I’m pretty damn proud, on the whole:
with no help from a cereal bowl,
I've succeeded from forehead to ear
(if you study him just from the rear);
things are barely askew at his nape
(where he’s gotten a rash from the cape),
and no section will leave him appalled
(save for those that are now partly bald,
and the sideburn that, thanks to a sneeze,
I sliced off like a piece of Swiss cheese,
and the forelock as limp and compressed
as a water rat dead in its nest).
Yes, my slipups could not have been littler!
(Though he does look a wee bit like Hitler.) ◊
MELISSA BALMAIN is the Editor of Light, a journal of light verse. Her collection Walking in on People is often mistaken by online shoppers for some kind of porn.
