Backbone > Quarter to Three

WWJW?
By Sparrow . Illustration by Mike Dubisch

I Was Sold into Slavery

Forgetting that slavery ended 138 years ago, four men rushed into my house, manacled me, and dragged me off. They brought me to an auction house in Manhattan, where I was sold. I followed an Art Deco chair.
A silver-haired woman bought me for $3,000. (“I didn’t realize I was worth so much,” I thought.) Her chauffeur led me to their Lincoln Continental.
When I reached her house, the woman insisted I have sex with her.
“Now you must wash the floors,” she announced afterward.
I was on my knees, scrubbing with a brush, when two us Marshals knocked on the door. “You are in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment,” they told the silver-haired woman. “I know,” she answered sadly.
“You poor thing,” said one of the Marshals,
smashing my manacles with a hammer.
Ten months later, I received a letter from the silver-haired woman.
Within was a photograph of our baby, Jeremy.
“You may visit him anytime,” the silver-haired woman wrote.

Enlarge China Project

Travel to China.
Find a way to enlarge China.

Professor of Adjectives

“I am a Professor of Adjectives,” Professor Limlin told me.
“How interesting!” I remarked.
“Yes, my profession surprises many,” the professor replied.
“What does a Professor of Adjectives do?” I inquired.
“I watch and listen for adjectives all the time,” said Professor Limlin.
“And what have you noticed?” I wondered.
“Each person has their own store of adjectives,” explained the professor.
“In a sense, each person is their adjectives.”
“And do you use adjectives yourself?”
“No,” said Professor Limlin. “That would be a conflict of interest.”
“That makes sense,” I noted.
“Luckily the word ‘adjective’ is a noun,” Professor Limlin observed.

Finger Retreat

Finger Retreat—This 10-day silent retreat will feature finger exercises, silent hand movies, and finger-snapping soirees. One day will be devoted to pinky dancing. (No sign language allowed.) Write: Finger Retreat, Box 308, Airevon, VT 02601 or see www.fingersalive.com.

Heard In A Dream

“All of his pennies are see-through.”

Contest News

We finally received a submission to the Write-A-Novel Contest.
In this competition, readers were invited to write an entire novel
beginning with the sentence:
“I am very unfriendly,” he said, smiling.
This novel will be serialized in Quarter To Three (this column). Our submission, however, from Mike Topp, only contains two sentences:
We were playing Frisbee in her apartment. “I don’t care about your past.”

Entry To Nonexistent Contest

I received an entry to a contest I have never even announced, from Peter Lamborn Wilson. He was able to construct an entire sentence from repetitions of the syllable “yo”:

“Yo! Yo, Yo-Yo . . . yo’ yoyo?”
[Translation: “Attention! I [in Spanish], Yo-Yo Ma...
is that your yoyo?”]

Feel welcome to submit to any nonexistent contest. Write: Not A Contest c/o Chronogram, Post Office Box 459, New Paltz, NY 12561, or e-mail info@chronogram.com.

A Palindromic Correspondence

Below is an exchange of letters between Mikhail Horowitz, esteemed poet and philosophical Brain, and myself. A palindrome (as you may recollect) is a word, insult, or bubble gum label that reads the same forward and backward.

Estimado Señor Sparrow:
After years of arduous work, I have succeeded in crafting my first baseball palindrome. It is titled, “Revelation of a Spiritual Initiate in the Visitor’s Dugout,” and it follows:
Is it Yankees I seek? Nay, ‘tis I
No salga afuera,
Mikhail

Señor Grande Mikhail,
Congratulations on your plentiful achievement. (Sadly I have been weak on palindromes recently, except for inventing “Bonk a knob!”) Instead, I have been concentrating on “visual poems,” such as:

Charity Poem
A portion of
th s poem
has b en
donat d
to victims
f Hur icane
Janet.

Pivot, O VIP!,
Sparrow
P.S. Incidentally, is there a separate “visitor’s dugout?”

Sparrow,
Yes.
Authoritatively,
Mikhail

A Letter

Dear Sparrow,
Since you are a writer, you will appreciate the new visor cap I was given. Across the top is written “WWJW?” [“What Would Jesus Write?”]
Cheerfully, Jess Arbruck