Adam Fieled (editor, Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania, USA): from Something Solid, The Nineties, "Defiance"

The road is slick with moisture. If they hydroplane,
you can say goodbye to my own future life. Rather
more distressingly, they’re both high, as she holds on
tight. Her long, slender arms make the necessary circle
around his ample waist; long, lank blonde hair blows
in the breeze. Yet she’s quiet at Penn Crest, stubbornly resistant to
attempts to draw her out. She’s his girl Friday more
than wife. Real marriage hovers in the future as
a homing beacon, against the ravages of too many
mob-related parties, intermediaries imploring her
to pipe down, climb on his loaded lap: her one and only.
Body/soul unity, as a possibility, haunts her uncomfortable
hours; ideals inherited from the Renaissance shake her
dope-addled brain. Statuesque, she carries a blown-glass bowl, rolling papers.

The most formal future comrade migrates from flat to flat,
the length of Manhattan; saved from school’s repetitive
rigors, yet awkward against others more normal. As is
often the New York spin, there is no getting close. Kids
come and go. She’s got the pluck, as is ascertained, to paint
what she wants. The most difficult forms (portal-ways, planar spaces)
flow easily out of her. She’s then a weird, worrisome windup
doll to defy the feral, formless touch used to lighting up
the New York art firmament. She’s a gem for someplace else,
not dust-binned yet, but close. Half-noticing, she also
imposes a posture of defiance on her life— tiny, half-dyke.
Day-to-day, the grind is to take the advanced forms, find
somewhere to migrate with them. The vision behind is crystal.
I dare to defy the motorbike, New York with paper piles, marriages. Right?

© Adam Fieled 2024-2026

More from 42 Opus

WHEN I FIRST SEE THE DEAD DEER

When I first see the dead deer, I think
Hope and Remembrance.
It's not the cluster of pinks I'd wanted,
not the first sight of the first crocus,
but a bouquet nonetheless.

Touching the furred foreleg where it juts
from the broken ribcage, it's
how perfectly still the leg lies, and
what a strange arrangement— how like a stem
it is for the whorl of bones and hair,
just uncovered by the melting snow.

Later, when I smell it on my hands,
I touched a man in love, and
what strange confessions the dead make.
Look how the blooms lie frozen still,
in the not-quite spring, in the shapes
of tubers, rhizomes, bones.

© Mary Walker Graham 2007

From Caffeine Destiny

ENTROPY

The night, the windows all crash
in their frames. I'm not the shambled

aftermath or the boy-girl order.
Spaces between us are not spaces

at all but a thousand blue flowered
nightgowns. You haven't yet learned

to discern the shape of things according
to your tongue. Heavy cumulous hang

the sky like sheets from a line
and entire alphabets go missing.

In the dark, a woman's teeth
flicker on and off. We'll decide

who's leaving by a scientific method
and the rule of light bulbs and iceboxes.

My skin exudes enough lumen for boxwoods to glow.

© Kristy Bowen 2006

From 42 Opus

DAILY MADONNA

Don't forget to do your daily Madonna.
Wake up and pat your womb before the light
gets in your window; you don't know what
the day will have in store.

You could be sweeping the stairwell, unaware
all this time that discipline was discipline.
You didn't know that using turnips
would win you favor, that saving rainwater
in the barrel would make anyone happy.

Someone likes it when you take the wilted stems to the heap
and churn them in. Someone likes it when you're patient
with bumblebee-weed, when you know that purslane is purslane,
and good to eat, and even when you let the grass
grow longer than it should.

Someone saw you carry the feathers of the jay the cat killed
and lay them on the fencepost, in hopes
another bird would use them for a nest, saw you smile
before you threw the gathered walnut hulls
into the woods, instead of weeping.

© Mary Walker Graham 2007

From Eoagh 3

SORRY

I can’t remember the 2nd
time I hurt you—

it was dark & someplace
in that darkness
was the thing I did.

You weren’t the target, I
know that, though
you might’ve been the bow
& the tension
I really think is love.
Nothing ever sends me away.
I’ve got your pain
in my pocket &
it glows in the dark

and in the light
it’s the softest kind
of singing woman’s voice.
That’s who you are. To me, I mean.
Let me hold your shoulders
back so you look
arrogant & beautiful
welcoming me into the warm
sad party. Let this
be the unfortunate hat
I hang outside the door
if only you will
allow me to come in.

© Eileen Myles 1979

More from moria poetry

PRECISION ENTRANCES
             (For H.D.)

Ethereal jellyfish
knotted garden
pearl vision of a
waking bridge
quiet transitory gully
screaming and sunlit
tides of dream
seeds in the ground
oyster abounding
the delphic charioteer
flies right into the mulberry symphony
trance skeleton drunk in the vineyard.

© Carrie Hunter 2004

From Dusie 5

WE’RE LOVING IT

Night arcs add to a continuous sense
of April, of this year. Please welcome.

To the pink pages, thank you;
thank you parasol, thank you fuzzy voiced
at the mike. Thank you, ice in a glass.

The road is a method, or a line joining
one possible former with a likely latter,
like a ladder.

And yes, the sky is blue,
& it can be photographed.

Our official position is class piñata.
Our innermost breaks.

© Shanna Compton 2006

From Melancholia's Tremulous Dreadlocks

METROPOLITAN AVENUE DANCE NO. 1

I will myself into a bird. I might be a sparrow
or a robin or a broken plate. I might

not be any of these things. I might hide
in the shed or sing a wicked song.

I might sing e-i-e-i-o. I will myself
an audience— everyone claps or sings or

does nothing. I will myself into a frame,
tuck in my arms, my legs. Perhaps I begin

again, this time with a partner. Partner says
you sing a wicked song.

Partner says sparrow, dish-plate, birdsong.
Partner says, no, no, you’re doing it wrong.

© Gina Myers 2006