Artvoice: Buffalo's #1 Newsweekly
Home Blogs Web Features Calendar Listings Artvoice TV Real Estate Classifieds Contact
Previous story: Upcoming Events
Next story: Literary Buffalo Events Listings

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.