Featured Issues

Images and poetry from the first issue of Snake Nation Review
1989

Drawings by Jerome Stern

“Electronic transmission of information may eventually displace all physical mail. The mailboxes won’t vanish so quickly, though-few people will rush out to uproot them from the curbside when the mail stops altogether, Like little oracles and temples that have outlived their purpose, they’ll hang around with their doors open, and the lucky ones will become wren’s nests.”
R. Bland Dawson
“Curbside Attractions”

Snake Nation Review #1

Aphorism
by David Kirby


It need only sound,
not be, right,

For all unhappy families
are not unhappy
in Different ways.

The father drunk,
the mother harassed,

the children angry
and frightened
these are every where.

And beggars can be choosers:
only this morning
a ragged man asked me
if I’d give him five dollars
for a croissant and cappuccino,

and when I reproached him,
told him no would ever
give him that much,
he said it’s a free country,
I shouldn’t tell him
how to run his business.

He’s right about that,
it is a free country.

Oh but true aphorism, you too are a deceiver!
For you make way of the false.

 

About the artists:
David Kirby
Jerome Stern