By Ellen Girardeau Kempler After you pay your poll tax, Boy, I’ll ask you how many jellybeans are in the big jar I keep on my Registrar’s desk? How many bubbles are in this bar of soap? How many seeds are in a watermelon, any watermelon? (An answer you should naturally know.) How many drops [...]
By Ellen Girardeau Kempler Heat buffets us seaward. Sunburn sends us home. We trail wakes of bags & butts clamshell packages & coffee cups. Styrofoam seeds sprout like alien plants neoprene petals band aid leaves. Straws take root in tangled kelp. Saltwater & sun degrade. Waves & currents take away. Great Garbage Patch. Undersea pyre. [...]
By Ellen Girardeau Kempler Disembodied. Disenfranchised. Disconnected. Disassociated. Disowned. Disliked. Distained. Disrespected. Disregarded. Disparaged. Disgraced. Dismissed. Discarded. Disavowed. Disqualified. Disappointed. Disheartened. Distanced. Disbarred. Dislocated to: Dis City, The Inferno, Sixth Circle of Hell, Not in My Backyard, Planet Earth 00000 (Do not forward. Do not return.) Disappeared. Called “a timely and powerful selection of [...]
By Ellen Girardeau Kempler In one stop- action second you spin in slow motion over the sharp edge of knowing. There was then & there is now. No scrabbling back up the cliff face. No rewind button. No cartoon-stopping on the way down. No spaceship to beam you away. No, the pressure is in the [...]
