Lipogram Variations, by Jon Riccio

Brushstrokes, by Roy Lichtenstein (USA). 1967.

Lipogram Variations

I) The Presley Southwest

Ego over dinner with driver of EMT,
the hour we went vowel-less
stocked with the comfort foods
of meteor scientists.

Colon-flense this sentence,
                         its period too fibrous,
the gurgling pulpit to your gig line, fig-left.

Prynne, New Mexico; Hester, Vermont.

            Olympic-sized testosteroner Phelps
                                                meets with chlorine pitchmen,
                                                dungeon for Pistorius.

                                    Elvis mimic,
                        hound dog discomfiting,
                                        nicotine’s compromised positron  
             driving prices in the direction of JC Penney.

Periwinkle filed under femme:
            the Indigo Girls’ top groupie,
                        my nonprofit boss.
 
II) Bill, It Ain’t So

Strum a grim strip-o-gram
            guitar plus volta.       
            Doctor, distill my toxic swain,
Q-tip blood for your hour-long wait.

“Watch for my crumb-flint mastiff,” 
I say all animal psychic,
         Passion Sunday, Hallmark’s not-so-
                                              cash cow, post-Ash.

Justify that Madonna primordial:

            not virgin
            not burning 
            not lucky star,
            Paula Abdul’s glum grain,  
            straight up.

This ᗅᗺᗷᗅ track lacks Anni’s “Mamma 
              Mia,” plus iambic logic from 
     Mar-a-Lago 
                      long ago, 
     Dolph’s Drago
    da pugilist-diggity crux.
Carl W: sans Vanity,
              will you do an Action Jackson II?

Ms. Curtis, can you talk about Dan Aykroyd?
           So many films in which you 
             and that Canadian co-act.

                  Scruffy Banbury, my porn alias.
Cousin Mary’s, Guy Park.
Bill Murray, do you chasm your ghosts?
 
III)Thereby Em D.

The caravan jeers,
            the applecart adheres.
Chevy objects,
            Yugo selects the solar tea  
brewed on my brother’s Plymouth roof,
warlock buckled and broomed.

Haberdasher’s gall,
            abbess’s cowl,
                        don’t forget the turtleneck,
       the dancehall a chow wagon begets.

                       You get two poem uses  
        out of mollycoddle and defenestrate.

Share an alley, take your colleague’s  
overheated car when you look for felon-wear
                        on Hardy Street. OCD means  
    you ordered three cuffs, COD.

Status quo near a costumer’s bungalow,
            my jewels aft of the bookshelf’s VHS.
Have you seen Three Men and a Baby melt?
There’s an urban legend where a ghost-boy
                                        pops up halfway through.
                                              
                                                       Trade you
             Ted Danson for Steve Guttenberg,
Selleck scorned for curmudgeonry
    of O’Donnell when they talked  
                                    guns, control.

                          Somewhere Shelly Long  
              adorns a stash of Cheers, 
         the Rebecca years.                                
Somehow, my grandma’s stole
sequesters the room of glean.

What people don’t know about fur
            trappers would occupy a La-Z-Boy
                        whose contours maladjust.

Scotchgard, could you be a cycle less?
 
Law and Order, must you resort to the freezer  
as body dump? Belzer, your Scarface  
scene made me laugh.

IV)The Fifteen-Minute Windshield

Have that trait where the gray eye
is left, blue eye is right?
That’s basic grandeur.

Riffraff, prism pilaf,
mendacity’s bracket’s  
the basket-able trend.
All I’ll say is ride the Schwinn mutiny,  
pedal serendipity’s highfalutin.

Sip a Sprite, press pens  
    with Bens Lerner and Vereen.
        Flashbulb in a gutter,
             the anticlimax. 

May I change the channel?
It’s filth’s zenith
(rerun a Cinemax).

Centaurs have their place,  
ask fraternities and Mr. Ed.


I’m dating a marsupial whisperer and his ranch,
better than the Sadie Hawkins  
where I fell uphill
during the perp walk, pre-queer.


In triage wards, I shun urges fragged by respect.
We hardwired the thief,  
gave him a yam habit.
Edgewise, the mantle talk;
philanderess unimpressed.
 
V)Brixen Mortar   
 
The villa wore Crest White Strips,
pomade reflected a falsehood swing set.

Their glee gel eagle-eyed,
residents hollowed a ventilator czar
betrothed to a fireside chat.

Wasps eroded, octaves escalated static:
            Mister Firearms crowned  
                        Miss Americoal Miner,  
friend of the Palm Olive heir.
                                                Breathe Right, the family millions.

Gee, a barbary librarian staging revolt,
the palimpsest a phlebotomist-enervated gale
(Type O cancelled to inclement kale).

           A-blather, abash, 
is it time for the third act of INXS?

The artisan clay-fired a ceramic Sarlaac pit,
       another did the brothel’s income tax.

              The Macy’s lady asked if I was
                                    some formalist adrift.

Redact a letter
                           and it topples a psychopomp.
      Anon inertia.  
Better glottals lie ahead.

Jon Riccio

Jon Riccio is a PhD candidate at the University of Southern Mississippi's Center for Writers where he serves as an associate editor at Mississippi Review. His work appears in print or online at Booth, The Cincinnati Review, Eratio, Hawai'i Review, Permafrost, Switchback, and Waxwing, among others. He received his MFA from the University of Arizona.