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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...


A Box of Fingers
An icon of Saint Spyridon ( center, front, identifiable by his shepherd’s hat ) silencing Arius ( right, with hands over his mouth ) at...


The Library of Time
Entanglement remains a mystery.


Kitten Heels
That's how you meet the Happy Few.


Father's Day
A father's nothing like a phone.


A Small Eternity
Ignorance rules, okay?


The Fall of Carthage
Make the most of what’s allowed.


Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus altissima)
A path is made by walking on it. —Zhuang Zhou 7 Merely is its Chinese name.* Master Zhuang Zhou made it a metaphor for his philosophy....


Bearded
The cat knows well whose beard he licks.


Dancing in the Forum
Here, kitty, kitty, kitty . . .


Setting the Record Straight
Photo: Diana Athill with Waguih Ghali Comments by Peter Dreyer on Vivian Gornick’s review (“In Lieu of Love,” New York Review of Books,...


The Files
The answer I would give is, No—I love them more.


Ghost Story
What has Undoing in store for you and me?


Lekker Brekker
Your quiver’s empty—but that bow is cute!


Dark Energy
Nobodaddy wins predict these lines!


After Virtue
Sufficient unto the day is the virtue thereof.


Remembering
These ills ought you have expected? Yes—or fled quickly to the skies. [Te faudra-il ces maulx attendre ? Ouy, ou tout vif aller ès...


Belle de Jour
Confused by too much reality, la réalité des faits —facts' factuality—the situation? The Doomsday Clock's hands stand at 89 seconds to...


Demonology
Max Ernst, "They have slept in the forest too long"


Pyewacket
Plunged on our own into a time
When digital culture plies its racket,
No point in supererogatory rhyme:
Doktorvater is Pyewacket.


Skullfire
In the far future, with our dug-up bones,
Archaeologists will unearth our phones . . .


Dodo
We'll bring the dodo back, too, one day.


Autoclave
A promisory outcome is wanted by the banks.


Now and Then
Oh, God, make small The old star-eaten blanket of the sky, That I may fold it round me and in comfort lie.—T. E. Hulme I thought—that’s...


Vichyssoise
“Forget grammar and think about potatoes.”—Gertrude Stein “History is the pack of lies agreed upon,” Napoleon said—or was it old...


The Formula
Its formula escapes you; it has lost The certainty that constitutes a thing. —W. H. Auden, “Brussels in Winter” Born into the British...


Table d'hôte
Chaïm Soutine, The Table (ca. 1923), oil on canvas. Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris Every angel is terrible. —Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino...


Good and Clever
If all the good people were clever, And all clever people were good, The world would be nicer than ever We thought that it...


Good Friday
The glacier knocks in the cupboard, / The desert sighs in the bed, / And the crack in the tea-cup opens / A lane to the land of the...


Stage Fright
Wide to destruction the freeway flows


Curfew
Forgotten words hide but for a moment


Dwell not too much on that which no one knows!
Lines riffing on "Denk nicht zuviel von dem was keiner weiss!" by Stefan George, in Der Stern des Bundes ("The Star of the Covenant")...


In Doubt We Trust
“It’s certainty that makes one mad, not doubt.”―Nietzsche, Ecce Homo A hae ma doots! * And well I might —necessity has doubt in sight;...


Bullet doux
Albrecht Dürer, Melancholia , engraving, 1514 Disoriented, brain-fogged, down at the mouth, I consulted Dr. Despair, my longtime quack,...


Dishonest Dreams
They who in folly or mere greed Enslaved religion, markets, laws, Borrow our language now and bid Us to speak up in freedom’s cause. It...


Famous Last Words: The Democratic Candidate
Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet ’t is early morn: Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle-horn....


The Bookie’s Turf
Zeal, Spirit, Hope, and Confidence Are said to constitute “morale,” But I, though pleading self-defense, Find hard to see how, if so,...


The Minimalist
"Fate thrives on figures and intricate designs. Its difficulty lies in its complexity. But life is difficult by reason of its...


Teenage Memories
Quitting school at fifteen, I side-stepped the self-promoting pains of so-called puberty, signing on with the GPO/HPK.* Taught Morse...


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.
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