A wonderful poem by my daughter, Tara:

Poem on the Bus

In my reverie

could there ever be strife?

Maybe that's like assuming

one would never have a bad day

How accustomed we are

masking our feelings

The answer to questions

fueled by judgment

When in reality

contradictions

make things palpable

Sergei

You're trying to nail down the left hand

of Rachmaninoff’s no. 3 in D minor

Nearly impossible to play!

eyes wide open in a room with the lights out

eigengrau . . . a grayness

not the same as practicing études in conservatory

blindfolded with the lights on . . .

Sergei himself here in the darkness

the King of Span

his gigantic paw stretching

the interval of a 13th on the keyboard

chuckling as you struggle to hold your posture

knowing a cramp is on its way . . .

you looking away . . .

glissando-ing like a caged animal

until the wooden hammers

blanketed in compressed felt -

the tuner's pin controlling their hardness

softening the tone -

acquiesce . . . releasing you into the world of light . . .

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Isn’t it time to resume the obligatory? . . .

Can you imagine? . . .

Not unlike the postmodern foisted upon minions

when no one was looking

and the brownout was force-fed . . .

And just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, yes? . . .

Is it safe? quoth Sir Laurence . . . to the Marathon Man . . .

Low-lying clouds should be forgiven . . .

They know not . . . As for you? . . .

The same is not true . . . You knew . . . around the block

and then some . . .

Wendy Bevan

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A one-size-fits-all transcription of experience

and your mind's ear takes a break today at Mickey D's -

generic, anti-confessional, without

the clawing happenstance of a Johnny Depp lookalike

backstroking in a sea of Elmer's Glue . . .

You continue to get antsy over dead zones . . .

Who doesn't? . . . but do we need two of anything? . . .

Attention-deficit mavens and their obsession

with the gap between fit and finish

transforming stage directions into librettos

puts one in the mood for a slice of pizza

with the works . . . from Baldy's on Cork Hill –

a stopgap for fortune tellers and fortune hunters . . .

If at any point you feel small, you should . . .

Wendy Bevan

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This poem is a game of scrabble . . . a game of babble

a game of mirrored sunglasses reflecting

a box of colored pencils . . . as you

thumb through Augusten Burroughs's Dry

inviting a tangle of lines leading to a fun house

in the middle of a re-enactment . . . as if

parallel parking a shopping cart were sufficient . . .

Again you argue the clock

with thoughts of a drybrush masterpiece

by Andrew Wyeth . . . at the Fenimore Museum . . .

Everyone deserves a break today . . .

Why today? . . . Why today the blue vacuum with dry load

applied to a dry support

from your days revitalizing sober living apartments? . . .

Wendy Bevan

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You seem to enjoy the almostness of your borderline personality

carrying on about the leaks in emptiness

that accompany Bruegger's Everything Bagels

and the duffel bags . . . of risky narcissists

adorned with fidgety flight tags

from the Bucket's 100 Places to Visit Before Passing . . .

Stay the merriment became your duly-noted mantra

even after your breaths exceeded the numbers

and you hop-scotched with bouquets of trillium

that happened by on their way

to yet another ho-hum commercial break

that . . . despite the menagerie . . . always made you chuckle . . .

especially when Facebook friends pointed to lapses in serving styles . . .

And you do believe yourself, yes?

Wendy Bevan

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Postcards from the corner office offer tips

on managing the parts of life that make no sense:

seductive five-star creamsicles

soundtracked by melodic lines nursing

pentatonic and catatonic scales . . .

You pride yourself on inscrutable self-scrutiny

the examined life . . . and all that

as if parroting fan-fiction of the Canon

through closed lips

makes dumbing down the default . . .

So why the obsession with spoon-fed fork-tonguers? . . .

The files . . . sight-read

have been sealed . . . and now

your raised hand is being co-dependently ignored . . .

Wendy Bevan

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You're charged with toggling the laugh track

while waiting in the checkout line

at the supermarket . . .

The manager is a clown suit . . .

A clown suit is a root canal sans Novocain . . .

A clown suit is a box lunch . . .

An after-the-fact afterthought . . .

Your flight is taxiing

and now the ticket person in a clown suit

is telling you you're in the wrong line

but there's a million dollar smile

on a million dollar baby

in a million dollar condo

with a million dollar (fill in the blank) _____

Wendy Bevan

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The subject has become the object . . .

It happens whenever you click Search . . . igniting associations . . .

The tendency to remain open

while people hover . . . submitting requests . . .

Are you ready to give it up? . . . to give in? . . .

Let's hope not . . . at least not until

your fingers are ready and the score is on the stands . . .

Opening statements, please . . .

What if we were to record every other word? . . .

Would nonsense reign? . . .

Would it become the New Now? . . .

You were late . . . with revisions . . . only

to be called out . . . to be called out . . . for redundancy . . .

Antonio Palmerini

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You count out change from a shiny metal change counter

attached to your belt with Velcro . . .

You score a merit badge for the likes of this . . .

Isn’t this romantic? . . .

An aging-out squeezebox expands and contracts

to the gesticulations of bystanders . . .

It’s a day away from eBay . . .

Forging ahead nonetheless

with less than Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels

you wait tables in reruns

buttdialing Ubers for Q&As

while running changes with after-hour noodlers . . .

A good misstep

as innocuous as an up-close-and-personal . . .

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Escaping through the cracks in your argument

following bread crumbs to the Temple of Incidentals

restless long legs

parody of a back-flap biography

you fret over brands of black pepper

focus on the container . . .

Stepping out onto the deck with eggs over easy, yes? . . .

And coffee? . . .

The seemingly insignificant? . . .

There's nothing wrong with invisibility

and lemon juice . . . held up to a light bulb

selecting from menu options

making do . . . treading water . . .

Come prepared to defend your thesis . . .

Antonio Palmerini

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The theatrics begin . . . with words up . . . words down

rehearsals . . . do not pass Go . . .

You know how it is

with everyone talking . . . at the same time . . .

It's tough to follow the storyline

if there is a storyline

but then some stories are better without a storyline . . .

Just let the events unfold

in your pocket . . . I don't care

little matter where . . .

Whatever's convenient for you

I'm trying to wrap my head around something

that will get me through the next few hours

or the next few minutes . . .

Antonio Palmerini

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Nights of reruns with brief, lost faces

feed the illusion of prediction

as if a magician's assistant living out of a suitcase

were cut in half . . .

location . . . location . . . location . . .

You as stopgap at the supermarket

comparing tongues with other sous chefs

squeezing into line for a virtual rollerama

of one-upmanship . . .

sampling tidbits for a breakout special

enjambed with abandon

awaiting a redo of the Breakfast of Champions . . .

The resident Kerouacian behind the deli counter

types a cemetery

on a roll of butcher paper . . .

a makeover for aspirants outside the walls

carries you through a thicket of unknowns

with one-way tickets to elsewhere . . .

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You have a reputation for down time

for rearranging players and their parts . . .

It's all there . . . in your notebooks . . . on your (un)zip drive . . .

It has become your mantra . . .

Incomplete sentences . . . written with crayons

follow in your wake . . .

The manner in which they carry themselves

and the questions . . . left unanswered . . .

Trying to construct reality with Legos, yes? . . .

You and your erotic other captured on tape

with sticky wickets . . .

I never believed in falling prey to pews

but then again . . . and again . . .

Something is sure to befall one-nighters . . .

Kate Barry

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You worry language and drama-splicing . . .

the abracadabra-ness of the day

as Walmarteers stuffed with colorways

bottleneck roundabouts . . .

It's summer . . . waters are being tested . . .

You’ve streamed the beaches with an eye on binge-reading

the short stories in the Canon

beginning with John Cheever's The Swimmer

starring Burt Lancaster as Ned Merrill

in skin tight trunks

swimming across the county

in neighbors' pools

but it's fragmenting because Burt

is throttling a steam locomotive in The Train

which pit him as French Resistance-member Paul Labiche

against German Colonel Franz von Waldheim

played by Paul Scofield,

who is trying to move stolen art by train to Germany . . .

In the final scene

von Waldheim stays with the derailed train

crammed with crates labeled with the names of artists . . .

Labiche appears . . .

Von Waldheim mocks Labiche as artless . . .

Labiche shoots von Waldheim . . .

Percy Shelley and his wife Mary

a wild-eyed young redhead

backpack stuffed with Frankenstein

enter as if on cue . . .

the lone and level sands stretching far away . . .

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You insist you can be more than a swinger of birches . . .

You've had your fill of adult playpens

popping up in motion-sickness modules

of deconstructed shopping malls . . .

The oppressive heat forces you to chill

in the supermarket’s frozen food section

brimming with memoirists

collecting empties for eternity's sake . . .

It's all part of someone's master plan . . .

you're sure of it . . . despite fashionistas

shadowing you with shoulda woulda couldas . . .

The takeaways, yes, the takeaways, remain dicey . . .

And why is that? . . .

Surely the director allowed ample opportunity

for whatever directors allow ample opportunity for . . .

Film Studies 101 is about to stream The Turin Horse . . .

Do you think you're ready? . . .

Aneta Ivanova

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Augustine pockets pears and spills beans

in thirteen books

the self merely source material

a lost wax process for the staging of bigger questions . . .

Cezanne paints his apples

and rewrites the laws of perspective . . .

logorrhea is a masturbatorially public act . . .

The endeavor complicates . . .

one word follows another

not as its sequel but as its unmaking . . .

You distort . . . intentionally . . . unintentionally

and become enamored of your own engagement . . .

your own autofiction . . .

You roll out virtual howitzers

and execute reams of legal pads

hopscotching metaphors

on lines of macadam

awaiting wait staff for today's specials . . .

How to make it so to seem doable

especially now with summer people

collecting shells of happiness

drifting offshore

in and out of doors and into whitewashed rooms

unencumbered by a mind of winter . . .

You, like them, are shaped by resistance

tucking sheets . . .

pulling them into neat corners

while the commute slows

dropping morning news anchors . . .

Aneta Ivanova

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You were shrunk by a shrink in a pop-up

during a blow-out BOGO sale

words flying off shelves

into Dharma bowls

prepped by line cooks for enlightenment . . .

presentation is everything, yes? . . .

There was a time . . . I mean . . .

I'm not sure what I mean . . .

without the script, perhaps? . . .

your one wild and precious life

walking Commercial Street

past Mary Oliver's ghost

sitting outside her oceanfront cottage

then on to the other end

Stanley Kunitz's tiered garden

snakes dangling head-down, entwined

in a brazen love-knot . . .

the tide lapping the Provincetown Inn

with memories of the Moors . . .

more than a bit raffish . . .

presided over by Scooter, the pet owl . . .

There is no other life . . .

Gary Snyder's homage

to log truck drivers:

In the high seat, before-dawn dark,

Polished hubs gleam

And the shiny diesel stack

warms and flutters

Up the Tyler Road grade

To the logging on Poorman creek.

Thirty miles of dust.

There is no other life . . . indeed . . .

This to be archived for odysseyites

in a reconfigured deconsecrated chapel

near Portofino, Italy . . .

Anja Niemi

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As if the movie was afraid . . .

so in the first episode

this face . . . and you're thinking

take this face through the whole movie

but nope, you're tossed into a dark room

writing over your writing

because you can't see . . .

words like dictation

the rain in Spain gives you wet brain . . .

Now you're worrying about remembering

to google unclogging a drain . . .

It's like that

the obliqueness

trying to fit it all into some designated,

predetermined framework . . .

The delusion of illusion, yes? . . .

and you're riffing on the responsibility

of the artist not to look away . . .

to render what to you is real . . .

But it's late, really late

for these visitors . . . these night stalkers

too late to be assailed

by the critic at the gate . . .

Too many weary heads

dislocating too many weary shoulders . . .

Carmen Watkins

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The neighborhood Carl Jung

behind the wheel of a red Ferari

slam dunks the shyness

that smacks you back

to the darkness of OCD . . .

cruising your bimonthly talking cure

filled with nightscapes

of lion-obsessed Venetian iconographies

the size of Rhode Island . . .

You do enjoy these costumey affairs

collecting your unconscious

with pretend puddings

and freedom from counting syllables . . .

The theater of limitations

is always open . . . with words

arranged salon-style from floor to ceiling . . .

The sound of paint applied to a surface

wants to tell you something . . .

Tomorrow oscillates in the beauty we seek . . .

Monika Ekiert Jezusek

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You recall Anne Carson on swimming:

. . . smoothing out the strokes in water filled with anxieties:

You can fail it with each stroke.

What does that mean, fail it? . . .

The poet, John Ashbery, blocked, envisioned

three empty oblong boxes to fill with words . . .

He dipped into The Cloud of Unknowing . . .

You like this idea and decide to try it . . .

filling a container with words

and whipping them into a poem . . .

Finding your way in a forest of well-crafted similes . . .

the rationales we muster . . .

What are you talking about? . . .

You know, to pass muster . . .

But is it that easy? . . .

No, not easy, there are huge holes . . .

yes, holes, that could trip you up

so that you'd have to start over again . . . Sisyphean . . . 

especially now, with the final station coming into view . . .

Nonetheless, . . .

Leila Forés

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Illusory at best, yes? . . .

This freedom of treading the remains of the day

caressing costumes

pocketing smiles

not unlike a silent film

where the audience can see what the actors cannot . . .

Gawking at the exhibit

within the resilience of a gift shop

an oasis ensconced in the rude . . .

later mapping the yellow brick road

perhaps indefinitely

noting the binge of history

as a way to memorialize your having been here . . .

convincing the watcher at the gate that your words

are suitcased and ready for a weekend getaway . . .

Leila Forés

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As if at one remove . . . transcribing

the moment to moment with reverse innuendo . . .

a reason for everything

a reason for the body

a reason for the body of the other . . .

Squeezing through an eastern window

the process beginning years ago

adding language's decrepitude to the mix

of polishing a lens . . . a lens to better see . . .

To better see what? . . .

To better see anything . . . everything . . .

and look, there's even room for more . . .

Do you expect the end as predicted? . . .

howling through a nor'easter

(kidding, but how about if it were) . . .

then struggling to get the words right . . . 

another backstory arriving on the 1:05

with conspicuous palettes to color whatever 'scapes

you have prepared a pitch for . . .

Leila Forés

 

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(reposted from Wednesday, June 11, 2014)

You enter a room . . . forget why . . . read . . . then not . . .
The dumbness of the day . . .

of putting one word in front of the other
of putting your hands in your pockets

of putting your hands in their pockets . . .
The intimation of intimacy . . .
of finding someone's clothes in your closet
of finding someone on the other side of the bed . . .
Have you forgotten about the tickets . . .
the quart of milk . . . low-fat . . .
the gestures . . . out of balance . . . of yet another day? . . .
The loneliness of long distance runners . . .
the scent of green filling your nostrils . . .
You can't wait . . . to tell someone . . .
To re-string the instrument . . . unplayed for far too long . . .
A question of sooner or later . . .
Your own wish to become a blankness . . . forestalled . . .

Saskia de Brauw

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You practice your lines in a two-way mirror

plagiarizing last night's notes

ghosts escaping into the semantic other

balancing tongues

at least believing such

that this is the way you have learned

to manage the world . . .

to manage you in the world . . .

Something will come undone . . .

You will then fondle happy moments

lipsyncing the middle of a chapter

from your childhood's diorama

carried along by the current . . .

your grocery list sheepishly revealing the answer 

to a question you have yet to ask . . .

the neighborhood's scammed

as odysseyites fill their foreigns with ancient myths . . .

Kate Barry

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Your earlier self inhabits the body . . .

A trolley on a back street searches for passengers

who were meant to be elsewhere . . .

You'd better not hear me say that! . . .

the weird aftertaste when you at least tried . . .

then the green of a standin

asleep in the other room . . .

Yes, perhaps the endgame

which if nothing else will stoke the confusion . . .

Someone will be kicked to the curb

before the overflow is reckoned with

and rendered inconsequential . . .

You began the conversation on a positive note . . .

a concert A? . . .

yes, that's it, you said, recognizing

the ramifications of a lost lyric

in the early morning, no, no, not that,

it wasn't that, I'm sure . . .

It's not about making the cut

the call and response . . . that sort of thing

reconfigured from audio files

dropped off at a transfer station . . .

It's about a musical suite in a stand of pines . . .

Can you imagine the confusion

of a left turn . . . then another . . . and another? . . .

Nervous motion, head jerks, tics, shouts . . .

The sinister recording of happenstance

followed by a rewind, a retelling . . .

Eva Torkarchuk

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Recall the chef you went to high school with

deboning your salmon steak

while in an antechamber

a one-nighter riffed on a Fender? . . .

You wanted so much for it to be . . .
The deck is stacked but you know that . . .

Veganism? . . . OK, veganism . . .

There's loneliness in acceptance, yes? . . .

The time your pickup broke down

leaving you stranded in nowhereland

only to be dropped off at a subway stop

staring at the third rail

as if onlookers refused the magic

of your harmless costume . . .

And later at the bus stop

where rehearsals got out of hand

and the day became a graphic novel

in a strange tongue . . .

You knew this but continued your renderings

rubbing your hands together between your legs as if . . .

As if, what? . . . As if the director would call a reshoot? . . .

Take a moment to close read your journal

then return to the diorama of your neighborhood . . .

Forget inevitability . . .

Jan Scholz

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You're taking a line for a walk

to capture the cherry blossoms along the River Styx . . .

It's a day in someone's life, yes? . . .

The someone who was promised this but given that . . .

How unlikely . . .

Then the excitement of the roles you took on

after the barman's Last Call

bloating your Little Black Book

with fingerprints from your tweens . . .

You were dusted . . . and sent home . . .

Your Hokas make the unseen seen

with canned images from the produce section

of the neighborhood Hannaford . . .

Plans to repair the fence

trampled by wolves in sheeps' clothing

en route to grandma's

await the results of COVID testing . . .

The director of Netflix's Ripley

refuses to believe it . . . or not . . .

There once was a time . . . you suppose . . .

 

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You've become enamored of the invisible,

the mystery of entanglements . . .  

It's not so much the unknown,

it's the excitement

of being seduced by the moment,

the feeling of engagement, a shared journey . . .

The sloop of your dreams, drifting . . .

This performative feeling about writing . . .

that it's not set in stone . . .

that it's not closed down, not done . . . never done . . .

is good! . . .

You wake to an openness . . .

a blank page, an empty canvas . . .

And, no, it's not too late

to resume the close reading of your autofiction . . .

to experience deconstruction . . .

A bookstore materializes long enough

for you to buy your book, which isn't for sale . . .

Someone chimes in with sequencing is arbitrary . . .

Where does that fit in? . . .

Nothing wrong with being inquisitive . . .

Better than being aggressive or defensive, yes? . . .

The slippery slope of misinterpretation? . . .

of misunderstanding? . . .

The time left is now . . .

your experimental film . . . infinitely looped . . .

The Turin Horse (2011)

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A  Polaroid of young people at a beach

and the tale of the white Donald Duck tank suit

dripping with the full catastrophe begins . . .

A return to the days of then

soundtracked by 45s

the carefree exchange of goods and services

Jerry's Long Strange Trip . . .

high heels clicking on a 4 AM sidewalk

following an n of 2 or 3 or 4 . . .

all legs and arms and hair and words

streams flooded with binge

when . . . fanfare, please . . . a bread truck

rolls onto the scene

with Henry Miller at the wheel

Can I give you a lift? . . .

so you climb on

for yet another ride

costumes aplenty

experiences aplenty

memories aplenty . . .

Regrets? . . . A few . . . You too? . . .

La-di-da, la-di-da, la, la . . . à la Annie Hall . . .

years later . . . an ice storm cometh . . .

its outage an insult to the Age of Crocs . . .

The world teeters on the edge

of Hawking's uninhabitable . . .

yoked to this and that . . . this and that . . .

and your hand . . . their hand . . . a full house . . .

Antonio Palmerini

30 days . . . 30 poets . . . 30 poems . . .

Rensselaerville Library's Eighth Annual Poem-A-Day Project
celebrates National Poetry Month
with a new poem by a local poet each day for April’s 30 days.
With this year’s entries, PAD will have showcased
240 poems by 136 poets.
Stop by PADYES for your daily poetry fix!

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You’re inventorying defining moments, trying to decide which one to include in your proposal for grant money to mount your play which you haven’t begun to write, so you're like, This may be a defining moment, with feet entering the five and dime from your childhood, drawn from a linebook by the director of that over-the-top production where everyone was fitted with a body double to stand in when excitement paled, but now with the defining moment head-butting, you turn to noone and begin improvising a selection of Beckettian anecdotes because, just because, you're in the mood to name-drop . . .

Billie Whitelaw in Samuel Beckett's Footfalls (1984)

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This is where the metaphor gets a little screwy

with you playing the part . . . whatever the part may be . . .

knowing that observing the inconspicuous

is your forte . . .

Let's start with an invisible person

sampling poutine at a diner . . .

They leave their cell phone at a bakery

with a baguette and stories to tell . . .

Are they a tourist? . . . Maybe later . . .

Cut to a lump of clay shape-shifting . . .

toggling the fourth wall as if a gift horse's mouth . . .

Are you OK with the vegetables in your garden? . . .

Let your family know . . .

This is important . . .

Family relationships are well worth

their autofictitious melodramas . . .

Think Tolstoy . . .

Everyone thinks about changing the world

and no one thinks about changing themselves . . .

How this came to this is well worth the time

it took for you to open the door to an unknown sound . . .

A cellist in the woods works through a Bach sarabande . . .

Antonio Palmerini

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A draft of a manuscript is being read aloud

by a voice from the air . . .

Crows mock crows . . .

You enter the scene idiosyncratically loose

in bib overalls and Mucks

approaching as if in the middle of a paper spree . . .

An unshapely tuft of something begins . . .

It's all about dreamscapes

in Rothkovian colorways . . .

The mist . . . as written, yes? . . .

but why this consequence by an unknown? . . .

I mean you could have just as easily engaged

with the cameras rolling . . . as discussed . . .

I'm not sure you're ready to apply the rules

of present tense . . . when the color of time being

is finished anyway . . . staying out beyond curfew . . .

of course you remember that day

on the street when the rightful owner

emerged from a late-model SUV

and began interviewing you for the next installment . . .

Federica Putelli

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You sport incompletion at an archaeological dig

with Etruscan vases and dental instruments

playing the part with players playing root canals

costumed as shattered visages . . .

The lone and level sands pull out into traffic . . .

You disappear into a labyrinth of words

but manage to recite your way out

with No coward soul is mine by Emily Brontë

whose disregard for convention

makes for an enjoyable trek

across the Yorkshire moors of someone's dreamscape . . .

Leila Forés

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You concede a strange bunch of circumstances

abutting a consolation of sorts

nothing to complain about . . . yet

but someone's interior monologue is about to sound . . .

It could be UPS

in the guise of medievalism or innuendo . . .

You're tizzied over an early arrival . . .

Try not to get hammered again . . . there's no need . . .

not that there ever was . . . at least according to the transcript . . .

It could be just what the doctor ordered

not unlike when your development was muted

and you were on your clovenly way . . .

Antonio Palmerini

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Your rhyming dictionary is off the grid

cluttered with words

you meant to Uber . . .

Buybackers stream . . . yet another example

of wardrobe anxiety from your out-and-about days

of celebrity passcodes . . .

This will begin . . . and this too will begin . . .

dreamscapes overshadowing your vintage items . . .

Regressing to some well-worn route

leading to a floor-through apartment

filled with the clarity of your mirror image

warms on the back burner . . .

Nothing is ready for you . . .

Nothing will be ready for you . . .

Appointments are backed into double wides . . .

This is not new . . . consolation prizes

leak language barriers . . . a throwback to the days

you shopped for muffled noises

only to be disappointed by more days of exceptions . . .

or expectations, whatever . . .

Antonio Palmerini

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Your costume mishap is a trailer park

and the horses in Patti Smith's

debut studio album are having none of it . . .

eating and drinking their shortlisted lives

in the orchard that went viral

while you studied your reflection

in a glass bead game not unlike Ahab's

he's dead but he beckons . . .

And here comes everybody's electronic music

with Moby whose middle name is Melville . . .

Patti Smith

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And now you're cutting and pasting . . .

exiting through the gift shop

with Billie Eilish's What Was I Made For? . . .

An uncertainty about how to live? . . .

A turning like the turning of the seasons? . . .

An image of a face from long ago

but the entanglement is like a train

leaving a station recalled

for a phrase rethought . . .

Enough to cross the bridge

with street cred and sky-high interest rate . . .

Not that you haven't been warned . . .

It's the unremitting arrogance

of a violist da gamba stopping by woods

on a snowy evening quoting from

a remaindered copy of How Should a Person Be? . . .

Leila Forés

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The tiresome bobbing and weaving

obliterate the string of pearl days

basking in the unseasonable 50s . . .

What you thought you heard

is what you heard . . . at least

according to hearsay . . .

Emptying a bottle of invisible ink

to the Big Pharma of resolution

is an AI monologue composed

not from images but from words . . .

Objections disallowed by dissonance, yes? . . .

How can masterworks survive

in this forensic undercurrent? . . .

A din drifts in from the back room

where pleas are bargained

before headlining virtual tabloids . . .

Your lines riskng enjambment

will doubtless make the six o'clock news . . .

Leila Forés

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Lately you've been lapse . . . and why is that? . . .

The intricacies of intimacy

with you elsewhere retooling your philosophy . . .

Nietzsche's We have art so we don't die of reality? . . .

Is that it? . . . OK, I'll play along

with the casual dress code

but now what? . . . now you're complaining

because you're telling me

that complaining kickstarts creating

and isn't that what we're all about? . . .

Like listening to someone's words

as if on the noisy soundstage of a silent film

or listening to a serial open mic reader

whose words supply a different narrative

every time someone texts

or listening to your own words

dress-coded for undertow with boxy takeaway . . .

Illusory, perhaps? . . .

Reupping with the help of an intimacy coach should do it . . .

Leila Forés

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Thinking a reshoot of the end game

is one way to pass this late season snowstorm . . .

The hiking paths wait . . .

This pincushiony dynamic is offputting

to say the least . . . it can't help but raise a flag

to the 365 days of summer . . .

It's something to think about, I suppose,

especially when considering footwear

and the miles and lines to be traversed . . .

I hate to remind you but those cyberdays

keep coming back, their moves color-coded

for easy turnstiling . . . and more . . .

Flat screens are a turn on . . .

Reminds me of Miles cranking out however many hits

to fulfill his contract and join Columbia . . .

Leila Forés

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You're turning the room inside out

looking for the missing link

you forgot to include in your email . . .

Rhode Island Reds cluck news feeds . . .

the regulated symbol in art

smearing your dreamscape lakeside

with the cinematography grammatical

to showcase your outré demeanor . . .

It's nothing . . . really, this imagining

as if one were willing to retreat

to a safer pop-up monastically . . .

even with everything curated, yes? . . .

Antonio Palmerini

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You're collapsing the story . . . but why? . . .

Why this segue into alienation

with voices at the back door? . . .

No, not gallows humor, not just yet . . .

You have come too far to fear the end . . .

of course, it's all about coming

at the drama from a distance

all stops pulled out

the perspective just that

and, what, you're trying to reel it in? . . .

You do recall the reshoot

after several lines had been cut

leaving you at loose ends, yes? . . .

a kind of detachment

even about the most intimate of details

fanning out like a stacked deck of cards

with the magician asking you to pick one . . .

There's more to it, sure, but let's not, not now . . .

Antonio Palmerini

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Fat Tuesday kicks off a super bowl of Cajun gumbo . . .

Cybersecurity mavens schedule colonoscopies

with iCloud colorways

as if keyboarding members of the alphabet

to guide a 20-wheeler through the woods of words

would be enough to maintain a daily stepcount of 10,000

for a buy-back from the gods of uncertainty . . .

Repurposing confidential information next to a dogbed

is a bullet train back to the future

where rehearsals are more rehearsals

and the game afoot raises the stakes

to a sub two-hour marathon

fixed on the window of a Magic 8 Ball . . .

The drama resurfaces in water under the bridge

quenching no one's thirst . . . with you

leaving the table of random numbers without a word

without finishing the song . . . driving away

into sheets of sound . . .

Leila Forés

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You're riding the shapes of the books you have read . . .

the geometry of stories

etymological underpins

backstories

late night walks - real and imagined . . .

Self-mythologizing life's path or paths

however logical or reverential

may seem, if pressed against a whiteboard,

a mapping of your encounters

etched from bootleg tapes

whose words fill thought bubbles

alphabetizing utterances

from the street, the media, internet feeds . . .

It's not just that though is it? . . .

But what of hopscotching the ongoingness of paradox? . . .

A trifle? . . . the intoxicating trance? . . .

the blindness of happiness? . . . I mean

you seem to be coming into the country of the end game

as it is, or better, as it will be . . . an alternate stage

upon which you can enact or re-enact 

your one wild and  precious  life  . . .

Leila Forés

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You're shadowing Kafka . . . with pointe shoes

spinning . . . spiraling . . .

into the tremendous world

inside his head 

then it's on to the drone

with the speed of a grizzly

but not whose woods these are . . .

the plaintiff continuing despite admonitions

with someone alleging misappropriation . . .

Again, the unbearable whiteness

before the conductor

raises her baton to begin

reeling-in the orchestra . . .

letting them know

where she wants them to go . . .

giving the impression

they're behind the beat . . .

But they know . . . yes, they know . . .

not unlike the time you waded into the water . . .

baptismally, perhaps? . . .

quoting Gilgamesh

the unbearable heaviness . . .

the emptiness of the endgame . . . moving . . .

wait, not moving, no longer . . .

A matinee . . . but not . . .

flip it . . . to a rendering of the terrain . . .

Leila Forés

The Ghosts Among Us

Death bench-presses a cosmos of darkness . . .

a friend's wife . . . a poet's partner . . .

The clock smirks . . .

It's not only life's etch-a-sketches

or the diagrammables

in the Kafkaesque cul-de-sac

but more . . .

which will play out . . . regardless . . .

Acknowledging re-acquaintances will buy time . . .

especially now with the truth-or-dare-isms

repotted in the guest room

where someone's once-and-future . . .

once waited . . .

There will be an ungodly number

of happenstances carried aloft

through the streets . . .

white chariots drawn by white horses . . .

The Trojan Horse will appear . . .

weighing history heavily . . .

And in the final moments of the final quarter

extras as ghosts will fly in

to make it all seem real . . .

Leila Forés

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Having discarded the template-a-minute app

as an unbearable lightness

confused by impersonators

you engage the drudgery of filling in the slots

while polishing stones from a not-so-hidden cache . . .

Altogether now with meaning, yes? . . .

You're drifting off-course . . .

the day's minutia fogging the lens

to say nothing of wannabes warming up . . .

The little green room is plantless . . .

an amalgam of exchange

without dawn's pristine view

reaching back for a foothold

or facsimile

which in time will revisit this memory . . .

This is not without precedent

but the moment-to-moment displacement

is hard to accept . . . let alone confront . . .

Your call-ins have been duly noted . . . and archived . . .

Leila Forés

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As if using a prepared piano

you explore the fringe between music and noise

experiencing emotions

as you write about them . . .

Is that something you even think about? . . .

Meaning? . . .

Cavorting with unbearables? . . .

Not sure . . .

but there always seems to be less to go on

especially when films echo the wavelengths of the lost

sitting with ferals napping on stoops . . .

Confronting silence with veiled undertones? . . .

Interpreted as joy? . . .

It's the presence, yes? . . .

That's it . . . the presence . . .

Questioning the call of odysseyites

inserting  pronouns to enhance palatability . . .

But didn't you say you were confused

by the struggle to make it all fit

into a nice little takeaway? . . .

OK, maybe elsewhere . . .

Forget the trends . . . rampant on the boulevards . . .

There's more to it than that . . .

the pounding at the back door, for example,

or the voided wishes of inoccupants in dilapidated storefronts . . .

It's probably worth the bother . . .

besides we all know you enjoy winging it

with the monochromatic subtones of early morning drivebys . . .

Leila Forés