“Bugs Bunny, Postmodern Postmortem”
Book Excerpt: Cartoons for the Chaos
Bugs Bunny, Postmodern Postmortem
One day you find a bloody rabbit’s foot
some toes still attached. Didn’t Bugs Bunny
Have some pun or standing joke on that
and the nature of art? How cartoonists
Play with their characters’ luck with a slip
of the pen or eraser? Bugs was both
A postmodernist and an animal
rights activist of tragicomic stature
Comfortable with the operatic
notion of the artist who plays havoc
With motion. A cynic who could think
on his feet, willing to weep, wail, cajole
Or dissemble for the Cause, either to keep
on his toes, or his toes on his paws, his nose
Clean and his claws to, a law unto, himself
Elmer Fudd was something else: a hunter
Homebody, redneck baby, nobody’s son
everybody’s pappy armed with a pop gun.
Copyright © 2026 by Richard Collins. Excerpted from Cartoons for the Chaos: Poems 1975-2025 (Shanti Arts Publishing). Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
Richard Collins’ Cartoons for the Chaos: Poems 1975-2025, was published in March 2026. His previous books include John Fante: A Literary Portrait, No Fear Zen, In Search of the Hermaphrodite: A Memoir, and Stone Nest. Since 2016 he has been abbot of the New Orleans Zen Temple and now resides in Sewanee, Tennessee, where he directs Stone Nest Zen Dojo.
