Enjoy the November-December issue!
Some days felt like prose
in a sloppy, ambitious mind,
striving to be written but
unable to attain
comprehensive form.
Trudging through the quagmire
of censorship the days dreamt
of the day they’d flow like verse
unconcerned with technique,
never intended to be performed.
But language and reason stood
as one immovable rock, blocking
intuition and broader definitions.
Those days became ink dissolved
in stale waters drunk by mosquitos.
The Feather
Not from a chaste, white dove
but factory born, with no potential
to reach the sky. Promiscuous and orange
descended from a flamboyant boa, full
of silky plastic charm. Forever reeking
of cigarillos and patchouli, imperfect
and only fit for falling, first right
then left and back in a slow diagonal
dance of false aerodynamics rectified
by gravity’s unfaltering axis.
Coming Home
Everything has to end
where it started from.
That’s why I always return
to the scene of our calm crimes
tracing back long lines of sin
filling out logs with updates
on the metastases and spread
of guilt. Everything has to end
where it started from and I’d sworn
there wouldn’t be a doorstep
I would stand on twice
when knocking would be dropping
my arms in unwise surrender.
But how tempting it feels to unburden!
Fake Fighters
We thought it would be the last fine day.
We stayed outside and took it all in.
The sun, the breeze, the smell of green.
When more gleaming mornings came
we stayed in, restricted by circumstance
or obligation. We let out sighs of relief
when the land finally gave in to the cold.
Even happiness had gotten tiring.
*for Ger Lataster
The reverent viewers debated in whispers
whether light could be mastered
in dark times, obscenely reflected as it were
on a pearl earring, forcing them to admit
the relevance of beauty in the ugly,
cranky world. They went on from wall to wall
undeterred by the overload of masters
of the Golden Age, all of them demanding
a bow. A boy of five, with no taste for detail
and no appreciation at all for human effort
pointed at the ceiling and chose
the abstraction of the working man
and the strawberry jam before he ran
straight to the windows past the Rembrandts
and their servants, unabashedly showing
preference for the frames of moving life.
[You will learn more about the Poetry Issues project here.]
