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Alicia Ostriker
Kenneth Ryan
Gary Corseri
Timothy Liu
Claudia Grinnell
Craig Chisholm
Diane Wakoski
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Love Makes Us Strangers to Ourselves
That night you went swimming in my brain
and all your scales were glimmering,
you sang an old song, too,
about wind in a bamboo forest.
When you shook off your pearls you sank me.
There were strawberries, too,
in a bowl of coral porcelain.
The moon shuddered in a surfeit of silver.
Wasn't it then that the hatter appeared,
thumping his tom-tom, and the mist
arose in our blood cells,
roaring over the refined lagoon?
We were standing in the middle of Agra
in the sludge of a dull afternoon,
the horns mooing, the cows honking,
when the eclipse came and your eyes caught fire.
Or was it fragrance from an afterlife,
caught in that dream, eddying towards
this irresolution, undermined by apparitions
in motley caparisoned?
Quiet Before the Storm
Where did the light come from
when the snow fell
over the city?
At 3 a.m.
the sky was milk-yellow
as though it held
a captive harvest moon. Yet
no light spilled
from moon or brownstone
in owl's or cat's eye
and every window held
palpable secrets.
Three shirts were left
unthought-of on a line
uncertain whether
to freeze or dance
ghostly.
Soft gusts of wind
threw powdery crystals off
as prodigal children would
scatter diamonds, laughing.
I stood in the window, writing,
with the gift of
unaccountable light as
the storm wreaked havoc gentle as
God's first dream
of love.
Gary Corseri has taught in public schools and prisons in the US, and at US and Japanese universities. His articles, fiction, poetry and dramas have appeared at CommonDreams, Dissident Voice, TeleSurtv.net, CounterPunch, The New York Times, Village Voice, Sky, Redbook, Georgia Review, City Lights Review, Atlanta-PBS, and 200 other websites, publications and venues. His books include: Manifestations (an anthology; edited); Holy Grail, Holy Grail (a novel); and Random Descent (poems, Anhinga Press). He can be contacted at: corseri@verizon.net.
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