DEVIN JOHNSTON ~

 

Late October

Kids crowd the stoop

backs to a darkened house

so close to nothing

yet incurious

*

Across the brick facade

a kestrel

races to meet

its shadow

*

Hawk and starling sport

through all this rigging

of blocks and lines

counterweights and arbors

the street

a theater set for storms

*  

A chunk of sycamore

adorns the telephone line

branch and trunk long gone

stump a faint impression

just that cylinder

faintly nautical

hung in a crown of air

*

Triple your chances to win

Take it at twenty-to-one

No money down

No faith in desire

*

Cashing out

the bartender croons

If you see me getting smaller

Trobar clus

Closing time

*

Two boys lug

a Samsonite

full of leaves

across the lawn

*

A starling whets

her thorn of beak

and song gives way

to sunlight on concrete

___________________________

Bright Thorn

poems 2000-2026

FSG, 2026

LITTLE DEMON CHASES SCREAMIN' JAY HAWKINS ~

 

   1956

CAMILLE T. DUNGY ~

 Let Me

Let me tell you, America, this one last thing.
I will never be finished dreaming about you.
I had a lover once. If you could call him that.
I drove to his apartment in a faraway town,
like the lost bear who wandered to our cul-de-sac
that summer smoke from the burning mountain
altered our air. I don’t know what became of her.
I drove to so many apartments in the day.
America, this is really the very last thing.
He’d stocked up, for our weekend together,
on food he knew I would like. Vegetarian
pad Thai, some black-bean-and-sweet-potato chili,
coconut ice cream, a bag of caramel popcorn.
Loads of Malbec. He wanted to make me happy,
but he drank until I would have been a fool
not to be afraid. I’d been drinking plenty, too.
It was too late to drive myself anywhere safe.
I watched him finger a brick as if to throw it
at my head. Maybe that’s a metaphor. Maybe
that’s what happened. America, sometimes it’s hard
to tell the difference with you. All I could do
was lock myself inside his small bedroom. I pushed
a chest against the door and listened as he threw
his body at the wood. Listened as he tore apart
the pillow I had sewn him. He’d been good to me,
but this was like waiting for the walls to ignite.
You’ve heard that, America? In a firestorm
some houses burn from the inside out. An ember
caught in the eaves, wormed through the chinking, will flare up
in the insulation, on the frame, until everything
in the house succumbs to the blaze. In the morning,
I found him on the couch. Legs too long, arms spilling
to the carpet, knuckles bruised in the same pattern
as a hole in the drywall. Every wine bottle
empty. Each container of food opened, eaten,
or destroyed. “I didn’t want you to have this,”
he whispered. If he could not consume my body,
the food he’d given me to eat would have to do.
Have you ever seen a person walk through the ruins
of a burnt-out home? Please believe me, I am not
making light of such suffering, America.
Maybe the dream I still can’t get over is that,
so far, I have made it out alive.

__________________

America,

A Love Story

Wesleyan University 2026

IT MUST HAVE BEEN THE DEVIL SAYS OTIS SPANN ~

 

Walking The Blues ℗ 1972 Candid Released on: 1972-01-01 Main Artist: Otis Spann Producer: Nat Hentoff Music Publisher: Candid Composer: Otis Spann Composer Lyricist: Otis Spann

DENNIS MALONEY ~

 

Empty Cup

     After a painting by Erin Gafill

A small still life

of an empty cup

executed in

hues of blue and

shades of gray.

It can hold anything

or everything.

You can pour in

coffee or tea,

or you can pour in

love, gratitude,

longing, bitterness,

or disappointment.

What will you hold

in this empty cup?

How does it taste?

_______________________

Dennis Maloney

Clearing the Stream

New & Selected Poems

1975-2025

SKIP JAMES TONIGHT ~

 

     1931

HANK LAZER ~

 

yes  i  will

go up to

the stars

this language

that we are

goes only so far

in peril

of the invisible

quiet running water

yes

i will go up

to the stars

________________

Abundant Life

New & Selected Poems

Chax Press 2025

CHASED OLD SATAN THROUGH THE DOOR ~

 

Recorded on Friday, May 29, 1931 in Charlotte, North Carolina for Victor Records.

JOHN CAGE IN CONVERSATION (1963) ~

 

VASSAR MILLER ~

 

Adoration

The afternoon is beautiful and silent.

The white garage lifts like the cloudy pillar

Into the sunlight. The tree rears taller,

Its foliage rufled like a green swan's plumage,

A sudden bird goes skimming through the sky

As noiseless as a fish swims in the sea.

When everything is far and near at once,

Remote as memory and luminous as now,

Till mind is cut adrift and like a web

Shimmering rides the heat waves up and down.

Nothing is half so tenuous as flesh,

Which, on the lightest pretext, steals away

To sleep in the cocoon of summer heat and haze,

When a jay's scream might tumble the brick wall

Next door to slide into the forests of the grass,

The afternoon so beautiful and silent.

________________

Onions and Roses

Wesleyan University Press, 1968

KEVIN KILLIAN ~

 

Pasolini

First, after the spots in the Sun

the twenty-seven holes in the coronal

Then, the meeting in the hotel

with a man in a cape only more discreet                                                       Visconti

First, look at the blackened scar

an elbow like a piece of macaroni

Then on the plate

I nearly came while I was looking                                                               "No Hands"

First, both ways, crossing the

street to the traffic island

Then a big van painted multicolor

hippie style, a tiger across it                                                                              The 60s

First, why don't you shave

your filthy face is burnt with oil

Then you could maybe eat

a bit of fruit like maybe, my little guava                                                          foreplay

First in the Mezzanine Palace

of the ancestors

Last on my list of like

required reading, get it?                                                                                  Lovecraft

____________________________

Padam Padam

Collected Poems

edited by Evan Kennedy & Jason Morris

Nightboat Books 2025