Poetry
Private Titanics
There’s so much down there.
Fathoms of cellars and stairways
leading to cellars and stairways
and great halls that lead nowhere.
So many days, mornings, thoughts passing,
the girl in fifth grade getting away,
the first time joy rocketed from the radio,
Bach on a winter day.
Ghosts from Friday fright nights
live there too, phantoms of operas,
things scuttling in the old sewers of Paris,
broken glass, rotting pom-poms,
spiders on cotton candy webs,
the week you never slept.
Old and damp, or dusty, foul,
we all have our cellars. No one wants to
go down there, much less clean the mess.
Funny, how we manage at all some days,
our friends, lovers, the guy next door,
floating around all these icebergs,
harder, sharper, steeper than our Titanics.
—anthony d. hughes
casualties of weather
this lightning
pours
in starts
forever with
black
afterimages and
black after-
shocks. and
the
eyes never
re-adjust. but look,
horses’ tails
braided with color
are all the
same thing.
and
the man of
the mountain
hollers
out, while
the man in
the moon
responds. and
when rain falls
it
was
never really
held; never
spoken to. and
i
think, waiting and barely rocking
is the sentence
a pirate pays in his brig
or the
freedom of a praying mother.
—livio farallo
How to get YOUR POETRY IN ARTVOICE! In the Margins occasionally features poetry by local writers. The poetry editor is Florine Melnyk. Submissions of no more than five poems and no more than 10 pages in length can be sent by e-mail to florine@starcherone.com or by mail to Florine Melnyk, Poetry Editor, Artvoice, 810 Main St., Buffalo, NY 14202 Please include a self-addressed stamped envelope to have manuscripts returned.
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