Issue #3, anyone?

Not from Lexicon Polaroid, clearly, but a wonderful poem that should be read.

openmikeharper:

First, I would have her be beautiful,
and walking carefully up on my poetry
at the loneliest moment of an afternoon,
her hair still damp at the neck
from washing it. She should be wearing
a raincoat, an old one, dirty
from not having money enough for the cleaners.
She will take out her glasses, and there
in the bookstore, she will thumb
over my poems, then put the book back
up on its shelf. She will say to herself,
“For that kind of money, I can get
my raincoat cleaned.” And she will. 

Ted Kooser

The Night I Lost My Virginity / Maunik Sturgeon, based on the poem by Drew Kostka, featured in Issue #1

She Sermon / Raul Alvarez
 
1. The Handmaiden of the Lord
 
Mother Christ sits
with bloated stomach pointed towards
the Kingdom of Judah,
mixing Caincocktail while
Golgotha flips flapped jacks
in the dark.
She churns –
liquids and lineage
merge towards the
waxing sun.
A belch beaches progeny,
discarded cans on her Holy highway.
 
2. The Magi Miss the Mark
 
Mother Savior blesses
her child –
her newborn meagermild with
suckled beer bottles from
sticky spare change.
And on the seventh day:
microwave macaroni.
 
3. Liturgy
 
I savor
the processional march towards liquor stores.
The transubstantiation of
crumpled dollar bills for
cigarettes and light beer:
“this is the body…
this is the blood…”
The eyes watch as I thirst,
writhing.
How I long for the cup, Abba Mother!
 
Eli Eli lama sabachthani?
Eli Ela…

Maternal Messiah!
Your lowly congregation:
Our Mother
Who art in 7-11,
Lithium is your fame!
Your mania comes
(Oh Naked One)
to our shared bed in heaven.
Give me a shame that stains my sheets,
and forgive my childish feelings,
as I forgive child protective services
for blaspheming your name.
And lead me out of Eden daily:
with half-truths on beer breath.
For Thine is the
manic
the
depression
and these
mildewed memories
forever,
Amen.
 
4. Beyond the Narthex

Her stomach drops
into my vitreous seas
as rosary beads rain from heaven:
I pluck them tenderly from the earth -
medicinal manna.
 
I sign a cross,
I raise a glass!
I swallow daily bread.

featured in Issue #1

The Night I Lost My Virginity / Drew Kostka
 
And then there were two
corn-fed muskrat children priming salt pumps
for carnal ecstasy in the shadow of biblical fright
Peering soullessly, straddling
the crevice between horseshit astrological pairings
and Darwinian nihilistic necessity
It’ll kill you, you know
the solid sledgehammer of realization
that chemistry compels your every move
Don’t worry, I can
stop a speeding photon in its tracks,
bid the black holes to vomit out ten trillion years of light
My feelings for you
could be balled up into a tiny ball of supermassive matter
that would throw the earth off its axis and send
us flying through the cosmos like sand kicked off an endless shoreline
by a horse who is owned by no one
I’ll hold you so tightly
the stars will let out a lonesome primal scream
at never having felt such gravitational pull
Still, I can’t help but wonder
if there are two beings more hopelessly detached
from the terrifying industrious fabric of loveless reproduction.

featured in Issue #1

Meditating on a Broken Member / Tammy Ferara, based on the poem by Will Schmitz in issue #2

Abuelo Looks At The Stars Without Glasses / Owen Schumacher, based on the poem by Kyle Moreno from Issue #2

A star is only a smudge

like a dead moth stuck to the window screen, but more

pedestrian—a flake of wing still clinging to the wire

after he leans forward to flick the insect off. Stars

have yet to sharpen hairs, startling

as nettles; have yet to grow hooks like ceiling fixtures.

He squints, calling them

the crusts on a damaged sky, skins thickened inward

scale-stiff and white—

the fingertipped buds on the lemon tree that prick out

the shadows and threaten to roll the moon off the night.

One night he sees two stars drop,

one chasing after the other,

both breaking off their gowns of light.

With no shell and no bone, he pictures

the body of the second

slowly flattening atop the first,

then igniting like a slug with salt.

There must have been a shriek.

There must have been a closer witness

come across a single sizzling mass.

Either he gave the lump a nudge

or he simply walked past the sound whose slight weight

did not leave a print worthy of notice.

She Sermon / Dasha Shleyeva, based on the poem by Raul Alvarez, from Issue #1

You are a jumble of run-on accusations

A high-pressure valve
Of words but not sentences.
Every period is a comma
Triggered by an open set of ears
And a mouth too young to interrupt.
 
The war.
 
Horror films.
 
Ice cream.
 
Dirty dishes.
 
Without a shirt
Without a hand
That doesn’t have
A grip on your vices
Whose fingers wrap around
To hold you back.
 
A cigarette.
 
A can of beer.
 
A narrow mind.
 
And open mouth.
 
You are not complete
But rather a sum of parts.
Torn by loyalties
To those who want to make you whole
And those cannot put you back together
But love your every part.
The war.
Horror films.
A cigarette.
An open mouth.

Featured in Issue #1

Like Snowflakes / Joanna Yang, based on the poem by Dasha S. from Issue #1

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I want to sleep in this pile of deadened life

overgrown with skeleton leaves

hey you won’t let my sleep

you scatter these small blankets, you pull them off

that I try so hard to pull over me

I’m cold at first

then you pour me a glass

of your warmth and I’m done

like snowflakes running down drains from the sun