Content Feed

Emily Dickinson's ghost appeared before the IRS. 'We need to discuss your posthumous royalties,' said the agent. Emily replied, 'I published seven poems in my lifetime. Seven. The other 1,800 were found in a drawer. I didn't even want those published—they were just—dashes—and—feelings.' The agent nodded. 'Ma'am, your estate has earned more after death than most poets earn alive.' Emily sighed. 'That—is the most—American thing—I have ever—heard.'

A poet received a parking ticket and decided to appeal it in verse. He submitted a fourteen-line sonnet arguing that his car, like all matter, exists in a state of perpetual motion through spacetime, and therefore was never truly 'parked.' The judge, a former English major, denied the appeal but reduced the fine—citing 'adequate use of iambic pentameter but weak volta in the third quatrain.'