Marilyn Taylor Verse-Virtual April 2023

April 2023

Marilyn Taylor
mlt@mltpoet.com / www.mltpoet.com

Bio Note: I’ve been writing poetry for a long, long time, and have been pleased to see my work published in such journals as Poetry, Rhino, Light Poetry Journal, and, of course, Verse-Virtual. I slid into poetry sideways, by studying linguistics in grad school, thereby coming across little gems like the “ambiguous sentence”, which--since its sense is entirely dependent upon its context--is impossible to parse or diagram. They are particularly prevalent as newspaper headlines; one example: “Drunk Gets Nine Months in Violin Case”. Below are three more.

Context is Everything


An ambiguous sentence, by accident or design, is difficult
to parse syntactically, and therefore supports no fixed 
and final semantic or pragmatic interpretation.
	—Psycholinguistics Glossary, Derek J. Smith, ed.


	
		
1. The chicken is ready to eat.
 
	
	
		The chicken is ready to eat;
it’s smothered in Sauce Marguerite,
looking trés debonaire
with his legs in the air
and paper rosettes on his feet.
		
		The chicken is ready to eat
his delectable afternoon treat;
we’ll toss him some seed
but will not over-feed
with an anthropomorphic conceit.
		
	
	
		
2. March postponed till August.
 
	
	
		March postponed till August,
July is due next fall;
June arrives in April,
And May won’t come at all.
		
		March postponed till August!
Demonstration dead!
The picnic will not happen—
a rally’s planned instead!
		
	
	
		
3. I saw her duck.
 
	
	
		I saw her duck
where the Winnipeg flows
riding the current
in regal repose
with taffeta flaps
between his toes,
a golden clothespin
instead of a nose.
Across his back
his waterproof clothes
went from copper to gold
to vermillion to rose.
		
		I saw her duck
and cover her face
as the ball kazoomed
past second base.
It screamed above her
splitting the air,
making her wonder
why she was there.
She dropped her glove
without even blinking,
walked off the field
and took up drinking.