Erie
for Karin Wiberg
Always the crossword clue for “Pennsylvania port.”
Everybody, I guess, thinks of a port as being
on an ocean. Not me. It’s the place I nearly drowned,
all those years ago, adrift on a rubber raft
Category: Poetry (Page 17 of 20)
Peep Show
By
Dennis Milam Bensie
Love enters, unasked.
On a hazy Sunday afternoon
The side garden was packed with watchful family and friends
Bearing flowers, cake, and punch.
A wedding,
Not too showy
But triumphant,
A sense of relief and pride,
The gallant pair,
Hot and flushed,
Stand hand in hand
On a little platform at the foot of a tree.
There is no preacher.
The two handsome men get tangled up in their love-talk,
Then they kiss with gaiety.
Husband and husband
Are jubilant.
At last, queer rights.
Two men can marry
And settle down
Despite the sex.
How to Write Poetry
They will never understand you,
although you speak clearly
as light through leaf-break
splitting shadows in a dense forest.
You will be misunderstood,
because to them you are a river
evading a dam
to keep under control
for they will never comprehend wildness
and they will never try.
They will force what they cannot
into confines, but you are air
leaking in cracks, whispering
your difference. They are impatient.
They will go past gentle persuasion,
right to strong arm tactics.
It won’t work. You are light in a dark room.
Pretend to listen to them.
It appeases them. Make it believable.
Tell them, yes, yes, I agree;
when you don’t. Take what they say,
weigh the truth or lies of it.
If it seems almost right, consider slowly,
is it almost what you need
because it never will be one hundred percent.
If it feels like a half-truth or outright lie,
and it will, then consider what they gain,
what you lose, and the gap between.
Is it huge? They never expect thinking;
they only know forced cooperation.
They think everyone thinks like them.
They only know public relations
and blind obedience.
Become whitecaps stirring in a storm.
Qi
Lavender silk rains from above,
but there’s no longer a God to worship.
Instead we decide to worship the sky.
Sifting through purple waves, we find stars waiting.
I think they are patient mothers.
You think they are lanterns lighting our way.
We both agree that we can hear them
mourning. They are only meant to be felt
like dry ice filled with dying matter.
The separation between stars above
and ground below is little more than wind.
The sky sends a phoenix and a dragon
for us to behold. The emptiness swallows both
and spits out a new color that is sharp
at the edges, but burning at the center.
Shifting under our feet, the world
molts and we accept it. Cracked dirt gives way
to rising lakes. We try to name creation,
but only your tongue moves.
I am silent.
A Sage of Dreams
-to Li Bai
I love wine more than myself.
A red river like blood runs
through me as it ran through
you. When my mind fills
with the metal of war, I can empty it
into a cup. I don’t much care
for sitting with flowers and trees
on nights like this, but there’s comfort
in the moon. The moon’s light
embraces the dark and creates
a shadow. I turn towards it and imagine
that you’ve come to drink. I raise my glass
to you, and we make a toast to the moon.
There is no singing or dancing, though.
Spring has vanished and taken you
and your joy. I’m too drunk to care
that you’ve left me. The soft grass invites
my eyes to close, but I try to look through
blurred vision to find your River of Stars
floating in a sea of pearls. Instead, I see
the moon and her light flood the sky
and merge with the night water below.
Now I understand why you grasped
for the moon with your arms.
In her light there is an endless sleep.
Massacre
Can you tell me God’s name? I think I’ve forgotten it in the grass. Monsters take out their knives to carve out shrieking chests. I dream that each blade mourns for Sơn Mỹ.
“I’m alive,” says the child.
All of her ancestors were on the wrong end of a gun. She looks into my face, but I don’t demand anything. I’m tired of everyone preaching about freedom. It’d be better to go look at the headstones of Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and some 500 villagers.
“Who are you?” she asks me.
My mouth won’t answer sweetly; instead I talk with my eyes. I try to say I am from a place of trees, passion, and fire. I think those are related somehow, but I can’t put it together. The sunlight in her eyes fades. My words can’t seem to stop the clouds from coming.
“You’ll be fine,” I say.
I look for some salvation, but there is no one left to ask. I turn to America, to God, to the masses. They all turn away from me, so I turn to the jungle instead. The trees offer me the compassion of fruit, but leave none for the girl. All that’s left is heat beating down on my shoulders and mud sticking to my boots.
The Tet Offensive
The vase went missing
years ago, during the hunting
season. My uncle swore it was lost
in the Gulf of Tonkin.
I think he lost it in Saigon,
but I let his unrelenting waves
beat against my side.
His furniture fled
from the mermaids
as they rode in on green tides
and into our beige walls, leaving
a taste of ash in my mouth.
The family portraits waited
patiently to be taken
by these thieves. Instead,
the paint peeled into sirens
and waited for something new
to happen; maybe like the extinction
of the dinosaur.
I’ve been thinking,
they should have bought
better life insurance before the war.
Supernova
When the solar flares woke up,
they stuffed our lungs full of soot
and exiles. Our skin sizzled,
or maybe that was just the streets
trying to stop roses from blossoming.
Now those streets stretch on
and on and on. Everyone calls it space.
I don’t know if it’s empty enough
for that kind of name.
I’m pretty blue,
but I hear that’s the color of heaven.
I try to fit my words into infinity,
but I hear that science killed god.
I’m not sure what that means,
but I think I’m going to fly out to Mars
where no one gets lost in all-consuming blazes.
Everyone calls it the End
of Days, but I don’t know
any myths that end like this.
Instead I’ll trust my eyes, filling up
with crimson dust and an old sky
twisted into a slightly new frame.
Lucas Campbell is a poet whose greatest goal is to become a professional vagabond. He currently lives in Ohio, but will always have California on his mind. While he writes about a variety of topics, he has a special place in his heart for madness, wine, and myth.
Trip
Carmel L. Morse
Lark, my artist friend,
my compatriot,
wakes me every Sunday morning,
I’m crashing, dear God,
please talk to me.
The flowers are vicious.
Eyes crawl from foreheads
and dark cloaks in corners
are dancing to smother me.
I am dying. Help me.
I spend an hour
on the phone
calming her.
Imagine a single rose,
swimming in a crystal vase –
petals open in slow motion
like in a movie
and it smells like June,
your birth month.
Find a mirror,
look deeply
your green eyes shimmer
like a proud cat
and there are only two,
a pair.
That is all you require.
Pretend that your eyes
are face cards,
two-eyed jacks
In a royal flush..
You can hold them
in your hands.
They are not exchangeable.
Walk to your closet,
remove your black cape
with the paisley embroidery,
put it on.
The swirls in the design
create a maze
that takes you on a journey
but the paths always
circle back to you.
You are the center
of your universe
that nothing can steal.
Your breathing has slowed.
There. There.
You have returned.
And Lark promises
she will never again
touch mescaline. Never.
But next Sunday
the phone will ring.
Carmel L. Morse has been writing creatively since she was in her teens. She received a PhD from the University of Nebraska and wrote a creative dissertation of her poetry. She has previously been published in The Connecticut Review, Darkling, Pudding Magazine, and The Great American Poetry Show, among others. She is currently an assistant professor in general studies at the University of Northwestern Ohio in Lima, Ohio.
This post concludes the Furious Gazelle’s serialization of Charles Bane’s new book of poetry, Love Poems. You can find the rest of Love Poems here.
You Descend Like Rain
You descend like rain
on fleece and I am
a second hand circling
nights around your
face. Bowed in sleep
you form in clusters
past the window ledge
and burrowing deeper in
the sheets set fires.
At the Observatory
At the observatory, I can
watch all the water mills
of galaxies. I deny every
injury in me and long to see
not backward but to forward
cliffs. I think the consequence
of you is written into the structures
we cannot know but by candles
in our room. Do you unfurl for
me? No, rather it is starry in your
eyes naturally and I want you
to order all the murdering
unstained from paper histories.
I deny sacredness
not born of your womb,
your hair the thousand
gestures of lovingness that
fall in gravity.
Charles Bane, Jr. is the American author of The Chapbook (Curbside Splendor, 2011) and Love Poems (Kelsay Books, 2014). His work was described by the Huffington Post as “not only standing on the shoulders of giants, but shrinking them.” A writing contributor for The Gutenberg Project, he is a current nominee as Poet Laureate of Florida.
The Furious Gazelle is continuing to serialize Charles Bane’s new book of poetry, Love Poems. You can find more of his poetry here.
Undying Light
Undying light, undying
words that carry into
times to come the
power of undying such as
we, who loved and
fell. Spilling like
wine from the largest
skins, or clouds holding
seas. Beloved, all the
surface wears away the
stones of fear that stand
in the way of running
streams and the cupped
hands of explorers drink
cold and thirsty when
they kneel. Only mystics
see, but the air is charged
and forked and I have always
known what is written in
me is you, again and
again, repeatedly.
Charles Bane, Jr. is the American author of The Chapbook (Curbside Splendor, 2011) and Love Poems (Kelsay Books, 2014). His work was described by the Huffington Post as “not only standing on the shoulders of giants, but shrinking them.” A writing contributor for The Gutenberg Project, he is a current nominee as Poet Laureate of Florida.
Elizabeth R.
A redhead. A queen. A woman.
Yes, she is me, and no:
no one’s woman, someone’s queen, sometime redhead.
Power(ful)(less)(hungry).
Every day a society to conquer, a territory to annex.
Gold in my eyes, on my fingers, in my coffers.
Storm Season
Summer nights so hot even the rain
can’t cool us down, & steam radiates
from the asphalt, like the fog
we get in winter, yet more sinister
somehow, billowing the way it does.
All we want is bare feet, but we
can’t risk burning our toes. I don’t know
how the toads survive it, their tiny
bumpy bodies absorbing what the sun
left behind before the clouds rolled in.
Thunder keeps rumbling.
Susannah, I’m Sorry
I couldn’t be your mother.
The specter of you follows me
through unexpected doorways,
like when I look at the man I wanted
as your father & am tempted to say,
“Go ahead. Knock me up.”
But I promise it’s better for you
that you’ll never be born
or incubated
or even conceived.
You see, Susannah, I wouldn’t be able
to love you, because I would be too afraid
a mysterious impulse would float
into my brain, begging me to make a ghost
out of your tiny, breakable, pale-skinned body.
At best, I’d have to abandon you,
leaving you to be raised by anyone
other than me.
At worst–well, let’s just say
you and I would be buried together.
Susannah, it’s not your fault.
I want you & your sister Dominique.
I do. But what I don’t want
is the haunted look I’ll see in my own eyes
in the mirror, the face of a woman
who still feels like a girl & is just selfish
enough to contemplate disappearing
so I can go live the life I planned,
& then I’ll be an apparition of the mother
you deserve: wandering the roads at night,
asking to be spirited away
to escape your midnight howls.
Caitlin Johnson holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Lesley University. Her work has appeared in Boston Poetry Magazine, Clare Literary Journal, Eternal Haunted Summer, Fortunates, Momoware, Pembroke Magazine, Vagina: The Zine, and What the Fiction, among other outlets, and is forthcoming in Baseline Literary Arts Journal and Stoneboat Literary Journal. She can be found online at cateismilesaway.net.
So This is What I’ll Do
I’m gonna turn that switch off.
Turn that valve and make sure that’s off too.
Then I’ll unscrew this thing over here. (I don’t even know what that is.)
Then I can disassemble that.
Take that thing apart piece by piece.
Just completely dismantle everything that’s around me:
My TV.
My furniture (including the bed and dressers.)
That lamp.
The refrigerator.
Then the walls of my house too. Everything.
Get everything down to its barest pieces until there’s nothing left to take apart.
And once that’s done I can move on to my car and the neighbor’s car and his house and the house next door and the house and car after that and so on. However long that takes it takes.
And once that’s done I’ll start on my toes— take those off one by one.
And then I’ll take out each shin bone. (They’ll make good doorstops if nothing else.)
Remove my feet and disconnect my legs from my hips.
Detach the knees and throw them in a corner somewhere. (Or somewhere where there used to be a corner.)
Twist off my torso and chest and bend away every rib like plastic branches of plastic trees.
Remove every tooth and strand of hair and pluck out each eye and tear away each ear.
And then finally…
I’ll plant whatever is left in the ground.
Cover it up with dirt packed nice and tight and hope that maybe something grows there.
Something different.
Because sometimes it’s good just to start over.
Start again from absolute peaceful desolate scratch.
seminal incident #3
it was early 1981.
alas
the change from the
previous year
had not fully
integrated into my eleven
year old consciousness and I
I still believed it was 1980. so much so
that when
I discovered that
newspaper in
art class underneath our
rudimentary
watercolor paintings
with the
current year I was
convinced with
indisputable certitude that
a genuine
document from the
future
had been delivered
to my hands.
breathless,
I turned to my
classmate, “Jason, look at the date
on this newspaper. 1981.”
“So,” he responded derisively.
“It’s 1980,” I said in the voice of
a fraudulent scholar.
even before he could
contradict me with
words of simple fact, the
true date
finally became realized
in my
brain and
I shrunk up like plastic in a flame.
You Can’t Avoid That Swerve in the Road
The willow in the yard where I grew up is no longer there.
And I am no longer there.
My brothers are no longer there.
The willow was tired of us leaving and got out before anyone else did.
There’s an unopened package from a guy named Schrödinger.
That swerve in the road is there whether you continue to move or not.
It’s unavoidable— like the smell of new painted walls.
There’s a comic strip character walking the streets.
He doesn’t know he’s left his frames.
A child from China digs a hole in his yard trying to reach America.
He’s got one match in the rain.
One chance to get it right.
The devil lurks somewhere in the dark sharpening his pencils.
He’s composing a complaint letter to the cereal company that sold him a stale box.
The phone rings, caller: unknown.
Matthew is a teaching-artist, playwright and independent filmmaker from Milwaukee. His latest film is titled Neptune (www.lasthouseproductions.com). You can find his fiction and poetry at the Newer York, Paragraph Planet, Postcard Shorts, Linguistic Erosion, The Eunoia Review, Danse Macabre and Streetcake Magazine. His plays have been produced nationally and internationally by theater companies including Edmonds Driftwood Players, Pink Banana Theatre, Cupcake Lady Productions and Screaming Media Gi60. Pennster Media recently published his short play Walk, Don’t Walk. www.matthewkonkel.com
The Furious Gazelle is continuing to serialize Charles Bane’s new book of poetry, Love Poems. You can find more of his poetry here.
As Einstein Pedaled
As Einstein pedaled his
bicycle in wide and wider arcs
and laughed among the multitudes
of pi, did he sense what
you and I discovered too,
that there is a great unsaid
and you alone with me walk the wildness
of its storms? Its circumference is garlanded
around your head and granaries
of unborn stars are sifted through the
hands, and my love, I fall.
I fall.
I fall unbordered and
unwound as time
and surrounding like snow.
Charles Bane, Jr. is the American author of The Chapbook (Curbside Splendor, 2011) and Love Poems (Kelsay Books, 2014). His work was described by the Huffington Post as “not only standing on the shoulders of giants, but shrinking them.” A writing contributor for The Gutenberg Project, he is a current nominee as Poet Laureate of Florida.
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