the stolen poem art
and
literature
christmas in winter&summer the whole world
michael farris - david francis - yolanda mora - francesca casta単o carmen casta単o mendez - eva steil - marian webb - renn barker jayme washurn - eva steil - enrique ya単ez - susana martinez
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michael farris
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david francis
THE WREN
She hobbled up on emaciated legs, a brace on the right, and held their place in the line. Her husband came fumbling with a carry-on bassinet and as he passed you saw a real baby snug inside.
When she backed out the door to the patio, hands occupied with a coffee cup and a plate with a messy chocolate croissant, a man at the serve-yourself counter stepped over to hold it: out she went, no thanks, as if she expected it.
She had suffered some injury concurrent with the birth, some freak accident or condition unconnected to that blessed event.
The father dunked the foreign remains into the waste bin, checked the bassinet’s precarious angle on the tabletop, and she wobbled over to join them. She sat, the bad leg propped on a chair, the okay one cocked up under her.
Her husband was young but with thinning hair and already with the reddish complexion of a middle-aged man.
“Nerves,� she peeped, staring away from him, her monologue partially absorbed by the traffic sounds and the almost-taken-forgranted birdsong. When she turned back again, the wide eyes with
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their dark pupils were striking: you could see what infatuated and kept him there.
She was talking about the diagnosis and recommendations in regard to her nerves and he was looking on for an unspecified length of time, the time allotted to domestic survival, which the conscientious would prolong: that was his role. She had the unselfconsciousness of the doted-on in her slender youth.
Bird-like in her stare, bird-like in the rhythmical movements of her head—even the orange hair sticking to that head resembled a shaggy plumage: it was like a pigeon alighting on the windowsill of a hotel room, fascinating and welcome at first, but one soon tired of the conditioned jerkings, the rapacious eyes, the flapping half-flights, they were programmed, robot-like, inhumanly nervous. The enervated observer turned away to the manageable pacing of his own problems. The window was empty, and he was glad.
“My doctor is…something something…for my nerves…the last time I saw him…” (uh-huh uh-huh yes understandably)—tearing off a piece of croissant and chomping it greedily with wild cold eyes.
The sleeping baby’s face was strangely inexpressive. His eyes were closed, his mouth grim, suggesting the tautness of an old person’s face. His head was propped by the upcurve of the bassinet and you could see him clearly willowed by the roof to the patio.
The wren spotted the discarded piece of croissant, the tough end of the crust with its tar-like gooey chocolate. The man froze. Cautiously the hungry bird gained until it took the table. Breathing through his nostrils, the man sat stock-still. Became a snake’s eye. It dart-jumped to the right, then to the left. Balked. Opportunity.
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Geological time. The bread was there for the taking. The other tables were deserted. Man is insane, will shoo a bird from a crumb. Unpredictable. Wrong. Will leave out chocolate, which is its poison. Free. Dangerous. Will shoot a bird for pleasure. Will throw bits of bread to gulls.
The wren is no magpie. Nor is it a brazen crow. Nor a fat city pigeon. These buxom colorful creatures abound. They are so common and healthy. The wren—more apropos to the grounds of a hospital or this shaded alley-like nook of a café than to the farm, the wilderness or the broad traffic islands of a large city—seems to want to be protected, its hops are like a child’s skips, jaunty in spite of the wounding censors of the world. But injured, it becomes neurotic. Sure to get what it wants, but unsure of what it wants.
Just at a safe distance from its object, it hops away, flies off to return. To try it again, to release the urge it cannot understand. All to fulfill its nature as a wren.
THE END
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yolanda mora There are legs involved my underpants hanging out in the blue wind posh blue sky, how much i hate it. i love you -- the less i love my legs the less i love you or anything. stains on my clothes, make-up what´s the point, this is beyond reason.
i know i made everything up i know i screwed everything up i break, break what i made. my lords, i did this to myself: coining phrases on dirty stamps, coining passions reaching obsessions, passions, addictions --
nearing death, crave fire sunset through my window.
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i craved sun and he did this to me: time, this time burning sun until exhaustion gigantic star wedging into my eyes like summer settings. control summer heat. a date.
my one hundred senses, wells. the well, looking at the faces that approach from the lip, hope to see you soon! [...]
tree legs can´t communicate, no book is a tree. dull grey. burnt-out woods of chatterers love words woe-- some longing, i don´t belong to them.
i run away, mess of women legs around my waist snaky, flaccid flesh
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whitish unmuscled fainted legs and two big mouths school days, those skirts.
and those boys, stinking male armpits of adolescence. how to obliterate the overwritten tape of my typewriter, with my fingertips? elongated black/red tape of long essays, adolescent letters, a rehearsal of
motherhood, mother of grey books, my will. so this is it. take this. really take this because you deserve it. you all won, my beheaded ladies, you won. now compare.
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the crystal palace
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on muses
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right before the fire
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2008
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self-portrait with the light of wuthering heights
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maggie, 2012
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francesca casta単o
Protection
Out in the night, no one sleeps.
Everything feels like a bad dream.
Omens crawl in, then out, a crater.
How to manage the space between the stretched arms
and the wall that hides a leaking roof over our heads
small birds looking for protection, we stay awake, endlessly falling
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to the ground and up again from the humble mud.
Orbit
The sun drops over the city we walk from shade to shade spilled ink
the sky a blue tent no green grass underneath only a small exotic tree
a meager parasol spread near the sea-shore like burned wings
the wind blows cooling the air near the old harbor
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our solitude feels like waiting for the sea to open at the stroke of an oar
Every hour
We are divided creatures wobbling back and forth, undecided between small eternities that vanish with a wink.
Some days feel a sudden gift. Others, truth penetrates like a knife, with a deaf, familiar pain, that we learn to endure, somehow.
Long time children; fears remain for years untold. It all goes in a sigh, a flow that perishes in deep silence, like a sudden blow that leaves you
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staggering, but still alive, as the voyage continues with its usual rush; a race of millions of miles every hour.
Francesca Castaño lives and works in Barcelona. She is a Spaniard who writes in English. Her Master’s thesis was published by the University of Barcelona, in February 2010. Her poems have appeared in; Ygdrasil, A Journal of the Poetic Arts: Selected Poems by Francesca Castaño, December 2011. Unshod Quills Issue # 1. The Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, December 2011. Shot Glass Journal Issue #6. Thefirstcut #5. The Foliate Oak Literary Journal Annual Print Edition, 2012. Decades Review, July 2012. The Stolen Poem, August 2012.
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carmen casta単o mendez
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Carmen Casta単o Mendez, was born in Spain. Currently lives in Auckland, New Zealand. She has featured as a finalist in the Auckland Festival of Photography Photo Day for the last 3 years." Her photos have also appeared in The Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, February 2011; and Unshod Quills, June 2011.
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Marian Webb The mynah bird struts on the steel sill
claws clatter. Its little bill knocks the pane.
My clockwork keeps a rhythm, beware the scare.
How humble this hard row. Voices shatter
the pigeon clamour. I've made a nest for them
a crown of twigs in the enamel litter bin.
Every creature loves a place to stay.
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Wood-borers whittle fistulae in the ledge where the husks rest.
The wind twists. My pretty hearth is dry.
I winnow the brittle endocarp of my pome.
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Renn Barker
LETS GET THIS POSEY STARTED
Shall I invoke the muse by amusing her? Have fun and games with words dithyrambic Bound into a handmade bouquet of poesy
Pent up with iambic pentameter And perhaps a touch too hudibrastic In enjambment of trochee and spondee
Will I avoid too obvious a caesura? Stitching together words floridly elastic To find out what I’ve written should tell me
THE CHANDELIER
A flower forged in a furnace from sand Blown into life, a mandala of light To take the cornered shadows by the hand
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And dance them back into the face of night A sparkling host for family ceremony For glittering prospects on gleaming show
At tables set with hope and memory Of who you have been and where you could go Fineboned china and glinting silverware Now hidden from all that tactfully quiet dust Yet still it hangs, cleaned with a worn heart’s care Fragile with clarity like such things must Casting not just light but illumination Upon illusions of earthly sensation
VARIATIONS FOR PIANO AND CAT
play me not every note in life’s day for night is struck in black or white
stop playing, start playing come here, go away
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don’t rub my belly i’ll do yours my claws attention’s goads my Bach is worse than your bite i hate rain it looks like rain put the pedal to the floor
don’t concentrate i know you know the score use your fingers more
All the things that don’t make me perfect, make you perfect for me love without thought appetite is a passion
feed me
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THIS POEM WILL SELF DESTRUCT IN TWELVE LINES
e e cummings didn’t write this so i will once i know what can be said (& should not be said)
with my faithful faceless familiars: sturdy supple honeyed words hardworking little sacrificial bastards until then the spaces
between us will just have to speak for themselves
once more with feeling
An atypical product of Fiji's education system, Renn Barker has worked as a screenwriter, copywriter, songwriter, speechwriter and salvage diver. He has no fingerprints on his left hand, plays the theremin and is currently writing a novel about a secret policewoman. Renn is not married, has no children and does not live anywhere interesting.
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Jayme Washburn
Small Mercies
Matter can neither be lost or destroyed She is here and she was left behind so long ago Behind my eyes, the heat from a distant sun still gives her life Warms her figure in the frozen landscape where I left her A letter can take a lifetime to arrive Tucked carefully in vest pockets traded by unknowing hands Moving at the speed of pioneers with graceful patience Faded words kick the chair below how are you here and not
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Handwriting from another world there is love still from far away Longing for mothers for order for days without dark Hard grey morning struggles to take on the world of dreams I ignore omens as if I had forever The wind never did any favors will surely take their names away One more day to tend the embers today is not the day the light ends
And one more....
Matador
For you a parcel of light wrapped with the words we threw to the void
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all summer we gained momentum dappled in ruin, threw the light in the shadows uncertain for you I am honey a long month with plenty ready i am ready as ever to cross the country hair blowing as it did on the crooked dock by the lake house filled with spiders doing whatever they want in the dark the night I turned thirty I wished for Tolstoy’s Levin for a son, for Aurelius’s simple truths extinguished wishes gather and find strength godspeed without direction forces of nature look so beautiful as the cape falls hood thrown over our faces we know nothing
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Eva Steil
A Queen I am
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Fallen Fallen Babylon Has Fallen
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Drunk With The Saints And Prophets
<<This series is called "Babylon The Great Harlot" taken from Revelations, the last book in the bible.>> eva steil.
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Bedecked By Halston night
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Bedecked By Halston day
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The Lambs Have Come
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A Widow I Am Not Mourning I Shall Never See
Arrayed In Mystery And Purple
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Black Swan talented beauty how's the weather up there where the swans are black and white beautiful dark day dried thorny roses pave the path to the city I broke my vows I slept with the enemy pave the path to the city, to the city as the thunder is lost of him being there in the maze I rewrote closer to the lightning and I see your horse round the corner I get up with blood stained lips and meet you in the storm I make beautiful noise blood makes noise beyond the thunder of the black swan don't say goodnight to me
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stay just once you dropped your belt on my hardwood floor robert I am used to being there you tell me everyone is I believe you blood makes noise should I have a better life with you is your anger only good in bed is your anger good out of bed my black swan if god is listening to us should we want what we have black swan should we want what we have black swan is there a slave in your bed is it you black swan the ocean stopped moving toward the sand he walked on the taste of forever in my mouth blood makes noise I see you right now talented beauty
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Enrique Ya単ez
el monociclo
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ciudad digital
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anat贸mico
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mar before
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alba mi musa
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Susana Martinez
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l´artiste
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catholic Christmas by Yolanda
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the stolen poem marian webb/yolanda mora editors contact us: thestolenpoem@planetmail.net jackiemorvic@yahoo.es