watching him with her

she sang
and he danced�
he is mad
or I am much mistaken



From The Philosophy of Grammar by Otto Jespersen (New York: The Norton Library, 1965), p. 90. Submitted by Catherine B. Krause.

Filey

Almost mid-way betwixt
Scarborough and Bridlington,
Filey Brigg,
being a nose of cliff thrust out into the sea
to form a horn of Filey Bay.

Here, there, are sands
i n o n e v a s t g l o r i o u s e x p a n s e,
from the Brigg to the Bempton Cliffs �
six miles of them all round the bay,
so spacious that there could never be
any overcrowding.
The beach
shelves
gently.



From a chapter on Holidays in Every Woman�s Enquire Within: A Complete Library and Household Knowledge for all Home-Loving Women, ed. A C Marshall (London: George Newnes Ltd), 1939. Submitted by H L Foster.

A Hiding Darkness

The monsters
in our cupboards
and our minds
are always there
in the darkness
like mold
beneath the floorboards
and behind the wallpaper
and there is so much darkness
an inexhaustible supply
of darkness.

The universe is
amply supplied
with night.




From Trigger Warning by Neil Gaiman (William Morrow, 2015). Submitted by Anabella Maria Galang.

Profits

in the
real sense
of the word,
pro that
wonderful,
fun, and
deliciously creative
force that
bathes the body
in delight and pleasure,

and what you are actually against is porn sex?

a kind of sex that is debased dehumanized formulaic and generic a kind of sex based not on individual fantasy play or imagination but one that is the result of an industrial product created by those who get excited not by bodily contact but by market penetration and �






profits.



From 'Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality' by Gail Dines, (Boston: Beacon Press, 2010), Preface, page x. Submitted by Rosa Walling-Wefelmeyer.

Some Sort of Shining

I can still see the bright-crimson glow.
This wasn�t any ordinary fire,
It was some sort of shining.
I�d never seen anything like it in the movies.
That evening everyone spilled out
onto their balconies
and those who didn�t have them
went to friends� houses.
We were on the ninth floor,
we had a great view.
People brought their kids out,
picked them up, said, �Look! Remember!�
They stood in the black dust,
talking, breathing, wondering at it.
People came from all around in their cars
and their bikes to have a look.
We didn�t know that death could be so beautiful.



From Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich, translated by Keith Gess (Dalkey Archive Press, 2005), p. 155. Submitted by Howie Good.

Rust Belt Americana

Searching for Pittsburgh
Going there
To see if something comes next
Finding something
How to love the dead

A year later
Explicating the twilight
What is there to say?
A ghost sings, a door opens
The container for the thing contained

Older women
Carrying torches at noon
Tear it down

The white heart of God
Almost happy



From the title index of The Great Fires, Jack Gilbert (Alfred A Knopf, 2008). Submitted by Howie Good.

Mundesley

We may come to the
sands through pathways cut in the
cliff, and the tide leaves

on these priceless shores
long lagoons which are
the delight of children�s hearts.



From a chapter on Holidays in Every Woman�s Enquire Within: A Complete Library and Household Knowledge for all Home-Loving Women, ed. A C Marshall (London: George Newnes Ltd). Estimated to be from the 1930s. Submitted by H L Foster.

Soil, sand, dust

If anyone sees that sand or dust is falling on him,
then he will become very rich
and own a lot of property.

If he sees that he is walking in dust and sand
or he sees that he is loaded with the soil,
then he will have to toil much to get wealth
and he will get plenty of it.

If anyone sees that dust is suspended in the sky,
then it is a sign that his affairs
will become complicated.

If a person sees that he is digging the earth
and eating its oil
then he will be devouring wealth
with deceit and falsehood,
because �earth� means
a false religion.

A wilderness of horror
has the same interpretation.



From Interpretation of Dreams, Imam Muhammad Bin Sirin (Ahmadiyya Muslim Mission Nigeria, 1979). Submitted by Dale Wisely.

Not given to imagination

Mummy, I�m not afraid to die.
Why do you talk of dying
and you so young
do you want a lollipop?

No, but I shall be with Peter and June.

Mummy, let me tell you about my dream last night.
Darling, I�ve no time now. Tell me again later.

No, Mummy, you must listen.
I dreamt I went to school
and there was no school there.
Something black had come down all over it.
You mustn�t have chips for supper for a bit.

The next day off to school went her daughter
as happy as ever.
In the communal grave she was buried
with Peter on one side
and June on the other.



Dialogue from an account of 10-year-old Eryl Mai's premonition of the 1966 Aberfan avalanche disaster, via Futility Closet. Submitted by Gabriel Smy.

Fossil

In this quiet inlet,
some eddy has collected
and drowned at the bottom
of the mire, now turned into marl,
enormous heaps of shells
of every shape and size.
It is a molluscs' burying ground
with hills for tumuli.

I dig up oysters a cubit long
and weighing five or six pounds a piece.
One could shovel up in the immense pile,
Scallops, Cones, Cylheridae,
Mactridae, Murices,
Turretellidae, Mitridae
and others too numerous,
too innumerable to mention

You stand stupefied before the vital ardour
of the days of old, which was able
to supply such a pile of relics
in a mere nook of earth.



Taken from an account by Jean-Henri Fabre on fossils in The Faber Book of Science edited by John Carey (Faber & Faber, 1995). Submitted by Taidgh Lynch.

Humiliation

Body collapsing in on itself
A bowed head
Shoulders curling over chest
Angling torso away from others
Uncontrollable shuddering or shivering
Hair hanging in face, hiding the eyes
A downward gaze
A flushed face
Hitching chest
Eyes dull, lifeless
Pulling down a shirt hem
Hands clutching at stomach
Covering face with hands
Bottom lip or chin trembling
Whimpering
Throat bobbing
Arms falling to sides, lifeless
Uncontrolled tears
Flinching from noise or from being touched
Huddling, crouching
Neck bending forward
Movement is slow, jerky
Knees locked tight together
Cold sweat
Stumbling, staggering
Backing up against a wall
Sliding into a corner
Hiding
Hands gripping elbows
Pigeon toes
Sobs trapped in throat
Drawing knees up to the body's core
Wrapping arms around self
Runny nose



From The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to Character Expression by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi (2012), page 90. Submitted by J.R. Solonche.

Theme IV

A false alarm,
caught in the act:
A joke on me,
my peculiar mistake.
The stalled car,
my experience
in a strange Sunday school.
The experiment I never repeated,
nearly on the rocks.



Essay writing prompts from English Composition Book One by Stratton D. Brooks (American Book Company, 1911). Submitted by Alex Albright.

Wholesome Nation

Too few countries
in the world
have chosen
a vegetable
to be their national symbol

but Wales chose the leek



From something that came from The Sacred Kitchen by Robin Robertson and Jon Robertson (New World Library, 1999). Submitted by Melanie Barbato.

In the Shadow of Selene

There�s a thing about being alone
and
there�s a thing about being lonely
and
they�re two different things.

I was alone
�but�
I was not lonely.
I was very used to being by myself.
I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Far from feeling lonely
or abandoned
I feel very much a part of what is taking place
(I don�t mean to deny
a feeling of solitude.)

It is there,

reinforced by the fact ... I am alone now
and absolutely isolated
from any (known) life.

If a count were taken,
the score would be:
three billion (plus two)
over on the other side
and
One (plus
God knows what else...)
on this side.

That was the best part of the flight.



From Al Worden: 'The loneliest human being', BBC, 2 April 2013, and Carrying the Fire by Michael Collins (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2009). Submitted by Daniel Galef.

Mysteries of Carrados

�Two left shoes" he remarked encouragingly.
"And an equally devastating sight of two practically blind states in America".

Smiling broadly, they were leaving like a airship. The war is
(P20) always exciting.

In a harmless war he had not had time to dig light that is
confidential on Monday afternoon.

I suppose you knew it was not out at sea, took it for granted.
Our submarine is echoing all which was expedient for a well-
(P40) known lady employer.

"What course for the news?", replied the girl. "Can I see who
had been asked out?" The man will tell you anything and rather
gratuitously it seemed.

Carrados could watch them licking. When the answer here
should be paid no attention until this chair is vacant and the
(P71) room without a word; like a shaken hand.

Murder something with one mistake. He will never notice a
strange message of misgiving had no difficulty in finding her.

A little attempt now to hear there's nothing like a good
testimony in a low voice. No photograph possessing
(P95) identification is unnaturally white.

It was the first time an empty chair splashed like a moments
worry. The most difficult alibi forgotten in case you cared and
nothing else at first.

It was the faintest idea to come prompted on the bare earth
(P114) followed through seriously simple explanation.

He would like to see time from just one window. Drink this
garden and assist melancholy admiration before the seal of
iron.

And the angel looked at me. A dazzling thing. The lady of
simultaneous voices rising in the dead of night without the
(P133) remotest hope to prick up their ears.

Interment, there in the dark. Unique mothers of the coming generation.

More happened if they could be drawn into the now vigorous soil.

That was plainly so much. So the giant in charge within
(P156) straightened spirits on that heart-throbbed dead weight,

His face was not her husband and children didn't know his wife.
You can hear a very intoxicated man a mile away. You must not
ask him sometime about when the paper said you could give
me an idea.

(P174) I wish I'd known. The blind and the first people who were not a
painting gave him the details of the letters.

Burning the place down was his way to be the victim.
To be spread:

(P189) Afraid to trust silent and deserted streets.

We used to have just coffee and water beetles. The very
opposite of money before our faces of pink.

(P198) A plague that furnished nightmares with quick feeling.

Touching, I appreciate onions...

As we are shrank back into fluency. The dirty appetite too near.

Hard-cased sleeping inside the dynamo to transform
(P212) mechanical force into quiet professional clatter.

The cigar that made the alibi unconvincing and the man it might blind.

To outwit five senses of old. His eyes were open, voice ingenious.

I should advise of traffic mentally described. To get some reason in the five minutes that they had atmosphere.

His mind was an inexhaustible hunger. A dish of water to be left at night. No means of stopping the leak it seems.

(P237) And for god's sake, don't stop there.




From Max Carrados Mysteries, Ernest Bramah (Penguin 1964). A hole was drilled through the book and words taken consecutively from every page, next to the hole. Punctuation and capitalisation added, some page numbers displayed. Created and submitted by Winston Plowes.

The Pornography of Everyday Life

Last year,
I woke up
in a hotel room
in Amsterdam.

There was
a woman
in my bed.

I looked
in the mirror
and saw
that my eyebrows
were gray.

I saw
that I was
forty.




Painter Alexander Melamid, quoted in Forty-One False Starts by Janet Malcolm (Granta Books, 2014). Submitted by Howie Good.

Sweet Thursday

What happened in between
the troubled life of Joseph and Mary

hooptedoodle
there would be no game.

Enter Suzy - the creative cross
tinder is as tinder does

the great Roque war
whom the gods love, they drive nuts

there's a hole in reality through which
we can look if we wish.

Hazel's brooding flower
in a crannied wall

parallels must be related:
lousy Wednesday: the playing fields of

Harrow: the little flowers of Saint Mack.
Suzy binds the cheese

a pause in the day's occupation
sweet Thursday, sweet Thursday

sweet Thursday was
one hell of a day.




Chapter titles 1-21 from John Steinbeck's 1954 novel Sweet Thursday. Submitted by Victoria Bean.

Sticks and stones

Unfortunately it is far from true�
The power of words to affect
your emotions and actions
is well demonstrated in science.

A word is not a crystal,
transparent and unchanged;
it is the skin of a living thought
and may vary greatly in color and content
according to the circumstances and time
in which it is used.

Majority Floor Leader Jim Stamas, R-Midland,
determined Lisa Brown's comments
violated the decorum of the House,
"What she said was offensive" said Rep. Mike Callton, R-Nashville.
�It was so offensive, I don't even want to say it
in front of women.
I would not say that in mixed company.�

Lisa Brown called a press conference, today.
She defended her use of the word "vagina"
saying it is the "anatomically medically correct term.�

Her English teacher even told her
you can�t get wet from the word water.




Each stanza from a different source: Susan Smalley, Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA; Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr; Detroit News, June 2012; Detroit Free Press, June 2012; and Nin Andrews, Sleeping with Houdini (BOA Editions Ltd, 2008). Submitted by Joanna White.

On the division of animals

More often than not, the linguist or anthropologist just throws up his hands and resorts to giving a list � a list that one would not be surprised to find in the writings of Borges.
George Lakoff

Those that belong to the Emperor,
embalmed ones,
those that are trained,
suckling pigs,
mermaids,
fabulous ones,
stray dogs,
those that are included in this classification,
those that tremble as if they were mad,
innumerable ones,
those drawn with a very fine camel�s hair brush,
others,
those that have just broken a flower vase,
those that resemble flies from a distance.




From 'Other Inquisitions' in which Borges writes of a strange way of classifying animals in an ancient Chinese encyclopaedia. Via Futility Closet. Submitted by Gabriel Smy.

Sport

About midnight, having fallen asleep,
I was awakened and greatly surprised

at finding most of my companions
up in arms, and furiously engaged

with a large alligator
but a few yards from me.

One of our company, it seems,
awoke in the night, and perceived

the monster within a few paces of the camp,
who giving the alarm to the rest,

they readily came to his assistance,
for it was a rare piece of sport;

some took fire-brands and cast them
at his head, whilst others formed javelins

of saplins, pointed and hardened with fire;
these they thrust down his throat

into his bowels, which caused the monster
to roar and bellow hideously, but his strength

and fury was so great that he easily wrenched
or twisted them out of their hands, which

he wielded and brandished about and kept
his enemies at distance for a time;

some were for putting an end to his life
and sufferings with a rifle ball, but

the majority thought this would too soon
deprive them of the diversion and pleasure

of exercising their various inventions
of torture; they at length however grew tired,

and agreed in one opinion, that he had suffered
sufficiently, and put an end to his existence.



Taken from Travels of William Bartram by William Bartram, published 1928. Submitted by Dawn Corrigan.