We are sending this
to ensure the privacy
of your Apple account.
*
Status of your funds
will teach you to lose pounds.
Can I work with you?
*
Hang any object.
Love the fusion idea.
They thought they fixed it.
*
Greetings Beloved.
Divine forces compel me.
May be a bother.
*
I am so happy
for you. The waiting peri-
od is over. Call
Mrs. Maria
for better understand-
ing why we write you.
A note from the poet:
I usually scan my spam folder for things that slip in there accidentally. One day, I just started to read through them, noting that my spam seems to be about the hope of money and the promise of good fortune and health. A lot of folks from Africa wanted me to send them all my personal information so I could collect my millions. Diabetes cures, weight loss programs, and some–very few–penis enlargement ads.
As I’m always teaching poetry, I noted the syntax and diction (often incorrect) and began to craft bitty poems from them. These are intact, mostly, from the originals. Sometimes I move a word or two around or change the verb tense, but these come in this way. My next goal is to start in on triolets and then pantoums. But I’m working slowly.
Jessica Barksdale Inclan has been teaching at the community college level for twenty-six years. She knows her rear from a semi-colon. Also, she writes various tomes, the latest of which is the novel “How to Bake a Man.” You can read more at www.jessicabarksdaleinclan.com
Jessica Barksdale Inclán’s debut novel Her Daughter’s Eyes, published in 2001, was the premier novel published under New American Library’s new imprint Accent. Her Daughter’s Eyes was a final nominee for the YALSA Award for the best books of 2001 and best paperbacks for 2001 and has been published in both Dutch and Spanish. Her next novel The Matter of Grace was published in May 2002. Her third, When You Go Away, came out April 1, 2003. Her fourth, One Small Thing, was published April 2004, and was translated into in Dutch and Spanish. Walking With Her Daughter, was published in April 2005, and her sixth, The Instant When Everything is Perfect in February 2006. Starting in June 2006, she published the first in a trilogy from Kensington Books, When You Believe, Reason to Believe, and Believe in Me. Her next trilogy began with Being With Him and Intimate Beings. The final book in the trilogy–The Beautiful Being–came out in October 2010. She is a 2002 recipient of the CAC Artist’s Fellowship in Literature. Inclán teaches composition, creative writing, mythology, and women’s literature at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill, California, and on-line and on-land creative writing courses for UCLA extension. She has studied with Sharon Olds, Anne Lamott, Kate Braverman, Grace Paley, Marjorie Sandor, and Cristina Garcia. Her short stories and poems have appeared in Rockhurst Review, Hotwired, The Salt Hill Journal, Free Lunch, The West Wind Review, The Prairie Star, Gargoyle and many other journals and newspapers. Her short story Open Eyes was given first prize by Sandra Cisneros for El Andar magazine’s 2000 writing contest. She co-edited a women’s literature/studies textbook Diverse Voices of Women (Mayfield Publishing, 1995). Ms. Inclán has degrees in sociology and English literature from CSU Stanislaus and a Master’s degree in English literature from SFSU. Ms. Inclán lives in Oakland, California and is currently at work on a contemporary novel and a book of essays and another romance.