Saturday, November 29, 2014

Anny Ballardini




Truck, November Issue
2014




This November,


With a well in my self
Draining water to saints
Kierkegaard’s paradox
From Socrates’s endless testing
Rules
While looking into the black pond
For answers
__God answers
Inwardly



This November,


Appalling month
Over 100 answered
Joining mine to theirs – yours / ours
Under Saint Cecilia’s patronage
Musicians blew their horns
Organs woke many
While the girl grew ecstatic
In thinking she could
Be



This November,


Thick in air stuffed with light
In closed rooms
At night
Trying to think
When thought gets lost
In and out of self
To accommodate
Past / future events
On a ten fragmented score



This November,


Has seen mountain peaks
Kneel
Sturdy Siqueiros’s hands
Leak tears and grow roses
On Time’s façade
Ancestors chant
Interpretative Chinese lantern plants
Decorate Proust’s monumental
Writings



This November,


Talks
Of seeds and piano keys
Of herbs
Of
Of vincristine
Of
Of crashed & renewed hopes
Of the makers of Illusions
Of a Leap of Faith



This November,


Smiles down at us
With its temperate sun
Its derailed tracks
Its alarm clocked underground routine
Messages on trains and greyhound busses
Slit throats bathed in the forgiveness of popes
Sacraments soaked in the concept of
Anxiety
Brevity



This November,


Without choice
The eleventh
Set as an Acheronian stud in a cameo
The rows of windows
People dis/appear in dim streets
They dis/appear in my mail
Their white poems against the black of Truck
With my acknowledgment to my
Moving November Poets



This November,


In the life of all
Distanced in our flesh
Distracted in our oaths
Hyper-attentive
Booted steps in echoing bells
Coats / cloaks
“Anything but loss”
Pleading for the word God gives to the Just
From those milky sky-s.



This November, 


Cold at the end
In the bones
With Thanksgiving on Fb
Teas honey chestnuts
Coughing
Giving thanks:
The girl is still alive
Distant
But still alive.




© Anny Ballardini



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Thursday, November 27, 2014

Lorraine Martinuik




Beadnell Creek

N   49°32.531'
W 124°45.536'

1
How time can stop. Stand still mid-passage, mid-stream. A bridge, high water, flood  where the creek curves to run north. The creek leaves the forest canopy there, where gray, where no horizon. Where the estuary, wide open. Mouth, urgent for the sea.
Bridge, cross over. Leave or return to, come to. A different time.

2
Sweetgrass smoke fused with winter. Fog closed in, shrouded a figure formed of leave-taking words pronounced for weeks, months following the news. How a death can shape things, as if all life is soft clay.
Water, flood-high swept close under the bridge. Wind, storm-force swept in from the sea, from the north, from outside the forest canopy. Effigy of clay swaddled in cedar fronds. Halted for a time there on the bridge.

3
Released, the effigy rode the creek, but not far. The outflow, even in flood, not strong enough to sweep it all the way to the estuary. Where the tide.
Freighted, the weight of clay took it under water, there where the creek curves north. Settled it, mid-stream, in the soft silt bed, to be worn away, over time, grain by grain. Over time, the creek carried the story to its mouth, where it opens to the sea.


Lorraine Martinuik ©2014


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Lorraine Martinuik


Awake

Winter storms the night awake,
rain striking glass panes a nocturne for three a.m.
a melody on the black keys
arranged for the longest night.
Though now all nights are long with wondering
how he sat, enveloped by the dark.
Late winter afternoon gathers dark
the fired imagination, how coming awake
he retraced the familiar valley roads, wondering
could he could drive through one more three a.m.,
would this be one more starless night,
might he find on a back road a key
to turning back, giving back the key
to his father's gun, taken. And sometime after dark
– exact time unknown – stopped at the edge of town [night]e
to the urgency of three a.m. [awake]
[three a.m.]
and stopped wondering.
How could I not have asked him open, I wonder
how long he had planned to take the key
without being caught. At three a.m.
patterns emerge from the dark,
in retrospect. I was not awake.
I thought his dreams were starry nights.
Rain prevents the stars tonight
nothing to navigate by, stop wondering.
How his mother carried home his ashes, awake
many nights wondering, if he had not found the key,
had not the gun to run with, into the dark.
We all question the night at three a.m.
No answers at three a.m.
nothing we can know. But imagine, night
howling like winter, time long and dark
as the distance to the North Star; wonder
how long to compose the black-key
Nocturne for Three A.M. While I, awake
wonder how he failed to exhale the dark
weight deep in the lungs, night pressed hard
against the heart. How take aim?



© Lorraine Martinuik

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Monday, November 24, 2014

Jeff Harrison




Queen Nab Masquerade


a toast to you, passed-around worrier
dark surplus water rattling around as
you're bending breathing in white grasses
skin my enthusiasm & see how pretty
it is then, a sequential enthusiasm anatomy,
layers nabbed clear & ever clearer
if in such clarity we have silence & if
in silence we have death, then in echo we
have the cradle, words don't spread to the
edges of my breath, these edges are
spattered with blowflies, our bones are
the roots of the sky, the hair of our head is
the bottom seam, is the center of the Earth,
if this cup could snow, its saucer would be
a bank, Queen Nab, faint with feeding silence,
words imprisoned on hairs slender like stakes
dark surplus water in this toast time of your guts




© Jeff Harrison


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Friday, November 21, 2014

Barry Alpert







T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G


            via Paul Sharits & David Franks



This straw,
its draw.

Destroy
this drawing,
it’s Troy.

Distraught.



© Barry Alpert





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