Category: Penman Lounge

You intrigue me
your wit
the way you turn a phrase
the way you see things
your passion for things
for life
so
it makes me wonder
what it would be like
to be kissed
by you
taken in your arms
and deeply
and
thoroughly
kissed…

I wonder
what it would be like
to be
in your bed
your scent surrounding me
my hands caressing
you
as you open me up
and plunge
deep
inside….

I wonder….

Copyright Catherine Anne Hayes © 2008

It’s another day
I can happily say
It’s another day
And I feel okay

There’s nothing you can do
To change my point of view

I’m feeling like I fit into a plan
I know I’ve been a desperate man

It seems like the sun is shining only for me
I know I can move across the deep blue sea

It’s another day
I just want to play
It’s another day
Feels like a holiday

There’s someone watching over me
When I’m not able to see

I’m feeling like I fit into a plan
I know I’ve been a desperate man

It seems like my world is coming together
I know I can brave any bad weather

It’s another day
I can happily say
It’s another day
And I feel okay

Copyright Rich Love © 2008

Cenovia how I wondered if I would see you again
Cenovia how I wondered if I could ever explain

I lost your contact when I failed to call back
But when I saw you again nothing had changed oh no
You were the same so sweet

Cenovia you are who I’ve been waiting for
Cenovia we can let love open the door

I will hold you close and never let you go
I will always be your loving man oh yeah
Your biggest fan

“Dedicated to the only woman who truly believes in me.”
“I love you and your children with all of my heart always and forever.”

Copyright Rich Love © 2008

I met Nathan when I went to read a story at the Hugo House. He read too. He has reddish hair– like copper flaking away its green. His teeth are wide. One is melded into another. I feel so much sadness for him. He will come meet my family tomorrow night. We’ll converge, at their apartment. Me, Nathan, Jim and Linda. No Jen, no Lauren, no Abbi, no Lewis. Just us. I’ve never done that with a boy before. But he’s the kinda guy that will let you stop his hand from traveling between you, not getting angry, not getting flushed. I tried to call Dad to cancel but he was too drunk to talk, incoherent really. Slurring his “See you toborrow.” My ma was too busy to talk. Nathan was counting on it. So I couldn’t cancel with him. So I’m writing this. For Meghan.

for Banksy

stop the dolphin
on the sidewalk
blue five feet
coin slot saddle
and red fishnet
the leopard lost
his coat tail swinging
red satin lining
five thousand gold buttons
bone not included
the chameleon wears Louis Vuitton
and Krylon splashes
the bonobo clutches
the remote watching
the discovery channel
monkeys’ procreating
pushing buttons—rewind
fish fillets magnified
in the bowl swimming
in circles
vienna sausages wiggle
and hot dogs snuggle
in the aquarium thirsty
for dripping mustard
the nuggets take a dip
sweet and sour
under supervision
from mother hen
sitting on her scramble.
we step out
seventh ave south
nowhere to eat

Lolo
whistled ivory
teeth of coconut meat
meant he was shoveling
or having coffee with Acidophilus Milk
or a smoke with Dan the ‘Nam vet
who sold him cartons

Lolo
wore flip flops in the garden
carved canyons in his soles
saw clearly beyond cataracts
made Filipino expletives
ukininam at the mahjong table
shuffling made the gamble sound simpatico
like the tango he danced on the piano

Lolo
called us from the trees
with peanut butter toast
fed us with his thick cracked fingers
nails like moons
kamayan style

Lolo
read Are you my mother?
to the audience, a page-turner, age three
in his lap and when you fell
he spanked the concrete
with vengeance
for a scraped knee
handfuls of coins convinced you
shhh—you were his favorite

In the morning basement
he hacked a toilet cough
for yesterday’s phlegm
in the bathroom where his dentures slept
where we split his menthols
and flushed them like love
we could not reciprocate

I roll Dekalb. I
watch color walls. I
illegal scrawl. I
feel
Fall. I
keel haul to
port of call. I

kill oak gall. Jackal
dolls bawl in
mess hall.
Ah !
ritual alcohol
non-habitual. I
waterfall

default to
thrall crawl

no wherewithal. I
drawl to
downfall. I
anchor

ancestral temple I
follow falsetto to
steeple to
people to
purple pall. Je
suis pas mal. I

Overhaul big
basalt ball
bearing to
Nepal. I
maul dhal
enthralled
by witwall craw
FAUGH!
I
am
salt
to
this
call.

“Money is a kind of poetry.”
~Wallace Stevens

A kind of currency. Lingua franca. Electric voltage to jumpstart a body or fry it to a crisp. Everything is bark. Words. Mots. Palabras. Pesetas. Copper. Argent. What a verbal illustration. Tip dessin vert. Mint species. Poetry is green olive and foliage. It will buy you a lover. Keep you in debt. Make you use bills for scratch. Jot your bliss. Spend it. It is vibrational. Tonal. Clinking in your pocket. You’ve got some. Everyone hears it. Wants it. “Just keys,” you say. Honestly. We’re bound by an imaginary trust to compensate for a world we could never afford. A cent is more magnificent in its power than its form. The opposite is true sometimes too. Shells. Buttons. It attempts to replace all things it cannot be. Tender to feed children, who will always hunger. We want it. We want it until our change is perceptual. We see trees different. We learn the value of patching a deflated tube inside a tire on the shoulder of an empty highway. No promises, but to leave a memory imprinted on the grooves and creases of palms and fingers. We exchange notes on a history of dead men and wonder. Is it a means or an end to suffer? I drop my heaviest coins into the mouth of a washing machine to shake the debris from the skins that protect me. Spin. Slide on a magnetic strip. Data. Plastic. Rarely seen or held. Easily drained.

if you sit still enough
the rwandan military
maracas and djembes
in hand will shake you
out the conga tree
entrain your thumping
beat an executive
order with six thousand
rebel forces ravishing
women strategic sheets
of boom and clang
embody their arms
inhabiting a melody
in the hollow
emerging from cobalt
that will take us
beyond sun embed us
in a videogame
car crash cocooned
via airbag inflated
by a tin
computer whose veins
knit as blue
and red wires pump
over the atlantic
in your blood wherein
one hand can
hold your mother
and in the other a drum
reigns and does not govern
someone resembles the madhatter
sits on bulging roots at the base of the tree
swigs from a crinkled paper sack intermittently
offers a whistle
wood barrels make boom
beads and rope
a hauling bump shack
stars of david
frankincense with metal
wind and saxophone resonant force of going
. some stop

On the path with basketballs or the curiosity of an archaeologist picking twigs remnants from the trees and carbon and dance steps on resting leaves there’s a reason for boots berets and beards and repetition and interruption

Su
n
da
y

night

the

bloo
d
y

Sa
murai

and

b
ee
t

sou
p
.