A sparkling operatic voice emanating from the 7-Eleven — strong soprano notes.
A woman passing, stunned, looked around her as if someone called her name, or like something she lost long ago was suddenly within walking distance.
Category Archives: poetry
A Study of Orange
She had a bright yellow pen and a fat hardcover book with a lime green dust jacket.
Her yoga pants were red like pomegranate, and her spa socks were slate. Her black and white cat played with a ribbon that was thick as Asian flat noodle. Her coffee was black and sat just so. It filled an espresso cup the color of steak bone.
Soon she would be eating a banana that matched her pen, but she was unsure she liked the color. The pens also came in a very citrusy orange that made her heart skip. Continue reading
Weekend
The workweek has passed like a stone in the night. Happy reading & writing, everybody.
Describe espresso
Dark liquid, as if derived from near Earth’s core. Bitter, hard-hitting high notes, lingering long after, like an aroma carried by smoke.
White lies
Sugar-coated almonds at a wedding. You bury the bride in her white dress. While they are nice to look at, you cannot bite on pearls. For instance, I do not need to see an ivory piano on which Mozart played. Or if the piano were situated in a jewelry box, raised up as if on a dais, the otherwise dreamy notes would sound contorted, as if reflected in a funhouse mirror.
Hanging to dry
My favorite blue towels hang to dry, and I see they are next to threadbare. Over the rack, they seem to have personality (or at least life.) The upshot is there’s still some drying left in them.
After a shower, I get dressed and go to work. I walk across the long street to my office, tired. Back at home, the towels dangle over the rack.
I had mused earlier that the scattered, solitary threads clung to the fabric like jungle animals avoiding a fatal tumble. The threads reminded me of monkey tails. There was also the more disquieting notion of worms on a membrane.
Black coffee and saucer
Black coffee in espresso cup resting on saucer atop secondhand book purchased for 25¢. In bed I continue reading Allen Ginsberg’s Planet News. Morning outside: the sun struggles against the clouds. Reminded of Whitman while reading. Reminded of proclamations, with Ginsberg’s text stretching from end to end on page after page. Reminded of Ferlinghetti, with text drizzling downward in thin stacks.
3 words
I love the word “strata.” Powerful considering its compactness and all it implies.
I dislike “tethered” because it is contrived. Who do you know who can say it without reprisal?
An age cutoff should apply for the slang “any-who.” Adults who use it should be embarrassed. It is cute only if you are 9.
Parfait
Destitute for the brush of Bacon, who will depict you in some shunga scrolls. A statue from the Orient with no mind. Your eye shadow the flush tones of Dali. Wedding cake of a face, you sweeten the leaf of Arches. The bugs are dancing beneath your lamp like at a disco.
