Even-Tempered

‘I’m not even joking,’ said Gemma.

Why ‘even’, though?

How about something

with a little more impact?

Fucking. That would work

for a lot of people.

I never used to swear in my poems.

I’m not fucking joking.

Or what about

putting the modifier

after the joking?

I’m not joking, probably.

The unnecessary addition of ‘even’

does rather give this phrase the ring

of the inarticulate and slightly huffy adolescent,

like the ubiquitously redundant ‘actually’.

Ackshully! The sort of word

my English teacher needed smelling salts

to recover from (along with ‘sort of’, ‘even’,

and, also, ending a sentence with a preposition.)

Maybe we should use ‘even’ more often;

actually, sort of.

Best get the smelling salts then.

I’m not even actually fucking joking, probably.