2. More Picture Poems
Jose F. Lacaba
The Birth of Venus Uncensored
A postcard in an envelope is rather
Unusual, but if the postcard is
The Birth of Venus, it's understandable.
A friend, touring Florence, had seen her,
A naked newborn babe striding the foam
While a corporeal wind blows roses
All around her. Ecstatic, he sent me
Wistful envy. It is true she beguiles,
She enchants like a witch, not even from
A reproduction can the fact be hid.
I smile at the ruse of the envelope:
We live, alas, in a land that cannot stand
Sorcery of any sort, always ready
With the thick red cloak and exorcisms
To counteract the charm and break the spell.
We choose the future husband at the anvil
As our muse, and we would see the goddess
Banned, for she will give us love, and that
Is an embarrassing thing, so old-fashioned.
Aberjhani
Angel of Hope’s Persistent Flight
I.
Wreaths of nuclear ash
decorate civilian hearts
with unresolved blood.
Greed, crowned emperor,
rules the earth with cold disdain
for harmony’s path.
War poisons the land
like diseased minds downloaded
into bowls of tears.
Chaos, loving none
so much as itself, slurps and
spits dead souls like bones.
What is belief now?
What is faith that will not die?
What news from heaven?
II.
In midnight’s orchard
roses blossom the secrets
that heal daylight’s wounds.
Beats of broken hearts
flow waves of revelation––
open gates to strength.
Cradled in scorched arms,
a soldier’s moon keeps its vows––
shines persistent hope.
This love that God is
curves in figure eights greater
than both time and space.
Death wins nothing here,
gnawing wings that amputate––
then spread, lift up, fly.
Maurice Oliver
Gold Lamé Communion Wafers
Begin with urinals plucking a guitar with their teeth.
A quill pen tale of dragons needing root canal work.
A Monkees album with gout.
Zen covered with golden honey.
Nixon’s five o’clock shadow on a hot tin roof.
Baked lasagna wearing pajamas with feet.
Cheedar & parsley adjusting the sudden bright light.
Jack Daniels relaxing in a pink straw.
A boatload of onion bagel breath.
Patio furniture using bad grammar.
Never begin at the fault-line in earth’s stocking!
Frank Peñones
Woman before a Mirror
(After Utamaru Kitagawa's Woman Putting on Make-up)
It could not have been the autumn wind
that nudged my aching nape.
I glanced at the cedar door,
it is still shut as on an evening at the temple.
My hair, the stretch of road
at the mountain pass he takes going home,
is now set in place, ready for his untying.
I looked again, and at my powdered face,
the creases now well hidden, erased.
I imagined the wings and shell of the cicada
as came in another gate.
Woman before a Mirror
(After Utamaru Kitagawa's Woman Putting on Make-up)
It could not have been the autumn wind
that nudged my aching nape.
I glanced at the cedar door,
it is still shut as on an evening at the temple.
My hair, the stretch of road
at the mountain pass he takes going home,
is now set in place, ready for his untying.
I looked again, and at my powdered face,
the creases now well hidden, erased.
I imagined the wings and shell of the cicada
as came in another gate.
