Ivan Jenson

Product Placement


if I were you
I would just do
nothing
and wait for
the light to change
the tide to crash
the morning to come
the recession to end
the mood to pass
the martini and the medication to kick
the psychic’s palm prediction to poof
the mighty cosmos to cosmetically lift the Joan Rivers like face of time
and crack your Da Vinci Code smile and send you
reeling back in time to some soft powdery Johnson & Johnson
moment when Gerber and Big Bird could bring you
unadulterated bliss



Once in a blue moon


pigeons are coming home
runaways call Mom and Dad
roads are leading to rainbows
and windows open to Santa Ana breezes
blowing clean and colorful laundry on a line
as the boy who lost the gal
gets her back
so sunshine washes out the shadows
giving someone a bright idea
which will after many years grow
like cash on branches
and you shrug
reach into a pocket of smiles
and giggle
having just been
toe-tickled
by what is
commonly called
a “Good day”



Trivia Time


I feel like
it’s the last night
of Sylvia Plath’s life
and yet I seek
the strength
it took to write
The Old Man and the Sea
but I am buried
as low as the
Chilean miners
and yes I hurt
like a Brazilian
wax
and understand
that it's not
worth sprinting
in a New York City
marathon
and so I ask
for the
tenaciousness
of the Tea Party
and the
balls of the
GOP
but the truth is
I am as
misunderstood
as two fingers
making
the peace sign
at an Ozzy concert
and seeking
to be legal
like Willie Nelson's
weed
I guess I will
always have
one foot
in the
20th.
and the
other in the
21st.
century
and it is
causing me
to split my pants
like Jackie Chan



Middle Man


Like the stork
you can’t face
stark reality
and like a butter
knife
you don’t cut deep
and like a dad
nobody much
listens to you
but unlike
Michelangelo’s David
you don’t stand
naked for just anyone
and like
a frozen dinner
you are initially
quite stiff
but warm up
quickly

Felino A. Soriano

Approbations 807

—after Lee Morgan’s The Procrastinator

                                                                        Wait

                                                when

                        waiting

predicts atmospheric lacking

the body

                        built once an architecture of holding remedies

becomes broken symptoms of the mind’s unwilling

                                                               acts of social

contamination.  Of

                                    collocated

restraints: hand|hand

                                                waiting breathes its slow function

into reverberating anger of now’s counter

upon exaggerated motives. 

Approbations 808

—after Ornette Coleman’s Broad Way Blues

Vagabond trepidation, curled

renaissance affirmation

                                    debating directional fathoms of

hope

            and

executing ambulatory faith

                                                regarding methodology of

reinventing prose of a thought’s

reconfigured skeletal concerns. 

Approbations 809

—after Paul Bley’s Seven

Tones of musical

            indentation

                        created

by warmth of intentional innate

                                                            methods for

ascertaining symbols

                                                the

friction of finding variants of promise

                                                                        needn’t find

fiction of the listening fools

finding reflectional premises important

creating

                        importunate declarations for

intersecting roles and

                                    categorical explications of tonal

independence.

Approbations 810

—after Tina Brooks’ Theme for Doris

Recall your rose

            from palm of opened garden, preparing scent of reddened resonation

                                    eyed whole an

optical rendition

your bodily waist hand-wrapped embrace by

warping wind of a moment’s elongated admiration. 

Now, as the angled devotion

of air’s singing fathoms

donating trust and humbled appearance

revolves ‘round delicate wrists of your hands’

holding flourish,

the mimic of memory

becomes extraordinary grasps of

language’s comprehensive, devotional

appreciation.  

Ivan Jenson

Picky, Picky


You don’t
belong with
your belongings
and you don’t need
your necessities
what you need is
something as impractical
as love at first sight
and as improbable
as a soul-mate
rather than a roommate
and then you can
engage in some
dangerously
impulsive acts
of kindness
and book
a flight to Venice,
Vegas
or a Hyatt
in Honolulu
and though
even Cupid
takes baby steps
you are ready
to make one
giant leap
for woman-kind
to the honeymoon
and back
you want to wake
up to a continental
breakfast of
pancakes and
pursed lips
and you
want to be
treated like china
that just might break
you are
precious and porcelain
so welcome lady,
to the tall skim club
of “chick-lit” longing

Arkava Das

pre/valence

resuming composition

a sub-Angstrom lever

tripped inside

an inventive wall

with a sturdy bracket

steeled atmosphere

annotations

reaching towards

safety considerations

“we made a lump of

wood into that form

&were abashed”

heartless &soundless

drugged &entered

cascading distractions

“we have this vivid picture”

Italics: Philosophical Investigations (Wittgenstein)

Pamela Sayers

Dragons fly


Hiding in unlit alleys, behind seedy bars
Red Stilettos, fishnet hose
A bowie tucked between her breasts
Concealed … she waits


In a subway tunnel: as the clock strikes
midnight, she is watching you
Stalking and plotting
As her stare draws you in,
Is your fear palpable as the sweat,
on your brow


Her hostage now,
clutched in her webbed arms
Carrying you to the highest ledge of a building
Placing a slender foot over the edge
She tells you she can fly …
The girl with the dragon tattoo

Felino A. Soriano

Approbations 806

—after Eric Dolphy’s Tenderly

Trust

of a reciprocated touch

of wind on

hand of air’s angled dexterity

leading

into various compassions of possible

indirection, splayed

but together

between versions

of an hour’s shifting premise.

William Michaelian

Before me, the past


Before me, the past speeds ahead.
It arrives, I know not when.


Behind me, the future is silent.
It knows that I am dead.


Pity, there is no grief in starlight.
Mercy, cries for the unborn.


Duty, is a failed science.
Love, walks alone.


You show me a sign.
A bright, fathomless smile.


As if there were, anything.
As if we were, real.


As if, rainbows give birth to children.
And they do: rainbows, and strawberries.


Fallen angels, white as any snowflake.
Black as an eye in a song.


Blue, as when light returns.
Green, because everything is so damn silly.


Honeyed as any flower.
Or as the scent and color of skin.


Intimate, as graveyard stone.
Whispers, with cold gray fingertips.


Wet shoes: where have I been?
And how did you find me?


A siren in a cityscape.
Moonlight, on a table.


Perhaps, or, simply, fate.
A wet sponge by the sink.


A leaf, a candle.
An unexpected need.

SJ Fowler

{Benedict IX, elected Pope at the age of ten shocked

the sensibilities of a barbarous age}

to traipse about the Museum

without even the faint possibility of seeing her

her torch light is doused

she stayed but a month

she let me sleep at her feet but once

Oh Evgeniya Akhmadulina!

but back they sent her

to meditate on the indistinct

to cultivate the wastes

then they told me she was a spy

no lambblood to her name,

but she was one of the ones I loved.

just the thought of the London Aquarium

and the degenerate art Museum

it hurts my webbed redchest

my nocturnal appendix surgery

I miss her more than that organ!

Everything seems older and less colourful.

no Saint Fisher, no benefactor will read my lists

& pay off my debts, hand me on to the upper echelons

she left me amongst the brownfilm slashed;

her burning hair is shed & black about her green eyes.

life has become less promising,

and the people seem much older.