5 Poems by George J. Searles

HOW TO LOSE A MICHELIN STAR

When George Donner called ahead
to make dinner reservations,

nobody remembered to ask him
whether anyone in his Party

had any dietary restrictions.
Bad mistake, any way you slice it.


THE KIND OF REQUEST
YOU SHOULD PROBABLY NOT IGNORE

Please step out
of the vehicle, Sir,

and keep your hands
where I can see them.


NO PRESSURE

Hey! Here it comes—
another femtosecond:

one millionth
of one billionth
of one second.

Don't blink,
or you'll miss the whole thing.


A PROBLEM IN THE KEYSTONE STATE

The teams at James Buchanan High School
in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, are nicknamed
The Blue Devils.

The teams at Mercersburg Academy
in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, are also nicknamed
The Blue Devils.

This may or may not be a Satanic plot,
but it does cause some confusion among readers
of The Mercersburg Journal sports pages.

G.J. CHAITIN & G.J. SEARLES

In his book The Information, James Gleick asks,
"Looking generally at all the numbers,
how can a mathematician know

whether the interesting ones are rare or common?
For that matter, looking at any one number,
can a mathematician ever know for sure

whether a smaller algorithm night be found?"
Gleick goes on to inform us that
"For Chaitin, these were the critical questions."

But for me, not so much.

Bionote

George J. Searles teaches English and Latin at Mohawk Valley Community College (Utica NY) and has also taught creative writing on the upstate campus of Pratt Institute (Brooklyn) and graduate courses for The New School (NYC). Widely published (literary criticism, textbooks, poetry), he is a former Carnegie Foundation "Professor of the Year" and is currently editor of Glimpse, a poetry annual.