Poetry Issues has just reached double digits! Enjoy this tenth issue right here:
February
The breeze stirs and then it moves us forward
with tangled hair and whirling splintered thoughts
and locks us in the chase of portentous
shapes in the low clouds. The soft grass writhes to
break free and its crystal prison of frost
stays relentless in its albinity.
But there is something in the lengthening
of light and the sonnets of the swallows
that travel from the lands of velvet warmth
that begs me to endure and join the strife.
It’s in the slight murmur of the willows
when the grey skies push upon their backs and
instead of lamenting they sing: “Perhaps
this isn’t such a bad month to be born in.”
Bus Commuters
Not the servants of a dark empire
of fast-drying concrete and steel
with hands and faces worn
by the tiredness
of a joyless looping life
but princes and queens
of flourishing kingdoms of the sand
with peach orchards where horses run free.
Distance
There is a longer
space between your words and mine.
We are diverging.
Just Watch
The history of
mankind is nothing but a
plucky fist raised high.
But now the fight is over
the color of our new couch.
Rectitude
Trying to rectify the wreckage
caused by the rectangularity
of the wretched electorate
the pious asked the rector
who exclaimed that there
was nothing to correct.
Anatomy
She ordered the surgeon
to remove her organs
and take pictures of her innards.
He was then asked to put them back,
and the money was good and the life
was tough. “I don’t understand,”
she said later, ignoring the sore
while her eyes still searched
on the photographic paper.
“My liver looks perfectly fine
but, where is my soul?”
Student with Purple Glasses
“And where do you dispose
the oil from the frying pan?”
She asked the landlady,
sincerely worried about the lack
of environmental planning.
There was a halo of smoke
rushing around her platinum hair:
“Just pour it on your trash.
It’s excellent sauce
for the lunch of the seagulls.”
[If you would like to learn more about the project, read this.]