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Idyssey
A Desk-Drawer Anthology
Peter Richard Dreyer
The Red Maple


In Lieu of an Introduction
. . . he recommended to all those who might be impressed with a sense of their importance to bury a copy or copies of each work properly...


Magnolia
slowly even in the vase and long separated from its tree a bud opens in spring Monday, March 24th, 2025


What's up, Doc?
If sub specie aeternitatis there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that does not matter either.— Thomas Nagel, The...
Paternity
Genghis Khan died on August 25, 1227, mourned (?) by some 600 wives, and at his grave the Mongols immolated thirty maidens. Eight hundred...


Bullseye
“ Pure intelligence is . . . a product of dying . . ..and is therefore in principle madness. ”—Ferenczi Confined to the prison house...


Wise Blindness
Pandora’s jar is only there to be rejected—


Amorous Cries
Blow, blow, thou winter wind, Thou art not so unkind As man’s ingratitude; —Shakespeare, As You Like It, act 2, scene vii Yeats...


Breaking Things
Claude Rowberry, London Blitz—Interior of a Ruined House. Royal Air Force Museum, Hendon, UK “Be not deceived: evil communications...


Clowns in Limbo
Christ in Limbo by a follower of Hieronymus Bosch (Netherlandish, ca. 1450–1516), Philadelphia Museum of Art Sir, Colonus is an...


Time’s Arrow: The Whig Version
For Joel Cutrara The Truth was there already to be true.—Auden, "The History of Truth" (1958?) It came to me just now, dreaming, that...


De historia stirpium: An Editing Life
Freddie Skinner, De Aar (1973) The gods chose the victorious side, Cato the defeated one / Victrix causa deis placuit sed victa ...


Keeping Up Appearances
The drop may spill; the rest'll trundle on.

How Not to Mistake Yourself for the World
Pieter van Laer, The Flagellants (Alte Pinakothek, Munich) I had a dream in which this is all real, where we rip off our masks and sing...


OMG
Eugène Delacroix. The Death of Sardanapalus . 1827. Musée du Louvre. “This country has gotten bloated and fat and disgusting and...

Housekeeping Night
"Eighty percent of life is just showing up."


The Lives of the Poets: Clerihews after Auden*
Sir Thomas Wyatt
(just on the quiet)
took Noli me tangere
for a come-hither query.


Atatürk, Smyrna, September 13, 1922
Mustafa Kemal, who remade this world, whose portrait adorns all public places— your mausoleum is Türkiye’s temple: What did you dream of...

See if you can spot Mawmaw!
You can tell her by her white feathers her sallow, goose-bumped skin.


The Ashes of Smyrna—A Book Review
"Poor Turks, poor Greeks, poor world!" —Halide Edip Adıvar (1884–1964), feminist, novelist, Kemalist member of the Turkish Grand National...

Cosmic Gall Redux
You couldn’t make up that stuff!


Non Sequitur: Improv for a Pin-tailed Whydah
The Whydah Gally, a former Ouidah slave ship captured by Samuel “Black Sam” Bellamy in the Golden Age of Piracy “Extravagance is a...


Formal Causes
I said, 'A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.'...

Palindrome: Roma summus amor
Why won't you be my Audifax?

Three Limericks in Poor Taste
There was a curmudgeon in Rheims Who lacked an appropriate stance. When he met a young filly Who teased, “Let’s be silly!” He groaned,...


Just say no to Guadalupe Hidalgo
Problem solved! No worries guys! Hey presto!!


Sprout Kale, or, Cake Month
I harbor notions that should not be read.

Weird: An Anglo-Saxon Week
There's no special day or time set aside for Wyrd!


At Gorillaspoort
So why, then, did they call it Gorilla Gate?


Holy Moly!
In memoriam Michael von Lilienstein Tapscott "Holy Moly!" exclaimed the DC Comics hero Captain Marvel. At which, in our Upper Montague...


No, seriously!
Qu'est-ce que c’est qu’un art qui ne rend pas gai?


Truth
“Truth is like fire; to tell the truth means to glow and burn.” —Gustav Klimt, Nuda Veritas (1899) Truth, I'd say, is more like a...

Cardboard Critters
Those cardboard critters will do fine.


Backward into the Future
We have met the enemy and he is us.

Pushing up Daisies
The abyss is a yawn of sorts, wouldn't you say?

Requiem
I print their names here in their memory. It's all I can do.

Genericide
"The process by which a brand name comes to refer to any product or service of its kind" (wikipedia) escalator, koozie, onesie, taser,...

Free Will
Doubting everything's the gods' physician.

Play It as It Lays: A Life in Pictures
It’s far too late at night, I fear.

A Pleiocene Posy
The dirge the Anthropocene sings.

The Golden Soup
Free will does exist, you know,
but you must want it—and few do.

Hrodberht Opts for Briggs & Stratton
Not even creeping Jesus can deny the unrelenting Hun!

The Hobgoblin Snoozes
What did the warning say?


The Basilisk Stare
He fix the future with him basilisk stare.

What to believe?
“Must I then doubt even doubt?”

Αn Unwritten Parable
Henry Mark Anthony, Sunset (1846) Imitation of Angelos Sikelianos's poem Άγραφον ("Unwritten") Walking a ways beyond the walls of...


The Codling Moth
What we believe, that, too, will pass.


Juggernaut, or, Paris à contrecœur
King Nebuchadnezzar looks at the city of Babylon. akg / North Wind Picture Archive The Lord said unto Moses, “Come Forth!” But he came...

Star Signs in a Parallel Universe
So near and yet so far! Not talking ’bout the nearest star, But of the closest parallel universe, Where things run in reverse. Astrology...


Winter Apocalypse
Winter is icumen in, Lhude sing Goddamm, Raineth drop and staineth slop, And how the wind doth ramm! Sing: Goddamm. —Ezra Pound No...


Rise and Shine
Jan van der Straet, called Stradanus, Allegory of the New World, depicting Vespucci awakening the sleeping America (ca. 1587–89)....
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