tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88366164009104396232024-03-08T12:21:56.882-08:00The Second Hump Volume VThe Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.comBlogger42125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836616400910439623.post-59262559516621581152015-05-01T06:13:00.000-07:002015-05-01T06:13:11.127-07:00Syrian belly dancer to Basher al-Assad by Amir Darwish<br />
<br />
UN. Fountain of blood. Ready.<br />
The stage is set for you.<br />
You appear<br />
Men clap<br />
Hips examined, re-examined again and again.<br />
<br />
Belly-dancing costume not too revealing!<br />
They shout.<br />
You take off a layer<br />
Then another and another,<br />
Not yet nude, but you will be soon.<br />
<br />
Up you jump, landing in the fountain of blood.<br />
SPLASH!<br />
You splash the watching men,<br />
Their tongues slide out, roaming over aces licking blood.<br />
Unreachable spots lickable by others next to them.<br />
<br />
They enjoy it.<br />
‘Do it again, again,’ they chant.<br />
<br />
Up you jump, landing more firmly.<br />
SPLASH!<br />
Blood flies, reaching glasses, faces, food.<br />
Glasses are emptied, food is eaten, faces are licked.<br />
Loud clapping.<br />
<br />
Jump, land, splash<br />
Jump, land, splash<br />
Jump, land, splash<br />
There is no more blood left in the fountain.<br />
But they still ask for more.The Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836616400910439623.post-19668277028868717002015-05-01T06:10:00.000-07:002015-05-01T06:10:02.582-07:00That Womanby Sowmya Aaryanmenon<br />
<br />
I saw a woman once<br />
barefoot, very brown,<br />
red ribbons in her hair.<br />
Her back bent.<br />
Hiding a handful of silver spoons<br />
under her half-torn clothes.<br />
A woman like that has no shame<br />
she must have stolen it<br />
from the house she worked.<br />
Some days she clutches fresh roses<br />
under her arms<br />
red, red roses.<br />
Sometimes, paper napkins<br />
stuffed inside her blouse<br />
drenched by the sweat flowing<br />
between her heaving breasts.<br />
<br />
And I wish I could be that woman.<br />
Shameless.<br />
If only I could carry love like thatThe Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836616400910439623.post-58939652704812570362015-03-29T09:27:00.001-07:002015-03-29T09:27:08.597-07:00can’t play pictures out hereby Mike Foldes<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
jorge focused on taking the same photographs over and over. different people who all looked the same. mangold said “we can't keep writing the same poem, painting the same picture, shooting the same photo…. you must get out and away and come back with fresh flowers and wet sand.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
i think there’s some down that alley.” jorge went to search for wet sand and fresh flowers. mangold never saw him again. when he returned, jorge was a different person, unrecognizable. his work was different, too. he’d taken up guitar and composed music for it that turned rivers green, the sky red and mountains mauve. when he put away his instrument, the world he played in went dark. mangold said, “let’s go inside. you can’t play pictures out here.”</div>
The Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836616400910439623.post-23651193158724864392015-03-29T09:27:00.000-07:002015-03-29T09:27:01.573-07:00The Other Muse Nancy Gauquier<br />
<br />
This is not about Pegasus,<br />
but about a dark horse<br />
born without wings,<br />
& banished to an island lost<br />
in the mists of Atlantis,<br />
not a horse born to the sun<br />
and bright soft clouds that<br />
will never grow pregnant<br />
with rain, but a horse born<br />
in the sweat of your pain,<br />
when you are too whipped<br />
by work, by a world that<br />
has a God but no Goddess,<br />
a world that worships<br />
its mountains of gold,<br />
but never remembers the<br />
nightmares of its buried soul.<br />
<br />
When you are so sick & tired<br />
& faith has leaked out of the holes<br />
in your dream, that one in which<br />
you are always treading water,<br />
& thirsty for one sip of love,<br />
she is surrounded by ravens<br />
who caw & shriek &<br />
fan her with their dark wings,<br />
shielding her from the burn<br />
of the sun.<br />
<br />
Though you once longed for Pegasus<br />
to take you up into his wings,<br />
it is no longer Pegasus<br />
you cry out for, but<br />
an estranged dark horse<br />
shrouded in the dust of Sisyphus.<br />
If you are lying exhausted<br />
under some dead indefinable tree<br />
on an island lost, you may open<br />
the soft eyes of the fog to believe<br />
she has always been there,<br />
like a dark wave,<br />
waiting.The Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836616400910439623.post-35993531342290479352015-03-01T04:21:00.001-08:002015-03-01T04:21:57.386-08:00Foundby Savannah Stuitje<br />
<br />
Love is, Her.<br />
It is the feeling in your chest<br />
When she is dripping from the shower<br />
Combing her hair with patient strokes<br />
Blue eyes trained on the liver spotted mirror<br />
As you lay sprawled on her bed<br />
Watching the water drip down her skin and roll over her nipples<br />
Down her stomach<br />
Not quite flat, the hipbones curved maternal to hold<br />
Like offered palms, the well of her<br />
A birthmark beaded with water glossy and distended<br />
Looks to you like a cluster of stars<br />
And you know if you kissed her, she would taste sweet<br />
Where the soap was smoothed over her belly and between her thighs<br />
Removing a tangy musk that you have breathed in, head pressed to her warmth<br />
Eyelashes fluttering<br />
She is automatic in her routine<br />
But you are transfixed by her breasts moving as she does<br />
Her shoulders softly rounded and peppered with freckles<br />
Shielding herself without conscious thought as she continues to brush her hair<br />
And from the bedspread you take in the lines where her bathing suit protects her from the sun<br />
Wet fabric you have tenderly peeled down,<br />
To kiss cold skin slightly gritty with sand, salty and pale<br />
As your fingers ran up the flesh of her calves<br />
Feeling the prick of dark stubble<br />
<br />
The intimacies of every day<br />
Are in the blotched pink around her mouth<br />
A cut healing raised on her tanned forearm<br />
A towel slung unevenly<br />
The frayed terrycloth damp<br />
<br />
How she slips into your tee shirt, climbs onto the bed<br />
Hands bracing at the old springs give to her weight<br />
The droplets of water left in a trail on the white bleached sheet<br />
Love is when she is stretched out beneath you<br />
And her hands are in your hair<br />
Still ropey from a day at the beach<br />
And you know she wants you to clean up<br />
That she’s wary of the grains on the soles of your feet that will cling to the old cracked linoleum and pressed wooden planks<br />
But for now<br />
She will let you lie against her<br />
And the afternoon sun travel up your back<br />
Warm and yellow<br />
Her taste in your mouthThe Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836616400910439623.post-89354168336666155052015-03-01T04:21:00.000-08:002015-03-01T04:21:43.211-08:00Seasons of the Apeby John Pursch<br />
<br />
Nylon captives creak<br />
in thermogenic motor<br />
hovel blister hiss<br />
compaction rituals,<br />
plugging matrimonial<br />
defection sprints with<br />
newly sweating<br />
pontoon spins,<br />
cycling wheezes<br />
into mourning.<br />
<br />
Minnows foment<br />
religious hyperbole<br />
by the sextant’s<br />
lusty gleaming<br />
intersection teeth,<br />
hemming integument<br />
with pinochle breath’s<br />
lonesome punch line.<br />
<br />
Eruptive sidearms<br />
capsize in moaning<br />
glaucous schisms,<br />
clubbing for pale red<br />
seasons of the ape.The Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836616400910439623.post-90972197457688019682015-01-30T03:34:00.002-08:002015-01-30T03:34:12.090-08:00Chiricahua December by David Chorlton<br />
<br />
Sparrows flash<br />
between the junipers<br />
while towhees rummage<br />
in grass turned dry<br />
and pale through which<br />
a trail leads<br />
up the slope. Snow<br />
clings to the crevices<br />
on canyon walls<br />
above the jays<br />
and sapsuckers busy<br />
tapping and calling,<br />
oak into oak; red cap;<br />
blue wing; low sun<br />
shining cool<br />
through the evergreens.<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
A chill stands up<br />
straight and runs<br />
from an agave's root<br />
through the stalk<br />
to the gray light<br />
carried on the morning<br />
wind across level<br />
ground that flows<br />
into the foothills<br />
to where a shrike<br />
looks out from<br />
a shiver<br />
at the tip of a mesquite.<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
Winter's crooked bones<br />
rise from the creek banks,<br />
white against the oaks<br />
and junipers filling<br />
slowly with night. It begins<br />
with the stream turning<br />
water to sound<br />
and moves up the mountain<br />
until the peak fades,<br />
the juncos have gone<br />
from the leaves in the yard,<br />
and the forest closes around<br />
the white patch<br />
on a flicker's back.<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
A woodpecker's tap<br />
carries between the trees<br />
with their arms full<br />
of overnight snow<br />
while conversation soaks<br />
into the clouds<br />
pressing low and cold<br />
onto the road<br />
and the ice<br />
lining each stalk of grass.The Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836616400910439623.post-78278593701598103142015-01-30T03:34:00.001-08:002015-01-30T03:34:07.985-08:00Cordobaby Simon Anton Nino Diego Baena<br />
<br />
Everything becomes a painting of memories<br />
as the vineyards tremble in the conflict<br />
of song and silence. It seems I yearn<br />
for the pearls of my lost archipelago—<br />
the temple is a window of the mosque<br />
and a door of the cathedral. Still I see<br />
no horseman on the hill, not even the phantom<br />
of Frederico, but Azahara exists<br />
in my dreams, at least. Since I speak<br />
for myself, I remain drunk in my own narrative<br />
of loss. There in the east lies the river<br />
of grief and in the west lies the garden<br />
of Bacchanalian feasts. Here I became<br />
more aware of the potential of death<br />
and what it means to life. But of course<br />
I hear the music of water coming<br />
from the Gothic fountain, if only<br />
it could cure my longing of maya birds<br />
flying over a forest of bamboo trees.The Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836616400910439623.post-83701584862955671412015-01-30T03:34:00.000-08:002015-01-30T03:34:02.111-08:00The Prizeby Kelsey Bryan-Zwick<br />
<br />
I had to explain to the surgeon<br />
that I wanted to keep the metal<br />
after it had been removed<br />
<br />
It’s not that I wanted it<br />
just knew that somehow<br />
I had earned it, and couldn’t bare<br />
to have it buried as biohazard waste<br />
or in the ground before<br />
and without me<br />
<br />
This metal<br />
bolts and washers<br />
two thin rods<br />
odd machined sculpture<br />
bent to the curves<br />
in the lean and slouch<br />
of my posture<br />
scaffolding to keep me<br />
up-right, assembled<br />
into and now out of<br />
my muscled ribs<br />
<br />
This collection of titanium bling<br />
I will keep it with the other set<br />
the stainless steel from the first surgery<br />
that metal that I am allergic to, that<br />
boiled and blistered<br />
I have saved these things<br />
keep them in odd drawer<br />
<br />
There are other relics<br />
the neck braces, the x-rays<br />
the wrist bands, cotton balls<br />
Steri-Strips<br />
<br />
It is the metal though that I must<br />
clean methodically, soak in bleach<br />
scrub with old toothbrush and rag<br />
in my latex gloves, hold each piece<br />
to the sun, see how it shines<br />
in the light<br />
<br />
I examine them<br />
read the little<br />
letters and numbers<br />
imprinted in each<br />
I will keep them<br />
and maybe one day<br />
melt them down<br />
<br />
into a chalice for ceremony<br />
into a vase for flowers<br />
into an urn for ashes<br />
into a teapot for company<br />
<br />
a paper weight charm<br />
a music box lullaby<br />
a pair of scissors craft<br />
a trophy wins<br />
counterfeit coins trade<br />
a crown glorifies<br />
Eureka!<br />
<br />
If like metals spill the same amount of water<br />
from a filled container, the body must transcend<br />
its own internal displacement in order to maintain<br />
a sense of wholeness, the hard immovable part<br />
of the self that will in all ways needs every spare caress<br />
<br />
The metal that appears the contents<br />
of junk-drawer, through process of osmosis<br />
has absorbed an intrinsic quality, has become<br />
something precious, to me the metal, now<br />
externalized, clutched to my chest, creates<br />
a kind of pressure, reversing its alchemy<br />
until I am only grasping strawThe Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836616400910439623.post-56370904599087105402014-12-31T05:32:00.001-08:002014-12-31T05:32:48.883-08:00Breathing Roomby David Klein<br />
<br />
Death can come<br />
and if I’m ready I’ll have him<br />
under the sheets or on an asphalt<br />
bed on a summer roof Rihanna<br />
blasting to the max over street noise<br />
a mongrel choir<br />
fierce and clamoring<br />
no psalm<br />
no hymn rising<br />
just What Is<br />
Happening<br />
<br />
On the Q train into Brooklyn<br />
heading home from work<br />
among the piled bodies on the Ferryman’s raft,<br />
a life’s work<br />
tallied on a MetroCard<br />
we’ll shoulder ourselves breathing room<br />
and do our thing, baby<br />
just wail away<br />
while the corpses dangle from handrails,<br />
plugged into their music with its hackneyed ecstasies<br />
<br />
I’ll give death a run for his money<br />
kiss him on the mouth<br />
blow breath into him<br />
clasp legs hard around his waist<br />
and past the end of time<br />
we’ll danceThe Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836616400910439623.post-40109221607071461862014-12-31T05:32:00.000-08:002014-12-31T05:32:41.862-08:00Elusive Alchemistby Laura Kaminski<br />
<br />
I bought a guide to local<br />
birds, thought I might learn<br />
to recognize a feathered<br />
phrase or two. It is<br />
a rainbow codex, organized<br />
by plumage, begins with<br />
redwing blackbird’s flashy<br />
epaulets, woodpeckers’ helmets,<br />
then proceeds with cardinal-<br />
and robin-red, works through<br />
to shades of jays and bunting-<br />
indigo.<br />
<br />
But it cannot guide me<br />
now, three hours after<br />
midnight, searching in<br />
the darkness for a fiddler<br />
and his echo. I am far<br />
beyond the limits<br />
of the rainbow. I am out<br />
without a flashlight<br />
and the moonlight keeps<br />
its secrets, it won’t reveal<br />
sources, and I cannot see<br />
the whippoorwill.The Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836616400910439623.post-9165529588950525452014-11-29T12:01:00.001-08:002014-11-29T12:01:09.982-08:00Dogmaby Michael Friedman<br />
<br />
See the language on the sign<br />
yield to its meaning and be blind<br />
in momentary air, flying fish chased<br />
by ravenous thugs out into the open.<br />
Sailing, slapping, flapping<br />
across the spit-shined floor. The one<br />
you cannot cross without permission from management.<br />
<br />
Cause effect the correlative pejorative.<br />
Dare ye be devil among the chosen idea<br />
wrongheaded in tow-away zone<br />
Tire boot clasps your goat<br />
pecked by popular demands in fish school<br />
turn as one dart as another sea within a sea<br />
among reefs clean picked by God knows what<br />
caused warming globe cannot deny<br />
or be in the company of Jesus or Homo erectus,<br />
splattered dung from tongues beatified.<br />
Stand alone and eyes removed one at a time<br />
so you can watch the other go. Warning to those<br />
who defy the even flow, the school weaving the reef,<br />
the mode stands out from the mean. When tools and application<br />
trump investigation. When immediacy is all that matters<br />
and further study boarded up as we’re through here.<br />
Quikrete half used and solidified in the bag<br />
buried at the construction site.<br />
Look into the sun and see what happens.<br />
Pick at scabs and watch the pink tender skin heal<br />
just the same. Lock step, quicksand, narrow purpose<br />
razor thickThe Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836616400910439623.post-64696541977234635842014-11-29T12:00:00.000-08:002014-11-29T12:02:54.437-08:00The Burning Bushby Ralph Monday<br />
<br />
I do not know your god filtered<br />
through you, speaking tongues,<br />
where you sit like a broken Roman<br />
statue reciting Etruscan.<br />
How can I know this spirit language<br />
that is plucked from thought’s burning<br />
bush? Ask, and I will give you a god,<br />
a great Grecian urn, cracked, singed<br />
black by the fires of dead dialects<br />
that does not speak language of the<br />
living. Run your tongue over its fissures,<br />
taste the waters pooled in dry desert<br />
oasis. Fill it with all the dross of your<br />
years: anger toward mother, father, husband’s<br />
suicide, intoxicated philosophies only you<br />
can decipher, days of cum and roses, black<br />
spots on the heart singed from a welder’s torch.<br />
Mix it all together like a spell in a witch’s<br />
cauldron, write that ink on a granite wall,<br />
let the god tongue split you open through<br />
an aria’s incantations. You will be no more<br />
whole than the butchered underbelly of a sow.<br />
All the gods long ago retreated to the sky<br />
when they could no longer replace the faces<br />
of women shivered by their dark tongues.<br />
Words do not fill emptiness. Words make<br />
the empty, the infinite void spoke into<br />
being before the tongues came through you.The Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836616400910439623.post-80320906962037965122014-11-29T11:59:00.000-08:002014-11-29T11:59:07.361-08:00totem animalby Joe Milford<br />
<br />
as a child told of beasts<br />
as a boy reading of beasts<br />
as a boy being a beast<br />
as a man killer of beasts<br />
as a man eater of beasts<br />
as a man maker of beasts<br />
as a beast afraid of men<br />
as a beast masked as a man<br />
as a beast killed to mask beasts<br />
as a beast becoming a man<br />
as a man recalling ancient beasts<br />
as a man a dying beast<br />
as a man an archive of beasts<br />
as a beast shedding a man’s skin<br />
inside this skin a beast and a man<br />
inside this skin the child taught by beasts<br />
who exited the womb with those masksThe Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836616400910439623.post-14922505837122002512014-11-02T11:05:00.002-08:002014-11-02T11:05:46.873-08:00Dervish Your Hoursby D. Russel Micnhimer<br />
<br />
We dance our beginnings forward<br />
our future is behind us, following<br />
us we cannot tell what it will be<br />
when it catches up to us<br />
<br />
Our past we see in front of us<br />
we can see clearly what it has been<br />
by keeping an eye on it if we are<br />
alert we can learn<br />
<br />
We are Janus perpetually cast<br />
in the middle of time, gates open<br />
and close to meet our gaze<br />
<br />
Dervish your hours, you may have<br />
more than it seemsThe Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836616400910439623.post-38709511543672636282014-11-02T11:05:00.001-08:002014-11-02T11:05:13.305-08:00Lines from Siddharthaby Matt Morris<br />
<br />
A ferry transported him<br />
up the sacred stream.<br />
He was fleeing from the self,<br />
<br />
the agony of being<br />
this incarnation.<br />
Going into the forest,<br />
<br />
into the oneness,<br />
the river flowed everywhere,<br />
singing & happy. Listen,<br />
<br />
the ferryman said.<br />
Siddhartha listened. He heard<br />
the river laughing,<br />
<br />
its thousand voices laughing.<br />
The bird in his chest laughed too.The Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836616400910439623.post-74628114388627776862014-11-02T11:05:00.000-08:002014-11-02T11:06:57.343-08:00Spiderby Kelley Jean White<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
This diner is haunted. The waitress says the paper towel machine in the bathroom starts unwinding all by itself and more than once she’s felt a little tap on her behind as she bends over the sink.And it doesn’t surprise anyone, afterall June’s father Spider died right there at the grill. Massive heart attack. (They’re always massive aren’t they.) No one remembers his real name. Except June. But he was the cook here forty some years. Fast, a real flyer. And before that at The Bay. And the Shore. And the Sea View. He was good with his hands. Ask his second wife. Ask his third. Always building something. And that bass fiddle. Those hands of his on the strings. More than an octave on a piano. And did you know he did clockwork? Fixed all those little springs and cogs? Built that fence out of gears and chains and bicycle wheels and pulleys and arrows all painted red and black and gold? He was a master. Arms, hands, everywhere. Had at least a dozen arms. No one could move a job faster. Not even the quickest autumn wind.</div>
The Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836616400910439623.post-45629898559655898702014-11-02T11:04:00.000-08:002014-11-02T11:04:55.139-08:00Three Pigs and Wolfby Laura Kaminski<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Dreadlocks: Three young javalina, trotting line behind sow-mother, up the embankment, across the road, fast-moving. Born with all their hair full-length, short little hoofed haunches not yet grown into their hides. Strands hang down into the dust, rusty gray-brown and wiry black rodent dreadlocks, a row of escaping Rastafarian wigs.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Too North: Strange to see them this far north in land that has grown cherries and seen snow. Drive up slow and stop the Jeep, get out and stand exactly where they crossed, look down the crease they’ve left in the middle of the field, flat trail to match one worn by the Mexican wolf in the Phoenix Zoo.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
First Wolf: He is a river of instinct carving a path to a soap-bubble sea held delicately in his mind. Perpetual walkabout, his trail a curving figure-eight, he never pauses or hesitates, never looks around or up or out. Wonder if he is pounding down the path to ease the way for the rest of the pack. He faces forward, never sees the ones behind him who follow single-file, each paw-pad placed exactly in the foot-falls of First Wolf.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Mobius: Perhaps, instead, he’s hay-wired late, wakes each evening, begins running, perpetually tries to catch up with his pack. He cannot see them. They move impossibly ahead each afternoon while he is sleeping.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Darwin: Contemplate the javalina strait, straight parting of the mountain grasses, half a mile. Fast, they’ve vanished into a scattering of rocks and juniper, fast. Fast like the wolf, and faster. Have a caricature vision, bearded Darwin, fraying track-suit, watching from the hill. He has a stop-watch timing laps, advises them to step it up, reminds they must clock it faster than a wolf-trot or their furry little bacon will not make the team.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Source: Gaze south, pick up the sweet dusty scent of pollen, follow it backward, trace the migratory river to its source. Wonder how many generations they have been running, these piglets, since they began south of the border, set off at the pop of a gun from some sun-drenched village. Mark mileage generations in the changing shades of green. Agave lime tequila grasshopper. Taste for salt.</div>
The Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836616400910439623.post-70193806419189346702014-09-30T03:52:00.001-07:002014-09-30T03:52:55.865-07:00eye contactby larry jones<br />
<br />
the cop pulled me over<br />
for speeding,<br />
65 in a 45.<br />
<br />
he whipped out his little flashlight<br />
said,<br />
<br />
"i'm going to look<br />
into your eyes."<br />
<br />
he was thinking about<br />
writing a ticket<br />
<br />
however,<br />
<br />
he gazed a tad too deep.<br />
<br />
"i'm letting you off<br />
with a warning," he said.<br />
<br />
works<br />
every<br />
time.The Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836616400910439623.post-80240437963152493102014-09-30T03:52:00.000-07:002014-09-30T03:52:28.415-07:00Normalby Jennifer A. McGowan<br />
<br />
It was the kind of<br />
fukkit-what-hit-me,<br />
who’s-driving-unlicenced-elephants-<br />
at-this-hour day.<br />
The sort where open<br />
eyes are an affront,<br />
and you realise that yesterday<br />
you only shaved one armpit,<br />
or one leg, or in fact<br />
somehow dyed your leg hair.<br />
And hungry. So finding the ingredients<br />
for pancakes; then having<br />
the brilliant idea of something<br />
to make them flame coz<br />
it cooks off and anyway<br />
it’s fun; serving them up<br />
to have them leap and<br />
take off your eyebrows, completely<br />
ruining that thread job,<br />
ah fukkit, they taste good,<br />
and I look good in dark glasses.<br />
That kind of a day. Normal<br />
since you’ve been here.The Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836616400910439623.post-78721091100199528682014-08-31T04:26:00.000-07:002014-08-31T04:26:19.842-07:00 Day Go Byby Dario Jimenez<br />
<br />
Joe did not know<br />
he was going to die that very same Sunday.<br />
In the morning<br />
bought a blue Chevy, sedan.<br />
For lunch<br />
had a double cheese sandwich with beer<br />
as he always did for his birthday<br />
and sat in the porch<br />
to watch the day go by.The Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836616400910439623.post-5760108394650814612014-08-31T04:22:00.003-07:002014-08-31T04:22:43.814-07:00Floating a Reunion Planby Todd Mercer<br />
<br />
Dusty Springfield singing Son of a Preacher Man<br />
inside the clock radio, between queens<br />
in a two-queen special at the Ramada.<br />
The day began with idol-smashing, smoothed<br />
to ritual, to sacraments. It sweetened.<br />
She said Let’s come back<br />
after ten years. Future talk<br />
is healthy for you. Clean up<br />
whatever you’re predisposed to<br />
muck-up repeatedly. Stop<br />
serial stupidity. Don’t rip<br />
head-boards from their moorings<br />
out of enthusiasm. The desk clerk,<br />
that jaded atheist, will smirk<br />
and add sixty-nine bucks and tax<br />
to the MasterCard. Before they split<br />
he over-tips the maid. It’s justice<br />
for the muss left. Dusty wraps the song,<br />
the one that makes this woman<br />
in the future wonder<br />
what became of a pastor’s son, the one<br />
who reached her, here.The Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836616400910439623.post-80674660163674323422014-08-31T04:22:00.002-07:002014-08-31T04:22:36.525-07:00Give and Takeby Miranda Stone<br />
<br />
In sleep, the fight has left you.<br />
Face slack, lips parted, you gasp<br />
as if taken aback in your dream.<br />
With sprawling limbs you encroach<br />
upon my side of the bed. A wrist bone<br />
prods my shoulder. A toe grazes my shin.<br />
<br />
I press my palms against your ribs<br />
and push. You roll across the dividing line,<br />
the sheet gliding over your bare skin.<br />
I marvel at the distance between us.<br />
You have relinquished half a foot of space.<br />
In sleep, you are the picture of compromise.<br />
Awake, you refuse to concede a single inch.The Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836616400910439623.post-50320504457372510962014-08-31T04:22:00.001-07:002014-08-31T04:22:28.727-07:00Spectrumby Kindra McDonald <br />
<br />
Black list, black board, black<br />
tie, panthers, black sheep, magic black<br />
and blue blood, blue streak, blue in<br />
<br />
the face, blue laws, blue<br />
collar, hair, blue plate special, agent<br />
orange, blood orange winter<br />
<br />
green, belt, green with envy, green-eyed<br />
monster tickled<br />
pink movies, caught red<br />
<br />
handed, seeing red, red cheeked,<br />
alert, blood-red silver<br />
screen, silver-tongue, silver<br />
<br />
spoon, lining, silver fox,<br />
quick brown nose, brown<br />
sugar, derby, how now brown cow<br />
<br />
yellow bellied coward, mellow<br />
yellow man, white as a ghost, a sheet,<br />
white supremacist, lie, white on riceThe Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8836616400910439623.post-75593468725133600442014-08-31T04:21:00.000-07:002014-08-31T04:25:48.766-07:00The Dodo’s Gone To Sleepby Amit Parmessur<br />
<br />
Each step up the staircase and each heartbeat brings<br />
me closer to you, like a black magnet.<br />
The only good I can do in this city’s emptiness<br />
is to anticipate your squawk;<br />
remember, when the sun sets, we’ll borrow wings<br />
and fly into the night full of fast clouds.<br />
Strumming my sitar I’ll watch over<br />
your yellow feet, green beak and curly feathers,<br />
with you preening in Wonderland.<br />
<br />
Reaching the rooftop I meet only a ghost<br />
as your name means fool. With each memory<br />
of you I shed a cold tear. I go down.<br />
The nuts in my hand, the seeds in my pockets<br />
I wish to see you in my room and<br />
fool the whole world, cracking jokes with you,<br />
rolling on the ecstatic floor.<br />
But the butterfly clock on the wall<br />
whispers to me that you’ve gone to sleep<br />
early today with the dogs and monkeys.The Camel Saloonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17466326145539153263noreply@blogger.com