Papa Don’t Shoot

“Papa rushed into the room”
Rola El-Halabi
told the newspaper. “He threatened us with
a gun in his hand and shouted
‘Everyone out!’ And then he shot me
in the hand from three meters.
I cried and screamed.”

Bild reported that El-Halabi split
from her stepfather as a manager
in January. “When I had problems
I could talk with him about anything,
except when it was about boys,”
El-Halabi said.
“That was taboo.”

Taken from a news story on April 3, 2011 about a female boxer in Germany, shot in the hand by her stepfather before a bout. Submitted by Marika Rose.

The Passenger and the Privy

I am arrive by passenger train Ahmedpur station
and my belly is too much swelling with jackfruit.
I am therefor went to privy.

Just I doing the nuisance that guard
making whistle blow for train to go off
and I am running with LOTAH in one hand
and DHOTI in the next

when I am fall over and expose all shocking
to man and female women on platform.
I am got leaved Ahmedpur station.

This too much bad, if passenger go to make dung
that dam guard not wait train minutes for him.
I am therefor pray your honour to make big fine
on that guard for public sake.

Otherwise I am making big report to papers.

A letter of complaint sent in 1909 to the Sahibganj divisional railway office in West Bengal. Source: New Delhi Railway Museum, via Letters of Note. Submitted by Gabriel Smy.

Insects In General

Don’t worry about popular opinion
Don’t worry about dolls
Don’t worry about the past
Don’t worry about the future
Don’t worry about growing up
Don’t worry about anybody getting ahead of you
Don’t worry about triumph
Don’t worry about failures unless it comes through your own fault

Don’t worry about mosquitoes
Don’t worry about flies
Don’t worry about insects in general
Don’t worry about parents
Don’t worry about boys
Don’t worry about disappointments
Don’t worry about pleasures
Don’t worry about satisfactions

Taken from a letter by F. Scott Fitzgerald to his 12-year-old daughter Scottie, away at summer camp. Submitted by Marika Rose.

The Complaining Lunch Queue Riposte

However the children complain
that they have to wait
they are hungry
they have less choices
they should even not have to wait
because they have their own lunch—
maybe this is all done deliberately
maybe temporarily
in order to teach them patience.

Why not?
They are not starving to death.
Should everything be easy?
Life is not like that.

Personally I trust the school.

From a Google groups message written by a parent at my child’s primary school. He wrote it as a reply to a stream of complaints from other parents that their children were having to wait too long to get their lunch. Commas removed. Submitted by Gabriel Smy.

Chickens on bikes

Things like boiling water, lizard watching,
mosquito nets, thorns in my shoes, wearing
skirts and t-shirts all the time, waking at
five AM, seat feeling sweaty, hearing
spoken Swahili, admiring cornrows,
dirt tracks and colourful markets and snacks
that all seemed so new when I first arrived,
now just feel normal. Glass pop bottles, old
Tsh notes, mud brick houses, chickens on bikes,
Karibu, men at bus stations, heat, dust,
colourful buses and dala-dala
and colourful clothes, rice and beans, insect
repellant, hot showers heated by the sun,
watering the garden morning and night,
African singing, mangos and pawpaw,
taking antimalarials, buying
green vegetables for the girls low in
iron, frogs, owls, feeding chickens … I got
that challenged feeling again today,
of having practical skills to offer.

For those of you
expecting a blog
on South Africa,
well, what can I say?
They did show G.I. Jane
twice in four days.

(Sarah’s post from Tanzania, then her husband’s article from Johannesburg)

Plowing at high knottage

Plowing at high knottage
through time itself
kinetic
even in stasis

Plowing temporally ahead

With time coming off him
like water in sprays and wakes.

From endnote 57 in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, (Little, Brown and Company, 1996). First published on Zach Higgins Is A Designer. Submitted by Zach Higgins.

Soon enough came fearfulness

Once she was born
I was never not afraid:

afraid of swimming pools,
high-tension wires,
lye under the sink,
aspirin in the medicine cabinet…

rattlesnakes, riptides, landslides,
strangers who appeared at the door,
unexplained fevers, elevators without
operators and empty hotel corridors.

(London Review of Books quoting Joan Didion’s Blue Nights. Submitted by Rishi Dastidar)

Miserere

I confess:

I have become  
a runner.

I go  
running.

I  
run.

Like a  
runner.

Which is what  
I have become.

A running  
runner.

Forgive me.

Oh Christ.

Forgive me.

(From I have been murdered and replaced with a suspicious facsimile. In running shoes. Submitted by Ailsa Holland)

Slip in their veins

I started as a boy
straight from school
in nineteen fifty
and I enjoyed my
twenty five years here.

It was almost like
a home from home, really.

It was always said
that potters had
slip
in their veins
instead of blood.

That’s what we were.
We were potters.

Terry Abbotts, former Royal Doulton worker, interview in the BBC4 programme Ceramics: A Fragile History. The Age of Wedgwood, first broadcast 17th October 2011. Submitted by Ailsa Holland.

Never go to a horse race

Who loves a horse race?
Are not too many fond of it?
Does it not lead to many evils,
and to frequent ruin?
Never go to a horse race.

Mr. Mix had one child,
whom he called Irene;
he had also a good farm,
and some money.

He went to the races with his child,
dressed in black crape for the loss of her mother.
Here Mr. Mix drank freely,
and bet largely,
and lost all he was worth.

At night he went home a beggar;
took a dose of brandy,
and died before morning,
leaving his child a pennyless orphan.
Never go to a horse race.

From The Clinton Primer, 1830, via Futility Closet. Submitted by Gabriel Smy.