St.
Baudelaire
I dream of you at night
entangled in the spires of
evil,
tied to a living pillar in the
profane sanctuary of Poetry—
the spores of wild flowers in
your nostrils, the ecstasy of
“the Word” painted on your
face
& slowly dripping from
your
St. Sebastian-like wounds
in sanguine lines.
I twist the arrows in your
flesh,
I dip my fingers in your scars
as you spit out your own
poisonous mythology
into my soul.
A
teaser piece from the NEW contest winning Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook,
“They Talk About Death” by Alessandra Bava
Available
in its entirety here - http://www.etsy.com/shop/BloodPuddingPress
*
13.
Pyre: wind as hell beast
The wind
teases my cutaneous engulfment, titillates the clavicle. My wounds are not
yours to take. When you read my transcriber’s notes you will find me guilty of
pining, sprinting to death’s gate, remembering pilfering flesh like it was the
future. The spectrum of other side sliced into orange slices. One: a battering
ram of bones. Two: I found something higher. I look down at whom plague left
untouched not because my brain is diseased or my organs explode at 1400
Fahrenheit. I see the tiny cosmos. My blood line perseveres through my abnormal
light. It cracks precious stained glass murals. I pierced your eye with a
scepter. The wind is my dog, inhales your waste breath,
delivers decay to dirt. Deliver messages to me through dead carrier pigeons,
charcoal shadow puppets, burnt tongues. Last gasp in the swamp. All I do is dip
a toe into the afterlife and I am glowing.
*
12.
Home: Dom Remy
Marching
boots over my chest. The gowns and haircuts wanted to see for themselves. Rants
unfit for knowledge lifted me into kinetic spasms of gloss, hair, bone, and
tendon. The tendons hung in tree branches by my childhood church. Nothing is
wasted. I reunite with all my flesh and sing. My split voice magnified in the
hills. My earth is one big ash kingdom and cat femur bones. Linen scraps,
purity belts, my scorched earth policy returns from the England’s gift shop. My
executioner came to me in a hazy trip. I whispered to beetles, crawl into his ear. There’s a touch of
witch. My fingers fold thyme, feel for
boot straps to tug, trip, and suffocate you in an inch of water. Is it more
unpleasant that way? To hear life going on above your ear shell and know that
you will leave it in a grueling tunnel of suffocation slaughter? How does pond
scum taste? I am enjoying Sainthood.
*
11.
Michael at night Catherine in the
day Margaret in the day
Saints can
fucking exhaust you. The first time I was lifted by tree stumps I was a cut,
dirty swan. Chasing voles, a husk shadow suffocated me, bones protruded from
his back. Being a suck-up, I didn’t recognize his wounds. Slaying god’s enemies
brings on the gray. Fight the dark one, learn to avoid razors. Drivethemout. I could not speak because
wings beat in time with his mouth words. Cacophony named all of him. Refraction pulsed through his voice light. I
was warm and elevated and grounded at the same time. His moth essence humming
all the while. Catherine with her
flowing hair and cumbersome gown that weighed in like silk and slime. Catherine
held me and burst her words into my torso like feathers. I plucked the feathers
out of my brain later, slowly, savoring the felt. Margaret the opposite, hardy
and robust with vocal chords like lost calves and mourning mission bells, a
blanket after shock therapy. The bells rung me and rung me. Tattered, but
knowing something had changed, I cried, buried my hands in the clay, practiced
playing prisoner to mud.
*
10.
Ants
A mob of
mandibles. Time leeches, burns loaves in fire. I have left the 1800s only to be
brought to this maelstrom of oversharing. What land lubbers of dull shit
crimes. I slice myself with this blade to show you what sharp is. Be dull on
your own time. Fly into the night through time zones of desert and Stone Age
and rubbish. Up close I can see epidermis like a red sea, black stitches sew
the infection in. You cannot kill me I am already dead from spit. Your spigot has exploded from unsure ability.
I have spread myself at midnight and taken the plunge from the highest mast.
Where is your spread? How far a wingspan? What have you brought as offerings
tonight small ants? Crumbs of want, I
throw them to the eagles who want more, rip lips off. An arrow in my neck, a
finger in my cap. My wings, internal intestines churning the hours out.
*
9.
Next
At the factory, he lost his fingertips to blades. In his line it was common, so common that many men would tie up the bloody parts and stay on until break time. But this man saw beyond sheet metal. Hours after he punched out, he would still hear the grinding of machines, the squeals of jammed conveyors. He wrote sounds down on parallel lines. This was his music of hands.
At the factory, he lost his fingertips to blades. In his line it was common, so common that many men would tie up the bloody parts and stay on until break time. But this man saw beyond sheet metal. Hours after he punched out, he would still hear the grinding of machines, the squeals of jammed conveyors. He wrote sounds down on parallel lines. This was his music of hands.
If only he had lived somewhere else.
There must be a place where the rivers don’t catch fire. No matter, he told himself,
borrowing his mother’s thimbles, but the pain almost made him cry, and he never
cried. Several twists of each peg and the strings were loose enough not to
hurt, notes three steps down, the depth of sinister captured instantly, tetanus
shot required.
*
8.
Along the Esplanade
Needing to replenish the source of his
powers, he entered the speed of light on the driver’s side. His best friend, a
set of cylinders, rode shotgun. The windshield would prevent the stripping of
spray from hair, the pinch of saltwater on leather. But the wheel was all
wrong, hands off the clock. When light strikes light head on, a life must end.
The cylinder man died at the scene, a cymbal rolling in the road. The man with
bones inside sobered up, made it to the destination, filled a shopping cart
with rounded glass. He returned to the crash, touched glass to cylinders,
resurrected his friend as a human corpse. Of course the music wouldn’t play,
sound no match for light in a race. His punishment for death would be to carry
the glass, always adding to the load, always ready to step on the slashing
shards of apologies that speed by so quickly.
*
7.
everything
is conditional
if
I am on top of her
falling into a dark hole
I
give until it hurts
her pussy is
the center of the universe
when
I was twelve my brother called me a pussy
surrounded by a scary group of
givers and takers
I
was the center of the universe
if
it rained in Indiana
everybody
got wet
if I took a shot
I gave until it hurt
if
things were not the way they were
I
wouldn't be here
dying
in some private way
if
it really mattered how I began
I
would have let them teach me a lesson
if
the center of the universe shows itself to you
a mirror is broken every time
~Donavon Davidson~
(an earlier version
of this poem was previously published by Spork)
*
6.
I
love the way you look at me
coming apart at the seams
I
cross all the T's and dot the I's
democratic as a coffin
nail
there
are two kinds of people in the world
those
on bottom
those
on top
each
bring to mind an art
I've
tried to separate from the artist
a kind of
decency that forbids privacy
to
convict us all of cheap parlor tricks
all
persons living or dead are coincidental
turning
to a loved one
a
ghost in the machine
making monsters of us all
looking for
trap doors
to
hide our doves
if
it makes you feel any better
shut
your glory hole
~Donavon Davidson~
*
5.
she
loves me
to
save the best for last
my
secret garden turns the green leaf red
when
I've had enough
she
loves me not
unlike
a body drenched to the bone
the exact cause of death
is unknown
mathematically
speaking
the diameter
of X is greater than or equal to
in your own
sweet time
she
loves me
to
tell it like it is
mares eat oats and does eat oats
but
little lambs eat their hearts out
if it were up to me
I would call a sweep
for
there are no aces up our sleeves
no little black birds sleeping in
our chimneys
we
can't light a fire
to make them fly away home
she loves me not
astrologically
speaking
she
met a tall dark stranger
~Donavon Davidson~
*
4.
THE OMEN
I was
lounging in the hotel’s graveyard when I realized
I
left my passport in the bathroom of the hotel lobby.
When
I got there, in its place was a good-sized fish with
the following
words written on its side: “If you are Cary
Grant
please take me home with you, and never do another
picture
with Hitchcock unless he allows you to direct yourself.”
Picking
up the fish it immediately disintegrated in my hands.
“This
is a bad omen!” I thought to myself. And when I returned
to
the graveyard I knew I was right because two dozen black
roses
had replaced my chair and a huge red hand was sticking
out
of the earth pointing directly at my wife who had turned
into
a pig with the face of her father who didn’t like me
from
the moment that we met.
~Jeffrey Zable~
*
3.
ONE TIME WITH JIM
“Jim,”
I said, “what possessed you to pull out your pecker and wank it
in
front of all those people?”
To
which he responded, “It’s a very fine pecker that has ridden with me
on
many a storm. That has lit my fire when the sleet of life has chilled
my
bones. When the back door man has come for me, hatchet in hand,
while
LA women laughed like hyenas in celluloid nightgowns. And when
strange
days led me to a spanish caravan on a moonlight drive into hell,
I
knew that the end was near, and that only by showing what I was made of,
would
I ultimately get back to the crystal ship and to the lizard king inside.
And
when people are strange, what choice do we have if we want to survive,
and
break on through to the other side!”
“Makes
perfect sense to me now!” I responded, and handed him back
the
bottle.
~Jeffrey Zable~
*
2.
SCENES FROM THE RENTED COTTAGE
rotting rope
rubs against worms
that necklace her throat
heads roll
here and there
like dead fruit
falling from trees
in dark cellars,
shovels displace
remembered autumns,
smother them
in mud silence
in a rocking chair,
a pleased,
disfigured mouth
speaks for all
~John Grey~
*
1.
DEAD INSIDE
You can’t just close
a graveyard gate behind
you,
not with the mulch
still on your shoes,
flecks of stone beneath
your fingernails,
and a twig of willow
burrowed in your hair.
A cemetery is no
short-cut
despite the fact
your house appears
a block or so down the
road,
kitchen light glowing.
The dead have at you
even if you don't feel a
thing.
They watch your churlish
sorrow
through marble angel
eyes,
seep up through rotting
flower stalks
to rub against your
doleful walk.
All that moss is just
the chilly bile
of spectral conversation
about the stoop of your
shoulders,
your leaden cheeks.
The cold damp wind
is how they follow you
home
for further explanation.
They know where you live
but why you live eludes
them.
~John Grey~
