Anatomy Of A Case

Anatomy can’t be beyond your wit:

Not being able to do chores or play

A game with kids does not mean too unfit

To toss a Christmas tree a mile away

Or fake a contest winner’s smile. The harm

My car crash did means I’m in constant pain,

Yet it does not affect my throwing arm

Or facial muscles, Judge, because my brain

Feels crash pain only in my middle back,

Attached to which is neither arm nor face.

Contrariwise, I lift no heavy sack,

As it would wrack my back … I rest my case,

Soliciting for five years’ wages lost …

Excuse me, Judge, you what—my case is tossed?

 

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Florida State University who has returned to live in his native England. His acrostic sonnets have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Better Than Starbucks, The Creativity Webzine, Current Conservation, the Ekphrastic Review, Grand Little Things, Light, Lighten Up Online, MONO., the New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, the Satirist, the Washington Post and WestWard Quarterly. The poem was prompted by the NBC story, “Mom loses $820,000 injuries claim after she was pictured tossing a Christmas tree.”