Letters of Transit

lugubrious lady in her
chinchilla coat strides down
the avenue, her
past life neatly labeled,
tied into
tight little parcels
with the shiny-sheen of
embroidery thread twisting/untwisting
the ends fanned out
like her hair on the pillow
that August afternoon as
the sun crept across
the floor in solid gold bars
until there was
no more
and dark

then one ivory ankle
stepping into a taxi,
then another

and the bells rang out ever,
for ever
ever

the pink cloud tree on Birch Street
due to burst again soon and she,
waiting with a wandering eye in
constancy, nonetheless, the
soles of her shoes
papered over, thick
with words, tripping over the
manhole cover (Bingham and
Taylor) in CAPITAL LETTERS

the cup of tea, overfull,
slopping into the saucer, the hieroglyphic
letters tied, safe,
slipped into a handbag as she
passes by a lantern-jawed Dick Tracy
chatting into his two-way wristwatch

his letters, the
book and volume
trembled from her hands to
keep company with the pocket comb
and the mirror

how d'you do?
how d'you do indeed?

good night, dear lady, good night,
good night, good night

the door is barred,
we'll venture forth
no more to speak
our words, thicksweet

Venn Diagram

coffee colored the rings were, the words
bleared over, sugary wet, corralled
in their neat columns, jumbled one atop
the other

intersecting to make a chain, ring upon
ring, binding the words, black upon white,
beneath them, the familiar dictionary

read out by rote each morning in staid
sentences--and will the circle
be unbroken?

........

He shows, with a flourish, the silver
rings which become one, then two, then
three, then one again, tossed to

the heavens above where they disappear,
finally, into black

.........

smoothing the paper out beneath the
coffee cups twinned and blue, above the fold,
remembering Kilroy and that last pair
of dry socks

as white smoke rises from the
chimney across the road, the
highway disappearing long past
squared wires of a screen to
keep things out, keep things in, the
errant flowerpot crashed to
muddy sherds upon the floor

Sweeping, Blue, Red, Green.....

swell and rise of tumult,
street-loud, under the ceiling,

she tries to mop it up with
sponges and soft words

to no avail, dancing with
the broom, short strokes

dragged against the nap
of the carpet, blue, red, green,

blue, red, green again, the
one last stubborn thread (a

strand from a scarf?) immovable,
immutable, curved into a question

mark she marks and goes on
her way

Bread of Haste

crumbling the bread of haste
into a bowl of vegetable soup

she does not think of forty
long years--or even forty days--

but of the forty-eight hours
before calm comes to rest,

blue upon her shoulders, like a
old friend or lover, the

touch familiar, light as a
scarf rounding her neck, the

stretch of silence, silk-glimmering,
held, only for a moment

between her teeth

OBSOLETE! Magazine Issue # 3 Now Available!!!!

Quarterly, $12.00

To subscribe:

OBSOLETE!
P.O. Box 72
Victor, IA 52347

obmag@feral-tech.com

Briars

She speaks into the wind where words are lost,
wandering, so, the well-worn paths others trod,
distracted, tendrils tumbled down accost
her eyes, blinded so, her soles rough-shod,
yet she goes on, having escaped the wolf.
Still, the thorns catch at her clothes,
strangely disarranged, espying the hoof
of the boar running before her, loathes
the loss of words into the whirling wind,
so many children lost, her hand,
scratched by thorns, so cold, pinned
to her heart for warmth, seeking a land
where winds will cease and she can rest
in the safe surety of her own nest.

Bedroom Arrangement

the warmth from the screen that
has so replaced the fire very
nearly touches her fingertips as
she rearranges the items on
a bureau-top: silver tie bar, loose
coins, gap-toothed comb, a crumpled
post-it bearing a telephone
number, the shoehorn fashioned of
mock tortoiseshell, furniture, staid
and squat, cherry-stained,
replete with socks and suchlike,
the blinds too thin to
keep the light out entirely,
and, moored down, so,
by heavy furniture, she
seeks some warmth, for a
moment, and then, sleep

Building Blocks

sans hands and feet,
perpetually walking across his
diamond of yellow bright
black bordered, featureless,
suspended, forever, in
signage

the blocks, too, have fallen
together so that they read:
mene, mene, tekel, upharsin...
before they are gathered up
in awkward handfuls to be
thrown back into the
toybox

still the carpets to be cleaned,
the dividing lines of the tiles
abraded with bleach and
water, the errant
marks of pencil smoothed
off a wall, the accidental
erased with a
heavy hand, heavier heart

OBSOLETE! Magazine #3 now out!!!!!

http://obsoletemag.blogspot.com/

Quarterly/$12.00

Networking Workshop for Poets and Writers at the Mount Vernon Public Library on the evening of 17th March!!!

Date: Thursday, 17th March 2011

Time: 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.

Place: Mount Vernon Public Library Community Room

Address: 28 South 1st Avenue, Mount Vernon, NY 10550

Telephone: 914.668.1840

Contemporary Literary Horizon.....two poems translated into Romanian for the Jan.-Feb. 2011 issue.

MARY ANN MCCARRA

FITZPATRICK

(STATELE UNITE)





PAGE-TURNER (CAN ONE TRUST THE NARRATOR?)





leather spined, she turns the

first, blank page, to see the

frontispiece, in short inky strokes,

obscured, so slightly, by paper tissue-

thin, the uppermost corner

wrinkled as if the last reader

closed the volume with an

impatient (or hasty) hand



endpapers, printed in peacock

colors, the whorls of red, blue,

green merging into a whole as

rich as plum pudding



turning the page, forgoing the

inevitable dedication (not to

her, certainly) musing over the

cryptic capitals punctuated by

oh-so-definite periods



chapter one was romance, the

treacle thick on the fingers,

licked off, delicious it was, so

sweet



no eye for foreshadowing, the

page missing from the index

vexing her, and can one,

really, ever trust the

narrator?



no. and so--she turns the

cream colored sheets, looking for

some legend she will understand,

oil black, that

she can trace over. but. no.



placed back upon the shelf at the

last and left to the whims

of the removal men



SEVEN-OH-FIVE



seven o five and OH the

minutes tick down, and dear,

this stocking is already laddered (where IS

another?) and there the

kettle blowing her top, steaming

away as if she would power the

whole house and

dammit where are my keys, so

sure I left them on the hook

by the door,

tick, tick, tick echoing back,

the click, click, click of

hasty shoes upon the boards (too

late, now, to worry about the

noise) snatching at purse-

strap then

dash-dark-down the stairwell,

ready as she'll ever be

(resolving, always, to be better:

that graceful, unhurried woman espied from afar)





ÎNTOARCE PAGINA

(NE PUTEM ÎNCREDE ÎN NARATOR?)



învelită în piele, ea întoarce

prima pagină albă să vadă

frontispiciul în tuşe scurte de cerneală

imperceptibil ascunse de hartia

ca o foiţă , colţul de sus

mototolit de parcă ultimul cititor

a închis cartea

cu o mână nerăbdătoare (sau grăbită)



ultimele două pagini, imprimate în

culorile unui păun, spirale de roşu, albastru,

verde contopindu-se într-un tot

plin ca o plăcintă de Crăciun



dând pagina, trecând peste

inevitabila dedicaţie (nu adresata ei,

desigur) cugetând la

iniţialele criptice delimitate

atât de limpede de puncte



primul capitol a fost de dragoste,

melasa în straturi groase pe degete,

linsă, ce gust delicios a avut,

aşa dulce



nepricepută la a ghici,

pagina lipsă din cuprins

o contrariază, şi ne putem oare

încrede vreodata

în narator?



nu, şi astfel întoarce

foile bej, cautând o legenda

pe care s-o înteleagă,

negru ca tăciunele, pe care

să o poată străbate. dar. nu.



aşezată la loc pe raft

ultima şi la cheremul

oamenilor de la mutări.



OF, ŞAPTE ŞI CINCI



Şapte şi cinci şi OF

minutele trec şi, vai,

ciorapul ăsta e deja agăţat (pe unde-o FI

celălalt?) iar dincolo ceainicul

dă în clocot, scoţând aburi de parcă

ar vrea să alimenteze

întreaga casa şi

fir-ar să fie, unde-mi sunt cheile, sigur

le-am lăsat în cuier

lângă uşă,

tic, tic, tic dublând ecoul

toc, toc, tocănitului

pantofilor grăbiti pe podea

(prea târziu acum să-mi fac griji

pentru zgomot) înşfăcând

geanta apoi

în grabă–pe scară-în beznă,

mai pregatită ca oricând

(hotărâtă mereu să fie mai bună:

femeia graţioasa cu pas agale

zărită în depărtare)



Traducere de Aura Mircea

MTTLC, anul II, Universitatea din Bucureşti

Mount Vernon Inquirer article, March 2011 issue.....available now!!!

An article appears in the March 2011 issue of the Mount Vernon Inquirer regarding last month's poetry reading at the Mount Vernon Public Library.

The paper is available for subscription ($34.00) yearly.

The Mount Vernon Inquirer
P.O. Box 458
Mount Vernon, NY 10551-0458

http://www.mvinquirer.com/

Mr. Joe Parisi, Editor and Publisher.