John Lindley
Introduction to the poems
A drifter from Bangor, Maine, Elmer McCurdy had been a plumber, miner, soldier and drinker before turning to crime. Spectacularly unsuccessful, attempting to rob a Kansas bank, he blew the door of a vault clear across the road, waking the town; used so much nitroglycerine in a train robbery that 4,000 silver dollars were fused together and in 1911, planning to hold up a train which was carrying a substantial amount of money, mistakenly stopped the wrong one and got away with the conductor's watch, a few dollars and some whiskey. Pursued by a posse, he hid in a barn, where after drinking the whiskey, he went out to exchange shots with the posse and was gunned down.
His body was embalmed in arsenic, but never claimed and remained in a corner for 5 years, where it mummified. Claimed by two men posing as relatives, it became for many years a side show attraction. Passing from owner to owner it ended up, painted iridescent, hung by a noose in The Laff in the Dark ghost ride. Eventually identified as human, its story was pieced together, and Elmer was finally buried.
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The