A Wardrobe Malfunction
Anne Fall
Generally false,
I find your societal distinctions
reek of sentiment and disbelief
in the worth of the rest of humanity.
Despite that, I like listening to you talk
about this and that.
Almost like, you know where it’s all at.
Then, you show through
like a little slip of a nip in the embarrassing dress
of a woman whose breasts
have seen better men than the applications
she’s currently taking.
Drink this, and you’ll feel better, I tell you,
and you do.
Oh, you do.
Our Sex Is Our
death. Important decision
for my wife and I.
We live with the urge to do it.
Day in day out.
Thirty five years married.
It has to be mutual.
First time sex is last time alive.
We must decide before
We are too weak
and other devices needed.
Sex is euthanasia, you see.
We agree when enough is enough.
I was born from my dead mam.
So, hopefully my wife will become
pregnant after we die.
Children in the Sky (V2)
By Michael Lee Johnson
There is a full moon,
distant in this sky tonight,
Gray planets planted
on an aging white, face.
Children, living and dead,
love the moon with small hearts.
Those in heaven already take gold thread,
drop the moon down for us all to see.
Those alive with us, look out their
bedroom windows tonight,
we smile, then prayers, then sleep.
The birds in the tree
they laid in the park like a sneak preview of being resurrected from their caskets but I didn’t want to tell them that the sun looked too old on their heads. I would’ve walked up to every father and said I didn’t sleep with your daughter. Even if it was a lie. I just wanted to say how are you, thank you for keeping my childhood on your spice rack. I’m sorry I don’t want to leave but all we ever wanted from the beginning was to kiss goodbye. I’m sorry I’m already gone. Did the mortician do your lipstick? I’m glad you’re at peace with how you’re dead. R.I.P.
and I spent the night on the other side of your roads
when the deer were dying and dark
I wanted you to come out from your statue houses in khaki shorts
to let me into your imaginary guest rooms
but you were in the dust of your welcome mats
and I couldn’t get past your smiles
I wanted to die by the stones in the mulch of your gardens
and on your daughter’s dining carts in their television worlds
DECADENCE
The decay consumes me,
the constant erosion of the solid,
all shape in slow flux.
Wind whips, rain batters, air dissolves,
light fractures as much as it illuminates.
Everything from the screech of brakes
to the sidewalk underfoot
is in the corrupting pay of time.
I sit alone in a quiet room
yet still my molecules bombard each other,
a billion rounds in my head,
even my toes, a war zone.
And day, that great over-achiever.
can’t resist the overwhelming night.
I’m a day myself.
The sun within me is counting down the hours.
Everything is unrelenting,
is designed to be what it isn’t now.
Get over it. somebody says.
Or spend more time with the eternal.
Like the sea for instance –
those waves constantly remaking shore,
rubbing rocks the wrong way,
spitting out carcasses.
Or the stars –
wonderful glowing hearth-fires
but no wood-pile in reserve.
Everything is matter – that’s the issue here.
It cannot be created or destroyed.
But despaired of –
now that’s another story.
Undertow
Though there was the ritual, I remained
a stranger to the formalities of church.
Long Island was Catholic back then, before
the heavy-accented, gold-cross-wearing
Pentecostals traded holy water
for the laying on of hands. The ritual:
wake, groom, dress, Corn Flakes, get ready for church.
There, the ritual was to stay awake.
My father promised I could make my own
decision about attending at thirteen.
I did. I left the church. But he left first.
There is no secret to it: the son does
what the father does until he doesn’t.
Our world was an idyllic place then. We were
insulated from most global news, and by
global, I mean New Jersey and beyond.
We were truly part of the middle class
and just a short drive from the most beautiful
beaches in the world. Fake ID actually
worked, and if you were lucky enough to date
an older girl, no one cared about the law.
Perhaps “churchlessness” is not a word yet,
but to Long Island Catholics, it was heaven.
Now, I am older and everything has changed.
I bought a nicer home than my father could,
and I have surpassed him in education
and income, even after adjusting for
inflation, yet I am lower middle class
because the middle class no longer exists.
The world is also more dangerous, or, perhaps,
I have that perception because of the news
cycle that is unceasing. Regardless,
I take my children to a non-Catholic,
non-Pentecostal church and they thrive.
Still, I cannot ignore the fact that but for
my father not being Muslim, I am not
Muslim and my children are not Muslim.
We are not Jews because he was not a Jew.
I take my children to the hospital
because he took me to the hospital.
Then, I was fifteen passing for eighteen;
today, my seventeen year old could not pass
for twenty-one. And I thank God that we
do not live near a beach because I cannot
bear the thought of my children being pulled
away from me, the two separated
with me having to make the choice to save one.
#
Violence
The mouth of the harmless newborn is violent
with hunger.
There is no greater colliding force than when
truth confronts a lie.
Hermeneutical errors start a long war while a
surprise attack, unintentionally, shortens a war.
The anodyne water that comprises most of our
bodies and our earth, that alleviates thirst, cools
or warms us, helps the flowers to face the sun,
flushes away our waste, ends droughts, and
makes children celebrate knows no violent equal,
the lack of it as threatening as the tsunami.
A boxer who refuses to fight in an unwarranted
war proves to be a man of peace.
#
Yours
The whistle I’d always slept through
nudged me, and I knew that on this
day, only one after I’d quit school,
I would be crowned a man by your
brothers, another virginity mislaid.
I would stick close to your side and
pretend to be the obedient son. We
would share a vow reserved for a
husband and wife, a becoming of
one. Your lungs were now mine.
You said I could never quit and set
a date for me to leave home so that
I would stay at you hip, you who
just yesterday let me quit school.
Even in the mine, I am yours.
Michael Marrotti’s book review of Dr. Randall K. Rogers’s latest chapbook.
Poem 1
Wittgenstein in the garden of Babel
After Peter Porter
is as, the world is as: words lay
As heaped autumnal leaves.
Devoid of life now – having
Been sent through – a mind and mouth:
Out of a window – trees evolve
Too slowly to be seen, too quick
For time’s body. The picture is hung –
At An Angle to complete – to perceive.
Xeno’s shadow; lurks around.
Before Wittgenstein’s light and darkness
Cast his shadow of the vision
Of the scene: cold light breaks in Finland.
Given the razored edge
Of Natures abstruse abstract.
Cut by silence the brooding angry
Poem 2
Lights wonderment
Pisa, Eiffel, Blackpool, and The Sears –
The light, the draw, the raw, raw power
Always empty. The space awaiting
to be filled, as Einstein sleeps on
The moons brief puncture
Is as it cuts land open before their feet.
The aged anger lies not far below –
Alongside the shark and serpent.
Among the mathematical cosmos
Remain rusted together.
Seen through a lens or eye.
As the night and the night roll on
Something unspoken is: or given over
To pleasure or pleasure
Poem 3
The new art school
Say what you want coz this is the new art school. Art School the Jam Paul Weller
Here! There! Here! Awaiting the new applause
Originality, the underlying clause.
Here, in this new art school
Is where every charlatan and every fool.
Is made, forged, and broke
The cost of seriousness is no joke.
The caged beast bites and claws
Smashing, minds, and smashing doors.
Into other worlds: that can never
Really exist, no one is ever that clever.
The new art school makes and fails in one breath
Awaiting your fame ’fingers crossed’ before death.
NO HESITATION
Man, all those times,
all those anxious
and nervous hours
we’d wait for you to
come home:
wondering how drunk
and fucked up you’d
be, what kind of mood
you were going to be
with, a playful and
humorous tone or a
vile and vicious , cruel
and scary asshole,
and that’s why the
first chance I had of
knocking you to the
floor, I took without
hesitation or regret.
The Beatnik Cowboy 