READINGS
The Glories of Penang
"The meal usually led off with an eerie gumbo, identified as pumpkin soup,
puce in color and dysenteric in effect. This was followed by
a crisp morsel of the fish called selangor for want of a more scathing term,
reminiscent in texture of a Daniel Green comfy slipper fried in deep fat."

Shrike's Passion in the Luncheonette
"Under the skin of man is a wondrous jungle where veins
like lush tropical growths hang along over-ripe organs
and weed-like entrails writhe in squirming tangles of red and yellow.
In this jungle, flitting from rock-grey lungs
to golden intestines, from liver to lights
and back to liver again lives a bird
called the soul."

POETRY
Aye, but to die, and go we know not where
"To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot;/ This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit/ To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;/ To be imprisoned in the viewless winds
And blown with restless violence round about/The pendant world..."

Being a Poet: One
"When the man in the window seat/flying next to me
asks me who I am/and I tell him I'm a poet,
he turns embarrassed toward the sun."
Being a Poet: Two
"These are the women whose husbands I meet on airplanes,
who close their briefcases and ask, 'What are you in?'
I look in their eyes, I tell them I am in poetry,
and their eyes fill with anxiety, and with little tears."

LETTERS
"What would you have me retract?
I thought your book an imposture;
I think it an imposture still."

THE OFFICIAL RALPH
Paradox-of-the-Month