Alan Britt

A POEM THAT BEGINS WITH RED SPIDERS

(For Percy Bysshe  Shelley)

               

Red spiders falling!

 

Everywhere, these

furry creatures

like spattered

pinpoints of blood

roam the outskirts

of my known poems.

 

Once they venture beyond

the simple map

folded

beneath

my death pillow

I let them

explore

my filthy depths of despair.

 

I have no choice.

 

But, suddenly, my entire

consciousness

alerts,

such as it is

wedged between paranoia and retirement benefits,

when a forest of birds

arrives

and leading the way

is the elusive

female cardinal.

 

Dusk ripples

from the folds

of a 19th Century chambermaid’s sooty apron.

 

Eventually, I, too, will crumble like

banyan roots of limestone

into a frightful skull of rubble,

just another icon

in desperate need of repair!

 

 

BANANA PEPPERS

 

Late afternoon

banana peppers sway,

flirting

with tiny breezes.

Their one curved toe

vermilion-tipped

roams funnel clouds

of waxy

yellow scars

sashaying this

early summer garden.

 

 

DARKNESS AND THE STREETLAMP

 

I’ve talked to these plants

since before they were born.

 

Out of thousands,

or billions of tomato seeds,

you sprouted!

 

Proud cucumber vines

hover like Sasquatches

over the garden!

 

I knew your cousins

and your great grandparents!

 

I ate them, as a matter

of fact.

 

They were delicious, as I know

that you, too, will be when

your happy day arrives.

 

Overhead, a downy woodpecker

rattles dusk.

 

 

FIREFLIES

 

The Irish streetlamp—

mercury vapor hair

pale as an Edvard Munch priest.

 

Green scales ignite Purgatory.

 

 

LOST POEMS

 

I’ve lost poems.

 

Some of them

stumbled like lemmings or buffalo

over cliffs.

 

I had no disaster plan

back then.

 

Others vaporized

like fat, gray cigar ashes

beneath the heel of despair.

 

Some poems

just didn’t make it.

 

I mean some were scavenged

by starving hyenas.

 

They weren’t coming back!

 

I’ve lost poems

to diseases,

contemporary ailments:

arthritic diction,

tubercular rhythm,

verbs with collapsed lungs.

 

Yet, somehow, survivors,

like plankton

filter the gills

of my hungry imagination,

and suddenly I’m beached

like a pygmy sperm whale

washed up recently

on Jersey shore—

no direction,

no sense whatsoever

of where he is

or how he got there.

 

 

Alan Britt's read poetry and presented the “Current Trends in US Poetry” at the VIIInternational Writers’ Festival in Val-David, Canada, May 2013 : 

http://www.flaviacosma.com/Val_David.html. His interview at The Library of Congress for The Poet and the Poem (http://www.loc.gov/poetry/media/avfiles/poet-poem-alan-britt.mp3) 

aired on Pacifica Radio in January 2013 :  http://audioport.org/index.php?op=program-info&program_id=57123&nav=&. His interview with Minnesota Review is up at

http://minnesotareview.wordpress.com/. He read poems at the historic Maysles Cinema in Harlem/NYC, February 2013 and at the World Trade Center/Tribute WTC Visitor Centerin Manhattan/NYC, April 2012. 

 

Alan teaches English/Creative Writing at Towson University and lives in Reisterstown, Maryland with his wife, daughter, two Bouviers des Flandres, one Bichon Frise and two formally feral cats.

 

 

 

John J. Dunphy

EIGHT SENRYU

 

class reunion

the ex-football team captain's date

handsome in his tux

 

 

the hooker's smile

after spitting out

my semen

 

 

winter walk

my neighbor removes

his chattering teeth

 

 

yard sale

everything her ex left behind

25 cents each

 

 

war crimes trial

the defendant tries to suppress

another yawn

 

 

all dressed up and nowhere to go

my atheist friend

in his coffin

 

 

abused child

only her doll

still cries

 

 

no more cleavage

my favorite bartender

now married

 

 

John J. Dunphy owns The Second Reading Book Shop in Alton, IL, which he runs with the assistance of three on-site cats.  His works of poetry include: Old Soldiers Fading Away (Pudding House, 2006); Zen Koanhead (Second Reading Publications, 2008) and Dark Nebulae (White Cat Publications, 2009).  John is a two-time winner of the North American Essay Contest sponsored by The Humanist magazine and now writes a guest column for The Secular Humanist Bulletin.  A widely-recognized subversive, John's humanist writings have earned him numerous denunications over the decades from right-wing luminaries such as Phyllis Schlafly, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and even President Ronald Reagan, who personally lambasted John in the October 1984 issue of Harper's.  Google "John J. Dunphy humanist" and marvel at how many ways one person can be verbally raked over the coals (by shabby tea bags? - ed).