July 18-24, 2005: Rumit Pancholi and Jennifer Gomoll

Rumit Pancholi and Jennifer Gomoll

BECOME A POET OF THE WEEK
click here for submission guidelines

bait silly girl once again, he has bought the fish and told you lies of how great, how hard he tried, all day, by the pier, reeling in til the perfect one struck the bait And you will believe him as you carve away in your kitchen sink the meat and ignore that it is spoiled A New Trick Once again I must tell you that you are mistaken, and once again we will come back to that lonely, cold alley where you first taught me and told me you loved me oh how sweetly you touched me in those places I resisted myself to touch, and how generous your fingers were, digging in my hips making sure it was certain they had been there, as if in a lame attempt to put some label on me that sounded, I bet, like your voice! No, I’m sorry, you were wrong then, and you are wrong now, as you find me in your dirty bed with some random guy And just to make you squirm, I teach him the same tricks that you taught me, and the others, so well You must certainly remember your own innocent words: “What good is it to learn something new, something perfect, if you can’t show it to someone else?” garden boy under a hot, disheveled noon the mosquitoes swarmed like poison, circling overhead the shirtless garden-hand tilled & ploughed & sowed, a shiny sun rattling against his slick and tanned spine, his muscles stiffening like the back of a hungry ox he ignored the flying gnats pecking him for blood, knowing they’d never leave, and greeted the owner, Hello, Mrs Salise, turning artlessly back like a quiet moon passing into its phase, knowing that it only took a cold wind so long to fly away.

This One’ll Get Me in Trouble the hippie poet got what he wanted all the factories in the world shut down there was no work to go to everyone was happy and flooded the forest preserves to contemplate sequoias, lichen, trout, waterfalls, cumulonimbi, their own hands and feces and pansexual longings they danced naked through nature trails and trampled down the bracken until their mescaline wore off and all the women were bursting with babies and the deer got so sick of everybody’s shit they moved into the abandoned tenement apartments and worked the salt mines, or at least licked them then some began missing video game rentals and others, Monday night football, flavored vodkas, butt facials, blogs, deep-fried jalepeno poppers, spiked heels on concrete, the jingle of coins in deep pockets they started charging possum meat for marijuana snail shells for monthly cave rent antlers and horns for blow jobs and so red-faced, squalling, dirty Capitalism was reborn unto the people laughing Bunhill Fields Forever At the National Gallery in London you stare at Lord Byron a while He’s not wearing his Albanian costume very well You can’t imagine him getting any girls, despite the hypnotic, oily green of his eye John Keats’ death mask is less romantic than that, its grim frown an attraction to rival the wax entrails at Madame Toussaud’s, that museum’s piped-in stench of burning flesh, its Michael Jackson circa 1983.  For sheer tears in the eyes, none match the Beefeater tour guide at the Tower:  “The dungeon was frightening in its day, more frightening now that it’s a gift shop.”  * Nights are unsuitable for walking alone, safety questioned in outsider status, taste affronted by blaze of adverts adorning historic facades.  Every hair rises with electricity you possess, but all merry-making wafts from beyond a solid row of empty shops, arm-in-arm, red rover, red rover, pretending to be one building, a barrier Voices are laughing and ringing out disco high above the cobblestones:  Hey hey I will survive.  Nothing doing in Soho but to count businessmen climbing narrow flights to those glowing red flats;  no Wonderland for you, looking for gin to make you alternately small, and tall * Once, post-afternoon rain, lost beyond markets, museums, pubs, clubs, theatre, you stumble back nearly two centuries into a graveyard, Bunhill Fields, where concrete crumbles so, you hallucinate a glimpse of casket, bone, first hand in town to wave hello, and welcome Know: this is not where Americans go on holiday It’s not the glorious postcard stand of Westminster Abbey, where one shuffles round the illustrious dead Here, find the dead no one erected statuary for, here lies what’s left of the mortal William Blake In memoriam, someone has offered a bottle of red plastic roses You feel emotion beyond the dictates of guidebook and embrace it, traveler, the only way you know–taking a photograph, final exposure, the last on your last roll of film (“Bunhill Fields Forever” first appeared in the journal Night Rally in 2002) At the Rest Home for Celibates At the rest home for celibates, almost everyone visits the chapel, keep themselves zipped for God (or parents, who slide rings on tiny fingers like spouses or first-time buyers ) The bitter stay in their rooms, muttering at the doors they’ve closed We’re not coming out for body on the tongue or blood in a cup of wine Not ‘born again virgins’ neither Our sheets will never be white again Devils stick us with needles at the chest and thigh, a pretty boy or girl who puts words who puts words who puts words devils who lie and pelt our barred windows with hot little stones of false hope For us there’s not much temptation We know every serenade has a final chord, understand that hell is a perpetual set of footprints receding from where we lie alone by choice not by choice by necessity by choice in a time no slight is forgotten, a place that’s hard as a pew (“At the Rest Home for Celibates” first appeared in the journal Grasslands Review in 2003) The Job for a Day Game If you could take any job for just one day what would you be? I say Rockette, flashing sequins and legs, kicking high as the Chrysler Building’s spire Or Sea Captain, smoking a pipe in salt wind, stumping along on my peg, damn you, Moby Orange Picker Fruit in hand, shaking rainwater leaves Citrus permeating skin O sunshine! Inspector 12 A celebrity, my name in every brand new pocket Quality guaranteed Typesetter one hundred years ago All the alphabet blocks in reverse lined up for the kiss of ink, the fresh page No, wait I’ve got it The Guy The guy who could drop the bomb Strokes the red button Chooses not to push. Documentary Press the lens of your camera or eye between the links of a chain link fence, past blackberries which are not blackberries but fruit of weeds grown long and strong Your viewfinder will find a loading dock, what’s left: a wall of doorways, no trucks and no more loads Inside is outside, concrete ground a meadow of rubbish Shoots push through fissures, open to sun, rain, a dust of snow Wonder what it is about walls, a wall that holds up nothing, does not divide or provide entry, stands against cinders and mud-tracks of bulldozers long gone home.