Archive #49
July, 2017
End of Reason ☊
I hear the echo of instability slide through the corridors like a plague that just missed. I hear the song and flip like a flock of tiny birds, upside down, bellies flat against the sky. I feel soiled by layers of complexity, needing to feel again protection, the stroke of a cool summer on my lips, needing a puppy left at my door. I know the sun will rise on my twisted frame. I know a red petal thrown into a pale blue sky. I know more than a parched mouth, more than brick painted over or prison bars dipped in rainbow hues. I know of tongues basted in trembling glory, my purpose - core, settled and pure. Enjoy this poem in the PoetryAloud area
Read the poetry of Allison Grayhurst Read a profile of Allison Grayhurst
Hunting When Og arose in the morning he did not wake up to easy listening on his digital alarm clock. He did not put on camouflage to blend in, stay warm, but left the cave determined to find meat, or the clan didn’t eat. So when Joe citizen set out, this was not lower class machismo demonstrating maybe he couldn’t kill the boss, but he could take out frustration with a high-powered, 30-06, laser aimed, telescopic sight on overmatched animals who couldn’t shoot back It was hard to miss an unsuspecting deer not evolved enough to defend against death from afar. A young Masai had to kill a lion, only armed with a spear, to become a warrior, one of the fairest tests between man and beast throughout history. There were still plenty of lions, not too many Masai, so the balance of nature was not disrupted. Before refrigeration, preservation, canning, greedy men killed more and more, despite excessive waste and threw away what they could not eat, perhaps driven to slaughter by twisted natures. Once, every bit of the animal was used for survival food, fat, fur, hide. Then mighty hunters bloomed, toxic growth destroying life, and collected trophies, heads, horns, entire bodies, decorative elements enhancing the castle to molder on the walls, relics of forgotten triumphs over helpless creatures. Then sport hunting began and the heroic breed shot anything that moved, from far enough away so there was no real danger, just the illusion, titillating diminished psyches who thought it sport to shoot an elephant, minding its own business grazing in the distance. The modern hunter, catalog equipped, dresses his five year old son in identical camis, gives him a bb gun, then the great outdoorsman leads them on the trail, determined to teach the young one how to enjoy the thrill of the kill of diminishing species, unable to protect themselves from mindless assailants Read the poetry of Gary Beck Read a profile of Gary Beck
Carpet and Walls
Thirteen years in this house we built. It is no longer new. Each room repainted, faucet and toilets repaired so nothing drips in the night except our hearts. The moon rising over the mountain no longer startles its cold beauty across the bed spread; even that mountain out back is older, already become part of our bones. Remember how we made love in each room that first year, soaking carpet and walls with our own heat, physical, moist, and more real than mortgage. Read the poetry of Gary Metras Read a profile of Gary Metras
Easter Glow
Easter glows at crosswalks and CVS while peeking through cellophane baskets I see foil covered chocolates that melted too soon in the almost summer sun. on hot pavement. Helicopter leaves-pinwheel trees with blossoms of yellow paper confetti. Dandelion nettles floating on warm breeze. On the park bench I sat with tights that never fit quite right around chubby thighs -legs sticking out like pins in a cushion. With folds of scratchy yellow lace about as I sweat kicking the bare dirt and hyacinths with the tips of my scratched white Buster Browns. Crescent smile yellow purse suspended Jeweled sun-tears as I wait photo snaps. Read the poetry of Michele Riedel Read a profile of Michele Riedel
A Decent Butcher's
~First of "The Butcher Boy" Series She never used the word ‘homesick,' she merely complained that “you can’t find a decent butcher’s." We didn’t know that as she purchased the weekly groceries, she was thinking of a wink from twinkling blue eyes. She couldn’t find a decent butcher’s, for her heart was calling her back to the butcher boy she left behind. Milk Tears My body cries milk tears willing satiation. In poverty my body gives a pauper’s feast: lacking quantity, lacking flow, I lack his latch. Bottle beckons – inanimate competitor. Gradual coaxing then mother and son meet. My body cries milk tears – joy of early morning feeding. Read the poetry of Rowan Taw Read a profile of Rowan Taw
The Prize Winner
~ for Marilyn Nelson At the ceremony, she read a poem about wanting immortality, questioning if that was all right. Who can forget that hot wish pushing through the skull as demanding as sex? Now I think: clown shoes, kaleidoscope glasses. A wish like the last stain of blood on my underpants. I’ve no grudge against the future. Anyone who likes my words can use them. But why should I imagine this or care about posterity with its swaggering, know-nothing ransack through our personal histories? Let the dead stay dead, ice thickening over their tiny ears. But since none of us can want only one thing I admit to a scribble of hope jammed into a pocket, easily ignored to be born again in a place like this-- almost exactly the same as this except he loves me-- I just don’t see why it should matter to me if my poems are feted when I’m dust. * The poet has gentle eyes. Fame becomes her. She looks at stars seriously. When she spoke, there was a hum in the air as if thousands of gold and black pollen-dusted bees with their fat, furry backs and inexorable honey were under her skin. I drank too much wine at the reception and left early. A five-year-old could draw my heart with crayons. And that would be all except the bees followed me. Tucked in bed, I watch them crawl on the ceiling-- earnest wobble of sun and ink-- and write this poem. Read the poetry of Margaret Diehl Read a profile of Margaret Diehl
Night Descends (after Chu Hsi)
Snow drifts in the air like a white fog. Summer has now come and gone. I know life will survive. New flowers will arrive. Ice will disappear, and the river will flow. But I read the future in the distant stars. They cannot light this harsh night. Leafless trees are like dead friends. They speak of what was, or what might have been. Read the poetry of George Freek Read a profile of George Freek
Carrion Thoughts
Outside an autumn Festival, stopped on a back, dirt road. I slipped out of my car, finger touched lips to hush my family. Aimed my awkward camcorder, big as the buzzard perched in the naked tree, wings expanded, ugly and beautiful, ominous as a storm. Look! my kids exulted. The driver behind, another kind of buzzard, didn’t care. His horn blared. Magnificence vanished, flew into a sun-sharp sky. Carrion thoughts. Read the poetry of Vern Fein Read a profile of Vern Fein
Baking Bread
~In Memory of Frankie Curran We all eat our dead, if we loved them, that is. They die and we carry them on our backs like flour sacks we take home, flour to knead into bread. Our kneading is physical, violent. We throw the dough onto the countertop, and pound it with our fists, a plaint with each punch, “Why did you leave me here?” We mold the dough into a metal baking casket, cover it with a cloth shroud, and sit down to worry it through. Will it rise? If it does, we wrench it from its resting place and punch and pound it again. “How dare you abandon me like this?” Our tears moisten the mixture while we heat the oven and wait for a temperature that will bake our memories and shattered hopes in the sweltering womb-bosom oven. The last time I saw Frankie he was Army bound. I was a conscientious objector in Denver—1969. I tried to dissuade him from joining the service. We sang Christmas carols in July. When the loaf arrives from the oven, the house breathes the fragrance of friendship, the kind that would lend a bed in winter, pay a lapsed heating bill, help a pal sing Jingle Bells in summer. Read the poetry of Charlie Brice Read a profile of Charlie Brice
Ars Poetica
Open The tongue of the bell does not strike the bronze to make its noise; it strikes the void within the shape to evoke the voice of emptiness. Timepiece Windows in the house of time flash black and white, sun and moon, day and night, icy pane, hot screen fall red, spring green, rust and dust of seasoning. Growing Growth requires time in cold and darkness, without light or warmth that runs long and deep in the bone before it can truly begin. This is true in botany as well as in poetry. [more] Read the poetry of Phil Boiarski Read a profile of Phil Boiarski |
We Renew Our Vows in the Pres-
ence of the Auto-Wed Machine (The Camera Obscura & World of Illusions, Edinburgh. 30 April 2017) Exit through the gift shop, but not before you’ve descended the staircase that resounds with whatever tune your footfalls create, or been waylaid by the wedding machine – don’t mind us. We’ll only be a minute. We’re renewing our vows in the presence of said coin-slot operated gizmo for the not-so-princely sum of one pound and I wonder by whose authority its powers are vested? The guy who made the chess-playing Turk? Skegness’s Jolly Fisherman, the chuckles under control and a more dignified sense of purpose? Robbie the Robot, redundant, heartsore for Anne Francis and quietly stacking the scales, one tourist couple at a time, against the loneliness of tin, glass, lights? (Note: Yes, the machine is real: click here.) Read the poetry of Neil Fulwood Read a profile of Neil Fulwood
Summer Wreckage
Light says nothing in passing. It cannot last, cannot endure. Light burns when it is purest, when it escapes the spectacle. Light can never last or hold fast. When beauty least expects it, light opens a door and escapes, and after light, life goes out. Beauty never plans for that. Life leaves behind its ruin: death. When light departs, life is taken and happiness fails as well. Light leaves both stars and lilies. Both linger for a moment, then go, like happiness, into the twilight, the cold winter. For just a moment light fills us, burning purely, the summer in us, but then comes evening, winter. Light passes from us so silently. Read the poetry of Will Reger Read a profile of Will Reger
Your Wires
A staircase waits to be stepped on, skeleton keys linger to doors which won’t open and moss outlines present themselves, newly-found under the welcome mat. I’m haunted by the likeliness; your movements swaying with the curtains, and rings from coffee cups never present. A storm passes overhead and crooked fence post eyes follow us on the horizon. Drag your fingernails through the night swat them down like an astronaut, free-floating. For every sentence that resists there is always a coin on your ear, the dryness of your fingertips, resting on some mantle, waiting for a picture never to be taken. I’ll trip on your wires, mend them together without my sewing needle, stich ‘em up, and drink from the thimble And hope that sooner or later, on some other plane, another diagonal, we’ll see each other again. Read the poetry of Alyssa Trivett Read a profile of Alyssa Trivett
After Reading The Bell Jar
curl up like black paper, burning like a moth; a glove turned inside out, trapped too under a house, a circle hidden and musty; fragile under steps, let us escape the carrying, legions of white coats; corridors as long as life. The Slaughter of Trees searching for the perfect word on virginal paper leads to the cut, to oaken tears, to a sorrow of yews; then the unbalance; rowdy tracks of leaves and branches: the pushing down against green bursts, the mud and ways, as if we could find more truth than the idle wind on a summer`s night, more than just a hush, more than just a whisper, more than this Night Spinning the night is the black down of a yearling this sky a taunt of trailed stars, let me spin in a frosty lane, head back, too fast to count and throw the dark to ground Read the poetry of Leslie Philibert Read a profile of Leslie Philibert
Occasionally, in winter
Occasionally, in winter I take a turn into some vast space –an empty parking lot, a parade field– shorn of summer frippery and I’m there again, there where each single blade of grass vibrates, where every grain of sand trembles and the sun, terrible in its wintry beauty, fights back the clouds, never mind their insistence on seasonal priority. Hard to stay home on such days, all the triviality of existence concentrated in a mote of dust poised by the window, ready to make a run for it, unaware of the relentless inescapability of it. Read the poetry of Mikels Skele Read a profile of Mikels Skele
What the Universe
Makes of Lingerie It’s impossible to see a black bra directly as no light can escape from it; still there are supernovas, dark matter, meteorites in its path. The black bra understands its usefulness is overrated. It’s problematic under a white shirt of a white woman, unprofessional peeking out of a blazer. To see observational evidence of black bras you do not need to borrow the Hubble telescope to view the Hourglass Nebula, their existence is well-supported, a gravitational field so strong nothing can escape. Black bras can be found in the back of a Vega between the vinyl seats. It is the star the boy wishes on—he is never the master of the unhook, Orion unfastening his constellation belt. Let it remain a mystery, something almost seen, almost touched in a Galaxy. I’d call it rocketworthy, but there is cosmic censorship, naked singularities to consider. The black bra has electric charge, too close to the event horizon, a man disappears in its loophole, escape velocity equal to the speed of light. Read the poetry of Kelli Russell Agodon Read a profile of Kelli Russell Agodon
Morning Glory
The morning glory I cut in fury, wild tendrils choking my careful plantings, strains to come back-- poking clover green through brown mulch, making me pluck bad luck every week—pale resilient stems and root hairs, deceptively meek. I was meek, before I went mad—too easy to bury in the shredded muck of my life. My variegated mane, like a corpse’s, grew out in coffin darkness. Tenacious follicles pulled me through rotting wood and earth. I coughed up breath-bubbles of mercury. Sixty percent water—and still I rise, I rise with the carbon-paper blossoms of dawn, the trammeled river glinting under new skies. My face redevelops, a silver gelatin landscape baring teeth like a mountain range, pouring unforgiving sunlight from its eyes. Read the poetry of Angele Ellis Read a profile of Angele Ellis
Lifts Her Like a Chalice
The weekday Mass at 6 a.m. brings the old folks out from bungalows around the church. They move like caterpillars down sidewalks, some with canes, some on walkers. Father Doyle says the Mass and then goes back to the rectory to care for his mother who cannot move or speak because of a stroke. And every Sunday at noon when the church is full, Father Doyle, in full vestments, wheels his mother in a lump down the middle aisle and lifts her like a chalice and places her in the front pew before he ascends to the altar. Sometimes at night, when his mother's asleep, Father Doyle comes back to the Church and rehearses in the dark three hymns she long ago asked him to sing at her funeral. He practices the hymns because the doctor said she could go at any time. When that time comes, he doesn't want to miss a note. The last thing she ever said was "Son, I'll be listening." Read the poetry of Donal Mahoney Read a profile of Donal Mahoney
Jammed
I never know where a line break should fall or how to split my team into squads. I'd make a lousy coach, I wager; I'd have made a worser surgeon. The tension comes from competing draws: a desire to hem water like the lake would and the instinct to fray, flow, stop and fake, and en- jamb it like a river does. Read the poetry of Sarah Hina Read a profile of Sara Hina
to my love forever remaining:
we are temporary fluorescents in the downpour of stars collectively rotating in rhythm with the land, whispering of dreams or passing as leaves nightfall's vagabond breath slips over the frayed orbit of its cares with our kiss that melts the brightness of moon i do not depend to live outside her witnessing to the furious hours, the heart's alchemy, the blood that runs through one for the other; i want to touch the bare torment to feel real poets break each other open i want pulsing bodies 'neath smouldering satin ripples and a pair of machetes. Read the poetry of Michelle Sho Read a profile of Michelle Sho
Morning Visitors
The doves visited every morning in the spring and summer came to the window sill and cooed till we stopped what we were doing, gave them our full attention. Shy in their presence, I refused to kiss you while they peered inside, shifting from one leg to the other bearing messages we couldn’t understand until they grew bored and flew away. Nonetheless they comforted us—our day went better. When you died, they stopped coming. I haven’t seen them in years…. so much went out of my life when you ceased to be. Read the poetry of Judith Dorian Read a profile of Judith Dorian |
Cast Your Own Mountain
Mallory said, "Because it's there," Beckoning, an ageless pennant among breathless air, that it should surrender. Its presence, however, was nothing outside Being. Mallory's invitation was a recitation of desire, nothing more. The mountain swallowed him like a thought on the verge of betrayal: un-ended portrayal of the searching ire that bewitches all but the best. Look up to the North Col, to the North East ridge and summit; the frosted rocks and snow like a torn blouse sheltering the scripture of that skin beyond time, beyond fascination of one life that alone of all the powers, imagination can devour. Read the poetry of Gareth Spark Read a profile of Gareth Spark
Gravity Boots
Your voice was Motown frozen in acid, thawing out at dawn in the Nevada desert. Your embrace was a pair of gravity boots within an exercise in weightlessness. Your walk was like a time machine slowing detail, casting a magnifying lens over surface. Your wit was like one magpie being joined by another; broken shells hanging from beak as the sun sets. Your words rest within this vacant mansion of my heart; marionettes with their strings laid to rest. Inanimate but present. Read the poetry of Rushika Wick Read a profile of Rushika Wick
It's Clear
On a clear night I should see the moon full silver in a sky shot by moonbeams. Not greyed by a smoky mist and dust clouds rising from the ruins. I should see a black, black sky. Not bright from the orange glow from the fires of hell on earth. Which send sparks high enough to compete with the stars, the pinpoint moonbeam spangles. Not beamed by lasers. I should hear the silence in the depth of the black night, not the explosive cacophony brought by the masters of war and the silent screams buried in the rubble. I should hear people talking in the street and the music and laughter of the night. I should see them walking home to feel firm flesh loving and soft unsplintered and unblemished by shrapnel, unbroken by the metal clad monsters masquerading as humanity and wrapping themselves in the uniforms of a thousand years old myths dressed up as history. These should be my rights. But they aren’t. I have no rights. Nor do you. Only what they give us, the men of the flags, temporally. Read the poetry of Lynn White Read a profile of Lynn White
suckless
they say of shame that it's capacity stays with you forever and that's why I keep my poems in boxes. Because you never know when you might rise from the gurney they've strapped you to before lethal injection needing an Al Green or Coltrane album, only to stumble across something you've loved. Only that what you thought was black pepper was mouse droppings, but for that brief moment you pretended that black pepper could magically walk itself into your upstairs attic, course through the shackling of those last words and sprinkle itself onto what remains of sentiment and confession. What unwilling role will I play in the afterlife? What nomad will I meet carrying large cakes of salt to trade for the poem I wrote in 86 of thirst? I dreamed. I loved, sometimes hard. I cried out loud with the others who's fragile hearts the mouse too, treaded on. Read the poetry of Dana Rushin Read a profile of Dana Rushin
from Selected Haiku
listen to the sound silence echoes all around quiet in the wood ❦ moon between pine trees silence echoes all around quiet in the wood ❦ no need to see it hear the rain on tall grass air is electric ❦ sun slid down the sky slow moon rising takes it's place respite from the world. Read the poetry of Thomas Canull Read a profile of Thomas Canull
Lingerings
You left your eyes on my mirror in the hall. Maybe you forgot to take them, you know, when you left. They follow us sometimes as we leave the room or enter it. We stare, as if in a contest, you and I, as I get myself out the door. You see me there, you know, that part of you. Your touch is hanging around on my couch, by that pillow, you know, the one from that woman who sewed while you drank wine. It folds now, that pillow, divides into itself all lumpy and clayish, molding one by one into who we are right then, In case you're missing your soul, it's hanging around your bookcase keeping company with Henry James, all dusty and uneven, you know, like a Summer Afternoon, Summer Afternoon. It mingles at times by the radio or gets tangled by the cat like a kite in a tree. Your voice is saved on my phone. I should take it and hide it somewhere. Can I store it in my head and will it stay? I believe the things you've told me in wordless words and nothing said. The sky is still on top, I can see it you know, the cloudless clouds all real and not, misty, fresh, always there. Read the poetry of Amy Soricelli Read a profile of Amy Soricelli
Modern Americana
This is the land of freedom of choice: Coke or Pepsi, light beer or dark, less filling, tastes great, Republican or Democrat, horse manure, cow manure, different crap, same smell. America is now a pie divided into eight slices, but, there are twelve at the table, and three of them want seconds. It’s all a game. George and Martha never had a son. Truth and illusion; it doesn’t make a difference, we still sit in the waiting room expecting delivery. Money is the new Messiah, greed is the national creed, “In G-O-D (gold, oil & dollars) we trust,” but, credit cards are accepted. The government of the people has been bought and sold. It’s strictly business, nothing personal. The heart of America stopped beating, the blood clotted, no longer red, now medi-ochre, and pumped by the pacemaker of public opinion. And still there are those that believe that the only real American patriots are true blue and white or least act white, and all the stars are in Hollywood. Read the poetry of Peter V. Dugan Read a profile of Peter V. Dugan
Neo-blues Song
What keeps me awake at night lulls you to sleep at ten. There are ten bars more, but I can’t sleep. There is a key change, but I won’t hear it. I can’t keep up with the tempo I have forgotten all the words. Things are changing too fast for me shifting when I’m sitting I’d get up, but I’m so down. That’s how the blues go: I’m so down. Who knows what repeats-- what keeps me away at night, Lulls you, lullabies you. Read he poetry of DeMisty D. Bellinger Read a profile of DeMisty D. Bellinger
A Poem Found
Beneath a Tree I like to think of it as A king in a bed who Never wakes up. A kiss Good-night and then that is All… slipping away in The dead of night. A King, once. Or The lone splash of lines falling Into cold mountain water that Came from a frozen pond by A mill that ground stone from An old mine with loose, lean Floor boards. So much Time and memories of trains On tracks that creep across Mountain-sides that we cannot Take anymore. Just the sound Of birds in bushes and the Soft rustling off of little pale Forms that whisper of Time in bottles that we float Silently downstream. Read the poetry of Matthew Henningsen Read a profile of Matthew Henningsen
At the Edge of Vision
How does one walk with her body appropriated for use in pieces? My skin makes me a caricature passing through your streets, a stereotype of humanity; my sex, my skin- make me a conquest, a curiosity. I have the anonymity of the homeless- The person most watched, but never seen. The invisible one of greatest visibility. Presence without belonging, I remain at the edges of knowing, without finding a center of power. A mind whose ideas are not formed or presented in the mandated format. A mouth without a voice. An artist of Life, without an exhibition. I stand at the border, at the convergence of all things, under the protection of the night, where you cannot see my otherness. And I stay here- shedding my hopes like so much clothing of a size too small, arranging fragments into something that resembles a woman. Once again. Looking for the door that will make me feel- less invisible. Read the poetry of Marie Anzalone Read a profile of Marie Anzalone |
