Download PDF of this full issue: v54n2.pdf (38.8 MB)

Arachnid Blues (poem)

By W. D. Ehrhart

I.

Fee, fie, fo, fum,
I got bit by a scorpion
not once, but twice.
It wasn't nice,
but I didn't die,
though I did cry
"Corpsman!"
loudly enough to convey
to every Viet Cong and NVA
from the DMZ to Hanoi
that I was a boy in pain.

II.

Years later,
a scorpion walks into a bar
and orders a beer.
The bartender,
who happened to be an ex-Marine
who had once been bitten
by a scorpion
—twice—
grabbed an entrenching tool
from under the bar
and smashed the little bastard.

—W. D. Ehrhart