Vlad Pogorelov: November 2023
Taking a bath
Sounds of water
Smells like
Something is burning
I guess its crack
“What the heck”
Its only crack
The time is passing
Drinking tea
Smoking third cigarette
Waiting,
Turning,
Slowly transforming
Into somebody new
Completely unrecognized
During the passage of time
While the dirty whore
Taking a bath
Smoking crack
Singing songs from
Time to time
Shaving legs
The sounds of water
As an addition
To the picture
To this little kitchen
Where this situation
Of self-mutilation
Is taking place
Cutting oneself open
With a calligraphy pen
Letting the contents free
And suturing up with spaghetti
While the dirty whore
Taking a bath
Smoking crack
Singing songs from
Time to time
Shaving legs
Lifting the new man up
From the chair
Getting a hairdryer ready
So she can dry her hair
Making more tea
Having another cigarette
Laying down on the bed
While the dirty whore
Taking a bath
Smoking crack
Singing songs from
Time to time
Shaving legs
Picking up the book
Photo-poems
All about New York
From a long time ago
Looking at a picture of a child
Trying to imagine him to be a grown-up
While the dirty whore
Taking a bath
Smoking crack
Singing songs from
Time to time
Shaving legs
Making the new man stand up
Walking towards the bathrooom
Slowly opening the door
Silently looking
At the dirty whore
While she is taking a bath
Smoking crack
Singing songs from
Time to time
Shaving legs
And smiling
Poems from the 1997 Repossessed Head chapbook Derelict were written while Vlad Pogorelov was living in Philadelphia, and the poetry editor of Siren’s Silence.
Vlad Pogorelov: January 2024
Came back home,
Had two shots of vodka,
A glass of wine,
And the classical music
On the radio
Was just right
For the time being
A cat sat by me
She looked quite happy too
And, though she never quit
Her job of chasing cockroaches
Around the house,
Somehow both of us
Felt very good.
© Vlad Pogorelov 1997
Susan Wallack: November 2023
most days, proving
poetry's indomitable, ingrained, like the Namer
herself, wrestling thousands of new
untitled tubes- scarlets,
magentas, blue-reds, browns- but none
a gash, none a wound, no blood,
nothing wilted.
Stumbling cylinder to cylinder,
knowing full well what these balms
mean to a woman
dogging beauty.
Then at night, alone, aged skin
phosphorescent & furrowed
as a moon, she tends garden.
Pruning, shaping, watering
roots she planted in sand,
watering the sand.
originally published in New Zoo Poetry Review Volume 5
Susan Wallack: January 2024
You disappear so beautifully.
Eyes wide, perfectly aligned,
as if you could see, as if
Matisse's joy
might be happiness...the azure/
pumpkin/scarlet fields set
lightly inside his penciled outline.
The main star shines, no glare.
And it's possible that
somewhere less frantic
charged particles
rest before they exit.
2.
But blonde light, like a starlet's
hair, sweeps all things
equally: calamity rests,
fallow in the field.
And the north-bred yearling hawk
looms motionless, like a stuffed
& mounted version of himself.
Watching. Shadowless. Red eyes wide
& perfectly aligned. And then,
when it's time, he just disappears.
originally published in the Minnetonka Review
Andrew Lundwall: November 2023
Andrew Lundwall: January 2024
transparent mattresses gray clouds
stars of sad reunions
sad centers of nectar
frigid with ground below
the spinal cord of
is rotating hum
is splintering
wooden halo
beneath the weight
taken in installments
anything is moon
wear it
whether pills or
metallic sacrament
saharan depressions
the days' dials pursue
robes flowing behind
profound obsessions
stringed instruments
purpose is problem
she'd kicked her habit
i'll admit
that i was hesitant
infested persistent
a leg up her skirt
is motivation
lurking around
the telephone booth
with its sincerest face on
my legs would not and still
last night
the rosary between her knees
her face from east to west
like an echo between poles
it was emotionally close captioned
it read like telepathy as it
struggled from shoulder to shoulder
GOODNESS
she looked so real
i couldn't bring myself
to hold her muster up
the sky is funeral blue
as anxious earth unrolls
before and behind you
a glued face to a window
is where godess
refuses intervention
a glued face to a window
is a face instead of you
unsteady on glossy feet
the city's recycled son
packing an unheard-of heat
in his tight jeans levi's
two neon virgin marys
flashing in his scrambled eyes
or remember when norfordville we'd went
to do when you'd thrown away important
that day way back in her ageless beauty
the clouds pissed all of this passionate intensity
© Andrew Lundwall 2009
From Argotist Online Poetry (2023)
From PICC (A Poet in Center City)
From the original Philly Free School blog
Posts (2005) from the original P.F.S. blog, before it became P.F.S. Post.
Highwire Gallery Calendar: 2004-2005
Taken from the Highwire Gallery's website, as it existed in the mid-Aughts.
Stacy Blair: July 2016
dried up somehow from the ice storm
which punctuated the night's prose on my
attic windows. This is where I live: the attic.
By 9 a.m. it's all slush, and my furnace is
hot and wet again. Cold shower: I need
one— present tense, of course. I will stop
not moving and wriggle a bit under covers,
twisting my body up in the blankets like
a fork in spaghetti. Three of them: not forks,
blankets. Three second-hand covers collected,
collect hair and skin samples from their human
domains: past, present, future. Who knows
how many have come before me, but I'll burn
this when I'm done. Maybe then, I'll light
a match to my own epidermis.
c. Stacy Blair 2009
Stacy Blair: July 2016
A circle is what we talk in
and the hole in which our
words bury us; the bulging
blueberries I add with soymilk
to my matinale Grapenuts;
or the gears in my grandfather
clock, circling through time only
to double back. It is the hug
around my waist made by Elea
before she left for France; the sphere
of space made by lovers touching parted lips.
Multiple circles of time form from repetition;
circles circling into generations make
five-dimensional slinkies,
our faults repeat like History while
new mornings wonder at our perseverance,
curious hearts.
A circle is the top of my water bottle
cap removed on the night-stand,
shapes my dreams take as I
circle back from sleep to
the same hour I rose yesterday (it was yesterday).
A perfect circle is a blueberry and the shape of us going nowhere.
MAPS
We peaked together atop
this snow-covered mountain,
rolled down its spine,
whereupon a creamy
blue fog covered my glasses.
Now we repose in the field,
backs up against cherry-bulbs;
the suspended poplar,
eyes drifting to the coast.
From across that field of
cherry-bulbs, suspended
poplars, the cemetery jogs along the coast.
Honesty, weeping, chills my lashes.
Oak-rich-ebony, your eyes match
your hair, block my view.
c. Stacy Blair 2008
Stacy Blair: July 2016
Sky blue hangover over-hung
above my tea-top-table
this morning while you slept.
Long days set into short
nights, your sunny sheets
never want for company.
Yourself dispassionate,
disappearing come September
beyond distant barren fields.
Melting mountains mighty since
time spared their angled edges.
Alliterative, I am consuming;
pretty poetess all the while
presumes ignorance.
LISTS RHETORIC
This gender-bender of a city
has me dealing in androgyny.
How am I expected to see
bliss beyond these words
of war poured out of your
mouth? I lie livid at the feet
of news, magazines,
not finding reasons why,
forgetting every second
that God did exist before Nietzsche.
c. Stacy Blair 2008
Stacy Blair: June 2017
bleached beach/sand-color by the sun.
Time's short between this photograph and my regard.
Picture: no flower lays or shoes, just
young grass hips. She is, I am, we were,
very young. The entire page of this album
flanks history; under my mind, another
helpless time explosion. I was, we were, are,
naked newborns, as our little limbs on film.
c. Stacy Blair 2008
Mary Walker Graham: March 2008
The story's in the broken shells, the fissures
of the rocks. The water left those cracks.
And it was the sea that rocked; that sang
its story of self or selves. I said,
You see me? And it did:
the sea saw.
I'm lying. It was a river
that ran nearest us, and all that night
I dreamt of alkali, dissolve.
That's why I say the sea, I like the salt.
I couldn't be more or less than I was then,
could I? But like a person, thought I could.
Standing beside the picnic table—
beside myself— mimicked hands, hello, and mouth.
Said yessir, pleasesir, thankyou— I watched
the boats go south. I waved goodbye, dutifully. I bore
the empty wine bottle to the basket, shoo-ing flies.
But all day he'd been leaning—mast and pole—
he had us cleaning the underside of the belly,
all along the bulwark and the bow. I had tools then,
didn't I? Steel wool, toothbrush, tar. Once
I tarred a roof, rewired a house. I was small;
I could fit into crevices. But only like a person.
I was a child: rest and enervation. I could as easily
lie down now in rows of soybeans, as against
the plaid flannel of your shirt, smelling of gasoline.
ON THE BANKS OF THE RIVER IN WINTER
So many Marys grieving by the river
that I have to cover my ears
to shut out the sobbing and hear,
as if for the first time,
the long low sound of the water
and the train just beginning
to round the bend and blow
its way through the dark tunnel.
How many times I've sat
in summer: considered the chicory,
drawn the blue bridge flung
from bank to bank, or wondered
the names of the red flowers,
their throats like trumpets.
How many times I've not
given in to the weeping:
I can almost see her— the one
who lifts the Potomac mud
to her face and smears,
as if it were a balm and not
the original problem,
or the one with the bucket of fish:
she should return them but that would mean
letting them slip, silver and whole,
finally cast out. I'd rather
let them wander in the maples,
cold and insistent and crying.
I should swim somehow— wait
for spring; I've been waving
to that other a long time,
the one who wears the red
and not the blue scarf.
Susan Wallack: January 2007
Once before, when I was a woman,
(a diagram distorting the actual
dream),
I hiked a leg,
barking like a seal, &
urinated a long-
lemon stream.
Running south,
syrup over ice
cream, pleasure
over suffering:
the first idea.
© Susan Wallack 2007
Susan Wallack: February 2021
Like a scientist to me,
Patient & persistent,
Stashed in a shoe box
On Heaven's marble floor.
Say once in an aeon,
He lifts the corner
To disturb us,
Checking on progress,
And inscribes
The statistics.
Susan Wallack: June 2021
gulps of oxygen, smog porridge
sucked ad nauseam. If a wily
Camus invites us to agree
that Sisyphus is happy, I'm
satisfied to dream Camus'
Algeria: super-heated sands
hemming the Mediterranean,
and a raucous newborn
gleaming with slime, a just-plucked
shell held high into the sun. Her
nomad-father's rutted palms
obliterate all light, his desert-
dimmed eyes squinting to find
stripes, moles, stigma, signs—
imperfections to justify
a drowning. No surprise. Just too few
dried figs, no gods or fires
driving them forward, into the sea,
ancient terrors, shallow waters
heaving salt, fish, history.
originally published in The Brownstone Review No. 5
Susan Wallack: October 2023
posed au naturel, cocoa belly
down on an improvised divan, eyes
rolled back to study Gauguin (who
flatters himself she's scared of him). Slapping
liverish paint to a faux
background, fantasy blooms
where the native truth would be: an endless
queue of stunted men,
shuffling forward, shifting dumbly
outside thatched huts infested with fleas.
Inside Death squirms, ever horny, flexing
moist pink lips as if he were a child,
slow to see where to fix his bristling
prick, bury Art, take his pleasure now.
originally published in the G.W. Review, spring 1999
The Khyber Pass: July 5, 2005
From Otoliths: April 2010
From Philadelphia City Paper: June-July 2005
Vlad Pogorelov: April 2020
Trying to find a decent rhyme or the place to go
Feeling very cheap like an amateur with a third class ticket
Isn't it a crime, a very major crime of nature
When you're subjected to not being able to find a
Rhyme or a decent woman?
But fuck the nature! Let's break this glass wall!
Go outside, be artificial but independent
And vice versa...Do you still like the verse?
In the meantime returning to the original style:
- Shut up and smile.
Nothing helps better than looking at polyester shirts,
Clear plastic skirts, synthetics and vinyl
Aluminum in the form of foil paper
Or listening to your last words:
- See ya later
When you don't mean it.
Paper, another artificial object. Nailing words to it,
Letting them dry and being absorbed
Feeling like a medieval knight holding his medieval sword,
Killing enemies,
Splashing blood just like ink, when the ink is just like blood
God! God! God! And the Virgin Mary. Here is the letter:
Dear Mary! Would you love me, would you fuck me?
I'll be very gentle, very caring.
I'll treat you nice, Mary. I am not exactly from Palestine,
But please, do not hesitate
To accept some very valuable foreign aid in the form of a
Smile.
And Mary's telegram says:
Wait! You're not a carpenter, you're a poet.
So go fuck your Muse or your mom.
The end of the telegram.
My reply: Dear Mary! Thank you for the advice.
Still want to fuck you. Love you very, very.
And back to the train station.
Where would I go without an inspiration,
Without a rhyme or a decent woman?
New York? Moscow? Near past? Distant future?
After all, the crime is becoming a punishment
When you try to cut your soul open.
c. Vlad Pogorelov
At the Train Station was originally included in the 1997 print chapbook Derelict, from Repossessed Head Press.
Vlad Pogorelov: September 2020
But I always lived on the first floor
And the gun shops won't sell a gun
To a foreigner with a criminal background
It's not that there are no other ways to do it
I dreamt of drinking myself to death
But after hours of puking
I discovered that life is O.K.
As long as you don't have to punch
Somebody's time-clock
Or when you're drunk but are still
Able to drive
And the classical music
Or a beautiful woman,
Or a decent typewriter,
Or a good friend,
Who is not asking you for some
Cash until Friday, every other day
At the moment,
I am still alive
We made love 3 times last night
It's 2:20 p.m.
I had two cups of tea,
Three cigarettes,
Plus some beer for breakfast
My woman is in the shower
She lives on the third floor
(Too low to jump
and I don't want to be crippled)
P.S.: She came out of the shower.
Looked at the first line. Put her hands
On my shoulders and said firmly:
"If you're gonna kill yourself, I'm gonna
Kill you, son of a bitch. Besides,
I don't need blood in my apartment."
Vlad Pogorelov: March 2021
"You're an enigma," she said
You're an enigma
I know all about you
At least more than the other girls
Her kiss was sweet and warm
Alcohol and perfume
I couldn't look in her eyes
"Yea....Yea," I said
"I don't want to be exposed
It's not good for you"
"For me?" she asked
"It's O.K. for me," she repeated
"You talk gibberish," I said
We kissed some more
Then she went to the bathroom
To snort
Ha! She liked cocaine
"God damn enigma," I thought
While drinking some lager
And when I lighted a cigarette
A black man came up to me
And asked me if I was queer.
Vlad Pogorelov: September 2023
Mosquitoes,
Cockroaches, and
Spiders
My lovely roommates
and my only true friends
I love you
I love you
I love you
In a sick kind of love
Which will make an executioner happy
And the victim will suffer no more
Only pleasure from the torture
And the pain has no right to exist
And some time my eyes are
Staring at you: big, lonely spider
You are sitting in the darkest corner
Of your dusty net
Waiting for me to get in
And I know for sure
That a giant mosquito
Made his home
Inside my swollen heart
There is plenty of blood
Inside those chambers
And when I can't hear you clearly,
When you are talking to me on the phone
I feel that a cockroach is moving
Inside of my ear
And sometimes I feel
That there is nothing to feel anymore
Ever since my soul was amputated
And smuggled to India
By a gynecologist
Who was seeing my mother
Long time ago, before I was born
So,
Mosquitoes,
Cockroaches,
and Spiders,
You are my only friends,
Who are sharing my soulless fate,
Abandoned by lovers,
Forgotten by long-time friends,
Forsaken by my motherland and the ancient gods
I am living a sheltered life
As a derelict
And it seems like it's time
To jump into the water of a substance,
Which looks like a residential street
Or a boiling sea
Depends on the point of view
Or the angle of the mind
Or just walk out the door
And swim to the store...
Buy some cheap liquor...
Go back home...
To this slow SINKING ship
And to share my fate
With my only true friends
With my only true love
With mosquitoes,
cockroaches,
and spiders
'Cause I am a derelict
And I am living a sheltered life
Vlad Pogorelov: October 2023
Experiencing her body
Next to mine
It felt warm and very close
It had the smell of alcohol
She was laughing like crazy
And talking
And swinging
Looking at me
From time to time
Drinking
I was drinking too
And smoking
An easy way to deal with life
Easy
Old easy way
And I was so happy
Happy just because of her presence
Beside me
With her soft hair
Flying around my neck
I didn’t wanna bother to
Ask her name
Instead, I asked for a cigarette
And she gave me her last one
I bet she would have given me
All of her
If I’d asked her
But I was happy with things
As they were
So I just kept drinking,
Smoking and writing on
The napkin of very poor quality
Finally, she asked me,
“What are you writing?”
“I’m writing shit…
I’m writing nothing…
I’m writing a letter to my wife…
Any more questions?”
“What?”
She didn’t hear me
It was too noisy in the bar.
Andrew Lundwall: August 2006
the el diablo outhouses
of the village
blast reggae tonight
as the silent man strangles
the sidewalk intoxicated
SOPHIE
sophie’s hands
reload my shadow
rewind my window
stoned in the afterglow
of a blue leopard’s eyes
soggy like so many moons
as bourbon babies emerge
from dated floral curtains
of next door bakery
bubbling doughy
unknowing
and across the street
groaning metallic
gruntworkers
wasted apostolic
black out beneath
the yellow flowing
midnight robe of
a meth-addicted monk
LAWN FLAMINGOS
my sister’s prophesies
usher in the gray rains
of coming circumcised autumn
in pornographic prayer
as the blood flower
of her boyfriend’s shadowy polaroid
sets fire to abandoned mattresses
of wilderness crashes a golf cart
into oblivion
lawn flamingos cringe
WHISTLER
the blind hands
of august weary
of strangling stars
fall into the graffiti
of her moist lap
Andrew Lundwall: December 2007
Andrew Lundwall: April 2008
the moon slices like ivory
through our window we see it
deceptive breaths
shredding yesterday's bills
injured that look
down the stairs
descending slowly
it hurts to watch
it's not even funny
we're incarcerated
in eternity's rumpus room
no one's speaking
THREE SLICES OF MOON
nothing personal but i'd rather distance you - cursive all up there in my face like a blizzard of bees each letter pimped out - geography this
*
three nuns at the bar last night raised mug this bud's for you - the jukebox jester played a wicked accordion for the occasion
*
a dark cloud - was it a rorshach test or blood spatter you tell me - my game is 3D - infatuated passengers grin
SENSES
if it rains for real
decorate it this time
laurel it and let it
drop like a stone
so safe on the other side
so convenient to be
EUCHARISTIC
congregate like the washington monument
bright hydrants shapes of being awake
recurring still supplied memory we’ll hook
up thoughts dispensing fleshes steadily
like yellow lips decompressing a map
hard twists of night radically lilt
to know long returns clad in black robes
by an absence like a lifer'd found the egg
10:15 SATURDAY NIGHT
struggled up from sleep
from the glow that fires her fingers
sweet consequential sweat aloof
like lonesome in snow globe
thought that if i'd told
or if you'd stayed still
long enough if being anyone
is being everywhere else but
you've shrouded yrself in silence
excused myself from room to smoke
distracted bored long drags tilted
to find her something in my stacks
BC
lost in the raging sound
a face is splintered
through the club
and its web of smoke
all eyes die here
at their feet the ladies
shiny north pole they swirl
to stun the masses stupid
at the edge of the world
renee especially
i walk through you
your legs suit me
where i wish to move
through your eyes
offer a bouquet
to shadows
to love
© Andrew Lundwall 2008
Andrew Lundwall: October 2008
those lips that smoke together
giggle at 4 am like porcelain
of it felt like years'd passed
chopping block was it the moon's
a woman entertains life this way
hear there are milky cloud noises
hear there is recur prolong each missing
with oval slip of kisses stirring up feel
which surged into my eyes for you again
RIVERSIDE
shallow faces paint this way go by
eavesdropping the largest erection yet
under penalty of checkered tablecloth
imprisoned by rainbows soft chewy nougat
milling about smoking dopest dope
being called fucked each hour inches by
flesh glaciers peach fuzzy incredible
strips like puzzles skinnydips off riverside
with buxom pupils whiskified abysmal
EYELASHES
moans on phone snuffed rationality her torso unspooling
beneath magenta sheets of doubtencrusted lust
rolling winedribbled r's of distant camerafugues
a fugitive cyclone of shattered spastic sunflowers
because lay awake is law of those indebted
because noise of kisses over shoulder past
because memory juice leaks what could might be
because floorboards creak a melancholy possible
BUG
stars after
rain feet
on street
television creeps
cramped cargo
stapled to chest
like an insect
like an ever
© Andrew Lundwall 2008
Andrew Lundwall: March 2009
footsteps the color of spur in dawn arcades
a technology of hush a nothing to look for
drinkable crests of twilight manes of dagger
stuttering turrets sloshing a mile-high snow
the dots each crane would hoist and ripple
or thrusts resilient bouquet of yellow smoke
threatened eyelids videotape stripping lots
or thinking drink and her transparent brooch
a mutable connection derailed by sideways sighs
lets so much in a little an oblivion of trinkets
IMPULSIVE POEM
a net out ahead two-a-piece wheezing
adderall funspokes belabored & bedraggled
a mystical head given a mystery occasion
of cardboard wingtips paint by numbers
plant anything that each breath should
hinge on kleptomania but it's given
murmurs of missing a tremulous kleenex
leopard print multi-faceted eyelids
drag dregs of cigarette up & away
it's an all-time rumour a gospel
duped bellydeep & good as thick
SHEER CHERRY
look no hands a buzz a silo what's collapsing
tunnels of fun ferns are set are swell & pines
throb elusive traipsing pillows of cloud elongated
melodious if she had a pin yet everywhere there's
a password stoned honey being called alive under
hunched shoulders of blue is sheer cherry conjuring
© Andrew Lundwall 2009
Andrew Lundwall: July 2016
spontaneously making noise
out there it's out there
plucked me from crazy wilderness
the sticks sniffling stoogey
o wild flower inebriated as a loon
what is it that spiritual graffiti
that follows you big lettered "poet"
through halls asteroid
upon halls asteroid hellishly
what in what gentle way
will i fuck her tonight?
in her prime my twilit dancer
this place these prancing people
among these demonically cupie
my pulpit is shabby like dolls' shaved balls
i'm ultimate lush reverend drunk
the killer the pubic hair
caught in your coffee
so irish feel my name kiss me
swim around you in august heat
and the one who asked of me
where's your girlfriend at
what's her answer
where's her tropic where are you
this alliance these vague conversations
about studliness and self-reliance
kerouac i wish i were free too
my lowell my crop my lover so pre-
occupied me i'm so so pre-cummy
and there's this everything hooking up
and you should be too harbinger
warped by your binge wrapped around
spooked in your haunted closet
c. Andrew Lundwall 2007
Andrew Lundwall: September 2023
I SWEAR
I am writing down numbers
There's a look in your eyes
That screams Moscow, bitches!
You've pinned God to the ottoman
Like a crushed mosquito elsewhere
Munching, the kids play dominoes quietly
Pretend to give a fuck, I dare you
I swear once I published in this literary quarterly...
& start to hold my breath & think virgin again
Dear brethren and sistren infatuated with irony
I swear the depth of this bread goes on forever
While a good portion of the world is starving
The balls of this poem are sagging south
I've stopped making plans expecting her call
I can't sit through movies at all anymore
My mangina is the screw
By which you thread
Your not so secret nights
Don't bother my beer
I'm drinking
Steve Halle: January 2006
teriyaki pork tenderloin @ $9.99/each
buy one get one tom cruise,
buy one loaf Brownberry, get one
jar of Hellman's real mayonaisse
buy one katie katie holmes?!?
buy one new & improved angelina-30
get one brad-41
bye one jennifer-36 (gown by vera wang) bye
buy one more tom-43-i-feel-the-need
for katie-i-love-you-dawson-26
tom, i want your baby baby buy buy buy.
buy two (anna nicole) smooth scoops vanilla
get one (j-lo's controversial dress) sweet can of
(aisle six) pie filling free
buy one britney's (no waiting lane three)
hit me baby
get one justin (ten items or less)
get one cameron.
buy one addicted (TGIF on ABC)
buy one cute, anorexic twin
get one crash buy one
(i watched you) pill get one
(grow up) diet
(mary kate) free
free sex sex tape one tape paris two
gena lee buy one baywatch babe
buy one colin farrell (bad boy buy) get
"unauthorized commercial
exploitation of the highly private
and confidential (FREE SEX) videotape
Good quality of information—
buy one get one free
buy one get one
get one free
"exceeds all bounds"
buy one
get one
buy one, get—
"of common human decency"
you may hate me
but it ain't no lie
baby
buy
buy
bye.
Steve Halle: April 2006
Steve Halle: January 2007
styrofoam packaging
w/ meat bloodstain discarded
a five of diamonds,
corners nicked off
the bud light can crushed, throw away
fuck sounds, a metal door
squeaks shut, silence, more moans
a half bag of mild winter’s salt waits unused
keyed up accord, she smokes
to trim her newly unpregnant body
she shows it
flower garden scuttled
a hip repair, metal-metal
an argument
snow falls one day,
melts next, murky
shoe run-off on white linoleum
market meet
in winter, potholes grow
a coffee can full of butts
sits off stoop right
crackpop wood burning,
whoosh of gas,
a scalding whirlpool
ups the buzz
and sleep, curtain.
BLACKBIRD #5
half-splashed in war paint
machete on canvas,
vomit is our Diaspora,
“yes, but”
idyllic in Germantown,
a depressed ex-model
tea for two by four
rots, or nails rust
from lack of proper
installation manual.
sip and taste misgiven weather.
rocks continue in bucket
love among the crushed coral
puzzle make hair, half-sip
or swallow before six.
a grubby denim hairline
inching spineward,
the paint taken off,
and soon.
emulsion in pomegranate juice,
non-proper, a defense of investment,
a denial of technique,
still-life withered grape above climate,
vin de glaciere tethered to tongue
hand swung and hamfisted
vision blurred by blood,
a nest, it ties it. a test
of flight in feathers of fancy.
© 2006 Steve Halle
Steve Halle: February 2007
a cup, or a ewe to tup,
to sit on my lap,
I'd toss her a tip
as she strips to trap
my lust, while my eyes
feast, and I'm tempted
again by the two-backed beast.
ELEGY / EULOGIA
For Lee Halle, 1928-2006
steady, steady…
live, they
say. a slow
steady, steady
wind breathes
life into clay.
it’s too whip-
fast, Pallas, to Spring
whole from a head,
and after, this marathon
of whip-fast footfalls
run year-round your
ragged dead.
© Steve Halle 2007
check out this poet's blog-journal at http://www.sevencornerspoetry.blogspot.com
Steve Halle: November 2007
dear dangerfeld,
#2
© Steve Halle 2007
Steve Halle: May 2008
Steve Halle: July 2016
crops on the downside, pesticide
boy on the crib-side, infanticide
favor eyes over eyesight into homicide
she asked me to untie her,
chase away the lice, the worthy
few isn't me, which heaven sees—
........................................................
a chain for your locket, the photo
drips from your mouthed wish,
my light oversees my greatest
pension; a shock of impatiens.
the rat beneath a Blue Line train
diseases Chicago underground—
.........................................................
broke Bogart, broken bone-saw,
thinned-out source, the sun capsizes
Los Angeles, and if you skip the sun
it will make you sleepy, if you count
measured breaths, you can snore
among bodies; these mink coats
paid off well; now I'm sworn off kills—
.......................................................
she gave in to "we," planted a house,
built a tree, still, needy, widgets belie
bees, a windy taboo, a yarn, pleased
by redundancy, Wednesday suits you.
she's the one she likes. all are pretty:
psalms and banshees like to scream
along; she likes to shoot his gun,
blown loose, left behind, if you wouldn't mind—
c. Steve Halle 2007
Steve Halle: January 2017
red plastic box
of Legos, from which
things were built
demolished brick
by plastic brick,
a place of origins
lays in wait
behind blue blinds,
a red light, an imagining,
made real by imagination.
The memory of its glow,
the ghost apparatus,
rising mind at bedside dawn.
Etched in the marble
of a city's empirical consciousness,
a dead man eternally bleeds.
Voices plead with his blood
for certitude, and construct
a reply, feels real enough
to pacify the weary mind,
the dry throat forming words,
yet the body reaches after
its own and another's carnality,
only flesh memories pacify,
not scripted visions of fantasy.
The lampshade grants
the bedroom understated light.
A turn-dial color TV,
one-hundred faux-fur paws,
magnitudes of material,
when love is pulled from warm hands.
c. Steve Halle 2006