Of Monarchs and Milkweed

With the cacophony
of Interstate 35 traffic as a backdrop,
Tyler Seiboldt stands
on the side
of the freeway

with three other researchers,
all
scanning the ground.
Three ragweed, Seiboldt says to the group.
Litter one adds, Julian Chavez,

a research assistant
in the environmental science department.

Their seemingly indecipherable utterances
are the start of two days’ study
of plants along the interstate

from San Antonio
to Laredo
and back again.



From Of Monarchs & Milkweed by Michelle Mondo, Sombrillo, The UTSA Magazine. Submitted by Ash Connell.

Dementia

I am nothing. You are right.
I’m like someone who’s been thrown
into the ocean at night.

Floating all alone, I reach out,
but no one's there. I have
no connection to anything.

The closest thing
I have to a family is you, but you
hold on to the secret.

Meanwhile, your memory
deteriorates day by day.
Along with your memory,

the truth about me is lost.
Without the aid of truth I'm nothing,
and I can never be anything.

You're right about that, too.



Taken from Town of Cats by Haruki Murakami, translated by Jay Rubin. The New Yorker, September 5, 2011 issue. Speech attributions removed. Submitted by Dawn Corrigan.

Man overboard

I find myself, in my plush seat,
going farther and farther away,
sort of creatively visualizing

an epiphanic Frank Conroy-type moment
of my own, trying to see the hypnotist
and subjects and audience and ship

itself with the eyes of someone
not aboard, imagining the m. v. Nadir
right at this moment, all lit up

and steaming north, in the dark,
at night, with a strong west wind
pulling the moon backward through

a skein of clouds—the Nadir
a constellation, complexly aglow,
angelically white, festive, imperial.

Yes, this: it would look like
a floating palace to any poor soul
out here on the ocean at night, alone

in a dinghy, or not even in a dinghy
but simply and terribly floating,
treading water, out of sight of land.



From the final paragraph of David Foster Wallace's essay Shipping Out: On the (nearly lethal) comforts of a luxury cruise, Harper's Magazine, January 1996. Submitted by Dawn Corrigan.

I'm a Nurse with a Vice

off duty without a friend, a hobby to console me,
or the price of a cinema ticket, what can I do?

I enter a little shop down the road, furtively,
and ask the woman for my favourite brand.

I sneak back to my room and lock the door
against everyone. Then out comes the teaspoon

I filched from the dining room. I indulge in an orgy
of onions, gherkins, piccalilli, mustard and spice.

Yes, I finish the whole jar. Then I wash my hands,
clean my teeth, and can face the world. Maybe

it’s because pickles aren’t provided in our meals.
Or maybe my nature requires still more acid.

Mother says the vinegar will dry up my blood
and I’ll be preserved. But, oh, what a glorious end.



From a letter to an old edition of Woman magazine sent in by Miss J.D. Huddersfield of Yorkshire. Submitted by Angela Readman.

Violets and motorcycles

I started thinking about smell,
the strange olfactory world,

and made a collection
of evocative aromas.

Rubber, naphtha, motorcycle dope,
cuir de russe, gasoline, ammonia.

Juniper wood, styrax, patchouli,
frangipani, amber, myrrh, geraniol.

Opoponx, heliotrope, nardo
spikenard oil, civet, coumarin.

Where does karanal stand
in relation to tuberose?

Or sandalwood to sage?
Don't ask me.



From Scents and Sensibility by Brian Eno, Details magazine, July 1992. Submitted by Dale Wisely.

A brutal nadir

I took my seat
at the microfilm reader
and began to scroll
slowly
through the archives.

For the first hundred years,
as far as I could tell,
all that happened in America
was that various people
named Nathaniel
had purchased land
near rivers.

I scrolled faster,
finally reaching an account
of an early Colonial-era shaming.

On July 15, 1742,
a woman named Abigail,
her husband at sea,
had been found
"naked in bed
with one John Russell."

They were to be
"whipped at the public post
20 stripes each."

Abigail
was appealing the ruling,
but it wasn’t the whipping itself she wished to avoid.
She was begging the judge
to be whipped early,
before the town awoke.



From How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco's Life by Jon Ronson, New York Times Magazine, 12 February 2015. Submitted by Daniel Galef.

Fleeting

The ocean is empty
again. Here and there

a small galaxy of scales
marks where a bluefin

swallowed a herring.
The victim's scales

swirl in the turbulence
of the departed

tuna now bearing off at
high speed. Then each vortex

slows and stops. The sinking
scales gleam like diamonds

from a spilled necklace
then they dim. Finally

they wink out at depth.



From Quicksilver, Kenneth Brower, March 2014, National Geographic. Submitted by James Brush.

Cocoons: A Fibonacci Poem

We
are
becoming more
and more relaxed
with uncertainty, more and more
relaxed with groundlessness, more and more relaxed with

not having walls around us to keep us
protected in a little box
or cocoon.—Enlightenment
we do
not
have.



From The Bearable Lightness of Being by Pema Chödrön, March 2014, Shambhala Sun. Submitted by Ali Znaidi.

Do You Have?

week one:
pattern for knitted
swimming trunks
will pay postage

week two:
Record by The Turtles
She’s Rather Be With Me
willing to pay all costs

week three:
Eye needed for an emu
(Rod Hull’s 70cm/27 1/2 in puppet).
Will pay costs

week four:
knitting pattern for a
lady’s jumper with a
blue and white Chinese
willow pattern on the front

week five:
Aretha Franklin CD
or cassette, The First Time
Ever I Saw Your Face.
will pay all costs.

week six:
Microwave Cookery Books
Will pay postage.

week seven:
Manual or photocopy
for a Sharp QL310
portable memory display
typewriter. Will pay costs.

week eight:
Instructions for a sony
ericksson K7001 mobile
phone. will pay costs

week nine:
Copy of the late Steve Conway’s song,
My Thanks To You.
Will reply to all letters.
Will pay postage and expenses.

week ten:
Hayne’s Ford Focus
LX 2011 car manual.
Will pay costs.

week eleven:
Knitting pattern for
anything using two odd
pins, one small and one
large. Will pay any costs.

week twelve:
DVD of the film, The
Merry Widow.



Adverts from the 'Do You Have?' page of Yours magazine, various issues spring 2012. Submitted by Anna Percy.

Wardrobe Mistress

My mother is ninety and likes
To wear a nice dress.
But she is tiny.

Size ten, and only five feet tall, she likes
Colour, nothing too clingy.
And needs a collar.

She would also like some nonslip
Ankle boots that are
Size four and a half.

Please help.

Nobody seems to cater for
Small, slim people of a certain age
Who are not terrifically flexible.

Do not want low necklines.
Do not like black and beige.



Taken from the "Wardrobe Mistress" column in the Sunday Times' Style Magazine, 29 September 2013. Submitted by Kirsten Luckens.

This is her

Names have power,
so let us speak of hers.

Her name is Sharbat Gula,
and she is Pashtun,

that most warlike of Afghan tribes.
It is said of the Pashtun

that they are only at peace
when they are at war,

and her eyes—then and now—
burn with ferocity.

She is 28, perhaps 29, or even 30.
No one, not even she, knows for sure.

Stories shift like sand
in a place where no records exist.



From 'A Life Revealed', by Cathy Newman, National Geographic, April 2002. Submitted by Angi Holden.

That was a woman

The other day I saw a woman in an omnibus
open a satchel and take out a purse,
close the satchel and open the purse,
take out a penny and close the purse,
open the satchel and put in the purse.

Then she gave the penny to the conductor
and took a halfpenny in exchange.

Then she opened the satchel and took out the purse,
closed the satchel and opened the purse,
put in the halfpenny and closed the purse,
opened the satchel and put in the purse,
closed the satchel and locked both ends.

Then she felt to see
if her back hair was all right,
and it was all right,
and she was all right.



From The Windsor Magazine, November 1907, via Futility Closet. Submitted by Gabriel Smy.

The Shape of a Dead Man

I have the shape of a dead man
on the wall of my cell.
It was left behind by the last occupant.
He stood against the wall
and traced around himself with a pencil,
then shaded it in.

It looks like a very faint shadow,
it’s barely noticeable until you see it.
It took me nearly a week to notice it for the first time,
But once you see it you can’t un-see it.

I find myself lying on my bunk
and looking at it several times a day.
It just seems to draw the eyes like a magnet.
God only know what possessed him to do such a thing
but I can’t bring myself to wash it off.

Since they executed him,
it’s the only trace of him left.
He’s been in his grave almost five years now,
yet his shadow still lingers.

He was no-one and nothing.
All that remains of him is a handful of old rape charges
and a man-shaped pencil sketch.



From the diary of Damien Echols - an inmate on death row for 18 years. Via How to Survive Death Row in The Observer magazine, 26th May. 'And' omitted from the eighth line. Submitted by Lisa Oliver.

Happiness is simple

Rise and dine
The winner will appear
When you’re too hot to move
Don’t worry about snagging a picnic table

The winner will appear
Don’t just watch the Food Network
Don’t worry about snagging a picnic table
Just toss ‘em in your pitcher

Don’t just watch the Food Network
Make pulled pork with the Neelys
Just toss ‘em in your pitcher
Happiness is simple. Cook with bacon.

Make pulled pork with the Neelys
Keep everything cold for nearly a week
Happiness is simple. Cook with bacon.
It will travel forty feet on a flat surface

Keep everything cold for nearly a week
If you find anything else inside our bag…
It will travel forty feet on a flat surface
Not all love notes are written.

If you find anything else inside our bag…
See if the judges pick your dish
Not all love notes are written.
Where can I buy it?

His and her refrigerators
Happiness is simple. Cook with bacon.
Where can I buy it?
Where can I buy it?

Rise and dine.
When you’re too hot to move.



Ads and headlines from 'Food Network Magazine' 2009, arranged into a pantoum. Submitted by Lita Kurth.

Game over

Even our ideas
Rick
are most certainly not our own

We have read everything
somewhere
or have heard it
somewhere

We’ve got nothing
really
except each other

And we hate each other



From a discussion of the political divide on Salon.com. Submitted by Wesley Brown.

Trunk road

A motorway in all but name
the A14 trunk road blunders into
this delectable landscape
like an unruly oik
gatecrashing
a debutante’s party.

Fortunately,
its influence is transitory
and the canal re-asserts
its rural identity,
weaving a tortuous path between
the Hemplow Hills and the curiously named
Downtown Hill.

It crosses the infant
River Avon - which goes on in later life
to find fame and fortune
as Shakespeare’s Avon -
hereabouts forming the border.



From the article 'WW Guide to the Leicester Section' in Waterways World, September 2012 edition, p67. '556ft high' has been omitted and the last sentence cut short. Submitted by Robbie.

The Legacy

The photos show a pool with a slide
and a sand pit - an idyllic family setting
separated from the gas chambers by just a few yards.
His grandmother told the children to wash the strawberries
because they smelled of ash from the ovens.

“So you ask yourself, they had to die. I'm alive.
Why am I alive?
To carry this guilt, this burden
That must be the only reason I exist
to do what he should have done.”

Goeth was played by Ralph Fiennes.
“I kept thinking this has to stop
at some point they have to stop shooting.
If it doesn't stop I'll go crazy right here in this theatre.”
She left the cinema suffering from shock.

Both she and her brother chose to be sterilised.
"When my brother had it done, he said to me 'I cut the line'."
Seeing his father's childhood home he broke down
kept repeating the word "insanity".


Taken from an article in BBC magazine about the descendants of high profile Nazis, 22 May 2012. Some words and phrases omitted for scansion. Submitted by Grace Andreacchi.

The Great Money Engine of State

(after Macaulay)

All who could help or hurt at Court,
ministers, mistresses, priests, were
kept in good humour by presents
of shawls and silks, birds’ nests and
attar of roses, bulses of diamonds,
bags of guineas.



Lord Macaulay, as quoted in an article in the Economist about the East India Company, 17th December 2011. Submitted by Rishi Dastidar.