Here's Issue #23 of Right Hand Pointing.  Turned out to be a big one.  It includes a little centerfold, of sorts, consisting of seven found poems.  These were, uh, found by seven contributors, counting one by me.  I don't really approve of editors publishing their own work in their own magazines but, hey, I didn't write it.  I found it.  

I think this might be an appropriate time to provide the often-requested comparison of Right Hand Pointing issue titles and James Bond movie titles.

Figure 1. Comparison of Right Hand Pointing issue titles and James Bond movie titles.

#	Right Hand Pointing Title	James Bond Film Title
1	Pilot	Dr. No
2	C Cell	From Russia With Love
3	The Radius of Salvation	Goldfinger
4	Driving North	Thunderball
5	Where Bats Fit in to the Relationship	You Only Live Twice
6	The Need for Carp	On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
7	Living Room	Diamonds Are Forever
8	Spew	Live and Let Die
9	Cold Front	The Man With the Golden Gun
10	Summons	The Spy Who Loved Me
11	Sees Small Sky	Moonraker
12	Fiction	For Your Eye’s Only
13	Puzzle Ball	Never Say Never Again
14	Shudder	Octopussy
15	Something We Recall	A View to a Kill
16	The Paradox of Going On	The Living Daylights
17	What We’d Never Say Aloud	License to Kill
Humor	The Backyard is Totally Big Enough for a Pony	GoldenEye
18	Your Sins Find a Dance Partner	Tomorrow Never Dies
19	This Is Why You Can’t Stand	The World Is Not Enough
20	Lyrid	Die Another Day
21	Ill Fever	Casino Royale
22	Why Is It Starting Now?	Quantum of Solace
23	Doubtful Forms	?

 

I rushed this to press, or e-press, or whatever this is, because I know you--and I know you're bored.  There are no political ads on television.  No sarcastic baritone voicing over candidates' lists of sins.   No grainy photos of the candidates caught picking their noses.  ("Negative ads work!," proclaim people on CNN.  Hmm.  Really?  Do they, now?")

We'll have a new President soon.  He's probably read some poetry.  Maybe he's written a little.  If so, I'm going to  extend an open invitation to the President to publish his Presidential Poems here.  I'd like to see our President ditch that Saturday radio address thing and do a poetry reading instead.  Or maybe mixed format.

My administration will continue to work with Congress to craft legislation that will lead to fair allocation of taxpayers' money in our efforts to resuscitate our deserving, but ailing, industries and institutions.  And now, I'd like to read 'Epitaph on a Tyrant', by W. H. Auden.

'Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.'

Dale