Gloom Cupboard

Laura LeHew
On a Scale

arthritis, hot throbbing bunions
worn-out line-paint yellow
the thrum
stretching on for miles without
end

pop Pop POP of corn
the burnt butter
stale stench of a movie theatre
Fanta orange aura
migraine’s prequel

lavender bruise blue as a phlebotomist
tortures searching for a vein
three week cluster headaches
on the very verge of disappearance
stitches without numbing, rehabbing surgeries

paper cut red slamming
a baby toe into a wrought iron bed
not breaking and screaming
nonetheless, stepping on pottery
shards, the stupidity of a sunburn

gall stone green
a fall herniating a disk
picking up 50 pounds of cat litter—
the pop—the slow burn in the knee
denial

impact black shattering a windshield face first
nose embedded in a steering wheel, the slap of laptop
as it is lands unbroken crushing a middle toe
the pace, vomit, pace—as a miniscule kidney
stone races to escape, the thought of a colonoscopy

a storming migraine lightning striking again
and again and again in the left eye, the essence
of antiseptic before another surgery, slipping on ice
landing squarely on a kneecap—the breathless pure evil white before
the halo of stars before passing out

(more…)

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Peter Magliocco
Not (But Fading Away)

I am not a critic but a poetry daredevil leaping over sin
because I don’t care why Madonna’s in the rut of her adoption life
or any other pressing pabulum for dust-worm thoughts:
I am not a reader of poetry because billboards
bore me, the papers all say the same thing
& the best sellers are written by the same people.
I am not a proper philistine because
it takes too much practice to become one,
or maybe just sucking-up (which is worse),
while currently an Elvis impersonator rules
the badly lit corridors of our brains
with the sounds of anti-silence pounding
on the White House asylum door
of contraband & the ex-poet laureate,
like a gun-toting anti-abortionist with principles
tells us, point-blank, to quietly step back
from the shape of things yet to come:

I am not a student of villanelles
because frankly what are they, anyway?
or even of iambic pentameters & trochaic
archaic rhyme schemes …

& I am not writing this,
it was cribbed from the notes
of a deceased

“man
of
letters”

writing a thesis
on the
problem

of
ill-
“literacy”

(more…)

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