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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The Cross Near the Edge A too small cross in a big wayside shrine amidst the fields on the fertile loess soil, soon to be devoured by the bucket wheel excavator, a monstrous word for an even more monstrous machine. The shrine made of dark red brick, plain, simple, solid, almost for eternity, like the many farmhouses here; […]
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AT LAST The simple lies so easy not to tell, One hell of ice. A Hall of Fame for those not nice, The predator of life. One cannot hold a flame bare in their hands, But one can help blisters grow And lick their bloody scabs raw. I know. On the table near the thumbs and eyes, Fresh pressed buttons, […]
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Night Song silence sings a silent song silently, this monody from the diaphragm of mockingbirds, breaking every wondering In her synchronized tune; a wail here, a brawl there, then a chirp. birds whistle, -at night, birds sing, so does mother. she tunes a wail for each new burden, she never opted for this. papa, you lied. true lovers don’t die […]
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Rocky Mountainscaping At the same height of Every rocky mountain Above all seasonal change A snowline is widely & cursively cut As if to bite a whole patch of Sky from heaven With rows of rows of Whale-like teeth
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Voyage to Italy AND IN GREAT PARNASSUS THE DWEEBS HELD SWAY SIFTING AND RISING FROM THEIR HARD BEDS BECKONING AND WELCOMING THE BECOMING OF THAT MAN WHO DRIVES DOWN THROUGH THE BUFFALO HERD AND THE HERD OF THEM PREGNANT AND BRIGHT BRIMMING WITH THE WONDROUS THE LORE AND THE SHINE THE MIRACLES FED WITH FORKS […]
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I hardly Knew You We remember a lost President, assassinated, promises unfulfilled, who dazzled the nation with youthful vigor almost unAmerican glamour, and many reminisce of what could have been, forgetting the best and brightest sent abroad in the Peace Corps, instead of working at home to cure national ills, forgetting how close he came to incinerating the world, […]
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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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INTER ARMA SILENT LEGES* (Based on the movie “The Conspirator,” about the trial and execution of Mary Surratt, one of the convicted conspirators of the Lincoln assassination) “In war, the law falls silent,” As Cicero first said, For when the times are violent Emotions trump the head. No “habeas” of “corpus” Or “sparing of the rod” Can […]
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Insomnia The house sleeps, but I am awake, tiptoeing back through my day. So many pieces left lying about, I want to fix them all. They’re too distant though, just beyond my fingertips, yet, squarely between me and my dreams.
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