Penny Wagers

So maybe you pick up the book because on day four of your summer squat it’s a toss-up between a ten-minute walk to the library and a forty-one hour drive to California to keep from losing what remains of your sanity. You’re between apartments, between semesters, between jobs. Your new lease doesn’t start for another week so you’re staying at your buddy’s place until move-in day. His lease is paid...

The Ghost of Robin Hood is an original poem about the merry men—specifically Little John, Will Scarlock, Much the miller’s son, and the minstrel, Allan-a-Dale—and the state of England after their master’s death. Details regarding the death vary according to accounts, but there is a general agreement that he was betrayed by a prioress after he sought to be bled at Churchlees. This story, which take...

Ingredients Prepare your whole bean coffee, v60 cone brewer with unbleached paper filter, kettle with variable temperature, burr grinder with variable grind settings and filtered water. You can use any mug you like. Maybe use the mug you stole from work, the branded one that came from the café on the ground floor where everyone lined up for a hot cup in the mornings, catching up and sharing storie...

There stands a beautiful hall near the fountain beneath the ash. Out of it come three maids, whose names are Urðr, Verðandi and Skuld. These maids shape the lives of men, and we call them norns. There are yet more norns, namely those who come to every man when he is born, to shape his life, and these are known to be of the race of gods; others, on the other hand, are of the race of elves, and yet...

By July 2012, I was thirty years old and more familiar with classic rock than most of my own anatomy. I had my family to thank for that: Due to my parents and two uncles, I had seen The Moody Blues, the Rolling Stones, and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young a few times over before I was old enough to drive. But that July, I'd have one of the most poignant concert experiences of my life. I had been bac...

On one occasion the poet came to the house of Bres seeking hospitality … He entered a narrow, black, dark little house; and there was neither fire nor furniture nor bedding in it. Three small cakes were brought to him on a little dish—and they were dry. The next day he arose, and he was not thankful. As he went across the yard he said,“Without food quickly on a dish,Without cow’s milk on which a c...

The day I discovered Time Beavers and pieced together their conspiracy, I was reading updates on Nextdoor. I like getting my community news from Nextdoor. The posts are always self-described as well-researched and articulate, and often drafted by used car salesmen, spouses of liquor store owners and other county luminaries. We never have “scientists,” “structural engineers,” “habitat biologists” o...

“The trees, which were far apart where I entered, giving free passage to the level rays of the sun, closed rapidly as I advanced, so that ere long their crowded stems barred the sunlight out, forming as it were a thick grating between me and the East. I seemed to be advancing towards a second midnight. In the midst of the intervening twilight, however, before I entered what appeared to be the dark...

"My father used to sing every morning. When he'd had his coffee, when he shaved, even when he was losin’ his shirt at the pub. He'd make this effort to sing..." Get full access to Penny Wagers at pennywagers.substack.com/subscribe