Here is the Lampshade
Here is the lampshade, spiderweb Eden,
where I read under the unscrewed bulb of
a witches shawl. My sloe evenings spent
reading birth certificates and samples
of wallpaper manuscripts full to the
brim with deflated drunks teetering with
ruin. There’s a bust of grief in those dog
eyed caviar pages, rich but onyx,
wild with heads of captured beasts, suburban
prophets high with dance of the Mad Hatter
and amnesia of days spent foolishly,
read on the luminescent filament
bedding, slavering with morphine’s saffron.
With shovels of hands I dig through the sheets.
Grant Tarbard‘s first chapbook Yellow Wolf is out now, published by WK Press, his first full collection published by Lapwing and a collection published by Platypus Press will be both out next year.
Out of the Light
At a few million degrees centigrade
gasses in a furnace
heat up … ignites
a frenzied disco dance
to Hoyle’s equations.
Quarks, protons, neutrons fuse.
The supernova explodes…
Hydrogen becomes helium
becomes oxygen
spreads out in nebulous masses
to make up
a horse’s head
a crab’s claw
a molecule that some day
will form part of a sandwich
Gell-Man eats as he reads Finnegan’s Wake.
The page is full.
I put my pen down,
go to a coffee shop.
Für Elise plays from a tape.
An angel steps
out of the light
from a display of cups.
You smile:
“Hello. How’s the poem doing?”
Graham Mummery worked for many years in investment banking before becoming a psychotherapist. His poems have appeared in many magazines and his first full collection, Meeting My Inners (Pindrop Press) has just appeared.
Secretary of God
Our Lord has often revealed his secrets to the world through women. –Christine de Pisan
These are not my words.
I drank God straight from the well.
I move through hours.
Predictions drip and pool.
When they burn the fields,
I taste ash. Tell me
this isn’t beautiful. I sink
downwards, a red moon
paling and losing its breath,
words coming from nowhere.
Write it like revelation:
this white, white light.
Jennifer A. McGowan has published poetry and prose in many magazines and anthologies on both sides of the Atlantic, including Pank and The Rialto. Her chapbooks are available from Finishing Line Press and her first collection is from Indigo Dreams. Her website can be found at the unimaginatively-but-accurately-titled http://www.jenniferamcgowan.com .