April 2012 | back-issues, poetry
My mind does not sway like
awkward young lovers slow dancing
at their high school prom.
My mind does not run up and down
a beach like water carried by the tide.
And my mind most certainly does not
billow like a branch in the breeze.
My mind is erratic and sporadic,
It’s fantastic and its spontaneous.
It jumps from room to room,
wall to wall like electricity
it is
electric.
My attention deficit is not a disorder,
it is a way of life.
A way of life that not all can understand
but for the few that do they can’t live any other way.
Side to side, up and down but never
billowing back and forth between
hobbies, interests, goals and direction at the speed of light
hyperfocus
hyperfocus
hyperfocus.
Everything else ceases to exist until a new
fascination catches your eye.
Some take medicine to slow the brain,
but I think this defeats it’s purpose.
Attention deficit is not a disorder no,
it is a way of life that allows for
creative explosion.
by Nicholas Anderson
April 2012 | back-issues, poetry
I sweat while I hack up
dust balls in the oily smelling
morning –5:09
I pound the coffee grounds into
the receptacle and wait
an empty stomach grows like a hybrid monkey
I ignore it
and read another Isacc Babel story
–that horrible war
and lumber to the cinema books
there is a picture of
Satre smoking on the beach
at Cannes 1947
I pull at heavy drapes
and am surprised by a white and
dark world
almost black and white but with
a strange blue hue –snow in february you are so cliché
now I can admit to the
chill and bring the portable heater
to my knees
and open the paper
an article on the next supercontinent,
Amasia they call it, interests me,
that gradual continental shifting,
a snail’s slow dance, that I
tell myself I can feel
hold on
and I read about
Iran’s nuclear program another
excuse for war, there are
so many, another witch hunt or
la conquista –la expulsion de los musulmanes
or la muerte de kunst
and as if struck I forget about Amasia
not hearing the death gulping
cries of the geese
confused as I am
I head for my covers
and forget the drab snow and morning
and I dream of that new
supercontinent and I know
I’m hearing and feeling the magnetizing pull
of continents under
folding water
by Oswald del Noce
April 2012 | back-issues, poetry
Under cover of night
The fiddler in blue gave the slip
to a toad of African proportions.
Toad wanted the fiddle.
The big silver whale
walked out of the water
took over the bandstand
and the angel folded his heavy
wings. In the soft light of
loving consequences the dragonflies
sat quietly on shimmer and
sparkle. Brook burbled and wouldn’t
change its tune.
Marigold floated on blackbird’s
melody, holding on to spiderwebs
during intervals. When manta ray
flew silently overhead all notes
burst with an audible sigh.
The Collector
finds them in bars,
parks, buses, the underground
or coffee shops;
he frequents downtown
pole-dance joints, picks up
blondes, brunettes or curly blacks.
Long legs, ample behinds,
he’s not choosey. All have one
thing in common: they talk.
Too much.
Somewhere in Soho they stagger
down those stairs
on dizzying heels,
click-clacking their way
into his basement. Call him
affectionately ‘Nutter’,
make themselves comfortable.
He smiles, puts his finger
to his lips and readies
the little machine. Pushes
the button and records
ten minutes of their silent breathing.
Terror
How much time is left?
In the whispers and hissings
are hidden words.
Mum and Dad disappear
after they kiss me good night.
They don’t know that I’ll soon be taken.
Something strokes me with cold feathers –
I wish I could tell.
Another ordinary story
Spring, it seemed, had changed
its mind. Like a disenchanted lover.
Pink, white, purple and tender greens
encased in winter-hardened water
topped with powdered sugar.
Fulgent in that white winter sun.
One harsh spring morning you
turned. No last glistening glory,
no last display of what
could have been.
A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm now lives with her second husband in Lima, Peru. When not writing poetry she wonders who to kill in her third novel, or goes off on a travel photo shoot. Her poetry collection TANGENTS has been published in the UK, and her latest poems have been/are about to being published in US poetry reviews.
