A HESITANT ODE TO A BUMBLE BEE

You there,

ya big, fat grumblin’
bumble bee,

you sound to me
like the chronically fuzzed-out
electro-static feedback
of a beat-up ’62 Fender Strat
(or maybe a ’63).

I see ya, there,
buzzin’ around the shimmering,
glistening early morning air,

sniffin’ about, here and there,
bobbin’ and weavin’, in and out
like a Mexican or South Korean
featherweight, in and out
and all around the newly blooming
Marigolds and Hyacinths
and those incessantly perfuming
Mimosas and Spearmints
and eros-inducing Linden trees…

Now, don’t you be
stingin’ on me!

-Jason Ryberg, 2012

POEM OF THE DAY BY JOHN MACKER

Diego

 

We buried my old dog Diego

on St. Patrick's day, next to the arroyo
one of the driest of devil winters. he
looked like any other dog in New Mexico,
like the Santo Domingo pueblo dogs,
asleep on the dusty earth in the shade,
dreamy respite
from the Corn Dance heat.
I wanted to write:
I wept tears of Irish whisky on his grave but
all I kept thinking was the Great Spirit must've
discovered that placing his soul on earth
for a spell
during my life,
beat
having to answer for all the sorrows
of the world, if only for a moment,
any day.

 

-John Macker

PABLO CONTEMPLATES THE PARADOX OF THE HARVEST MOON

Hey you.

Yes, you.

Tell me how it is
that the moon
can be both
rose and blue,

this strangely luminescent
night-blooming fruit,
suspended so serenely, there,
in the sweaty, swampy,
nearly-liquid
midnight air,

there, just above
the darkly churning
blue-green
broccoli-stalk
horizon of trees.

And, what with the ghostly
tangerine glow of streetlamps
and the invisible ocean
of oregano, mimosa and mint,
basil, lemon and hyacinth

(and of course
all these dangerously tart
and ripe tomatoes
lolling about
the scene)…

well, the world tonight,
must truly be
a veritable
vegetable garden

of urgent
and earthy
delights.

-Jason Ryberg, 2012

POEM OF THE DAY BY EZHNO MARTIN

What Now, Turkey?!

 

I'd like to whisper into your gaping neck-hole
a reminder
that my mother
the insufferable suburbanite
who fisted you full of breadcrumbs,


is in her bedroom
on the phone with her squirrel voiced sister on Long Island
screeching at the top of her lungs

and now it's just you
and me
with a bottle of scotch
the bible
and this box full of power tools

Don't you try and hide in the oven...
this is an inquisition
and I know where you been!!!

What you got to say for yourself?

Answer me, damn't

Who sent you?

Was it Obama?!
I bet it was Obama
that faggot loving socialist


You're lucky you're already dead,


but damn't
if you don't start talking,
I'm going to make you ever deader!

Maybe you won't talk to me...
but what do you have to say...

TO MISTER SAUDERING IRON?

I'm gonna do you like you were a Beauty Queen
and I was Mike Tyson if...

Stay back Bitch!
This is between me and the Communist Turkey!

Hit me with that harpoon full of face-plant if you must
but don't think a syringe of sedatives
is gonna put a dent in my holy patriotic investigation
(owww, shit)
into the satanic and subversive goals of this flightless mole
and his obvious collusion with the queers
the mexicans
and...
and the little green men from outer-space
who want to take our jobs
and ruin our families...
and make tax evasion
and forcing your secretary
to have sex with you illegal
and free healthcare
adequate public education
blood money
Ronald Reagan...

Ronald
Reagan

Ronald..
Reeeaaaaaaa....

(SPLAT)

 

 -Ezhno Martin

POEM OF THE DAY BY HARLEY ELLIOTT

REPORT ON THE FOURTH

Alone in the house on
the fourth of july bang
one hundred and five all around

no shade the orioles bang and
sparrows droop panting in the trees
and the bang and the beer
marches bang bang from the refrigerator

a dripping line of bottles
along the living room floor
bang the policemen doze like sweating birds

one man bang bang one man
is arrested in drunken slow motion
while trying to get a bang

a drink of water from a
filling station air hose
bang on the fourth of july.

-Harley Elliott

POEM OF THE DAY BY JOSH RIZER

=locker room=
 

i’m training in a restaurant
for some extra holiday dough.
i’m the only male.
all the servers are women.
by the end of one shift
a girl comes out of the bathroom
admitting the onset of
party butt.
another is throwing up
from the previous night’s drinking.
they are tweaking tits,
grabbing ass
and cupping one another’s cookie.
they are rating men as men
enter the establishment.
one says
he has little hands and little feet
and i don’t wanna’ know what else.
they are crop dusting tables.
(the act of walking intestinal gas past eating patrons.)
they are burping like
hung over bullfrogs.
they are tearing off hunks of foccacia
as if the bread were medieval boar
on the bone.
they are drinking water and it’s running down their shirts.
one of them tells another
she’s violating health code.
the other fires back with a knowing eye
so are you when you pick your ass and handle bread.
there’s two in the kitchen,
locked into pelvic doggy-style
replete with ass-slapping
and here’s this solitary man
corn fed and kansas raised,
trying not to get his panties
in a bunch.

-Joshua Rizer

POEM OF THE DAY BY PETER MICHELSON

In Her Seventh Decade the Priestess of the Dreams

“The news from everywhere’s a gone bad deal
And the Priestess of the Dreams says
It ain’t kabuki Babe, they’re losing it for real…”

Dreams the agonistes of the age
that she’s an antique
doll her face of porcelain but eyes
her eyes are all too real
Her ragged heart pumps plasma
plasma by the barrel
The price is right  She sees it trickle down
“We are Americans
the patriotic people
The Civil War the Spanish War the World War
Korea Granada Vietnam
Nada Nada  It trickles down
The workers work  It trickles down
The workers fast  It trickles down
The great bell tolls


E Coli walks the streets
Muslims eating watermelon in the yard
Patriotic fervor fills the Fourth
Kim Jong Il invites the children in
Their eyes are huge and dark
The mosque explodes all hell erupts
Nada Nada  It trickles down
“We’re still at war”
Nada Nada  It trickles down
The great bell tolls

The Priestess gathers infants in her arms
“I saved hundreds but
what of those who died  I think of that”
It trickles down
She commandeers a train
She fills the cars with children
She leads them through this world
At every checkpoint she declares
her orders from on high
You will not compute these ones
their calculus beyond your profit margin

In each hand a stone
a stone to place upon the bier
I think of that
It trickles down
The great bell tolls

“My drive is to revise Regression’s Law”
Open the gates  Install the orchid beds
the carousels with hyenas gaily lacquered
I think of that
the young one with the baleful eyes
innocent mustache and marginal IQ
He’s out of work
and understandably annoyed
with the hungry child’s squall
slamming her in the manner of
rural women slapping
wet muslin against the stones
I think of that
It trickles down
The great bell tolls

“These are the sympathetic cases”
Nada Nada the Priestess says
Open up the gates
Install the orchid beds
The gaily lacquered carousel
The pools with golden carp
And blossoms bright above the lily pads
In the iris of her eyes the sight
Of children slammed
In the manner of rural women
Slapping wet muslin against the stones
Nada Nada the Priestess moans
She gathers infants in her arms
She commandeers a train
In the iris of her eyes the sight
I think of that
It trickles down
The great bell tolls.


-Peter Michelson