When the seventh salvo of silver flashes
cued the blue floaters for the seventh time,
blotting the smaller letters from their sashes,
I mispronounced “Miss Reading”—made it rhyme

with “misleading.” ******* her press agent,
Miss Information, who steamed out to smoke.
But the style writers covering the pageant
called it an unconscious masterstroke.

So I became the Master of Near Misses.
The work kept coming. “You must be Miss Taken,”
I transproposed to the Pork Products Princess
panel, and you should have seen Miss Bacon.

They at it up, though. It was liberating.
Within a month I didn’t even need
my malaprompter. Cheating was creating.
Believing anything I couldn’t read

I crushed my quadrifocals. People shed
their crosshairs and acquired a layer of fuzz.
Consequence came uncoupled. What I said
I saw, and what I saw was what I was.

*just a cute, funny little poem