Tony Renner live 10.26.12 @ Noisefest 9 (LNAC, S. City St. Louis) from Chizmo.tv on Vimeo.
Trouble There on the Frontier
When water and government and children disappear
We take apocalyptic scripture seriouser and seriouser.
Coyotes mentor hens in history of the West they alter,
Chant chicken neck chicken foot then put them on the altar.
Legs of rumor running down this cowtown spread
Plagues and fantail sprays colored chorus girl red.
Hot shotgun hut admits no sunlight so we burn it.
Horse of course can’t recanter its curses so we burn it.
We draw Colt Peacemakers and X’s all over our maps
Traveled in covered wagons circling back to traps.
Autocracy and automobile and automatic buffalo
Sheriff’s deputies and dentists moved from Buffalo.
Trainhorn don't you know there’s no return to buffalo?
-- Steven D. Schroeder
Note: Originally published in Pleiades.
Here's what my Playboy Playmate bio would be:
Occupation: writer, Plath scholar, tarot card reader. She also teaches English at St. Louis Community College and Humanities at Lindenwood University.
Turn-ons: Sylvia Plath; cats; Kabbalah; the Buddha; correct use of subjunctive form
Turn-offs: Fascist dictatorships; airport security (same difference); winter
Guilty pleasures: satellite radio (XMU, Lithium, and AltNation)
Latest passion: weighing the evidence as to whether William Shakespeare was really Francis Bacon.
Villanelle for the Wife of My Stalker
He follows me around like the Moon at night,
waxing close over everywhere that I’ve been.
She pretends that everything might be all right.
She cuddles their baby and smiles too bright,
entrapped in his hard golden band ‘til the end.
He follows me around like the Moon at night.
He plans my return, makes arrangements, despite
what his dark moods, blow-ups, and death threats have meant.
She pretends that everything might be all right.
Long brown hair and beauty mark; she loves to write.
He’s made her his model of me, from back then.
He follows me around like the Moon at night.
He lies smug in their bed. With her, but not quite.
What’s unknown won’t hurt, and the truth can be bent.
She pretends that everything might be all right.
For five fearful years, this man has been my blight--
His forever love-curse we three cannot end.
He follows me around like the Moon at night.
She pretends that everything might be all right.
-- Julia Gordon Bramer
Julia adds this note: "Form doesn't have to be boring. It pushes the writer into new and unexpected places. Still, every syllable, the meter, and the repetition have a purpose. And with the villanelle form, it becomes like an incantation. Poetry is serious, powerful magic."
Autumn Wears a Red Dress
Autumn comes gaily clad,
Cooling the skin, but enflaming the eye;
She is the raucous harbinger of
Winter’s silent and unprotesting
Final death; the immodest,
Elderly grey,
Corpse to be concealed
Reverently beneath
Modest, white morgue sheets
Of snow and ice.
Autumn, she comes,
Crying and wailing;
Beating her chest,
Exposing her distress;
She can not be consoled,
Until that tantamont tango,
Naked and whole,
At last.
From the Debutante Spring
That grew like a wallflower;
Danced bare-legged and
Gawky limbed;
Rode her Papa's toes
Like an awkward colt.
Through to Summer ,
A Fine and Generous Lady
Ample bosomed,
Carnal and knowing,
Her skirts full and lush,
Fertile and green;
Her suitors, potent;
Her children, many.
Comes Autumn, then, finally,
Liberated from decorum and duty,
By the windsong echo of
Death-bone rattling drumbeats
Of thanks and praise;
Blessings.
Autumn dons her gayest dress;
Flaunts her harlot fashions,
Taunting like a Hollywood starlet
The phantom that approaches
To claim her last dance.
Autumn hosts a feast! A party!
A festive Big Easy Wake,
Held just before the
Last rites will be given.
Bare legged again,
But veined now, and thinner skinned,
Shedding her accessories
Coyly, one by one,
She boldly leads
Mourners dressed in riotous color;
And Dixieland bands,
Trumpets gleaming, toot sweet,
Through dream-soaked streets,
Announcing
The Year’s last breath.
Dressed in bold finery,
With nothing to celebrate
But certain death,
The Old Year is carried jubilantly
On the shoulders of the parade
To the Midnight of the Seasons.
On this Eve
The pyre is lit;
The uninvited and the dead
Feast with the living;
And the soul of
The unborn New Year
Runs mad with prophecy
And redemption in the streets;
The Old Year's breathe rattles
Like kindling,
And She lays to rest
Upon the dead wood crackling orange
Against the black night.
And Autumn wears a red dress
To the funeral.
-- Rae Cailliach
Mirror Zone
I'm afraid
You're afraid
Everyone's out there burning in their graves
Let us go
Let's go out
I'll find you out
Everyone we've told
I don't care
What we do
We will just slide away
And then we'll all be in the mirror zone
Oh, oh, the mirror zone
You will run
I will chase
I will burn
You will find every little piece of you ...
Down inside
In your heart
You will pull it up
And then we'll start
From the beginning of your ...
Life is hard
You don't care
But you will find your way
When you're older
I promise you
Oh, oh, the mirror zone
-- William Kyle
Laurel Oak
Each leaf a single finger,
pointing at every angle,
smooth in the dense, bronzey canopy
that had expanded skyward
for a hundred years,
a mere sapling when the house
was built beside it.
Each leaf an exclamation,
terminus of trunk, limb, and twig,
pulsing the root telegraph
of water, earth, and sun.
I shot your portrait with the rippling bark
filling the frame around you,
a second presence blending with your hair.
We knew the comings and goings
of that raccoon nested in a hollow
higher than our roof. We saw
the songbirds of spring and summer
taking rest, the eagle alone in the dawn
on his way to the river’s hunting ground.
The black breath of the storm swept
from the west, killing the power,
and caught me at the shop,
away from you.
Your voice kept breaking on the phone,
“I am in the basement, with the cat,”
as if that would comfort me.
I would have run through the torrents
and lightning to get home,
only our daughter was with me.
Somewhere a transformer exploded.
Your voice hesitated, “Out the back,
it lit up for a second. The tree,
there’s nothing there—just bucketin’
down like a feckin’ machine.
I heard something, like the sea, rushing,
then the siren,
I am in the basement, with the cat.”
-- Drucilla Wall
Beware
Beware of the mind
where thoughts grow in the night
once the lights are out,
the Moon shines through
windows without a blind.
Beware of the mind
where thoughts grow in the night
after the cat lets out a meow
a chill comes through your spine.
Beware of the mind
where thoughts grow in the night,
when the hands of the clock
cover the strike of midnight.
Beware of the mind
where thoughts grow in the night
when your day was stressed,
your driving erratic,
sleeping, you toss around.
Beware of the mind
where thoughts grow in the night
when the floor squeaks, the door grinds,
a lit candle comes into the room
held only by an arm.
Beware
It is Halloween Night.
-- Marcel Toussaint
Lifeguard
They trod her into the blue concrete.
I saw that.
She tried to push upward,
her arms like streaks of pale fish
at the shallow bottom of the water slide.
Maybe I saw that,
in the chop of children.
Thirteenth summer, first job,
the world an unforgiving mirror,
new bikini hiking up in the back,
I had refused to wear my glasses.
Hold this safety pole and stand there.
Just watch. Just do that, okay?
And I did. But she was still under,
doing a doggie paddle all wrong.
I felt that. So I jumped in,
pulled her to the surface,
wondered at the weight of her head
rolling on my shoulder.
I did not call for help.
Only ran like some big gawk of a bird,
bouncing the child out the gates
of the supervised area.
I may have shouted at her
above all the fun, above the din
of their horrible little minds,
so easy with their feet and their throats
and their team sports and their sing-a-longs.
She coughed and started crying.
Stupidly, I lay her on her side,
slapped her back. Good. That’s good.
Coughing is good. I am sure
I carried her to the Nurse’s Station.
Someone said, get a towel.
Or maybe we were both wrapped
in one big blanket, side by side
on the edge of the medical bed,
shivering less and less.
Then, nothing happened,
plowed in through the door,
the open windows,
unmeasurable nothing,
even into September.
-- Drucilla Wall
The Promised Rose
Inside the greenhouse, warmth, mist, and light
soothing in the early hours, curled dainty petal lips
preside over a completion of a rosy glow.
I searched for you, the promised rose,
on a slender stem with a collar of leaves,
diamond water beads sparkling this morn.
You were holding court among the courtesans
who gravitate in the shade of your persona
wanting to be players in the garden of love.
I paused and gasped, recovered my breath,
moved closer to admire your elegance,
your presence taking over my heart.
With shyness I extended my hand
to hold you for an embrace.
I moved closer and touched your side.
You stung me with a thorn. I jumped back,
letting the blood run down to the ground.
This blood will empty my heart
and create a circle with me trapped inside, wounded,
with no hope for the promised love.
-- Marcel Toussaint
“Gritty and real, full of personality (and personalities), urban St. Louis scenery and experience.” —- J. Gordon, Nightimes.com
“Simultaneously hip, funny, and sad.” -— Dorothea Grossman, Poet
“A microscope into the world of an extraordinarily talented schizophrenic.” —- Suzanne Shenkman.
The Twelfth Swan
Every year we gather the feathers
in small aluminum jars. They fall
from the autumn sky in bursts
for five days. Since the sister
could not complete the final shift
of thorn-made cloth, we know
he will circle above us, one wing
fighting against the arc, a pink
fleshy arm beating uselessly opposite,
a reminder of the periphery.
We have never been able to determine
how he acquires height and stays
drifting rough, ugly in his half-dance
amidst whatever weird fog lingers
this time of year. But he comes,
always with sound as trampled
tissues after our carnival’s last
swift removal of distraction
a few months before. We hear
the one wing, too white, and we look
away. The same the next day and the next.
Yet, the feathers meet us as we walk,
where we greet each other and pretend
to notice only the shifting branches
and graying walls all stone beyond this
or that street. The fourth day
we glance longer and higher
and prepare the pewter to seal
the jars we will fill. He is gone by dinner
on the fifth day of each flight in each year,
in the month we mark by orange coolness
and restless movements toward under-
ground. We have heard a story
about an unnatural affair and a fire,
but cannot remember where it begins
or might end, and so catch what we can.
-- Kelli Allen
