Fall/Winter 2009-10
tom oristaglio
scott summers
cindy childress
tom rechtin
james b. nicola
debra rymer
doug draime
corey mesler
rebecca schumejda
chris crittenden
arlene ang
joey nicoletti
brad johnson
lorie allred
elizabeth kay
alexander russo
nissa lee
kenneth gurney
jessi lee gaylord
keith brighouse
ajay vishwanathan
ethel rohan
william "cully" bryant
julie steiner
Steiner Interview
by Alex Nodopaka
Jennifer VanBuren
Jai Britton
Alex Nodopaka
Patrick Carrington
Mannequin Envy in memory of poet and artist Douglas Gamrath
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Kenneth Gurney
Fall-Winter 09-10
EXTRACTION
Though we’ve been friends for years,
you ask me to be your enemy,
fuck you like a sick bastard
and spit on your face.
It is the old memory fragment, again:
the broken window, the rain,
the smell of urine soaked silk
and the missing brass numbers
on the building’s doorway.
You say the pills do not quite cover it up,
the psych doctor won’t accept blow jobs
in lieu of insurance payments—
the plant closed and health benefits
cost too much to maintain on your own.
That moment twenty years ago
strikes without warning,
defines your sleeplessness,
clouds the sun bright day.
You tear your shirt to expose your flesh
as the tears blind you to a stagger,
hands uproot hair in an effort
to yank the damn thing out
through a gutted scream
that sites the names
of all of history’s women.
Winter 2008
Release
A woman’s blue shirt darkens to indigo
where her over full breast gushes when bumped
in the crowded subway.
There is no liberation from embarrassment,
from the stares of bellicose, branded men
who dream of a different release.
Nipple: from middle English neble:
A small projection from which liquid
can be expelled, secreted, drawn.
All the bottle-fed boys involuntarily salivate,
fail to weigh the heaviness of their eyes
upon her chest, her breath.
Several women stand, form a protective arc,
a matronly covenant of dignity, until
composure recovers its sense of proportion.
They stare down the visual trespasses of strangers,
until the woman in the blue shirt feels
as light as a housed jay that flies out the open door.
Fall 2007
Le Balloon Rouge
I doubt you received my Paris postcards,
as I never did figure out how to properly use
the postage stamp machines. Don’t worry,
they were all nudes, something you see nightly
at the stripclub where you tend bar. France remains
the world’s leader in Pout, but the terms
of endearment aren’t as long as they were
before all that artillery fire leveled Verdun.
Still, my invisible friends absolutely love
the singular issue of the haberdashers
not far from my triumphal poetry reading
to a disgorged bus of shutterbug Japanese tourists
at Napoleon’s arch. As far as the smoky bistro
fantasy goes, it turned out to be like
drunken sex with a woman
who gave her smile away
for a frayed piece of twine
that once possessed a red
balloon.
Communication and the Common Cold
The low hum in your ear
is not radio static or an ipod,
but the hummingbird
that has mistaken it for a flower.
Don’t blame the bird.
All the cellphone signals
have jammed its internal radar
and nothing looks like itself anymore.
We weren’t meant to have
so much light pass through us,
vibrate internal molecules
with long, string-like tides—
No wonder you express
symptoms of a cold
on the hottest day of the
year.
Cross Dressing
The woman, next door, stole my dog’s fur
to knit a sweater for her bald kitty.
There was much confusion at the fire hydrant
and no discussion about who did whom
in this season of heat.
Winter 2006
Misdirection
As the number ten bus
bumps down Humboldt,
I see Lisa rub peanut butter
and jelly on her forehead.
This action distracts me
from staring at her breasts
for just a moment.
I’m not ashamed of my staring.
This is the first time I’ve seen
Lisa’s breasts fully clothed.
If there is such a thing as sacred geometry,
Lisa’s curves possess it.
Most men would seriously consider
worshiping at Lisa’s feet,
but this whole peanut butter and jelly thing
dissuades most of them.
It is an effective tactic for Lisa
to keep the riff-raff away,
prevent them from committing
verbal acts of sexual aggression.
Once, in Chicago, a man on the bus
who was about to be mugged
pissed himself, wet his pants
down to the cuffs. The attacker
walked away in disgust, leaving the man
unharmed.
The golden ratio is approximately:
one point six one eight zero three three nine—
Stradivari is said to have used this ratio
to create his violins.
The bus comes to a stop and grounds itself
at the corner, so the elderly can embark
and disembark with ease.
Lisa steps off the bus, heads toward work
at that peculiar institution
Art’s Performing Center
which, not by chance,
is just up the block
from my destination,
the Performing Arts Center—
a violin evening
of Isabella Leonarda.
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Bio: Kenneth P. Gurney lives in Albuquerque, NM. He participates in local poetry events, rarely gets past the first round at slams. You'll find his work spread across the internet's poetry sites(see links below) and on his personal poetry website. Kenneth has rejoined the ranks of internet poetry publishers by producing Origami Condom, which started up in July 2007.
Ascent Aspirations, The Blue House Poetry EZine, The Centrefugal Eye, Concelebratory Shoehorn Revew,The Cliffs Soundings, Fickle Muse, Free Verse, Lunarnosity, Mastadon Dentist, Pearl, Word Riot, Wicked Alice |
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