Ashes and Dust | Allan Lake
I feel sorry for Sicilian
man up on scaffold,
cutting concrete without
a mask.
He breaks
for a cigarette. I notice
he’s wearing his mask
as a necklace.
imagery poetry
Radia | Rus Khomutoff
Atrocious verse of silence
and toad of nothingness
atrocious page where the wind is silent
territory isolated from melancholy
treasures of insomnia and the plain of silence
over which the rain and words fails
and the wind destroys everything except the word
-Leopoldo Maria Panero
Radia
My heart is elsewhere camouflaged by the
poetic phantom power
church of clarity eminence front
cardinal lamentation dwell
melancholy body sacrilege
tattoo highway insomnia punk equinox
superhorse transfiguration tesseract
deacon anarchy untitled child
and the night ocean I neglected to mention
More at https://voidfrontpress.org/portfolio/radia-by-rus-khomutoff/.
The Saloon Mirror | Krushna Chandra Mishra
Not many days ago that hot noon
in the barber’s saloon the mirror
served me a truth to alert me if I
was still the young man that I think
I am without a doubt ever raised
anywhere in my world of admirers.
I got my life’s lesson sitting stunned
as the wizard barber made me a paste
of some magic stone in his black pestle
with his hammer crushing that with a hum
of abracadabra to a pop played on his radio.
Every time after that embarrassing noon I had
my lucky encounter with my vanishing youth,
I would be drawn to that intimate hair-dyer
for looking into his whispering mirror and ask
if I still required his nod for looking young longer.
I often ask me now before I move out of home
if there would be time still for me to have a look
into a teaching mirror before I was sure myself
things were not out of hand for me to run
from pillar to post for a saloon bath past a dye.
On My Very Short Run from Mecca | Ryan Quinn Flanagan
Do not obscure Jude
do not fill mortar with ivy
let the cat hook its tail like walking
with an old man’s cane
through rainy parks named after
famous death,
sit blowing over coffee
like a reverse volcano,
your hand in the grip of the mug
plotting violent escapes.
Busy trombone voices around you
played out over a line of red swivel
stools by the cash,
tears in the fabric and you are thankful
you do not wear a watch,
a single blood poppy over mothy lapels
to remember the lifeless overturned flies
in the window,
the way Hardy sat at Cambridge
as though growing old in a bumper car
of forced intellectualism.
Wet newspaper overhead
you rush to hit the light,
ink running down your hands
the moral poverty of a
personal favela.
The Red Balloon | Susy
An obvious escape for the balloon,
I, for one saw it coming.
Even though the balloon was securely attached to the string and the string was grasped just as strongly by the boy’s hand.
It didn’t matter.
The balloon was set for adventure. It was going someplace never seen before.
A riveting ride
A color wheel ready for exploration.
Sounds in the air, a gravitational slowing, almost as if it would effect something differently.
It did.
Don’t let go.
Hold on tight.
Show us.