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Wednesday, September 21, 2011

poetry by Ray Succre





                                                                                                                                         

Where the air was lithe as teleost fish,                                                                                       

I was mercy, pity, peace, crushing on her, immediate,

a sessile flower rooted in the shoulder of a satellite,

and with hygienic disrepair, teeth the outside of an old mill. 



I looked to laugh,

I called up words

and on them was carried up into gelid rooms;

I was bruised by lights as from wrongness there

   (and niftiest inward where I’d cocked the springs,

    while under-swimming to pull down the sexies from hobs).



When her sweetheart worked, my neck split atop the pole,

head displumed and pegged, example to set off a cached wealth.



I looked to laugh,

I called up words,

and heard simply soft chuckles on every passing voice.




                                                                                                                           












His mouth speaks tirade but

the kaleidophone has split

all of his speech into slush.

“Are we starry sorry?”

I listen.  “No, no.  But I understand.”



This is the moment when I

get rid of him, though still

mention my urge to

sock his face back and look

for the candy

for forgetting to lift me

from a bar-den meet full of

meat still clinging to spun-out baboons.



His charm:  “Voila-  apology.”

My statement:  “I spent time with

one of the subtlest, then he

showed me his van.”



The earpiece fractures, then blooms.

Adam’s shrapnel enters my ear:

“Eve, you putrid stew of puke.”

I listen.  “Yes, yes.  And I understand.”



















Ovation





To live in a bottle of bay leaves, I lead a woman with morning hunger like yours

into sunrise.  On the leaves, drought to veins suffocated,

broken offshoots tortured for soup.



You say it is in a bowl, and raise your spoon to employ breakfast,

but it was at first a mule-bray flavor riding the water in a pot,

and it was first in measuring tins and spoons,

and it was first in bottles, a refrigerator, and behind the curtain in a skull.



She woke and was a swish of wet curtain for the shower.

Behind the hill the light eye lifted, dilating the library on 4th street,

lilting the fluent shapes of bus-stops, alighting on apes and stairwells and elbows.

            “You’re still awake?”

            “Couldn’t sleep.”

            “You’re making me soup?”

            “The Sun is coming up.  This one’s yours.”

           

The air is porous and catches against the mood of moon and October.

I serve with a bowl, bread.  Activity.

I have seen you, the public, after ladles, your eyes ironed and nostrils looming

for the thing of it; she is the same.

She is a woman of yours like a reel of film rolled out to expose every frame

of the scene.  She is very public once the Sun has risen.



Then, the Sun explodes with ovation, from the highest, sparse-treed line.

Her clean spoon, as though nothing is beyond it,

dips through the steam

of the coliseum.








Ray Succre












Not inhuman   shim-fed pose   upright and the candor:  What a meal.

All truncated to a test   the nocturnal violence.

All moments wait out respiration 

The peck of hungry homages   growth of peat   the peek of your birth

Quick utterance    hello saber, spin   gestate  

hand in hand, doll in doll, matryoshka

The 8th lady   lady Clairol   dumb lady eight

Mental bisque of cognition   stop yelling   pared body into hairy legs—

fiery   omen cyst in dementia— Picasso forest

Squander revoke your lot in Hell   the nocturnal tenors   saran toupees

harpies and gorgons spitfight and the get-out.



Epitaph:  You sat in a centaur’s hard dentures,

gnashed   white shrinking from nothing   incapacitating fucks

but orderly   posed   not inhuman.



Ray Succre



Bio:  Ray Succre is an undergraduate currently living on the southernOregon coast with his wife and son.  He has had poems published inAesthetica, Poets and Artists, and Pank, as well as in numerous others across as many countries.  His novels Tatterdemalion (2008)and Amphisbaena (2009), both through Cauliay, are widely available in print, and  Other Cruel Things (2009), an online collection of poetry, is available through Differentia Press. 


For inquiry, publication history, and information, visit me online:http://raysuccre.blogspot.com



Friday, September 9, 2011

Poems by April avalon

Madness

I'm riding the cloud of bright blanket dreams,
The coconut smoke entwines with the mist,
The potion of madness in violet streams
Is carving the urge that I cannot resist.

The mysteries find me still lying in bed,
Enjoying the pleasures of drunken grapefruit.
Just several gulps, and a room painted red
Will turn to a princess' incredible suit.

I'm a swift errand girl of my fortunate fate,
When my fantasies leak, the reality hides
In the weirdest world I could ever create
With my eyes tightly shut, with my heart as a guide.

A rose with sharp yet invisible thorns
Will bloom in my gardens in endless July -
The country of fairies and pink unicorns
Beneath the enchanting and welcoming sky.

I trust in the might of the element Earth,
However, the Air attracts me much more.
I'm hovering free, and I feel the rebirth.
This madness is tempting like never before.

I'm a swift errand girl of my fortunate fate,
When my fantasies leak, the reality hides
In the weirdest world I could ever create
With my eyes tightly shut, with my heart as a guide.

I giggle and slap the reality's face,
I found salvation in madness' embrace.

I'm a swift errand girl of my fortunate fate,
When my fantasies leak, the reality hides
In the weirdest world I could ever create
With my eyes tightly shut, with my heart as a guide.

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

poems by Michael H. Brownstein


THE GARDEN
It's quite clear what I have done--
I took the bones and planted them
in the grass filled yard of leaf and wind 
Well, it's very simple:
she knocked the earth out of me,
tore the wind through my skin.
What choice did I have?
You kiss someone for years
and then you don't kiss them anymore.
When did the moment pass,
the half hour before midnight's full moon?
The half hour afterwards?
There you have it. Nothing more to say.
She shredded the lettuce my spirit
so I made a garden out of hers. 

poetry Garth von Buchholz


Garth von Buchholz
The Wedding
The wedding guests
tanned and tepid
ringed by falling children
will die as their grandparents died

(grey fingers curling under sullied sheets)
but tonight they dance
a crooked wooden two-step
slip the sweating floor-tiles
break balloons that must be broken
spill scotch that must be spilt

while I (childless child)
who may never feel daughter
stroke my deathbed brow

dance in drunken dervish delirium
wild-eyed and whirling, bestial, pale,
hemorrhaging, bloodshot,
rhythmically rapt

(dangerously sinful
talc powder pure )

as gestating eyes grow round at me
afraid their unborn
will be born

without legs.


Garth von Buchholz is a Canadian poet living on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. He is also a book reviewer who is a member of the National Book Critics' Circle. Garth's last book of poetry, Mad Shadows, was published in 2010.

Monday, September 5, 2011

poetry by S.P. Flannery

Duct-tape Cure

Vinegar in a glass cup
is poured down my esophagus
to cleanse the stomach and intestines
of build-up, dross-like crud
coating smooth tissues, permeability
decreased until this acid
scours encrusted hamburger, fries,
doughnuts, junk food indigestible,
stripped of nutrients my
cells need to mine chemicals
used to construct proteins and energy,
fatigue I endure, a heaviness
that accompanies a diet unhealthy,
unconcerned with substance
rather filler, a place-holder
for when I shall awaken in
elder years to find a body
ransacked and infested with disease.




S.P. Flannery was born in La Crosse, Wisconsin, and now resides in
Madison. His poetry has appeared in Random Acts of Writing, Revival,
Bolts of Silk, Poetry Salzburg Review and The Blotter. More of his
work may be viewed at: http://spflannery.wordpress.com .








Saturday, September 3, 2011

poetry by Valentina Cano


The Traveler
 
Back through symbols,
careening in a current
that pulls me downward
through time to the center
of this apple,
to the worm-pondered hole
into another space,
another choice like a colored ribbon
ready for my taking.
I pull and yank
at the trembling threads,
hanging like crisp clothes,
smelling of green air
and strawberry grass.
Back to that morning
when I stepped on the broken stone
splitting my life in two,
one always stuck
on the wrong side
of the crack.
I’m pulled,
ever backwards,
ever trailing my
ragged train.
-Valentina Cano