most recent first Author Bionotes
Birthday Poem
73, feeling like a Samurai
with a dull bladed sword
swinging into the blade of night
Somewhere beyond the horizon
sailors buried at sea
rise in ghostly procession
Skeletons sharing their secrets
with withered old men
lined-up like bowling pins
Measuring them limb to limb
like a tailor sizing you up
for a perfect fit printable
A. D. Winans
A Matter of Trust
I don't trust these poets
reliving the Beat generation
Their days lost in archives
Their nights in media hype
Making their reputation
off the bones of the dead
The pages of their lives
falling like costumes
off a cheap clothes rack
nights meant for creating poems
they spend undressing the dead
Spreading their seed like
a trail of bread crumbs
no one cares to eat printable
A. D. Winans
The Taste of Some Words
That word
you said you liked
to hear me say?
I will whisper it
in your ear all day.
You sleep tight &
all night I will lie
beside you slipping it
in between each dream.
Actions may speak
louder than words,
but some come on
like shivers,
don’t come out
but overcome
your mouth,
make your lips
start speaking
in tongues
hips buck &
squeeze like
Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty please!
It’s a go down
on your knees thing,
like ah (!) bright wings;
your mouth is open,
and your eyes are closed,
your head falls back,
and you sing. printable
Taylor Mali
When the activity of the day is done
When you are showered and waiting
for dinner, maybe lying in a hammock
with a sweating glass of something
on the stump, reading, or listening
to a dog barking by the river’s edge,
you might think that’s the ideal time
to write a poem about the darkening day.
But you’d be wrong.
Because you’re tired, and hungry,
and slung between two trees;
the erratic creaking back and forth
is all the music this moment needs.
The necessary edge is the river’s edge;
and that little bit of dark insistence,
the distant, barking dog. printable
Taylor Mali
Montreal
I could tell in the way she kissed me
that she was bilingual.
There was a geography
in her lips I could taste;
and the muscles of her mouth
had known foreign tongues. printable
Taylor Mali
Manhattan Song
give me a sprig of sassafras
to crush and sniff
or a lemon geranium leaf
pat a drop of nectar
where the third eye hides
to tempt
buzzing possibilities
give me a hand ...
here’s mine come on over
bring words that taste
like gold in the exchange
give me a hug
...laughter until tears
spill from our eyes
and the dusty rug
sprouts crocuses
bring a gust to disperse
my gathering wool
or bunch it into cumuli---
peach and burning yellow
leaving an afterglow at dusk
give me the clarity
to shuck my shells ... files
cartons, racks of stretched
cotton duck ...
to take myself lightly
give me hawk eyes
to spot the weightless
treasures vision buys
to varnish the usual
with surprise printable
Carolyn Stoloff
Russian Episodes
Peredelkino and elsewhere
Bizarre letters---like signing
with somebody else’s fingers.
No directories. Anywhere.
An oyster sky.
Cukes every meal.
Napkins, tissue-thin triangles, say
eat neatly.
Jasmine’s scent overwhelms
the pines’.
Frail pensioners hunt
in weeds for benign mushrooms.
A lineup of tall
blue spruce, alert in every needle,
guards a cement-block
residence for guests.
Elsewhere, a cluster of domes
gold pates shining
over the high wall.
Nearby, in open stalls,
muddy wet tiles
surround holes
to squat over.
Black-bearded seminarians
in black brimless hats
and slim black robes
step quickly past a bed of red
begonias against a black-
and-white checked refectory.
But how do they kneel?
Inside the cathedral, male
voices soar---the choir
stands.
Later, a brown field with a few
bent-over kerchiefed women
slides by.
More pastorals, more low hills
till eyelids won’t stay open.
A guide talks us through
the Tretchikov, where great
dead Russians hang.
Displeased with lateness
and no-show, lies, rain daily,
the others sneak off,
separately,
buy tickets, pack
complaints and dyspepsia
and fly home, early.
Our driver, late again---
distraught to find himself
abandoned
by all but one,
and no language between us,
settles down,
gives me a necklace of stones
from the Black Sea
in jellybean tones.
I hand him a tape of early jazz
brought from home.
He beams. It seems
the rain we thought
would never cease, has
ceased at last. printable
Carolyn Stoloff
Those Little Garnishes at the Café Surreal
On a floatsum island,
down the Caribbean,
in a bongo-bongo
place, très epicurean,
in me coconut juice
and de tiger milk gin,
I spy de scareful wake
of de hammerhead fin:
“Shark!” I cry.
Dis bring a lon’ dead eel
in pink bowtie,
de Café Surreal head waiter.
He say, “De shark no please de mon?
You want a litto umbrella?”
“No, no,” I say, “What else you got?
Some litty bite less scare so?”
The lon’ dead eel, he smile.
“I bring de twist o’ slug?
de octopus?
de black water bug?
de ‘gator?”
Qui Qui!
I pick de water bug.
It swim so fine
dare in da gin
and jungle wine.
De atmosfear, refined it be
(Oh! de spiceful garnishes)
at de Café Sur-real. printable
Leland James
Dancers of the Ultimatum
“We cannot separate our fate from that of all life on the earth.”
– Lester Brown, The Earth Policy Institute
From behind their veils, the dancers move
and roll beads through their fingers,
counting bones of the body. Are they asking
to turn more of this place into their stage?
A few of them appear, then step back,
invisible. An arm reaches forward
as red-violet, a leg axles into solar-gold air,
a few faces partly appear then slip behind
their veils, where the skin of their arms is ashen,
and then a column of hands turns grass-yellow
with daylight as we’re asked, we’re being
asked to join them, where we’re headed anyway
through sassafras cedar smoke across the road.
A chorus of dancers carries in ancient chanting,
their shoulders, smooth, squarely facing
into a move, aligned with the center of weight,
their heads held from the ground to the sky,
in parallel, one bead at a time in their fingers.
Have they lifted the gemstones off a nightstand
of a 15th century mystic in France to come here
not needing words, just gravity of the stones
and their feel, even forgetting them
for long stretches, having become them,
as one of the dancer’s hands turns instantly
back into ashes—no, gemstones—and another
has opened her lace veil into merganser wings
as she steps through a sense of the finite
between seven-foot splinters of paintings
by Marc Rothko, a pink field racing in wind
into crimson-gray sky, a green wave crashing
again at the edge of black-red smoldering coal.
One of the dancers seems shaken, perhaps
by the effort it must have taken her dancing
to appear here, as she pivots, letting
beads turn to ancient bone in her fingers.
Or is she saying she loves someone she left?
They’re dancing for this place, lifting their arms
into reasons, each quick swoop of hips
caught by a South American fish wind
through the hand-drums played from pulse
through rings through the rings, as if more
were still forming, as if night sky has shown up
above them, cast there by night in the beads,
the forest beads now holding the dancers
as they keep dancing and calling us back
to the last rooms, where nothing has moved
from starting or ending. Are they saying
the beads are now in our hands, the stones
which have been finch eyes, the air-full
in a runner’s lungs or a river’s chemical eyes?
The beads that have been blisters on hands at work,
the ultraviolet pollen clumped on ankle hair
of bees, stones that minister to the newly dead
of a war, that reconstruct the helix and soak
hazards from air, that drain the sun from the core
of false report from giants, slumber–shot,
who’ve enslaved the commons they’ve spent,
beads that unlock prime night, turns of infinitesimal
constellation, refigured to be ratcheting vibrato
of mortality, to grasp light in stillness and move
with hieroglyphic dialect from within
their hoarse heron-fogged warehouse,
bound as they are to dance, until
we’ve returned to what we were doing,
holding parts of Earth, taking them
through our fingers, the beads now
thin-shelled hummingbird eggs,
where our survival depends on theirs. printable
James Grabill
This Play
in the pilgrims’ parking lot
a patch of emaciated earth
is poignantly dark with pus
blood and swarms of common house flies
an eviscerated ‘hairless’ mongrel
drools on at the midday foothill sun
with singed eyes
I look up
at your matted burnt hair
now haloed by this sun
in this sun’s light
your trident glints northward
snakes hiss and are hot and salivate
muted tom-toms dance on the river mother
can you comprehend this play of pain
with your incredibly sad eyelids and so
is this your intense prayer of joy
*
I grant that you give me this blood and pus
kill me or make me whole again
in this afternoon so absolute
when your skinned tiger
grins beneath your haunches
your sun reddens
urchins fish for pilgrims’ pennies
and geese fly formation
from the mountains to the plains
your uncomprehending myriads
fearfully light torches
and festivals of incense and camphor
in boats made of dry leaves
lined with rose petals perfumed and dead
which the mother river bears
then exuberates and swallows
and inexorably dances on
to bells in a cacophony of panic
your temples are my food and drink
your monks my vassals
your path my mountain
your worship is my joy
so
‘kill me or make me whole again’ printable
Ashok Niyogi
Coming Back
we are now approaching New Delhi station
send the car to the east exit
with so many marriage processions
it will take an hour to be home
*
I told you about that bridge
from beneath which the river has walked away
and crows’ feet on white afternoon sand
punctured white-water rafts laid out to dry
*
the hotel was by this dry river bed
called ‘moon-ran-away’
or ‘moon-destined’
or just moon shaped
*
they have planted poplar on the crown
good cash crop
they probably make cigarette paper
with the pulp
*
the girls all wear navy blue cardigans
and go to school on bicycles
and yellow beaked black geese
fly formation into the setting sun
*
we are at the platform now
my bag is so light
I don’t need a porter
thank god for cellular phones
that protect us from ourselves
*
turn the key in the front door lock
and take your pills
don’t wait up printable
Ashok Niyogi
Second Love Poem
mustard flowers
entangled in your tangled hair
we pass through fields not ours
but
it is about the catching of the sun
shining on life’s villages
these morning roads
in programs
parrot green against red sandstone
from the turret of which
the muezzin will call
to acres and acres
of yellow mustard flowers
you will bathe your head in yellow mustard
in the early morning
you will hear the sun fall printable
Ashok Niyogi
Pay Attention, Knuckleheads, and Follow Directions
Rock, ya knuckleheads
Rock, rock, ya knuckleheads
Dance, ya knuckleheads
Dance, dance ya knuckleheads
Dream, ya knuckleheads
Dream, dream ya knuckleheads
Love, ya knuckleheads
Love, love ya knuckleheads
Honor all knucklehead drama
and know thyself
Delve deep in the damp mineshafts
of knucklehead shiver
Worship whatever sloops you
from the teeth of the hum-drum abyss
Kiss, ya knuckleheads
Kiss, kiss ya knuckleheads
Rest, ya knuckleheads
Rest, rest...
Caress all that is hard and lonely
for the basement couch is your savior
Sisters and Misters, blindfold
the dartboard and register the truth
we ain’t talkin’ about no meatheads here –
Let the buzz be known right now
and let it be known the world over
A knucklehead got much mystery
and no history of premeditated slaughter
no need for trigger-happy horror
Feel free to borrow your mother’s vehicle
and return it with the windshield featuring
your fingertip curly-cue
Yearn for sandwiches prepared
by other people, and how you’ll scam
one without paying for it
Love your own wit
and the nearly identical wit
of your fellow knuckleheadrons
Laugh until y our face shines
like an engagement ring
Sing, ya knuckleheads
Sing, sing ya knuckleheads
Chant your anthems
of homework disappeared
in the dungeonesque bowels
Of your backpack and relationships
chewed to bits by your dry hesitant lips
Belt your faith in a choir
of, yo, yo – let lumberjacks know
they ain’t got nothing on your glow
Do your glamorous lean
against brick with your
arms crossed in spectaculectric failure
Whisper your intentions
to your high-top hip hop kicks
swish hips that you don’t have
Smash the window
of your jiggly polychromata
let it sizzle and bloom
Hearken to the sparkle and crackle
of a giant squid drowning
in a hyperbole of fire
You are one nickel-plated Zamboni
and you must show respect
for yourself and others
Leave your hats and coats in lockers
leave your bubble-gum at home
and above all
Arrive, you knuckleheads, arrive, arrive
show up always, almost, on time printable
Jeff Kass
Alice
All this was between Alice’s legs;
the hole where roots unfurled,
the roots of England, her beauty
still pagan, and the cusp of time
covered in stiff brown hair,
where is built the tiniest garden.
If he leaned down to whisper in her ear
the last of gravity
tumbled down the forest path where beautiful
waifs lay gifts; no Dickens ever frosted their lips
nor consumption snatch them too soon.
He would find her among the Thames’ ripples;
her questions would vaporize like rabbit-shadow.
Yes, a hedgerow burning downward and tender,
the hurriedness of discovery,
the zero at the heart of the red queen’s rose;
and such bright falling
as he pushed away the leafy hem….
There is curiosity in the air
filtering down like holy water
into the rood of her mouth
and the choirblack soot of London chimneys.
What tunnel of invisible crusades, topiary, and green hills spins forth
inside her, stretching her
like a drum. What is it she holds back?
Ribbons of old English voices
tied round her flushed throat
singing as he watches, “Cherry Ripe”.
What did her parents expect him to do?
She is his oar and compass through madness;
her blue dress beginning to fold and plait itself
before she is caught in someone’s good intentions
before she grows overwise—
The wedding of x, the children of y—
She is still in the modest dress of wonder.
Oh her small hand just beginning to touch him— printable
Emily Brink
Prayer
Cornered as any bed frame four ways
angled to hurt have learned
especially at night I must be sharpest.
Sentinel that is not a sentinel
as the hardness of weaponry
only predicts the body’s softest plane
and dominates.
You, the nothing but the matter of
a breathing not yet sullied into breath--
nothing that hones to a point
or wants to not be damaged by its own use--
prior to its freezing, its descent into shape.
If you keep me molten always ready to ( )
dear breath dear absence
coming via vegas, via anywhere
to a leaving of itself behind--
If you help me draw the outline of my own decease
here carefully unname its presence--
Here is a pen o make it erase printable
The Past
The past does not haunt us, does not
moan from the rafters or materialize
from the plaster like some genteel
ghost which means no harm.
The past stalks ahead of us inspecting
the snares, counting the deadfalls,
probing the open pits, knowing we
will fall into them, knowing that though
we’ve been there before, we’re stupid enough
to revisit these haunts. And when we do,
the past grabs us by the neck and wails
into our ear: Here we are again.
Dumbfounded, we wriggle in its grasp,
and when it rasps, I want, we — eager
to ingratiate and possibly escape,
hazard words we think might work:
“Atonement?” we try. “Retribution?
Compensation?” The past tightens
its grip until we are forced to silence.
It studies us with loathing, and hope.
A future, it finishes. printable
Barbara Gregorich
Anselm Kiefer in Love
I have collected for you an old army boot
A root and some hair, a wet piece of wood
The broken remains of an emergency flare.
I have prepared an old tire and sandblasted some metal
To show you how much we're meant to be together.
I will collect a pile of dust and dedicate it to you
Broken labels, empty bottles and an old toothpaste tube.
You see, I am filling up space with what resembles your face.
And a glass box won't do, to hold my love for you in,
I need a tall giant space to put infinity in.
I have composed ten volumes of gouached artist's books
Isolated their shapes and the young model's looks
With a dot and a word, have prepared a rich crown
And comprised a whole world in a paint dolloped gown.
My room, a treasure box of unsightly odds and ends –
Here's the perfect place for my love to live in.
I will collect your eyes, your mouth, your heart.
I will trace your legs, where your mouth starts to part.
I will count the moles and reflect them with stars
So that wherever you're posed, I'll know just where you are. printable
Joy Harris
The Peach Thieves
so then
set yourself
before things
when
fields
not yet
cropped
or boxed
but
plotless
without end
or object
there
remember them
as one
unfigured sum
where
muchness
loosed
from law
or logic
still
clung
in clots
of pulsing light
behold those
tolling tones
that
touch
on what
goes on
beyond us
here
reach
out
feel
the yield
of meat
plunge
pitward
for the core
and tongue
and tongue
and tongue
so long
it stung
and come
to know the world
by heart
and
wonder
how
we never
really
noticed
this
until
just
now printable
Joel David Beacon
Between You and Me
but
just
between you
and me
how
daybreak
through
those
slanting
blinds
slashed
that
wet
flesh
in lengths
of sleeky eel-
like light
left
skimming
its
slick
skin
these
sheets
of sheen
which
caught
the wriggling things
beneath
(or so this seemed)
then
expired
but
breachlessly
as evenings
into seas
yet
here
our bodies
bobbing
in the bathtub
the sense
of something
overlapping
you
and me
both
flaccid
and placid
as a manatee
who doesn’t need
to breathe printable
Joel David Beacon
Like Some God
Like some god
had stuck a straw
in-
to
the milkshake
of the universe
and with
a
big
long
hard
pull got
all the way
to the bottom of things printable
Joel David Beacon
