B.D.Feil: Four Poems

 

 

I’m A Fool

            It doesn’t matter that I know better

that I know history teaches that history teaches

that history teaches or can feel it undigested

sitting in my bones hollowed out and ignorant

or am graced with the goddamned sense

that God graced a goddamned goose

the itch becomes too great

the death of winter too new

the first green weekend of May too pulling

I dig in slap-happy in rows lost in mulch

wandering amid mounds yet frost teaches

that frost teaches that frost teaches that I’m a fool

Not This God

In my perfecting world

I would release the trees

from the woods

by first cutting the vines

that run up their trunks

and hang to the ground

what god would create the tree

only to slowly strangle it?

not this god

not this god

Giblin’s Grove

Set me down in Giblin’s Grove

the corner closest the coming storm

set me down in open wicker

let the wind sow me

beneath the redbuds

suffer me no pretensions

no need to balance the wicker

on heads of bare-breasted virgins

no hanging of black crape

no systemic scattering

only burn me let me blow

let the wind take me where it will

like the first spring light coaxes

the redbuds from wet winter woods

thirsty to be first tight purple nipples

erupting randomly stubborn to go

Korea 1950-1953

I knew the veterans of that conflict to be a bit lost

office managers filling station owners

door-to-door salesmen scoutmasters

brown shoes with drab green suits on Sunday

five o-clock shadow at eleven a.m.

tape on eyeglasses

missing gas caps

neat but incomplete stacks of National Geographic

living rooms hung with the smell of bacon

cement blocks laying around to no good purpose

Blatz Beer

Tab Cola

always the wait for checks to clear and rides to come

maybe a wife maybe not either way

owners of the ugliest dogs in America

dogs that would never come no matter how loudly called

how insistently how pleadingly

they just would not come



                          ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BD Feil has credits in New Plains Review, Chaffey Review, and Margie. He lives in Michigan with quite the brood.

Robert E. Petras

THE DESERTED ISLAND

She’s neither Ginger nor Marianne,
has the face and body only a plastic surgeon academy could love,
to ask a personal question:
if stranded upon a deserted island
together, would you play footsies with her?
Not as long as carpel tunnel holds off
would I touch her with ten feet of treated lumber
you tell your office buddies.


It’s been a long day
at the desk and you drift
into a daydream, drift to the ocean,
drift into the uncharted
just you and—let’s call her Aria
because she’s been playing
solo polo for a lifetime.


A week passes in your mind,
your imagination running wild,
your wife spreading more than rumors,
your wife more than humoring the Good Humor Man,
your wife blowing her glass-blowing instructor.
Didn’t she just jack up
the life insurance on you?
Yes, you declare, yes, yes,
I will play footsies
with Aria, if only for spite,
if only for revenge.


Another week passes.
Two weeks.
Then a month blows by with the trade winds
while you consume a steady diet
of only coconuts but they could well be
brass supplements because
you are growing a third ball—
the one that counts—the inner ball.
Once off paradise
you will tell your pseudo-widow
how you and Aria shacked up
under the palm leaf thatches.


Meanwhile, on a strict Deserted Island Diet
Aria is melting away fat like a pig on a spit
and is starting to look like Kirstie Alley—
“Dancing With the Stars” Kirstie
and you and she are doing crazy things together
like making snow angels in the sand.


During the third month
she’s taken up yoga, Pilates and tantric meditation
while you try to catch fish
because you need protein
because the old staff sergeant
has been standing more at ease lately.


Your beard is growing and root black
is no substitute for Grecian Formula 44.
You lost too much weight.
and look like Christian Bale in “The Machinist,”
in need of Colgate,
in need of Old Spice Speed Stick,
in need of counseling
as Aria looks more and more like “Cheers” Kirstie,
the very image and fragrance of Coppertone
while you burn and burn, becoming
redder and redder—as red as a baboon’s butt.
She calls you pet names like my Little Baboo,
worsening your widening red shift.


Five o’clock rescues you from the dream island rescue,
returning you safely to the island of your desk,
your fortress, fortified with new knowledge,
in the now, knowing to watch out what you say
about the unwanted woman,
the one you once wouldn’t touch
with ten feet of treated Scotch pine
because she would well turn out to be a ten,
leaving you and your carpel tunnel clutching
the short end of a very long stick.

Kenneth P. Gurney: Three Poems

Late Bloomer

I was one of those slow kids

a few years before there was such a word as dyslexia.

My feet were very fast back then

and I won all the schoolyard foot races.

I am told by my doctor 

that I was one of those lefties forced to be right-handed.

My doctor is sure of this 

because I am left footed when kicking a ball.

Though I am six-feet four-inches tall

my basketball potential remains grossly neglected.

The irony that keeps me out of shopping malls

is that clothing stores put the tallest sizes down by the floor.

The earliest part of my youth that I remember clearly

coincides with the one-hundredth anniversary 

of the American Civil War.  Now you understand

my home library’s prejudice and must read my uncle’s book. ¹

I was thirteen when I started exploring rebellion:

I became a Chicago Cubs fan, which drove my south-side mother crazy. ²

The oddity of my education that I am most proud of

is that I graduated four-hundred and second out a high school class

of five hundred students, yet still managed to attain

the top ten percentile in my college entrance exams.

¹ my uncle, Walter Hebert, is the author of the civil war related biography "Fighting Joe Hooker".

² a Chicago south-sider would, by geography, be a White Sox fan, as my mother most definitely was.

Underpainting

If you walk the road 

Dianne paints

to its very end,

you will find

that the blue of the sky

beyond the mountains

is not a hue you expect

or the same as the sky 

you see upon the canvas.

There is a deer

on the back side of the mountain

that she painted two days ago

that changed meadows

that found a field

where the butterflies erupt

from their sleeping places

once the sun clears the eastern ridge

and dries the dew from their wings.

There is a house waiting for you 

beyond the background.

A log cabin that rough brushstrokes 

placed upon the canvas

near the stream that feeds the lake

where you will fish 

and the migratory waterfowl

will land.

But you do not see these things.

You are too focused on the foreground

on the brightly colored images 

as the abstract forms boggle your mind.

Dianne explains how they form

a sky, a mountain range, a road

which viewed from twenty feet back

form a face that is your face.

But you have trouble seeing that image. 

My Sweet Away

It seems you are away again,

but your framed drawings 

nail a sense of you to the wall.

This coordinated abandonment

echoes through the ages

to mother, to the church. 

My old routines become new

without you present in our picture—

become old in two days.

The fanfare of your return 

arrives adjacent to the glitter of bagpipes

and flags and biker patriotism.

Your voice dusts the silence

off your paintings where my eyes

settled in taciturn longing.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Kenneth P. Gurney lives Albuquerque, NM, USA.  He edits the poetry anthology Adobe Walls.
His latest book is This is not Black & White.  For a full listing of his publishing credits and books
visit his website.  http://www.kpgurney.me/Poet/Welcome.html