My Doonesbury inspired poem Zonker is up at Backchannels. Here is the poem:

Zonker

My love affair
with the sun
began early one
March, after
a particularly brutal
winter.

No one could
have predicted
it. After all I
was a pale
and pasty
child, who shriveled
outdoors
and spent
summers slathered
in calamine
lotion.

These days
I like nothing
better than
to sit in full sun,
skin alive
from the warmth,
like the afterglow
of a lover’s
caress.

Recently, a friend
called me Zonker
and the name took off
like a solar
flare. I haven’t
had a nickname
in 60 years—
and Zonker
is so much
finer than what
they called me
when I was young.

Today, as I sit
in the morning
sun—like a lizard
reviving, I imagine
Sol bequeathing me
the perfect
tan, as I hoist
the First Annual
Zonker Tanning Award
up to the full sun.