Month: May 2020

Glenn Ingersoll – I WANT

I Want

found in the database of the UC Berkeley library

I want a black doll

I want a dog

I want a little girl

I want! I want!

I want it now

I want mama

I want me a home

I want to be a lady

I want to be a mathematician

I want to be African

I want to be an astronaut

I want to be happy

I want to be like Stalin

I want to go on the stage

I want to live!

I want to say listen

I want to speak

I want you to marry me

I wanted to be an actress

I wanted to see

I wanted to tell you

I wanted to write a poem

I wanted wings

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MARC CARVER – CURTAIN TWITCHERS

CURTAIN TWITCHERS
As I run the day to begin it
the sun comes up and I want to get out before anybody sees me and sees I have used up my quota for the day.
I think I can go out the front way once and out the back way the other time and no one will see me. Maybe I can sneak out two or three times in a day before all the curtain twitchers see me.
It is only a matter of time before the have a hot line.
I saw him going out again twice yesterday and three times on Monday.
People

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Sal Marici – As We Wait for His Transport to Cremation

As We Wait for His Transport to Cremation

                      

George’s body lies in bed

mouth ajar. His skin

each minute turns

in a shade of white

paler than before.

 

In front of his grandpa’s corpse

grandson flips through tropical shirts.

The few items George’s daughter

did not pack for me

to take to Goodwill.

 

Grandson picks one. He pulls

his t-shirt over his head.

Slips his arms through sleeves.

When buttons fasten holes

birds, flowers align.

 

A friend of George

who has the same name

who influenced George’s poetry

wears a tropical shirt he selected

from the stack.

 

George would smile

if he could see them

wear him.

But he said no afterlife exists.

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John Dorroh – “It’s Probably More Than Colitis”

“It’s Probably More Than Colitis”

I like a woman with a clean colon,

the way she starts telling stories

at the end

and works back toward the beginning,

expecting me to connect all the dots.

She takes her temperature every hour,

tells me the results, wants for me

to tie a knot with my swollen tongue

in her cherry

stem. The french kiss should have been

the second best clue

that we wouldn’t click, at least not like that.

I can cuddle like a fish with the best of them,

but sometimes we have to be satisfied

with a flag at half mast. You can always

use tulips to brighten the

room. We fidget in the clinic for an hour

before they call her name.

She refuses my hand, gives me an orange-lipped

piranha smile, and disappears into the

blue-white light.

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TIM STALEY – 2 GUZZLES 

2 GUZZLES ~ pronounced two ghazals

 

4.29.20

 

All this time I’ve been talking to myself:

meet me in the weightlessness between breath

 

The moon pouts and is unsure how to age

Which of our masks protects us from our thoughts? 

 

Eyeballs slither like the sliding glass door

heavy like shadows against the curtain

 

A fleck of gratefulness comes at what cost?

which one happens to correlate to you?

 

All my actions grease the slipping of time

as manufactured love crumples the foil

~

 

5.4.20

 

So a part of your blood I’ve already

fast forwarded your best intentions

 

Your family matters because they complain

but inches below the water they glow

 

The spilled milk is 14 billion years old

the space time continuum continues 

 

Like the Milky Way, be deliberate 

acknowledge the itch, but do it slowly

 

Yo! how much have you paid per square moment?!

My stomach is my own Magnum, P.I.

 

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