APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA

by Richard Meyer

on Christian Ward plagiarizing a poem by Helen Mort

Image source: Brainstuck.com

"The poet Christian Ward has said that he had "no intention of deliberately plagiarising" the work of another writer after it was discovered that his prize-winning entry to a poetry competition was lifted "almost word-for-word" from a poem by Helen Mort." --The Guardian, January 14, 2013


It little profits that an idle king poet
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.”
I am a part of all that I have met read
Now recollected in tranquility.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides, and though to take.
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
I am the silence in a snowy field.
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.
Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.
When I am dead, I hope it may be said:

"His sins were scarlet, but his books thefts were read."


Richard Meyer, a former English and humanities teacher, lives in the home his father built in Mankato, a city at the bend of the Minnesota River. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in various print and online publications, including Able Muse, 14 Magazine, Per Contra, The Flea, Measure, and The Evansville Review. His poem “Fieldstone” was selected as the winner of the 2012 Frost Farm Prize.

BEFORE OBAMA CAME

by Brandon Mullis

Once this land was beautiful
With shining silver springs
The dew-kissed fields'
old harvest yields
Fit both for man or king

But then the sky grew darker
The fields were kissed by flame
O how grand
was once our land
Before Obama came

The forests played a melody
Its fauna harmonized
The sparrow's tweet
so nectar-sweet
A robin would reprise

Now it's all so raucous
The wind sings not my name
Those dulcet tones
soothe not my bones
Not since Obama came

The sun was so much brighter
Water just seemed wetter
A woman's touch
healed twice as much
My pants fit so much better

There was no Justin Bieber
No "Glee" or "Jersey Shore"
On demon's wings
came all these things
With number 44

The world is now so flimsy
So malleable and frayed
The hidden cost
of things we've lost
Might never be repaid

We still had Michael Jackson
Steve Jobs and Neil Armstrong
These men and more
stood strong before
Obama came along

The future's bleak and ominous
Like many futures past
As in them all
we'll surely fall
If we don't do something fast

I may not have the answer
But I do know who to blame
So let's raise cheers
to those great years
Before Obama came


Brandon Mullis pretends to be a writer. While doing this, a number of short stories and poems do accidentally get written. His work has so far only been published in that mythic forest we hear so much about -- the one where no one's around to hear them, so nothing makes a sound. Rejection notices, however... let's just say if they ever become a form of currency, Brandon Mullis will be the 1%.

CHAMBERED NAUTILUS REVISITED

by Mary Cresswell

           after Oliver Wendell Holmes

Image source: Carnivoraforum

This is the ship of state
swimming backwards through a grimy sea
spewing foam, its hundred sticky arms
waving wild and pale and aimlessly.

Chamber after chamber fills and closes
blocking out what’s gone before.
No contamination can leak out –
thoughts sealed inside appear no more.

Adding empty gap to empty gap
the hulk is finally cast up on the beach,
where we toss it back and forth, and ask
what kind of truth had one time grown beneath.


Mary Cresswell is from Los Angeles and lives on New Zealand’s Kapiti Coast. Her third book, Trace Fossils, came out in 2011.