Birds on a wire
gather like clouds before a storm,
like thoughts flocked together,
perched before they fly shadow-winged
toward the blazing sun
gilding the rooftops--and the fiddler—
with his burning violin,
sings the songs of stars—
the endless cycle of before
and after love and beauty, constants amidst the fleeting.
And so, we waltz, three-quarters beyond time,
pausing like birds, then soaring high again,
in rhythm, feeling the universe’s beat.
*Inspired by Leonard Cohen’s “Bird on a Wire” and “Dance Me to the End of Time.”*
Osprey
Star-dusted primordial seas birth dinosaurs,
who emerge to fly back toward the light.
From river shore, I watch them
in bobble-winged flight,
twinkling silver above the sapphire waves.
Now, there, in the crisscross currents,
the osprey sights a rainbow beneath the surface.
A dive and splash, his taloned toes grab
the flounder--
who only sees white wings,
the Angel of Death, carrying him home.
Spaces
There’s a space in the tumble of a wave
just before it hits the sand,
when you can see the fold of time--a fraction of a second
that vanishes with the evanescent sparkle
of spindrift in the air,
a synaptic connection made and gone,
winged on white gull against grey-blue sky.
As a strand of seaweed twines around your ankle,
the moment passes,
and the next --
and you remember him,
and that space between heartbeats,
when you listened, waiting for the next one--
that never came.
Short bio: Merril D. Smith is a historian and poet. She is inspired by nature, particularly her walks along the Delaware River. Her poetry has been published recently in Black Bough Poetry, Anti-Heroin Chic, Nightingale and Sparrow, and Fevers of the Mind.
Twitter: @merril_mds
https://www.merrildsmith.comA Fevers of the Mind Quick-9 Interview with Merril D. SmithThe Wind Whispers Storms by Merril D. Smith (poetry from her webpage)3 poems from Merril D. Smith in Fevers of the Mind Poetry Press Presents the Poets of 2020
Outside a café table
somewhere in Los Feliz,
the poet in his vintage blue
suit with his fedora tilted
over to keep the LA sun
from hindering his already
wrinkled skin. While sipping
a rare blend of European tea,
I notice the way he flicks
his cigarette ashes into the air,
as he, slyly grins, Cohen
waves me over, “You must
be a poet.” he whispers
in his deepest voice.
“I can tell…” he says,
as I sit down, I stammer:
“I love the way you smoke
that cigarette…” Glancing
back at me, through his mirror
shades, I picture Leonard
delightfully giggling,
“Each ash flicked
is my way…” he begins to say
while taking a giant drag
of his already vanishing
cigarette, he declares:
of thanking her for the gifts
that came like a seductive
prayer” like an expressionistic
memory filled with poetic
smoke, as his aura clings—
Leonard disappears
4 AM rewakens like Leonard Cohen
He wakes up early as darkness
shadows at the monastery in
the Los Angeles mountains,
peaks of monks chanting,
even amid his resilient vows
Leonard sparks lighting her
cigarettes with his mind
in the dark, blinking back
his eyes begin to sing, remembering
her lips ready for wordless
conversations flashing back
from the spotlight so smoky
she returns… again and again,
coming like a reimagined passion
play, the roles between the sheets,
bodies of poetry believe they
were more than making, recreating
love. Before their dance climaxed
and he woke up alone, only
her ashes remain, flickering
in his mind, she arrives before
the light of morning, she reaches
inside reawakening the match
between his half-closed eyes,
the poet exhales, reliving
the stars from their last night
together, her drags rise from
the floor, merging with shadows
even more ashes from her
smokiest flame this Lady
Midnight reappears—glimmering
candles ripple as his glowing skin
loves to remember every space
she loved to explore.
She asked, why Leonard Cohen preferred his walls, empty and white?
When he glares, in between
sips of wine, Beaujolais 62,
he loves imagining movies
emotion pictures from his
imagination coming alive
his eyes, the blinking
projector focusing
daydreams, each scene
becomes a poem, the pen
and paper on the table,
always there to recreate
lines from the memoria
verses he transcribed
just by sitting starting
at the walls, never white
and empty, to Cohen’s
eyes they filled up
painting his mind
with colors, resurrected
focusing her glow Marianne’s
body naked, wires filled
with birds chirping waves
of laughter, Hydra isle reawakening
morning embodies the fantasies
from his favorite shadow
play, his mind dancing
with the sun, Leonard
loved watching his
imagination rhymes
coming into light.
The Chills
Standing in the vacant
kitchen in his newly
inherited home, Adam
recalls the last night
together drinking as
father and son, asking
the poet where he could find
the last bottle of Tequila.
Opening the fridge, he
remembers discovering one
of his father’s holy Cohen
notebooks, rhymes
frozen inside with so many
little freezer burning icicle
crystals on every page.
Feeling the cold from
the fridge, he doesn’t
close the door, the son,
Adam wants to stay here
and inhale the freezing steam
inhaling the verses chilled
by his father, wanting to
be thawed out waiting
for the voice of The Flame
deep dark smoking to reappear
reliving the last moment
discovering the last notebook
his father the Poet—left with
with the bottles and ice cubes,
knowing each stanza inside
he would know the stranger
behind the father, with even
one poem could he discover
a line would that we answer
so many lyrical labyrinths
melting so many paradoxes
glimmering inside. The Poet
now gone, the house is even
colder. But as Adam finds
the tequila bottle with his
father’s fingerprints back
in the fridge, he clutches it
and pours one last shot,
although this “lost” notebook
has only half-filled in
elegiac treasures, with
a toast he can still
feel the chills, as Adam
drinks, no chaser tears,
missing Leonard the Poet
his father, the son declares—
“I wish I knew him better.”
A Fevers of the Mind Quick-9 Interview with Adrian Ernesto Cepeda
Bio: Adrian Ernesto is the author of Flashes & Verses… Becoming Attractions from Unsolicited Press, Between the Spine from Picture Show Press and La Belle Ajar & We Are the Ones Possessed from CLASH Books and Speaking con su Sombra with Alegría Publishing.
His poetry has been featured in Harvard Palabritas, Glass Poetry: Poets Resist, Cultural Weekly, Yes, Poetry, Frontier Poetry, The Fem, poeticdiversity, Rigorous, Luna Luna Magazine, The Wild Word, The Revolution Relaunch and Palette Poetry.
Adrian lives with his wife and their adorably spoiled cat Woody Gold in Los Angeles.
Adrian Ernesto Cepeda
poetnotarockstar@gmail.com
www.AdrianErnestoCepeda.com
twitter.com/PoetNotRockStar
instagram.com/thepoetnotarockstar/
facebook.com/poetnotarockstar/
The Reason I Write
In the house where I
grew up was a library
and in that library was
a man. He was
beautiful and terrible,
loving and mean. This
man loved words with
a passion and read
me anything and
everything he could
find. Sendak and
Homer, Wyndham and
White. He gave me
words and he brought
them to life. He gave
me words for years
until he'd finally given
me the words I
needed to leave him.
The words I'd use to
pick myself back up.
He gave me so many
words to love. He
gave me Leonard. He
gave me a poem.
The reason I write is
to make something as
beautiful as you are.
The reason I write is
because I can't help it.
Words are the safest
place I know. I play
with them
incessantly. I craft
conversations in my
head, jot notes in
books, and index
lyrics and quotes with
the rapacious
appetite known only
to children raised in a
cage built of books. I
can give you the plot
points of the Iliad,
quote White
Christmas, and argue
the bible as literature
with equal ease. In
our house, the ability
to bend words was
survival the way food
was survival the way
staying stock still in
the right moments
was survival and, if I
know one thing, it's
how to survive.
If I'm without one
thing, it's the ability to
tell when it's okay to
stop.
I hoard food then
binge it then go
without it for days.
I've bought a library
twice over. I still, a
decade from poverty,
run a tab in my head
in the store while I
shop. I am an expert at
going unnoticed. I am
capability incarnate. I
have never needed a
thing in my life.
In 1993 I was
enamoured with a boy
who painted me a
replica of the Various
Positions album
cover and tucked it
into a spare CD case
as wrapping for a pair
of silver earrings I still
have today. A month
later he caught my
backpack as I d
dropped it out the
window of my father's
house before taking
the back alley way
from there for the last
time. We were on our
way out too,
everything but the
words themselves
already occupying the
space between his
hand and mine. When
we broke up, I turned
back to Beautiful
Losers. Where better
to lose yourself than
in words.
There is a magic to
language, and I wield
it. He broke me in
three words but I will
love you forever in
five, and I have never
been accused of
modernism. If I love
you, you will know it. I
won't let that love sit.
I have sat too long in
that absence myself.
In my way, I am
bending and shaping
the world as I know it,
doing my best to hold
back the tide. I am
taking these words,
divorced from their
origin, despite their
origin, because of it
too, and stocking
the shelves of that library
anew. This time, no
weapons. This time,
we're building. This
time the hero is me
and the hero is you.
This time we go back
and we rescue the
girl.
When I'm with you I
want to be the kind of
hero I wanted to be
when I was seven
years old. A perfect
man who kills.
Bio: Kat Blair (she/her) is a queer Canadian writer, editor, and poet
living in California. Co-EIC of Corporeal and Chapbook Editor for Lupercalia, Kat tweets as @katharine_blair and fumbles the rest on Instagram @kat_harineblair
The day is a song Leonard Cohen
didn't have the chance to finish
and I'm caught inside it
like a wounded thing
and sometimes my poems leave me
like a woman or the hours in a day
or a last breath at the end of things
and I'm left with this ghost of a life
and this hunger for beauty
in whatever form it can still afford
outside there's rain
and broken people beneath
a pretty uselessness that pulls the heart
and sometimes it seems
the best plan is to be forgotten
just as soon as you can manage
yet there's a music to it all
that's kept me going so far
when I finish this beer I'll go outside
and find some alley I've never seen
I'll turn the corner and take
whatever's there.
*This poem appears in William's collection, From the Essential Handbook on Making it to the Next Whatever
Bio: William Taylor Jr. lives and writes in San Francisco.He is the author of numerous books of poetry, and a volume of fiction. His work has been published widely in journals across the globe, including Rattle, The New York Quarterly, and The Chiron Review. He is a five time Pushcart Prize nominee and was a recipient of the 2013 Kathy Acker Award. Pretty Things to Say, (Six Ft. Swells Press, 2020) is his latest collection of poetry.
https://www.instagram.com/catgrahampoet/?hl=en
https://linktr.ee/CatGrahamPoet
Forthcoming from Palimpsest Press, 2022: The Most Cunning Heart (novel)
Shortlisted for the Toronto Book Awards, praise for Æther: An Out-of-Body Lyric:
“Catherine Graham’s seventh book of poetry is an intricate reverie, in poetry and prose, which floats back and forth in time and between memories, dreams and reflections.” – Toronto Star
“It is a masterpiece. The melding of poetry and prose into a beautiful and heartbreaking skein, gradual revelation, going back/going forward, weaving in and out, repeating and broadening the meaning as you go. A journey that is fascinating, heartrending, and courageous.” – Marilyn Gear Pilling
A Fevers of the Mind Quick-9 Interview with Catherine Graham
