Tag Archives: Melissa Balmain

Melissa Balmain, ‘The Marital Bed’

You always hog the blankets
and steal my magazines.
No need to ask what smells so rank–
it’s you, the king of beans.

Your toenails cut my shin.
You blow your nose: I jump.
I’m sanded by your bristly chin,
then bulldozed by your rump.

You scratch your back and sigh,
you grunt, harrumph and bray.
And yet the crazy truth is I
can’t sleep when you’re away.

*****

From Walking in on People © Melissa Balmain, 2014. Used by permission of Able Muse Press.

Melissa Balmain writes: “As with many of my poems, I owe my husband for being a good sport about seeing such things in print. And I owe Light‘s founding editor, John Mella, who advised adding a foot to the third line of each stanza, for a 3-3-4-3 pattern. (That pattern has a name that I don’t recall. Could someone please remind me?)”

Melissa Balmain’s third poetry collection, Satan Talks to His Therapist, is available from Paul Dry Books (and from all the usual retail empires). Balmain is the editor-in-chief of Light, America’s longest-running journal of light verse, and has been a member of the University of Rochester’s English Department since 2010. She will teach a three-day workshop on comic poetry at the Poetry by the Sea conference in Madison, CT, in May 2024.

Photo: “#oneperson #AdultsOnly #onlywomen #onewomanonly #people #Adult !indoors #humanbodypart #Bed #realpeople #BlackBackground #closeup #day #awakenings” by nikdanna is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Melissa Balmain, ‘Bird in the Hand’

Melissa Balmain, ‘Tale of a Relationship, in Four Parts’

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Kissing.
Hissing.
Dissing.
Missing.

*****

Melissa Balmain writes: “Often, monorhymes end up feeling a bit forced, so I’m happy when I manage to write one that feels natural (at least to me). Plus, it’s always nice to have a poem in the love-gone-wrong category. Not only is this a prerequisite when you apply for your poetic license, but it can land you in great company. (See Kiss and Part, a 2005 anthology edited by Gail White, where ‘Tale of a Relationship’ rubs elbows with verse by the likes of Dorothy Parker, Wendy Cope, XJ Kennedy, and many poets whose work has appeared in Form in Formless Times.)”

‘Tale of a Relationship, in Four Parts’ is from Walking in on People © Melissa Balmain, 2014. Used by permission of Able Muse Press.

Photo: “Broken Kiss; Love Lost” by angelaathomas is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Melissa Balmain, ‘Shopper’s Life List’

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Nine thousand quarts of orange juice
Five thousand loaves of bread
Eight hundred fifty bars of soap
Three hundred lipsticks (red)
A gross of bras
A score of scarves
A dozen wallets (black)
Ten cars
Eight dogs
Six cats
Three homes
Two canes
One granite plaque

*****

From Walking in on People © Melissa Balmain, 2014. Used by permission of Able Muse Press.

Editor’s note: If this poem doesn’t look like formal verse to you, and the only structure you see is the declining number of the items listed, then read it aloud to pick up the swing!

Melissa Balmain writes: “As you might guess, this one came about when I’d been doing some birdwatching. I considered starting one of those ‘life lists’ that birders have—then thought: what if there were other kinds of life lists? I never did get around to listing birds.”

Speaking of shopping, Melissa Balmain’s third poetry collection, Satan Talks to His Therapist, can be preordered from Paul Dry Books (and from all the usual retail empires). Balmain is the editor-in-chief of Light, America’s longest-running journal of comic verse. Her poems and prose have appeared in such places as The American Bystander, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Lighten Up Online,The Hopkins Review, Poetry Daily, Rattle, and The Washington Post. Her other poetry collections are Walking in on People (chosen by X.J. Kennedy for the Able Muse Book Award) and The Witch Demands a Retraction: Fairy Tale Reboots for Adults.A member of the University of Rochester’s English Department since 2010, she lives nearby with her husband and (for now) one of their two children. She is a recovering mime.

“Missing Plaque” by QuesterMark is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Using form: villanelle: Melissa Balmain, ‘Villain Elle’

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Whenever I wake up and don’t feel well,
I like to read a women’s magazine.
I know that I can count on Vogue or Elle,

Cosmo or Glamour, Self or Mademoiselle,
instead of pills, elixirs or caffeine,
whenever I wake up and don’t feel well.

Page Eight has bathing suits that look just swell
if you’re six foot and live on Lean Cuisine.
I know that I can count on Vogue or Elle.

Page Nine’s a list of “wardrobe musts” that sell
at reasonable prices—for a queen.
Whenever I wake up and don’t feel well,

Page Ten says how to age, yet stay a belle.
The photo? It’s a model of eighteen.
I know that I can count on Vogue or Elle

to make my time in bed such living hell,
I’m out of there in sixty seconds clean.
Whenever I wake up and don’t feel well,
I know that I can count on Vogue or Elle.

*****

Editor: The villanelle is a highly structured poem, its two key lines rhyming and repeating several times. One of its challenges is to make each repetition fresh and interesting, either by developing and deepening the context, or by varying the repeated lines slightly or, as with this one, by having the same words resonate differently. Here “I know that I can count on” gives an initial impression of a favourable attitude to women’s magazines, but at the end the words show total disgust. This ‘Villain Elle‘ is typical of Balmain’s twists and puns and absolute control of form.

Melissa Balmain edits Light, America’s longest-running journal of light verse. Her poems and prose have appeared widely in the US and UK. She’s the author of the full-length poetry collection Walking in on People (Able Muse Press), chosen by X.J. Kennedy for the Able Muse Book Award, and the shorter, illustrated The Witch Demands a Retraction: Fairy-Tale Reboots for Adults (Humorist Books). Her next full-length collection, Satan Talks to His Therapist, is due out in fall 2023.

‘Villain Elle‘ is from Walking in on People © Melissa Balmain, 2014. Used by permission of Able Muse Press.

Photo: “304/365 – 8/8/2011” by GabrielaP93 is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Melissa Balmain, ‘Not So Snow White’

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Things started so well: found a chick in a box,
got her out, and days later, we wed–
such a snap because, speaking of life’s pleasant shocks,
my stepmom-in-law turned up dead.

Home that night, after finally fooling around
(happy ending for both!), I sighed, “Heaven.”
But my wife simply stared at the ceiling and frowned:
“Is that it? I’m accustomed to seven.”

*****

Melissa Balmain writes: “This poem comes from my latest collection, The Witch Demands a Retraction. To anyone who has mistakenly bought a copy of it for little kids: I am sorry. Maybe the book’s subtitle (fairy tale reboots for adults) should have been printed bigger. Or maybe the illustrator, Ron Barrett, should have made his drawings less adorable. Either way, to prevent further disasters in gift-giving, here’s a partial list of topics in the book: Interspecies adultery. Corrupt puppets. Kinky princes. Elderly cannibals. Impotent baked goods. Porcine insurance fraud. And, yes, eightsomes that include Sneezy, Happy and Dopey.”

Photo: “Snow White Mural” by ATIS547 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Melissa Balmain, ‘Fallen’

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As a kid growing up in New York,
I considered our fall second rate:
how I longed for the grand, mythological land
we exotically labeled Upstate.

In that Eden, I’d heard, leaves turned bright,
endless acres of yellows and reds,
while my single tree browned, dropping one tiny mound
that I kicked to the curb with my Keds.

Now I live several hours to the north,
and the maples and oaks truly blaze—
hues so loud they look fake—till the time comes to rake
without stopping, for numberless days.

And I daydream of trips farther south,
of the places I’ll shop, stroll and dine
in that part of the map where the leaves may be crap
but you don’t need a rod in your spine.

*****

Melissa Balmain writes: “Like so many poems I write, this is a case of making lemonade out of lemons—or, more accurately, salad out of way too many leaves. My husband would like it known that in our family, he does most of the raking. But I do most of the talking about raking.”

‘Fallen’ was first published in Lighten Up Online.

Photo: “A walk in the woods” by Let Ideas Compete is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Resources: Light poetry magazine

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‘Light‘ has just published its winter/spring 2022 issue… perhaps a little late, but it still has snow on the cover. Originally founded in 1992 by John Mella as the print magazine Light Quarterly with the mission to “restore humor, clarity, and pleasure to the reading of poems”, it is now biannual. It moved online in 2013, and all issues since then can be read for free on its website, along with excerpts from print issues dating back to 1999. Under current editor Melissa Balmain and her staff of fellow volunteers, it remains the oldest and best-known journal of light verse in the U.S.

I used to think of magazines as purely ephemeral, things to be skimmed and discarded unless a page or photo was worth retaining by tearing out physically or saving online. Light, however, has made me pay attention to how many resources are made available through a well-managed publication. In this case you get the following:
1. The magazine – some 50 poets with one or several pieces each – a great way to be exposed to, and kept up to date on, the range of light formal verse being produced in the English-speaking world today;
2. and more extensive work by, and coverage of, a featured poet – someone with a strong track record, worth learning about their work and career;
3. and (sometimes) an additional light-verse-related feature or essay;
4. and (always) reviews of light-verse books, and/or books that at least have a large helping of comic poetry – and I’m happy to say that the Potcake Chapbooks are again mentioned this issue!
5. and general news: the News page carries info on: 1- events of interest to Light poets (i.e., readings, workshops, and so forth involving light verse and/or Light poets); 2- contests and submission calls friendly to comic poets; 3- awards and honors received by Light contributors and volunteers; 4- books and, occasionally, music by Light poets. **NOTE: Poets and editors are encouraged to email editor Melissa Balmain with info appropriate for the News page: lightpoetrymagazine@gmail.com
6. and the magazine even runs light-verse events! Recordings of its “Light Verse in Dark Times” Zoom series are on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-tR4v4H23BUg5ZDUJlU7fA. In pre-Covid days, Light hosted live readings in Washington, DC, and at the AWP conference in San Antonio, TX. Its first live event in two years will be a reading in honor of Light’s 30th anniversary, May 26 (next week!) at the Poetry by the Sea conference in Madison, CT;
7. and the current-events Poems of the Week (POTW), a mailing list you can join (or find on the Light website’s Home Page) for a weekly blast of 10-12 snappy, snippy comments on the absurdities and iniquities of the world.

So, more than just being a skimmable and disposable magazine, Light provides a doorway to an extensive community, with each issue providing the work of dozens of current poets, and opportunities to go deeper into the world of formal light verse either online or in person, and to be engaged with it actively or passively, weekly, twice-yearly, or as you feel like.

Of course Light also provides an opportunity for a poet to submit their own work: just read an issue or two, and go to https://lightpoetrymagazine.submittable.com/submit to get the details on how (and what) to submit to either the magazine or the POTW.

And for those who think this is the most worthy (free) enterprise they have run across in a long while, their donation page is here: https://lightpoetrymagazine.com/donate/)

Launch: Potcake Chapbook 11, ‘Lost Love’

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‘Lost Love – poems of what never happened, and of the end of things that did’… how bittersweet; but what a collection of poets, and what a diversity of stories and observations!

Seventeen poets are packed into this chapbook. Seven have appeared before: Marcus Bales, Melissa Balmain, Michael R. Burch, Vera Ignatowitsch, Martin Parker, Gail White and myself. Ten are new to the series, with wicked little pieces from Brooke Clark, Cody Walker and three from Wendy Cope, and with longer poems from N.S. Thompson, James B. Nicola, Mary Meriam, Helena Nelson, David Whippman, Richard Fleming and Vadim Kagan. Bios, photos and links to read more of their work can all be found on the Sampson Low site’s Potcake Poets page, while all the chapbooks in the series, showing which poets are in which, are here. Each of the 11 chapbooks is profusely illustrated (of course) by Alban Low, and can be yours (or sent to an ex) for the price of a coffee.

Heartbreak has never had a happier manifestation!

Potcake Poet’s Choice: Melissa Balmain, ‘Fluffy Weighs in on the Baby’

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It’s hairless as an egg—
why bother petting that?
It doesn’t purr or groom your leg,
and yet you feed the brat.

Instead of catching mice,
it grapples with its socks.
It’s never taken my advice
to use the litter box.

It can’t climb up a tree,
it can’t chase balls of string,
it leaves you zero time for me—
just eat the wretched thing.

‘Fluffy Weighs in on the Baby’ is reprinted from Walking in on People (Able Muse Press)

Melissa Balmain writes: “The great light poet Bob McKenty calls himself ‘an editorial cartoonist who can’t draw.’ Given my fondness for writing persona poems, I think I qualify as a method actor who can’t act. As you might guess, adopting a persona lets me try on fresh points of view and say things I might not think to say (or dare to say) as myself. Plus, it can be a fun vehicle for mockery—as in ‘Fluffy,’ which aims its claws at new parents who ignore their pets. (Yes, I was one of those new parents…) Over the years I’ve attempted to channel not just animals and fellow humans in my poems, but also cartoon characters, plants, water, Satan, a dictionary, and, in my latest book, fairy tale characters. It’s the closest I’ll get to a SAG card.”

Melissa Balmain edits Light, America’s longest-running journal of light verse. Her poems and prose have appeared widely in the US and UK. She’s the author of the full-length verse collection Walking in on People (Able Muse Press), chosen by X.J. Kennedy for the Able Muse Book Award; and the shorter collection The Witch Demands a Retraction: Fairy-Tale Reboots for Adults, new from Humorist Books. She is a recovering mime.

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