POETRY
Edited by Phillip Levine. You can submit up to three poems to Chronogram at a time. Send’em if you got’em, either via snailmail or e-mail. Deadline: September 5. 314 Wall St., Kingston, NY 12401. E-mail: poetry@chronogram.com. Subject: Poetry.
Sadly, I, we, lost a friend, poet, and friend of poetry when Saul Bennett passed away this past month. He will be missed. —Phillip
The Great Escape of ’88
untitled
My Ford was cooked and I was lost. I pulled into the town of just swell. The ravine of blue hair-conditioned track homes sucked what little smoke was left in my lungs.
you will not like this poem it does not describe antediluvian wastes makes scarce use of polysyllabic wordplay will neither challenge nor commend the reader’s literacy
A swarm of spider-veined Reaganites walked the rootcracked sidewalks. I was surrounded; and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. I tempered my haste and weaseled my way under the hood without alarming the natives. Popped my Pabst and manned my block; I whispered in her ear, I’ll get you through this, baby. I focused through the glare of tea jugs and sun-spotted legs in polyester socks. I’ll be damned if that fucking poodle wasn’t as smug as its leash holding grin; but who was I to judge. The miles of coiled green hose on saturated lawns twisted my gut something fierce. The sound of pimpled larvae tugging at the teats of Stepfords caused a painful twitch in my cock. I polished my baby just right and dropped the hood; pounded the gas and left grease in my wake. The zombies in my rearview were frozen in defeat; I beat them perfect and victory was mine.
you will not like this poem it does not compare the poet to dylan thomas or anaïs nin— humbly accedes to conventions of grammar and spelling— avoids the fumbling contrivances of grade ten english compositions you will not like this poem this verse is forced to rhyme and does not even try to flourish syncopated time not that the poet has failed to notice the wretched calm that precedes torrent and flood how these words have filtered down from greater minds or that rhyme and meter are terribly unfashionable nor has the poet failed to notice that poetry can reek of commodity— writing is an act of desperation and compliance— and these lines, too, are a product of manufacture —Franklin Demuth
—Alveraz Ricardez
Litter
Night Thoughts
Man
I sometimes envy the evidence of languid hours: a congregation of acrid filters commiserating beneath a bench; the front stoop caped in feathers of newspaper; shards of green longnecks freckling the cement. Until I had sluiced bluesmoke to mine coal stripes in my pink lungs, or smashed bottles, pissed incontinent, between cars and curbs, I interpreted litter with thick-lipped innocence. Now I smile while walking by, same mouth, just stained.
Moon shines down in white spread beams on closed-up flower.
I know a Man He has Straw Growing in His Heart Someday I would like to walk Though His Heart And crush the Straw
—Blythe Boyer
—Michelle J. Lee
Youths speak words with loud, gash tones into thin air. Chopsticks click in dim lit room for waiter’s meal.
—Ingeborg
Wolf-dog howls at flat, white disk ’til early dawn.
The mist draws down. This house, the only house. Tunneled to our window, the smell of earth.
In From the Rain
—Chris Sumberg 66 POETRY CHRONOGRAM.COM 9/06