Gloom Cupboard

New poetry by Michael Ceraolo, Mike Finely, Joseph M. Gant, Ananya S. Guha, Laura McKee, satnrose, Almond Sylem, and Justin Wade Thompson

Laura McKee
where the snow lay dinted

In the meantime
I try to remember the blush of things.
Before the cold slub
woven bluish lines
of love evolving.
So now I tread water
frozen.
And in this snow
angels and footprints still hold your warmth.

Mike Finley
Ice flowers

It’s shameful seeing fields I can’t identify.
It’s ice, or something,
a tangle that affects me.
I see zinnias and fall flowers with chew-marks
of frost on them,
a white mat of fur that I lay on
and chisel with my nails.

I noticed it first on a window frosted over,
and later a figure on a patch of linoleum,
and later out of a hatch in my eye
where a while ago a painting had been.
There were haystacks and sheep in it,
and the stubble figures of men
caught in the motion
of hoisting something overhead.

I can tell by the quiet it must be winter.
And how it affects me, I want
to write everyone I know,
or have them come visit me.

Joseph M. Gant
Making Change

It’s Wal-Mart— 3am;
I stagger inside,
my pockets
jangling
with the
Chinese currency
I bought on e-Bay—
breath heavy with Kentucky bourbon

and I refuse to
leave,
in plain, drunken protest
until they sell me
a garden
rake
at the fair and considerable
rate of exchange.

satnrose
CAT CAT HAIKU

crows attack a cat
the cat jumps under a bush
the crows caw “cat! cat! cat!”

Justin Wade Thompson
Saint Petersburg

putting a black tie
on the dead

watching my wife and thai mother
weeping thru the ashes of the buddha

minutes passing like tears
tearing thru the sky
from the eyelids of the sun

while alligators bathe
while murder sleeps
while children bury guns
in the guts of their mothers

flattening the hearts
of their fathers

and sinking into the sea
that happy ship that
brought us here as slaves
and martyrs
in black chains
and blood clotted passages

thru the airways
to the center of the brain

the preachers preach
and the madmen rape each other
in the streets

damn our mothers for telling us
that we may someday walk on water

damn the heroes
and the bed-wetters
and the jewel-skinned dinosaurs
we thought we’d ride
to bethlehem

all i can fancy is my own death
stepping over books
turned to vipers

like some superstition
that leaves me cold and toothless
as they’ve pulled all life
out of my mouth
and laid me still
on the bed
with no covers

just pillow-feathers in my mouth
and a flat slit of eyes
as neat as black lines typed
on black paper.

Back to Haikus
we’re back to haikus
trip trap
-ping
across the united states
with a black man in the trunk
tied with silver tape
or so i imagine it.

no, actually,
it’s just cold winter
in the east side trailer park

RVs and terrys and coaches
with gray linings and
beige carports
across the chain-link fence
where the old Mexican
families live their
catholic lives
and wait for feliz navidad
with children singing
and wildflower honey
dripping on buttered bread
and tortillas
and little cookies shaped
like camels and stars.

we’re back to postcard
shrines with dried flowers
and lucky-cat
and red statue-frogs with coins
in their mouths

theravada books and blue butterflies
dead and dried up in black
boxes and needles
through there backs
and i can’t help but look at the
word needles and think
how it looks like needless
needless needless
like death mounted on the wall
above an unused fireplace
in December
while a friend offers
to cook my wife and i steaks
and all i’m looking forward to
is a day cool enough
to ride down to the grocery store
and not have to worry about
using up all the propane.

last time we both left
town and when we came back
the food had all gone to rot
and it took me a week
to get the mold smell out
i’m not kidding.

i have books on everything and have been almost everywhere
but i’ve nothing to show for it
no pictures no wisdom
beyond what one could learn in the streets

i’m not rhyming i’m not rambling i’m not raking in profits
just counting syllables on my right hand with all five fingers
like the 31 and 30 days between my knuckles
or multiplications of 9s

but i was never very good at mathematics
i was never very good with form and structure
and on top of that i’ve a slight lisp
since they pulled out my
two front teeth and replaced them
with fine china
(like glass eyes)
and
now
the walls shake when i walk
across the room and the door-jam
is wet with condensation
and there’s not enough paper towels left
to soak up the grief
that’s
collected on the living room
floor.

Almond Sylem
I Am Not Certain

I flung a coin into the bowl the beggar kept beside him
while he raised both hands to explain they once had fingers.
I am not certain in whose name I had done it.

I pretended I did not hear the doorbell a man with matted hair
and drums slung on shoulders rung for I knew he wanted a rupee
or two. I am not certain how I felt when I saw him walk away
to open my neighbor’s gate.

I sing and offer spiritual advice to calloused men and women
who live and die by a river that dispenses sand and stone
and dismal hope every week outside a city that has decided
to leave the poor behind. I am not certain
how much I really love them.

I watch structures rise in gardens where the outcasts once collected
tealeaves before they sent the police to chase them away. The city is changing,
suburbs metamorphosing, but love, I am not certain I want to dine
in that restaurant serving global cuisine there.

I watch two madwomen strolling daily on highway of jerks
and bus drivers ignorant of mercy, one lost in an alternative world
and ropes she had tied around her shoulders, the other with eyes
I could not interpret and tattered blouse that could not contain
a perfect breast below a neck ravaged by a disease I knew nothing about.
I searched my heart and I am not certain whether I found compassion
or coldness there.

Gaudy eunuchs slap my face inside trains and threaten to lift their saris
if I refuse to give in to their extortion. I rush to hide for centuries
in reeking toilets and emerge to find shelter in the wings of a prayer
my love prays for me. She holds me in her arms, my strong lover, while
disembarking passengers pull their bags to the door of the slowing train.
It happened sometime in spring this year, before the Indian sun began
its ritual of anger, before floodwaters of dirt and disease overran  huts
in low lying plains. Last week, the eunuchs returned to a train
that was bringing me home, yanking bed sheet, clapping hands,
thickly made-up, stubble showing. The nausea returns and I am not certain
I want to forgive them.

I heard a wise man say he’s made a declaration of dependence on God.
I flirt with darkness and drink turncoat wine, dragging a string of tears
along the way. After all these years of knowing you, I am not certain
I know what dependence really is.

Michael Ceraolo
Cleveland Cinquain #20

Real
security:
a bank vault still standing,
the rest of the shopping center
rubble

Ananya S. Guha
Evening Poem

This is the turn around
this screeching winter abyss
the empty faces, speak
of empty things, and
lostness, only the damp cold
reminds of a cycle, an orbit
past, present, future…
this turn around bespeaks
of what is not, this winter
is a scythe to cut that bitterness,
pain or anguish
This is the turn around we are
talking of, earthquakes, disaster
God’s forbidding finger
in tremulous anger
This turn around
is emptied in smelling
pots of tea
As we do a catwalk
Or a somersault.

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