Drawing Jokes / Recent Jokes
Found Parable by J.D. McClatchy (published in the 15 November 1993 issue of the New Yorker, p. 72)
In the men's room at the office today
some wag has labelled the two stalls
the Erotic and the Political.
The second seems suitable for the results
of my business, not for what thinking
ordinarily accompanies it.
So I've locked myself into the first because,
though farther from the light bulb overhead,
it remains the more conventional
and thereby illuminating choice.
The on its walls is more desperate.
As if I had written them
there myself, but only because by now
I have seen them day after day,
I know each boast, each plea,
the runty widower's resentments,
the phone number for good head.
Today's fresh drawing:
a woman's torso, neck to outflung knees,
with breasts like targets and at her crotch
red felt-tip "hair" to guard
a treasure half would, half wisecrack.
The first critic of desire more...
Betty was scribbling industriously over some paper with a pencil when her mother asked her what she was drawing. "Im not drawing, Mom," she said indignantly, "Im writing a letter to Fred." "But you cant write," Mom pointed out. "Thats all right," said Betty, "Fred cant read."
A kindergarten teacher was observing her class of children while they drew. She would occasionally walk around to see each child's artwork. As she got to one little girl who was working diligently, she asked what the drawing was.
The girl replied, "I'm drawing God."
The teacher paused and said, "But no one knows what God looks like." Without missing a beat or looking up from her drawing, the girl replied, "They will in a minute."