[Susan McLean]

Uncoupled

Why do bad poets tend to rhyme in couplets?
I like kids, but I wouldn't want octuplets.
Penning an epigram that doesn't rhyme
is juiceless, and one couplet is no crime,
but row on row of rhymes pair-bonded like geese
will have a reader itching for release.
Enjambment helps. When sentences don't pause
at the line's end, but leap from clause to clause
like joyful gibbons, swinging from branch to frond
to trunk to vine, they launch themselves beyond
pat landings. Hurtling through the air, suspended
on nothing but momentum, they've transcended
now for what's next. However, if you hope
to bring the couplet back, unless you're Pope
or Ogden Nash, the answer still is "Nope."


Revisions:
L1 "bad" was "hack"; then L1 was "Why do bad poets always choose rhymed couplets?"; "drawn" was "impelled"; then, the line was "Why are bad poets drawn to use rhymed couplets?"
L13 was "now for the future. Therefore, if you hope"