You are the runt of the lute’s litter, the parasitic twin excised from its half-pear belly. Sideshow dwarf to the guitar’s trapeze artist and bass fiddle’s strong man. You ring with tarantellas and bluegrass. You plink, plink, plink for revelers sweating spider poison and parry with the banjo at Saturday night clog dances. You are limoncello and moonshine, the Apennines and Appalachians, Vivaldi’s Concerto in G Major and Bill Monroe’s Blue Moon of Kentucky.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Monday, January 9, 2012
"Ming and Al" by Amy Holman
Ming and Al
“All I wanted was a Garden of Eden.”--Antoine Yates
After Yates was arrested in East Harlem, Ming and Al were alone. The rabbit was good,
but hunger can have little to do with what fits in the stomach, just read MFK Fisher.
Three days in those close rooms, and they didn’t come down on each other. Truth is,
they weirded each other out, always had. People insist oddity is the basis for friendship
among misfits, but Ming and Al would never miss each other. Yates had held them both
in high esteem--a place so cold it should be snowing, Ming would say, if words were
appealing. Al kept looking for the truth to bathe in and was insulted by porcelain. He
just knew he should be hanging on the surface of it like a cloud in the sky. Ming slept
in a state of velocity, mysterious tundra opening his mind. New York’s Finest shot him
through the window. No matter, he woke to familiar stripes and the scent of snow. Al is
contributing to a population explosion in a subtropical state, no longer of the mind.
“All I wanted was a Garden of Eden.”--Antoine Yates
After Yates was arrested in East Harlem, Ming and Al were alone. The rabbit was good,
but hunger can have little to do with what fits in the stomach, just read MFK Fisher.
Three days in those close rooms, and they didn’t come down on each other. Truth is,
they weirded each other out, always had. People insist oddity is the basis for friendship
among misfits, but Ming and Al would never miss each other. Yates had held them both
in high esteem--a place so cold it should be snowing, Ming would say, if words were
appealing. Al kept looking for the truth to bathe in and was insulted by porcelain. He
just knew he should be hanging on the surface of it like a cloud in the sky. Ming slept
in a state of velocity, mysterious tundra opening his mind. New York’s Finest shot him
through the window. No matter, he woke to familiar stripes and the scent of snow. Al is
contributing to a population explosion in a subtropical state, no longer of the mind.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
"Morning Glories" by Michael T. Young
Morning Glories
These flowering funnels burst like waterspouts
frozen in the first perfect flight of spray.
Perhaps that’s why their violet suggests
the last moment of night, its final thought
surviving into the early stages of daylight.
I rise and stand at the window admiring
how they lace the chain links and stretch
their spindles toward the bench.
No photograph could frame their tenacity
as they reach like a deliberate wave breaking
over the lawn. It will take days, like a work of art.
Yet their leafed ambition is a figure of modesty,
a flourishing that withers by the afternoon hours.
Even as they twine the bench’s wrought iron
sending their blooms up through the planks,
they shame my recollection of how their name
was used to mean someone whose promising youth
never blossomed. Tomorrow they will trumpet
their arrival with new flowers so vivid
it will seem that today never existed.
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