POEM OF THE DAY BY JOSE FAUS

SHE SAYS


She says it has always been a blues town
even when it was a jazz town
but she is wrong it is a food town
because I can’t choose between
costillas en chile verde up on Summit
or samosas piping hot on Lexington
scalding pho in the market
dumplings on 39th street
chicken spidini on fifth
gyros falafel and pizza at the curb
I don’t want to argue Gates Bryant’s Jackstack LC’s
Oklahoma Joe’s or your granddaddy’s all night long
Italian and Austrian in the freight
peppercorns above the trains
peaches from the tree or
double cheese & grilled onions on Broadway or Baltimore
or taquitos along Independence or central Avenues
greens in Eden’s garden
strutting chickens north and south
pollos ricos shrimp biryani sashimi
roumalade ooh la la mix the bunch
and bring me iced sweet tea
and bourbon on the side.


-Jose Faus

POEM OF THE DAY BY CHARLY FASANO

All Major Credit Cards Accepted


The preacher whisper screams something about mixed emotions and temptation of the flesh. He’s not yelling! He’s just trying to get everyone’s attention. Three piece suit wrapped around his portly figure, talking about hunger, sacrifice and humility. More production than an ABBA concert. It sounds like he’s sobbing under the stage-lights, more sweat than tears rolling down his spray-tan face. The swell of string music. The audience holds their arms straight up and cup their hands like little satellite dishes. The preacher looks into the camera and blames Satan for war, poverty, Halloween and rough sex. He jumps and paces around the pulpit. Takes off his jacket, speaks in tongues, dives off the stage, runs past the band, the camera men and cue-card holders. High-fives the congregation up and down the isles. On his way back to the stage he hugs his wife, winks at his mistress and kisses his boyfriend. The preacher calmly returns to the pulpit and closes his eyes. He whisper screams a prayer to heal the world’s scabs and cellulite. An organ wails. He pauses and asks the deacons to pass the collection plate.


-Charly Fasano

POEM OF THE DAY BY OLIVER DE LA PAZ

Dear Empire [these are your temples]
Dear Empire, These are your temples. There are rows of stone countenances, pillar after pillar. As if walking through a forest filled with alabaster heads: here, the frown. The gaze. The luminous stare. Smoke from the incense curls, shapes itself against the archways, rubs against the grooves of the columns. Only a few men press their heads to their hands. Outside, archeologists excavate a stone torso. Bound in coils of fraying rope, it rises before us, pulled upwards by a backhoe. Its form momentarily hides the sun, though as it sways, the light strikes our eyes. Saying yes. Saying no. -Oliver de la Paz

POEM OF THE DAY BY AARON MCNALLY

The Garden of Faith


Strength has a way of inching itself
into existence—first, the seedling,
vulnerable, and then the stem.
Soon enough a plant is flowering,
rooted, and offering itself to the intensity of the sun.
Such things are beauties uncontrollable, almost.
Even the threatening storm quenches a thirst,
even the predator offers new life
in return for what it takes to eat.
Yes, there is an offering beyond all this, beneath.
The earthen roots dig deep into foundation,
clenching what is needed most, what is so often overlooked.
Here, in the dirt, resides a variety of truth.
Each shrub is an expression of that on which it feeds,
and soil, and damp, and feces feed the root.


-Aaron McNally

POEM OF THE DAY BY VICTOR SMITH

LUCY’S FAVORITE STORY


it usually takes about 4 beers for me
but lucy’s time machine runs on vodka
then she will tell anyone who will listen
about the time me her and banjo
sat drinking under a downtown bridge
and we saw a christmas tree fall
from the back of a truck
and how banjo dared 5 lanes
of rush hour traffic to rescue it
the kicker she says
was not that he was jewish
but that he almost made it


-Victor Smith

POEM OF THE DAY BY FARNOOSH FATHI

The Youngest Two Hear Cicadas

Tennessee: We are here, between trees,

with the tempo of a rosary being strung

in a queue of escalating beads—

Carolina: It’s not quite the count in

the countinghouse of my chest

but the heart does make an awful attempt

t: and a circle wherever it may be

there was music coming on

c: which though machinery-like

moves not in cogs, and never

springs, but waves through

t: like wired applause for antic backstage

buds on the pre-comeuppance buzz; but it

fades

c: but only after the chorus has pulsed

t: it drops off with sudden decision, like fountain

water gone dross

c: or it reaches the furthest point

the branch turns from us, and is for some arc

fully quiet...

t: until the roulette snaps its jaw and the choir’s

circuit opens to one

c: like a pigeon unhinged, its wings

in sudden white-rumped ascent

t: unopposed by iridescence

c: unopposed by iridescence


-Farnoosh Fathi

POEM OF THE DAY BY T.R. HUMMER

Terrorism

Black wavelets lap against pilings. Bone dust settles on the pier.
The ferryman looks up from his tiller at a man in an Armani suit
Who steps out of the shadows, swinging his briefcase, staggering a little
before stopping at the edge of the jetty, knowing—despite the absence
Of his head (and the eyes in that head) and despite the hole in his chest
from which an ichor, the ghost of blood, fountains in the wake of the bomb blast—
That the wine-dark water is perilous, being neither wine nor water.

-T. R. Hummer