| . |
. |
. |
Black Irishman
Stephanie Dickinson
He was either a little death or a long jump. Like the dragline of a spider, he haunted her apartment for weeks. Tall in ragged cutoffs, he sat where the magnolia's branches reached into the heat, petals like gutted fish lungs, his pale skin, ravaged and handsome. "Do you have it?" she said. He answered, "I've been watching you get into Terminal cabs. You're too pretty to live here."
Houston of the boom, of six thousand cars a day adding themselves to the interstates. He laid his product on the table, a yellow chunk nestled in innocent rice. Crack: drug of the universe, the Nebula, Mars. Gamma rays: everything operates on increased velocity. It was an extra lifetime.
He turned the lock. Black Irish grin, black hair, blue eyes, a matinee idol, except he was missing a tooth. The cold lady did that. Took his tooth. He unpacked his needle and spoon.
"Do you want me to hit you up?" Nada. She wanted a taste, not a knowing. He sank the silver splinter into his hand where he still had veins, and trembled like a dying hummingbird, a Charismatic Tiger who needed four shots a day, his father three. He brought it home like groceries. He ran his head. A year since his last erection. His eyes were flying when he rubbed her gums with it. Bitter. High noon and midnight are the same in ice cube space. The air conditioning gurgled.
Her brain was playing 'Tiger Rag.' He picked his skin as if chicken. Her glow kept growing. His toe vibrated in the sponge of his flipflops. "Who are you?" His eyes bulged. He fell back on her bed, panting.
The wall tapestry shivered. Deer in red velvet, drinking from long, brackish puddles, skittish, forgiving eyes looked up from the quivering leaf odor, knowing black holes were opening, dwarf stars being born.
~ . ~
Variations for Single Violin
Charles Fishman
1
Outside, a mist deepens. Beneath
the rain-blackened sidewalks,
the woman and her lover lean
over the tracks: they feel the train
coming, the temblor of its transience
and power. This ride—a treason
of judgment: each wrapped in smoke.
In the glaring light, he asks her
to guide him, but she can do little
to help. They embrace to warm themselves,
the cool wetness of rain a living ghost.
2
Within the safe borders of her room,
they could hear already the signal
of the approaching train—that distant
finality—but they had been too lost
in the mist to listen, too lost
in the theme, as if their tongues
had played a difficult Bach partita.
And, here, only phantoms of confused
desire rise up, as if they are being
strummed from their own flesh, the bow
drawn deftly across their bodies.
3
He is the man she could love if
he was free to love her, if he
was able to leap when the doors
flew apart and the lights drained off
into darkness. If he could leap, she
would follow, but he is not ready
and the train is moving too fast
and there is no place to lie down
and be animals together, no place to growl
and scratch and bite from sheer pleasure
of possession.
(Prior publ.: Groundswell. Reprinted with permission of the author.)
~ .
Learning to Dance, 1956
Charles Fishman
for Marlene Broich
It was the 50s, and all of us
were kids, but you were older—
almost a woman—and you would
teach me to dance. You were
the dark-haired child in a family
of blondes, slightly exotic, wilder,
my best friend's sister.
In your father's basement,
you took my hand and showed me
how to hold you—how to hold
a woman. I was fourteen and knew
already how to be awkward. You knew
I was falling into shadows. When I breathed
your hair, I was no longer in the forest
but had broken through
to a clearing where tall grasses whispered
and swayed, where white-petalled daisies
and violet clover blossomed in profusion.
You moved me deeper into the music
and made a meadow spring up around me.
Your body showed me that I had strength
to change the moment, if only the quiet
power of a summer breeze…
When you said I would be a good dancer,
that I had rhythm that I could swing,
I held you close: some day,
I would find the one
who would pull me near to her in love,
not mercy; I would dance with her
and learn her secret names.
(Prior publ.: Pedestal. Reprinted with permission of the author.)
~ . ~
The Amateur
Michael Foster
Tonight, she steps to the window
naked. Night before last, she danced
there in a leotard, its thin black shield
revealing everything about form, little
that mattered. Last night, in sweet
surrender to the August heat, shirtless
in cut-off faded jeans mottled by the sweat
thrown from her small breasts as they swung.
A slice of darkness—the boundaries
of my porch and her bedroom window,
our cut of the vaster darkness—inhabits
the distance between us, uncrossable,
absolute until it flares to incandescence.
~ . ~
In Paris
Michael Gause
for Georges Bataille
The laughter of ignorant women
makes this night more romantic
in Paris, where not knowing is
more beautiful than all the smiling virgins left,
whose drawn back bodies are almost releasing
the trickle-sound of my contentment.
As I sit encircled, I caress it from all sides at once.
~ .
No Longer Hidden
Michael Gause
Upward
Through plates of memory,
angled across her best guess at woman,
she forces herself toward the light of day.
Is all silence drowned to this throat-filling thunder?
Her heart, once two,
Reunites in hunger for
succulent fruit splitting
Home
The reason they waited
was the only thing left
Unknown to their screaming oceans
His fingers feel the close
of her childhood,
Love and blood, implying a future
while opening all secrets.
~ .
For Michele
Michael Gause
An object of light lies motionless
beside me, a strange gem denoting the grace of stillness.
What I can say is only eyes
never dull in the presence of woman beyond gender,
and this idle praise seeks in vain words above words, not
what we now need:
A brand new organ
beside this incessant drumming made Romantic,
with which to adore this now stirring species,
the envy of courtesans.
~ . ~
To the Logician, from His Better Half
Liza Hall
For our communication,
You suggested
A periodic table of the heart:
The elements of each feeling
And their weight
Arranged by order of importance
On a chart.
For vivid illustration,
I stripped naked,
Raided bookshelves,
Stole your pen,
And inked on my skin the Latin names
Of every body part:
Oculus, clavicula
Oris, auris, labia…
Do these distinctions make us closer
Or keep us apart?
~ . ~
Tell Me
Maureen Holm
And you say…,
'Tell me-e-e…,
tell me what you feel …'
— Oh-ho God! Aah-heh!
Purple black blue green
sky hurtle hurtlesky purple black sky
purphurtlespace blue green white — Heh!
hyper hyper hyperspeed hyperspace
spaceneedles speedneedles flashneedles crashneedles
headlights tail lights spacelights
SCRE-E-ECH!
galactic traffic speeding jam
speeding headlong weightless
am past beyond and through and through
where my being wa-a-s
hyperbeing hyperspeed
wheeling through the breath where your chest breathing wa-hah
hyperspace between between
purple black blue green
where my knees being were am I
plunging flung spinning spun
riding upside rightside downside eyes eyes
driving diving on my eyes
deaf deaf comet eyes
deaf streaming deaf screaming dum-m-b
purple black blue green
laser beam laser fingers laser thum-m-b
speedneedles needneedles
hot light cold light spotlight come
hot not hot cold hot not hot cold
don't hurt me don't hurt me
I love you I love you
no no
how could you know how could you KNOW?
lips full mouth woman
smooth curve smile pink
skyhurtle skyneedle Que-e-en QUE-E-EN
whimper need wheedle plead
yes trust him yes trust him
no NO
not when not when
just a thumb-
print
and I'm power-
just a
press thumb yes yes
NO
power-
less
just a
no please
you where
who deep
where I weep?
am I — Oh! — weeping now?
wet white blind needleblind needlebright
skyhurtle skylips why lips true?
pink inner pink inner
skyhurtle purpleblue
she knew she knew
trust you trust you
no no-o-o
weight yours
shoulder yours
thigh yours
breath yours
mouth yours
bring me back, bring me back, bring ME back
make me solid
pin me pin me pin me down
give me back my body
give my back my will
hold me DOWN
hold me hold me-e-e
now you know now you — OH!
black his boots she said
black his boots she would
for this
me too
anything for you
for this
you knew
play novel book movie
don't remember
she remembered
damage that they DO
don't touch me don't touch me
let me go go
don't go don't go
don't ever ever touch me ever GO
Je-sus! you KNOW
she OH!…
And you say, 'Tell me-e-e…'
~ . ~
Mouthing Off
Nicholas Johnson
I like first of all how you look
when I tell you what I want to do
with your mouth. How disappointed
you were when I suggested putting it
on a bird's wing. You wanted something
more imaginative but there's only
so much you can do with your mouth
or anyone's mouth. If I hadn't been
so sick I'd probably know your mouth
a lot better. It looks practical
and generous and fun when it gets going.
I wonder if it will make me feel
like a bear that's found a nice place
to hibernate and if I'll get to know
all of its Shelleyan overtones.
I like reading your lips before
they say what they're going to say
and the tangents your mouth goes off on
happily inventing some new geometry.
Don't get me wrong: I'm not just asking
for lip service, but simply the need
to explore more intimate countries
that meet somewhere on a plain
flapping with curtains and teal
branches, where a mouth meeting a mouth
can really take you from here to there
as if finally winning over the eternal
event, the last tournament, flying
high with colors even higher
in the wooded summer.
(Prior publ. Bad Henry Review)
~ . ~
From Havana to Sidewalks
Jillian A. Johnstone
Crocus shells the color of sunlight
stir behind the torn windscreen. They seem to leap
to all other buildings in part to find stems.
Speaking, it means something else. Something
coming up during the frost when you expect all bloom
to be sleeping, all flower pots put to rest and buried.
Now with shutters opening, the pot lies on
the broken sill and only rocks slightly
when a truck or bus blows by.
A crocus like a silver bullet, wind-bracing
shedding off layers from all
sides of the street below thousands of windows.
Havana. Sun looks like a peeling orange
off a coast that mirrors the ocean with a foghorn,
snowshoe, a lake smeared with evergreens.
The water is open year round. Its folds move
into shorelines and the rocks remain rocks.
They haven't yet turned into sand or gold.
Nothing like a street lined with crocus shells.
Nothing like Havana when you walk from the
hotel lobby to the first part of the gulf.
All you can see are orange pots lining the sidewalks.
The only faces are those of the flowers,
working themselves in soil, working themselves to death.
Your body wove all the roads into one road
and the fruits all the same taste, sweet like Havana
in its midday hush, sweet like the bodies of the crocus.
~ .
The Making of a Movie
Jillian A. Johnstone
In old movies, the women step out
of black and white automobiles and look like dreams.
They look like clamps, vises in a machine shop
and their perfect limbs swing around
like shiny jewels falling from pockets
in their white, white skin.
The simple colors fall out of them
like reds and yellows do green leaves.
Lips touch so silently.
Unlike the lips of me, and my male counterpart,
our lips touching like the automobiles
in those classic movies
bumper to bumper
in a loud excessive form.
I am not an actor
but I deliver a performance so profound,
that the morning confuses us.
So many colors decorate the morning
like the season of autumn and we scramble
around each other
despite each other
like goldfish and leeches in one
unhappy tank.
In the morning
in spite of ourselves
we are the movie,
the dénouement,
trying to erase our parts
by scratching our chests
with indelible ink.
B
Mud Love ~ Peter Markus | The Reading ~ Dave Matthews | Latitude of Fellatio ~ Laura McCullough | Fresh Air ~ Sean McEvoy | Nuzzling Wind ~ Baruch November | Sophia's Room ~ Samvara and Vajravarahi in Union ~ Sharon Olinka | As Far As ~ Allan Peterson | Sally Lunn ~ Leo Vanderpot | Dutch Interior: The Artist and His Model ~ Gyorgyi Voros | because ~ George Wallace
|
A
B