“Continental”

By Thomas Page

I am student teaching a senior level class in Washington, DC. They have to write some poems on these prompts. I decided to try all 30 of them. However, I will not say what the prompt was but what its number was.

Prompt #4

Marley, free as a flea on her Harley, see the goatee on the quay by the sea.

 

What is like on the Continent

Where they say their vowels funny?

The origin of all of this culture

That we hold in high regard

Because it is familiar?

 Marley, free as a flea on her Harley, see the goatee on the quay by the sea.

 

Everyone wants to go there

To see the art and the buildings

And eat fancy bread with butter

Hearing je t’aime this and

Je t’aime that.

Marley, free as a flea on her Harley, see the goatee on the quay by the sea.

They have some good things

Like that lady in the brown-gold frame

Surrounded by many

About to inherit St. Denis’ syndrome

In the city of lights.

Marley, free as a flea on her Harley, see the goatee on the quay by the sea.

We have the same here

As they do there

Even a town in Texas with the same name

That was shaped by the Normans

Who came to their fathers’ home a millennium ago.

Marley, free as a flea on her Harley, see the goatee on the quay by the sea.