Category Archives for POETRY

A Poem from Dennis Mahagin


Spill
by Dennis Mahagin

In my sweetest dream,
you are tattooing my trussed white ass
as flour-dusted pizza dough on a heart-shaped cutting board,
while your twin sister stands under the birthday pinata pony
lactating Milk Duds, Red Hots and Candy Corn—
the pony, lactating, that is, not your
sister, and then you softly whisper:

Aren’t you forgetting something mister?
 —pushing a bolus button at the base of my testicles
like a toaster lever, ‘till that prodigious penis it

pops right up,
and Sis is able to toss her lime green hula hoop
as a horseshoe bulls eye smack dab on the pulsating
purple head, while clapping out the funky rhythm
for the first verse of “Mickey” the cheerleader song.

I’ve told you already
about the eye patch and permanent
palm prints on my pasty forehead, that came from playing
Patty Cake and Rock-Paper-Scissors with a paranoid
schizophrenic Three Stooges fan in Washington Park;

I let you know about our previous life together
as Appalachian flower children riding astral planes
made from my magic carpet tongue sparks
flogging your flint rock nipples.

I’ve given you the password to my heart
in all its anagrammatic permutations; but you seem
to insist this is nothing but a start; so herewith, at
last comes the story of my first puppy—
an Airedale named Chipper

who could jump
five feet into the air
to kiss my cheek, and then spin
and spin, like Brian Boitano,
all the way back down
to the ground.

A Poem from Ruth Stone


WANTING
by Ruth Stone

Wanting and dissatisfaction
are the main ingredients
of happiness.
To want is to believe
there is something worth getting.
Whereas getting only shows
how worthless the thing is.
And this is why destruction
is so useful.
It gets rid of what was wanted
and so makes room
for more to be wanted.
How valueless is the orderly.
It cries out for disorder.
And life that thinks it fears death,
spends all of its time
courting death.
To violate beauty
is the essence of sexual desire.
To procreate is the essence of decay.

A Poem from Kaia Sand


DEJA VU LOVE BOUTIQUE
by Kaia Sand

I’ve opened a can with its opener.
I’ve opened a can with my teeth.
I’ve returned to find fire in the kitchen.
I’ve found my keys, instead.
My favorite dress is the backless one.
There’s always the problem of the bra.
How much fuel runs the 1956 bulldozer?
Why does the brush acquiesce to its bulk?
Does the brush reap rewards for prostration?
Does the onion lust for eyes?
I’ve lied, but only twice in this poem.
Here’s some dirt I’d like to bulldoze.
It’s civic, that dirt, heaped over bodies, cultivated toward lawns.
The house’s vendettas are ready for new occupants.
My arm is long with fingers
turning on the truthful lamp, folding habits of a blanket.
fidgeting lectures in my lap
I’m feeling more bingo than slot machine, social, I mean.
The way the mosquitoes share my face with me.

A Poem from Beth Woodcome

Hometown
by Beth Woodcome

The shame in the church crawls out of each human. A mild sin grows first behind the ears.

The wind: it comes without thought or any use of my hands. My hair grows the same color as the red scarf covering a lamp. I’ve heard of women who lead men into a chamber that is stained like the pit of a cherry. Place something upon the tongue. Go in peace.

Pretending there is no time to stop and look at the old gravestones that lean south, my father keeps driving. The common is cold and blown clear of leaves. This is near Chocksett School playground where a German shepherd tore up my soft back. My father took me to the dog that night to let it smell me. I held it in my arms. We’re all bound to something.

The strain of the body in trauma stresses the heart muscle. When I come up for air, the wind fills my throat before I realize I want it to.

When I think of what I am, I think of this small town. The dog, my back, the women, my dog.

A Poem from Grace Paley

The Poet’s Occasional Alternative
by Grace Paley

I was going to write a poem
I made a pie instead it took
about the same amount of time
of course the pie was a final
draft a poem would have had some
distance to go days and weeks and
much crumpled paper
the pie already had a talking
tumbling audience among small
trucks and a fire engine on
the kitchen floor
everybody will like this pie
it will have apples and cranberries
dried apricots in it many friends
will say why in the world did you
make only one

this does not happen with poems
because of unreportable
sadness I decided to
settle this morning for a re-
sponsive eatership I do not
want to wait a week a year a
generation for the right
consumer to come along

A Poem from Pat A. Physics


The Last Dave, Never Another
by Pat A. Physics

My hit list is riddled with names
that are homogenous. Joe Joe Joseph,
Mary Mary Marianne, William William
Bill Bill Bill, but never another
Dave. This Dave was a special
assignment involving something
that I can’t disclose here, but
I want to remember Dave as
a person I took immense pleasure
in snuffing out. A Dave whose
existence can never be
anything other than Dave. And so,
I have a six-sided Chinese star
of David, and it’s David David David
from now on.

A Poem from Elizabeth Bishop


One Art
by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

A Poem from Nicole Kuwik

TEN BILLION
by Nicole Kuwik

10 Billion farm animals will be
slaughtered next year,
and 60% of each body
will be buried in pits
in
Texas, Ohio, California

I grew up in the grass
in summertime Ohio,
a little girl blowing bubbles and skinning
knees, and all the while
calves were being blasted
‘tween the eyes with
buzzing
prods all across
the U.S.A.

In China, they use
organic waste to produce
energy, but there are many
problems, see,
the fat, see,
it leaves a layer
at the end of it all, and
bones, they just won’t
break
down.