Poise
The looking glass asserts a dialogue
Comments silently on years of experience
Condensed minutae; photoshot segments of life
Selected from kaleidoscopic patterning
Layered memories like wafers
Tesselated; uppermost intensities of yesterday
A woman’s face appears in profile
Ingrained forehead, narrowed furrows
Shows up corrugated, reserved, self withheld
Disguised lines, hidden beneath lush Max Factor foundation
Revealing secretly lingering clingings to her youth
Eyes blink, flutter eyed
As she vainly endeavours
To renew her once admired appeal
Then she smooths her veined neck
And arranges her style
Important only to herself…
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yarn woven monkey
he weaved his way
for an artificial life
consisting of his
arms,
legs,
torso,
and head–
save for a plastic
face that smiled
a hangdog grin
that disturbed
the other
children
at show and tell
proudly crowned
in his red fez with
golden trimming,
his matching vest
revealing a chest
full of curled yarn–
the grin became
more ominous
over the years,
after several
exhalations of
marijuana
staring at
it in the dark
in college…
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The new peasantry
are having difficulty
adjusting to the dirt.
They are still used to
big houses,
and find life cramped
in wattle and daub.
Each morning they rise,
and go out into the fields,
and factories, and offices,
sowing and building,
carrying trays of coffee,
and typing briefs
for the rich.
They have been taught
to know their station,
and not to rise above
the nothing they have
become.
Politicians clink glasses
with billionaires,
and laugh about
where and how
to squeeze more
from the masses,
while the servants sigh
and tighten their belts,
knowing better
than to raise
voices in protest
or eyes above the floor.
– Joseph Farley…
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Taillights gather up ahead
and glitter in the brittle
black of another holiday
passed by. We are derelict,
driving to our homes, to
our beds; betrayed in our
appetites, we scratch our
necks, massage the temples,
our headaches landing like
piled notes in a Handel
choir. We pull forward,
inch closer to sleep,
comfortable that time
is not a fallacy, that there
will be morning again—
the carriage and canter
of another chance. We
are given the green, move
from brake to gas pedal,
hear a siren wail some-
where across town. Wait.
– Timothy Juhl…
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When your own space rejects you
the walls creep in when you least expect it.
The clock sneers
And holds her breath like one of those bitch-ass girls
from school who scorn you.
The kaleidoscope of abandoned shirts, socks, pants,
empty cans, books and DVD’s
that frame you
all of sudden look impeccably dressed beneath all the dustballs
and whisper, as though you hadn’t cleaned some cat vomit
off of them a day or two ago.
You attempt to take possession
of the room
After all, you own all this damn crap
that now berates you …
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In Kilburn I walked down the street.
What you did! What you said!
Thumb-tack through a billet-doux —
that note on your door made an end!
And more than that — no more amor.
Too much wish made too much whim,
my theory of love’s mistake. So:
at last you upped and went.
Again I see my smiling snap
you’d hidden on the sly.
Jumping Jack, I’d hopped all your hints,
till: “I love you — goodbye!”
oOo
– Gerald Solomon…
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She was the prettiest girl you ever loved, but she tortured you like the Inquisition. She’d bawl that she loved you one minute, flirt with your friends the next. Every few weeks you’d break it off, for good this time, until she scratched at your apartment door to toy with your heart like a cat with a captured mouse. She would disappear in the morning, and you limped off to work that day with your throat talked raw and your heart wrung dry and your stomach tied up in knots. And you’d count the minutes until you saw her again.
So you leave town, for a good job and a fresh start. You meet a better girl, a nicer one, who moves without complaint through your transfers and promotions.…
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