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Today's Opener...
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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 _________________________________
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David Chorlton
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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. |
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Read the poetry of David Chorlton
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Read the poetry of David Chorlton
Read a profile of David Chorlton
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Ian C Smith
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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
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
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