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Happily Never After: the Second Curse of the Horny Toad
by Michael R. Burch
 
He did not think of love of Her at all
frog-plangent nights, as moons engoldened roads
through crumbling stonewalled provinces, where toads
(nee princes) ruled in chinks and grew so small
at last to be invisible. He smiled
(the fables erred so curiously), and thought
bemusedly of being reconciled
to human flesh, because his heart was not
incapable of love, but, being cursed
a second time, could only love a toad’s . . .
and listened as inflated frogs rehearsed
cheekbulging tales of anguish from green moats . . .
and thought of her soft croak, her skin fine-warted,
his anemic flesh, and how true love was thwarted.

Originally published by Romantics Quarterly. Keywords/Tags: frog, horny, toad, prince, princess, curse, kiss, fable, true love, magic, spell, spells, croak, kingdom



Happily Never After
by Michael R. Burch

Happily never after, we lived unmerrily
(write it! —like disaster)  in Our Kingdom by the See
as the man from Porlock's laughter drowned out love's threnody.

We ditched the red wheelbarrow in slovenly Tennessee
and made a picturebook of poems, a postcard for Tse-Tse, 
a list of resolutions we knew we couldn't keep, 
and asylum decorations for the King in his dark sleep.

We made it new so often strange newness, wearing old, 
peeled off, and something rotten gleamed dull yellow, not like gold:
like carelessness, or cowardice, and redolent of pee.
We stumbled off, our awkwardness—new Keystone comedy.

Huge cloudy symbols blocked the sun; onlookers strained to see.
We said We were the only One. Our gaseous Melody
had made us Joshuas, and so—the Bible, new-rewrit, 
with god removed, replaced by Show and Glyphics and Sanskrit, 
seemed marvelous to Us, although King Ezra said, "It's S—t."

We spent unhappy hours in Our Kingdom of the Pea, 
drunk on such Awesome Power only Emperors can See.
We were Imagists and Vorticists, Projectivists, a Dunce, 
Anarchists and Antarcticists and anti-Christs, and once
We'd made the world Our oyster and stowed away the pearl
of Our too-, too-polished wisdom, unanchored of the world, 
We sailed away to Lilliput, to Our Kingdom by the See
and piped the rats to join Us, to live unmerrily
hereever and hereafter, in Our Kingdom of the Pea, 
in the miniature ship Disaster in a jar in Tennessee.
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