Posts for 2020 (page 45)

walking up
these stairs
again
the tears
pooling
in my chest.
i hear the
mighty words
pressed with a
stronger sword.
a call for justice
a cry for peace.
silver pieces
in return.

                                                     Some people called 
My whole life a defense mechanism…unfairly
I thought.  So I took the kids to the zoo
And bought a quarter’s worth of birdfeed
to appease a free range parade of contemptuous
Flamingos who looked ready to spit their wad
right in my eye; backing away in fear
I spied a pair of metallurgical porcupines
Copulating under a rose hedge. Immediately
I knew that in this insanely speckled world
The flapping flipping flopping dishevelment
Of love was just around the corner

Cyclone kiss christens honey ships
Salty springs unhinge ruby kings
Control your mind, my girl

Riots silence whispers, undo
Binding battles, through and through
Control your mind, my girl

Mirrored poetry strewn and burned
Ashes of evidence, lips turned
Control your mind, my girl

Battle beats bloody feats, harsh hearts
Supple surrender disembarked
Control your mind, my girl

♡Anastasia Z. Cunningham 
06-25-2020

ice cream pearls     pinecones    pieces of cloud    tender fronds    cardinal staccato
moss-veined twigs    coneflower petals    kite tails    sea glass    mist
thunder’s edge    grass perfume    rain-stained rocks   
slice of titian sunset    Chinese yo-yo
lace fragments
tumble & slide down
a woodsy chute lined with Aegean
sea tangle glistening like crocodile eyes into your soil-
smudged waiting hands trembling with anticipation like childhood

Random words and phrases tucked in books,
scattered on paper. 
Poetry of the moments I don’t want to lose
but don’t have the ink to write and let fly.
Like ideas cut from a magazine and pasted in a notebook of dreams,
the pieces will come together some day.

A spacecraft shaped like a whale body with a smoky mauve
crescent moon as a tail-flipper, glides through the gauzy,

gold-pink glow of an alien atmosphere. Three smaller vessels
hover near—one reminiscent of a white seagull, another a pair

of black upside-down wings or a mustache with one side bushier
than the other, and a lone oval eye. The whaleship heads past

an emerald planet to the docking station in front of a charcoal moon.
They’ll cradle the ship’s belly in a curved expanse, recharge

before heading home. On the deck, sharp-angled women
dance to ethereal sounds floating through rosy dusk.

Pounds of peaches
Picked in Georgia
Trucked to Kentucky

Become

Pounds of peachy flesh
Increasing girth
Through baked goods.

TO THE RUNNER OF HARRODSBURG 

Running is his religion
          that heart pounding
          muscle aching discipline
          of stride that carries him to oblivion,

He’s been running all his life
what’s behind him 
          has faded
what’s beside him
          is blurred and
          what’s in front of him
          he can never reach
 
He runs alone
no one else can keep the pace.
Some have tried but
he left them behind.
Or they abandoned him
for an easier path 
          a slower way.

Does he run from the past
          or to the future?

He runs up alleys and
across highways.
He never stops for lights
         or signs
he is not afraid
he is protected.

Running is his religion.

Tony Sexton

Weakness 

I have  a weakness
for poetry–the kind that hides
in shadows beneath Sewell Bluff–
naked in plain sight,
fragile,
as colorless
as an Indian Pipe is
when living.

I have a weakness
for women, Venus like in tides,
the ones who strut their stuff
& own the night,
fire in their veins, no less.
They are unforgiving.

It is
no difficult task
to surrender to words.
Lust is that kind of vice
poets pursue,
& love is their easiest
weakness to lose.

two worms lay near. in the grass
the summer storm now had passed
the heavy sun, the ruthless sky–
one worm lived, one worm died.