|
March Dream
For Vaslov Najinski
When a cyclone devours a pink, stucco house,
when a water-stained brown finch
sings from the spine of a blue spruce,
when the cardinal's hypodermic
drops of quicksilver
drip down
the sides of a burning
calendar
made from advertising waxes.
When robins and mockingbirds
mop
the late afternoon's
forehead
with silk handkerchiefs
woven from the abandoned skins
of reptilian oboes.
They dominate
when the air
turns blue!
They dominate
the walnut hair
of winter hedges,
and the husks
of yellow squash
abandoned
like coyote skulls
and Mescalero dreams
along the surface
of gravity.
When crows
drag their souls
of Cuban cigars
beneath maple branches
bored like the black-gloved fingertips
of a Prime Minister's mistress
draped across the shoulders of my split-rail fence.
When
frozen barks
from woolly black dogs
disturb
nests
of twilight
dripping from the thoughts
of the prisoner.
The thoughts' antlers
graze on gray air.
Squirrels
and the occasional topaz chirp
of a northeastern sparrow
whose tiny tusks
of rubber and steel
plow fresh veins
through our
gas grill
love affairs.
When driftwood
unhooks a black telephone
from the ocean,
curls of foam
unfurl the scattered bones
of religious terrorists
washed up on the shores
of dementia.
David lays down his sling
to fold freshly laundered, white napkins
on the humid patio
at the Breakers Hotel.
At this precise moment
the Lake Worth pier
exposes her waist
of amnesia.
When the wheels of injustice
creak
below balconies' moonlight
igniting white flour
fingerprints
of Popes, Governors, Dictators,
and other rented security forces.
When the wind
rips the flesh of sentimental blue
from the spectrum,
turning it inside
out revealing
intestines
the color
of Irish whiskey.
Shadows fall
from maple trees
leaving large, permanent stains
on my thighs.
A faun
rustles
the maple seed
inside my chest.
Alan Britt's recent books are Greatest Hits (2009), Vegetable Love (2009), Vermilion (2006),
Infinite Days (2003), Amnesia Tango (1998) and Bodies of Lightning (1995). The Poetry Library
(www.poetrymagazines.org.uk) providing a free access digital library of 20th & 21st century
English poetry magazines with the aim of preserving them for the future has included Britt’s
work published in Fire (UK) in their project. Britt’s work also appears in the new anthologies,
American Poets Against the War, Metropolitan Arts Press, 2009 and Vapor transatlántico (Transatlantic Steamer),
a bi-lingual anthology of Latin American and North American poets, Hofstra University Press/Fondo de Cultura
Económica de Mexico/Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos de Peru, 2008. Britt recently served as Panel
Chair for Poetry Studies & Creative Poetry for the PCA/ACA Conference 2007 in Boston and read poetry at
Ramapo College in Mahwah, NJ (2009) and the WPA Gallery/Ward-Pound Ridge Reservation in Cross River, NY (2008).
Nominated for the Pushcart Prize 2008. Alan currently teaches English/Creative Writing at Towson University and
lives in Reisterstown, Maryland with his wife, daughter, two Bouviers des Flandres, one Bichon Frise and two formerly feral cats.
Email: Alan Britt
Return to Table of Contents
|
