A CLAVICHORDIUM OF SECOND SUNDAY
POETRY
While we wait to re-open later this year at the Studio Theatre at St. Denis Building, here are some poems from the terrific Saturday Poetry Workshop that Bob Foster and Alex M. Frankel facilitated for so many years first at the Church in Ocean Park, then at Beyond Baroque, then at the Coffee Bean in Ocean Park, and finally on Skype. Workshops work!
Will Slattery
The Ape Writes Poetry
He lies on her couch in his underwear
and dirty socks with her game controller,
drinking beer first thing in the morning,
smoking all her marijuana,
and she just lets him do all that.
God knows what else.
She says the ape writes poetry.
She never shows it to anyone.
This girl came to me after her rape
when we were little,
this girl tells me everything,
but she won’t show me the ape’s poems.
She says they are too personal.
I see her in the lunchroom crying
after she reads his crumpled pages,
then smile when I ask what she’s feeling.
the nasty eyes of the office woman
the colorless faces
trying for joy
the stairwell haunted
by too much meat
the designer some satanist
off in his keep
the color of the desert
ravishing
the cats
cut hard against the grass like snakes
the lizards
imbued with heartache
able to dance against the light
treating men like children
before the light
the monitors sucking the people in
wraiths
give me the freedom to take the gun out
and inform my associates of their mistake
this is a holdup motherfucker
of your mind
Suzanne Weisberg
To a Pelican on Biscayne Bay
I watched you dive, bring up
and swallow living fish
when my sandals indented
the sand and two small wavery lines
marked the edge
of the bubbly shore.
Lately I heard you were seen
flying over Miami Beach
flapping magnificent wings
snapping your giant beak
still holding on to
plaintive Phrygian modes.
And what of your weird
ornithopteric squawking, muted yowls
warbly cawing,
the calls of a sea bird
floating off on a breeze?
My life curled around that music
as a thin blue branch unfolds.
When you flew away
I heard the empty clanging
of the suitcase room
where vipers go to expire.
I searched everywhere for your cries
looking for a saltwater inlet
where tiny seashells make pinging noises
if you step on them.
Now I stroll the old seaboards
looking for blue throated pelicans
that yawn, stretch their wings,
then plummet
to capture the thrashing fish.
Bill Cushing
Virulent Evolution
Like most atrocities humanity
has seen throughout history, it begins
small, subtle, almost imperceptibly.
Devious whispers of accusations
spread, then grow to screams of protestation,
but those aren’t enough to quell anger
or dissipate dissatisfaction.
Sound-sounding slogans become the pebble
that bothers, then irritates, as the slight
that aggravates, grows into a blight
that feeds on its host and produces
more of its kind, only more pernicious.
Thought becomes movement, then a virus,
inevitably destructive, vicious:
a mindless mob, inexorable until
soon enough, voices turn to action:
the thrown brick, the broken window or door,
the setting of fires. Finally, outrage
ushers in rage and hideous death.
Alejo Rovira Goldner
After a Meeting of Fame-Seekers Anonymous
Moritz Inchlinger, fame-seeker,
slept bright for nearly five hundred years
on the doorstep of the orphanage.
The smell of orphans soothed him
ninety-nine million times a year.
He slept through wars and the lives of vipers.
He began to attract viewers, first two
then thirty-two, then three hundred thousand,
even actress Trish Keating paid attention
and Prime Minister Radcliffe took note.
Inchlinger persisted in the citadel of sleep.
On a bridge over his eyes appeared the Wizard Scout
who proclaimed “A likeness carved in ivory!”
The deaf heard the power of the thin fame-seeker
who slept in blue and white and blue sleep milk.
Generations of actors and scouts and prime ministers
watched over Inchlinger who did not speak or say.
The galaxy couldn’t rest without checking in on him.
In sleep he learned the many lessons he didn’t learn
but witnessed the mountain toast the moon.
So many mouths at the end of all beauty, in other words:
Inchlinger heard the tumult of the New One
and beheld the lightning of the Voice.
He was found in a pond on a Monday,
his body made strong by the pond.
Because the weather was clear and the weather was off
and the weather was clear
Cal Murphy, founder of Fame-Seekers Anonymous
and known to members as Friend Zero,
stopped by to respect the shy face and frame.
They say the corpse got five views, tops.
William Slattery is a metaphysical poet writing in Los Angeles. Robin Wyatt Dunn was born in Wyoming in 1979. You can read more of his work at www.robindunn.com. Suzanne Weisberg is currently re-inventing herself as a poet. She was first an abstract painter, and then a lawyer. She is a co-founder of the SoHo 20 Art Gallery in New York City. Called the “blue collar poet” by peers at the University of Central Florida, Bill Cushing moved to California by way of Puerto Rico after earning his MFA from Goddard College. Besides writing, he facilitates a writing group (9 Bridges). His book, A Former Life, was released by Finishing Line Press and later honored with a Kops-Featherling International Book Award. Alejo Rovira Goldner left Spain in 1995 and settled in Los Angeles, where he writes poems and plays.
The Ape Writes Poetry
He lies on her couch in his underwear
and dirty socks with her game controller,
drinking beer first thing in the morning,
smoking all her marijuana,
and she just lets him do all that.
God knows what else.
She says the ape writes poetry.
She never shows it to anyone.
This girl came to me after her rape
when we were little,
this girl tells me everything,
but she won’t show me the ape’s poems.
She says they are too personal.
I see her in the lunchroom crying
after she reads his crumpled pages,
then smile when I ask what she’s feeling.
the nasty eyes of the office woman
the colorless faces
trying for joy
the stairwell haunted
by too much meat
the designer some satanist
off in his keep
the color of the desert
ravishing
the cats
cut hard against the grass like snakes
the lizards
imbued with heartache
able to dance against the light
treating men like children
before the light
the monitors sucking the people in
wraiths
give me the freedom to take the gun out
and inform my associates of their mistake
this is a holdup motherfucker
of your mind
Suzanne Weisberg
To a Pelican on Biscayne Bay
I watched you dive, bring up
and swallow living fish
when my sandals indented
the sand and two small wavery lines
marked the edge
of the bubbly shore.
Lately I heard you were seen
flying over Miami Beach
flapping magnificent wings
snapping your giant beak
still holding on to
plaintive Phrygian modes.
And what of your weird
ornithopteric squawking, muted yowls
warbly cawing,
the calls of a sea bird
floating off on a breeze?
My life curled around that music
as a thin blue branch unfolds.
When you flew away
I heard the empty clanging
of the suitcase room
where vipers go to expire.
I searched everywhere for your cries
looking for a saltwater inlet
where tiny seashells make pinging noises
if you step on them.
Now I stroll the old seaboards
looking for blue throated pelicans
that yawn, stretch their wings,
then plummet
to capture the thrashing fish.
Bill Cushing
Virulent Evolution
Like most atrocities humanity
has seen throughout history, it begins
small, subtle, almost imperceptibly.
Devious whispers of accusations
spread, then grow to screams of protestation,
but those aren’t enough to quell anger
or dissipate dissatisfaction.
Sound-sounding slogans become the pebble
that bothers, then irritates, as the slight
that aggravates, grows into a blight
that feeds on its host and produces
more of its kind, only more pernicious.
Thought becomes movement, then a virus,
inevitably destructive, vicious:
a mindless mob, inexorable until
soon enough, voices turn to action:
the thrown brick, the broken window or door,
the setting of fires. Finally, outrage
ushers in rage and hideous death.
Alejo Rovira Goldner
After a Meeting of Fame-Seekers Anonymous
Moritz Inchlinger, fame-seeker,
slept bright for nearly five hundred years
on the doorstep of the orphanage.
The smell of orphans soothed him
ninety-nine million times a year.
He slept through wars and the lives of vipers.
He began to attract viewers, first two
then thirty-two, then three hundred thousand,
even actress Trish Keating paid attention
and Prime Minister Radcliffe took note.
Inchlinger persisted in the citadel of sleep.
On a bridge over his eyes appeared the Wizard Scout
who proclaimed “A likeness carved in ivory!”
The deaf heard the power of the thin fame-seeker
who slept in blue and white and blue sleep milk.
Generations of actors and scouts and prime ministers
watched over Inchlinger who did not speak or say.
The galaxy couldn’t rest without checking in on him.
In sleep he learned the many lessons he didn’t learn
but witnessed the mountain toast the moon.
So many mouths at the end of all beauty, in other words:
Inchlinger heard the tumult of the New One
and beheld the lightning of the Voice.
He was found in a pond on a Monday,
his body made strong by the pond.
Because the weather was clear and the weather was off
and the weather was clear
Cal Murphy, founder of Fame-Seekers Anonymous
and known to members as Friend Zero,
stopped by to respect the shy face and frame.
They say the corpse got five views, tops.
.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.
William Slattery is a metaphysical poet writing in Los Angeles. Robin Wyatt Dunn was born in Wyoming in 1979. You can read more of his work at www.robindunn.com. Suzanne Weisberg is currently re-inventing herself as a poet. She was first an abstract painter, and then a lawyer. She is a co-founder of the SoHo 20 Art Gallery in New York City. Called the “blue collar poet” by peers at the University of Central Florida, Bill Cushing moved to California by way of Puerto Rico after earning his MFA from Goddard College. Besides writing, he facilitates a writing group (9 Bridges). His book, A Former Life, was released by Finishing Line Press and later honored with a Kops-Featherling International Book Award. Alejo Rovira Goldner left Spain in 1995 and settled in Los Angeles, where he writes poems and plays.
© 2021
Poets William Slattery, Robin Wyatt Dunn, Suzanne Weisberg, Bill
Cushing and Alejo Rovira Goldner
Featured Poets 2021 Second Sunday Poetry Series
Featured Poets 2021 Second Sunday Poetry Series