This year’s Foley poetry contest
Poetry
Posted inPoetry
Letter Written After Leaving Fresno
I’ll return for one night, carrying youpapaya. Thickly cut. Resembling driftwood scattered below the parking lotI can see from Sacramento’s river bridges. I’m taking I-5 south to 99. Cut tomatoskins roll in foil. My chest drops like ocean swells I could onlysee once
Posted inPoetry
From Nothing
“I am rebegot/ Of absence, darkness, death; things which are not.” — John Donne, “A Nocturnal Upon St. Lucy’s Day” Again and again, from nothingness I’m born.Each death I witness makes me more my own.I imagine each excess line of mine erased,each muscle
Posted inPoetry
Gli Indifferenti
The lady of the cleanersdoesn’t care.She really doesn’t care.She writes your fatein a steamed infernoand presses with despair.Three pins in mouth—Judas, Cassius, Brutus,—she greets you lowand points with tail,like Cerberus,to where the stainedand spotted go.“Come again,
Posted inArts & Culture, Poetry
‘There Fell a Great Star’
Their shadows flickered and stretched to the west.The future fixed its lidless eyeOn concrete switchgrass, furrows of asphalt.Telescopes, searchlights aimed on highShot the flare of the mind at darkness.We stood on the moon but failed to scryThe star called wormwood. The signal changed, but the
Posted inPoetry
The Paintings of Rouault
O Holy Spiritwe did not knowhow strong you arein our dull ageuntil we saw your colorsapple reds, transparent greens,blue of truth,laid upon the figurinesdeep embossed in halos,Gospel figures,hooded, cloaked,upon the roador standing by a city doorwaydrawn in heavy blackened brushagainst the Holy skie
Posted inArts & Culture, Poetry
True Believer
“What men truly want is peace,”Says the last one true prophet.Peace feels so like submissionGood prophets can fool most men.For the rest, there’s the hammer,Followed by a gentle tongue To sweet-talk the wounds. A tongueWorks wonders keeping the peace,But wonder-workers keep ha
Posted inPoetry
The Flea
For him the truth is a flavor,a pulse made of nutriment,a living mountain of breath.Even pinched betweenthe fingers and released, he springsto perfect absence, beyond punishment,a celebrant of undetectable freedom.Cinder-speck, a vibrant fiend of punctuation,no bigger than a typesetter’ss
Posted inPoetry
They Build a Hogan in Coal Canyon, Arizona
You must sit down and taste. —George Herbert That morning, Gilmore and Mary Francessacrificed a lamb for us. Gilmore said,With a cool hand,I slit the throat,the lamb did not suffer. We gathered around the lambskin-draped picnic table. Direct from the open fire,we ate everyt
Posted inPoetry
[Rooster, rooster]
Rooster, rooster,golden coxcombwait not for the sun to rise.Crow for Peterthrough the darkness,pity him who thrice denied. Rooster, rooster,Peter’s broken.Darkness shrouds all earthly scapes.Time to crow, foreven Petermay just yet be saved by shame.