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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...

Cosmic Gall, Part 2
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...

That Hollow Moon
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)....

Binge and Purge
Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. . . . Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine...


Cybernetics
In the Israel of the future All Jewish robots will wear electronic yarmulkes And Palestinian ones Wi-Fi-enabled keffiyehs. In the Iran of...


Biodegradable Souls
Peccavi Latin: "I have sinned ." When he was young, he did small wicked foolish things That burden him now, sixty years later, Although...


In Arcadia
Tomorrow we’ll boil acorns instead of cabbage to treat our hangovers. —Nikocharēs (Old Comedy playwright and poet, Athens, d. 345 BCE)...


Lost Cities
I saw in my dream. the great lost cities, Macchu Picchu, Cambridge Mass, Angkor . . . —John Berryman, The Dream Songs, No. 197...


In the Crush Bar
What has fame in mind to brandish at me in the years to come!


Brazil
Brazil? He twirled a Button -- Without a glance my way -- "But -- Madam -- is there nothing else -- That We can show -- Today?" —Emily...


Cosmology
Hanuman showing Rama and Sita within his heart. Ravi Varma Press, Bombay. I read in Science News that in searching for dark matter,...


Obversity
It’s not too late for “yet."


Spirits of Saturn
Vanity's a dangerous deed.


Old Dreams
Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, “Ōshū Adachigahara Hitotsu Ie no Zu” (奥州安達が原ひとつ家の図), illustrating the legend of an ogress who drank the blood of...


Zero-knowledge Proofs
Yet it will come. The readiness is all.


Back from Syracuse
What sort of slave might such a savant be?


Doggerel
"Namoore of this, for Goddes dignitee, Quod oure Hooste, "for thou makest me So wery of thy verray lewednesse . . . . . . . . . . . . . ....

Little Old World
Will there be a signal, do you suppose?


Aphorisms
False modesty is the kindest lie.


Maxims
More honest than we are, our ancestors called a mirror a looking-glass. The journey of an illegal immigrant is an upside-down fairy tale:...

The Dilemma
With greasy Joan to keel the pot!
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