Of course,
I was on course
With a good deal of force
Until I hit the gorse
Which made it worse
And to make this more terse
I should omit all this verse
But I am naturally obverse
So let me just say
In my obvious way
That biting bugs called ticks don’t just play
But lie in ambush for the day
When someone coarse forces through their gorse
Without remorse
Thinking, I suppose, he is a horse
Thinking he will not need recourse
Joe C. Smolen, AKA L.W. Smolen is an Oregon Coast writer of insufficiently exaggerated notoriety. Never having been arrested, he lives with his wife Sherrie and the ghost of their black, Standard Poodle Rico Suave in a really pretty good, Prairie Style house they built themselves. Since the Literary Magazine Fleas on the Dog of Kitchener, Ontario has permanently stopped accepting submissions, in order to read L.W. Smolen’s 2021 short fiction, A Real Guy, you are referred to joecsmolen.com. Some of L.W’s other, subsequent short fictions are archived at Olive Tree Review, Ginosko, Cardinal Sins Journal, Wrath Bearing Tree, Wilderness House and etc. Kirkus reviews once interpreted his work favorably.
