Mensa Kids

Mensa Kids


My children are so smart
their tests have to cheat to get the questions right.

It took some getting used to at first,
like when they browbeat gravity with theorems
and axioms until they could fly.
Regularly they shamed our chessboard
with only a handful of pawns.

When riding across town for burgers and shakes
they’d re-spell all the signs in Elamite,
sing along with the radio in Old Malay.
Of course no-one got their jokes—
they taught the parrot profanities
only shamans would blush at in Burkina Faso.

It wasn’t always pleasant. They figured out
my infidelities with parish wives almost before sin
had a moment to collect its thoughts.
Even the dog couldn’t lie.

Nuns found them demonic, making school impossible,
plus, how smart should they get? Bedroom walls
were covered in mathematical graffiti,
they played Bach with embellished sub-woofers
until plaster planets began to fall from the ceiling.

Owing that California is mild, they stopped wearing clothes,
which imposed the Girl Scouts' ban.
My wife took to drinking Vodka from pint bottles;
our girls taught her remedial games of chance
and soon owned our deed, even the Volvo.

Specialists diagnosed St. Anthony’s Fire,
and prescribed tranquilizers, which they ate like Raisinets;
becoming rather surly, fashioning weapons
from the kitchen drawers, building grenades from mold.
I’m currently seeking asylum.

Police are doubtful, being predicates
to faulty logic themselves. My daughters feast
on television. They’ve taken to sporting hairstyles
Elsa Lanchester popularized at Universal.
Using real voltage they plug themselves to the wall.

In the cellar, my wife is habitually bound and starved,
meanwhile I bunk with transients beneath overpasses.
They drive by in the car sometimes, waving like starlets
propped up on fat dictionaries, no doubt
to hide the facts—and therein rests my hope.

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