Cardinalis Sinuatus
Pyrrhuloxia
Samuel Ace
Pyrrhuloxia in the desert
The pyrrhic is rightfully dismissed. Its existence in either ancient or modern rhythm is purely chimerical, and the insisting on so perplexing a nonentity as a foot of two short syllables, affords, perhaps, the best evidence of the gross irrationality and subservience to authority which characterise our Prosody.
Edgar Allen Poe: The Poetic Principle*
I would not be here either without looking like a juvenile from the north red cockscomb in the mesquite bosque picked up by a boy in a convertible for something I was not I would not be here either in this loosely built cup of fumes purple bark and grass but for 3 white eggs left by one mother saying daddy you take over today (you find a boy to feed) I would not be here either twit or daily casual to the west broken by the heat in the thorny bush liquid or lightly speckled in thickets I would not be here without the occasional barn and weevil without a thousand more fires (as substantial) aroused discharged and wet I would not be here either despite Poe in between needing a name bent and burnt billowed and rhapsodic by my swollen beak
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Samuel Ace is a poet, photographer and educator, the author of three collections of poetry: Normal Sex, Home in three days. Don’t wash., most recently Stealth, co-authored with Maureen Seaton (Chax Press). He lives in Tucson, AZ and Truth or Consequences, NM.