We’ve done it once again, mon Dieu! Yet again we failed to see that we were still in France, alas, and cappuccino had one “p”. The girl who smiled her savoir faire as we enquired “Italiano?” then scorched the milk with quite a flourish would get no work beside the Arno. Ja Ja Si Si […]

Read More

I took a faddish nonsense And wove a certain charm With words designed to scintillate, postulate, disarm. My lines were splendid nothings, Mere heady repartee: My ink pools weren’t for you, you see but formed to flatter me. Brianna Heseltine

Read More

“The enemies of agriculture in Russia are precisely four,” our Prague friend’s saying with a smile as if it were a football score, “Summer, winter, autumn, spring.” He apes his hapless commissar. How much the old jokes have improved now that Moscow seems so far! Geoff Page

Read More

Always the same dream, it pleases me: Narcissus in his favorite sport coat reading his favorite lyric poet, “it is fitting and just,” he says adding, “dignus et justum est” because he is a spiritual fellow, and laughs looking at me, because I am he and he is me and my own jokes are funny, […]

Read More

The vestiges of Vladimir are growing harder to detect: bad PAs, appalling plumbing, boring buildings you suspect must once have housed the local Stasi, apartment blocks in slow decay. The Age of Dreariness is gone. The Age of Greed’s arrived to stay. Geoff Page

Read More

THE DOUBLE The witness Jones attests by affidavit That you were present at the seminar All of the day in question. He asked you for your number and you gave it. He’s quoted from your repartee At lunch and, when you broke at three, He came to collect a pamphlet from your car— And this […]

Read More

The Blessings of Saint Vincent Saint Vincent, patron saint of student clothing, bequeathed to me from the depths and twists of his sorting tables, a perfect Victorian camisole, every stitch scaled in sixteenths of an inch, pin-tucked lawn and pale silk ribbon that threaded the three deep inches of lace to play, across the breasts […]

Read More

Short Boots Twenty five dollar boots from Cooks— on Oxford Street, cow hide, Cowgirl-style, embossed, with a Cuban heel, you meant business and when, at eighteen, I walked home in the hot compression of summer after work, the local mongrels once formed a pack, the first, hair-sprung snarling, rushed to introduce his throat to the […]

Read More

Dealing with obese women Fat women don’t have feelings— They are, by definition, jolly, Bluff, a bit obtuse. No need to watch your words— Like foreigners and children, They don’t speak the language. Despite their bulk, They’re easy to ignore, and All of them look strangely similar. When next you meet one, Remember, if communication […]

Read More

Surreal Elements in a Relationship He wore jeans and a singlet boots and a watch which he hung over the chair like a Dali watch it grew bigger and bigger while I grew smaller and smaller he said my moustache made me look like a man I said his moustache made him look absurd I […]

Read More