"'oilfish' to 'old chap' for 'C'" by Tina Darragh

“oilfish” to “old chap” for “C”


Performing military service for the king and bearing a child
have a common medieval root. The progression to this point
is first academic, then technical. Textbooks give way
to textiles which lead to T-formations and T-groups.
We pause to add “th” and proceed through Mediterranean
anemia, deep seas, Greek muses, pesticides, young shoots
and the instinctual desire for death. It is there that
we find “thane” to be followed by all manner of “thanks”,
including the “thank-you-ma’am”—a ridge built across a
road so rain will roll off.


Source of the text - Tina Darragh, on the corner   to   off the corner.  College Park, MD: Sun & Moon Press, 1981, p. 7.

Bourguignomicon: Root brood. A fantastic image concludes this prose posing philology as an odyssey backwords through time, both an adventure & a return home.