Verbatim

Welcome back to Verbatim, our stage for amateur and professional writers. Today we hear from Jonathan Rose. This series of short poems were inspired by this year's Miami Book Fair International.

Misguided

George Armstrong Custer
Thought himself and Indian buster;
At Little Big Horn he faced a band
He could not stand.

Retrospective

Captain William Bligh
Remarked with a sigh,
"Perhaps there would have been no mutiny,
Had the crew not viewed the lashings with such scrutiny."

Catastrophic

Martha Jane Burke
Drove fellow westerners berserk;
Her antics brought such bother and bane,
She earned the epithet Calamity Jane.

Literal

Roman satirist Apuleius
Thought to slay us
With his pen.
Words were not as mighty then.

Unheralded

Eric the Red
Explored Greenland's coast, it is said.
Though finding our new world is not his fame,
America incorporates his name.