Elegy and Praise Hymn
If ever I dream
of the crooked trees
with green around the trunks,
dripping water from their twigs,
believe me,
I’ve found the spot
for my burial.
Tag: writing (Page 6 of 37)
Gordo, Alabama, USA.
October 31st, 1933.
Charlie Wannemaker and Eddie Brackett spent the afternoon making the exemplary scarecrow. First they’d dragged the ragged old scarecrow off its stake down on ol’ Henderson’s corn field. They folded its straw-filled limbs up nice and tight and toted him in a red wagon all the way to Charlie’s barn. Henderson’s scarecrow was okay, but it wouldn’t do for the great stunt they had in mind for the night. Not without a touch of restoration.
“If we’re gonna do it, we’re gonna do it right,” Charlie instructed. Continue reading
up to no good.
how long? how long
will you put up
put out
shoulder blades
heavy sunburnt
gold nugget eyes
Everything happens a little more each day.
I’ve had a good time; even my fear has been a twinkling light.
The best place to be is right in the way.
I am sewing my flesh into the costume.
There, in your bed, a warm body bends.
We all like each other in a surprisingly realistic fashion.
A little bit further along to the mass grave and the Tilt-a-Whirl.
Outside, metal bangs against claw.
What a dull needle!
Reach for meaning, step on the sleeping.
Nauseous, a practical girl lay down beside the memorial fountain.
Your date with fate reveals a mutual attraction.
Penis!
Did I get your attention?
As a writer whose fiction sometimes includes (gasp!) sex, I have a problem with the male genitalia. It’s not that I don’t like the penis – I’m a big fan. It’s because there is just no good way to say its name. Every word, whether scientific or euphemistic, either changes the mood, or kills it altogether. So I tend to write around the problem, by describing the act without naming all the players.
Silence so deep you can hear
that moth combing its antennae.
The trees are asleep on their feet, oblivious.
A single leaf yawns, turns over.
At the hint of a breeze the grass
pulls the bedclothes tighter.
I should mention how the moonlight
looks but I can barely keep my eyes open
so instead I’ll say what it sounds like:
like a dining room in a
long-foreclosed mansion where the finest
china has just been laid out on
the finest tablecloth by the
ghost of the late butler
who nodded off while looking
for the spoons.
The secret joy of the hour
is that anything could happen
and nothing ever does.
Kurt Luchs has poems published or forthcoming in Into the Void, Triggerfish Critical Review, Right Hand Pointing, Roanoke Review, Grey Sparrow Journal, Antiphon, Emrys Journal, and The Sun Magazine, among others, and won the 2017 Bermuda Triangle Poetry Prize. He founded the literary humor site TheBigJewel.com, and has written humor for the New Yorker, the Onion and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, as well as writing comedy for television (Politically Incorrect and the Late Late Show) and radio (American Comedy Network). Sagging Meniscus Press recently published his humor collection, It’s Funny Until Someone Loses an Eye (Then It’s Really Funny), which has been nominated for the Thurber Prize for American Humor. His poetry chapbook, One of These Things Is Not Like the Other, is forthcoming. More of his work, both humor and poetry, can be found at kurtluchs.com.
This poem was first published in Fjords Review.
POEM FOR KATIE, QUEEN OF OHIO #88
Speak to the cicada.
They have the violent
sounds we need
to coal the ridges
of Ohio, to set the fires
& watch the state run
away from complacency.
The rich will cover
their ears, Katie.
The rich will drop
their guard. Take all
that you can.
POEM FOR KATIE, QUEEN OF OHIO #89
I have great hopes
that you will have
your mother’s dark
hair. If you can be her
continuing, if you can
be her without
all of that goodness
you might just take
the unpretty state
of things here
& thrive amidst
your revolution.
POEM FOR KATIE, QUEEN OF OHIO #90
Dear young lady,
if anybody else
addresses you
in this way,
you should probably
take their property
first, then give
their lilies to the sky,
& then burn your name
in their field.
Fuck any minimizing
of your ecstatic.
Darren C. Demaree is the author of ten poetry collections, most recently “Lady, You Shot Me”, which was published by 8th House Publishing. He is the recipient of a 2018 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, the Louis Bogan Award from Trio House Press, and the Nancy Dew Taylor Award from Emrys Journal. He is the Managing Editor of the Best of the Net Anthology and Ovenbird Poetry. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.
It occurred to me at some point during our second date that Mike might not exist in real time.
When we first met, he seemed friendly—cruelty-free, like a human-sized rabbit. We ate at Lenny’s Subs off I-35. On the way, he wheeled his big, white Texas truck backwards through the drive-thru of a shuttered restaurant. It seemed like the perfect accident—a ploy to make me accept his wonky habits.
Waiting in line at the shop, he cracked jokes that made me roll with laughter. I told him I used to work there—that I was once a struggling sandwich artist who was so busy fixing cold cuts and meatball marinara, I hardly had time to sit down and eat them. Continue reading
I’m dreaming
Always
Of my grandparents
My preacher
Of you as a small boy
The nights are days
Of finding you all
In turns
And patterns
Fields and haunts
Unearthing
Old treasures
And smiling
They minister
To the migratory in me
But you look at me
Helpless
As a broken-winged bird
And I’m trying to figure out
How to mend you.
Oak Ayling is an English poet whose work, both current & forthcoming, can be found in the Literary Magazines Anti Heroin Chic, From Whispers to Roars, Foxglove Journal, Drunk Monkeys, Memoir Mixtapes & in print anthologies ‘For the Silent’ from Indigo Dreams Publishing & ‘Light Through the Mist’ from author Helen Cox.
Follow her on Twitter @OakAyling and on Instagram @oakayling
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