Paper Carnations
"If you can't be free, be a mystery"
-- Rita Dove
hope can be fool's gold
cloaked in syntax and codes
unable to recognize itself
in any given plot
or understand the natre
of progression when the solstice
offers more than a series of
unanswered questions in indigo
and sapphire under the enveloping silk
because hunger isn't just
about your next meal
a web of thoughts amid
the juniper-berry scented checkout
lines at the Safeway grocer
lights like shining asters
melting at the edges
while we argue
over our entanglements
vulnerable to a stranger's eye
in a sentimental fragmentary text
with rocking chair reverse logic
Faustian longing summer sunset
reflecting on windows and washlines
as we perpetually push our boulders
upward on a mountain of
weather reports and mass advertisements
seduced by a vague yet romantic farewell
from Havana Dialogue
No despiertes corazon
Si sun estas dormido
Tu que siempre has sufrido
En silencio y resignacion
walking in circles like
dead leaves in an afternoon
storm suspended in mid-thought
nurtured by the silence
Cuantos suenos de fantasia
Durante tu infancia anoraste
Y en tu juventud anhelaste
Despurtando en cruda ironia
maybe it's because we spent too
much time with too little imagination
alone & urged by paper bodies
under a cavernous sky
Duerme duerma corazon herido
Por los duros golpes de la suerte
En la vida todo te ha mentido
Solo es verdad la muerte
with each image there is desperation
a prisoner containing a scarlet letter
affixed to their breast who longs
to sleep beneath the billowing awnings
Defense Mechanism
mischievous late moon
rising over almond orchid
as far as the eye
or I
could see with
depths between fingers &
gold corollas gravity
spiral corridor
inches from her paradigm
cosmic hallucination
that told us we were
petals expecting
our last autumn
crumbling
but not too serious
metaphor
empty platitude
blow into the wind
& see if it responds
see if it gives another
ambiguous answer amid the
cackles & clutter
euphoric hummingbird
heart
of Aztec lore
nursing my wounds
from the tempest roar
skin graft memorial to
the nine muses
feeding the young
&
recognizing every
last neurotic as
an intellectual leper
shaking the sky
of all its memories
wiry curls
unscathed innocence
lingers on lip gloss
every day with a
new exchange rate
weeping
bottles
of dream bubbles
bodegas stale beer
thinking the unthinkable
during three-hour commute
from provincial convention
& constraint
sudden unbearable absence
a snapshot of the fishless creek
in Stevens' poem
seamless fabric of
my own undoing
greeting the tide
when the ocean waves
goodbye
translucent sorrows sapped
from
hunger
from
confusion
from
dry red eyes
Prozac &
pink lemonade
scars that never heal
but why should they
music tilts bodies between blossoms
between thighs
turns to cantos
leads tongue to new adventures
perhaps this is what it means to
withdraw in one of those
unending songs
softly aglow
a thousand portals behind
cables & viaducts
I used to refer to myself
in the third-person. Now,
thinking back on it, did
John ever expect to under-
stand the myriad of mistakes
he made? Probably not.
these are words for just about
everything
though
more often than not
they're just meaningless
sounds
murmurs of morning dew
overlapping crescendos of
language plunged into the
moment momentarily
muddled
with no regard for
inventory or transparency
churning whitewater
to purify our ears
I suppose nothing is ever forgotten
John Casquarelli is the author of two full-length collections, On Equilibrium of Song (Overpass Books 2011) and Lavender (Authorspress 2014). He serves as Editor for Otter Magazine (http://ottermagazine.com/) and is an English Instructor at Trinidad State Junior College. He received his MFA in Creative Writing at Long Island University--Brooklyn. John was awarded the 2010 Esther Hyneman Award for Poetry and the 2016 Kafka Residency Prize in Hostka, Czech Republic. He is a member of a literary and art community called the Unbearables (http://unbearables.com/). His work has appeared in the International Higher Education Teaching and Learning Association's (HETL) anthology, Teaching as a Human Experience (Cambridge Scholars Publishing). Other publishing credits include Storm Cycle: Best of Kind of a Hurricane Press, Suisun Valley Review, Ginosko Literary Journal, Pyrokinection, Visceral Brooklyn, The Lonely Crowd, and Kinship of Rivers.
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