Category Archives: anaphora

Anaphora (an-aph’-o-ra): Repetition of the same word or group of words at the beginning of successive clauses, sentences, or lines.

My family’s muffins were great. My family’s muffins were the best. My family’s muffins saved England. It was 1210. England was ridden with warfare—people were lying around all over the place riddled with arrows, looking like sleeping hedgehogs. People were starving to death left and right—children, adults, whole families. People were so hungry they ate their own fingernails and toenails. Poverty was the norm. Nobody had money. They bartered what little they had, or became indentured servants. Most people wore feed bags or flour sacks and lived under rich peoples’ carriages. They had to move continuously to keep a carriage over their heads.

In short, it was hell.

My ancestor was Chief Baker to the King. While surrounded by poverty and starvation, the big fat king had an abundance of gold and an abundance of food. My ancestor thought it was obscene.

The king loved my ancestor’s muffins. He ate ten every morning for breakfast and three more before bed. After eating his morning muffins he would burp loudly and take a nap. His favorite were plum muffins. When he stuffed them into his mouth he made a smacking sound, drooled, and spilled crumbs all over the floor. Sometimes, he would do this while looking out a window, watching starving people starve. He would snort and laughter. He was a nightmare and a glutton.

My ancestor couldn’t stand watching the King’s antics. So, she started smuggling muffins out of the castle to feed the poor. She was caught and tortured, and returned to her duties. The King loved her muffins too much to have her executed.

The King’s birthday was coming. For his birthday, she would make him his annual giant muffin. This year, she would poison it. She couldn’t wait to see him writhing on the floor coughing blood. She used plague- ridden rat testicles, disguised as plums, to do the job, baking them into the muffin. The King gobbled down the muffin. It took the King a week to die, moaning for God’s mercy as he passed away in his blood- and sweat-soaked gilded bed.

The King’s brother Neville succeeded him. King Nevill was benevolent, releasing the realm’s royal assets to the Kingdom, feeding the starving, creating government jobs, and providing subsidies to craftsmen and tradesmen.

England was saved by a giant muffin baked by my ancestor Mrs. Bran Oxley. Oxley’s Muffins are still sold by my family all over England. They are known as “The muffins that saved England.”

Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

Anaphora (an-aph’-o-ra): Repetition of the same word or group of words at the beginning of successive clauses, sentences, or lines.

Time is a pain in the ass. Time is a cleaver that cuts up life. Time is anxiety’s husband and wife. I used to wear a watch. I used to look at it too often, worried about being on time—as if time is a surface under my feet like my lawn or my living room floor, or a cliff overlooking a rocky abyss with bones strewn at the bottom. So, I stopped wearing a watch. I put a piece of duct tape over the clock on my iPhone. I put away all the clocks in my house and taped over the microwave and oven clocks. When I was home, I didn’t know what time it was, until I noticed night and day induced by sunrise and sunset. Night and day are vague approximations of time, but they measure time nevertheless. So, I blacked out my windows. I would used lightbulbs to manage time as much as I was willing to manage it. But really, lights on was about being able to read and traverse my home without tripping and falling down—in other words, “light” was about seeing, dark, about not seeing.

After awhile, after completing my timeless regime, my boss called me and asked me where the hell I was. I quit, right there on the phone. I have my IRA and was eligible for Social Security. I stood to make more money by quitting!

I still had a time vestige or two that were almost impossible to shed—when I said “soon” or “sooner or later” I was doing time talk. I actually wanted to excise “soon” from my approach to life. But sadly, I bear “soon” in my body, along with other unavoidable aspects of time’s rootedness in consciousness. Given this realization, and the frustrating struggles it induced, I reconsidered my ay attempt to evade time. So, I want in the opposite direction—I timed everything. I wore a stopwatch around my neck and carried a pen and small notepad. I timed my toothbrushing. I timed putting on my shoes. I timed how long it took to go from my bedroom to the kitchen. I even timed how long it took to urinate! I changed my screen name to Father Time. I bought five cuckoo clocks that chorus every 30 minutes.

Now that I am immersed in time, I am pestered by the prospect of being early, on time, or late. Pestered. What does that mean? I am cowed. I am laid low. I am crushed. I am enslaved. Time is my master, I can’t master time.

Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.