Artwork © Eric N. Peterson

 

M. Roland Mesnier

More Democratic Party members than

Republicans ate my desserts: Dems reeked

Of greater sweetness than the Reagans’ clan—

Lest chocolate, though, should all be stopped, I sneaked

A mousse to Ron when Nancy left for hours …

Not stinting at receptions, I found six

Desserts are what an average guest devours.

My tools of trade—a most eclectic mix

Encompassing a tire gauge, ice pick and

Steel hanger—might be primitive, yet my

Nutritional spectaculars were grand …

I‘d swap them, though, for plain old apple pie—

Empowered as a pastry, I would be

Reborn a big, fat doughnut, filled with me.

 

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Florida State University who now lives in York, 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. His poem was prompted by the New York Times story, “Roland Mesnier, Pastry Chef to Five Presidents, Dies at 78.”

Eric N. Peterson is from Atlanta, Ga. He’s been drawing cartoons all his life. He leans towards the absurd, imaginative, and the surreal, as that’s where all the flavor is.