Archive #52
October, 2016
The Silent Sound
of My Soul I only know it is silent because I cannot hear it It is a loud, thick silence Every time I try to listen to it it is always the same loud, thick silence It wakes me up when I try to sleep and in my sleep it becomes louder and thicker Listen, listen now! Can you hear it? Can you not? Attention-- Listen again! Can you hear it? Can you not? This silence crushes me when I am awake bottom up side to side head to toes this heavy, loud silence always crushes me when I am awake There is a ruffling quality in this silence it always bothers me I know it is there when I feel this ruffling quality this ruffling quality of my soul's silence Read the poetry of Amauri Solon Read a profile of Amauri Solon
as if I had been there ☊
a thin vapor trail slipped in through the front door but nobody was home if I had been there I would have noticed something was quite different but I was gone on a journey of a lifetime the place had not changed all these years everything perfectly in place as if nobody had really lived there while my mind wandered away from worldly ideals seeking out transcendental gurus residing on new moons my spirit remained behind waiting patiently to be seen Enjoy this poem in the Poetry/Aloud area
Read the poetry of J. Matthew Waters Read a profile of J. Matthew Waters
Claw Footed
I run my hands over the smooth white porcelain: You might have been a fountain full of silver coins You might have been Apollo in the Galleria Borghese It has no face, yet it faces me. I bend my ear to its sturdy shell, listen. Don’t think it doesn’t dream of leaving its claw feet tense and awkward. But where would it go? Read the poetry of Marilyn Annucci Read a profile of Marilyn Annucci
Dream Street ☊
I left her the house and got a place on Torley. Each night the neighbors put chairs on the sidewalk, turn the TV face out, drink Iron City and watch the kids play in the street. I get home from work at 6 or 10 or 2, shower and then sleep with eyes open: a child shrieking on a hospital gurney, her spine filleted and straightened, the smell of burning in my hair, a new mother life-flighted from the mall, brain shifting in her head, crushed by bleeding while we watch. We drink coffee and wait while a father facing doom in our hands says good bye to his children; each day I pedal in over the Bloomfield Bridge, or drive when called at night, never knowing that it will get worse.
a tryst indited in senyru
second degree burns from your consummate kisses lips don't want to heal exploratory arriving at your neckline advancing to depths the maneuvering balanced near the precipice i fall into you sighs and cigarettes smoke rings of contentment waft moments replayed Read the poetry of jacob erin-cilberto Read a profile of jacob erin-cilberto
Morning Encounter ☊
All doors are locked right now. Nobody’s home on the street where every house stands neatly in place, with flowers and a wind chime hanging by the door. Although the mats say Welcome, no one is here for hospitality. The sun streams into unoccupied living rooms whose only sound is of time ticking its way across a carpet. It’s a fine day to be walking without a destination, just to feel each step as it falls and looking up at the mountain baked into the atmosphere; to be a sentence beyond interpretation in a book of desert hours while a lawn sprinkler whispers to dry heat, when a coyote melts out of the light and flows across the sidewalk after picking up a scent that runs from his nose through each of his bones to the last hair on his tail. Enjoy this poem in the PoetryAloud area
Read the poetry of David Chorlton Read a profile of David Chorlton
Magnetic Horizon
Watching yachts, tinnies, round Old Man’s Head, he considers the choice of a single word to describe the way gulls flicker across sifted cloudlight blanketing Bass Strait. He dwells here each summer like a gipsy, staying wherever he can overlook this cove. Here in the lee of the roaring forties sand engulfs the scaffolding of an old wreck. Children have built a Lord of the Rings realm, a stark beachscape weathering tides, reminding him of times past, sojourns when his children sculpted sunlit sand. Where the sea furls muscular young men run. How can they be his sons from long ago? Yet their names are the same, the blond manes, their self-conscious shouts a narrative nothing like his own best-forgotten youth. They plunge in, a weight shifting his heart. Silent women from the yoga retreat smile. A pair of sea eagles circle the tinted sky. Near the pioneer’s grave he catalogues his picaresque past, shivers, his silence ringing like the cessation of a tolled bell marking seasons which all too quickly fall. Read the poetry of Ian C Smith Read a profile of Ian C Smith
The Smokers on
My Way to Work Banished they stand apart, alone or in pairs, huddled against imposing pines, figures restrained by an invisible fence of taboo. They lean in to protect their minuscule flames, in the scorch of August afternoons or the sting of February mornings, between April raindrops and against November gusts. Overpowered by cravings, they give in, again and again, deaf to the voices who love them. Read the poetry of Claire Weiner Read a profile of Claire Weiner
roots
a kidney bean once became lodged deep inside my ear canal and i don’t think i need to remind you how a sweet polyp like that will sprout roots among the white axons grow throughout the squid and drink in salvation from the brainpan god knows i’ve tried what i can even turned to the purgative artillery strong medicine for sure but my throat muscles only strained and expelled a bulky stool so gassy and when the shaman sat atop me with his covey of broken clam shells scraped the flesh from back of my neck wouldn’t you know it the beast only sneered from the hole and spat so i guess i’m resigned now to co-exist with my friend and no as you’ve gathered it’s not a symbiosis but i’ll get by Read a the poetry of Dan Shawn Read a profile of Dan Shawn |
How It Is
No more winds, please, let’s keep it on the down low lest someone pull the chain and down the drain we go, merrily down the drain, life is but a word fashioned from old shoe-strings and faded bruises Was that a victory or a loss? Or am I asking the wrong question? The way clay fits the mold, even if it starts out flat and all wrong… No, no, it’s not true that life is just a story, that’s just what we trick ourselves with, to make us feel we are not blind worms, dodging concretions in the all-too-lumpy soil But we are not worms any more than worms are us Simple. That’s it. Simple rain falls to earth, clouds dissipate, and we think it’s the sun coming out, but it’s the sun, not the clouds, that’s been there all along, least of all, we. Read the poetry of Mikels Skele Read a profile of Mikels Skele
from Selected Tanka
and Senyru on the beach each piece of glass a poem I pick up the small ones nobody wants ❀ scent of rain rising from the pavement after a storm the few things I still believe ❀ invisible fence his wife says the dog will get used to it ❀ a honk behind me as the red light changes to green… I’m half a second slower than my life Read the poetry of Ken Slaughter Read a profile of Ken Slaughter
The Woman In a Negligee
wears an elegant outfit, décolletage, with a thigh-high split. I’m almost 17, making a delivery during the war for a local drug store. She pays me with a big fat tip, invites me in for a yummy taste of blueberry pie she’s just baked. She tells me her back is in pain-- do I have time to give her a back rub? Her stereo is ablaze with the vibrato of Edith Piaf while she offers me a sip of homemade wine, brewed by her husband before he left. I sit on her sofa and wonder: Is this a fantasy I’ve had on my delivery route? Are we both phantoms in a mutual dream? We both seem to savor the mystery of the perfect moment—no dialogue necessary. My body and soul is willing in more ways then I care to say. It’s the very best blueberry pie I’ve ever tasted, before or since. Read the poetry of Milton P. Ehrlich Read a profile of Milton P. Ehrlich
Syrian Resistance
In the basement the scent of cloves Rivalled rising tear-damp Along a torn curtain. “Subversion,” he said, “must be The down payment of war”... And fingered the stone crucifix Above the lice-plagued mattress. Later, famine bruised the soil, and An embryonic Junta Came calling. A pencil stub Was found Deftly piercing The vast Interior sky. Read the poetry of Stefanie Bennett Read a profile of Stefanie Bennett
Pool
I have a small pool out there. Not dark like night, but full of pale milky light, and shimmering smoothly, rippleless. It's not deep either, hardly more than a footfall. Just deep enough to hide my dreams without them drowning. ♢ On Our Watch If it had been on his watch, he would have seen, he would have given the alarm, would have been heard and catastrophe would have been avoided. She also was alert, but it was not her watch and no one heard her warnings. On their watch we would have heard the warnings. But it happened on our watch and we were sleeping Read the poetry of Lynn White Read a profile of Lynn White
A Poetry of Place
in such a poem, the voice present indigenous, the always of a furrowed trunk of gray bark, a native belonging here in such a poem momentary details can be distorted by global climate anomalies induced by our mastery of god, a hurried time-lapse development. I've lost control now, forfeit my surety, this elegy, false, in a scene painted too nicely even as I sit here, somewhere watching an old bird feather skitter in the wind. This is some place, anonymous, this is a real wind, alive, not a pretty view but I will miss it. I'm keeping the present, cottonwood trunk, fluttering dead leaves, keeping this place splayed on white paper, a museum, a specimen. Read the poetry of Emily Strauss Read a profile of Emily Strauss
Sisters
first chemo a yellow leaf caught in her hair day moon (dis)appearing sister's thin face squash blossom creases form between her brows fingerprints on yellowed recipes she is here, still planting a Three Sisters garden we remember you
Sleep With Dead Grass
Chill in my tired bones steamy breath follows crispy red apples drop oak firewood stacked, walk the dying fields sleep with dead grass. Colored leaves release spinning down to ground unpacked winter clothes fill dresser and closets, walk the dying fields asleep in dead grass. Autumn's song plays a freshness of spirit feel a harvest solstice life's circle goes round, I walk a dying field, sleeping in dead grass. Read the poetry of Ken Allan Dronsfield Read a profile of Ken Allan Dronsfield
The Book of Numbers
~And the Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai" ...count the heads of all the community of Israelites…” Numbers 1:1-2 I too, take the census—count the years and months and days, add and subtract the moments of his life, the mundane pieces, first tooth, first word, first step, bruises and band-aids, candles on a chocolate cake, ice cream in a turquoise bowl. I calculate the arc of his delicate ears, the crook of his elbow, the scar on his nose, his hands that once fit mine, I count each parcel and part, search for a mystical number hidden beneath Hebrew script, written in ancient dialect, locked in the mysteries of Kabbalah. A number I can manipulate, weave among the hours, and like Moses drawing water from a rock, perform a miracle. Read the poetry of Valerie Bacharach Read a profile of Valerie Bacharach
Anticipated Interruption
~for my son, Ben Suspended within reach, somewhere in the atmosphere, those few words that will lead my poem home. They tease me, flash me, taunt me. I think I hear them whisper, but my internal clock warns me of the anticipated interruption. It is the commercial that breaks in just before the killer is revealed. Instead of hurrying, I hold. Then there is the detonation and the boy’s energy frightens away the words, which scatter like birds after buckshot fills the air, and then his words come. Before hello, he says, “Raise your hand if you have an armpit,” and, silly me, I do, and I brace for attack. He says he missed me, and I don’t miss my words. There are no words without him. Read the poetry of Thomas Locicero Read a profile of Thomas Locicero
A Boy in the Family Orchard
I roam through my family’s orchard, lost In random thoughts that fly with bees and Fruit flies. As I walk the bountiful lanes of Peaches, the trees dapple images in filigree At my bare, aimless feet. My mind conjures A shape from each shadow as I walk the lanes Of fruit. A dish of ice cream soothes. An auto Wreck terrifies. A favorite teacher makes me Smile. It goes on like this. Dark scenes stalk Bright ones as the shadows shape-shift tree to Tree. I decode the pictures in the soil until my Mother calls me in to dinner from my reveries. Read the poetry of G. Louis Heath Read a profile of G. Louis Heath |
Black Box Warning
I think we should all come with black box warnings disorganized narrative inside frequent use of Vicodin and Valium tendency to shoplift alarm clocks & scented candles only years & attorneys’ bills later do we finally figure it out our bank accounts drained, our faces falling down frantically joining OkCupid, Match.com, eHarmony filling out profiles with alternative facts (only spam offers of Easy Russian Sex or I’m Waiting for You Babe) WHY DIDN’T YOU WARN US!!! We scream at bored FDA bureaucrats, busy playing Final Fantasy or Battle Field, fingers flying inside their airless cubicles what if our own black box cautioned irreparably damaged in childhood prone to bouts of homicidal rage recently released from Herrick Hospital forever ruining our chances with Mr. Sweet-Tempered or Ms. Charismatic after all, you can’t have it both ways Read the poetry of Claire Scott Read a profile of Claire Scott
Finding Heart
Part of the art inside the bamboo cage was to be still and find your partner’s heartbeat. Yours hammered like a bird’s wing against my fingertips at first touch. But when you looked for mine, there was nothing there to find. Part of the art is knowing how to look, how to hook two fingers just so between the bones beneath the flesh. “Like this,” I said, and guided your fingers in, the way I learned to do taking vitals on the night shift. And there I was, alive, again, beneath your touch. Read the poetry of David Thornbrugh Read a profile of David Thornbrugh
Live-ins We moved into the new place and there was someone already living there. Mice in the walls that made their way down through the vent above the stove and had themselves quite the party. Trouncing through the cornmeal eating through spice packets leaving droppings everywhere. And under the sink where the gettings were not nearly as good. We had to throw everything out when we could hardly afford to. But we set up traps and flushed enough bodies to grace the cover of Serial Murder Monthly a couple times over and soon the place was ours. And we stayed there a year and 7 months, really made of a home of it. If anyone knocked, we answered. Read the poetry of Ryan Quinn Flanagan Read a profile of Ryan Quinn Flanagan
The Days That
Have Left Me These are my wildest hours of surrender, where my minutes tick my clock back to midnight and the seconds get too close to black, to bleak. These are the days that have left me– blind, in a flurry of wasted soul, a body yearning for rest away from the searing pain that scorches to flame. I tell only of the wrench and wrest of limb from limb, the wish to be free and alight on pine needles under full cover of violet evening, rocked in a cradle of molten moonlight. Read the poetry of Judith Brice Read a profile of Judith Brice
Sunday on U Street
Let’s pretend that it’s midnight as saxophonist Gary Bartz steps onto the stage. The room darkens; candles on the table flicker. Shadows hide the thickset men at the wall. The ceiling lowers; tiny lights strung above stand in for stars. Imagine moonlight rippling on salt water. The scent of mango dusted with chili powder and cinnamon trickles in with the piano and drums. We taste fruits we don’t know the names of. Tap your toes, for sure, or sway, following the pianist’s lead, but when the horn starts in again, carry yourself a little straighter. Cameras flash. Wedged in, we are all caught in the glare. All too soon imagine the empty streets above. Playing the last song, Bartz retreats into the early morning’s shadows, the color of his long-tailed jacket, and climbs the back stairs to his refuge above the club. When we leave by the front stairs, it’s still daylight on U Street. We can no longer pretend. Read the poetry of Marianne Szlyk Read a profile of Marianne Szlyk
Party
My friend Larry Poodle gets out of jail so we throw a “Poodle Broke out of Jail Party.” Just another party at the dump—our duplex-- joined by the tank of oil that warms us in January. A few kegs and blenders, and late into the evening bodies fall asleep against anything that doesn’t move. Too shy to look at anyone, I hardly speak. Someone’s hand is grasping my foot the way twins are born. All the nightmares lay beside all the dreams. Larry shuffles from ash tray to ash tray, emptying smaller ones into larger ones. He has a thing about fire. It’s a new thing. He never empties an ash tray directly into the trash can. He is otherwise very smooth, with chuckling eyes, and known for having the best Quaaludes in Tidewater. About life, Larry and I have nothing to say. It’s the quiet hour that makes me so anxious. Read the poetry of Barrett Warner Read a profile of Barrett Warner
The Handflower ☊
In this night’s dark stain, come, lay beside me; I will take you, man without a name, who turns his face away and bites my shoulder, who needs but cannot bear the bitter dregs. I will carry your weight, as every sister who wore the handflower became the bangle, learned to spread her bones and sink beneath the waves of each particular obsession. Curses follow me of those who fear my right and shudder to know the love I count in minutes of every hour, who spit their gall where I laugh. This flesh is mine, it has bled, and shed, like a snakeskin every unworthy touch and kept for itself, the taste of one kiss. Enjoy this poem in the Poetry/Aloud area
Read the poetry of Kerry O'Connor Read a profile of Kerry O'Connor
Funeral Wake ☊
Now and again, the parade of kisses and mourning. Thunder raging at the autumn winds and at the first sign of human folly. Winding up like thickened blood and vowels helplessly hanging without a word. I may be marble, or made of damp wood. The shattered hymn swirls around like the cry for hope, any hope, after death. I may be without a garden or a plot of land to call my own, but I do own the hours I’ve spent digging beneath the crust, spying on the soft turf uncovered only in prayers and in conversations of the crying. I walk with these doubts as though stranded on an unpredictable slope, coiling and uncoiling as I speak, and then, I hold my breath. I heard the lies ricochet up like an island rising and sinking from corner to corner. I heard the wish to forget and the need to widen the bed of memory, sharp and just as blank as the eyes of those in shock or as a heart drained of music, calmed by nothing, not by bread, not by good fortune: This season of grief just beginning. Enjoy this poem in the PoetryAloud area
Read the poetry of Allison Grayhurst Read a profile of Allison Grayhurst
The Black Marble
“The world in darkness, lit up” is how the news-reader puts it – tin-eared teleprompter prose. Point taken, though. The images released by NASA are pure spectacle: the planet as onyx globe pin-pricked with gold. Pin-pricked in some places; in other places, great patches of it – cities under their cowl of lights, seen from space. The news-reader lists the benefits of technology that can identify a single streetlight or a boat in the darkness, illegally fishing. Imagine: a dizzying, whirling Hollywood money shot, a billion dollars of NASA tech zooming in – two guys, some beer, a boat that’s half the bank’s; patrol car at the harbour. Nice one, NASA. Thanks. Read the poetry of Neil Fulwood Read a profile of Neil Fulwood
Proportionate Response ☊
Some of us believe a fib, a little white lie is not a sin. And if it’s done in innocence it’s not a grievous fault, especially when it’s meant to spare the feelings of a sensitive loved one. Yet others insist the small lie is the seed of deception that grows into distortion, propaganda, brain-washing. So we use instructive adages, ‘Honesty is the best policy’, ‘It’s a sin to tell a lie’, to teach youngsters the value of truth, despite our living in a dishonest world. |
