Sex and Shadows

 A critical piece on two poetesses who have both been featured in P.F.S. Post.

Also: two pieces on a female painter of note: 1 and 2.

Adam Fieled (editor, Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania, USA): from Something Solid: Aughts Philly: "Undulant"

for Hannah Miller

I'd made plans to meet you in Bar Noir
on 18th, you were there; we drank. What
happened after that, in the Logan Square
flat, is that in defrocking you knocked over
an antique lamp bequeathed to me by my
aunt in Mahopac. Serendipity, I thought,
stunned then into silence by your bedroom
elan. Outside, a sultry night simmered; this
night of all nights, scattered green glass littered
my bedroom floor, & I finally got taken, past
liquor, to what eternity was only in your mouth—
as though you'd jumped from a forest scene
(ferns, redwoods), a world of pagan magic,
into a scene still undulant with possibilities—

c. Adam Fieled 2017-2023

Undulant first appeared in Monday Journal (Issue #2) in 2021

Vlad Pogorelov (Rocklin, California, USA): "No. 33"

Mosquitoes,
Cockroaches, and
Spiders
My lovely roommates
and my only true friends
I love you
I love you
I love you
In a sick kind of love
Which will make an executioner happy
And the victim will suffer no more
Only pleasure from the torture
And the pain has no right to exist

And some time my eyes are
Staring at you: big, lonely spider
You are sitting in the darkest corner
Of your dusty net
Waiting for me to get in

And I know for sure
That a giant mosquito
Made his home
Inside my swollen heart
There is plenty of blood
Inside those chambers

And when I can't hear you clearly,
When you are talking to me on the phone
I feel that a cockroach is moving
Inside of my ear

And sometimes I feel
That there is nothing to feel anymore
Ever since my soul was amputated
And smuggled to India
By a gynecologist
Who was seeing my mother
Long time ago, before I was born

So,
Mosquitoes,
Cockroaches,
and Spiders,
You are my only friends,
Who are sharing my soulless fate,
Abandoned by lovers,
Forgotten by long-time friends,
Forsaken by my motherland and the ancient gods
I am living a sheltered life
As a derelict

And it seems like it's time
To jump into the water of a substance,
Which looks like a residential street
Or a boiling sea
Depends on the point of view
Or the angle of the mind
Or just walk out the door
And swim to the store...
Buy some cheap liquor...
Go back home...
To this slow SINKING ship
And to share my fate
With my only true friends
With my only true love
With mosquitoes,
     cockroaches,
     and spiders
'Cause I am a derelict
And I am living a sheltered life

c. Vladlen Pogorelov 1997-2023

Symbolists and Hallucinogenics on FM (Fieled's Miscellaneous)

Some interesting damage being done by a travelogue piece covering my years in State College, Pennsylvania, in the 90s. Parts 1 and 2.

Steve Halle (Palatine, Illinois, USA): from blackbirds

not good at much,
great
at being 
forgotten, though

the Big Ugly Tarp flaps
outside the window,
forgotten, though

cockroaches stagger out,
die on the carpet, their
eggs, however, travel home
with me, jewelry for my wife

many folks
die for voices

that's why Emily
was smart, shut
her voice in drawers
near ghostly knickers
there the larynx
won't lie
too cramped

this enough of shouting

........................................................................................

my pre-arthritic hands strangle
Disillusioned and Disruptive Students

as snow melts to re-fall
the Big Ugly Tarp becomes
my blanket, I sleep
on the roof and use books
to kindle my life-saving fire
the smell of stagnant water
dances with my nose hairs

the drone of traffic sounds
my imaginary wolfpack
gets shot not forgotten

the Terrible Angel
slithers into Theology
the true Big Ugly Tarp,
Class while the Rabbi
drowses drunk before
noon, did you hear
the one about

I think so, but I've forgotten

dump out wheelchairs in dumpsters for miracles,
shout "rise and walk," with a grating voice for veterans,
'twas enough to suffer, thrown from the steed

six legs crawl
over a half-dozen
forgotten spoons,
night is coming
again, at last;
so are cockroaches.

© Steve Halle 2008-2023

My mangina is the screw
By which you thread
Your not so secret nights

Don't bother my beer
I'm drinking

© Andrew Lundwall 2008-2023

Chris McCabe (London, UK): Two Poems

LONDON EYE

Nature: an extinction rate.
Recall she was a girl
Speaking with a bullet in Budavox,

Shells on the sea blasting,
On Frith Street, where, in 1914,
Imagism flicked on. Then,

There (!) the pseudo-Blitz
Of television began, 1929.
I wear the soft black cloth

Of the bathrobe you gave me, swan
On the foam of your rising.
No home for creatures with the sun

Dialing its metronome
Onto the cool ridge's melted dome,
To kiss and caress, honey, by-gone.

QUARTER TO FIVE

Grief's a winter gulag—
growing gardenless in rain—
cardinals that cannot vote—
the air damp infected corduroy—
this bone tundra

implanted under the cranial flap
like a loveless rose petal:
slow white slime-worms
risen to bury
dim flesh in you.

© Chris McCabe 2008-2023