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ALPHABETICAL
Rae Pater
(The Versifier)
The extent to which the book extends
is bound within its cover and stretches
through the vaunted halls of mind cathedrals
in signs and codes.
The book whose spine
follows the circle of library walls
is God -- according to Borges --
and spins circles through space.
The space between books on shelves
in the library,
any library at any time,
remains a universal constant
over which a librarian has no control.
This page, a leaf that turns through cycles.
These letters, catalogue of scrawl on the toilet wall
by those who seek light
as they travel down rows of shelves,
neatly filed volumes dissolving into atoms
of information
transmogrified,
transmittable via brainwaves
anatomical cables bridge
print to thought.
A conversation with God,
with gods of words in ceremonial procession
covering page after page,
alphabetically,
systematically
coordinated page and word.
Titles by authors long dead,
the scarecrow straw and stuff of their heads.
‘Oh time thy pyramids,
thy labyrinth of letters’
how we scramble and climb
through their thorns and dust
for meaning
and find only the beauty of symbols,
a simulacrum of beauty.
We search now for alternatives
through spaces, silences, the narratives unwritten.
How long have we stumbled uncomprehending,
and who writes the findings of the search,
the narratives of the searchers?
Is there, somewhere, a writer penning
in slanted gold calligraphy...
‘In the beginning the word was...’.
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SALT
Laurie Byro
(Desert Moon Review)
My mother would play Hank Williams sometimes
and beg the men at the bar to dance the Two Step
or some old-fashioned reel I barely knew.
I was six. I would think of my father coming
home with his empty thermos and us not there again.
I had a stomach full of fear, glasses shattering
as his hand would clear the table from the night
before. I’d plead with the bartender through eyes
like globed fruit. My mother would say
I was shy and they’d poke bony fingers at me.
If one pulled me on his lap while my mother
danced, I’d smell the stale sweat and beer. I thought
of my father hanging damp laundry on the line, stirring
up a black cast iron skillet of potatoes. On the slick
wood there was a small bowl of salt. I’d play with it,
write Daddy, or a draw a heart and our initials. I promised
when I was older I’d steal away with him to Mexico.
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VOICES
Guy Kettelhack
(About Poetry Forum)
The messages come thick and fast -- like
Joan of Arc with her Saints Margaret and
Catherine and Michael, his spirit-guides
provide him clear instruction: their disciple,
he turns left or right -- away from dark (he says)
towards light. Perhaps it is projection but it gives
him some assurance of protection -- for a moment
he is safe. I can’t assess this as pathology:
it seems to me an absolutely viable response
to feeling spiritually chafed -- ripped raw. Dumped
into the depths of the abyss you will do anything
to promulgate at least the fleeting sense of
some experience of bliss: that is the law.
I sit here knowing nothing but that it is human
to resist the sucking maw that wants to swallow
him. I only wonder that I haven’t followed him.
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THE SMOKING ROOM
Yolanda Calderon-Horn
(The Writer’s Block)
The Smoking Room
There comes a time to let go,
though there is nothing tangible
like a surge of sunflowers
to be found. It is an unexpected
feeling hidden in a tidy space:
a sunspot perched on your
collarbone. Yeah -- you circled
the lip of brilliant flames, but you
must release what you won’t call
love. It might alert and harm
the ones you look after. Dumb
smiles and elegant conversations
were the closest you came
to colliding. You mourn
during rush-hour; when
the market’s breadfruit
can’t handle your finger’s
crush. While there’s no body
of physical work with a start,
middle or end, you bury
what you have.
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