ODE TO THE SPELL CHECKER
—Anonymous
—Anonymous
Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong or write
It shows me strait a weigh.
As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
It's rare lea ever wrong.
Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.
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Thanks to Marie Riepenhoff-Talty for passing this on to me! Isn't the English language fascinating/complicated/frustrating? But I don't have to tell you that—you're poets! (I especially like the pea sea...)
Poets Marie J. Ross and Elizabeth Parrish will be reading from their new chapbook, Lavender Fields, this coming Monday (12/4) at 7 PM at Java Aroma/Stockton Empire Theatre (1825 Pacific Ave., Stockton, cross-street Walnut). The readers will be followed by a book-signing and open mic. Watch the upcoming issue of Rattlesnake Review (and past issues, too), for samples of Marie's work. Meanwhile, content yourself with poems from two other Stockton-environs poets: David Humphreys and Donald Anderson:
WAR CRIMES
—David Humphreys, Stockton
Thought it was cold last week but that was nothing.
It’s going to be in the twenties tonight. You remember
walking between buildings only about a hundred yards
at thirty below zero, having your uncovered head go numb,
knowing you would’ve frozen solid if you’d been caught
out in it under that star sparkling huge Colorado sky.
You wonder about the space station and if temperature
is like sound out there without gravity but you don’t
really formulate it into a question. It is like the prism in
the kitchen window, amusing but remote. The man was
testy again at this morning’s press conference. You imagine
him being helped away from the scene of a roadside bombing,
shaken and smudged with blood and dirt, hair wild and askew,
shouting “But I don’t understand, they just don’t seem to get it!”
Watched a show last night on Japan building the Bridge on the
River Kwai, how they killed so many people, mostly Asians and
POWs, close to two hundred thousand by the time they finished,
regrettable said the Japanese railway engineer who was found to be
blameless, but that’s what seems to happen in a time of war.
_______________________
How do you describe the indescribable inside?
You can feel it in water over granite,
in the pleading grunt of a bear cub looking hungrily,
in soft pillow and warm blankets in October,
in the long walk towards a cozy coffee shop in morning hours,
in the long wait for you,
in the moments we claim for ourselves,
looking into your eyes,
in the notes of a keyboard in a small room,
when it is played slow,
in the lights of a small Christmas tree that fills my heart,
in the colors of a painting that seems to connect with another sense of oneself outside of oneself,
in the air that I breathe,
and want to breathe with yours.
—Donald Anderson, Farmington
________________________
—Medusa
Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry, photos and art, and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets. Previously-published poems are okay for Medusa’s Kitchen, as long as you own the rights. (Please cite publication.)
