Origin Stories - L. Shapley Bassen

    IRL
    by L. Shapley Bassen

    In Real Life,
    words, pauses, punctuation.
    Smells, perfume, memory
    is a scrim, a masking of
    movements, bowel and ballet.
    Autumn, age, are slow shock.
    Now, whether body can
    weather toxins? Ankle cramp?
    No acronyms suffice.
    Spell it out.

Origin Stories – IRL

This is a new poem, haven’t submitted anywhere else yet. It was inspired by a recent FB message from my daughter. I juxtaposed the constant need to look up cyber-acronyms used by younger and/or more fluent friends & family – whom I never ask to translate/explain – with yet another symptom of aging, a foot cramp in a long ago injured ankle. Ah, Achilles!

BIO

L. Shapley Bassen’s grandmother was a telegrapher on Wall Street a century ago who taught her to read and tapped messages to her in Morse Code. A New Yorker living in Rhode Island, she is a multi-published & prize-winning author of fiction, poetry, & drama.

2014 novel Summer of the Long Knives (Typhoon Media-Signal 8 Press)

2014 Lives of Crime & Other Stories (Texture Press)

2017 Showfolk & Stories (Inkception Books)

2019 collected works poetry What Suits a Nudist? (Clare Songbirds Publishing House)

1996 The Month Before the Moon (Samuel French, Inc. https://www.concordtheatricals.com/p/1563/the-month-before-the-moon)

Fiction editor at https://www.craftliterary.com/.

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4/1/22 “Satan Had Always Been in Love With Eve” https://gyroscopereview.com online page 28. Spring 2022 issue available to buy at https://www.amazon.com/Gyroscope-Review-Issue-22-2-Spring/dp/B09WHNJXZZ/

4/17/21www.gyroscopereview.com I’m part of their National Poetry Month event PROMOPALOOZA; features me as the poet of the day with the interview & photo of collection, WHAT SUITS A NUDIST. https://www.gyroscopereview.com/2021/04/promopalooza-l-shapley-bassen/

10/1/19 “Ebbtide” https://gyroscopereview.com Crone Powe Issue 19.4 Fall 2019 https://www.gyroscopereview.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/CRONE-POWER-PDF-FOR-WEBSITE.pdf Also at amazon https://www.amazon.com/Gyroscope-Review-Issue-poetry-around/dp/1695833252/