Harrison Fisher

Hercules Unchained

The jackass Hercules, Herakles—
whichever name you call him by,
he’ll poke you really hard in the chest
and tell you to call him the other.

Here comes the postman,
dodging Cerberus, delivering paychecks
for the no-show jobs Hercules holds. 

He also collects protection money
while strolling through the agora
so the vendors don’t find a river
cleaning out their stalls in the morning.

Whatever you do,
don’t let drunk Hercules
catch you in a bar late at night. 

He’ll want to bet you can’t name
all twelve of his labors in order.
If you can, he’ll take care of your tab
and carry you home on his shoulders.

If you can’t,
he promises your end
will be the stuff of legend.

Gordon Gordon’s Attack on the Lake Poets

Gordon Gordon, Lord Gordon
(no relation to George Gordon, Lord Byron)
was a petty versifier, a scalawag, and a lunatic.

Visiting the Lake District,
he held his tongue when he spied Wordsworth
walking with Dorothy, but, the next day,

the sight of Will with the doddering Coleridge
set Gordon fulminating to the ambient quacks
of satirical mallards.

He shouted at the strolling duo, calling them
“Turdsworth!” and “Colon-Itch!” and he roared
all kinds of ways they were fecally intercalated.

The rattled perambulators lurched and wobbled
like bowling pins from this verbal assault.
Later, emoting in tranquility

was impossible.  Each Lyrical Balladeer
cried out in florid impotence, “What is to be done?
What is to be done?”

and this is what they did:

Coleridge upped his daily dose of laudanum
to 50,000 drops, and Wordsworth
took an unclean jelly knife

from the breakfast table and unconcernedly
slit the pages of a newly-published book
Robert Southey had purchased while in London.

 

Harrison Fisher published twelve collections of poems from 1977 to 2000.  After a hiatus from writing and publishing for most of the 21st century, in 2025 he has new work in 
All Existing, Amsterdam Review, The Basilisk Tree, Chewers by Masticadores, The Corpus Callosum, dadakuku, eMerge, the engine(idling, The Kleksograph, Metachrosis Literary, Panoplyzine, Rat’s Ass Review, and Trampoline.