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? Perhaps someone will pick you up and seeThose qualities your owners didn’t notice:Your hunchbacked stoop, your gnarled and . . . . Continue Reading »

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 subjects? Cats, and apple pies, and toys;Quilted covers, macramé, and knitting;A nest of robin’s eggs, the happy noiseOf . . . . Continue Reading »

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 . . . . Continue Reading »

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 radical equality. He was guillotined by the French Directorate. Babeuf . . . . Continue Reading »

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 it And nowhere else. The herb had a distinct Fragrance of rosy fennel, with a whiff Of spiciness, as . . . . Continue Reading »

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 poetry. It left us stunned. The only antidote To poison in your flesh was blessèd words. No other good thing . . . . Continue Reading »

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 John-how much more than the rest My soul smiles on him in completest love! Mother and friend, by misery oppressed, . . . . Continue Reading »