Poetrycommunity – Page 18 – Fevers of the Mind

Poetry: wave is a circular motion by Peach Delphine

Out of the wound
we come singing
a chorus of wings
swallowed by daylight.

Hand that balances wind
waiting on the surface,
out from the creek, free diving,
descending from surface warmth,
gathering shells,
ascending in one long exhalation,
leaving the squeeze of depth
and coldness behind.

There is a voice in lightless sea,
entering through eye,
answering voice of shadow
buried beneath sternum
coiled about spine, always
we feel the vibrations
in our feet and hands
always we feel the wire
of edge, the burnished arc
of time.

This form has become shadow
of cloud, darkening shallows
for a moment, turtle grass,
blue crabs, bonnethead sharks,
ponderous and seeking tongue
of horse conch, the sea is indifferent
to this body, the multiplicity of forms
has buoyed me out past the Key of memory
into the open Gulf of sapphire
reflected in your eyes.

Surfacing breathless, unfolded

from palms the optic remains unspoken,
fronds shimmering with morning,
a spent shell lifted from shallows,
empty of body,
my own emptiness filled with sea
restlessly seeking reunification
with the greater body
an ebb and flow of so many small voices
in the roots of mangrove,
a clinging of barnacles
to our mothering wood,
leaves of voices lifting
to azure, a different blue
than your eyes reflecting
sea and horizon.

Peach Delphine is a queer poet from Tampa, Florida. Infatuated with what remains of the undeveloped Gulf coast.

Poetry: Cartoon by David L O’Nan (from the Cartoon Diaries)

I am a cartoon
Spawned out of sedatives,
And the undressing of social ghosts

From another era,
A misplaced shadow
Picked up by his brain
And placed into the grey
The black and white mingling
With the coolers of evergreen grass,
And sunshine
Only on days beyond the pale

The programmed moments
To feel human
Soon the eclipsing,
Back to the litter
The polluting of liar’s kisses

The youth that have regressed
From freedom to greed
I am a cartoon
All eyes wanting a joke,
You have become the joke
Smiles are for the pretty,
The handsome

The crooked money ticklers &
The sensual succubus
Teasing you into a melting,
Staining thought

Restraint, your control
Faceless,
Soul non-existent
Your mouth dry,
Drawn on
By the hedonistic mystery of power

You are tattooed in –
The rust of their hearts
All eyes are fake, to you
Their spinning, dancing words –
Are dreams, to you
When they move b y you
Fast like a motor’s hum
Trying to inject their life,
Inside your bubble
Puncturing the ink from my skin

They are annoying, to you

I am a cartoon
Murdered from the loving,
Peaceful world we knew –
Many vastly shaded moons ago –
And placed into this,
Whatever this is?

The unknowing,
The apprehension,
The reality
Placed into the soil to resurrect mania
Buried into this soil
To alleviate trusting

A cartoon always wonders
If they’ll make it –
To the next page

This poem is from my book “The Cartoon Diaries” (2019) found at this link tinyurl.com/v2pg5nrv Follow me on twitter @davidlonan1 and @feversof

Re-post Poetry: The Healer by Robert Frede Kenter (in Avalanches in Poetry)

I am a healer

I have healed many wounds in my time

with a magic wand

and a black Stetson hat

I healed

the wounds of poets and statesmen

with dark amber potions and herbs

I healed the painters of houses

with canvas bags of secret wines

I healed the scars of hatred

on the back of Montgomery street

with a needle and thread and scissors

I starved the healer

whose cane was crooked

and dropped him into a pit

I filled the abyss with dirt

and stitched it up with rain

I walked along the avenue

and was prayed to

Robert Frede Kenter is a writer, visual artist, editor and publisher. Recently guest editor of Burning House Press (July, 2019). Work also in Anti Heroin Chic, Mookychick, New Quarterly, Grain, cough, Dandelion etc. His new book, Audacity of Form, is available at Ice Floe Press (2019). Tweets at @frede_kenter

@icefloep for IceFloe Press

*This was first published in Avalanches in Poetry: Writings & Art Inspired by Leonard Cohen*

(re-post)Poetry: Curtain House Wounds by Foy Timms

At the bottom of these eyes, there is a quiet stirring

as streets wake up and mornings fall abruptly between us.

We were prising open a memory

with the blunt scissors of noon,

when our lone child leapt from these arms

across a season’s unfaithfulness,

introducing a silence heavier than bone.

Foy Timms is a poet/writer based in Reading, Berkshire, U.K. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Hypnopomp, Merak Magazine, North of Oxford, Peeking Cat Poetry, Pulp Poets Press and Twist in Time, among others. She is preoccupied with themes such as British towns/villages and the sociopolitical dimensions of living spaces. Twitter: @FoyTimms

This poem appeared in Fevers of the Mind Poetry Digest Issue 3 the Darkness and the Light (November 2019)

New Poetry: My Mother Stays Up Very Late by Georgia Hilton

My mother stays up very late.
At two a.m. she washes dishes,
at three the steam iron hisses.

Domestic responsibilities discharged,
she consults the Materia Medica,
does some arithmetic,

composes lines of poetry
by the sinking light of a turf fire.
Before dawn there is still time

for incantations
and complicated revenge plots
with metaphysical elements.

Left to my own devices,
I wonder if I too might do
my best work after midnight?

The daylight hours reserved only
for tea drinking, long distance phone calls,
reminiscences.

Bio: Georgia Hilton is an Irish poet and fiction living in Winchester, England. She has a pamphlet I went up the lane quite cheerful and a collection Swing both published by Dempsey and Windle (UK). Georgia has an MA in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of Winchester and is married with three children. She tweets occasionally at @GGeorgiahilton

white teacup on top of brown table — photo by Jeffrey Wegrzyn (Unsplash)