October 2012 | back-issues, poetry
The Missing Poet’s Lounge
In memoriam Weldon Kees and Lew Welch
In the missing poets’ lounge, a sad man
Tickles the piano, key by cold key,
Thinking, all the time, of his escape plan.
He spreads his long fingers into a fan,
Drops a chord, exhales smoke. He wants to see
What he’s missing. Poet’s lounge, young sad men
Looking too cool. One watched since he began
Playing. He snapped his fingers far too quickly,
Thinking in double time. He had his own plan
For getting out, he knew. The second hand
Ticks loud. He strikes a note. Could all these be
Missing poets? The lounge seemed sad. Each man
Speaking only to themselves as they scanned
The room. Alone, each one was sure that he,
Alone, was thinking up some escape plan.
He trills a slow riff. He stops and stands.
He bows. The faces tell him he is free
Of the missing poet’s lounge. This sad man’s
Thinking all the time. His escape is planned.
by Mark J. Mitchell
A Literary Myth
A dry pen
rolls down the table.
It teeters, momently,
on the edge
then falls
turning gymnastically
and lands point
down in the carpet
exactly like
a sword in a stone.
by Mark J. Mitchell
Mark J. Mitchell studied writing at UC Santa Cruz under Raymond Carver, George Hitchcock and Barbara Hull. His work has appeared in various periodicals over the last thirty five years, as well as the anthologies Good Poems, American Places,Hunger Enough, and Line Drives. His chapbook, Three Visitors will be published by Negative Capability Press later this year and his novels, The Magic War and Knight Prisoner will be published in the coming months. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, the documentarian and filmmaker Joan Juster. Currently he’s seeking gainful employment since poets are born and not paid.
October 2012 | back-issues, poetry
But did he find the tribe
spat out of rock
below the cousin clouds
with sounding conch shells
between their ears?
They feed on everything:
metals, birdsong, saffron,
until what’s out and in
seem twin and one
like the dance of lesser
and greater dreamtime.
Social as termites,
they raise tower upon
tower, projecting
a blind, spiral god;
vicious as hornets,
they cultivate venoms and
enemies to die of them.
There’s less blood
painting and head polo
than their fathers knew.
Customs evolve as
killing grows easier.
They’d almost rather
track evil spirits
to their inmost cells,
corner them in forests.
Their stories tell both
of gates and pits,
how one can seem
much like the other.
Armed with a language
they speak forward slowly,
liable to lies
and misconstructions,
tending at times
toward the grotesque,
but hopeful at last
of their waiting name.
by James Fowler
James Fowler teaches literature at the University of Central Arkansas. His poems have appeared in such journals as Poetry Quarterly, Rockhurst Review, The Hot Air Quarterly, Amoskeag, and Parting Gifts.
October 2012 | back-issues, poetry
Rift Time
A crevice spilling seconds
into the endless cup,
a whorl of glass so fine
as the film of saliva over lips
spun in the gasp of a moment,
tongue tucking back into its cave—
the cool stop-flow exhale,
waiting, weighting,
the mass of time
evaporates from the flesh,
swirling in the tangled ether,
sprouting from rooted breath;
the clock unfolds between lovers’ teeth,
blooming into a flower, its face
the weeping mask of an instant,
its hands two warm, slick leaves
reaching through white picket fences
to conjoin in the space between.
by Ross Moretti
Gravity’s Arrow
Gravity carries only one arrow in his quiver,
a bolt of blackened cypress salvaged from fire,
tempered in the warm ashes of sorrow.
It is fletched with red feathers, plucked
from a falling dove dyed in blood and cherries.
Platinum-tipped, it shines in the sun,
and in the darkness drips a slick glimmer.
This is all he needs to bring the world down,
to bring the moon to her knees
and make her sway with the ocean tides.
One arrow, fed through with steel cable
that he keeps in a coil on his hip.
With this, he will seize you by the heel, Achilles,
and drag you back from the far shores of Troy,
sparing you the final grief of heroism.
by Ross Moretti
Excelsior, or Lover Lost to an Overdose
Cellophane tensions
swelling;
pearled intoxicants
mixed in the dark:
we pumped
everything you never had
into that syringe,
sealed with a kiss
over the needle.
I pierced you with the feather
and you took wing
in the psychotropic aftermath:
fluorescent eclipse and
nectared aurora.
Mid-flight, you realized
my gold foil betrayal,
pretty in the sun, but
insubstantial,
the brass knuckle of my love,
and you flew skyward
through frosted cloud
and filament air
to dash upon the knife-blade stars,
leaving me to crystallize
amongst the raining
celestial shards.
by Ross Moretti
Ross Moretti is a first-year graduate student at Stanford University. An aspiring poet who originally hails from New Jersey, he was published several times in his undergraduate literary magazine, Lafayette College’s The Marquis. He recently participated in a poetry reading with Matthew Dickman, in recognition of one of his poems in Lafayette College’s annual H. MacKnight Black poetry competition.
