Fifteen Hits
Each day, our server lists those
reviews, readings, poems and articles
that are called up
most often by our readers.
Here are this month's
most popular.

NEW TITLES
Glittering Images
"Paglia is at her best with very early art.
On Queen Nefertari and the Godess
she comments on the inclusion of many symbols:
'Hieroglyphics hang in midair,
clusters of sharp pictograms of a rope,
reed, bun, viper, owl,
human leg, or mystic eye.'"

Mommyblogs
"I have always been
blatantly honest with you,
blog people,
even when my position
is childish or selfish or silly.
And so I am honest now:
Staying home with my kids is boring."

The Old Priest
"'I am dying, Egypt,' Cleo said.
'Well then drop dead already,' Slater said.
"They will fire us hence like foxes,' Caesar said.
'"Life in the postmodern,' Slater said.
'You never know which century
you're standing in around here.'"

The Roy Stories
"Spanky was short and stout.
Lying there on the bathroom floor,
to Roy he resembled a big red hog,
the kind of animal Louie Pinna
had shoved into an industrial sausage maker."

My Life as a Silent Movie
"If you are fond of old silent movies,
this is a neat reminder of
films and characters long lost.
Chaplin and Keaton and
Laurel and Hardy were lucky.
They remained found."

Thirteen Cents
"My mother is dead.
My father is dead,
I repeat again.
The deafening sound
of destruction
fills the air."

Great Reviews of the Past
Astronomical Enigmas
"The secret of outer space is nothing.
Cruising around out there in your intergalactic SUV,
you can go for eons and eons and eons,
and never get anywhere even near any of
the stars or comets or galaxies or suns.
Only the lonely, the unreachable,
the fathomless bottomless whole of dark space."

Another Great Review of the Past
State Houses
"The Senate chambers in Alabama
look like Mission Control,
Florida's capitol looks like Stonehenge
mixed up with a high-rise office building.
The prettiest lighting ---
bronze standards and graceful insets ---
can be found in Olympia, Washington."

LETTERS
Scabies Baby
MORE LETTERS
On The Essence And
Matrix Of The Universe-Life
EVEN MORE LETTERS
5ft bah tubs

ARTICLES
Pistol-Packin' Mama
"What they don't think of is that ---
unless I am in traffic jam on highway 5,
or on the telephone with some government official,
or throwing up after a binge,
or in church ---
I am most usually,
wheresoever I am,
in my favorite place on earth."

READINGS
Poisoning the Neighbor's Dogs
"'It s a dog,' she says,
and stares through me,
a yellow moon dancing
in each black eye.
'It barks. Bow-wow,' she says,
and walks away as if
that's all anybody would
need to know about it."

Blue People
"'Roy says they turn blue because
of the dye on their robes,' said Jimmy.
'Very clever,' Lorraine said. 'I wish
I could just wear a red babushka over my hair
to make it stay red, then I wouldn't
have to pay the beauty parlor no more.'"

Night Owl
"Does everyone have secrets?"
"Oh, yes, certainly they do."
"Do you?"
"One or rwo."
"Would you die if anybody
found them out?"
"I wouldn't die, no.
There are just a few things
I'd rather other people didn't know."

POETRY
Two by Ron Wallace
"I must confess that I, too, like it:
the poem that's filed up flat and fast with condiments
on a sesame seed bun. Steamy, grease-spattered,
and juicy, fluent with salt, piping hot
from the grid, glazed with bubbling oil."

OUR NEW BOOK
(Hot Off the Press)
The Noisiest Book Review in the Known World
has just been published.
It contains 200 or so of what we believe
to be the best articles, readings, reviews and poems
from this magazine from our first years to now.
Here you will find all necessary information
on ordering this two-volume set
which one critic called "magic."

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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