Angel Fancies

Shy and peeking

through the cracks,

a spirit shivered white,

disturbed fleeting dust

fragile as new maple leaves,

the widow starts a-working

such warmth within the

vague spot of light which

fell from the open door,

bubbling ragged and

wispy wet poetry

from ribboned solitude

flight of frantic wings

around her shine

angel fancies,

blown up and away.

Previously published as part of Found Poetry Review’s “Pulitzer Remix Project.
Poem “found” across several pages of Andersonville, by MacKinlay Cantor.

Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash.

Someone had a bigger rocket.

Dear Mr. Trump, most high pathological liar, adulterer, corrupt, compromised, pussy-grabber,

I hear you would like a “grand military parade” with tanks and bombers and soldiers marching. You demanded the biggest parade, the best parade–a better than France’s parade.

she had blood coming out of her wherever.

Every single day you sit in the oval office, you take a metaphorical crap on the Constitution. Being as our military has vowed (and so did you) to protect “against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” no, you cannot have a parade with guns and planes and Jeeps.

no collusion.

How about a parade of all the children of every background, gender, and ethnicity whose futures you plan to destroy?

they are not dreamers.

Celebrate the folks you sold out to the NRA. Bring the families of all the children who were slaughtered at schools in the last year, and the white domestic terrorism victims in Las Vegas and Charlotte. Betsy DeVos can protect them all from bears.

both sides.

Parade the wives who lost their husbands because they could not afford insulin, and mothers who lost their sons to addiction. Invite Brenda Fitzgerald to hand our free cigarettes.

the rating were huge.

Honor the lives of the prison inmates who died in custody because you and Jeff Sessions are more interested in profit than human dignity. Throw a parade for the mothers whose children committed suicide because they were bullied by kids who took lesson in how to attack the weak from your Twitter feed.

Covfefe.

Brave journalists fighting to bring us the truths that keep our democracy vibrant will march side by side with the ghosts of their international counterparts who have been butchered by despots emboldened by the glamourous way you abuse your office.

I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem.

Mr. Trump, you can have a parade, but not one with tanks and missiles–perhaps one that honors the teachers sacrifice so much to ensure our history and humanity is not forgotten amidst your chaos. Let’s honor the scientists who work to protect and understand our beautiful world before it is destroyed by ignorance, greed and denial of incontrovertible scientific facts.

perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming.

Honor every person killed in a hate crime, every teenager who committed suicide because they were relentlessly bullied on social media by kids who learned the art of shaming the weak by taking lessons from your Twitter feed.

please, don’t be too nice.

Shame on you, and shame on every single member of the GOP who has failed to act or speak out while you threaten the law and institutions that protect the values of freedom, equality and justice our country was founded on. Shame on your family. Shame will forever ride the coattails of your name.

in God we Trust

Sincerely,

E Pluribus Unim.

Coffee

Cofee had a brain

which contained machinery

he knew it, felt it moving

like pitch through the veins

tangled throughout his big body

ragged waves of tidewater

seven nails bristled out

like quills of wrath,

his own red blood

turning to black.

Found poem, culled from pages 99, 140 and 141, of the novel Andersonville, by MacKinlay Kantor. Originally published for National Poetry Month, on Found Poetry Review’s Pulitzer Remix Project. Photo by NASA.

Savoring the Sweetness

They walked in that pagan dream
wherein violets grew
distant flutes were playing,
stood alone in a wonderland
as the deer of legend ran past,
plum light intense around him

she loosened her hair, rearranged it,
wished she was wearing her
wrapper with the torn ribbon bows
he dared not look–in reverence
turned his glance from the
worshipful agony they shared

a holiday of silence as they sipped
from silver cups, attraction of
opposites, solidified by peril
hastily she touched his hair,
embraced him with the tenderness
of a crow calling the spring to come.

Found poem, culled from pages: 74, 77, 78-79,451-452, and 737 of the novel Andersonville, by MacKinlay Kantor.
Previosuly published on Found Poetry Review’s “Pultizer Remix Project” website for National Poetry Month, April 2013.
Photo “Blue Forest Path,” courtesy of Nicolas Raymond under a Creative Commons license, www.freestock.com.

Mr. Water Gate

Sour faced Mr.

water gate

gone to vote, rigged

the entire burden

lazybones slapped

forget fact

fiends in human form

forget

America

children worshipped guns

he adored

stars

brass

his mother

Christmas.

Blackout poem from Page 642, Andersonville, by MacKinlay Kantor, 1955
Previously published on the Found Poetry Review’s Pulitzer Remix Project website, April 2013.

For My Immigrant Ancestors

Road to Nowhere Ethan Crowley — *Road to Nowhere*, by Ethan Crowley

Ode to Cardamom

Daughter of Kerala
the Queen of spices
ran wild in the monsoon forest
set sail on the backs of intrepid wanderers
and roamed the world for thousands of years
before she stopped in the snow,
bedraggled at a Bavarian merchant’s door
and was invited in to sit by the fire
to stay a few hundred years more.

Her warm flavor conjures the palaces of India,
intoxicating scents of Egypt, Greece and Persia.
These healing seeds of Sumer and Asia
were preserved in the dough rolled through
my grandmother’s speckled hands,
the sole survivor of her abandoned history.

The jar waits behind the coriander and cumin
and on the longest night of the year,
I grind the green seeds on my metate
slowly savoring the motion.
When the baking is done, and the flame has cooled
I pop a moon-shaped cookie, and my mouth
is filled with the flavor of my inheritance–
this smoldering spice sleeping sweetly
in a blanket of sugared lace.

Running

I carry a picture of the two of us
about to walk to our first day of school
I clutch the sleeve of your blood-clot paisley shirt
that’s untucked itself from your brown corduroys
long hair and longer collar, defiant,
the shadow of our mother falls behind us,
my braids tight, I wear a green checked dress
my thin arms cling, wrapped tightly around yours
head leaned on your shoulder, gaze serious
I am trying to keep you with me—

You taught me to run on the balls of my feet
panting air quickly through our mouths like deer
extra oxygen pumping makes us fast
we fly over the dusty cracked concrete
past thirsty palm trees, drinking in moonlight,
leaping off curbs, through the weedy mud lot
bare feet floating over broken glass and pop tops,
I keep pace with the wind, you outrun me
fearing I’ll never catch up, I find you,
a laughing silhouette on the stairs.

That was before the door slammed
before the glass was broken—
before a needle ever went in
before they told you that you were stupid,
before you believed them.
I knew one day, you would just keep running,
but I didn’t know it would come on such
an ordinary day, a nothing day,
when I knocked on your door
and you just weren’t there.

For five years I scattered whispered prayers on
the Santa Ana winds, to blow through every
city park, jail cell, trash-can lined alley,
street corner, freeway bridge, and smoky bar
hoping they would find you.
I hiked alone on the Carrizo Plain,
stole a rock from the heart of the
San Andreas fault, where spirits dance
without heed or consequence,
so I could bring it to you.

You dug yourself out, like Lazarus
came back a prodigal son
they gave you a crown of sweet redemption
bathed in praise and washed in hallelujahs,
you tried to shake off your past, ran
over the Rockies, across the Great Divide
blew past the prairie’s wild horses, but
I could see a bloodless crooked finger
was still pointing
at your altar boy heart.

You made a bargain down there,
you knew a clock was ticking—
and some slithering thing
would come seeping
through the melting asphalt
to take you back,
and now it sitting in the corner
of this stark white room, where I am holding
onto your arm for the last time, your body is
the color of wrong, eyes yellow, like a cheetah

At dawn, a nurse wheeled in a tray
with coffee, and a plate
overflowing with pastries
before he quietly said,
it’s time.
I wanted to tell your stories,
I wanted to sing, or pray
your soul smooth, but I just
watched as you ran,
fast as deer, not looking back.

Previously published in volume 1, issue 4 of The Grief Diaries.

For his birthday and Pride

Alan Turing, 7 June 1954

With my eyes closed I can almost see you
playing a game of noughts and crosses
during French class at Sherbone
your china white schoolboy fingers
wrapped around a pencil
prying at the gates of mystery
with your vanadium steel mind.

Left alone against sulking cold bricks,
I pressed myself into your shadow
walked away with it and
puzzled my way through the war
in a whitewashed hut at Bletchley,
creating the bombe that proved
contradiction can deduce
everything.

Now I have bungled my way to infamy
The “burglary and buggery”
being turned into a woman
for not being a proper man,
one can only giggle at the irony.

Now, the war has gone cold
they fear one drunken stumbling kiss
on a cobbled Manchester street
might infect the world
with a rash of atomic weapons.

Under their microscope,
I have had nothing left to do
but search the whorls
of fircones and daisy carpels
mapped with all mathematical certainty,
combing through the numbers
for an echo that might be you.

It is time to give up
this young man’s game.
soon the scent of bitter almonds
will send me off to sleep,
the poison apple on the nightstand
a symbol of the forbidden, hope
that your crooked smile and lightning wit,
will wake me from this dream.

Previously published in Floating Bridge Review Number Five, 2012

Deep in the Green

Das große Rasenstück

deep green, ochre green,
mould green, amber green
earth untamed, unkempt
majestic perspective
rendered expertly
into perfect fertile chaos

a handful of turf
subject to trampling
by horse or by foot,
cart wheel or plow
anywhere, everywhere,
look down

dandelions unbloomed
bowed in long grass
holding petals tight,
will burst forth–
three brilliant suns
at morning’s light

leaves don’t care
if they are ovate,
or spatulate,
are unaware
that they are dactylis
and poa pretensis

darkening,
the golden sky
halos the blades
of grass and seed,
the tallest growing
beyond the frame

worms wander
through white roots
tethered to a common plot,
creeping things live,
feed and breathe
unseen

Previously Published in Between the Lines, 2012.

Featured

Circe Invidiosa

Eyes flash like waves near crashing
throwing thunderbolts of despair.
Glaucus swims to me, an eel flowing
seal-slick tail and seagrass, hair.

“Give me a cup for love,” he pleads,
“to turn Scylla’s gaze to me.
She is the true pearl my heart needs
in this cold and lonely sea!”

Through the lace-gray fog I find her,
resembling nothing more, than
an ordinary pebble crashed upon
my mind’s sharp and rocky shore.

Her pale eyes must be broken
to miss the breathless beauty in
each curve of every glistening scale–
a divine man clothed in fish’s skin.

What gentle woman would refuse
to embrace such a godly prize–
immortal strength and bold desire infused
with raging powers of the surging tides?

I tell him I will help him,
and in that vow, I do not lie…
The dark magics I brew in my cup
offer gifts of deeper sight.

Smoldering branches, burn deceptions,
baneful leaves and flowers decay.
Fruit of truth—a revelation.
In this cup, the light of day.

Be revealed, scuttling cruelty.
Be revealed, heart’s dismay.
Be revealed, false hounds of passion.
With this cup, my will make way.

Not jealousy, but love’s sacrifice–
a heart cracked pure and cruel
tips the cup into the bath
and poisons Scylla’s pool.

Truth strips the mask of comely skin,
lets loose the spectacle that lies within
the needle teeth, the shrieking bark–
an endless thrash of tentacled arms.

She will screech for all eternity
astride harrowing rocks displayed,
a warning to all unlucky sailors
who dare steer their ships this way.

Published by Alfred Music, 2015, in the score;
Circe Invidiosa: Sonata No. 1 for the Piano, by Tom Gerou.

Catherine Seitz Nichols

poetry & shenanigans

Category: Poetry