A DOZEN HITS
Our server lists
those pages from
past issues that receive
the most monthly hits.
Here are the twelve most popular.

NEW REVIEWS
Mark Twain's Own Autobiography
"Because he was, as we all know,
a professional river-boat captain;
and we know that the truth
is not to be found
in or about
a river-boat captain."

The Return
"Eyes that sought out
fetuses and other tiny
wide-eyed creatures,
'full of humanity and fear and
fetuses lost in the
immensity of memory.'"

Spies of the Balkans
"When Zannis goes to buy a Walther,
a 'PPK detective's model,'
he notes that the store
smelled of gun oil,
not far from bananas."

Life along the Inner Coast
"I so content
there in the sun,
lying around me,
listening to them
croaking out their little lives
on the worn and sun-cooked decking."

Dead Neon
"The editors give thanks to
Sutured Esophagus, Righteous Pigs,
Curl Up and Die, Drainage X,
Dreaming of Lions and
Mother McKenzie."

Something to Declare
"Travel is all about
calculating risk.
Was this red
bell pepper worth
lying to a Chilean guard
with a big gun?"

World War One
"It forever laid
in the grave
the elegant dance of
distantly related cousins,
brothers, aunts, grandfathers
that had ruled England,
France, Germany, Austria,
Hungary, and Russia for
the previous 300 years."

Great Reviews of the Past
Varieties of Liberalism
in Central America
"The most sizable exports
from the USA
were gangs plucked from
the streets of Los Angeles
and returned to El Salvador
and Nicaragua to teach
los bros how to survive
on the streets and
get colorful teardrops
tattooed on their faces."

LETTERS
The 3rd Ave. El
Part III

MORE LETTERS
The Florida East Coast
Key West Extension
The Full Moon

EVEN MORE LETTERS
Cryptic Letters of the Month
Unleavened Bread Rolls
Dada

YET EVEN MORE LETTERS
Letters We Never Finished Reading
Your Fairly Friend

ARTICLE
Great Articles of the Past
Buying Your First Motorcycle
(At Age Thirty-Nine)
"Tell him to ride
near the centerline
so oncoming traffic
can see him or
squish him deliberately."

Articles We Never Finished Reading
Ralph Magazine on
The Scrap Heap
"Men all over the country
will be crying into their beers tonight
after learning that
Ralph magazine
is no more."

READINGS
To Suppress the Bible
"The bishops' anxiety
to buy up the copies
in order to destroy them
provided Tyndale with
a steady income while
he went to work
on the Old Testament."

POETRY
Two by Pete Winslow
"Some of the things you can do are
not read the newspaper
not buy any advertised product
jaywalk
play the accordion badly on street corners
write a subversive children's book
eat something inedible like treebark erasers or dynamite."

Great Poems of the Past
Vietnam Scrapbook
"Midway through fourth grade, early 1968,
Mrs. Hackemeyer said it was time
we learned about the war in Vietnam,
where, she said, "American boys
are giving their lives to fight communism."
We were American boys, or half of us were,
and we already knew communism was bad,
how it spread like a rash across the map
that pulled down like an illustrated window shade."

THE OFFICIAL RALPH
Paradox-of-the-Month

GENERAL INDEX
All the back-issues of RALPH,
including titles of books under review,
along with author, subject, and publisher,
plus links to readings, articles, and poems
that have appeared on-line
since 1994.

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

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