this teacher, much more preacher,
vowelizes her vague threats
with a dry-throated croak: "I'll learn
you both to behave, or else!"
A one-eyed stare sawed in two
shows that she means vehemence,
tying down small-town thrashers
in the straight-jacketed comport
of a well-raised progeny.
Their permafrosted pause firms
the footing for lessoned spells
that had giggled on the brink
of insolent "Chelations"
and its indecent relations.
But this light-bubbling silence
irresistibly explodes
in a "Cosmoramic" spray
of sophomoric rhymes – soapy
language tickling her upturned no's.
"One more outburst ..." and she'll make
twin reprobates rinse away
too-capricious grunts and groans,
exulting in the power
of a well-placed investment:
her overtime, their effort.
— Francis Scudellari
This poem is written in response to Read Write Prompt #96: spam, spam, spam at Read Write Poem. The fifteen "Wordle" prompts, taken from spam e-mails, are italicized. I used the motif of a spelling lesson to avoid having to write lines that made sense of the words Chelations and Cosmoramic (whose definitions bred more confusion than clarity).
