My Cruel Invention
A Contemporary Poetry Anthology
It’s true, the mother of invention might scoff at this delightful collection as being wholly unnecessary, but the rest of us will only marvel at the sixty-two poems focused on inventors and inventions—clocks, IUDs, safety pins, chemotherapy, pantyhose, among them.
A Fable (from the Journal of Chemical Ecology)
J.G. McClure
In the beginning there were rough-skinned newts
and snakes who wanted to eat them.
So the newts grew toxic. And the snakes
became immune. The newts grew more toxic,
the snakes more immune, until one newt
could kill a hundred men, and no snakes.
Some time later, man invented the coffeepot.
In 1927, the bodies of three hunters were found
around a pot in which a newt had drowned.
The newt was studied. The hunters were buried.
What happened to the coffee is not recorded,
but most likely it was dumped at the camp
where snakes came from under rocks
to smell it, to tongue it, and at last to leave-
disappointed the coffee was not a poison newt.
Reviewed by
Matt Sutherland
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