Magnapoets Free Verse and Form

After Reading G's Journal by David Matthews

Black is her color
Zero her number
Pain pledged its sacrament
Held tight her pale hand
Mute beauty descended
Skeletal as dawn
Blood, sex, speed
What algebras of need
Geometries of desire
Equations of loss
Inhabit her skull?
Art her currency
Pain her capital
As if embracing
A vandalism of the soul
A music none may hear
Far from sunlight
A catechism of silence
Absence
Void

— How I would give over to her
Baubles, wigs, shiny things
Hieroglyphs, Canadian pennies
Secret imaginings . . .
For I recall too well the season
When I declared all hope deceit
Denied the possibility of love
Made my heart an empty coffin
Choked on all laughter
Even now cannot deny the truth of that vision
Still would embrace life
Improbable as Miami snow falling cold upon your lips

How I would touch her
My fingers burning like an angel waiting to be born

Previously appeared in Abbey, A Little Archive of Poetry, Qull and Parchment, and the chapbook Notes to One Who Is Far from Here

Christians by Elisha Porat

In Marjayoun, on the city wall,
I am shaken by the pealing of bells:
A distant bell-ringer steps on
the pedal, pulls the ropes,
calls the dead to hurry to be baptized,
to hasten to their prayers.
In the ancient vaults of the fortress
the doors shake, the windows scream,
insistent voices implore
the baptized: to rise once again,
one more time, from the pools,
to draw near to the miracle worker
benefactor of their bruises, witness to their wounds,
injuries that now will never heal.
In Marjayoun, from the city wall,
I see how the melody
of their prayer dissolves in the parapets,
is lost among the hills,
smoking, as if it were
a requiem for the dead.

©2007 Elisha Porat

Translated from the Hebrew by Cindy Eisner

October Bleeds, Sleeping (J. Armstead)

A chill is in the air,
smelling of the scent of regret,
grief, spicy anise
and peppermint...

There is a lonely place inside my Mind
Where it is perpetually twilight.
It is a solemn cathedral without walls
where light whispers
and shadows walk alone,
making a sound like winter rain.

In a landscape that seems an after-thought
from a Magritte painting,
Faceless people silently walk
two by two, passing the captured light
from a distant fading star
between one another
like a celestial baton.

I love this place with a dead passion.
The air is cool and crisp
and when I stare
into the deepness of shadows
the dark within
the obsidian depths stares back.

No one knows this place so well as I.
Few venture here, travellers
seldom wish to stay,
but there are always new arrivals,
births,
new life sprouting forth
from the fertile soil
of solitude.

Here, it is always midnight
the day before Halloween,
All Hallows, with faded saints
whispering nightshade myth.
Even the fallen leaves wear masks.
Here it is always the brand of autumn
that brings the scent of storms.

This place is a gothic fortress
without borders, sprawling and dense,
a Notre Dame of the Fantastic,
a Canterbury for phantoms.
The music from within this place
writes memories from forgotten
dreams
on the soul.

It is the October of Always
and the season is bleeding.

I blink, night descends, and, fitfully,
the memory sleeps.
 

--- fini ---

Image: Whitby Abbey by Perterclose, courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock, dreamstime_920627 

TRICKS TO TREAT by Nick Zegarac

Sit, my friend,

drawing loose tongue

in deep laps of bubbling intoxication

whilst I illuminate the fate of possibility.

-    a ghost story, then…

superficially corrosive to logic

bolstering the wonder-path

overactive imagination

thrust undulating and diluted

into the murky crust of darkness.

We see…we think…

we hear quick light footsteps on the ceiling

perhaps a servant girl

-yes…gone down

into rat infested bowels of a Tudor manor house,

where the good doctor buried

rotting flesh of his wily mistress

concealing their infidelity from an unhealthy wife.

A flash and flicker, then

candlelight…

no – gunfire!

The heavy role and tumble

shattered skull,

clumsily careening

down damp wooden stairs.

Ah yes…then to summon the spirit –

by faith – not prayer,

or, perchance the unholy séance…

specter of Dashiell Hammet,

nay – Sherlock Holmes…

or maybe just a hint of Jessica Fletcher

For sincerity,

to calm the taut

fine fingering nerve-strings

my caustic violin heart

quickening as though by arsenic…

…the same as in your champagne flute -

Dear guest,

You are the murder tonight.

If you would like to experience a photo enriched version of this poem, please visit Nick's other poetry blog at: http://poetisthenewblog.blogspot.com/

From Poems of the Mountain Village by Eliaz Cohen

a.

my life is here

in my house which I dug

in the mountain

b.

I would walk

my face against the wind

one of the hallowed winds

of Gush Etzion

all the stone houses are like

boulders growing out of the earth

raising rock fetuses

children of stone.

I am not of stone, in me

all is recorded

c.

when the column of smoke becomes too black

I escape to

the study hall

rub my eyes

with two thin webs of silver

d.

I came to the study hall

there

two flames

webs of thin silver are billowing

everyone is bound on the altar here, on the mountain

the flames of silver whisper

Shalom Karniel* enters

approaches, sits next to me

wants us to write a poem jointly

and his hand hovers over mine

almost coercing it to write

optimistic things

it’s impossible to write poems jointly

I tell him

and he dissipates

e.

in the dining room

at evening

I see a smiling mustache

say the blessing over the warm bread

“Blessed art Thou, O Lord,

who brings forth bread from the rock”

and the aging winds whistle after him:

amen selah, amen rock

*Shalom Karniel, poet and educator, one of the pioneer settlers of the original Kfar Etzion, fell in the battle of “the Convoy of Ten” in Kislev, 1948.

translated from the Hebrew by Larry Barak

Bloody Aquifer by Elisha Porat

In this late spring, in the time before
the first summer fruits, I cruise
the roadways idly.
My mortal eye sees:
stalks of withered hollyhock and clusters of
dill, among the blossoming vegetables.
But with my other eye I
see in your deep basins,
Oh my beloved ravaged land,
blood gathering and draining: from under
the scorching subsoil, your bloody
groundwater surfaces, rises and floods.

translated from the Hebrew by Cindy Eisner

first published in The Pedestal Magazine

Dissent, Loathing and Gunfire Over a Sausage Casserole (J. Armstead)

(...the crackling hiss of static,
like a fire in a garbage can,
as the television ignites to life...)

Awakening with sand in my eyes, vision blurred,
my mouth dry as a desert and hunger
stabbing my belly
like an impatient street mugger.

Get up.  Turn the T.V. on
while I scavenge breakfast.
A rage of global psychosis floods in through my cable.
I bathe in the electron downpour as if showering.

Corporate news broadcast delights
in a festival of murder,
somber tones, a junkie's eagerness,
sharing rumors and exposed secrets,
Politics and religion and economics
inspiring a legion of assassins.
We all have a reason to kill, white hoods and burnt crosses
We all have a reason to kill, oil prices and dead prophets
We all have a reason to kill, market crashes and lost profits

Brown sausage and drain.
Place on bottom of 9"x 13" casserole dish.
Place bread on top of sausage
and put shredded cheese on top of bread.
Mix with eight eggs and one tsp dry mustard
and two tbsp Worcestershire sauce,
then beat in large bowl:

March in lockstep and do what you're told,
March in lockstep and do what you're told.

My family photos are burning, and I watch the images curl and crisp,
The names of the Dead resound like the strike of a Judge's mallet.
We all have a reason to kill, minnarets and mullahs,
We all have a reason to kill, kevlar vests and grief-stricken mothers,
We all have a reason to kill, shiny metal badges distrust all the others

Pour liquid mixture over ingredients in casserole,
Bake for 45 to 50 minutes in 325 to 350 degree oven.
Cut into squares, serve hot.
Curse, lick burnt fingers and listen to the traffic report.
Corporate news broadcast morphs into a deoderant commercial.

Awaken to the clangorous music of a brand new day. 
March in lockstep and do what you're told.

I can't taste anything I eat
and
My hunger still burns.

(...the shushing silence of a vacuum,
like the air escaping a punctured lung,
as the television fades to black...)

--- fini ---

Image: "Chaos" by Meison, courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock, dresamstime_1864967.jpg

MADAME LEONOWENS by Nick Zegarac

Through parched yellowing history
you're galloping myth infects
lionizing lands breeched from afar.
Forever etching
an imperialist's journey
into sacred Siam’s
ignoble star.

You were England’s mistress,
an ambassador brought,
to child-like liege,
then 'silly' country taught.
Bodice constrictions,
penning fictions into fame.
How beastly barbaric was
that unwilling heart to tame?

Fed on false trumped legend
your words refuse yet to die.
A lyrical ode bursting forth
has all but eclipsed each quiet lie.
And now when one ponders
the supple questions; what and who.
He merely hums several joyous bars
of “getting to know you.”

Or conjures reflections to mind,
from the glean of a bald Russian pate,
the road may have been for journeys -
Alas, some destinations arrive too late.

Was not the pallor cheek of England bruised,
ancient and self-serving;
a sovereignty confused?
Sickly swollen superiority,
ample absurdities must now decry,
"T’was Anna then, my lord…
and never 'The King And I'."

Green Days ? | Walter Ruhlmann

I was spreading
my grey working shirts
on the balcony.
Down there
cars were passing
fast
engines revving
hard
buses rolling
driving people to where
other people were.

Fumes
all over the city.

Smog
on my grey working shirts.

Carbone dioxyde
in the air.

Black dust
in my lungs.

I took a bottle of bleach
and poured it on the clothes
and wished
something similar
had existed
for the atmosphere.

Home (Margarita Engle)

In the patio of my house

there is a branched canyon

like trees or lightning.

Secrets are sewn

into windows

of cloth.

Maps and statues

fold themselves into letters

with stamps.

A silhouette of my soul

is carved in the red clay

of a silent garden.

Memory is a camera

within a camera

upside-down.

I live in the corridor

between wild reeds

and indigo sky.