Emile Donovan ~ Neil Ellman ~ Rose Knapp

Tre poeti

 

 

Emile Donovan

Feminine Divine

 

Contemplating King David’s words to Jehovah God

“Your eyes even saw me as an embryo,”

She looks down as the misty cosmos swirl around her

Her protruding belly illuminated

The space around her varying shades of grey

As the space moves away from the light

In the silence she feels the soft movements

Like the kisses of a butterfly

Sitting on a child’s finger

From the cosmos to the sanctuary of her belly

From her belly into the world

For her to nurture and teach

She is the bridge

Between worlds

 

 

 

The Devil

 

In a small Christian town with small Christian people

In the bloom of her youth naive and unaware

She stands in front of the mirror and within a ritual

She transforms with face aglow and dress encircling

with anticipating breath she climbs into the carriage and sees the Devil watching

with green eyes seen through the looking glass he penetrates and analyzes her very soul

Her naive hazel eyes look back with painted lips holding whispers

At the dance he claims her always by her side

without knowledge the first baby comes without consent comes the second

The Devil always present life's necessities, the security, and the safety can never be found

She takes herself and her babies thinking the Devil unsuspecting

But the Devil has found new prey

She is devoured, empty, and unsavory

Older blue eyes in a small Christian town with small Christian people

Past the bloom of her youth naive and unaware

She climbs into the carriage and sees the Devil watching

 

 

 

I’m Sorry for Being an Inconvenience

 

I’m sorry for being an inconvenience

To you

I am just a little speck

To my Creator

I could be

The teacher of dreams

 

I can hear you

Breathing quietly in the night

I can see the shadows

Of others on the wall

I can feel the waters

Cushioning me

But my heart,

My heart

Knows I am unwanted

 

I can hear

You say

I am a mistake

I can hear

You say

I am bad timing

I can hear

You say

I would ruin your life

 

I’m sorry for being an inconvenience

The salt water

Burns my skin

 

I’m sorry for being an inconvenience

I ride the wave

To the outside

 

I’m sorry for being an inconvenience

My breath slips away

Laying on the cold steel

 

And I,

I who is just a little speck

To you

A teacher of dreams

To my Creator

I slip into unconsciousness

As my life is taken

 

 

 

For a long time Emile Donovan hid an inner writer. As a photography student she decided to take a foray into creative writing and this semester released the inner writer. As a person of paradoxes she experienced the bitter and still finds the sweet, is compassionate but non-trusting, and has touched the darkness but chooses to surround herself with light. Her genre in photography is memento mori/vanitas but explores this genre unlike anyone else. Bienvenue au Danse, Emile.

 

 

 

Neil Ellman

Analysis of Diverse Perversities

(after the painting by Paul Klee)

 

Everything is perverse

the perverse the commonplace

in this uncommon world—

the way all life is made from ash

and turns to dust

then scatters in the air

to form again a chrysalis

and then the commonest of things

as perverse as they are everyday.

 

How life itself

all manner of man and beast

Is measured by

a caliper-length of string

a metronome offbeat

and random pulses on a screen.

 

Nothing here is typical

the typical diverse

in this corner of the universe

life’s meaning is perverse.

 

 

 

Necrophilia Springtime

(after the painting by Salvador Dalí)

 

We are lovers, you and I,

unforgiving ground our bed      

the sky a canopy of tears

I hold fast my dream

of us together in the night.        

 

It is autumn in the south

spring here

among the willows and the yews

the grass grows higher

as I whisper in your ears:

 

Come with me

to some other world

just beyond the equinox

with an endless spring

where I can make you live again

and we can be as one

or I can die with you once more.

 

 

 

What is Happening to Him?

(after the painting by Pierre Alechinsky)

 

What he was

is of no consequence.

 

What he is becoming

another matter

 

another creature

in an evolutionary tree

 

the way the first fish

crawled onto land

 

to become whatever it could

without a bearing

 

or a name to call its own

its shape indifferent

 

in a new beginning

he can take any face

 

assume any future

his mind conceives.

 

He is the alpha

without an omega

 

forever becoming 

something other than himself.

 

 

 

Neil Ellman, a poet from New Jersey, has published more than 1,200 poems in print and online journals, anthologies and chapbooks throughout the world.  His latest chapbook, Mind Over Matta (Flutter Press) consists of poems responding to the work of the Chilean abstract-surrealist, Roberto Matta Echaurren.

 

 

 

Rose Knapp

Harper’s Poem #1

An esquire sent in for

  the hottest wasteland.

    But Johnnie only walks on

      black raposado water.

     It’s Christ Ole Mass

    time for time, iq,

titles, toys, tits.

 

 

 

Very Vary Mary

 

Poor poets in their crazy poverty

Educated and wise beyond professors

 

More secular than a shyster salesman

More spiritual than a con trite confessor

 

More sensitive than the painters or dancers

Actors and musicians can’t understand

 

How the highest art nets one no power or Kapital

How the highest art still will always require a day Job

 

Why do it? You’re a bad businessman being a proud pale rosy poet.

Because: when we’re not suicidal or Furies we’re very vary Mary©

 

 

 

Opposites Abstract

 

Archetypical Futurist duel of the fates

Black against trite, gods sparring in a night

 

Hatred is forbidden, rage is its own cage

Except this once, just six specific situations

 

Once in a lifetime, St. Francis and Buddha

Can let it all out, let the pure mask slip

 

Hating evil is the only way to stop black devils

So let armies of angels descend with messianic shouts

 

Let plague and volcanic rains hail down on deserving sinners

Predestined poor in spirit within Sodom and Gomorrah

 

But wait! Where is the marketed love throughout all of this hate?

My manic text replies: you must destroy in order to create

 

 

 

Rose Knapp is a poet, novelist, multimedia artist, and music producer. She has an experimental novel forthcoming and various poetry publications in Commonline Journal, Blue Lake Review, Poetry Pacific Magazine, Indiana Voice Journal, Shot Glass Journal, Chicago Literati, and many others.

 

She currently divides her time between Brooklyn and Minneapolis.