I always bite down on marginalia, though only when it’s lower case. Marginalia proper with those damnable spines always lodges between my caparisoned molars and my already receding gumline. Illuminated manuscripts (lower case) are usually all right, engendering their own marginal notes, of sorts, though I wonder about what esoteric plant juices and metallic salt concoctions might have been used by some Medieval monk transcriptionist set on getting poisonous revenge on any rampaging barbarians set on licking parchment pages to set free thin foils of gold leaf, which, come to think, might also end up wedged between irritated gum tissue and enameled grinders, lending a horrendous glint to the Mad Moue of a Moribund, Marginalia-Munching Marauder who Met, in this Monk, his Match.

Author’s Note:

The epigraph is from “Dip, Rise and Dive: Personal Questions & the Leap into Poetry” by poet and educator Valerie Martinez, in the book Wingbeats II: Exercises & Practice in Poetry (Dos Gatos Press, 2015), edited by Scott Wiggerman and David Meischen.

Bio: Roy J. Beckemeyer