Category Archives: Fiction

“The Aurora of the New Mind” – David St. John

There had been rain throughout the province

Cypress & umbrella pines in a palsy of swirling mists 

Bent against the onshore whipping winds

I had been so looking forward to your silence

What a pity it never arrived

The uniforms of arrogance had been delivered only 

That morning to the new ambassador & his stable of lovers

The epaulettes alone would have made a lesser man weep

But I know my place & I know my business

& I know my own mind so it never occured to me

To listen as you recited that litany of automatic 

miseries

Familiar to all victims of class warfare & loveless

circumstance

By which I mean of course you & your kind

But I know my place & I know my business & baby

I know my own grieving summer mind

Still I look a lot like Scott Fitzgerald tonight with 

my tall

Tumbler of meander & bourbon & mint just clacking my

ice

To the noise of the streetcar ratcheting up some

surprise

I had been so looking forward to your silence

& what a pity it never arrived

Now those alpha waves of desire light up the horizon

Just the way my thoughts all blew wild-empty as you

stood

In the doorway to leave     in the doorway to leave


Yet I know my place & I know my business & I know those

Melodies melodies & the music of my own mind

:: from The Southern Review

“Desire” – Langston Hughes

Desire to us

Was like a double death,

Swift dying

Of our mingled breath,

Evaporation

Of an unknown strange perfume

Between us quickly

In a naked

Room.

(1947)

“When A Man Hasn’t Been Kissed” – Jeffrey McDaniel

When I haven’t been kissed in a long time,

I walk behind well-dressed women

on cold, December mornings and shovel

the steamy exhalations pluming from their lips

down my throat with both hands, hoping

a single molecule will cling to my lungs.

When I haven’t been kissed in a long time, 

I sneak into the ladies room of a fancy restaurant,

dig into the trashcan for a napkin

where a woman checked her lipstick,

then go home, light candles, put on Barry White,

and press the napkin all over my body.

When I haven’t been kissed in a long time,

I start thinking leeches are the most romantic

creatures, cause all they want to do is kiss. 

If only someone invented a kinder, gentler leech,

I’d paint it bright pink and pretend

Winona Ryder’s lips crawled off her face,

up my thigh, and were sucking on my swollen bicep.

When I haven’t been kissed

in a long time, I create civil disturbances,

then insult the cops who show up,

till one of them grabs me by the collar

and hurls me up against the squad car,

so I can remember, at least for a moment,

what it’s like to be touched.

Excerpt (II) from On The Road – Jack Kerouac

She was a nice little girl, simple and true, and tremendously frightened of sex. I told her it was beautiful. I wanted to prove this to her. She let me prove it, but I was too impatient and proved nothing. She sighed in the dark.

“What do you want out of life?” I asked, and I used to ask that all the time of girls.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Just wait on tables and try to get along.” She yawned. I put my hand over her mouth and told her not to yawn. I tried to tell her how excited I was about life and the things we could do together; saying that, and planning to leave Denver in two days. She turned wearily. We lay on our backs, looking at the ceiling and wondering what God had wrought when He made life so sad. We made vague plans to meet in Frisco.

(I.10.9, I.10.10).

“My Lavenderdom” – Sarah Maclay

—as in, pre-flutter, that kingdom of semi-purpleness— should I

say dome of— that area of anti-limp, lawless, drunk on your

fingering, unfingering— that omnivore, oh, eating now your—

even your branches, iceless, anti frozen, gazelle flying toward the

twin kingdoms of your cheekness (more at “flying buttress”),

nearly periwinkling now— that perpetrator of the semi-grunt,

grunt, instigator of the groanful demi-flood of— flutter, flutter,

post-flutter— gorge of neomauve, rich canal of sunsetish plush,

now unguardedly sub-fuschia; that private brandied eyelash

batting at you in its brashest postcool queenness, plump and

succulent as a plum—

—-The Best American Erotic Poems: From 1800 to the Present, 2008

In You The Earth – Pablo Neruda

Little,

rose,

roselet,

at times,

tiny and naked,

it seems

as though you would fit

in one of my hands,

as though I’ll clasp you to my mouth,

but

suddenly

my feet touch your feet and my mouth your lips:

you have grown,

your shoulders rise like two hills,

your breasts wander over my breast,

my arm scarcely manages to encircle the thin

new-moon line of your waist:

in love you have loosened yourself like sea water:

I can scarcely measure the sky’s most spacious eyes

and I lean down to your mouth to kiss the earth.

Excerpt from I Heard God Laughing: Poems of Hope & Joy

A poet is someone / who can pour Light into a spoon / then raise it / to nourish / Your beautiful parched / holy mouth

By Hafiz

“Olive” – H.M. Scheppers

It seems to me like the forest will look more like this:

barren

an olive, on a toothpick

one side x, one side o

— O

how my brain feels

hollow, punctured.

With just a word,

he punctures me

an olive on a toothpick

flesh purses into an “O”

and I’m pitted

on my back—“X”

begs—hit me here,

my strong side,

but I lie mangled

among other pitted O’s 

like a bug on its back and rolling

into others, without limbs

to move freely, without,

only to roll, 

empty, blind

mouth open

O

Excerpt from The Year of Magical Thinking

We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality, even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. As we were. As we are no longer. As we will one day not be at all.

Joan Didion – The Year of Magical Thinking