Secret identitiesAbout this book
They’ve kept their true identities secret. You couldn’t pick them out of a crowd. You might have heard of some, but you’re not sure whether you’ve ever met them. Their names have been changed here to protect the innocent.
The cover is a photo by Myrabella / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0, of a Kwakwaka'wakw transformation mask at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, presented during the exhibition La Fabrique des images (The Making of images) – Musée du quai Branly, Paris (16 February 2010 - 17 July 2011).
The characters
- Alice
- Alice had her own poltergeist
- Bill
- Seeing aliens was normal for Bill
- Calvin
- Calvin didn’t share what he knew
- Cindy
- Cindy was Ainu
- Denny
- Denny used to have a rock band
- Dick
- Dick might have been in witness protection
- Emile
- Emile imagined cities
- Enlil
- Enlil was a fishmonger for now
- Evelyn
- Evelyn was inhabited
- Ferdinand
- Ferdinand could read minds
- Frank
- By day, Frank was a graffiti artist
- Glenda
- Glenda kept others from wondering
- Jasaw
- In spirit, Jasaw was a Maya king
- Jeffrey
- Jeffrey had an active fantasy life
- Julie
- Julie was a famous poet
- Pete
- Only Pete read the poems he wrote
- Ralph
- Ralph knew he was adopted
- Sejus
- Sejus knew about miracles
- Smith
- Smith knew government secrets
- Susan
- Susan felt like an impostor
- Wendy
- Wendy was a survivor
- William
- William was a millionaire
- Xavier
- Xavier was an experiment
Any resemblance to any person living or dead is incidental, which is not to say that humans bear certain resemblances.
Links and shortcuts
In any page, you can click on or touch links to jump around in this book.
- Each entry in the contents links to the poem.
- The title for a poem links back to the contents, highlighting the entry for the poem.
- Words in the headers and footers link to the index, the contents, a listing of books by the author, to this page, and to the previous and next poems in the book.
You may find the following keyboard equivalents to be convenient. Here I use the symbol ⌥ for the option key on Mac/OS or the alt key on Windows, ⇧ for the shift key, and ⏎ for the return (enter) key. Arrow keys are ◄ (left), ► (right), ▲ (up), and ▼ (down).
| Context | Keys | Jump to / Behavior |
|---|---|---|
| cover | ⌥ ◄ | Books by Tom Sharp |
| ⌥ ▲ | About Tom Sharp | |
| ⌥ ► | about this book (this page) | |
| ⌥ ▼ | contents | |
| ⇧ ⌥ ▼ | contents | |
| contents | ⇧ ⌥ ▲ | cover |
| ⌥ ▼ | select the next item in the contents | |
| ⌥ ▲ | select the previous item in the contents | |
| ⌥ ► | open the selected page | |
| ⌥ ⏎ | open the selected page | |
| poem | ⇧ ⌥ ▲ | contents |
| ⌥ ◄ | contents | |
| ⌥ ▲ | open the previous page | |
| ⌥ ▼ | open the next page |
The poet
Tom Sharp is a Native American of Aleut heritage, a member of Seldovia Village Tribe. He is the author of numerous books, including Spectacles: A Sampler of Poems and Prose, Taurean Horn Press (ISBN 0-931552-10-9), a novel, Hans and the Clock (ISBN 979-8580172484), The book of science, SciFi (ISBN 979-8694935210), Things People Do (ISBN 979-8687425568), The book of beliefs (ISBN 979-8683553593), The I Ching (ISBN 979-8573510620), Images (ISBN 979-8577560515), Aleut Artifacts (ISBN 979-8575608998), Aleut Words (ISBN 979-8582103394), and First Nations (ISBN 979-8682924769).
You may email tom/AT/liztomsharp/DOT/-c-o-m-/ to share comments on this work.
