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

VASHTI BUNYAN, WAYWARD ~

 

R E A D   M E

White Rabbit, UK

2022

WILLIAM EGGLESTON, THE LAST DYES ~

 

 R E A D   M E

GO WEST, OLD MAN ~

 

                                                      C O R M A C   M c C A R T H Y

R E A D   M E

St. Martin's, 2026