Snails were slow, the wise ones say
And ill prepared to live
Their city burned one sad day
The wise ones unprepared
Then they went their separate ways
Snails seem better lived today
August 29, 2016
From “Wisdom of the Snails” by Wilis Dossman
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August 22, 2016
From “The Pick of the Picks” by Keck Stippich
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May 7, 2016
From “Grasping at Papers” by Tress Graig Pappan
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Swallowing the constant propaganda
The backbone stirs from the blood
Spurious anarchy mutters all about
How do we count as true chaos
That which we cannot grasp
Pick apart basic slogans
Figure past paperback monarchs
The proud hypocrisy all support
May 4, 2016
From “Tides of Distant Memory” by Anonymous
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Time is eddies and currents
Holding us to our path
Everything with its purpose
Maybe even all our pasts
One wave brings us forward
Then another brings us back
Let us forget, then,
Everything that
You ever meant to us
Many are the memories
And many are the tears
No one could mean more
Has it really been so long
After all it seems so soon
Sliding through time together
Maybe apart, in our current boats
Everyone’s stronger
April 11, 2016
From “Jawbreaker Haiku” by Anonymous
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April 4, 2016
From “First Love, First Kiss” by Anonymous
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The first love
Which one? There are
Many firsts
Holding hands in grade four?
Maybe I was just imitating
The girl in seventh grade
The first I noticed
An eighth grader
She was the first
I even considered asking
Or the freshman? I’d known
Her since we were three
I think she’d have said yes
If I ever asked. When she
Asked years later I said
Yes but my mind wasn’t there
At the time, a junior
I only cared for the most
Volcanic crush, the first
To break my heart, the first
To say no
The first kiss
Unconscionably late
Classmates had children
Before I took even that step
Twenty-two and two degrees in
She was from my hometown
Her parents knew mine, though
We never met before
I waited too long, gave an
Awkward hug trying to screw
Up the courage
I kicked me heels in the lot
Afterwards, scarce aware of
The Dear John email a month
Away and the journal, online,
I’d only see years later
Chiding herself for accepting
A kiss from someone she wasn’t
Interested in, critiquing my
Goofy look of satisfaction
Wishing she’d kept her
Lips to herself
March 25, 2016
From “The Feline Dinner Rhyme” by Anonymous
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March 19, 2016
From “Blossoms of Tuesday” by Tomas Boulds Fossey
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On the one side, a wide open field, urban parkland, filled with wildblossoms like unto a snowstorm of beauty, of fragrance, of joy.
On the other, the rear-engine mower, hydrocarbon haze, churning in lines because Tuesdays are scything-days, petals or no.
Between them, me, hand on wheel over idling engine, stoplight brilliant in plexiglass ahead.
It will all be gone by the time I return.
I am moved to silent tears, rolling oily down cheeks still sunburned from the last walk, sopping across nostrils aching for an iota of fragrance.
The light changes, and I see no more. A scene for my dreams thereafter, then, waking or resting, blissful or nightmare.
March 1, 2016
From “Ocean of Illumination” by Lilia Minotun
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An ocean of clouds, undulating quietly beneath a single vessel. From above, starlight to dapple a subtle silver light. Coyly, it shrinks from any other illumination within or without, turning to ink. From below, lamplight like phosphoresence, the outline of each town clearly painted in warm oranges. When on a still tropical night you look down in the darkness, it is this. Even on chilly nights, even with trails of ice winding their way across the windows, it is this.
From below, we are invisible. A boat on the waves, an opaque night sky turning back all upward gazes. From above, we see only the archaeology of light. Remnants of dead stars vie with reminders of departed moments along city boulevards. Our light surely cannot reach them, surely will not reach them, but in each pinpoint a reminder waits. What creature on som far-distant sphere or deceptively close pavement has not shed light sadly, thinking it means nothing?
Our reminder is as fresh and twinking as starlight, as city lights. The light you shine now goes further than you know.
February 5, 2016
From “Emily Disserson” by Lindsy Sisemore
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Serious scholars of poetry know that in reclusive poetess Emily Dickinson’s most notable publications during her life were in the Springfield Republican newspaper. Between 1858 and 1868, she anonymously published a handful of verses in the paper, many differing quite significantly from the editions discovered by her sister Lavinia after Emily’s death in 1886.
What is less well known is the series of occasional poems that appeared in the Republican‘s sister publication, the Springfield Democrat between 1871 and 1882. The Democrat was a guttersnipe paper that specialized in sensational and taboo topics; it folded in 1883 after an obscenity case in Boston, in point of fact. It was the New York Post to the Republican‘s New York Times and very popular and reviled for that very reason.
The poems published therein were clearly inspired by Emily Dickinson’s poetry, but were universally vulgar and denigrating, directing shocking (for the time) insults and invective at unnamed parties. Scholars have somewhat facetiously dubbed the unknown author “Emily Disserson” due to this.
For example, the following was published in the Springfield Democrat on April 2, 1879, clearly based on Dickinson’s Hope Is A Thing With Feathers:
Hope you’re tarred and feathered –
And run right out of town –
As we sing a tune uncensor’d –
Of how we cast – you down –
And sweetest – in your cries – is heard –
And sore must be your ass –
That could abash the little bitch
That spoke so much of sass-
I’ve seen it on your bitchy hands –
And on the whorish lip –
You – never – in one-night stands,
Never shame loosen – your grip.
Experts disagree on whether the anonymous author was a family member, an acquaintance, an unrelated party, or even Dickinson herself. Most discount the latter theory, for obvious reasons. The closest to a scholarly consensus, advanced by Dr. Philip Sagle of Southern Michigan University, is that the author was Ms. Caroline Treacle, a close friend of Lavinia Dickinson.
Ms. Tracle was notorious for her profane language and ease of offense, and is recorded in the Springfield Social Register as being banned from the Springfield Sewing Circle for “using such language as would make a Sailor blush and a Whore take up the Cross.”
Excerpts From Nonexistent Books 