Earth Angels Stumbling along life's path inexorably linked by hand and shoulder, history, holding the end of the stick of the one who precedes us. Hollow eyes or closed lids upturned to an invisible heaven, oblivious to their surroundings – until the man in the lead tumbles over the fallen man, downed by the music embedded in the rock, arms flung out in ecstasy, making an angel in the dirt. Betsy Mars Betsy Mars is a poet, educator, and avid mother, art lover of all genres, animal afficionado, and traveler. Her writing has recently appeared in The Rise Up Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, Writing In A Woman's Voice, and others. She is compiling a semi-random collection of poetry and photos which can be found at https://www.facebook.com/marsbitsandpieces/
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Lipogram Variations
I) The Presley Southwest Ego over dinner with driver of EMT, the hour we went vowel-less stocked with the comfort foods of meteor scientists. Colon-flense this sentence, its period too fibrous, the gurgling pulpit to your gig line, fig-left. Prynne, New Mexico; Hester, Vermont. Olympic-sized testosteroner Phelps meets with chlorine pitchmen, dungeon for Pistorius. Elvis mimic, hound dog discomfiting, nicotine’s compromised positron driving prices in the direction of JC Penney. Periwinkle filed under femme: the Indigo Girls’ top groupie, my nonprofit boss. II) Bill, It Ain’t So Strum a grim strip-o-gram guitar plus volta. Doctor, distill my toxic swain, Q-tip blood for your hour-long wait. “Watch for my crumb-flint mastiff,” I say all animal psychic, Passion Sunday, Hallmark’s not-so- cash cow, post-Ash. Justify that Madonna primordial: not virgin not burning not lucky star, Paula Abdul’s glum grain, straight up. This ᗅᗺᗷᗅ track lacks Anni’s “Mamma Mia,” plus iambic logic from Mar-a-Lago long ago, Dolph’s Drago da pugilist-diggity crux. Carl W: sans Vanity, will you do an Action Jackson II? Ms. Curtis, can you talk about Dan Aykroyd? So many films in which you and that Canadian co-act. Scruffy Banbury, my porn alias. Cousin Mary’s, Guy Park. Bill Murray, do you chasm your ghosts? III)Thereby Em D. The caravan jeers, the applecart adheres. Chevy objects, Yugo selects the solar tea brewed on my brother’s Plymouth roof, warlock buckled and broomed. Haberdasher’s gall, abbess’s cowl, don’t forget the turtleneck, the dancehall a chow wagon begets. You get two poem uses out of mollycoddle and defenestrate. Share an alley, take your colleague’s overheated car when you look for felon-wear on Hardy Street. OCD means you ordered three cuffs, COD. Status quo near a costumer’s bungalow, my jewels aft of the bookshelf’s VHS. Have you seen Three Men and a Baby melt? There’s an urban legend where a ghost-boy pops up halfway through. Trade you Ted Danson for Steve Guttenberg, Selleck scorned for curmudgeonry of O’Donnell when they talked guns, control. Somewhere Shelly Long adorns a stash of Cheers, the Rebecca years. Somehow, my grandma’s stole sequesters the room of glean. What people don’t know about fur trappers would occupy a La-Z-Boy whose contours maladjust. Scotchgard, could you be a cycle less? Law and Order, must you resort to the freezer as body dump? Belzer, your Scarface scene made me laugh. IV)The Fifteen-Minute Windshield Have that trait where the gray eye is left, blue eye is right? That’s basic grandeur. Riffraff, prism pilaf, mendacity’s bracket’s the basket-able trend. All I’ll say is ride the Schwinn mutiny, pedal serendipity’s highfalutin. Sip a Sprite, press pens with Bens Lerner and Vereen. Flashbulb in a gutter, the anticlimax. May I change the channel? It’s filth’s zenith (rerun a Cinemax). Centaurs have their place, ask fraternities and Mr. Ed. I’m dating a marsupial whisperer and his ranch, better than the Sadie Hawkins where I fell uphill during the perp walk, pre-queer. In triage wards, I shun urges fragged by respect. We hardwired the thief, gave him a yam habit. Edgewise, the mantle talk; philanderess unimpressed. V)Brixen Mortar The villa wore Crest White Strips, pomade reflected a falsehood swing set. Their glee gel eagle-eyed, residents hollowed a ventilator czar betrothed to a fireside chat. Wasps eroded, octaves escalated static: Mister Firearms crowned Miss Americoal Miner, friend of the Palm Olive heir. Breathe Right, the family millions. Gee, a barbary librarian staging revolt, the palimpsest a phlebotomist-enervated gale (Type O cancelled to inclement kale). A-blather, abash, is it time for the third act of INXS? The artisan clay-fired a ceramic Sarlaac pit, another did the brothel’s income tax. The Macy’s lady asked if I was some formalist adrift. Redact a letter and it topples a psychopomp. Anon inertia. Better glottals lie ahead. Jon Riccio Jon Riccio is a PhD candidate at the University of Southern Mississippi's Center for Writers where he serves as an associate editor at Mississippi Review. His work appears in print or online at Booth, The Cincinnati Review, Eratio, Hawai'i Review, Permafrost, Switchback, and Waxwing, among others. He received his MFA from the University of Arizona. The Last Bone Pink Peony
I stop to listen to a crinkle stepping out of the curtain as you sleep, as summer wilts through the open window and your belly swells to the rhythm of two clocks, one near, one far. In the face of disaster, you tell me there are no violins, no panthers, no paintings of peonies in the forest. Too many passed openings, too many eyes closing at night to hear too many rainy lullabies. In the smallness of trying too hard, too much is given up: the testimonial of accuracy, the fundamental flower. This lesser majesty seeks out a ballad, something generous, something wicked, less fine than a toothbrush, less exact than a fingerprint. Petals falling to the ground reverse the spiral of growth but still find symmetry on the brick walk. I seek the last bone pink peony, proof of stillness, the luckiness of sleep. Amy Nawrocki Amy Nawrocki is the author of five collections of poetry, including Four Blue Eggs and Reconnaissance. Her most recent work is The Comet's Tail: A Memoir of No Memory published by Little Bound Books. She teaches English at the University of Bridgeport and lives in Hamden, Connecticut. Visit her at http://amynawrocki.org. |
The Ekphrastic Review
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May 2024
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