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Out now the Deluxe Edition of “Before the Bridges Fell”
https://amzn.to/3ftkxNX for a copy on paperback or kindle (U.S.) please check availability in your country. Some countries take awhile for the paperback to be released. It could be a few days to a couple months until available.
Bio: Raegen Pietrucha writes, edits, and consults creatively and professionally. Her chapbook,An Animal I Can’t Name, won the 2015 Two of Cups Press competition; her debut poetry collection,Head of a Gorgon, is forthcoming with Vegetarian Alcoholic Press in May; and she has a memoir in progress. She received her MFA from Bowling Green State University, where she was an assistant editor for Mid-American Review. Her work has been published in Cimarron Review, Puerto del Sol, and other journals. Connect with her at raegenmp.wordpress.com and on Twitter @freeradicalrp.
when flies walk upon my forearm hairs
proprietorial as landlords
and the land is ripe with roadkill
extreme weather scenarios
play out in real time
climate diplomats gather
but the plenary is beached -
delegates cloyed
as wasps in coulis
we sit around
the water table
with an ashen thirst
everybody wants to make a move
but no one does
like watching the bleaching of coral
the only thing agreed on
is that all this is unprecedented
unprecedented rainfall here
unprecedented temperatures there
unprecedented use of the word unprecedented everywhere
in high summer
the deluge
the canicule
the conflagration
ants grow fat
grow wings
buzz my ears
we pick at
the brittle wishbone
of consensus
wait for crows
locusts
to draw down the dusk
with a dry calling
We Are Green
One winter’s day
through condensation windows
I mistook a withered gunnera leaf
for a heron’s wing.
Imagined the bird
coiled, primal,
waiting at the water.
Months later,
in the veiled sphere
under a summer gunnera plant,
I imagined myself
small,
deep in zoological realms
below explosions
of virid strong-stemmed leaves
as wide as the sky,
blush flower spikes
pushing up and through.
Today
in seasons of indeterminate grey
when squirrels
do not know
which page
of the nut calendar
we are on,
it is the verdure
I return to.
I daydream of a kinder world.
Daylight and rainfall
elect a parliament of plants.
An upper house of trees.
We are green,
enfranchised.
XY (No Means No)
X.
Doctor Foster
went to Gloucester
in a shower of rain.
Fred and Rose
they quit town
but left a nasty stain.
That’s Fred West -
more than a sex pest.
Did unspeakable things
in his dirty vest.
Y.
Cycling past
the rape seed fields
brings it all back.
The yellow so vivid,
you lying on your back.
The yellow, the horror,
you want to be home,
but find yourself
involuntary, prone.
He seemed ok at first,
he said he’d drop you back.
The stony ground remains
no aphrodisiac.
You shut your eyes
your demon’s back,
slow, stupid in the sack.
And No Means No
involuntary
lying on your back.
Choose Your Own Mother(for Rhianydd Daniel)
I have heard it said
the yet unborn
can choose their parents.
A strange idea, this.
Although we live in times
when nothing is
beyond belief.
If it is true..
If it is true,
I ask myself
the reason
I chose you.
Indecisive as I am,
and daresay was
before my birth,
there is a scenario
in which I am at peace.
Wherein, unborn,
I somehow hear
your singing voice.
And from that time
I have no choice.
sand in your blood
I remember when
you scraped your leg on coral..
a rose rust bloomed raw
under your skin..the
sea was a blister the moon
was a bruise.. all night
your fever rose and
fell..lava tides licked feral
flames..sand in your blood
Ad Astra Zee
I am waiting for my blood
to clot. Broad beans
block green veins,
velvet furred.
I am ripe
for it.
One day my feet
will be corms,
shoehorned
in stony ground.
My soles are up
for it.
Hey Astra Zee!
I want my
second dose
already.
I am weary
of this solid flesh
my veins
so unimpeded.
Bring on the levelling dark.
I am ready, pale horse
for your clip-clop.
For blood clots.
Bolt, beauteous breathlessness!
Bolt, cramping throbbing pain
stampeded!
the paranoia shop
sells mini cctv
for the home or handbag
sells cctv any size you need
hard-sells hard knuckle dusters
and knives all shapes and sizes
beyond imagination
for your perfect tribulation
they say carrying a knife
puts you more at risk of a stabbing
but the stab-proof vests are on offer today
see the cute hand guns
to fit your hand just so
the paranoia shop
nestled between Gaultier and Kenzo
I love to window shop there
It makes me feel so safe
worm haiku
exit wounds out of
apples, soldiers, the worm out
of one the bullet
Perfect Bed
I dream I am at Bembom Brothers
Dreamland funfair park
with Tracey Emin.
Hard by Margate sands.
I know I shouldn’t drink that Vodka
on the Helter Skelter.
Apart from that,
a Day as Perfect as the Lou Reed song.
We Kiss with Fish and Chips Lips,
Join Hips. A Turner Sunset
Going Down.
I guess it is the Golden Hour.
Blair’s Babes
and even some of his men MP’s
are busy Changing a whole heap of things
for the Better.
Back in your room
we remember that
we even Changed the Bed this morning.
The linen soft and cool next to our Optimistic skin.
(This poem has previously appeared online in iamb-wave seven)
Going back
I went back, and it looked the same.
I was not expecting that.
Expected the usual rash of
New Builds, creeping up the hill.
I went back, thinking
it would all look smaller, like
when I came back from America
aged 19, and it seemed like the train
home had shrunk
in a B movie.
I went back
looking for what?
The muddy lane where
we skidded our scooters?
The neighbour’s garden gnome
one of us pushed in his pond?
The Fish Caves, where we played
explorers? Journey to the Centre of the Earth,
or at least
some way in
to that disused tin mine.
I went back, not to look for
my Dad, just some of the places
he used to take us.
Halfway between morbid
and curious.
I went back to the old conker trees
and the scraped knees. To the
broken fence on Bishop’s Wood Road,
where it said No Trespassing
but my Dad said we’d be alright.
I went back to the old quarry
with the pond we thought was a lake.
I’m channeling a half-
remembered sense of comfort,
danger. Somewhere between
Teddy Bears and Teddy Boys.
I went back to stacking
boxes of seaside rock
at Woolworths.
Each stick had writing all the way through,
persistent as memory.
From up on the hill
you can see it all.
The only thing different
is wind turbines out at sea,
turning like time.
I remember a school master who left.
All of a sudden. The smell
of that old classroom
at the end of the dark
corridor. Scuffed floor wax.
Thanks Sylvia for the Sylvia Plath/Anne Sexton Challenge
You married Ted, slapped
cobweb faced British poetry,
long overdue
Bio: Ivor Daniel lives in Gloucestershire, UK. His poems have appeared in A Spray of Hope,
wildfire words, Steel Jackdaw, Writeresque, iamb~wave seven, Fevers of the Mind, The
Trawler, Roi Fainéant, Ice Floe Press and The Dawntreader. He has poems forthcoming in
After..., Re-Side, Alien Buddha, The Orchard Lea Anthology (Cancer) and The Crump’s Barn
Anthology (Halloween). .
@IvorDaniel
So now the beat was out on the streets again, Darkness hears the soul’s tears burning within. Finding home wearing the sadness coat. Fighting a love affair with a knife wielding holy ghost. My beautiful girl is at rest, wasting away She is staring into the darkness – Of this evening’s shade The horror calls from across the halls, They were deafening, my silence proved too late So now I know, how the death bell tolls I seek revenge, I fuel myself with scorn and hate To take apart, the crooked heart Who severed my soul, magician of greed and loath? Reincarnate myself into the heroin, the addiction The power rose, the mighty lion, the sorcerer, The dictator, the cult king The need to be disillusioned The creation was to be crazy, To break apart with newly found powerful hands, That used to be so gentle. So fragile and weak, When I used to touch her cheek The morning like a celestial daydream,
The haze of fog Sipped her tears, When she began to cry The dryness, Like a desert for sad brown eyes This germ will not run, cannot hide Cannot mutate, I know that I can design The perfect plan, the perfect kill Alas, I may become dirt on the way Dear God, knowing however His bones are already chilled Spirits have cried, they dry, they fly They live in my heart, for my love That was taken by the evil in a wild heart.
The Bible Belt Bachelor Prison Speech
Hello,
To all that have been captured We are breathing the same chipped paint walls, Yellow urine stained floors, pneumonia air.
The air of a criminal Locked up, prison guards whistling our death tune. Death will be coming soon.
We’re already dead in a sense. Nature is outside, designed for the free man
On a warm sun-lit sand. The touch of lovers, the natural consumption of lust. In my cell asleep with the poetry – I felt when I was one with the free When I wasn’t practicing bullets Setting fire to Mother Nature and to faith. When blizzard walks exuded freedom. Through the snow chills devouring my feet With numbing, cutting skin The pain of past freedom My name is Dante Moricelli Her name was Nadine Angelis You might have read about me In your wrinkled newspapers, Slippery phlegm gazettes
The glossy excitement of a Time Magazine. The mortality sonnet depicting the surrealism in a slippery dream. Nadine Angelis was my love as the tender years began to fade. Young, careless, we were the storybook tale of the unsaved. I will tell you more about my love, If your ears are tuned to listen “Must we have a heart, we never listened before?” “Must we have ears, To be attentive to your listless self-loathing?” “Must our maniacal spirit be all and sundry To your hopeless prophecy?” “Are we peasants to your pulpit?” “You, bleeding your cold love propaganda in our troglodytic tomb” “Interrupting the carving of our minds with a fever That comes from watching roaches scurry down prison floors, Spiders climbing up our shirts, flies and decay consuming our food” “Marking x’s on our calendars with our life force fluid, The countdown to our demise: the foregone conclusion” But I am a human heartbeat I was a 5-year bachelor that fell on hard times, The loss of reasonable thinking, And a self-confessed stalker of love So, if what I’m about to tell you – Were the opening of a movie The song “Let There Be More Light” Would be resonant, magnetic to the ears Illuminating, flashing of lights from psychedelic trips of torture The horrified manic looks, As we drive erratically down a desert road. Passing cacti and breathing in dry arid air The sun setting down to a dark orange/bright red hell.
The flashes of a nearly perfect capture lay – In the trunk of a Pontiac Sunbird. The music, the music like soundwaves to our mind. We can see the sound We have become the sound We have become the light Passing by leather skinned lizards with masochistic claws,
Wanting to give you one more bite in the jugular before – The eternal damnation of our soul’s ease. The serpents black flickering tongue – Spreads over the heavens With a Hallelujah Chrysalis of poisoned tears. We, looking for an escape to find peace again But, knowing the only written word of our future is that of a Eulogy. A eulogy given by family members who didn’t know us well enough to care before.
All because of espionage and jealousy. And the loss of love that wasn’t understood quickly enough. The burning of a desert, The scarring on the face of Mona Lisa The victim that lay in his own bloodletting on torn towels – and shredded t-shirts. With the rips, that remind us The struggle it was The determination in us that caused our perfect lunacy to this near perfect kill. His false hopes of spiritual happiness And wellbeing exposed by his crooked cross on a cut chest.
Even though I’m terrified by the outcome. As sheriffs, detectives, specialists all pace faster and faster behind our car of forlorn sin.
The electricity already beginning to pop in our veins! The multiple trips are scary, long, and all indicative That we had almost masterminded the perfect crime.
So, now the collapsing rollercoaster ride has ended. The song has ended. Let me tell you how we came to this plunge into ridicule and reverie. I’m Dante Moricelli “the Bible Belt Bachelor” The name they stamped on me, I’ve lost all identity and dignity now I’m just a title, less of a man. Because I erased a man from existence Who deserved to die. He took away the root to my soul, My dear Nadine Angelis She made my heart feel, She made my blood pump And he twisted my mind into only one way of thinking, Left me with the confusion
Much like after an aneurysm The pounding, splitting shards of glass as well shakes to the wild howls of coyotes.
Fevers of the Mind 