POSTING NUMBER FOUR OF THE FACEBOOK GROUP
RAVENSWOOD BOOKS! NATIONAL POETRY MONTH UN SLAM
Poetry continues to arrive in our in tray, and we
expect to put up at least two more postings
through April and into May. Fleet Historian Abel
has suggested that the project is worthy of
publication in chapbook form, i.e. an actual
book object, with paper and inky print. Let's hear
your thoughts on that, please, and thanks for your
continuing participation in the project. Use the Group's
wall for comments. Read on.
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An E Mail from Satan
Satan sent me an e mail:
Look, he said, anything you want.
A giant cock, authentic knock off watches,
Horny housewives lined up at your door,
Billions in clever stock manipulations,
Sex 24 hours a day while money rolls in,
A staff of fifty hand-picked servants
To run things for you while you fuck and spend,
And climb Mount Everest without oxygen.
You’ll be on every TV in the land,
AND you’ll catch world record trout,
Invent a cure for AIDS and pen an opera,
ALL IN YOUR SPARE TIME.
All I ask is a little consideration, he said.
Just sign here, he added,
I mean, sign here once you’re dead.
Robert Abel
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& we don't care where we kiss
we blew on our flute-rims
'til the champagne spilled into shapes,
spelling the notes we summoned into sound.
ideas pitched into existence,
under the spell of some thinness
of our blood,
they sank in the linoleum
as if they knew this was the last night
they'd be conjured up.
they sang through the gaps in their teeth.
& so did we.
& it was either the silver & gold
of our apartment keys
or the black & white
of the piano
that we fumbled around
when the next thing we knew
was we couldn't feel our fingers.
so just as champagne had once occupied
a bottle that now laid probably on some sidewalk,
our lungs let laughter occupy the room.
& with feet intertwined,
we slept a dreamless sleep
wearing shapeless grins
on our bare skin.
by Dustin Currier
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On Reading Alfred Tennyson
by Stephanie Cascio
You are an ally of alliteration.
You sent a rolling wave over my head;
A wave of creative inspiration.
I think you may have inadvertently led
to my yearning for a life of poetry.
A life fill'd with verse and a musical
meter; and beauteous, perfect symmetry.
A life that is oh-so-fantastical.
Now I am here, writing this sonnet.
'Tis my first. Is it very obvious?
If this does not go well, I may end it;
But hopefully I make thee envious.
O Lord Tennyson, how you provok'd
my poetic genius that was yet uncloak'd.
(Yay for poetry!)
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Gin
She came to sex as she’d come to gin. Five
years in the convent, what did she know
about gin? Sister Emmanuel said the Devil
himself was suckled on it, and after her
third drink in the Red Kilt she knew he was
inside her like a crazed Wizard of Oz,
pushing and pumping her levers and gears.
Sister’s voice whispered, You couldn’t
lift one finger, not one pinky of one hand
if not for the Love of God. But she was
twenty-five and didn’t know anything about
love. She knew she wasn’t holy, or chaste, or
even sorry. And she knew she was alone when
the man called her beautiful, when the gin said
Baby, relax, enjoy it while you can.
--Meg Kearney, from An Unkindness of Ravens
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No Lap Dancing at the Nada Bing
Lives lapping at the wreck -strewn shore
wave eroded lives
purchased at the market's top
slipping into dirty froth
and lichen slimy rocks
Overlapping lives, perhaps,
but unaware until a backward glance
reveals what might have been
and now too late to change the course,
to stop and try your hand
at some enchanting conversation-
the rip tide and the undertow are furious here-
swim parallel to shore
until the ocean's bottom drops away
and things calm down
but in that deeper, older sea,
no one that you'd want to meet
all these fatties in the inner tubes
no hunks or halter tops
to catch the eye and tempt the flesh,
The floating folks
waiting for the tide
to take them in or out,
wherever.
Jim Mall
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