Lincoln
What we don’t know of Abraham exceeds
the books on him, by thousands, on our shelves,
the bulk of which, addressing present needs,
are principally devoted to ourselves.
The more of them we read, the more we know,
and also less, as, gradually, we come
to realize how many unknowns flow
from every new addition to the sum.
He carried papers in his stovepipe hat;
how many did he lose that way? Did ink
stain his deep brow? How many leaves at once
would fit? Did Mary know of it and think,
“How idiosyncratic, my sweet dunce”?
What hatband in this world could compass that?
Dan Campion is the author of Peter De Vries and Surrealism and coeditor of Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song. His poems have appeared widely in periodicals. Two selections of his poems, “A Playbill for Sunset” (Ice Cube Press) and “The Mirror Test” (MadHat Press) are being published in 2022. He lives in Iowa City, Iowa.
Innisfree 35
A Closer Look:
Grace Cavalieri
Jonathan Bracker
Jamie Brown
Dan Campion
Don Colburn
Barbara Lydecker Crane
Barbara Crooker
Robert Fillman
Paul Freidinger
Charise Hoge
Edison Jennings
Vyacheslav Konoval
Laura Manuelidis
Susan McLean
Jeffrey B. Mock
Jed Myers
William W. Palmer
Fred Pollack
Greg Rappleye
Benjamin Rosenbush
David Salner
Laura Shovan
Tim Suermondt
Ann Weil