My sonnet, “Western Union,” was selected by 14 by 14 for the Love Sonnet edition. Above, we have me reading it last Sunday at Bar on A in New York. See, also, a smashing 14er by Christopher Hanson among the loves sonnets.
Note, further, that my YouTube gallery features several others reading at the Carmine Street Metrics event at Bar on A, namely Quincy Lehr, Wendy Sloan, Nemo Hill, and David Katz.
For Marybeth and Nemo
Casino workers tend to reminisce.
The games are closed. But will the summer fly
and all this parkway hydroplaning cease?
Remember this: A kiss is but a kiss.
Suburban gardens melt into the sky.
Casino workers tend to reminisce.
I’m not surprised at all to learn that Cec-
il B. DeMille might turn a jaundiced eye
on all this parkway hydroplaning. Cease!
or is it Cut! he’d cry, the emphasis
on wrapping it and filing it on high?
Casino workers tend to reminisce
on briny white electric clouds that hiss
and lovers too cashed-out to say Good-bye!
Will all this parkway hydroplaning cease?
Unlikely, as the weather’s simply hit-or-miss
near Exit 38. Which tells us why
casino workers tend to reminisce
on parkway and the hydroplaning seas.
The fall issue of Umbrella covers the syllabus, and I am allowed the last word on science. For history and math, you want W.F. Lantry. David Rosenthal is exclusively focused on math. Cutting biology?—Hey! That’s Martin Elster! Rose Kelleher drops out with a villanelle.
For my Aunt Ches at 98
You linger through a summer fraught with squalls,
a tough recession and tomato blight.
“It takes its time,” you sigh. “It drags, it crawls.”
You cry to have it over with at night
and deal your Mass card solitaire in dust–
a run of hearts, a club, the Savior’s face.
You play a closing hand of gold on rust,
a color scheme that seems to swim in place.
I drive to Exit 0 in the rain
past stunted pines, a vagary of plate
tectonics. How this prehistoric strain
of evergreens defines the Garden State
and brines the heavy air of afternoon!
I feel the electricity in clouds
that build like weekend traffic, knowing soon
another microburst will tear like crowds
across a sunny beach on Saturday.
We’ve had so few this year, the businesses
along the Jersey shore are blown away.
Carlyle called it two hundred years ago–
the hammers down, the xylophones locked and loaded.
Now, from this incandescent studio
of karaoke, I’m the man exploded
on a screen of iridescent stars
and gummy satellites the cracking apple-
green of sucking candy. Bumper cars
beat incorrect below me where they grapple.
And if a whiplash from the Wilding Mouse
cuts pressure points along my gangsta lean,
I’ll compensate by shouting out. I’ll house
the action park and bust a new machine
with throw-down from the last contralto standing.
A rhyme for peace and love and understanding.
Hershey Park, Hershey, PA, August 14, 2009
____
Photo by: eHow—How to do just about everything.
For Marie
On Sunday morning I showed up
to find you calm and sitting up,
your brown eyes tired but alert
and bright. They told me that it hurt
to move—a wisp of Percocet
in open light. The TV set
was dark and silent. Still you seemed
to stare into an image beamed
across the room. A shadow play.
A mirror into Saturday.
An anesthesia flower show,
it ended when I said, “Hello.”
Roosevelt Hospital, New York City—
Rick Mullin's Chapbook from Modern Metrics, an imprint of 
