Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Keith Higginbotham

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Future Is Coming, Academics Predict

Classes are over for gaslights,
glasses, windmills, gifts
and grace. Classes are filled

with scribbles in notebooks found
in Walt Whitman’s trash.
Walt is calling us off
to barbecues at the love palace

beyond the Interstate, country
paved with fences, surrendered
to statistics. The wilderness has
bought a condo on the road

where Thoreau copped his
final plea. Classes are over
for a while, sayeth Karl

Wallenda walking with a pole
across the Tallula Gorge. Classes
are over, according to Poe,

recovering from addiction
in Richmond’s Shockoe Slip.


window rock drill

step down into sagebrush
flowers and leaves
typically three-toothed

where butterflies light
cottontails nibble
and scatter with the sound

of steps on rabbitbrush
and snakeweed landscape
without much green

sandstone layers flat
and tilted tilted and flat
sand dunes frozen

saddlehorn formations
entrada like faces
juniper and pine with leaves

needlelike explosion
of nut pine pinecones
with wings whiptail

lizard trails across collapse
of geology where monument
canyon creeps into colorado

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 Keith Higginbotham lives in Columbia, SC. His poetry has recently appeared, or is forthcoming, in Clutching At Straws, Counterexample Poetics, Eratio, Liebamour Magazine, Otoliths, and trnsfr. He has published two chapbooks: Carrying the Air on a Stick (The Runaway Spoon Press) and Prosaic Suburban Commercial (available as a free PDF download from Eratio Editions).

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Donal Mahoney

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The Whole Thing Over With


From her side of the bed
the wife suggests he get dressed,
go out in the night and
purchase a piece. She’s

not in the mood. Or
if he must, he can
go ahead, stick it in,
shoot it off, and get

the whole thing over with.
She doesn’t care any more
where he pours it
so long as he’s quiet

and doesn’t wake the kids.
Too tired to dress,
he sticks it in, explodes,
rolls off, finally spent.

Maybe now the beasts
that will never creep
within his crosshairs
can get some sleep.


The Last Honeydew

On the way home from work
I buy the last honeydew
in the window at Meyers.

Tonight the wife
will cut it in half
and with elbow bent

scoop the pulp
like ice cream
from its golden shell.

She will savor its juices
as I do the cherries
on the sundaes of her breasts.


Mop Woman

Near dwarf this woman.
Foreign born, Minsk,
perhaps. Her nose

a fist. Her hair
a whisk broom
only black. Her back

an Orthodox cupola.
Her arms braids of gym rope
lowered to the floor.

Orangutans could climb
those ropes, hand
over hand, no rose

no purple
doughnuts
on their hinds.

Near dwarf this woman.
Foreign born. Minsk,
perhaps.

Her hands, all gristle,
hang an inch, no more,
above her shining floor.



Rodding Out

a Bulgarian plumber’s song

And so I’ll tell old Max,
and maybe he will listen,
it’s time to call
the plumber in
and tell him,
“Here’s the deal:
We’ll hire you today
and Friday you’ll begin
rodding out Camille.
When you finish
bring her back,
and we’ll see if she will yield.
And if she won’t
you’ll try again,
rodding out Camille.”

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Donal Mahoney, a native of Chicago, lives in St. Louis, Missouri. He has worked as an editor for The Chicago Sun-Times, Loyola University Press and Washington University in St. Louis. A Pushcart nominee, he has had poems published by The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Commonweal, Public Republic (Bulgaria), The Beanik (U.K), Revival (Ireland), The Istanbul Literary Review (Turkey), The Osprey Journal (Scotland), Pirene's Fountain (Australia) and other publications.

Thursday, July 08, 2010

Peter D. Marra

For Polly

It’s too easy to fall down,

Fractured child
falling from the sun

Waiting on the beach for Time to arrive.

Scraping across the sky,
Grabbing at the clouds,

Gentle bird watching the sounds.

She smiles and
All is well

Baltimore Fell’s Point
3/27/2010

=====================================

Asphalt

The sour taste in the back
While the little children
play in the street

While the parents don’t care that the end is in view
Disaster fights the sun

And electrifies the clouds.
Rubber man can’t stand still

Rubber man can’t stand still
Rubber man can’t stand still

The telephone
is an assassin

While the children lay in the street and
the constant communication keeps

the walls.
crumbling.
========================

The Sin Eater

Clothed in black gauze
waiting
For the final sun

Laughing at the moon at rest
Spinning inside the eyes from afar

Her hooves click clack down the hall

Ready to absorb the shadows