Gnashing Teeth Publishing

| words that get in your teeth

A Word About Words by Bruce McRae

A Word About Words

The past is a place in northern England
where the left-handed are gibble-fisted
or coochy-pawed or left-kaggy.
In another time and place, where freckles
were frentickles or branny-spackles.
When daddy long-legs were once called
harvest men or long-legged tailors.
Old words like yestermorn and overmorrow.
 
And new worlds and words, like lamestain,
hatewatch, flamebait, humblebrag;
cobbled together out of need and urgency.
And words I fail to understand –
seriatim, raillery, apotropaic.
Or words I fancy the sound of making –
belvedere, chromatopia, propinquity;
and how to fit them into conversations.
 
Though a dog would hear
the song of barbarous barking,
the human voice is of deeper value.
Words, the meaning of which increases reason.
And we speak of more than meaning.
We speak of ourselves.

Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician currently residing on Salt Spring Island BC, is a multiple Pushcart nominee with over 1,600 poems published internationally in magazines such as Poetry, Rattle and the North American Review. His books are ‘The So-Called Sonnets’ (Silenced Press); ‘An Unbecoming Fit Of Frenzy’; (Cawing Crow Press); ‘Like As If’ (Pski’s Porch); ‘Hearsay’ (The Poet’s Haven).

BOOK REVIEW: Gusher by Christopher Stephen Soden

Gusher, the recent Queer Mojo release from Christopher Stephen Soden, takes his first publication (Closer) and fine tunes it. Soden writes, “For this one moment / your connection is enough

BOOK REVIEW: Refugee by Pamela Uschuk

Pamela Uschuk’s 2022 release, Refugee, stands at an angle in the line of poetry collections. Hers is a unique perspective which weaves potent emotions and experiences into the fabric of

Goodnight, Taj Mahal by Andre Peltier

Deep below earth, clay and sand, deep below roots and aquifers, it lies in wait. Like that silent coyote stalking her white-tailed deer through the brush, it waits patiently and

connect

we love hearing from you. tell us everything