amphibi.us

Healing

Shannon Peil — Thu, 17 May 2012 00:15:03 +0000

The morning sky imagined
a glow of pink and purple
before the sun arrived,
before the horizon
imagined itself a blond,
like the smiling nurse
who helped me out to the car,
wearing colorful clips in her hair,
clips which stole the sunlight’s gleam.
On the sidewalk,
I stared at the asphalt,
it held a puddle of rainwater,
I imagined it a cocktail.
Over the sunlight,
a dense cloud dissipated,
creating a halo
around the red brick of the building
I earlier imagined
would be my last to enter.
I had never noticed sunlight ripple
in a street puddle before.
The ride home was uncomfortable
yet joyous.
The road imagined a parade,
cars lined up dutifully,
and the morning, so conscious of itself,
imagined a celebration of light
forever beaming, forever replete.
When you touched my hand,
it was as if
you imagined I needed your touch,
as if I imagined your touch
exactly at that time
to realize the morning.

© Michael Keshigian, 2012

[others]

Ribcage Inside a Glacier

Shannon Peil — Tue, 08 May 2012 01:02:13 +0000

Drunk on cheap red wine from the liquor store
Down the street at four a.m. on a mahogany
Saturday morning I stumble through the bedroom,
Toward the bathroom with its sliding shower door,
Towels balled-up on the tacky yellow tiles,
Hug the left side of the doorframe for balance, go in,
Lift my head as though I were waiting to drink the rain,
And piss on the toilet seat. With sudden sharp pains
In the left side of my ribcage I sit Indian style
On the edge of the mattress, thinking it’s good to be here,
Today I laid in bed all morning, depressed,
With the shades closed and watched Tony Soprano
Eat himself to death in high definition. Yesterday
I stayed in bed until ten p.m. in the near-darkness
With the closed shades looking like kimonos
Hung from the ceiling, a slight hue of gold shone through
The pursed edges from the streetlight across the street
And I pulled the covers over my head.
Steam constantly rises from the steel grates
In the sidewalks of Philadelphia. From the tenth floor
Of a hotel in Chicago and the eleventh of one in Philadelphia,
I saw piles of bricks and cars parked crookedly
On the rooftops of small buildings. There must be
A steel concoction pressed against the beams
Of the roof above my brain. Three times in the last month
I’ve caught myself crying in my sleep,
The first of which I dreamed my father had died
All over again, that he would continue to die,
That my life would go in reverse, like swimming
Upstream the River Styx watching all your old birthdays
Take place on the shores, until I end where the concierge
Checks my coat and crams the impossible baggage
Of my bones back into the womb.
I don’t want to be awake anymore. Not that I want to die,
I just want to sleep for a few years. Let these things
Iron themselves out. Everybody seems to see the point
In watching snails fizz and boil, except me.
I know that no one gets away with anything.

© Brian Le Lay, 2012

third-grade cursive

Shannon Peil — Thu, 03 May 2012 00:50:11 +0000

when i saw you in my head
you were really upside down
on this swing
in a park where we got drunk
somewhere close to july
in 2009
a glint of silver
your locket in the moonlight
that you stole from walmart
with the generic picture
of some girl i will never know
and the chain on the swing breaks
and down you fall
and i wake up and realize
we were never really there
barely at all

© Walter Mackey, 2012

Yesterday

Shannon Peil — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 14:55:03 +0000

the sun peeked out in the morning
and didn’t fall down until the night
took its place. I drove for miles,
a cup of coffee, cooling between
my thighs. Time didn’t mean a thing,
didn’t cost a dime. There was music,
something I didn’t know, something I
couldn’t sing along with, something
with a piano. I drove past lakes, trees,
a girl walking a dog, birds moving the sky.
My parent’s called from Florida,
talked about the heat, golf courses,
palm trees, oranges, and the suntanned
people who walk around like they’re
the only ones. I drove until they
couldn’t hear me, until the line cut.
I fell in love once, and I’m
still hanging on, to all that’s dead,
all that’s moved away, started new
lives, a new direction. I steered up a
dirt road, drove to the end, the very
end, of what, maybe everything. If I learned
one thing, I learned it’s best
to close your eyes to the world.

© Tyler Bigney, 2012

Cinema Poem

Shannon Peil — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 17:04:36 +0000

We’d go to the cinema in the afternoon
Then for coffee later.
She’d studied film for four years
And when discussing it afterward
Sounded like a police mortician
Diagnosing the cause of death,
The more lavish and Hollywood the affair
The more bloated the corpse,
“Exposition, complication, climax”
She’d say and draw a curved line on a napkin
Depicting the three stages of composition.
One day she said,
“Only life can teach us how things explode”
And it was true I thought-
Most men drop dead
In the middle of their story or
Have nothing resembling a story at all.
When she finally left
I kept up those visits to the cinema
Sat in the cool dark on long afternoons
till my senses warped
The most simple story perplexed me
I found myself laughing at death scenes
And weeping at the jokes.
Even years later the random sight
Of planes and falling buildings
made little sense,
No matter how well explained and
Beautiful the narrative.

© Tom Harding, 2012

Weekday Tunnel

Shannon Peil — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 01:15:12 +0000

sullen commuters
fidget in the nostril
of the tunnel.
their heads wilt ashen
over asphalt grey,
their lips gnaw on
little agendas,
inching in tandem,
slower than a dog trots.
each of them has a tangled schedule
bursting at the temporal seams.
the city, drowned in their misery,
has the waterlogged stench
of greed and fuel.
to travel downtown is to struggle,
and everything moves faster
than everyone in the tunnel.
they are mucus in the sinuses
of a very big, unhappy place.

© Chris Crittenden, 2012

Idiosyncrasy

Shannon Peil — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 21:02:39 +0000

my father used to cross himself every time we passed a church
it was a strange habit i thought
it didn’t matter what the denomination of christianity the church spewed
he just crossed himself
sometimes at sixty-five miles per hour
it became quite comical
especially if we were travelling through the South
where there’s a church it seems every hundred yards or so
i asked him once why he didn’t pay his mobile respects
to mosques or hindu temples or synagogues
we had those around our city as well
his answer was defensive convoluted and circular
much as you would expect from an intellectual or academic
(which is what he was)
but to his credit he had read the Qur’an
as well as countless pages of hindu texts
buddhist shinto tao and zen as well
he devoured non christian religious literature as if it were comic books
my father died at the end of the last century
instead of burying him as he wished
my sisters and i had him cremated
we had very little money and turning someone to ashes it seems
is a better financial choice if you’re on a budget
he would have no doubt protested our choice
but
ashes to ashes is how it goes i think
the church to which he belonged all his life
(greek orthodox)
burned to the foundation not long after he died
only the lower third of the giant cross remained
i drove by the site once on my way to settle some accounts
my father had left unresolved
there were two boys rummaging for something just next to the burned cross
one of them picked up a rock and heaved it at the charred remains
and then they laughed and ran away

© Alex M. Pruteanu, 2012

[others]

A Strange Trip

Shannon Peil — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 20:28:16 +0000

I took a strange trip
through fields of dust.
I searched for the one
I loved, but I was

bitten by ants that
were everywhere.
The bees left me alone
and that was a blessing.

I searched in the ground
for my life. It was
hijacked by the ants
that were everywhere.

I spoke to them before
they consumed my head.

© Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal, 2012

[others]

Raven, The

Shannon Peil — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 17:05:24 +0000

I feel uncomfortable
Read Walt Whitman
Patriot, maybe
I don’t know
Strands of grass
Trees of leaves
Fell asleep
‘I am going to kill you’
Hold on
Run up stair case
Trip over dead body
‘I am going to kill you now’
I feel tired
I can see myself
Wake up
Read Edgar Alan Poe
‘Deep in earth my love is lying’
Deep in earth are dinosaur fossils
‘And I must weep alone’
And dinosaurs are extinct

© Keegan Crawford, 2012

The McDonalds at the End of the Universe

Shannon Peil — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 17:47:55 +0000

I’ve gone to see the Radio Telescope
in Wild and Wonderful West Virginia.

I want to eat dinner in Beckley until
like a B-movie cliche I’ve made a wrong turn
and find myself in Beaver Falls
under an Arthur Rackham sky.

The frogs are awake.
At first I think their chorus is from an iTunes sample.
So loud and clear and in my face from
a trucker’s Supersized sound system.

How many frogs does it take
to make that kind of rumpus?

Carl Sagan springs to mind.
His “billions and billions.”

A woman in pink yells at six scruffy kids.
All busy scarfing down enormous
ice cream cones. They ignore her.

Are these pear-shaped
gargantuan humans from
the same carnival gene pool?

I walk past them into the Spoke ‘n’ Spur.
Everybody is watching March Madness
West Virginia on a roll.

Confederate Dandy and Pirate Dude say
every day is Halloween
in Beaver Falls.

Advise me to order the T-bone.

My steak arrives seductive
and standing on a plate
like Venus on the half-shell.

Confederate Dandy and Pirate Dude
Give me a high-five.

My steak smiles, hops off the plate,
wrestles me to the ground.

I don’t eat it.
I make love to it.
Or else my steak makes love to me.

“Sheesh, get a room,” Pirate Dude says.
Confederate Dandy turns away in disgust.

“April Fool,” my steak says.
And climbs back onto the plate.
No more face or frou frou.

I cut into the steak revealing
a slash of red. The steak winks at me.
No way I can continue this.
I pay my bill and split.

Confederate Dandy and Pirate Dude
give me awkward Bro hugs.

I missed the frogs while I was inside.
All that joyous lovemaking.
Their chorus filling the night.

A bald leprechaun passes me
on rickety wooden stairs.
A pink tube stuffed with lights
wrapped through every rail rung.

The woman in pink and her six kids
cross my path once more
like a black cat I can’t avoid.

Sucking on Slurpees now.

I think of frogs. Spawning.
I think of Carl Sagan and the radio telescope.

Maybe there are really only a few enormous
Martian frogs out there in Beaver Creek?

And then I know what to do.

I push the woman in pink
and her six scruffy kids
and their Slurpees
into the creek.

The frogs will feast.
Eat their flesh.
Suck their marrow.

amphibi.us

Healing

© Michael Keshigian, 2012

[others]

Ribcage Inside a Glacier

© Brian Le Lay, 2012

third-grade cursive

© Walter Mackey, 2012

Yesterday

© Tyler Bigney, 2012

Cinema Poem

© Tom Harding, 2012

Weekday Tunnel

© Chris Crittenden, 2012

Idiosyncrasy

© Alex M. Pruteanu, 2012

[others]

A Strange Trip

© Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal, 2012

[others]

Raven, The

© Keegan Crawford, 2012

The McDonalds at the End of the Universe

© Richard Peabody, 2012