Slip

A tanka

Daddy, put it in
the microcave. The micro
cave? Oh, sorry, I’ve
not said that since my early
sixies. I mean microwave.

A conversation with my 7-year-old daughter, 11 June 2011.  Submitted by Neil.

From H– to L–e.–


Your letters are destroyed
and you have nothing
to fear from my indiscretion.
Your ring, &c., is ready packed,
and will be sent when
opportunity offers or
you choose to indicate a way.

Your ‘ever’ lasted five months
and I was a fool to expect
it would be otherwise.



An advert in the Times, some time in Victorian London. Submitted by Marika Rose.

Corpses To Remember Him By


I hope I shall not offend you; I shall
certainly say nothing with the intention
to offend you. I must explain myself,
however, and I will do it as kindly

as I can. What you ask me to do I
am asked to do as often as one half-
dozen times a week. Three hundred letters
a year! One’s impulse is to freely consent,

but one’s time and necessary occupations
will not permit it. There is no way but
to decline in all cases, making no
exceptions; and I wish to call your

attention to a thing which has probably
not occurred to you, and that is this: that
no man takes pleasure in exercising
his trade as a pastime. Writing is my

trade, and I exercise it only when
I am obliged to. You might make your request
of a doctor, or a builder, or a sculptor,
and there would be no impropriety

in it, but if you asked either for a
specimen of his trade, his handiwork,
he would be justified in rising to
a point of order. It would never be
fair to ask a doctor for one of his
corpses to remember him by.



The typewritten message Mark Twain would send to autograph seekers, via Futility Closet. Submitted by Marika Rose.

Into what is the universe expanding?

Our universe
is all of space-time,
and space-time
is all of our universe.
Our language,
with the possible exception of mathematics,
is rooted in space-time,
and we have
no language
for that-which-is-not-space-time.
There is no what
that the universe is expanding into
because what,
where
and when
are properties of space-time,
not that-which-is-not-space-time.

So where does that leave us?

Unfortunately,
it leaves us with Wittgenstein:
What can be said at all
can be said clearly,
and what we cannot talk about
we must pass over
in silence.

From a submission by Jim Ford of Watford to the Guardian’s Notes and Queries column, 13th April 2011. Submitted by Ailsa Holland.

Where Is Thy Sting?

Sweat bee; light, ephemeral, almost fruity,
a tiny spark has singed a single hair
on your arm. Fire ant; sharp, sudden, mildly
alarming, like walking across a shag
carpet and reaching for the light switch.

Bullhorn acacia ant; a rare, piercing,
elevated sort of pain. Someone
has fired a staple into your cheek.

Bald-faced hornet; rich, hearty, slightly crunchy,
getting your hand mashed in a revolving door.
Yellowjacket, hot and smoky, almost
irreverent, imagine W. C. Fields
extinguishing a cigar on your tongue.

Honey bee and European hornet;
a matchhead that flips off and burns on your skin.
Red harvester ant; bold and unrelenting,
somebody is using a drill
to excavate your ingrown toenail.

Paper wasp, caustic and burning. Like
spilling a beaker of hydrochloric
acid on a paper cut. Blinding, fierce,
shockingly electric, a running hair drier
has been dropped into your bubble bath.

Bullet ant; pure, intense, brilliant pain.
Like fire-walking over flaming charcoal
with a three-inch rusty nail in your heel.

From the examples of the Schmidt Sting Pain Index on Wikipedia. A few words removed to aid scansion: ‘Similar to’ (line 10); ‘Like a’ (15); ‘distinctly bitter aftertaste’ (19); ‘Tarantula hawk:’ (21). Punctuation amended. Submitted by Gabriel Smy.

In the Merry Month of May

Arsenal missed
the chance to close the gap on Premier
League leaders—

Arsenal’s rapidly
deteriorating season
took another blow.

Arsenal—could
only earn a point as their Premier League title
aspirations were dented.

Arsenal’s Premier
League title aspirations suffered
a significant setback.

Arsenal kept
up the pressure—and maintained
their title hopes.

Arsenal’s title
hopes were left hanging
by a thread.

Arsenal’s Premier
League title hopes were dealt
another devastating blow—

Arsenal’s Premier
League title challenge is all but over after
they lost to a last minute goal—

Arsenal blew
the Premier League title race
wide open.

Stoke extinguished
Arsenal’s Premier League title dream
with a deserved win at the Britannia stadium.

Lines from the opening paragraphs of Arsenal football match reports on the BBC football website. The reports quoted cover a run of 10 games from Sunderland (home), 5 March, to Stoke (away), 8 May 2011. Ellipses replaced with m-dashes. Submitted by Gabriel Smy.