John McKernan

POSITIONS

 

I like to kneel on a pillow

When I beg for sex

 

Kneeling on my right knee

In gravel

Helps me to pray with tears

 

I have knelt

In mud

To pick up a penny

Or find my contact lens 

 

When my daughter's eye

Was leaking a bloody white fluid

On the surgeon's blue gown

I switched knees & languages

For seven hours   Staring at my shadows

 

 

YOU RIP WHAT YOU SEW

 

And you want me

The beautiful teenage hooker whispered to me  

 

Appearing out of nowhere

As I walked to my car

After a day of teaching

 

I looked up and

Down

The bustling

Twilight Sixth Avenue

 

At row upon row

Of human beings

Wearing their tattooed

Business suits

Or jogging outfits

 

Some of them disguised

As garbage cans

On the stilts of shadow

What was her name?    

Shame or Shane or Shauna

Not her    Mac  Come on with me

 

Screamed the poems in the back seat of my car

 

 

MY CORPSE INTERRUPTS THE PARTY

 

Come here   McKernan

Don’t be shy

 

Tell these people

About all

Your broken ribs

 

They might not be interested

In your chipped teeth

Missing gold crowns

Funny colored gums

 

Tell them about your first drunk

In the middle of that winter

Driving a stolen car

How you almost killed

That pregnant woman

 

You can give up lying later on for lent

 

 

John McKernan grew up in Omaha, Nebraska and is now a retired comma herder after teaching 41 years at Marshall University. He lives - mostly - in West Virginia where he edits ABZ Press. He has published poems in many places from The Atlantic Monthly to Zuzu's Petals. His latest book is Resurrection of the Dust.

 

 

 

Thomas Piekarski

Ideal Fish Flash

 

The unfortunate incident left behind,                                       

     freed by massive  fortitude,     

          that hellish experience having

               impaled itself,

 

silence on Olympus, seeping graphite

     and susurrus of crumpled leaves

          fallen all over covers his

               exonerated body,

 

writes at The Ideal Fish on Santa Cruz

     wharf as amped volleyballers

          spike, Ferris wheel inert,

                the surf placid,

 

paddling a canoe down Hiawatha’s

     throat, borderline nonchalant,

          he regrets past obeisance

               to sham sacraments,

 

sold a shiny new silver Armada SUV

     to the foxy tanned horse trainer

          whose ritzy rhinestone belt

               illuminated the lot,

 

coats with amethyst the sidewalk between

      the landmark lighthouse and Dream Inn,

          noticeably shaky organism

               to live another day,

 

Oppenheimer laces puffy boxing gloves

     to square off with an irate Ayatollah--

           he takes an atheist’s stance since

               it hurts much less,

 

quasi-Oz Odysseus, oddball babbler,

     mendicant, marinated, crisscrosses,

          canoodles, never disembodied

                in maritime rime,

 

they once hung laundry on window sills

     to dry in city core ghettos where

          a shoe shine cost a dime and you’d

               get your throat slit,

 

he grapples up the steeple through thick

     green algae--hunchbacked, grunts,

          sweats in ascension, panting,

               tolls the bell,

 

albacore scarce but crab plentiful—

     frisbeed, caresses waves, he

          spins across foamtop and past

                international date line,

 

when it’s cold and gusty weather

     catch an eel at Moss Landing,

           stucco Hadrian’s Wall with its

                slimy fresh guts,

 

no, not exempt but with choices:

     head the other way or believe

          nothing they say about you,

              of late aboriginal,

 

on to the beach where sunbathers soak,

     fishing poles propped against

          the railing as Vietnamese

               fetch perch,

 

jack-in-the-box bobblehead opted

     not to pop up and thus smeared

          like paint on Neptune’s palette,

               innately pathogenic,

 

and then the ambulance shows, choir

     harvesting clammy clouds’ most

          undecipherable hieroglyphs that

               lend ancient grace,

 

Alcoa CFO UFO USO MSRP Elvis rehash

     plays on the radio, sans assistance

          intimating it’s finally his time

               to reconcile, 

 

abominable bugs embedded under two

     fingernails--predisposition aside--

          shoved around, brushed off

               by risen tide,

 

accepts all religions, foundations, faiths,

    sects, sexual infidelities, institutions,

          consentual death, but mostly 

               a level playing field,

 

holding a palm frond  rides a donkey

     on his way to challenge windmills,

          slash doubt to bits,

               emasculate,

 

declares the long stretch of coast

     from just north of San Francisco

          waters south past Pismo

               marine sanctuary,

 

doesn’t cotton to being bludgeoned

     in the dungeon, insists he didn’t

          set that world record on steroids,

               honest Injun,

 

Wounded Knee unmasked, exposed, those

     isometric statistics still in the hunt,

          advanced through the aftermath

               of moist boys,

 

and then a news flash—another bombing

     in Iraq, initial tangential office

          space temporary residence of his

               ostensible accomplishment,

 

constant sea lion hornking echoes, chills,

     reverberates the mile across

           Victorian-lined sandstone-

               cliffed beachfront,

 

 opportune heart set on one destination--

     cannot be sideswiped by the intentions

          of  carpetbaggers, amphibious

               wizards or splintered owls.

 

 

Revelation

                                                                                                  

Somewhere in the unknown cosmos cling

love, grace, consciousness, karma--the world

mirrored, subjective.

And the image of an angel with arms

outstretched, like a womb wanting

everything it isn’t.

 

Fortunately I survived the bullseye hit

I  just absorbed from a nuclear bomb.

 

It could have been a disaster had I failed

to release the stress of manifold universes.

 

We were mating, creating space between

the distance space must travel away.

 

We had destinies together, unspoken vows,

a wow factor incalculably inventive.

 

Orgasm after orgasm in every port

she owns, every orifice and hole.

 

 

Imbroglio

                                                                                            

Sleet nearly waylaid the battalion,

marching in bitter cold. She woke up

astride a unicorn, miniaturized in a terrarium.

He hammered the TV with a 2 by 4

and it continued fuzzy. The sidewalk convex,

dappled by righteousness. At La Scala

they took up the entire stage—pirouetting

to Stravinsky, Mozart, Cole Porter and Dylan.

 

 

Thomas Piekarski is a former editor of the California State Poetry Quarterly. His theater and restaurant reviews have been published in various newspapers, with poetry and interviews appearing in numerous national journals, among them Portland Review, Main Street Rag, Kestrel, Scarlet Literary Magazine, Cream City Review, Nimrod, Penny Ante Feud, New Plains Review, Poetry Quarterly, The Muse-an International Journal of Poetry, and Clockhouse Review. He has published a travel guide, Best Choices In Northern California, and Time Lines, a book of poems. He lives in Marina, California.