Month: May 2019

dark eyes dark asterisks

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Anniversary
–Dan Beachy-Quick
You are for me as you cannot be
For yourself, chaos without demand
To speak, the amethyst nothing
Hidden inside the trinket shop’s stone,
Dark eyes dark asterisks where light
Footnotes a margin left blank. You
Don’t look up to look up at the sky.
Your ears parenthesize nothing
That occurs, that I keep from occurring,
In the poem, on the page, as you are
For me, not a shadow, but a shade
Whose darkness drops from no object
But is itself yourself, a form of time
Spanning nothing, never is your name.

Photo by Eric Muhr on Unsplash

filth falling through it

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Untitled
–Marianne Boruch
He was touched or he touched or
she did and was, or they were
and would. Or the room could, its
three doors, two windows or

the house on a slant touching,
touched by the drift down street, cars
pressing quick or slowing. All along
the town touched a river, the river

the filth falling through it. What was clean—
a source pure as rumor—a shore
touching lake touched by wind above,
and below, a spring. All touch blindly

further water. That blue touching
blacker regions in the sea so weirdly
solitary, each to under, to every
sideways past deeper, where nowhere.

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

eyes that spurn

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In Your Face
–Samuel Menashe
Eyes that spurn yet invite
Like spikes in the sunlight
Of Manhattan’s high-rise—
Babylon’s ladies outshine
Daughters of Jerusalem,
Zion is no easy climb

Photo by Andre Benz on Unsplash

 

crash test dummies

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Crash Test Dummies of an Imperfect God
–Dean Young
Because we are so stupid,
the prizes in Cracker Jacks are now paper
so they can be swallowed, ladders
spackled with warnings. No getting
within a hundred feet of Stonehenge because
everyone wants to hack off a souvenir
and the way home is clogged to one lane
so whoever wants to can stare into a pothole
until coming up with a grievance. I’d vote
the greatest accomplishment of mankind
is the pickle spear. God created paradise
to tell us Get out! which is why we probably
created God who doesn’t much like being created
by ilk like us. No wonder it’s pediatrics
every morning and toxicology by happy hour.
Is it all in the mind, the dirty, dirty mind?
Maybe God tried to turn you into a garbage can
so you could be lifted by the truck’s hydraulic
arms and banged empty. Maybe a snow cone
so you could be sticky-sweet and dropped.
Maybe a genital-faced bivalve to be dashed
with Tabasco and eaten whole or, to his glory,
produce a pearl.

Photo by Charles Deluvio 🇵🇭🇨🇦 on Unsplash