Definitions

Extremely elderly Benedictine monk
Irrational predilection for performing surgery
Of, like or pertaining to lava
One who habitually enters many competitions

Local judge among miners
Provisional name for a plant whose flowers are unknown
Expression of joy among Arab women
Muscle by which the testicles are suspended

Government by superior firepower or by cannons
Part of a bullfighting arena where the bull makes his stand
Ancient syrupy medicine that is licked off a spoon
Doctrine that the wicked are utterly destroyed after death

Some definitions from The Phrontistery, a free online dictionary of obscure words. Submitted by Howie Good.

American Portraits

1
Arrested by the Seattle police
for shooting a car’s tires.
Enlisted in the Navy Reserve.
Spent two days in jail
after a bar fight in Georgia.
Investigated for shooting a gun through his ceiling.
Honorably discharged,
despite “pattern of misbehavior.”
Contractor security clearance re-approved.
Told the Rhode Island police
he was hearing voices.
Twice went to Veterans Affairs hospitals
seeking treatment for insomnia.
Killed 12 people at Washington Navy Yard.

2
One morning she flew
to an early analyst meeting
and realized too late
that she had left
her dress shoes on the plane.
So she eyed women
in the baggage claim area,
spotted a suitable pair
worn by one of them —
and approached
with a $120 cash offer
for the emergency footwear.
The stranger said no
but offered a second pair
from her suitcase. Done.

3
The tail fin of a sockeye salmon
caught in a net in Bristol Bay, Alaska.

Matthew Sullivan releasing a gull
that crash-landed on the deck of the Rollo.

New buoys sit aboard a crab vessel.

Billie Delaney, a fisherwoman, holds
a dead seabird at Graveyard Point.

Stanza 1 is taken from the New York Times article, “A Troubled Past”, 19th September 2013. Stanza 2 is taken from a Forbes article, “A Real Amazon“, about a woman who died on 19th September 2013. Stanza 3 is taken from“Eat, Fish, Sleep, Click”, 21st January 2013. Submitted by Howie Good.

I, Emily Dickinson

1
I am afraid to own a body
I am alive I guess
I am ashamed, I hide
I asked no other thing

I bet with every wind that blew
I breathed enough to take the trick
I bring an unaccustomed wine
I came to buy a smile today

I can wade grief
I cannot be ashamed
I cannot buy it, ‘tis not sold
I cannot dance upon my toes

I cannot live with you
I cannot meet the spring unmoved
I cannot see my soul but know ‘tis there
I cannot want it more

2
I can’t tell you but you feel it
I cautious scanned my little life
I could bring you jewels had I a mind to
I could die to know

I could not drink it, sweet
I could not prove the years had feet
I could suffice for him, I knew
I counted till they danced so

I cried at pity, not at pain
I cross till I am weary
I did not reach thee
I died for beauty, but was scarce

I dreaded that first robin so
I dwell in possibility
I envy seas whereon he rides
I fear a man of frugal speech

3
I felt a cleaving in my mind
I felt a funeral in my brain
I felt my life with both my hands
I fit for them

I found the words to every thought
I gained it so
I gave myself to him
I got so I could take his name

I groped for him before I knew
I had a daily bliss
I had a guinea gold
I had been hungry all the years

I had no cause to be awake
I had no time to hate
I had not minded walls
I had some things that I called mine

4
I had the glory – that will do
I have a bird in spring
I have a king who does not speak
I have never seen “Volcanoes”

I have no like but this
I haven’t told my garden yet
I heard a fly buzz when I died
I heard as if I had no ear

I held a jewel in my fingers
I hide myself within my flower
I keep my pledge
I knew that I had gained

I know a place where summer strives
I know lives, I could miss
I know of people in the grave
I know some lonely houses off the road

5
I know suspense – it steps so terse
I know that he exists
I know where wells grow, droughtless wells
I learned at least what home could be

I like a look of agony
I like to see it lap the miles
I live with him, I see his face
I lived on dread

I lost the world the other day
I made slow riches but my gain
I make his crescent fill or lack
I many times thought peace had come

I meant to find her when I came
I meant to have but modest needs
I measure every grief I meet
I met a king this afternoon

6
I never felt at home below
I never hear that one is dead
I never hear the word “escape”
I never lost as much but twice

I never saw a moor
I never told the buried gold
I noticed people disappeared
I often passed the village

I pay in satin cash
I play at riches to appease
I prayed at first a little girl
I read my sentence steadily

I reason earth is short
I reckon when I count at all
I robbed the woods
I rose because he sank

7
I saw no way – the heavens were stitched
I saw that the flake was on it
I saw the wind within her
I see thee better in the dark

I see thee clearer for the grave
I send two sunsets
I send you a decrepit flower
I shall keep singing

I shall know why, when time is over
I shall not murmur if at last
I should have been too glad, I see
I should not dare to be so sad

I should not dare to leave my friend
I showed her heights she never saw
I sing to use the waiting
I sometimes drop it, for a quick

8
I started early, took my dog
I stepped from plank to plank
I stole them from a bee
I sued the news, yet feared the news

I suppose the time will come
I taste a liquor never brewed
I tend my flowers for thee
I think I was enchanted

I think just how my shape will rise
I think that the root of the wind is water
I think the hemlock likes to stand
I think the longest hour of all

I think to live may be a bliss
I thought that nature was enough
I thought the train would never come
I tie my hat, I crease my shawl

9
I took my power in my hand
I took one draught of life
I tried to think a lonelier thing
“I want” – it pleaded all its life

I was a phoebe, nothing more
I was the slightest in the house
I watched her face to see which way
I watched the moon around the house

I went to heaven
I went to thank her
I worked for chaff and earning wheat
I would distil a cup

I would not paint a picture
I years had been from home

All the lines beginning with the first person pronoun ‘I’ from the Index of First Lines, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, Edited by Thomas H. Johnson (Little, Brown and Company, 1960). Submitted by J.R. Solonche.

Broken bones

Baby chicks hatch out of eggs
Smoke goes up a chimney
Chess is a kind of game

Spilt ink makes a splotch
Broken bones can be set in a splint
Rain splashes into puddles

The lamb has a woolly coat
The carving knife is long and sharp
A wren is a small brown bird

Sentences out of my homework book from when I was six. We had to put words into sentences three at a time; the resulting stanzas were haiku like and a little sinister. Submitted by Gabriel Smy.

Magnetic

Magnetic Boys Talk

boots glue monster scary bones
racing moon helicopter aeroplane
tractor money lorry wizard conkers
frogs sticks mud dirt spiders snails
stones bubbles sweets flags magic
pond string grass rugby bug dogs
caterpillar cobweb worms dinosaur
dragon bike scooter forest treasure
climbing swinging skeleton running
ghost trees swimming lawnmower
treehouse blue football chocolate car

Magnetic Girls Talk

clothes hairband heart love sparkle
perfume beads necklace furry lipstick
ribbon handbag wand glitter fairies
fluff candy flowers wings sherbet
bubbles sweets pink make-up skipping
magic dancing ballet bunnies rainbow
ladybird lemonade stars sky shoes
chocolate doll party secret diary hair
jewels princess queen tiara ice-cream
teddy music sunshine birds butterfly
sugar angel diamond cooking friends

‘Favourite Boys words’ and ‘favourite Girls words’ as found on fridge magnets, via The Kraken Wakes. Submitted by Simon Williams.

Birth of the Suwannee

Cypress trees,
bottle-shaped, grotesque,
reach from the wine-colored water,
form a canopy. Light is weird and green.

Banners of
Spanish moss hide
the feathery foliage of
living trees, cover up dead stumps.

Through the vast
drowned swamp two tiny
streams creep sluggishly to join
at last before a spit of quaking land.

From Suwannee River Strange Green Land, Cecile Hulse Matschat (1938). Submitted by Dawn Corrigan.

I hope…

I hope you always get your squash to water ratio wrong;
the new carpet in your office means that you constantly get static shocks;
you approach someone in the street and you both move to the same side
and the top comes off your salt pot and you get too much on your chips –
not loads, just too much for them to be nice.

I hope you’re offered a Revel and get the coffee one;
the next delivery you’re to receive between 8am-6pm arrives at 5.59;
in the middle of the night you need a wee, and in the dark end up standing on a lego brick
and you make toast one day, really looking forward to toast and jam,
and don’t have any jam.

I hope you accidentally get given a foreign coin in your change;
you discover the milk is off only once you’ve added it to your tea;
you can’t play your favourite pentatonic song because you’ve removed the black keys
and you ask for The Wicker Man on dvd for your birthday
and get the Nicolas Cage remake.

I hope your tattoo artist can’t spell Britain.

Selected from tweets with the hashtag #Edlmisfortunes. Semicolons have been added to the first two lines of each stanza; ‘and’ has been added to the beginning of line 4. Submitted by Angi Holden.

Doubles

I miss you. I hark back to the friendship
we used to have, impromptu adventures,
knowing the everyday details of each
other’s lives, nights in watching trashy TV.

I’ve been there at 3am when you’ve clutched
my hand and explained he’s dependable
and he’ll make a great father. I want to
tell you that it’s the 21st century

but you don’t listen to me any more.
I am impeccably polite. I put on
a rictus grin when you spend an hour
discussing your wedding plans. I am

becoming a souvenir of your past life,
to be gradually discarded for
women you can play doubles tennis with.
I’m happy for you. But I wish you’d call.

From What I’m really thinking: the single friend, The Guardian, 26 January 2013. A few words omitted: ‘that’ (line 6), ‘I know, ‘really’ (9), ‘something’ (14); and sub clauses removed in lines 8 and 12. Submitted by Gabriel Smy.

Prescription for a creative burst

I want to sit out in privety
with my dressing-gown on
and nobody to see
but it must have a balcony.

Then I can finish my writing.
It’s a hundred-and-forty a night, with a hot tub.
That’s no good. I can’t write
with a fountainpen in a hot tub.

I wonder if there’s background music.
I can’t have the sort of music
that keeps you jumpin’ all the while.
There needs to be quiet.

The windows have got to open.
I must hear water all the time.
If I get a room that’s luxurious
I’ll get writing in half the time.

I want to see Rooms One and Eight.
I want to see if they’ll do.
I don’t need you to come with me,
but I’ll need you to move in with me.

It’s all sketched out already,
just waiting to be filled in.
I’m tense till I get this settled.
Can’t get my head round it till then.

Overheard in a hotel bar in Ludlow, Shropshire, on the 10th March 2013. Submitted by John Killic.

Richard Stallman’s rider 4

Food

Or, You need to know what I dislike

avocado, eggplant, usually
(there are occasional exceptions)
hot pepper, olives, liver
(even in trace quantities)

stomach and intestine, other organ meats
cooked tuna, oysters, egg yolk
if the taste is noticeable,
except when boiled completely hard

many strong cheeses, especially those
with green fungus, desserts
that contain fruit or liqueur flavors
sour fruits, such as grapefruit

and many oranges, beer, coffee
though weak coffee flavor can be good
in desserts, the taste of alcohol
so I don’t drink anything stronger than wine

(From the detailed requirements that Richard Stallman sends ahead of his speaking engagements)

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