Today’s National Poetry Writing prompt called for a poem that featured technology that is no longer in vogue. When I saw the prompt the memory of the scent thrown off by the mimeograph at Glendale High School–of the ink and spirit developer, that second cousin of Magic Markers, liltingly aromatic–hit me in the nose, so I did a little bygone-era walkabout via Internet search, and watched a training film on mimeograph techniques courtesy of the University of California at San Diego, which in 1958 was called San Diego University.

(More Memory Laning came when the film reminded me of the sound the film projector made when in grade school and high school they showed us stuff like that. I remember in 8th Grade, Mr. Gasser showed us a film on digestion, featuring fluoroscopy after a food or drink item had been put in the mouth, and seeing the journey down the gullet to Stomachville. Hilarity ensued when Mr. Gasser ran the film backwards, and you saw stuff gradually coming up a kid’s esophagus, then consolidating in the mouth, and then you see the kid chew and chew, stick his fork in his mouth, and pull out an unchewed piece of cherry pie. Our darkened room exploded with laughter. So hey, Rudy Gasser, wherever you are–thanks for all the fun stuff like that!)

Mimeo Graph

Make a stencil/get an ink pad/paper: cotton rag
Mockup/test/& crankcrankcrank/you got it in the bag

Images come flying out, 12 dozen for a dollar
It’s a boogie-woogie noise the envy of Fats Waller

Memoranda/flyers/Hell: The History of Cholera
Maybe even comic books–Osiris Vs. (Taller) Ra

Eventually, Xerox gave the mimeos the slip

Obsolescence makes them one with petro/hieroglyph