poems by Doreski, William

Greenland and Antarctica

Field ice knuckles down to the sea

and fractures. Slabs coast away

to addle container ships lurching

to New Jersey, Hamburg, Rotterdam.

I lie awake worrying that bergs

as big as Manhattan will crush

these fragile ships and deprive us

of necessities fresh from China.

Aren’t you worried, too? Your back,

as you sleep your crescent of sleep,

is a map on which I can project

new seas, new continents no one

even mildly sane has explored.

Maybe you’re dreaming of field ice

shuddering as thick rivers melt it,

climate change sickening the air

with the cries of failing species.

Maybe you’re dreaming of hiking

those ice-fields with me, crampons

groaning with purchase, ice axe

poised to slaughter pale creatures

that loom in the chilly fog. I press

against you, hoping that layer

upon layer of flesh will protect

the planet from its ugly secrets.

You stir a little but snooze away

my local effects. Antarctica

and Greenland seem so far away,

their rugose coastlines beaming

with winter sun or brooding

with winter dark. Which winter

are we? Early traffic sizzles

as the daily commute begins.

No one commutes to Greenland

or Antarctica, but the ice fields,

caught between competing eons,

simper like freshly printed paper

on which the latest scripture scrawls.

Red and White Stripes

Framed in the red and white stripes

of your six pillows your face

goes adrift, warping into places

I can’t enter without mourning

the forty years we discarded

like a cargo of empty oil drums.

The city grumbles to itself

with most of its passions muted

by the buzz of construction sites

and the criminal expressions

of cops in fresh new uniforms.

We should visit the museum

with its Dutch masters blazing

and Goya too angry to paint

but painting anyway, on and on

into black and gray infinities.

We should lunch like typical

elderly couples, late blooming

over delicate little sandwiches

and glasses of oily white wine.

In a few minutes the patter

of your bare feet on the hardwood

will present angles of vision

no one since Adam has enjoyed.

The snore of traffic will become

gossip of epic proportions,

and the stoplights will pause

on yellow for hours at a time.

The cops will almost learn to smile,

creasing their aggressive trousers.

Then you’ll fade into distance

rendered geological by habits

we hope to acquire. And then

I’ll know why the red and white

stripes of your pillows say nothing

of ordinary blood and flesh.

Lana Bella poems:

Lana Bella

1) IN THE BREW OF LEISURE

from the outside,

the house was painted rose salmon 

with blue shutters,

in what silver stains lived another life,

I stared at my shadow on the wall,

its gaze traveled where hued runnel bled into 

the yolk-sun overhead,

then earthward

to a pair of feet standing in the brew of leisure,

what wonder drug was this

when I let idleness become a river of two suns, 

one was the leaving moon drawn closed and dark,

the other, the wakeful one,

seared imprints where my shadow 

gave chase into breath's filter, 

conspicuously near,

just once beneath this heat's imprint,

I would like to be 

on the side of a place where leisure went to hide, 

and not be felt or seen--

2) AN IMPOSSIBLE WOUND

an autumn pine cone laden of sap drove

down my prayer balloon, then inside my 

fingers it stretched heavy like a wrecking

ball yawn, her mouth, red and upturned, 

snapped my impossible wound in two as 

a forked bone,

I held within the songs she sang to me, 

remembering an ocean parting between 

us now--her sand-paper words that still 

rapped my knuckles into bend hastened 

like a storm tearing through my flesh, 

I stood on a tale which went untold, dim 

in the autumn breeze that traveled the 

narrow turns of her cinched chiffon robe,

it was a brief indulgence, I knew, for the

end came ever so keen and fine, 

her gaze rose over miles of shifting planes, 

and upon the fickle skin of these nimbus, 

my love restraint laid down in mourning, 

orphaned like a shrapnel dispersing along 

the unforgiving soil,

I became a stone lay unobstructive, stoic

to her leaving over then round the carved 

landscape, even when everything that grew 

around me pinged of twin emotions: her 

baptismal stamp and my elegant sorrow,

so wherever or however long I will live, I will

tuck myself carefully away in a place only

known to me, without her--

3) WHEN HE IS MOST LOST

an old man wraps himself in familiar threads 

of the garden's atmosphere,

with his bad hips and worse eyesight,

he folds in two as if a bent dollar bill, 

it is early spring,

sunlight and birds make their descent

below the window sills,

where he is knuckled deep in dirt,

a handful of clouds and blue daffodil

plunk down besides his burnt-brown skin,

he breathes them in,

leaving shadows like an angel's nimbus,

looking about the garden,

he wonders how little things like bird seeds

and fertilizer

could release the pulses of emotion,

when he is most lost.

4) CATCH PHRASE

if I could reach out, 

and take hold of

the first word you spoke as it was then,

because at some point 

I became just an empty catchphrase

that traced your skid-marks

with my eyes--

I let your ghost settled the weight 

on my body,

a thin stale leash of smoke

tethered me to the earth

as I dug with my hands through 

the russet dirt,

for your messages 

from the grave--

5) DEAR SUKI: LETTER J FOR JEANS

Dear Suki: Los Angeles, December 2nd, somehow, just now, 

I find a memory of you in that old pair of blue jeans, the one 

that tears awfully at the knees and fades from front to end. 

My melancholia, this, when there is nothing to lean back to 

unless I am holding on to some visible threads with your 

invisible glue, how steady the ligaments, how imperishable 

the starch. This may seem silly but it is not my intention to 

make you sad, at any rate, I think I will don your blue jeans 

over my wool leggings, to add an extra layer to ward off this

December cold. So that my stirring moves just so against the 

memory of your body.

vintage poetry presents Peycho Kanev :

The Reportage

A wooden cabin in the woods.

I sit by the dusty window and

look at the greenness of the world

outside.

Nothing interesting happening

inside but out there on the ground

between the trees and the bushes

there’s a little red and blue bird

bathed in afternoon light. It just

stands there as if trying to communicate

with me.

Hey, little birdie do you want to discuss

the problems of Essentialism or maybe

you prefer to ponder on the sorites paradox?

Whatever you want. But before that, please,

take notice of the bobcat which is slowly

creeping towards you.

 Now

You write these poems so someone could read

them, right? And someone reads some poetry

right now, probably not written by you but

it’s still good.

The printed page glitters in this dark world,

giving enough strength to the heart for just

one more beat. It is still night and the book

in my hand flashes as a lantern on the shore,

a rescue beacon to all illiterate ships wandering

through the eternal darkness

and the seagull perched on the rocks tells me

that he’s the author of Pablo Neruda’s The Captain's

Verses  -

we all live for that moment, literary or not.

 Come Morning

And the darkness slowly retreats

like a Napoleonic soldier from

the dazzlingly white Russian winter,

carrying nothing but his shattered pride.

On my doorstep you write with your

sparkling letters the beginning of today’s

bright tale, which includes everything,

even me and the shadows like homeless dogs

sniffing the corners and looking for a shelter.

Please, do not come yet. I would like to

sit by the candle light a little more and finish

reading the autobiography of Leon Trotsky.

And after that? Well, then I’m all yours and

you can do with me whatever you want, except

taking me for I walk out there. You know

I can’t stand all this whiteness, I’m a night

person and so is my house, which right now

is awash in your shameless light and the books

on the shelves are already burning and I feel

like I’m back in Nazi Germany in the 30s. 

 

Peycho Kanev is the author of 4 poetry collections and two chapbooks, published in USA and Bulgaria. He has won several European awards for his poetry and he’s nominated for the Pushcart Award and Best of the Net. His poems have appeared in many literary magazines, such as: Poetry Quarterly, Evergreen Review, Front Porch Review, Hawaii Review, Barrow Street, Sheepshead Review, Off the Coast, The Adirondack Review, Sierra Nevada Review, The Cleveland Review and many others.

 

 

Vintage poetry presidents (true classics) The Fly by William Blake

The Fly by William Blake

Little Fly,

Thy summer's play

My thoughtless hand

Has brush'd away.

Am not I

A fly like thee?

Or art not thou

A man like me?

For I dance,

And drink, & sing;

Till some blind hand

Shall brush my wing.

If thought is life

And strength & breath,

And the want

Of thought is death;

Then am I

A happy fly,

If I live

Or if I die.