from “Jeopardy”

Life’s tough choices. Beauty
contests, for instance, three goddesses
and a mortal judge, a straight-ahead
guy, no counter-intuitive there.
He taps the no-brainer button
and what’s his reward? [more]

from Milton Acorn: In Love and Anger

IF YOU’RE STRONGHEARTED

If you’re stronghearted look at this Island;
red gouges of creeks at low tide and
the stronger red which spreads behind plows.
Don’t hold your tongue too long, it’ll swell
with so much good and so much bad to say.
— “If You’re Stronghearted”

FROM THE MID-1950s ON, poetry was so central to Acorn that he seemed to have been born with metaphors in his mouth.