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ALL-POETRY 2008 |
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M. Blake |
After Seeing an Artist’s Rendition (Based on Skeletal Remains) of a 3.3 Million Year Old Child By M. Blake, May 19, 2008 Mother Nature’s wild child Shit smears on his ass, Tangled and wild Bush on his skull Wide, big-boned plate of a face Half rotten the teeth for tearing, For a threatening Snarling show. Under protruding ridges Flame-dazed eyes reflect The first, experimental blazes, The oversized nose quivers At the smell of cooked flesh. He can see it as he tends the grill. The untended beard is gone; An apron has appeared. As the meat is seared Cavemen glare from the pages Of National Geographic. Yet after two gin and tonics He senses something primitive Come alive in his warmed gut Something from a million years back. No longer seeing red hot coils But flames blackening a lump of sustenance, Enthusiastic, guttural sounds Uttered by the ravenous, All eyes in that fire lit circle Already devouring a meal (He can taste his steak), Man and his family then, As his brood waits around the TV. Satisfied smiles on greasy lips, Talk back and forth, laughter Belches and yawns. Now just some time to put in before bed, In front of the flames or the flickering screen. Stories to entertain, thoughts on the day, Anticipating sweat-slick embraces. Dreams forever for the restless and troubled, From hominids to humans From primitive to contemporary. Brown Bag John By M. Blake, May 19, 2008 You read the holy book and wear your cap As you were taught before the bottle capped Your red-eyed days, the utter collapses, Brandishing brown bags and barking Your sad city boy troubles to unheeding traffic. No one recognizes mama’s blue-eyed boy now, Red face a huffing and puffing bellows As you stagger your pugnacity around town. You fool the rabbi, know his collection jar, Share the wine and say the words But none of it will put off the early end (For something inside has already died). The college boy is a thing of the past, The word career brings the biting laugh, The eyes suddenly hard as stone. Mama doesn’t want to see you now, John, A trembling shell of a one-time dreamer, Desperate for any handhold as the days slide by, Beyond tears, resigned in hell. M. Blake lives in Rhode Island and has been working on a novel since winter, though he always has time for shorter things. He has writing online at 3711 Atlantic, Madswirl, Fiction on the Web, Hackwriters, Zygote in My Coffee, Expose'd, and The Cerebral Catalyst. One Time You Called Me O.J.By Nathan Graziano, May 23, 2008 The glove doesn’t fit, I said, my transgressions stabbing into your shoulder blades. Shame, dressed as a gardener, slipped out the back gate. One time you called me O.J. so I called you a cunt and, to this day, I swear when you glared back the look boiling behind the look in your eyes contained the potential to kill. The glove doesn’t fit, I said as your hair slashed my hands when you whipped around your head. Bullshit, I said. That was the first time you called me O.J. There have been others. Like the time I lied about where I’d been when I came home at two a.m. and you reached for my throat in bed and grabbed my second face instead. I shook my head. The glove doesn’t fit. Bullshit, I said. Bullshit. But things were over by then. I had ruined them. We had stopped being glamorous and walking together at nights, stabbing ourselves with stars. Beautiful Women Kill Me By Nathan Graziano, May 23, 2008 I. A black skirt, smooth calves, and stiletto heels click as she strides down the hall. Sex and opium wrap her hips like gun smoke. There’s a window, cracked a finger’s width. A crow on the ledge caws its clichés as her hips shake off the smoke and start to move like fire. II. Beautiful women kill me in increments. Beautiful women don’t know they’re beautiful. Beautiful women apply lipstick in rearview mirrors as cars swerve off cliffs, drivers flapping their arms, soaring toward a row of swords. Beautiful women tease with a bra strap that crawls into plain view like a diamond in a coffin. Beautiful women have beautiful wombs, give birth to other beautiful women and men who strap on bombs to sleep with virgins. Beautiful women cause wars. Beautiful women kill me and now I’m dead. III. When I marry a beautiful woman, I promise my eyes will never stray. Then painted eyes will meet mine at a traffic light and there I go, hell-bent on hips and lips. I can’t remember my vows or my wife at home in slippers. I am alone, my shirt torn open. Please, beautiful woman, stab my heart then bury me and straddle my grave. A beautiful woman’s fractured notes swirl in the air behind me as I turn and watch her watching me die. The crow kisses her neck then spits. Nathan Graziano lives in Manchester, New Hampshire, with his wife and two children. He is the author of Teaching Metaphors (sunnyoutside, 2007), Not So Profound (Green Bean Press, 2004), Frostbite (GBP, 2002) and seven chapbooks of poetry and fiction. His work has appeared in Rattle, Night Train, The Coe Review, The Dublin Quarterly, and others. For more information, visit him at his website. Grandpa’s Final YearsBy Steven Kunert, May 21, 2008 Our Grandpa turned classical dancer said Jesus should’ve become a ballerina. If I can master the pirouette, he preached, so shalt the Lord. Grandpa asserted if our savior had tried a plie, he would’ve been a hell of a diva. He could’ve conquered Swan Lake, Grandpa raved, and done mankind a bigger favor. We’d be all be happier on our toes, he ranted, had Jesus worn a tutu with his thorny crown. The Nutcracker! Grandpa shouted at Reverend Potts the Sunday before they hauled him away. At the State Hospital, he was Nureyev by day and Baryshnikov by night. Adagio, adagio the long-time lawyer murmured on his deathbed, his final summation a welcomed coda. American Lullaby By Steven Kunert, May 21, 2008 Sing a tisket, a tasket, Smith and Wesson. Say hey diddle diddle, M-16. Pop goes the weasel, 44 Magnum, and get fuzzy wuzzy, Glock 17. Sing pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, Winchester and Remington. Say fee fi fo fum, Ruger P89. Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, AK-47, and rock-a-bye, baby, Colt 45. Steven Kunert grew up on the Texas-Mexico border and got literary “training” in the vast nowhereness of the desert and intense somewhereness of back streets in El Paso and Juarez. His writings in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have stretched for 30 years from places like The Starving Artist Times and Dude, a defunct men’s mag, to the Rio Grande Review, Word Riot and other fairly “respectable” print and online journals. |
