Daniel Galef

Is something — off? The captain scoffs: ‘Pizzazz!’
That’s not it, but I don’t dare say he’s wrong.
I heard the butler whisper that she has
A tooth or two too many, or too long.
I’ve seen her prick her ears up like a cat,
Which gave me a peculiar hunted feeling.
She smiled and said ‘Why, any can do that,’
And then returned to dusting off the ceiling.
She walks the moorlands: Cold and arid climes
Are where she says her noble line arose.
She’s strangely secretive at other times,
When asked, say, why she hasn’t got a nose.
But love erases flaws, and hides all scars:
To err is human — Who’s to say, on Mars?

DANIEL GALEF is an undergraduate student of classical philosophy and classical literature at McGill University in Montreal. His poems have appeared in The Lyric, Measure, and Light Quarterly, and his genre poetry in particular in Sein und Werden, the Surreal Grotesque, and Child of Words Fantasy & Science Fiction. He also writes musicals and won the Krivy Award for Excellence in Playwriting at the 2016 McGill Drama Festival.