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"A Good Home-Schooling"
by Bob Boston

I forced one of my readers
to swallow sandpaper today.
He needed a good stiff drink
to help him clear his throat
after I promised him he'd see
rainbows and pinwheels,
and taste mangoes with coconut cream.
After he finished swallowing that,
I made him devour hot marbles
and ice-cold gravel.
I'm not sure if I would have been able
to live with myself had I gone as far
as I would have liked.
I had planned on dipping him
from head to toe in hot, wet asphalt,
and then rolling him like a homemade
cigarette of cheap tobacco
in a pit of pigeon feathers
until all he could smell
was an onslaught of sulfur
and gun smoke.
Whenever he got indignant,
I made him trip over a comma,
which didn't belong at all.
And that's when he fell,
he fell right onto his own
sour face.
He landed headlong in a saucepan of
boiling water with rude question marks
disgusting as his own colon,
trying to separate his brittle spine
from the ruthless grip of
the pointless orifice
just below.

Bob Boston is brand-spanking new to publishing his poetry. Though he's been writing for years, this is his first publication.