It’s hard to sell your rhymes when you’re from here.
What editor would recognize that Worcester
doesn’t go with fester, but with blister?
Fester goes with Leicester. Paul Metayer,
my buddy from Revere, would understand,
but he’s not editing Big Dog Review.
Here/Metayer, now that’s a nice rhyme, too,
though Revere needs a Leah if it lands
at a line’s end. And, oh boy, the scansion!
Consider Ayer—a single syllable.
It also rhymes with here and there. Who’s able
to follow that? A Kennedy in a mansion
doesn’t speak like Joe in Haverhill.
Guess how that’s pronounced. You never will.

————

Richard Jordan is a mathematician and data scientist who also writes poetry. His poems have appeared in Tar River Poetry, The Atlanta Review, Redivider, Harpur Palate, Canary-A Literary Journal of the Environmental Crisis, upstreet, on the Verse Daily website, and elsewhere. He lives and works in the Boston area.