Gregory Autry Wallace

Poetry

 

 

Lavender and Frankincense

 

The creature filled me with

smooth and glistening

smiled serenely as they

threw slowly back

upon the printing press

 

The evening's automobiles

propelled by centrifugal force

speed past high chimneys

with impenetrable speech

 

Blood upon the threshold

a feather gives coronation

victim to the terrors he had

fitted into peaceful countryside

 

Only prison door

opened his mouth and sighed

the crash and roar of

huge antique panels

 

 

 

A Current of Hot

 

the survivor

rattled on

and on toward

lantern

wick was probably the cause

 

dumb girl talks

sliding floor

and I found each step

 

sun follows me

dial tone in blue gauze

the chimney smokes

 

things fall

along the speedway

child of heaven

his glistening

magic people

 

of the wasp

 

 

 

Isabel

 

Words cannot paint the horror

of escaping, expecting

every saint in heaven

and inwardly perceiving an imperfect ray

of clouded Spanish masters

speaking to a rose garden/

she addressed herself to

automatic process,

pyramidal energy beam shone

on the princess's situation/

the point skids into the suburbs

whence hung a fragment of earth

as softly as possible,

she felt for space control cells

certainly an inside job

at last, her hair gets

into the car packed with

conflicting reports

 

Alone in so dismal a place

her mind imprinted with all the

terrible events of the day/

hopeless military vehicles crossed

roof of the vault which seemed

to be fallen in and from

the mysterious point

a cactus man entered trembling

into the vault/

these thoughts crowded on her

distracted mind

and she was ready to sink

under her apprehension

 

Then followed bear who

perceived the head of a beautiful girl

and between her legs a torrent of sugar plums

they were far from comforting,

Duchess of Kirkaldy's breasts

extended thirty feet out of the window

from which rained pink cases

of gingerbread covered

with porcelain dolls

 

 

 

The Prime Radiant

 

Psyche was turned into stone

by the flag of film

she could not even weep

the lost glossing of “reality”

seemed like stretching

and though her body was

present, her strangeness

was simply some tassels

piling upward with

enormous stars on them/

millions of us in this hat

were parked within the strict

confines of a child's mental

archives lined with snow

the accident was terrible

something was the matter

with the disc

apples on the crater

raise their heads and

almost always surfaced

in the mysteries of Osiris

saltcellar suddenly began

moving on the table

before the tiny child

 

The youngest daughter's prophecies

produced no great disorder;

they gave these policies life

this country with its laws of glass

had organized a system so

completely by the weight of the dangers

of these stars in our flag

everyone was in the large disc

of Isis and I had yet to attain

immobility. The other children

wave helplessly beyond the cape

 

 

 

The Four Queens

 

Queens have not always felt

ripped and torn but in the past

the knight's senses stirred

when she stood near to him

you begin to have access to

things beyond her body

darkness and cold stone

are a rarity in the world

we have the red flame partly

covering her emerald

she dropped her lids

we have decided to let you make

pretty things beyond belief

she moves towards Lancelot

shimmering green halo floating out

around her body

she walked as people do in dreams

with the botanical mantle that covered

the ground, shattering

her weeping willow hair

 

 

 

Gregory Autry Wallace is a poet, painter and collagist living in San Francisco. He studied English, World and Comparative Literature, and Creative Writing at San Francisco State University.  His poetry and collages have appeared in Athena Incognito, Black Scat Review, BlazeVox, Danse Macabre, DM du Jour, Clockwise Cat and Five 2 One. He was a poetry editor for Ink Magazine and a founding editor of Oblivion Magazine. In addition, his paintings, collages and assemblages have appeared in juried art shows.