UPDATE: Unfortunately, FIVE Poetry Magazine is now defunct. I’m posting the text to the poems after the original blogpost here.
Morning!
I’ve got five poems out now in Volume 03 Number 12 of FIVE Poetry Magazine. You can buy a copy here for a measly $3.99. Or, if you love poetry delivered straight to your inbox every month, you can subscribe to FIVE Poetry Magazine for $1.99 a month.
Big thanks Douglas W. Lance, Editor-In-Chief, and the rest of the staff of http://www.fictionmagazines.com for putting the poems out.
Here’s the pdf of FIVE Poetry Vol 03 No 12.
-A.S. Coomer
Nocturne #2
by A.S. Coomer
It’s young, over yonder,
the dewy-eyed baby of dusk and day.
It’s bright with neon, lit by drinks,
the glasses clink in riot
then stand naked and empty by the sink
come morning.
The radiance of festivities,
the aura of promise,
the unmistakable mirage of tireless youth,
sitting like soap scum
around the drain edge
while you try to hedge your bets
on whether calling in
to work–again–will get you canned,
come the pallid, pallor morning.
Nolin
by A.S. Coomer
I want to be in that place
where the cloud white
meets the white and tan of the river birch.
I want to live in the ripples
of the Nolin
as it laps smooth the silt stones,
caresses both bank and root,
as it flees towards the ever larger body.
I want to be the place
for sunrise and sunset,
a warm spot for basking
snapping turtles,
an eddy pool for midday soaks.
I want to matter in a subtle way,
a more pure form of existence,
tried and true and blue,
everything in motion but standing timeless,
there and nowhere else and without distinction,
save the form.
Late September Blues
by A.S. Coomer
It’s getting to be about that time of year
when “can” and “have to”
begin to sound a lot like
Cain and Abel.
Who wants to do anything
under such an oppressive sky?
The riverbed is dark
with the first of the fallen leaves;
the lawns are beginning their slow retreat
into hibernation.
Coffee in the afternoon
but sleep still comes heavy-handed into the evenings,
a drunken uncle really trying to hammer in that dirty joke
that everybody already got.
The crisp chill in the morning air,
fog on the windows, sweating with your breath,
teases the hair to stand erect on your bristling neck,
makes you reach for that old, threadbare sweater.
You know, the one from high school.
I’m never sure what to do around this time of year.
My feet want to move,
kick up and head out,
but my mind is hazy, slagging with memoria,
twisted twines of reddened leaves, friends and family.
Picking out pumpkins with brother, mother and dad.
Dying my hair the blackest of blacks and jamming in the vampire teeth.
The world tends to slow for me, now.
Coats itself in a mirror
reflecting back the moments;
giving me pause.
Makes me think that’s why Dracula never could see himself in the glass.
Maybe he just saw a collection of memories, a bundle of moments passed,
peering back from the past
like slow knives in the night.
And really, who can’t see
how easy it would be
to get trapped inside that deadend Platonistic cave?
Forever chained, wide-eyed and mistakenly enraptured,
lost, so lost, in reverie?
Everyone’s Uncle
by A.S. Coomer
He’s full of anger and biting cynicism;
already had the one heart attack
and working steadily on the next
with the full surety that even it can’t kill him.
Laughing at all the things
that no one else in their right mind would:
bearded man tossing a loaded backpack
in the middle of terrified (white Christian) Texans
while in full arab garb, robe’s just a-flowin’,
sandals clap-clap-clappin’ as he dashed away.
“Now, that’s a joke, right?” Ha Ha Ha.
There’re spaces between his sentences,
filled to the teeth with wet throat-clearing,
huffs for breaths that haven’t come in unobstructed
since he was sixteen. Chock-full of groans,
little disappointments that he doesn’t think we can hear,
little pains that start and stop
like the skipping needle, dust-shrouded & scratchy,
on the warped Tom T. Hall record
because everything from Jesus
to Jack Daniels really is just an ode
to half a pound of ground round.
Always carrying and never slow to show,
Guns and God, Sweet Baby Jesus & good ol’ Mr. Winchester,
both things that pop and go boom, baby. Get Right
or get left behind, let the Big Guy sort ‘em out.
The bravado of a scared and insecure man, obviously.
A man in love with the trigger
and the power he thinks it gives him.
The desperate palm-slapping
for any sense of control
in a great, big world
of people he just doesn’t understand.
The little targets flutter in the breeze
after the bullets have already skidded off
and sunk like knives into their tombs
among fallen leaves and pre-winter weeds.
They’ll probably stay right there
until the next great civilization unearths them.
Holding each bronzed bullet
up to their artificial lamps and wondering why
it was there. Then bagging it up as just another artifact
from another battle in what’ll come to be known as
The Great Asininity, The Great Misunderstanding,
or The Ne Plus Ultra Xenophobic Crescendo.
Then your uncle’s smile will appear and you’ll get it.
That goddamn smirk,
just like the sudden, unexpected ray of sunlight
that makes you look up and smile, open-mouthed and beaming,
just before the bird shits in your face.
The world’s a joke and it’s always on you.
Of course, the lifestyle is killing him,
slowly, painfully, the claws are in there
and they’re not going anywhere but deeper,
but at least he’s laughing and you can’t help
but turn away.
The Great Mountain Must Crumble
by A.S. Coomer
The great mountain must crumble.
-Confucius
The great mountain must crumble,
That lone birch will break.
The skies will darken,
the night will refuse to speak.
You will scuttle along.
You will flutter along.
You will find fault and falter,
shutter and quit singing the song.
The great mountain will crumble
because that’s what mountains do
in time.
The great mountain will crumble
because the world spins
and gravity pulls.
Sometimes there is a weight that is beyond measure;
a darkness more blue than black.
The great mountain must crumble.
Categories: Literature, Poetry
A.S. Coomer 