Spells/Vote (After the State of Louisiana Literacy Test 1964)
spell backwards forwards write right from the left
to the right as you see it spelled here
print the word vote upside down but in the correct order
write right from the left to the right as you see it
dispelled here draw five circles
that one common inter-locking part (sic)
above the letter X make a small cross
© Melisande Fitzsimons 2024
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the rains / serene
the rains fell on Babylon
the rains fell on Jerusalem
so the poets said
may the rains fall unceasingly
on ancient Rome
may they somehow continue to fall
forever
however how
as one poet said
or might have said
before dying
from an attack in the street late one night while going home
not after?
the circuses the crucifixions
the wars the conquests
nothing to praise
as the rain falls relentlessly
on ancient Rome
still nothing to celebrate
not even in the art
nor in the poetry
the rains’ reign
******
serene / now yes now
ah now / serene
ah how strangely
after such violence & trauma
‒ always travelling somewhere
but with missing documents
missing connections
even the destinations missing
missing forgotten destroyed
how strangely
& inevitable
strangely inevitably so
friends dead yet here
in dreams / yes / night after night
everything dead
yet still here
inevitably
© David Miller 2024
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(Untitled)
The rock
is a mouth
without a body
and with only
the inside of the mouth
everything
else
is
its
face
© John Levy 2024
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Rain Tool
I imagined
the rain tool
my friend
mentioned in her
email
then saw she’d
written “rain too!”
My mis-
reading─
one of my mind’s
tools, may
be
one of the sharpest
in my minus-
cule toolbox.
(for Eve Luckring)
© John Levy 2024
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My silences
came after
words
as long as I remember, even
the silenciest
silences were on the shore
of words
© John Levy 2024
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Present Tense
We are sitting on the porch of a cabin in the woods of Oak Creek Canyon, Arizona. I am reading a delicious book by Iris Murdoch. You shine with beauty while you relax on a cushioned chair. We breathe in pine and mesquite logs that warm our dinner. You have just returned from Mayo Clinic in Rochester; we now know the diagnosis. Commit to earning your mobility as we can. We believe that this will happen, picture nothing else. At this pure moment we do not know it will be forty-three years of loving and living what we see this day. The perfume of mesquite, the sleight of handsome in the form of birds in crisp air teaches us what is always here.
© Sheila E Murphy 2024
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She
She alerts the glass to grandiosity by voicing spindrift from the center of her palatial soul. She drowns in unreality bequeathed to windblown offspring listening to recitations of her goals. She proffers an homage to the very self reputedly the antonym to cinders blocked from history. She births a doppelganger then ensconced in mind intended as a backup singer strewn from solo parts. She opens a can of sauerkraut to splay across the bitter protein lumped in the middle of the plate she may consume any moment now.
© Sheila E Murphy 2024
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Unprayer
Your correspondence marries
The myth that prose breeds
Unintended roses matching
The meant ones the anemones
The petunias the acorns light
The mathematical joy ride
Pleasuring the pilot test
During off-putting moments
Before memorabilia crutched
Tonight the mere morning
Of lamb's wool and pseudo faith
In secret perpetuity
Performed for faithless ones
Sans mufflers in their Maseratis
© Sheila E Murphy 2024
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Late-Term Divas
It is possible to say the same thing
To each other for hours prompting variations
Differently enriching and convincing
Each according to her once articulate and vibrant need
Twin pairs of mirror eyes voice
A host of inferences and denotations
Caught without release for the duration
Cycling and recycling the mood
More than the message
With flattering or unflattering tones
That draws some truth spoken repeatedly until
The room the mind the world
Turn undeniably and irretrievably
Empty
© Sheila E Murphy 2024
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Cloudless day
Washing hanging limply
on the line, suspended
above sharp shadows;
water trickling slow, the
melody to the distant
bass-note of the lawnmower;
perspiration blooms as
all my plans evaporate,
rising in the stillness;
and there, between the trees, a
drifting white wisp – an
intimation of tomorrow.
© Jake O'Leary 2024