Alzo Sprach der Surgeon General

(A found poem)

Rauchen kann die Spermatozoen schadigen
und schrankt die Fruchtbarkeit ein.
Not only that, but
Rauchen kann todlich sein.

Pushcart Nomination!

My poem Shrine to Satan is among the six nominated by Shit Creek Review for a coveted Pushcart Prize! I’m honored to be named along with Mike Alexander, Rose Kelleher, and Dave McClure, and I will Google® Pushcart Prize very soon!

Thank you, Shit Creek Review!

Poetry the Counts!

Modern Metrics, a rising press for metrical poetry in New York, has just published two chapbooks by very fine poets. These are:

Barcelona

From Prospero at Breakfast by Alan Wickes

ABOVE Placa Real the palm trees nod
like caged giraffes. Pubescent prostitutes,
dressed up in ra-ra skirts and Lurex boots
patrol their pitch. As evening falls an odd
pink light pervades the patched Baroque arcade.
A girl steps from the shadows, face aglow,
like some doomed saint by Caravaggio;
her sallow beauty mocks the drab parade.
Across the faded square a duo plays
upon accordion and clarinet,
up-beat and strangely phrased, ‘Those Were the Days.’
Fooled by the atmosphere of veiled regret,
we quietly deny what we became,
pretending yet, ‘our dreams are still the same.’

…and

North Church Street

From Graceways by Austin MacRae

THERE are no churches here. But folks don’t care.
I love how lives hang flapping on a line,
their threadbare faith a figuring of air;
the man who rocks himself and spies a sign
of kingdom come; the birds that congregate
to plead their case from glittering wires and shit.
I love the drunk who finds his twinkling fate
at the bottom of his pint and swallows it;
I love the kids with whipping sticks in hand.
I love the siren’s scream, the child’s reply.
I love how shelled-out, old Victorians stand
with shuttered eyes, shuddering at the sky.
I love the grave misnomer of this place,
and in it find a certain kind of grace.

You are strongly encouraged to check out Modern Metrics’ website and order copies. The press publishes important poets’ work at its own expense. Well worth the price of your support.

A Ghost

A ghost is made of gas, she said,
Not meat or milk or gasoline.
Your hand just passes through a ghost
Like nothing you have ever seen.

The Prestigious…

…has published my poem Amity After the Fire in Volume IV, just out. Not only that, but the Shit Creek subzine II is running with Waziristan and an accompanying prose piece on driving to work on the Garden State Parkway where I wrote a poem called Waziristan.

Many of my poet friends are in with me. Tiel Aisha Ansari of Knocking From Inside is in both issues. It is a highly regarded (U.K.-based!) online publication and my first break.

I will be breaking in a few other places in the weeks ahead. Watch this space!

RM

Hopper

Hopper paints monotonous haiku, empty
bedrooms, light and curtains in midday breezes,
awkward figures over and over, surely
getting at something

pure and true. America. Midnight diners,
tiny brownstone Brooklyn apartments state his
premise. Spotlit aliens touch the rigid
hand of a student.

Ochre walls in cadmium daylight build a
gabled house suggesting the Bates Hotel in
Psycho. Railroad sidings and lonely phone poles
resonate longing.

He endows interior landscape: T-shirt
zombies, grasses rendered in opaque yellow.
Collie sniffs the whippoorwill’s sundown echo.
Infinite distance.

Separation Anxiety

With haploid days and chiral nights ahead,
still basking in our novel enzymes, why
traverse a simulated moving bed
or acquiesce as columns liquefy
and separate our racemates? The yin
and yang go left and right with no regard
for God or nature. Peptide ringlets spin
unhooked from awkward ligands limp and scarred.

But chemists in discovery have passed
this process to development where scads
of geeks will scale it up til we’ve amassed
the fingerprints of fifty undergrads.
And symmetry is such that, pulled apart,
one always gets the brain, and one the heart.

Lutetia

I might stumble on the flagstone quay
and slip the black embankment to the Seine,
or clutch my coat and amble on my way
envisioning your face. I’d count to ten,

inhale the rain and press my face on yours,
disolving in your scarf, your red embrace.
In either case, I’m lost. The night detours
of Paris take the ghost and leave no trace

but visions and a vignette cast in time–
a kir royale, rouge lipstick on the glass,
a street in Montparnasse, a petit crime
of conscience, call it love and let it pass

for city lights reflected on a wave,
for worms that twist like cables in the grave.

Tuxedo Tag

The Catholic schoolgirl on the number 2
declares I look like Uncle Penneybags,
“Monopoly!” she yells. Her friends in blue
St. Michael’s uniforms endorse the tag.

It happens when I shuttle in the tux,
my rented Mariachi rig, this suit
of penguin torpitude, the million bucks
routine. But Uncle P? That’s pretty cute–
the Parker Brothers Millionaire. I wish

I had a quarter of the attitude,
a quotient of the automatic swish
Manhattan subway Catholic girls exude.
Their impious affront would not prevail
if I could come back quick with: “Go to jail!”

My Shot at Jesus

When Tom Delvecchio demurred—they say
He didn’t want to wear his mother’s gown—
I got my shot at Jesus. We were down
To just a week before the Easter play.

St. Rose of Lima’s pageant was about
As close as you could get to by-the-book.
The script was written by a crew that took
the Bible to my room and knocked it out.

I’d wear a sheet. When Judas kissed my cheek
(Delvecchio objection number two)
I’d be uncomfortable, but I’d get through.
I’d drag the cardboard cross. I wouldn’t speak.

Then Andrea Tartaglia would lift
The face of Christ drawn on a handkerchief.