The Shutterfly Edition

He pounded out hit pieces,
throwing hardball questions
& paraphrasing quotes
that weren’t provocative enough.
She penned puff pieces,
handing over softball questions
& doodling little hearts over her i’s
as she took notes.
He was as interested in presenting a caricature
as she was a character,
but then along came the biographer
who made their subjects human.

Marilee Readon suffered from writer’s flow,
but when she was sentenced to watch
SpongeRob FatPants
16 hours a day
for committing a lowercase crime
(a.k.a. misdemeanor plagiarism),
she developed writer’s block,
for her I.Q. points had been dulled.

When “Humans of New York” became a thing,
she came up with “People of Pensacola.”
When she crossed over to “The Far Side,”
“Nearsighted” became her thing.
But when 50 Shades of Grey found her,
50 Ways to Gray became a hit-&-run,
becoming known as “Sticky Lit”—
sticky being those fingers
that lifted from the bestselling,
if not the best.
Mediocre writers begged & borrowed,
whereas she stole the genuine article
& turned them into genuine knockoffs.