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To a Decorative Dwarf in the Garbage

Joseph S. Salemi

Perhaps you’ll find a home in some back yardBeneath a poplar, or beside an ash;How could those soft suburban hearts grow hardAnd leave you stranded in the morning trash?...

Your Grandmother’s Verse

Joseph S. Salemi

She writes it with a quill pen, so they say,On cream-smooth vellum (paper she refuses).A photo of three granddaughters at playSits on her desk to supplement the Muses. Her...

The Old Story

Joseph S. Salemi

She loved him in the way girls only canAt sixteen, with a maelstrom of desire. She lingered on his every word. He’d fan Her glowing embers into open fire....

Babeuf at the Scaffold

Joseph S. Salemi

François Noël Babeuf (1760–1797), known as “Gracchus,” was a French revolutionary and social incendiary. He was the instigator of Babouvism, an ideology of ferocious, leveling terrorism to bring about...

All Gone

Joseph S. Salemi

quam magnus numerus Libyssae harenae lasarpiciferis iacet Cyrenis ”Catullus, 7 Silph-bearing Cyrenaica, said a poet, Alluding to a plant now long extinct. The coastal plain of Libya could grow...

For Benson A. Koenig (1912_1997)

Joseph S. Salemi

Battery A, 10th AART Battalion, U.S. Army North Africa and Italy, 1942“1944 Those last three days, reciting from memory Cicero and Vergil, you could quote Long passages of Latin...

Charity’s Gift

Joseph S. Salemi

Pinioned here, I look downwards to see My mother weeping in unfettered grief Her heart transfixed by swords, beholding Me Hang from this branch like autumn’s final leaf. Disciple...