poetry

3 Sonnets: Mrs. Alving Contemplates Her Nipples, Like Epictetus on Mushrooms, Another Ha Ha Chuckle for the Blessing of Rest by RW Haynes

by 
Mrs. Alving Contemplates Her Nipples

Hedonism governs men, or simple greed
Deludes them always, so these masculine minds
Delight in lies that their convenience finds
So that for them there’s nothing true indeed.
If the lies are just nature’s just excretions,
Or by-products of heated oxidation,
I see their value as no more than negation
A healthy memory turns into deletions.
Lusty dudes, braggarts, loud buffoons,
Imploring forgiveness, tender sacrifice,
Though only my surrender will suffice,
I scorn your swaggering, you groveling baboons.
“Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!” These babies cry.
My nipples are mine now. Big babies, good-bye.

Like Epictetus on Mushrooms 

If Fortune turns its face toward the sun 
Whose light takes eight minutes to arrive, 
Then I put aside impatience to revive 
Fortitude in hope when day is done 
My sputtering candle may be noted then 
For what it’s worth, although its little light 
Took sixty years of travel through the night 
To let its fitful illumination begin. 
Duty is useless if no mark is made, 
And if the light should vanish, be unseen, 
As the Spartan said, I’ll fight then in the shade, 
Divested of incumbrance, darkly serene. 
Take your insincere sympathies, then, 
And stick them all elsewhere, all the way in. 

Another Ha Ha Chuckle for the Blessing of Rest

She thought light would leak on all
True dilemmas, personal honor, life or limb,
What to cook, what to hide from him,
And when she saw some ominous shadow fall
She knew to relish inevitability
Like an old stone statue staring in a tomb,
Silently satisfied in that silent room,
Mutely assimilating shadows she could see.
“My poetry will get you,” she wanted to smile,
“My syllabic dynamite, my shapely lines
Of harmony, tangled like wise vines,
Must stack all being in an elegant pile.
But you, O Diogenes, what you are after
Provokes no more than a brief fit of laughter.”

R. W. Haynes, Professor of English at Texas A&M International University, has published poetry in many journals in the United States and in other countries. As an academic scholar, he specializes in British Renaissance literature, and he has also taught extensively in such areas as medieval thought, Southern literature, classical poetry, and writing. Since 1992, he has offered regular graduate and undergraduate courses in Shakespeare, as well as seminars in Ibsen, Chaucer, Spenser, rhetoric, and other topics. In 2004, Haynes met Texas playwright/screenwriter Horton Foote and has since become a leading scholar of that author’s remarkable oeuvre, publishing a book on Foote’s plays in 2010 and editing a collection of essays on his works in 2016. Haynes also writes plays and fiction. In 2016, he received the SCMLA Poetry Award ($500) at the South Central Modern Language Association Conference In 2019, two collections of his poetry were published, Laredo Light (Cyberwit) and Let the Whales Escape (Finishing Line Press).

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author & https://poetrylifeandtimes.com See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

OLD CHORISTERS & MY WAR WITH ROACHES. Poems by EM Schorb

by

OLD CHORISTERS

Singers                                                                 Look

of our generation                                                 from

are turning up                                                      a high bridge,

dead. A serial                                                       as highway god,

killer                                                                     he drops

is injecting                                                            stones on old bones!

them                                                                     Even the sap

with corona                                                          of trees is worried

plus cancer                                                          up the trunk

heart disease                                                        as the killer

and stroke                                                            waits

This police                                                           for an autumnal

silhouette                                                             weariness of

of the killer                                                           leaves.

isn’t made                                                             I am

of his head                                                            Time’s agent

and shoulders,                                                      his tool

but of his                                                              he brags.

twisted mind,                                                       Singers

made                                                                     of our generation

of a brain                                                              think that this

to answer                                                              is a serial crime,

for his crimes                                                       but have

of torture                                                              no choice

perpetrated                                                           but to

on so many                                                           become ringers

choristers.                                                             and to pull

With a rough                                                        the ropes

cat-tongue                                                            and toll

he licked flesh                                                      the bell.

from bones

and made

the others

mercy-kill

to make

amends.

 

MY WAR WITH ROACHES

                            Pitt Street, Lower East Side

 

I looked into a half-filled beer bottle

left opened and standing out,

saw six dead roaches floating atop the stale, flat beer.

I was disappointed.

I could have drunk the stuff.

I had no aversion to warm, stale, flat beer,

and had learned to put a head on it

by dropping an Alka-Seltzer tablet into it.

But I wasn’t about to drink beer that had

six dead roaches floating in it,

bodies like boats and legs like oars raised up,

so aimlessly.

The place was filthy.

I needed order!

 

I went out, bought roach spray,

sprayed the walls, up and down,

back and forth, until billowing clouds

of poison were closing on me from every corner.

It was bitter cold out, but I knocked the

cardboard out of the windows

and let the fresh frosty air suck the poison

out from under my nose.

I blocked the windows again.

I surveyed the carnage.

Roaches of all sizes and shapes were swarming

over the walls, dropping from the cracked ceiling

with small, ticking sounds and

rocking on their curled, chitinous backs,

flicking, flailing, their feelers drooping.

 

The kitchen gas range was a stronghold,

a fortress of greasy grooves and baked-in crevices.

I lit the oven and watched until the top

of the stove glowed red.

Out they came by the swarming hundreds,

feet burned away, feelers melting

into kinky hairs. They ran over the stove

in desperation, panic, trying to find places

where they could put their feet.

Expectant mothers, their eggs in chitinous cases

at their rear ends, struggled with their hindmost legs,

as with an instinct to save their offspring,

to force or kick the cases loose.

Some had their cases dangling

by only one side when they leaped

from the top of the stove.

As they landed on the floor and tried to crawl,

with their burnt feet, their dragging, kinked feelers,

with their wings askew, and their dangling,

thread-hanging egg cases, I sprayed them madly

then trampled, kicked, jumped up and down on them,

only wanting them dead.

I saw a fat, hideous albino roach,

already like the pale ghost of its dead self,

leap from the stove.

I squashed it underfoot and swore

I could hear its white shell crack and

spray the pale muck of its insides out: squish!

When I lifted my shoe it dragged itself,

like animated pus, into a heap of glittering

brownish bodies. Thousands of crooked legs

moved sluggishly—then, here and there,

with sudden convulsive speed—

over the place where the ghost had gone.

 

On the wall was a wooden plaque

that held sets of false teeth, an exhibit,

sold by a dental supply firm to dentists.

It belonged to an artist friend who was to use it

for some arcane artistic purpose

but who had forgetfully left it here.

I grabbed the plaque from the wall

and mashed it down atop this horrible mass

of half life. Then I jumped on it, up and down,

not distinguishing the sound of the breaking teeth

from the sound of roaches snapping on the stove

like popcorn. When I looked down

there were rolling and bouncing human teeth

among the slimy dead and still crawling.

Sakyamuni says they will live again.

Needed: Sneaky Pete, pot, peyote.

 

 

Schorb’s work has appeared in Agenda (UK), The American Scholar, The Carolina Quarterly, The Hudson Review, The Southern Review, Stand (UK), The Sewanee Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The North American Review, Poetry Salzburg Review (AU), The Yale Review, and Oxford Poetry (UK), among others.

His collection, Murderer’s Day, was awarded the Verna Emery Poetry Prize and published by Purdue University Press, and a subsequent collection, Time and Fevers, was the recipient of the Writer’s Digest International Self-Published Award for Poetry and also an Eric Hoffer Award.

Most recently, his novel R&R a Sex Comedy was awarded the Beverly Hills Book Award for Humor.

 

 

 

Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author & https://poetrylifeandtimes.com See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

Ode to Olivia. A Poem By Jack D. Harvey

by 
       Ode to Olivia

Oh, Olivia, during
what disingenuous dialogue,
getting closer and closer,
you told me
in that bar by the seashore
"pretty good-time girl
comes once, comes often,"
eyelashes shyly lowered,
thick and lustrous,
lowered time and again
to hide the hard eyes
I knew were there.

I was surprised by
your interest;
vital with intent,
your lithe body
tilted towards me,
white teeth showing
in a smile, breasts
firm and unfettered
in your summer blouse.

Delirious with your fancy magic
I nearly fell off the bar stool,
fell like a fairy-tale frog
clear down to the bottom
of the mossy well, my member
swelling in your favor,
transported to
to your body's joyful openings,
anticipating
hot and wet,
those ports of entry,
those sweet breasts,
that sweet tongue
flicking between your lips;
promises of things to come.

O ye spermy nights of the gods!

The rune on our canoe's tail
says "enter here, ye of little haste"
and willows brush our arms
as we paddle down the river
of ardor and fulfillment
and coming together and
whatever else
we can muster up
from a time of dreams,
from the manna
of this earthly paradise.

Olivia, you were brown as a nut
from a summer of sun;
a glamorous summer goddess
there for the taking and still
it came to nothing.
A change of heart,
a parting glance,
and off you went.

Your naked this I never saw,
your curly that I never pawed;
alone in the majestic garden
of self I sit stiff and cold
as a block of ice;
a lonesome soldier in a sentry box
waiting for the gate to open;
it never does.

Olivia, you left me
as you found me
and just as well
for the both of us.
There we were
in that bar,
and there we are forever,
enshrined, inscribed
like Keats’ Grecian urn,
graceful outlines,
a frieze of some long past event,
at rest in that luminous
wasted moment forever;
no future, no past,
no time at all and
what never happened,
what is not there
just as real
as what is there.

Jack D. Harvey’s poetry has appeared in Scrivener, The Comstock Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Typishly Literary Magazine, The Antioch Review, The Piedmont Poetry Journal and elsewhere. The author has been a Pushcart nominee and over the years has been published in a few anthologies.

The author has been writing poetry since he was sixteen and lives in a small town near Albany, New York. He is retired from doing whatever he was doing before he retired.

His book, Mark the Dwarf is available on Kindle. https://www.amazon.com/Mark Dwarf Jack D Harvey ebook

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author & https://poetrylifeandtimes.com See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

Exam Week. A Poem by Loukia Borrell

by 


Exam Week
 
We were in the middle of finals
and needed a quick getaway, so
we dug out our bathing suits and
packed a cooler with beer and those
hard chocolate chip muffins we
brought back from the cafeteria.
 
I wore a black, polka dot swimsuit
that laced up the front. It was just a
little tight across my tits and, for once,
I had cleavage. My hair looked like
Madonna’s when she did “Like A Virgin,”
even though I wasn’t one. Neither was she.
 
All afternoon, I sunned my young body
on a floating dock and you swam in the lake.
We thought of nothing. Not school, not exams,
not the muffins, not the beer, not our families,
and not our friends who didn’t know where we were.
 
I think of that day when I feel like ending my life.
I have no idea whatever happened to you and don’t
even remember the last time we spoke or saw each other.
All I know is that day. It happened. I remember it.
All afternoon, life was lighter than it has ever been since.

I could float.

Loukia Borrell is the American-born daughter of Greek-Cypriot immigrants. She is a former newspaper journalist. Her poetry has appeared in literary journals in the United States and United Kingdom, including London Grip, Cerasus Magazine, and The Bangor Literary Journal. She tweets @LoukiaBorrell and has a website, loukialoukaborrell.com.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author & https://poetrylifeandtimes.com See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

Diaphanous, disingenuous 3 Poems from Prabhu Iyer

by 
 Diaphanous, disingenuous

Parsed in the Planck intervals of me, 
diaphanous, is it not you?
Yet impossible, disingenuous
this dichotomy: thirst
after the conjurings of sentience? 
Parsed in the Planck intervals of me, 
is it not you, ineffable ? 
And yet the flood tides of rage 
toss me over on the waters of life;
Gulf between eyes shut and open -
chasing after the web of thoughts;
Parsed in the Planck intervals of me, 
is it not you, ineffable? 
Who do I call, dear presence,
when called to act by the world,
true to my being and becoming?
Impossible this dichotomy:
diaphanous, disingenuous, ever 
 Dear electricity, what are bulbs to you?

Dear bulb of light, 
what is electricity to you?
Do you like it in your corner
beaming in your shine, or
in a chandelier
adorning the nights?
         Dear chandelier,
what is electricity to you?
Do you like it in your throne,
brimming in your shine, or
in a celebration
of glory lights?
        O celebration,
what is electricity to you?
Do you like it in your vestal
ornamentation
of sundry occasions?
       Ever humble unknown
flowing through the veins
this elixir of life that lights up 
lamps, chandeliers -
one indivisible borderless,
yet bringing a hundred
filaments to celebration:
       Dear electricity,
what are bulbs to you,
chandeliers and celebrations?
Darkness, darkness again

Night goes back to night, darkness darkness again, 
no one cares for daylight now, when tears and stars
fill up the lakes shiver sharing in our grief,
where we sit in longing for one last time;
Desolation goes back to desolation, ingratitude 
ingratitude again, our homes too unbeautiful,
Little, too freckled to house your poise,
steps that measured out the vast;
Silence goes back to silence, unfathomed
grief grief again, our hearts too frail for your love,
this hour of separation, we break our bangles
uninterrupted by the beat of the dhak;
Inconsequence goes back to inconsequence
mundane mundane again, that you must come 
despite us being us, darkness darkness here:
light devoid of light and life devoid of purpose, 
Everything goes back to everything 
rudderless rudderless again, boatwoman, 
who will to sing to us of the journey
to the fjord of wisdom, past the gulf of the dark?
Night goes back to night, darkness darkness again, 
desolation goes back to desolation, ingratitude 
ingratitude again, silence goes back to silence, 
unfathomed grief grief again, inconsequence 
goes back to inconsequence mundane mundane 
again, everything goes back to everything 
boatwoman, rudderless rudderless again -
just a prayer of longing, for one more glance

Prabhu Iyer is an Indian poet writing primarily in English. A scientist by training and practice, Prabhu weaves his quest of truth, beauty and goodness into his verse. An avid student of poetry, he is inspired by the spirit of the romanticists and transcendentalists, while also being influenced deeply by figures of the avant-garde, drawing upon such movements as cubism, surrealism and magical realism in the sense of gesamtkunstwerk or ‘total art’. He is also an ardent fan of popular lyrical poetry as manifested in the variegated Indian devotional, musical and film traditions. Prabhu’s work has appeared in anthologies and poetry journals including the PLT and long-listed a couple of times for the prestigious Erbacce Prize for poetry. He has published two volumes of poetry, ‘Ten Years’ exploring the themes of love and loss, while ‘The Hermit’ is a surrealist collection of poems. He is also working on releasing a collection of Haikus collated over many years, especially during the COVID lockdown. https://www.amazon.com/Prabhu-Iyer

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author & https://poetrylifeandtimes.com See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

My Voice. A Poem & Artwork by Kelly Sargent

by 
My Voice



I am Deaf. 

My fingers speak. 


A coiffed paintbrush in my grasp, 

my voice streaks turquoise and magenta 

across a parched canvas. 

Vowels coo through thirsty linen.


Click-clacking keys with my mother tongue, 

I chew hard consonants

and spit them out. 

Sour, a scathing sonnet can be at dusk.


Fingertips pave slick exclamations, 

punctuated by nails sinking low into clamminess.  

I sculpt hyperboles.

Kelly Sargent is an author and artist whose works, including a Best of the Net nominee, have appeared in more than forty literary publications. A poetry chapbook entitled Seeing Voices: Poetry in Motion is forthcoming (Kelsay Books, 2022). A book of modern haiku entitled Lilacs & Teacups is also forthcoming, and a haiku recently recognized in the international Golden Haiku contest is on display in Washington, D.C. She serves as the creative nonfiction and an assistant nonfiction editor for two literary journals. She also reviews for an organization whose mission is to make visible the artistic expression of sexual violence survivors.
You can find her at https://www.kellysargent.com/

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author & https://poetrylifeandtimes.com See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

Peach Delphine The Backwater River Poems

by

–

it was not the arc of a star-

Boat tail grackles wove a river of possibilities
where each scar became eye, it was not a song 
of our grandmothers from beyond pines, 
 buried in flesh, bone close, blade thin, what must be 
carried, weight of singing, of the gone, an edge,
 tasting of blood, navel oranges, pie lemons, 

calamondin, an incandescence living
 in my flesh, glyphs of their own light, their own
 life, divination begins with my shoulder blade,
another bone tossed on the pile, a pyre
stacking itself into a ceremony of absences,

without moonlight desire floats with owls,
glide path of palms, asphalt, gravel, we are such,
an aggregate laid down for the passage of others,
so many carcasses trundled into pavement,

with the random divination of bird tracks,
as day burns, we burn, as ash reveals, stars
unfold, as stragglers croak their way out
to the rookery, we remain cindered, land bound,
a reliquary of unattained salvation, a singing
whittled down, stacked fatwood desiring flame,
all our dreams arrive here, shore of burning,
songs mangrove verdant, tangled in drifts of shell.


-Dog has a pumpkin head-

it was the season of rhymes,
pig killing, wood burning, whiskey,
you said your brother wouldn't care
who I was, true enough as he only spoke
to the dog and the stove, his back porch

navel oranges, kumquats,
cabbage palms, a bougainvillea blood
dark flowering, eating canned peaches
fished from a cooler of tall boys,

you said I was good enough for your bed,
the back of your bike, biscuits at your kitchen
table, second drawer in your dresser, ''Sit, 
so listen, there's no redemption,
 just atonement, and there's no end to that."

Sour gum flowering gathered
up into honey, we chewed the comb
as if adopted by bears, living off
saw palmetto berries and grubs,
or the other flesh,

thorn of my tongue, word pierced,
we are without, not of, not
within time, hinged sky, a mollusk
drying out between tides, barnacled
wind bent, current woven, taste skin,
taste wind, taste salt, how blade manifests
a dream life, tongue balanced, taut with lace
of scars, a sargassum float of entanglement,
small crabs, sea turtles, it was the season
of arrivals, no hint yet of the horizon
closing upon us, the other fruit
ripening on the tree, absence
overtaking, hand
over fist.


  -Pithlachascotee River -

Some Sunday she said from the kitchen to the breezeway,
"Suffer not a witch", left before  dinner,
walked  to the landing, where possibilities
survive immersion, current relentlessly flowing, 
took the skiff downriver, followed a creek
into the mangrove, abandoned habitation, learned
tide, names of wind, to thatch with palmetto
to polish the blade, circular motion of sharpening, 
stone of susurration honing the heart, hatchet of tongue 
riving chunks of fatwood to feed hands of flame, cupped 
with each evening, there is a singing on the breeze, 
a litany of pollination, a triumph of flowering,
 night fills my ears as sparks of fireflies float 
over the verdure of burning, praise laced 
with woodsmoke, wave summoned tide 
manifests this form, an expression of sea,
 a liver of possibilities, a cloud filled lung,
breath of a thicker atmosphere, ponderous 
flight as form reveals itself to sky.

Sun folded away in its blue coverlet, you cannot drink 
from this broken cup of sky spilling moon, skillet on the fire, clouds stack on the horizon, 
spoonbill stretching wing
 into shade, egrets lifting over mangrove, we lived
 for a while on black coffee and bacon, shouldering 
a river door wind walks through, trailing night and a glory 
of stars, we gathered the taste of names, memory is flesh, 
trees  speak of it, questioned which half holds the spoon,
which half lifts the bowl, which eye is on the horizon, 
weather coiling beyond curve of sea.

As fireflies are shards of air cracked by lightning, 
we name ourselves that sea may know us, 
salt tasting salt, coiled into wave of remembrance, 
the whistle and click each song must pass through
to reach open water where emerald shimmers 
into cobalt, lifting such light as we can from all this
 broken, edges balanced on fingertips, a divide between
 what glitters  and what sinks quietly, some days my dress
is burlap, sometimes a hank of sea borrowed
from wave, tide uncoiled from one hand the other dipped
 into river, filtering a current of unintended sorrow, 
where the gone has lifted onto  breeze, silence feathers
its nest beneath tongue, magnolia opening slowly 
with morning or  question swallowing word, sometimes
I am spoonbill, head down wading,  a roseate flowering
 in an unnamed forest striding into darkness, sometimes
 there is a face in the mirrored waters, sometimes
 it is mine, sometimes a voice, wave lifted, sometimes 
we speak but the voice is never mine, face of water,
 voice of wind, a sound from the edge of all things.

Peach Delphine is a queer poet from Tampa, Florida. Former cook infatuated with what remains of the undeveloped Gulf coast and blackwater rivers.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author & https://poetrylifeandtimes.com See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

The Inventory Poems by John Okey

by 
Steps

These days,
sequential in their order,
random in their events.

Yet,
I am supposed to come through
	every 24 hours
With some sort of understanding,
a plan for the next day,
and the same every day after.

What am I supposed to do?
Control the guessing…
	Suppress the panic…
It’d be more human
	to be a lab rat
or a lamb
	in a Chicago slaughterhouse.

I am stupid with my intelligence.
I sequence,
Collate,
Numerate,
Alphabetize,
Chronicle,
Dewey Decimal, 
Periodic Table,
even square root…

All fucking useless.
More importantly,
it all misses the fucking point.

Inventory

I am the poet,
a disaster in stanza,
the upside-down verse,
enjoying one good mistake
	after the next.
Turn in each ugly line 
sloppier than the last.

The pen is a weak sword
	against suicidal woes.
I scribble nothings across
	scraps of paper.
Really anything I can get
	my hands on,
then lose before I get home.

My attempts at bringing
	the dark side to the outside.

Double-Checking the Inventory

No shine.
No polish.
No pretense.

I am dirty and unkempt.
I from when I should smile.
I am a disaster in every
	human way.

Lacking popular respectability,
I revel in my ill-repute.

My style is blue jeans and t-shirts.
My attitude is to smirk
	with a hint of alcohol.

I am the question mark
and the exclamation point.
The means without an end.

Final Inventory

As a sane man,
I am a catastrophe.
As an insane man,
I have it rather tied together.

Bio
Okey is a forty-four-year-old bakery employee. He has written poetry since he was a teenager. It was during the pandemic that he finally decided to publish his work. A novel, This Here Night Life…, and a poetry collection, Back to Masturbating Monkeys and God’s Plan, are available on Amazon. These poems are reprints from his poetry collection.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author & https://poetrylifeandtimes.com See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

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