SOMETIMES I WISH I WAS STILL ON THE GLIDER ON THE SCREENED PORCH by Lyn Lifshin

before traffic was no
more than a soft lull
beyond the elm trees,
ice clinking in frosty
glasses, my mother
still in 4 inch heels.

1 out of 6 by by Rob Plath

bukowski said
he punched out
one great poem in
every six

those are pretty
good odds

that means you gotta
keep banging them out
shitty or not to
get to that 1 in the 6

suffering and its proximity by David Mclean

they write that our awareness of the suffering
of others is deadened by distances
and i agree, you really have to see it
for it to be funny, that's why we have
TV

The Recipe by Emme Hor

1. keep on my knees
2. look him in the eye
3. rub his ego all night
4. cook up his soul

Sometimes Suicidal by Aimee DeLong

SPIDER BITES

I am Spider.
In 1960 I learned
to crawl.
In 1940 I woke up
with spider bites.

Last Night at Southport by Justin Hyde

tell her i'm a butterfly
with sixteen wings
beating in
succinct
anarchy.

microwave popcorn haiku by Pete Lee

pop. pop. pop, pop, pop,
poppoppoppoppoppoppop
pop, pop, pop. pop. pop.

 

THE “ A THOUSAND SMALL DELIBERATIONS”

Those with stubborn, routine-measured words
can protract the profit of a chilled age,
but they will fade, as rumours fade
being constantly replaced in webs and waves of wires,
what will never pass are these instead,
birdsong and cries of gulls that now last
all through the night, lamplight spurring
their persistence, theirs are the background breaths
and the sediments in our hearts,
and they can become the foreground
if breath makes the heart grow
while the body goes.
The blackbird pierces, crying its blade,
the air’s light glass, the gulls
slash in waves. At dawn when I fade
and maybe surface in another tide
I will wait for the first cry
to deliberate my new premises.

 

THE TOUCH

Sea instants, the patched stretch of the sun’s glare
and the wholeness of a net of ripples on the water-skin,
you breathe quietness in a blink while your thoughts stream,
you intercept this fullness as a flash in between distractions
and although it’s always almost gone you know
it can pierce pains, purposes, memories and silence
with the touch of a simple smile from bottomless irises.

THE BAT

It got in. Your greatest fear.
We said it could happen once in a million times
but once happened I felt as if it just had to.
This flutter in life’s tapestry.
Because you said you hadn’t seen it
and it had been only a flutter what you had heard
or sensed rather, and had no doubt.
You left with only a tiny scream
asking for help and dashed into the bedroom
and locked yourself in.
Your scared voice trembling, thin and far,
an infinitesimal heart
pierced by an infinitesimal needle.
And we in the hall trying hard to chase it out,
the big balcony window open wide
to the swarming evening.
It seemed like life out of spite,
as we managed to push it to the window
it turned round towards us
brushing the ceiling, the library, our heads,
stopping with a squeak on the bedroom doorstep,
then on the doorframe, a dark brown patch
like a tiny stretched cloth that jumped then
among the books, part now
of a world of hidden breaths.
And we saw it again at last,
it was flattened and well camouflaged
with the very wood of the shelf,
a still wave mirroring our still
staring selves.
And your voice from the bedroom now
still too. Waiting.
Not even the needle of it.
A lurch and we trapped it in a bowl
and threw it into the night
from which he had come
falling into the heater’s pipe,
rattling and scraping till dawn.
Now it’s gone but you are gazing
at its flash, its whiff still
hovering in the hall, or a patch
stamped mute in an inside corner.
The flash of the fluttering kernel of the world
interrupting a routine day of hopes and worries,
an astonished and astonishing wave,
the force of the present storming in
with an unavoidable lurch.

PATH

A narrow line persisting like a song.
Forwardness in grass and dirt, stone and air,
purpose, direction, what you want.
It is blonde-grey now, dry, with on its sides
the brittle winter whisper of brambles.
It rises and falls and you keep walking
testing faith with your legs’ muscles, even if it seems
the end of it will never be seen,
just the ongoing eternity of the given fragment.
In the meanwhile the mouse is like a thought,
in and out of the straw of the slope, when it stops
and stares for a second, then dashes off,
its tail a hint from a dream,
a brushstroke from the haze, earth
in its twinkling, twitching rims.

A narrow line with the scattered feathers
of your steps and breaths, and thoughts,
syllables rope-walking on silence,
the noises of your passing that leave behind
nothing but dust and sky.

A narrow line whose persistence
you are however called to imitate, gazing
at the naked trees, like the prints
of your bone-marrow, gazing
at their settled silence.
Fists of green will soon
close the gaps in between.
Fists of green like desire
where eyes beyond your eyes will nest.

---

 

Biography

Davide is an Italian teacher of English. He has been writing exclusively in English since 1993. Mr. Trame's poems have appeared in magazines since 1999. His poetry collection “Re-emerging” was published by www.gattopublishing.com in 2006.

 

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