[New-Poetry] Calling Dr. Giggles

[Richard Wilsnack]

I will sadly have to miss Tad Richards' presentation, but I hope that it 
includes time
for Don Marquis' "archy interviews a pharaoh,"  wherein archy confronts 
a mummy
with the realities of Prohibition pre-1932.

The text can be found at

     http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/76.html

A key passage spoken by the mummy:

oh by isis
and by osiris
says the princely raisin
and by pish and phthush and phthah
by the sacred book perembru
and all the gods
that rule from the upper
cataract of the nile
to the delta of the duodenum
i am dry
i am as dry
as the next morning mouth
of a dissipated desert
as dry as the hoofs
of the camels of timbuctoo
little fussy face
i am as dry as the heart
of a sand storm
at high noon in hell
i have been lying here
and there
for four thousand years
with silicon in my esophagus
as gravel in my gizzard
thinking
thinking
thinking
of beer


Richard W. Wilsnack
rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu