LETTERS
A Love Poem for Father?
Who are you trying to kid?
&
A Critique of Unidentified Book Review
Concerning Unnamed Books

MORE LETTERS
Ed Zern,
Eternal Treblinka,
A Round-Heeled Woman, and
George Bush and the Civil War

ARTICLES
Bonehead English
Part I
"These were the boneheads, right?
Yet with a couple of exceptions their stories were
fun, or funny, or sad --- and in a couple of cases,
downright gripping."

Part II
"I loved the class
and came to love my students.
Most of them told me their stories without shame.
I remember thinking how lucky I was
to discover their wonderful awful secrets
while pretending to teach them English."

READINGS
Pack My Bag
"It was here,
on these Sundays,
I began to have
those first movements of delight,
those first motions toward
the open heart which is growing up,
taking one's place,
looking beauty
right in her cow eyes."

A Snatch of "The Miller's Tale"
[Middle English Version]
"He felte a thyng al rough and long yherd,
And seyde, "Fy! allas! what have I do?"
"Tehee!" quod she, and clapte the wyndow to,
And Absolon gooth forth a sory pas.
"A berd! a berd!" quod hende Nicholas,
"By Goddes corpus, this goth faire and weel."
Another Snatch of "The Miller's Tale"
[Modern English Version]
"He felt this rough and long-haired thing
And said, "O damn! what have I done?"
"Tee hee!" says Alison and slams the window shut.
Absolon goes forth on his sad way.
"A beard! A beard!" he says.

POETRY
Two by Lloyd C. Pettus
The End, The End
"And so, you and I Jesus are assigned the task
To be the last of the caring Jews, pulling
Babes from their graves by dawn
(They've told us we can have them all).
We'll leave at sunrise, moving carefully
About the edges of the falling cross-beams,
Retrieving the babes from their graves."

The Last of the Douchebag Warriors
"The Douchebag Warrior was taken by his mother
To join with the pilgrims
Marching the shore of the River Jordan.
There, he was told, he would find a drunken penitent
Waiting at the Cafe Golgotha
Waiting to share his vision of eternity."

THE OFFICIAL RALPH
Paradox-of-the-Month

GENERAL INDEX
A complete list of all books reviewed in RALPH,
arranged by title, including author, subject, and publisher,
plus a listing of all readings, articles and poems
that have appeared since 1994.

A PITHY SAMPLE
of our most notorious reviews
as collected in the hard-copy
"FOLIO"

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