Naked Embellishments of an Ornament by Kelly Wantuch

Slugs copulating on
Suspended slime cords
Swaying in the breeze
Twisting their capsules
Under a sycamore tree.
Wind chimes play out
Their charmed hearts while
Our Lady of Thermidor
Soaks in a wine barrel bath
Of warmed strawberry juice-
Healing her Napoleon woes.
Stepping out light-headed
She dries her blushed body and
Slips into her sleeveless
White silk dress -no panties.
Six sapphire rings on her toes
With a forehead jeweled with rubies she
Makes her appearance at the Paris Opera.

Over the River by Kelly Wantuch

There was something about the way
His body looked... swallowed up by
The reclining ghost-white bed,
Dry Bartlett- faced with lemon-aid
Eyes expressing the words he was
Holding hostage. Eating sweet cubed
Watermelon moistening his
Parched lips into a smile as
He watched over Little Bobby
Playing with the scrap wood train he
Made for him; up and over the
Blanket mountains.

Closed flower shops

Leaves a bare oaked
Casket weeping
At Christmas time.

ACCESS DENIED by Louis Gallo

I got here by mistake. I don’t want in.
It was never in the deck. I refuse
as I would refuse gravity, if I could,
and the heat death and dark energy,
entropy, black holes, whatever goes wrong.
I’d chuck the body itself with all its
sacs and ducts and nodes, the weak links;
and the mind, I’d kick that clown in its ass
if I could.
Don’t think I can, Don’t think I can.
The little engine that couldn’t.
No wonder we de-rail, swerve into imbroglio.
As if the tracks ever lead anywhere
we want to go, like Acapulco,
the trees verdigris and swollen
with fruit. Here at the outpost
it’s one powdery foundation after another.
That’s how long it’s been. Powder,
that queer state between solid and gas.
All you can do to push another button
and remain permanently out.
Access, just another orifice with airs.

POEM WITH A CUCUMBER IN IT by Robert Haas

Sometimes from this hillside just after sunset

The rim of the sky takes on a tinge

Of the palest green, like the flesh of a cucumber

When you peel it carefully.

*

In Crete once, in the summer,

When it was still hot at midnight,

We sat in a taverna by the water

Watching the squid boats rocking in the moonlight,

Drinking retsina and eating salads

Of cool, chopped cucumber and yogurt and a little dill.

*

A hint of salt, something like starch, something

Like an attar of grasses or green leaves

On the tongue is the tongue

And the cucumber

Evolving toward each other.

*

Since cumbersome is a word,

Cumber must have been a word,

Lost to us now, and even then,

For a person feeling encumbered,

It must have felt orderly and right-minded

To stand at a sink and slice a cucumber.

*

If you think I am going to make

A sexual joke in this poem,

you are mistaken.

*

In the old torment of the earth

When the fires were cooling and disposing themselves

Into granite and limestone and serpentine and shale,

It is possible to imagine that, under yellowish chemical clouds,

The molten froth, having burned long enough,

Was already dreaming of release,

And that the dream, dimly

But with increasing distinctness, took the form

Of water, and that it was then, still more dimly, that it imagined

The dark green skin and opal green flesh of cucumbers.

Lobocraspis griseifusa by Ted Kooser ~ DELIGHTS & SHADOWS

This is the tiny moth who lives on tears,
who drinks like a deer at the gleaming pool
at the edge of the sleeper's eye, the touch
of its mouth as light as a cloud's reflection.

In your dream, a moonlit figure appears
at your bedside and touches your face.
He asks if he might share the poor bread
of your sorrow. You show him the table.

The two of you talk long into the night,
but by morning the words are forgotten.
You awaken serene, in a sunny room,
rubbing the dust of his wings from your eyes.

One of my favorites--Into White by Cat Stevens

Tapioca is Like... (a flarf poem) by Kelly Wantuch

 

  … a good thing while pregnant, but I don't know, eating foods that naturally containing cyanide compounds and all. People have been eating tapioca at least since the heyday of the Mayans, maybe in place of puffer fish.

Is it the taste, or the texture?

 I can eat it like a kid now, and that's good enough… it’s a creamy goodness with jujubes.  I have to admit that I've never liked the texture of tapioca pudding; it has a strange and gooey texture, like silly putty. It's like a smoothie, but usually not as thick like you’re chewing on coagulation of semen in testicles or something. Eating tapioca balls feels like you're chewing the insides of your cheeks, or like chewing on gummy bear’s balls of a passion fruit. I tell people that eating the tapioca balls seems a bit weird at first  like chewing on little gelatin-like dots, like little fish eyes staring up at me. Sometimes it tastes like heaven in the form of diarrhea, like a vanilla exploding round bubbly feel.

 Try it, eat all about it!

Where did the damned squirrel go?

Cotton Candy

Shrunken Pond

Down Dog

Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape By John Ashberry

Eraser by Kelly Wantuch

The first message
Sits unthought of.

A livid hue
Emerges a
Sea green
Pleasant vacation
Remembered.

He brought you thunder
As you wished.

It shall grow if
Inspiration
Suddenly
Remembers
The thought.

Tears are scratched
Hurtling through
Her thighs.

Gusty schemes
His jealous bolts
Rupturing
Only darkness.

Finished his urge
Around the strange
Fear from
Burping  a
Domestic country.

Boundary Issues by John Ashberry

 erasure  by Kelly Wantuch

He groped till there was nothing.
Grabbing at life's desert still warm.
An impossible begs you a chance.
Waver disputes into war.
Time ends abruptly
To heal weeps
Before the shaft.
Contemplating the lost
For it always has to pay.

Snowy Day 2010