From “The Sonnagrams”

By K. Silem Mohammad
on thoth’s tits
From Sonnet 75 (“So are you to my thoughts as food to life”)


A groovy day, a fish fillet, an elf hair,
A cosmonaut, a microdot, a hoedown,
A trusty door, the finest whore on welfare,
A neocon who’s keeping on the lowdown,

A purple fist, a Federalist, a sunspot,
A bird that’s got a big big butt to study,
A guy named Toots, ten dumb galoots, a gunshot,
Die Fledermaus by good ol’ Strauss (my buddy),

A grinning troll, a real a-hole, a smiler,
A dude who knows a gushing hose is funny,
An underdressed (no tie, no vest) John Tyler,
A sexy flirt, a cowboy shirt — oh honey!

I’ll flip you for a dinosaur, my sweeties,
When Uncle Pete lets Usher eat our Wheaties.



uh huh: hi, hula tooth
From Sonnet 135 (“Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will”)


Will refried catnip addicts find a cure?
Will daytime televangelists go broke?
Will Algorithmic Horses go on tour?
Will nineteen shekels buy one thin, thin Coke?

Will innovative inverts be reported?
Will weasel-human hybrids rent a maid?
Will hesitating oxen get aborted?
Will analysts of real estate get laid?

Will hoochie-coochie nuns remove their mink?
Will enemies of hotness shut it down?
Will tame aphasic mynahs learn to think?
Will Hi-Ho hunt the hound in Ho-Ho town?

Will Willy Loman eat a thousand ants?
Will Willa Cather do that nasty dance?
Notes:
My process for composing sonnagrams is as follows: I feed one of Shakespeare’s sonnets into an internet anagram engine, generating fourteen lines of text that is quantitatively equivalent to Shakespeare’s poem at the level of the letter. I then rearrange this text, clicking and dragging letter by letter until I have a new English sonnet. All leftover letters are used to make up a title.

Source: Poetry (February 2014)