The Furious Gazelle

Literary as hell.

Tag: poem (Page 4 of 7)

“Sinister Romance,” a poem by Paige Simkins

August 11, 2015 /

Sinister Romance

 

We walked the downtown

Busy streets stark naked,

Holding black candles lit

High above our heads.

 

We shouted at business

Men in expensive black

Pinstriped suits, “Wear red,

You must remember, wear red!”

 

People sitting at outside

Tables of the Black Palm

Restaurant stared in disbelief,

Whispering amongst themselves,

 

When we sat down to join them.

**********

Paige Simkins is a poet who lives with her dog, Sir Simon, in Tampa, Florida. She holds a Bachelor degree in English (CRW) and a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science. She works as a Public Librarian and is very passionate about poetry, libraries, VW Beetles, and visual art. Her poems have appeared in Stepping Stones Magazine, Burningword Literary Journal, The Wayfarer, Crack the Spine and the Tulane Review.

Poetry by Jennifer Wesle

April 14, 2015 /

The Gods of Homelessness

 

Places I called home in two thousand and ten:
A fine mattress of ferns and horsetails
By the ocean a salty bedroom beneath cedar boughs
Under a tarp roof erected in back yards
I was kept safe in the court of this Church

Where Nuns corralled a herd of six year olds inside
Sweet sisters of mercy turned blind eyes
Let me sleep safe underneath these oaks.
I was blessed with lentils and with love poems.
I was blessed by Gods you’ve never heard of.

I ate sardine and sriracha sandwiches beside the pacific.
I ate boiled fiddleheads in the rain,
I positioned strategic tin can rain catchers above my head.
I met at least a hundred Gods of kindness
I met at least two dozen street smart Gods of generosity.

The Junkie

The dread spider   the afternoon shakes   the weirdo haircut   the animal bar rioting
the antique footstool     the working mama   my bathtub tortured     my windsock
limp  my wango lifeboat   put out on the curb backache death    your dew dew door
knob    your wild worldlessness   you attitude adjuster    our forever yawn
spazz overtime naps  matchpoint   a plasma thrown pillow    against   a   windowpane
cracker skin and casual bear life   a normalcy handshake    a just pope stick    a lewd
leopardskin coat   my silence eating custard   my custard pussy purring   I am purple
and poisonous   I am tired of this game   my cheek hollows twitchy   my spoons
twisted in agony   and the elusive dollar dollar bills   dropped in the toilet bowl  goodbye.

The summer of my twelfth year

I was wearing pristine
White jodhpurs
When the symbol
Of my ladylife bloomed
 
I was laying roses
Among the snow
I was weeping rubies
All over the sheets
 
I saved the petals
Preserved in pages
Drops dried in vials
To use as future magic
 
My hands bloodstained
I prayed to Yoni
I prayed to Sekhmet
Goddess of my blood
 
I cried to lost childhood
I painted red footprints
Through deserts of Jasper
Crystal blood of Gaia.
 

Jennifer Wesle is putting the finishing touches on a poetry chapbook. A lifelong home-schooled student, she is working on double major in English and Psychology through distance education. Her poems are published or forthcoming in Bluestockings Magazine and The Furious Gazelle. Although a born and raised west coast Canadian she leads a semi-nomadic life and is currently living, finding inspiration, learning Italian and eating in Italy.

Follow her on Twitter: @jennyiwesle

Blog: thegonzoproject.blogspot.com

“Judgment” by Jon Bredeson

March 31, 2015 /

JUDGMENT

The curved lip at the bottom of the
Coffee pot saves the white tablecloth
From a tiny drop traveling down the
Body of the pot with malicious intent.
Nothing saves the waitress or the meal
As food tumbles from the tray to the floor
In a violent crash of humiliation.
Cry for the poor fish sandwich, cut down
Before its prime, and decide not to tip.

 

Jon Bredeson is a gay poet, fiction writer, and English major at the University of Minnesota Duluth. He is an MFA applicant, and currently at work on his first chapbook. He is likely to be found reading poetry, fiction, and/or comic books at any given time of day, and has no plans to seek treatment for his literary addiction.

 

Trip by Carmel L. Morse

January 20, 2015 /

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.

Poetry by Caitlin Johnson

December 12, 2014 /

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.

 

“As Einstein Pedaled” … Excerpt from Love Poems

November 25, 2014 /
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.

“For Jane Kenyon” … Excerpt from Love Poems

November 18, 2014 /
The Furious Gazelle is continuing to serialize Charles Bane’s new book of poetry, Love Poems. You can find more of his poetry here.

For Jane Kenyon

The hollow is
filled with every
kind of traveling
bird that lowers its
wings to drink, and
I rage beside the flock
and remember I closed your eyes.
It is difficult to be snared
in warmth and cold
and pressed inside
a page. Unread times
are so far away; with
every taste that holds
me, my lips close
on yours.

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.

“Sleeping There” by Charles Bane

November 11, 2014 /
The Furious Gazelle is continuing to serialize Charles Bane’s new book of poetry, Love Poems. You can find more of his poetry here.

Sleeping There

Sleeping there
enclosed and loving
even as you breathe
unaware of mockingbirds
talking in the dark and you
turn, eyes opening, to look
at me and each time you do
I fall. I am whole in you
and you in me are
daughter and wife, but I say
only, birds that were night
are breaking now as day.

What I Whisper

What I whisper
is not single celled,
but a colony and trees
bent in light leaving from
their stems wash the depths
of me. I am stunned when
morning comes; dew beads
every blade, and we who
loved the night shadows
are painted green.

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.

“There Is” and “I Knew” by Charles Bane

November 4, 2014 /
The Furious Gazelle is continuing to serialize Charles Bane’s new book of poetry, Love Poems. You can find more of his poetry here.

There Is

There is no
nothing as I
sleep inside
your soul.

I Knew

I knew that poetry transforms
the ordinary of the soul
but like Creation I did not
sense what you, so lovely
made in gathering light,
writes in me to the margin
of the stars.

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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