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Volume I, Number 1 (Summer 2006)
ISSN 1934-4324

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NEW-CUE

NEW-CUE, Inc. is a non-profit, environmental education organization founded primarily to assist writers and educators who are dedicated to  enhancing  the public's awareness of environmental issues.

 

 

 

William Winfield Wright 

Too Busy Stop Just Send Titles Stop

The Size of a Postage Stamp


Jingoist
Jingoist by Cindy Johnson

 

TOO BUSY STOP JUST SEND TITLES STOP

That Last Year Among Friends
Three Things I Could Never Remember Until it Was Too Late
All The Excitement of a Potato
Some Confusion Over How to Proceed
The Bee Sting in Kindergarten
If You're Going to Read that Crap What Do You Expect
Bags of Pears
No, Really I'm Quite Content
The Fountain, The Suit, and The Airplane
Checking Diapers
All This Time and She Still Wouldn't Tell Me
The Other Room
Water that Bridges Don't Know About
Yes As a Matter of Fact
The Soap We Only Leave Out For Guests
An Ugly Disagreement Over Something Little
Coming Home After a Long Absence
Lines Written On or Near a Boat
Admittedly It Is a Little Bleak
Big Ben and the Astrolabe
Stop Apologizing
The Cereal Boxes in the Dead Man's House
Lazy Ghosts
How Come We're Always Out of This
You Don't Think About Birds Ganging Up Like That
Mote and Eye
Who In Their Right Mind Uses a Saucer Anymore
Broken Glasses
The Figure in The Linoleum
Do You Think a Book Would Help
Those Pills You Get on Sweaters
Bug Legs
Northern Dakota's Hidden Beauty
The Feckless Cockroach
Why The Woman Upstairs Keeps Doing That
Séance and Potluck BYOB
Regular and Superstitions
Who Wouldn't Given the Circumstances
Adjective, Noun, and Something Else
Gratitude in Translation
The Guy Who Said I'll Be Right Back
It is Only the Time Between that Matters

TOP

THE SIZE OF A POSTAGE STAMP

The size of a postage stamp is a misnomer.
The original English three-penny stamp
was as big as a five-pound note
and had to be folded and clipped or wrapped
around its letter. Scott took great sheets of them to Antarctica
to inspire his men with pictures of the English countryside
but this too proved disastrous
as not a one of them could bring himself
to burn the things for warmth even as the cold closed in.
Survivors reported wearing them as party hats
during that last and fateful dinner.
Amundsen ever the more resourceful explorer
brought tiny 2 kroner stamps of Norway's birds
and used the small bits of color
to mark the port and starboard of the dog sleds
and to break up the unremitting white.
The only one he brought back was
stuck to the back of his compass.

In Enlightenment Venice and her sister Verona
lovers mapped out assignations
on the backs of stamps that they attached
to mundane notes about fashion and the weather.
Their beloveds simply steamed them off
and set out into the crooked streets.
Early drafts of the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet
included a stamp and a bowl of warm water.
This continued to general satisfaction until
the council of ten standardized the post.

In the U.S. stamps are still a form of currency.
Late in the war Confederate soldiers licked the glue
from the stamps used to pay them.
Anticipating the application to correspondence
Audubon left blank spaces in the corners
of some paintings for the postage rate.
The two Inverted Jennys that astronauts left on the moon
are said to be worth more than a top drawer Picasso
if someone could just go get them.

TOP

 


 

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