John Schertzer

Cinque poesie

 

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Meanderthal Warrior Priestess Does a Crossword

 

Feeling established. Like.

Reading every word.

It says. Remediation this sponge.

Library in circumference.

Believing. In Arc. It is

Transportation villain. And

So forth. Bold ties. Both

Add up to a flurry a.

Buffet of. Noxious

Lingerers. Hopefully primed

Open possible. Rem(a)inder of

Learning a lot of. Door into

Flagrant. Networks illuminated

Proximate you. Mortality. Done.

 

Meanderthal Warrior Priestess Fixes a Flat

 

The pressure subsides

The wheel deformed

Requires the crisis

That she provides

Now fit for travel

 

Meanderthal Warrior Priestess: Job Creator

 

Every phenomenal silence is to be filled

A breeze required to hug the body of a dead tree

 

Foot for shoe, step for pavement

Air to breathe and thought to think

 

All the crimes that fill our stories

Raised with a word from an imagined world

 

To build us as we are 

And never otherwise be

 

Meanderthal Warrior Priestess Balances Her Check Book

 

Birds flying in and out of the windows

Help to align the air for the sound that moments

Possess as movements pass over the pen

Ink laid here and there amid the crossworks

And the dream of it all adding up. It does

Add up, all of it, but only in one of her otherworldly

Worlds, one contained in a small box she keeps

Free of ectoplasmic improvisations

Unlike the others held in softer delineations

But no matter what net she drops

There is a reaction, top to bottom

And a spice that settles on a situation

The flatness of the desk, the bulging of what appears

Upon it as the twittering releases numbers

Far more of them than was earlier imagined

 

Meanderthal Warrior Priestess Lounges

 

It's as difficult for some

To turn these symbols into water

As it was to begin a universe

One of similar retail value

Cradle interlocking crane

Hoisting new personalities

Into the air. It becomes dozens

Of rare minerals, exploding

Out of the ground with faces

In the direction of the stars

Asteroids colliding as she sits

In the silent radiation of suns

Saying not, hearing not, drugged

By the inevitable decay it is

 

John Schertzer is the author of Bellamonia (Spuyten Duyvil, 2021). His poetry, fictions and hybrids have been published in Danse Macabre, Big Other, Inverted Syntax, The Germ, American Letters & Commentary, 1913 Journal, The Cortland Review, La Petite Zine, LIT, and other journals.

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