 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Poetry - Selections from The White Crow v4, i3 - Osric Publishing
(More poetry from Kaia Sand, Gary Blankenburg, as well as Michael McClellan, Amber Lesicki, and Matt Welter in the print version of The White Crow, available for $2.00 ppd from Osric Publishing.)
*
I still bite the burnt cork
and under the waxed lipstick
—with my teeth still peel
from this candy bar
its baggy wig, its Harrison Street
Godwin Street –I know their names
why can’t they remember mine.
They mistake me for the kid
whose breath left water-marks
whose floppy shoe was never found
though month under month
as every new calendar is searched.
I begin each year unwrapping.
October waiting inside
even in the rain –nine pages
crumpled :Spring and Summer, what’s left
from Winter and the Fall –October
still sweetened, bathed
in almonds and crinkling paper :the mask
hugged till I become that oversized moon
swollen from fruit and house to house
that kid behind each door
as every month after
will be worth holding, will pass
from stranger to stranger
ringing and remembered.
- Simon Perchik
Mexican Heather
The lavender
of Mexican heather, gently
lining green twigs, comes
like a whisper, a seductive
man who is more handsome
in his soft voice than his hard
muscles. I stay quiet and
just listen, wondering where
it will lead. He only stays
a summer, but what a summer!
The kind I will hold close to
my heart on my deathbed,
clutching it the way others
clutch rosary beads.
- Kenneth Pobo
Dreaming of Angels
Beneath me, in the dream, is a deep vault of bottomless blue.
I’m holding on to a pair of beautiful ivory ankles belonging
To an anonymous woman whose body is hanging suspended
Through a trap door in the ceiling above me where safety looms.
I climb her naked body until I reach her shoulders and look up
to discover there is a noose around her neck that the weight
of my body has been tightening. She is being strangled
and is trying desperately to speak, to ask me to release her.
For me to let go is, I’m certain, to perish forever in a terrible fall
through all that blue beneath me, so I turn my face from hers
and continue to climb only to discover that seven bald angels are chained
alternately by ankles & by neck to the suspended woman I’ve just scaled.
It has been they all along who have been supporting both the woman and myself.
I begin to mount the first of the angels. There is a wipe, & the scene changes-I’m
riding shotgun in a very old black Cadillac driven by Muddy Waters
dressed as a chauffeur. He fires up a reefer & passes it to me. As I take a drag
I look through the window and see that the naked ivory woman, now ebony, has been
transformed into a life-sized hood ornament. She has also become bald & sprouted wings.
I hand the joint back to the driver and ask him where the hell we are going. He inhales deeply,
Shakes his head, and says, Damned if I know, but it sure am a pretty drive, ain’t it?
- Gary Blankenburg
Still Life Dynamic
Your hands
scrub massaged my feet
with big grit black sand
and I saw the ocean
see us, rear up, your hands
worked my feet, the ocean
reared, your hands worked
my feet.
The instant rose on pointe,
Tangled grace, pirouette.
- Kaia Sand
Population Control
My sister tells me
the New York Times is a powerful demon-stration
of lavish phantasma that sells out
of every newsstand for a dollar per paper.
She says we are
silk and shrapnel shrouded in diesel
fumes that do not hurt anyone
important. Babylon-numb. And it costs
a dollar. Chiseling dizzily; the silent
binding of feet and hands.
The man’s hands spin
on his lap and he knows if he lies
awake at night he can cancel
entire populations. As he rides
the subway, his eyes are darting, wedging,
waiting for the pregnant glance
to pave his presentation: fluffy words
pour forth from his mouth like foam.
A jazz record
is moaning in the corner of the
world like a half-dead dog. Incense
twines through chamomile dreams
boxed up and marketed. And it costs
a dollar. We know nothing
is funny anymore.
- Jules Boykoff
Last Updated 06.25.2000