2.5.19 7.48 a.m. 33 degrees Picking the boardwalk instead of the pond this morning, onward through the woods, the ground a mosaic of leaves necessary for the crosshatch of broken branches to fall silently, dim in the overcast, the cedar is possessed by bittersweet. 2.6.19 11.33 a.m. 41 degrees Pretended yesterday that spring was […]
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Poem By SIMON PERCHIK * She wraps your limp the way the sun marks out its darkness and along the ground pours a small circle –you’ll make it back she says, writes on a pad kept open how seabirds will call each other over and over force their feathers though your shadow too has taken on that phase […]
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NEVER KNOWING WHAT HIT (Based on the painting [above] by Danell Millsap of the Scotch Cap Tsunami at Unimak Island, Alaska, on the night of April 1, 1946, where all five Coast Guardsmen manning the lighthouse were killed [see www.semparpac.org/tsunami.jpg]) I ponder the Scotch Cap Tsunami And wonder just how it felt When impact dismembered your body From […]
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A Husband Falters Better take his wife to lunch after what he said yesterday. A slip of the tongue. But where to take her? The Chinese buffet? The Indian buffet? Maybe the Japanese place. She likes sushi and tempura. But when he asks about lunch she says not a chance. She has to clean the house. Cleaning lady comes today.
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AWAKENED November 22, 1963 East Hartford High School 2.02 p.m. Ninth grade English, and just out of Catholic, school, I was not yet adjusted to the outrageous idea of a public school – no uniforms, and teachers who were men, men in street clothes, not dressed in black with stiff white collars and faces of […]
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Growth Before Buildings Wood piles beneath the shallow permanent stone Firm feet upon the yielding bog Let water in – the wood’s grain will prevail through its lines Let water out – white softness will grow to draw things down The foundations could be called organic, So people longed to analyse to scrutinize Trade silver mercury Sweep […]
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A flight separates the sea from the sky. Her glance caresses the stillness. The flowers scathed by hail become bluish. They do not die, yet. This life without him is like the plenitude seen with one eye. Her right convictions sculpt in sadness as in a block of marble a rocky embrace. The sun is crying. There is only […]
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WINGS OF PESTILENCE (By Joseph Cavera) Once there was a farm out east Ancient wooden barn With piles of straw And long mahogany fields The land swelled with crops Corn enough for every man Woman, and child Line after line Veggie after fruit Spade over hand And shovel under foot, Those columns grew Each year, waves […]
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rpm (rhetorical paradoxi-metaphorisis) scleras, snow white pupils, dilated. brain box, sparking incandescently. he asks the physician: ‘tell me doctor, what’s my malady?’ stares at his sloppy zig-zag manuscript and replies ‘rpm’. not comprehending, he utters, ‘excuse me?’, physician expatiates: ‘rhetorical paradoxi-metaphorisis, a rare cerebral disorder in which the forebrain “wordyfactures” weird grandiloquent and aesthetic phrases and clauses sub- consciously, using […]
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I always think about you Whenever I fail to tame tears Flowing and overflowing like Nile waters– Siphoning strength from a bereft soul And chasing sleep at midnight; Leaving me restless like an insomniac… I always think about you Once I falter cheering my spirit on: To endure gnawing loneliness That humbles me to bow To silence’s sorrowful songs! […]
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