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Volume One, Number Five February 2010
Dark Lady Poetry is an online literary magazine, with a focus on poetry. With an eclectic taste, anything goes, and we encourage up and coming writers in their pursuit to be read. Good words are always appreciated.
Welcome to Number Five.
Dark Lady is elated to be in our fifth month of publication. Continuing in tradition, Number Five is home to five talented poets. Headlining this issue is Brandon T. Bisceglia, a young, modern, prodigy of a poet. Standing on the same pedestal, are two writers with romantic wit, Karl Koweski and Rebecca Nutile. Also in this fabulous February issue, complementing fine poetry with fine poetry, are savant authors Joseph Farley and Christopher Kenneth Hanson.
Because Dark Lady aspires to put out a print issue when we reach Number Twelve, we are making available (in the United States) Dark Lady Poetry vinyl stickers for a donation of one dollar or more. Please check out our Support Page for more information.
Also, Dark Lady is always proud to support the growth and preservation of the art of writing. If you are interested in making history by being a part of the world’s longest poetry reading, taking place in Kansas City, Missouri this April, check out our newly added Events page for more information.
As always, thank you to our readers and contributors.
Josephus Saw the Cities - Why Can’t We? Consequences ætas Should Have Read the Biography Grade School Wonder Boy Goose Steppin' Gramma
Nothing’s Working Out the Way We Planned The Drummer What's Left to Say Revelations Country Flower
A Moat Dirge Two Anagrams of Live Oh Bind, the Perils of Function
Brandon T. Bisceglia
Josephus Saw the Cities - Why Can’t We?
Twisting etches of fiery wrath
Here the edifice is marked,
In the hands of Abram's descendants
The tale, deferring refutation,
A priori, His Will
In all, a flutter of dust
Consequences
A new plate spun puts china in
danger –
ætas
You fiddle the dials, staring long
Karl Koweski
Should Have Read the Biography
I tell her she reminds me of Anais Nin
her fearless, confessional style of writing bursting with a pagan exuberance
which is to say I like to remind myself of Henry Miller
any chance I get with the cock or the pen
I want to be the Henry Miller to her Anais Nin
Anais Nin, huh? she mulls this over
yeah, I beam, you even keep a journal just like her
not too mention our torrid affair unbeknownst to our clueless spouses
you know, she said Anais Nin fucked her father when she was in her thirties and once had an abortion in her third trimester
oh… well… maybe I can be the Ted Hughes to your Sylvia Plath…
Grade School Wonder
Boy I can trace not only my desire to write but my need to be adulated as a writer back to the fifth grade where I scored my first fiction success with my seven hundred word story An Invitation To Death.
the plot, near as I can recall involved my cousin and I being invited to investigate a house of notorious reputation. within minutes of entering the house my cousin was devoured by a monster and I escaped out a back window.
my classmates hug on every word reacting to every dangling participle and graphic description of disemboweling with the sort of awe and reverence I can only dream of recapturing today.
flushed with the respect of my peers I quickly penned the sequels Invitation to Death II, III, IV, V, VI… in which all manner of friends and relatives met gruesome demises.
by the time I wrote An Invitation to Death X, The Final Invite, I sensed my literary star descending, and by the fifteenth installment, I’d lost my status as literary lion to Leticia who wrote convincingly of magical ponies in faraway suburbs.
it was too much success too early, thinking back on the intervening years where I couldn’t write anything.
and I never did explain why the narrator kept bringing people back to the slaughter house and being constantly surprised by the gory outcome.
Goose Steppin' Gramma
Gramma left a ruined Germany pregnant and married to a bullet-crippled GI believing Hitler was a good man
one only had to look at what he’d done for the country before the allied decimation of everything
taking the people from the bread line to the assembly line providing identity direction a sense of national pride absent for so long
Gramma tells me this when we are alone
my resemblance to her youngest brother Paul thirteen years old when captured by the Russians in the last days of the war breaks her heart
which doesn’t keep her from dragging a fistful of diamond-encrusted white gold rings across my head when I’m not paying enough attention
you’re too weak she tells me
you need to toughen up
you read too many books
Rebecca Nutile
Nothing’s Working Out the Way We Planned
We talked about these things, the two of us – we talked music and drugs and art and sex living and dying – all the typical topics stemming from curiosity and general boredom mixed with Bombay gin. Although it was morbid, we made a top ten list. We disagreed on where to rank gangrene, and drowning, but agreed on these two things: If you die old, then dying in your sleep is best. If you die young, it should be dramatic. Grand pronouncements came easily back then.
One morning last week -- it might have been night, you simply slipped away before sunup. You went to bed as usual, still young, You slept alone this night, alone often Drifting off to sleep, then never woke up. I don’t know how many hours had passed before you were found. I couldn’t bear to ask. No signs of violence or self-destruction -- no empty bottles of pills on the nightstand -- just a half-finished mug of Guinness Stout.
Yesterday I walked past your empty house. Four dumpsters were lined up in the front yard filled by the cleaning crew your mother hired. They overflowed with things I didn’t recognize.
The Drummer
He watched his mother scour and scrape black pots. Her weary arm in steady motion pulsed Against the clanging of porcelain on glass. He dreamed of café cadences he’d drum This dreaming boy, his rhythms etched inside.
A cymbal sounds when saucers hit their cups. As sticks rolled crisp across the snare’s taut head A griddle sizzled sausages and eggs. A paradiddle, paradiddle stop. He felt each rhythm underneath the noise.
For twenty years as journeyman on drums. He found the grooves in jazz or rock or blues. He drove the South, ceaseless in his pursuit Of homes for every roaming sixteenth note And shelter in a phrase for triplets gone astray.
What’s Left to Say
He tells her he doesn’t know what to say but says something anyway. He’s sorry. The woman was pretty and young. And they drank too much Tanqueray. And you know what that does to him. And well, he’s human. Humans make mistakes.
She shows no sign of anger as she scours movie listings in the Tribune. She searches for one they haven’t seen, one that starts at 7 o’clock. The new Woody Allen? She tells him she’s in the mood for a romantic comedy.
Let’s have some wine first. He kisses her lightly on the forehead, touches her shoulders. You’re cold he says. And she is.
He hands her a gray sweater, the one she’s worn all winter the one with the unraveling sleeve. It’s unflattering and far too big but it’s warm and goes with everything.
Together they’ll see the film, discuss its shortcomings and merits over cheesecake and decaf, how Woody’s too old for a romantic lead, how his love interest could be his granddaughter. Even so, the acting was exceptional, the script well-written. He’ll suggest they see it again.
Together they’ll sit side by side in silence each in the comfort of the other’s presence staring straight ahead.
Joseph Farley
Revelations
a block of wood natural as the sun shining upon it speaks to the carver with the voice of its grain before the first chisel strikes
Country Flower
in the village where you dwell the poor know only how to be poor rain dances on tin roofs dripping through the cracks onto heads listening
the summer heat may seem unbearable but bear it they do even strangers get use to it after a few years content to shed extra clothes and let the air cook bare skin
children play in all weather but they grow up soon money is earned in the city sister and cousins have gone there and send home baht to buy rice
you will follow them if someone can take you or you can find the money for a bus ticket to sell the pearl of your body and dance for drinks and cash to send home
Christopher Kenneth Hanson
A Moat Dirge
Quite quiet, We left the scene. Or should it seem, Devastated and wandering. Trails of despair, As firmly weighted down mass. In desperation. Here my lament crawls, So fall asleep now. Float by beat to this bleak canvas, And a secret to keep, Beneath castle walls.
Two Anagrams of Live
A vile of red potion, May line this crown, With seasoned captivity. Fluttering by a poignant phrase, Upon this, I may readily see. Maladroit oh simpleton, And hear this rhymed defeat. Without which rumored evil Would even dare to drink.
Oh Bind, the Perils of Function
Out of the womb, Thrown Into this cycle. Most caustic concordance, Seeks stolid embrace. Then passion fueled as we send another, Wet dripping, through decadent, polarization. Drive hormones drive! Turn and toil, Tap the brain that bakes the bread. Kiss me quick, And produce another. I will need someone to comfort me, Whilst I rue the next day. |
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Dark Lady Poetry, 2010. All Rights Reserved. ISSN 2152-8594