New Poetry from Jordan Somers

Neologism


Or·bit·ual: (orbit + ritual)

1.
a. The tangible nature of residential
return as seen through loopholes:
Constructed and Depleting.
b. Knowing the games that you love:
Matching the color of lipstick
with socks.

2.
a. Informing you that A Streetcar Named Desire
is simply a mediocre retelling of Genesis:
“you, Me and Kowalski
move together on parallel lines,
orbitually”
b. Seeing nothing with your glasses off.
c. Refusing to clear a dinner table
with forearm.

3. The world continues to move in an orbitual
fashion, orbitually.

4. Quickly, while all is not obviously lost.


Di·min·sti·cate (diminish + domesticate)

1. I, diminsticate the ideology
of loafer gentry.
The soft shoe aggregator
is but a fabrication:

2. Diminsticating atop
the factory of poorly stitched senses.
“A myriad of diminsticatory
brown.”

3. Sanitized frills of a taut high school verse
that preaches Tuesday –
when we knew it was Wednesday
morning
all along.


Lo·se·qu·ious (loquacious + obsequious)

1.
a. Speak to my of plots
and I will love you losequiously:
Tactile, irrational.
b. “The poet laureate of losequiousness
demands a harsher shadow upon
the leftness of your face
with penalties
for the dismissive sun.”

2. Sex is a losequious pretext
(example):
Illuminating bed skirts
but ultimately denoting
very little
of meaning.


Tel·u·cial (telegram + fiducial)

1. (démodé)

2. The Telucial white flowers die soonest stop
Die into that
telucial chasm bride-bed of a telucious moon stop
I hear the owls stop
While the world is ruled by precedent stop
Here our telucial crimes of history join
the fairy tales stop
It is often safer to be in chains
telucial, bound by the lies
of our ancestors stop


Per·fund·ulate (perfunctory + undulate)

1.
a. The desire to connect
irrevocable schisms.
b. A utensil to sweep chimneys.

2. Perfundulating fear:
Today,
I eat my usual diet
of perfundulating shadows.


Wand·ir·ic (wanderlust+ oneiric)

1.
a. How else to feel
other than I do –
wandiric as such:
b. Combusting in rust:
“wandiric demeanor”

2. Like a wedge pressed between teeth.

3. Other, more legitimate misinterpretations:
Shortness of hair,

4. Grocery lists denoting pain –
dental floss,
wandiric bread,
diet cola.


Ner·bose (nevus + verbose)

1.
a.There is fitness in spades -
b. So nerbose that empty
chairs denote
nothing at any particular
moment upon any
particular night.
c. Not even now.

Jordan Somers lives in Toronto, Canada and unless he is saved by his fans, his women and his heroin, that is where he will probably die - alone in some type of igloo dwelling surrounded by photographs of antique toasters minus their delicious and warm bread slices. He also is responsible for the E-Zines Ninjoetry and The Collected Poems of Valentino the Robot.

New Poetry from MK Ajay

FACSIMILE OF BELIEFS

I

Fog of forgetfulness; hills lost
in the clouds lost in the hot breath
of the city. We watch our daughter
build a monster with legos; outside,
the sky has circled a crimson sun.
We move through roads familiar
with the itinerary of our imaginings
and stop at crossroads no one used
for centuries. The hill is distant,
and we can’t aspire to reach out
to its green loneliness; the hill
is distant, a night’s journey away
from the crossroad where our car
has broken down, puffing smoke.

II

Odd! It is the same white lotus
we saw in summer, on our way
to the stony Buddha at Ajanta.
We have seen the difference
between its whiteness here
and the navel of life there,
while the water gathers clouds
on its blue, cool reflections.
Imitating the local palms,
it sways in the rain-drenched breeze.
You teach me the myth of creation
enacted on the lotus, when the gods
danced and let the cosmos gossip.
You stare at the bee-cup on the lotus.

III

And looking at my face, the squirrel
charges into the night’s campfire crackle.
The dew has unsettled the history
of unending warmth on these slopes.
I miss myself in these woods;
it is so much more intense now
as I watch you snuggle into the wool
blanket on our tent’s breach.
A toppled paper-cup on the grass,
cries of the rain forest, an orang-utan
marking his territory somewhere,
sallow moon’s trail of surprises…..

IV

We walk on mud not in our dreams,
an alien mud, fragrant with the gentle
bloom of hibiscus and orchids.
The hill we climbed is a spirit
we encountered at the airport terminal.
I know, you believe the moon has cast
a spell on me, you believe the river’s
gurgling is only water flowing.
If only you had seen the squirrel’s eyes
and the moon’s hideous wink.

V

Daybreak. All too familiar?
You would sweat too, if you
saw your face, looking hundred years old,
when you peer into mirror’s darkness.
Where is the vein that fed the flesh
last night? And the post-it note
you pasted on my forehead?
In the blue voids clouds forgot
to fill up, I see the sky create
tunnels into the riddles of universe.

VI

The Brahminy-kites have flown out
of our eyes. The tigers have deserted
our inspiration and we have nothing
left to say, thankful we haven’t lost
the memories we carried along. You
hum songs in our mother-tongue. I touch
their strange melancholy coolness,
like a cat’s coat in monsoon.

VII

Finally, the rains. Clear as glass.
Mirror of sights around the hill,
refracted through my dreams.
I touch its faded imprint on the soil.
And discern its coded music like drumbeats.
I don’t feel the pain, till I see
the rains pass by, without words
to kiss their drops and sense the
wet earth’s anguish. Finally,
the subdued trance awaits me.
I welcome the facsimile of my beliefs -
my poem.


MK Ajay’s works have appeared in Orbis (UK), Indian Literature, Blue Fifth Review, The Little Magazine, Cerebration, Niederngasse, Ygdrasil, Crimson Feet, Chandrabhaga, Brown Critique, Montreal Serai, Poetry Chain, Muse India, Kritya and In our Words: A generation defining itself, among others. He has published a book of poems and a collection of short stories. Ajay was born and brought up in Kozhikode, India, and currently lives in peninsular Malaysia.

Three Poems from Louie Crew

Found in the 1988 Register

Susan B. Atwood


cook, chauffeur, housekeeper, and mother

cordially invites you

to attend her divorce

from Henry James Atwood

attorney, financier, and trustee,

at the Cook County Court Number One

on the 29th, at high noon, high time.


Reception afterwards at the Battered Women Center

on Halstead

Presumption

If I had said that you,
--eyes bright, like those your
little boy returns,
shoulders soft, like
your red velvet trousers--
are far too lovely to suffer such sadness,

I would have presumed.

It is better to tell a stranger
in a poem, make him know
how meaningless is one's first spoken word,
how mild the shock of one's first breath.


Chocolate Fishing

Quean Paul takes willing country boys
fishing with a Vaseline tin rolled
in the blanket and a shotgun to fend off
any uninvited crackers who stray
upon their rubbings by the creek.
She can hear strangers a mile off,
and one blast suffices.

She likes only the sweet ones, not the toughs.

Leaving her job at the flour mill, her Afro
still pressed under a dusty stocking,
she can spot the girl in a lad a block away.
She has nurtured a score of orphans
and the fatherless into raising guineas
and smooching at the drive-in.

She spurns more conspicuous queans,
except in the dark, and never is suspected
by any but the boys she woos as Dad.


Louie Crew has edited special issues of College English and Margins. He has published four poetry volumes: Sunspots (Lotus Press, Detroit, 1976) Midnight Lessons (Samisdat, 1987), Lutibelle's Pew (Dragon Disks, 1990), and Queers! for Christ's Sake! (Dragon Disks, 2003). The University of Michigan collects his papers. More information can be found on his website.