Fowl Feathered Review 184

IN MEMORIAM

This particular folio—a slender reed against the cacophonous winds of modernity—is consecrated to the memory of Dr. Eustace B. Septum (b. Aug 14, 1888; d. May 29, 1963). He was a man who practiced the high and lonely art of rhinology in Booger Hole, West Virginia, a place whose nominal misfortune he bore with the stoicism of a saint contemplating a particularly disagreeable odor. Dr. Septum was, by all accounts, a connoisseur of the nasal passage, a Flaubert of the fossa, whose exacting standards for what constituted a "properly cleared sinus" remain, much like the sinuses themselves, largely obscure. He saw the world through a speculum, darkly.

A PREFATORY TRIPTYCH FOR THE PERPLEXED
"Poetry is what happens when nothing else can."

— K. Young (A statement of elegant resignation.)

"I have seen the future, and it is much like the present, only longer."
— Y. Berra (A tautology of such terrifying simplicity it verges on prophecy.)

"Somebody hit the lights, so we can rock it day and night.”
— C. Milian (A direct, actionable, and, frankly, undeniable imperative.)

To you, then, O Perusers of this, the 184th trembling issuance of the Feathered Scroll—you few, you happy few, you band of subscribers—a salutation. Within this codex, you will find narratives whose veridicality, we suspect, exists in a state of asymptotic decay relative to its sheer altitude. It is a known literary phenomenon. I saw a man build a shelf once. When he was done, I stared at it for a very long time. It was a good shelf.

But that is a digression, a footnote in search of a text. The text, in this case, is Grace Cavalieri. The name itself suggests a certain Florentine panache, does it not? She, the reigning Laureate of Maryland—a state known for its crabs and its poets, two creatures distinguished by their hard shells and oblique methods of locomotion—has deigned to furnish our humble pages with a poem. A poem! An object constructed of nothing but air and syntax, yet possessing the specific gravity of a collapsed star.

And as if that were not sufficient to buckle the very knees of our gratitude, she has also dispatched, via means one can only describe as recklessly optimistic, six (VI) paintings. One pictures the scene: Ms. Cavalieri, having exhausted the potentialities of the mere alphabet, seizes a brush, dips it not in mere pigment but in the very idea of cerulean blue, and, with the furious precision of a neurosurgeon operating on a gnat, commits her visions to canvas. We are told this is not how it happened, but as a wise man once said¹, what is truth but a lie that has aged well?

Which brings us, by a process of sorrowful subtraction, to our other contributing poets. They exist. Their names are known to us. Their poems are here, somewhere, trapped in the amber of cold type. And yet, we are compelled by an aesthetic and, let us be frank, a brutally pragmatic editorial policy, to decline the specific honor of naming them.

They came to us bearing only words. Words, naked and shivering, unaccompanied by the validating thud of a framed oil painting on our welcome mat. It is an oversight we find both puzzling and, in its own way, a form of high tragedy. To offer art without its material sibling is a particular kind of cruelty, the onanism of the un-illustrated. Their poems are in a drawer. The drawer is closed.

Therefore, gentle reader, find your sturdiest chair. Decant something dark and expensive—may we suggest a vintage Rooster Rouge, a wine that whispers of the barnyard and the barricades in equal measure? Prepare for the full, multifaceted, and frankly overwhelming Cavalieri. She is a credit to the arts, a jewel in a tiara that America probably pawned years ago to pay for a monorail.

Yours, in a state of profound aesthetic dislocation,
Virgil Kay,

Editor,
Chief Sorter of Unsolicited Sonnets,
and Provisional Keeper of the Sacred Wok
of the Order of the Crimson Comb.

¹ I did. Just now.

Keywords: Ontology of Ostriches