From Seven Corners Poetry (ed. Steve Halle)

A VILLANELLE

I have undone our bent decision laughing sadly.
Between wind and wound, the day pitches down.
We are a replicating setting devoid of greenery,

with hoes, tropes, and our mass machinery
with licensed language but without listening we drone.
I have undone our bent decision laughing sadly

as though to speck electric and forgo our power medley.
We divine to be verbs but end up as proper nouns.
We are a replicating setting devoid of greenery,

trying through the days’ languor to talk avidly
of words settling among sheets slipped facedown,
the stillness undone, our bent decision laughing sadly.

An embryonic engineering; an abracadabra of absently
searching the haphazard circuitry of words. Yes, this brown
field is a replicating setting devoid of greenery,

a discord of clouds at our throats, a soured creamery
left hastily for the rush of law, of light, of renown.
Still moving with our bent decision laughing sadly,
we replicate settings devoid of greenery.

© William Allegrezza and Simone Muench 2009

Adam Fieled (State College, Pennsylvania, USA): "Song for Maria"

My scarlet letter let you in
     We rallied on our separate beds
         The way to blue was flushed with ice
              Your tongue possesses everything

(lighten my,
watch my,
  blow my)

                        In any case the case is closed
                  We walk the streets, a trackless train
              My verdant prayer is your own skin
         I can't believe I'm free again

Relax—

Ice yr drink—

Think—

Pursue a purpose, lost in flame
     Become the scum you dote on, crab
          The sky, the ground, the square you are
                The realm of flesh is one lone purge...

mercy        mercy      mercy
     mercy                mercy

© Adam Fieled 1998

Chris McCabe (Montreal, Quebec/Dagenham, London, UK): "Fragment (undated)"

Debating the relative merits of Orchestral Manoeuvres in The Dark
or Tears for Fears, while April ice melts slowly in Westmount Park.

Now appears to be less world-shaking than when, Misha G., we both
could be smartly vehement about Richard Rorty, Boy George, Truth,

Logic & being spanked by Marianopolis twins known to us as Ruth.
Not that we were L. Cohen’s heirs, but rather a pair of young pioneers

gazing into the future with our smoking jackets for uniforms, sayers
of sooth but more often faux-decadent imbibers of lascivious perfumes,

who often drank tea (before it was Pennyroyal) on mornings as Winter
Dripped away as surely as Youth does— as children, crushed on looms.

If such industrial imagery seems a tad stark, consider the Reagan Years
were also ours in Montreal. We danced: slim Japanese New Wavers,

The Cure & The Smiths our aural neighbours if not allies; felt Time’s
Axis turn, as early eloquence (our praxis) dried up in Age’s Summer.

© Chris McCabe (?)

Tammy Armstrong (Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada): "Affair with my Partner after Spring Haircut/Shave"

This begins my affair:
this new face in our bed.

Fastidiousness spatchcocked
into shiftless lust
in a basement tavern
where base boys
dance with undergrads.
We drink with blind date enthusiasm.

Treat me proverbial,
chalky with wine & newness,
bringing it all to bed
while he’s away on a road trip.

This perennial hook-up
leaves alarm clocks,
toothbrush rituals in the margins.
Back story:
a much younger you,
a .12 gauge, a chipmunk.
The words don’t matter at last call.

Take me home in the van—
a box of finishing nails
chattering
in the back,
a weeks worth of Globes & Mails
nested on the passenger seat.

If they ask, tell them—
yes, we left the Chevron
near the Tannery
around three—
a new pack of smokes
paid for from an ambitious wallet.
Clearly, single before tonight.

© Tammy Armstrong 2006

Rosanna Lee (Manhattan, New York): "Shoot the Freak"

The Cyclone rattled its last rat a tat tat
roller-coaster shudder two decades ago.
The skeleton still stands as testament to a bygone
New York Jewish era.
The construction crane demolished 
the last, wiry matchstick remains,
because at night, it swayed and made
a sing song noise that made them
think it would crash one night and kill someone,
last ligaments brushed away.

Today no one goes to see the freak show. The bearded lady
and somnambulist have shaved and awoken.
The Siamese twins are severed and killed.
Cut the baby in half and the real parent will speak up.
The Wisdom of Solomon is the new freak show.
It's the real parents screaming cut them, kill one, and leave
me a normal baby for chistsakes!

Even the circus died. No one's amazed anymore.
The Norwegian trapeze artists and gypsies keep
up the desperate legacy of their sad parents.
The ringmaster parodies himself in mocking bravado.
The elephants stink and are crusty and march in unending circles
with glamorous, glittering ladies who do not seem to exist
even though they're straddling beasts.
Professor Sascha talks to the animals with a long whip, magic,
& the white horses leaping really are so ravishing, tame and wild.
The big tent droops; the crystal ball dulls to wood.

One night a child goes to the circus carnival for the last time.
He fingers the illusion and all the players congeal into waxy ice:
Feather Woman in mid-flip above the net, tiger tamer with his head
in the mad kitty's jaws, the clown mid-tumble with his
shiny shoes on the dusty ground.

© Rosanna Lee 2008

Adam Fieled (editor, Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania): Equations: Thesis: Wendy Smith

Here I am in New England, getting killed. It’s summer, there’s weed around, booze. I’m perched on a ledge, feel I’m being pushed off. Look who’s here to visit: Wendy, two years older than me, who has two pieces coming out in Poetry. My first major piece has been out two months. We immediately become big shots to each other. Wendy has slightly bronzed skin, brownish hair lightened towards dirty blonde, a voluptuous body but a way of holding herself that suggests she finds her own body embarrassing, somehow unworkable. Yet even her diffidence is enticing; it makes guys want to ram through those defenses. Our equation sinks into place: I’m a young Poundian firebrand, she’s got all the spiritualized quirkiness of Emily Dickinson, but with sex appeal. We are standing, having drinks in my room, smoking cigarettes in the balminess (open windows, flies). There’s a party down the hall we abandoned to smoke in peace. Somehow, a wind current comes into the room and does a loop so that the door closes: a minor miracle, or a universe sign concerning what’s meant to happen next. It does: I reach over, begin with gropes, which soon turn into kisses. As we go into this, Wendy lets her hair loose from her ponytail. We are two geniuses, kings and queens, and this is within days of Heather, her positing of me as underling. Such is a life in the arts. When a surfeit of symbolic material lands on two souls, they (sometimes) have no choice but to act them out. As I enter her, Wendy becomes a symbol of my own artistic potency, and I of hers.
.....................................................................................................

As I pound away at Wendy, I notice this about her: she’s scared of sex. I am on top of her, she clutches my arms with her hands. It’s like she thinks I might go crazy if not held back. Her eyes are opened wide and looking into mine, glazed and petrified. I later find out that fear of sex is one of her great poetic themes. But we bang away on this tiny narrow bed with no sheets in this dorm room that must suffice for this ten-day residency. I try Jean’s tricks (variations) but nothing works; Wendy’s afraid. She’s denied the unction of a stream; I’m wearing a condom. This goes on all night, right through the New England summer 4 am sunrise. There is some gruesomeness to wolf-hour sunlight that only New Englanders know. She leaves me and there is poignancy to her leaving because we both know this cannot happen again; we have taken our roles too far. She can’t handle the moves that accrue to the life of a big genius and I don’t like this diffidence in her parts that hates sex, loathes feelings, wants to curl up underneath a crab shell and close its eyes forever. I’m twenty-nine, and I’m building relationships that are instantly obsolescent. Wendy, for one night, got to be a goddess, and me to be a god, only to find out that we’re just more normal people doing that hallowed, time-honored routine: fake it ‘til you make it.

© Adam Fieled 2011-2023