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To a Decorative Dwarf in the Garbage

Joseph S. Salemi

Perhaps you’ll find a home in some back yard / Beneath a poplar, or beside an ash; / How could those soft suburban hearts grow hard...

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 play...

The Old Story

Joseph S. Salemi

She loved him in the way girls only can / At sixteen, with a maelstrom of desire. / She lingered on his every word. He’d fan...

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

Silph-bearing Cyrenaica, said a poet, / Alluding to a plant now long extinct. / The coastal plain of Libya could grow it...

For Benson A. Koenig (1912_1997)

Joseph S. Salemi

Those last three days, reciting from memory / Cicero and Vergil, you could quote / Long passages of Latin poetry. ...

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...