Poetry Super Highway

Poetry Super Highway

August 1-7, 2016: Poetry from David Spicer and Domenic J. Scopa

​David Spicer and Domenic J. Scopa

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​David Spicer
earwinxus@yahoo.com

Bio (auto)

David Spicer has had poems in Yellow Mama, Reed Magazine, Slim Volume, The Laughing Dog, In Between Hangovers, The American Poetry Review, Easy Street, Ploughshares, Bad Acid Laboratories, Inc., Dead Snakes, and in A Galaxy of Starfish: An Anthology of Modern Surrealism (Salo Press, 2016). He has been nominated for a Pushcart, is the author of one full-length collection of poems and four chapbooks, and is the former editor of Raccoon, Outlaw, and Ion Books. He lives in Memphis, Tennessee.

The following work is Copyright © 2016, and owned by ​David Spicer and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.

If Interested, Call 634-5683

Since kindergarten communion I’ve
swallowed revelations that fell
into my clutches, held baggage that
chose to bump my belly, and straggled
to the archives of the library
in my psyche, hibernating like books
crowding a deserted dresser. When ready
to accept the crystal thinking of the Greeks,
a loudmouth newscaster’s votives
to hallucinogens, or plump research
about Mao over intercoms, I surrendered,
unlocking prophecies in recovered cantos
of Pound and Emily the Martyr. Now,
I eat rhubarb pie with milk the color
of bored snow, or radishes garnishing
duck flattened to my specifications.
I haven’t unlocked the furnace under the bare
light bulb of my crumbling basement in years,
but if you visit, whistle Dixie and I’ll drop
the water pump I’m fixing, open the rusty door
with welcoming, palsied arms, and prepare
the bathwater to soothe bruises you and I
have endured, like every other clipped body
in this sad, random world of lost idiots.

 


Domenic J. Scopa
djscopa@gmail.com

Bio (auto)

Domenic Scopa is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee and the 2014 recipient of the Robert K. Johnson Poetry Prize and Garvin Tate Merit Scholarship. He holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. His poetry and translations have been featured in Poetry Quarterly, Reed Magazine, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Reunion: The Dallas Review, Belleville Park Pages, and many others. He is currently an adjunct professor for the Changing Lives Through Literature program at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. He is also a copyeditor for The Tishman Review and a manuscript reader for Hunger Mountain.

The following work is Copyright © 2016, and owned by Domenic J. Scopa and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.


In the Land of Fields

The final time my babysitter sinned
was when he mapped a way,
and made forgiveness possible
for how his hips slammed into me.
If I could do it, he might also,
someday, wherever he strayed,
be so humble to forgive himself.
 
*
 
Wanting solitude,
longing for the simple loneliness of travel,
I said farewell and flew to Poland.
Descending, I looked down
at snow powdering fields,
and small towns,
each house with a steeple roof-
Then the scowling tarmac,
thump of touchdown…
Then nothing…
Still he followed,
and every woman I held close
felt like my captive.
Run away. Or don’t.
Most of my decisions have seemed wrong.
 
*
 
Once, at dusk, I strolled
the foggy streets of Warsaw,
the pavement puddled,
…………and reflecting,
and at that hour, alone,
I stopped hearing the sigh of traffic,
discussions, the racket
of winter wind lifting leaves
high above the sidewalk lamps.
 
When I heard my nephew was born,
I thought, how noisy
this world must be for him,
…………how mortal.
That night, to spite a missing person,
I refused to listen
to the sound of cathedral bells…
to spite a missing person…
To be honest, I was still attached.
My babysitter died and I was still attached.
It seems so strange to say it
…………quite like that-
But how else can I say it?
 
*
 
When I wake up,
I confront the mirror,
press the safety razor to my skin.
I uproot a breath.
My body craves to hold,
…………and be held.
Because there are faces
I may never see again,
…………I must say
there are two things about darkness
and what it does to us-
Her bright, hooker eyes
when I flicked the light switch off,
how the pupils constricted
as if in blind faith,
 
and my babysitter closing
…………the closet door,
shadowed and speechless. 

 


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