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IN THE FLAMES
Lightning started a fire one day.
It protruded orange lilies in the blackest
gulf of the sky. Out there where
no one knew where I was. Running along
the side of the potholes on our unnamed street, trying
to make it home before my mother.
Eventually the sparks ignited an old boat and it
burned and shuddered against the wind.
The sledgehammers flew past me then.
The beauty of horror becoming miscellaneous.
Brown haired and stone-souled I stood
in the background nursing my own flames.
My mother going up and down the stairs that
so carefully calculated a path towards a beaten white door.
Sledgehammers were there. They flew with the wind.
My father stood in amazement, untouched. His hand
on his beer; blue cynical eyes on the flame.
My sister so tall then fiercely her
face lit up in reverie of some past
haunting.
For days they told the story. Each one different from the other,
each one never knowing
I was there.
Julie Mazza (TornScorpio)
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WITLESS
Paradox is tastier when I spread oxymoron on it --
good for brunch -- or if it’s dull and rainy, I’ll choose brainy
bunches of dichotomy to give my day some punch:
my secret hunch, however, is that these collectively
comprise a mere appurtenance of wit -- shutting doors
on what might otherwise have edged towards
an encompassing, unnerving larger “It” -- or whole
(inconsequential goal: a flit: a bore). For moments
I implore the ‘interesting’ to venture in -- applauding
its derision of the evident: marveling at its provoking quips --
but when its mix of either/or threatens to become a little
more -- I kick the Three-Card-Monte trickster off the floor
and hide the evidence. Until I can’t ignore this prevalence:
I haven’t found a meaning if I stuff what doesn’t feel right
in a drawer. I’m only in the light when I have stumbled
in its glow -- humbled witless by what I don’t know.
Guy Kettelhack (GuyBlakeKett)
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MORATORIUM
Cesar Pasquel stopped
using words one day.
He removed them from his vocabulary,
aardvark to zygote, one by one
until there were none.
Gestures went next.
No waves goodbye,
no shrugs, no handshakes.
Slumped shoulders and downcast eyes
became status quo.
Cesar cut off his left foot
one idle Tuesday, and then the right.
He cooked them over a spit,
ate them with a side
of regret and solitude.
The legs went Wednesday, then his torso,
then the arms. Soon he was
a severed head with two perfect
hands hovering nearby,
marred only by neglect.
The last time I saw Cesar
he picked up his head and set it
in the middle of his kitchen table,
a centerpiece of sunken eyes
and hanging jowls.
He closed his eyes,
a sigh barely audible from
his dry, cracked lips.
We passed the wine and bread
without looking.
J.S. Lange (Runatyr)
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