A new poem by Winston-Salem-based poet Carl Martin, entitled "Starveling Shepherdess of Predicates and Truth Functions." Carl will once again read at the 2005 Festival as he did last year.

Starveling Shepherdess of Predicates and Truth Functions

And in this system of word-meanings
it's mostly conveyance that troubles the synapse.

Not the cookie cutter school
though the picaresque functions
inimitably buried
in illusion's tight opalescence
and pretense of rational discourse.

Now a vision in the fractured beard:
by the bench the slippered young queen
urges illogic to batten its sails!
Her pupils thumb their slates & eyelids.

O these Anglo logics and fairytales.

Though skunk eye pursue his thesis
Sweet Fern rules the priory of truths
in the afterlife of her oft golden seed,
in the Immutable Order of Sleeping Car Conductors.