PSH: Poets of the Week

Bio (auto)

My name is Ryan Chandler. I live in Barcelona. I've worked as a journalist for fifteen years but have recently given up building walls to dedicate more time to planting flowers. I recently wrote a collection of poems for a group of local artists and am currently working on my first collection which is a comic courtship between night and day.

snippets from Day and Night

I.

Drunk with rage
Drowning his sorrows
On the sins of man
God swallowed the sun
And became night.

Unimpressed,
Day unloaded a machine gun
Into his cassock-black cloak.
Day shone through night,whole
Galaxies of bullet holes.

II.

Night boasted:

“I am the deepest tarn
On the tallest mountain
On the coldest day
In the history of man.
I am the breathless sleep
Of your darkest dreams.
I have no colour.

“You know, that is exactly your problem,” said day,
before breathing warmth into her icy fingers
and calling up Sun on her mobile.

V.

“Looking for you, I made the moon a coffin
Sacked the bone dead black cliffs of Alkaid
Smothered raging desert fires near Mezar
Then quenched my thirst in the Eradinus river
Every lambent drop – gone.
In the rayless forests of Denebola
I fought glistening packs of hunting dogs
With black mirrors and sugar blindness.
I razed the kingdom of Cephus and Cassiopea
Crushed it, starless - beat it black and blue
I spent all of me, looking for you.
But found not one damned lucent trace
In deepest darkest out of space.”

“Maybe you should try being a bit more down to earth”

Donna Sewell
donnajosewell@gmail.com

Bio (auto)

Donna Sewell followed her heart to Japan 11 years ago, ended up in the suburbs of Tokyo, liked it well enough to stay this long, but is now wondering where a new path might lead.

Kusai

Tobacco reeking
Hasn't bathed in days
Scraggly ass guy
Sits down next to me

Puts his face in mine
"What's that smell?"
Waving his hand
back and forth
in front of his fu man chu

Brown crooked finger
Pointing at me
"You stink"
Ignoring the smirk on my face.
"Kusai"
Hand keeps on flapping

"You must not speak Japanese"
Ignoring my,
"You're the one who stinks"
In Japanese.
Ignoring the four or five others
Ignoring us

One hand fiddling with his zipper
The other still flapping about
"Your pussy stinks"
And then he gets up
and walks away.

Sits down next
to some salary man.
Mumbling.
A stop later
Waltzes by one last time
"Kusai"

My stop,
I get off the train
His stench
Clinging to me

The Pain is Less When We Are Two to Carry it

Why do they call it losing your virginity anyway? Like you might become forgetful and misplace it, only to have it turn up later in some random bowl, discovered by your little brother along with the "marbles" your grandfather had lost? Me--I willfully discarded mine. Got rid of it as soon as I could. Liberated myself from it as if it were a curse--a stain. Something dirty to rid oneself of at the first opportune moment. And from then on, master of myself. Nothing to protect. Nothing to hide. Free to play like one of the boys. I did not lament being free of it.

Part of the "The Pain is Less When We Are Two to Carry It?" suite of poems.

It's Complicated

You told me
that when we make love
I don't open my legs
as wide as some of
the other girls
that you've known
that it seems
like
I don't want
it
like it hurts
me
like
I'm afraid-
Like there's no
pleasure
in it
for me--

Like I'm not
there.

Well,
I do
want it.
But
it's
complicated.

Part of the "The Pain is Less When We Are Two to Carry It?" suite of poems.