Congratulations!
The Bewildering Stories Review Board has selected one or more of your works for the First Quarterly Review, currently on line. We're very happy to extend this recognition to the outstanding prose and poetry of the season that's just ended. It will be listed again in the 2009 Annual Review due on line on December 28th.
You may have already seen the "1QR," as we call it familiarly, but we modestly refrain from assuming that everyone logs into the website the first thing on Monday. We're just taking this opportunity to send a semi-personal note (it's going to all the "winners" at once) to thank you for providing such good company on line.
Please keep up the good work; you have interested and appreciative readers!
Don Webb, managing editor
Bewildering Stories
http://www.bewilderingstories.com
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Prairie Prayer
when I died
Samuel buried me
in the breast of our land:
then he remarried
and continued to draw corn from the dirt.
all things come from the dirt,
all things return.
by then Samuel, too, was gone.
as were his wife
and their children.
my thoughts come closer
to the wind each season
so that sometimes I cannot tell
who is speaking of
and who of
Samuel buried me
in the breast of our land:
cross made of wood
carted in from somewhere back East,
a cairn of stones
each pulled one at a time
by his hands.
then he remarried
and continued to draw corn from the dirt.
all things come from the dirt,
all things return.
the cross dried in the prairie sun
its splinter bones blowing.
the rocks settled
and forgot their purpose.
by then Samuel, too, was gone.
as were his wife
and their children.
my thoughts come closer
to the wind each season
so that sometimes I cannot tell
who is speaking of
carrying grasshoppers
and bees
and pollen
and who of
forgotten husbands
and unfinished wombs.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
curse
Curse
Don't confuse Death's touch
with the bony cartoon digits
of a Halloween costume.
Death's rendering is ever so subtle,
her finger is precise
flicking one adenine loose
from the fresh, wet nucleotide
like an assassin might nick
the break lines of his victim
letting the red fluid drip slowly.
The car will stop today
at the intersection, but tomorrow
or the next day is always coming.
And so you blunder along
self-satisfied
and all the while the rot begins
nestled beneath your areola,
sending it's roots deep and slender.
This unfathomable thing
is not subject to righteousness -
and when the lump forms
you flail about fat-fisted
cursing Death
but she is long gone
and you are alone.
with the bony cartoon digits
of a Halloween costume.
Death's rendering is ever so subtle,
her finger is precise
flicking one adenine loose
from the fresh, wet nucleotide
like an assassin might nick
the break lines of his victim
letting the red fluid drip slowly.
The car will stop today
at the intersection, but tomorrow
or the next day is always coming.
And so you blunder along
self-satisfied
and all the while the rot begins
nestled beneath your areola,
sending it's roots deep and slender.
This unfathomable thing
is not subject to righteousness -
and when the lump forms
you flail about fat-fisted
cursing Death
but she is long gone
and you are alone.
woman bird
cloaked in black,
the color that absorbs all light
she mocks the songs you know,
that you are vulnerable to,
though the words have no meaning to her.
lyrics pour forth from her mouth
and you lick them up like honey -
"choose me, love me"
she sings.
this word she comprehends,
like all predators do.
surprised, you look up to find your lips
covered with tar,
warm and thick and inescapable
and the chorus you thought you heard
is really the moaning of eaten souls,
gutted and rendered and forgotten
in the filth.
only your eyes are unclogged
and finally wide
as her beak finds purchase in the flesh of your chest
and the nuzzle becomes a tearing of bone and sinew -
she has won her prize.
she only wishes to fill that void,
and you cannot blame an animal for its hunger,
passed from mother to daughter,
mother to daughter.
the color that absorbs all light
she mocks the songs you know,
that you are vulnerable to,
though the words have no meaning to her.
lyrics pour forth from her mouth
and you lick them up like honey -
"choose me, love me"
she sings.
this word she comprehends,
like all predators do.
surprised, you look up to find your lips
covered with tar,
warm and thick and inescapable
and the chorus you thought you heard
is really the moaning of eaten souls,
gutted and rendered and forgotten
in the filth.
only your eyes are unclogged
and finally wide
as her beak finds purchase in the flesh of your chest
and the nuzzle becomes a tearing of bone and sinew -
she has won her prize.
she only wishes to fill that void,
and you cannot blame an animal for its hunger,
passed from mother to daughter,
mother to daughter.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Doing the Hustle
I find "The Hustle"
on a friend's "Pure Disco" CD
and burn it to my iPod.
With the door closed,
the lights dimmed,
and headphones jacked in
I finally push play.
Sultry, hushed voices
enjoin me to
"Do it!"
and a tweety flute,
a cheezy electric guitar,
and a not-altogether unpleasant
trumpet begin their silly melody.
"Do the Hustle!" the voices command
like Sirens,
and I am suddenly seven years old,
laying in my bed,
the Superman bedspread pulled up.
My parents are in the next room
playing records,
trying to learn this dance,
and the tango, and other last gasps
of form in modern art,
while avoiding the coffee table
and the black vinyl love seat.
Things that make grown-ups happy
are incomprehensible
and they can only be watched
like cloud banks forming on the horizon.
Tonight I am in many places and times
as the horn blows
and the strings and bells accompany,
and somewhere there is the sound of soft footsteps
and laughter - I am not sure of when they are
or I am -
"Do it!" -
but the clouds are pink and gentle
and beyond them is a safe sea.
on a friend's "Pure Disco" CD
and burn it to my iPod.
With the door closed,
the lights dimmed,
and headphones jacked in
I finally push play.
Sultry, hushed voices
enjoin me to
"Do it!"
and a tweety flute,
a cheezy electric guitar,
and a not-altogether unpleasant
trumpet begin their silly melody.
"Do the Hustle!" the voices command
like Sirens,
and I am suddenly seven years old,
laying in my bed,
the Superman bedspread pulled up.
My parents are in the next room
playing records,
trying to learn this dance,
and the tango, and other last gasps
of form in modern art,
while avoiding the coffee table
and the black vinyl love seat.
Things that make grown-ups happy
are incomprehensible
and they can only be watched
like cloud banks forming on the horizon.
Tonight I am in many places and times
as the horn blows
and the strings and bells accompany,
and somewhere there is the sound of soft footsteps
and laughter - I am not sure of when they are
or I am -
"Do it!" -
but the clouds are pink and gentle
and beyond them is a safe sea.
**
Monday, January 5, 2009
Every Night it's Just the Same (published in Shaking Like a Mountain)
Tom Waits and I
sit across the aisle from each other.
The train is moving again and
there is Rod Stewart
at the front of the car;
beautiful men and women surround him.
Light flashes on the walls
from an unseen disco ball,
He is singing Tom's song
as the steel wheels chatter
over seams and joints in the tracks.
Is it like this every night?
I want to ask
when I see Tom watching,
face smoothed of emotion.
But I know we all ask this question -
will I see you tonight?
Equal shares of hope and fear
as the "you" is filled in
with approaching faces and names
like stops on the downtown train.
sit across the aisle from each other.
The train is moving again and
there is Rod Stewart
at the front of the car;
beautiful men and women surround him.
Light flashes on the walls
from an unseen disco ball,
He is singing Tom's song
as the steel wheels chatter
over seams and joints in the tracks.
Is it like this every night?
I want to ask
when I see Tom watching,
face smoothed of emotion.
But I know we all ask this question -
will I see you tonight?
Equal shares of hope and fear
as the "you" is filled in
with approaching faces and names
like stops on the downtown train.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Search
I Google you to see if you are still there
after seven years.
Is there eternal life among the electrons?
It seems there are fewer hits now,
but I could be wrong.
There are more oddities intermixed:
a list of runners from a race -
two of whom, when combined together,
share your first and last name.
Apparently you are also a camera brand,
and you must have a distant relation
who runs a knitting group in Iowa.
These all appear
like random thoughts
that intrude when I try to hold your face,
your voice
in my mind.
I bring up Mapquest
and click for directions.
In "Starting Location"
I type "Wishing You Were Here"
and in ending location,
I enter, "Heaven."
I click on "Get Directions"
and wait.
after seven years.
Is there eternal life among the electrons?
It seems there are fewer hits now,
but I could be wrong.
There are more oddities intermixed:
a list of runners from a race -
two of whom, when combined together,
share your first and last name.
Apparently you are also a camera brand,
and you must have a distant relation
who runs a knitting group in Iowa.
These all appear
like random thoughts
that intrude when I try to hold your face,
your voice
in my mind.
I bring up Mapquest
and click for directions.
In "Starting Location"
I type "Wishing You Were Here"
and in ending location,
I enter, "Heaven."
I click on "Get Directions"
and wait.
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