The Right Lexicon

Alan Berecka

May 4, 2025

Not since the age of Johnson

and Webster have lexicons

been met with such excitement

but there’s a twist, modern

list makers don’t hunt words

for inclusion but to ban

from official vocabularies,

as if erasing a phrase

like peanut allergy can relieve

us from the need for EPIPENs 

and air filtration systems 

though affliction and cure remain.

Such confusing lists, written

in venom and arrogance,

forget a newer testament

that teaches us to remember

three kind words to live by

faith, hope and love 

of which love is the greater.

Alan Berecka resides with his wife Alice and an ornery rescue dog named Ophelia in Sinton, Texas  He retired in January from being a librarian at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi and is settling into a whole new level of contentment. His poetry has appeared in such places as the American Literary Review, Texas Review, and The San Antonio Express. He has authored three chapbooks, and six full collections, the latest of which is Atlas Sighs from Turning Plow Press, 2024. A Living is not a Life: A Working Title (Black Spruce Press, Brooklyn, 2021) was a finalist in the Hoffer Awards. From 2017 to 2019 he served as the first poet laureate of Corpus Christi.