DON MARKENBALDI, LITERARY CRITIC AND ASSASSIN, MURDERS THIRD WIFE IN PEORIA

Don Markenbaldi, yes the same Don Markenbaldi who infamously attempted to snub us in front of an audience of our peers in 1993 as we accepted the long-overdue Life Poetic Achievement Award from the prestigious hands of the Peoria Poets Society’s own Linda Beluth, has murdered again, and this time in his own backyard!

If the reports we have received are correct, the calumny was committed during this year’s Labor Day barbecue and church picnic on the sacrosanct grounds of his own weathered and irregularly mown Peoria split-level. Yes, the unhappy mother had been drinking shandies. Yes, she was the victim of a local scandal in which the paperboy Randy Todd was implicated but never charged. Yes, she wore the pants in the family. But did that give Don Markenbaldi the right to murder her? Were her past transgressions grounds for a brutal stabbing, in front of hundreds of witnesses including her own children? And most importantly, can we believe the coroner’s report if it reads CAUSE OF DEATH MASSIVE CEREBRAL HEMORRAGE, NO OTHER WOUNDS?

The wrong Markenbaldi died this Labor Day. Happy Labor Day to you, Don, great work you done, you middling critic and even worse assassin.

Photo by Hanna Postova on Unsplash