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UNDERGROUND VOICES: POETRY
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MP POWERS Foreclosure The morning's grown dark with storm clouds. There's just a little muted light in this room, water rushing through the rusted pipes in the walls and the sound of the wind moaning in the house. A Baroque guitar with missing strings stands upright in the corner. Toulouse-Lautrec's cabaret dancers highstep across the wall. Shadows observe them. I've reach the point of no return again. This time with my creditors. They call and I don't answer. I just lie here on the sofa, listen. I climb up off the sofa, and stare out this gray window the morning is dark. Two doves sail high against the storm, then depart. And the mango tree I planted years ago - the one that never grew - looks nervous. Chinatown Square It must be a qin or a mandolin or something weaving its delicate soul around the Red Dragon Cafe... as keen shadows creep up the old brick walls, there's a circle of people mingling around the fireplace, and I am drinking Tsingtao next to a Chinaman in a soiled trench coat, who doesn't bother hiding the side of his face that's melting or his eyes like spent little amoebas. It's midnight, midwinter. In the doorway, this sawed-off hitman is awash in neon light, and the misshapen skull of his restless yes-man huffs Lucky Strikes... while The Bellflower Lady descends the staircase wearing purple sequins and a see-through dress, rogue tongues of color lick the heavy curves of her supple breasts... a fang of gold flickers between them as she wanders past the window. Snow outside is beautiful and falling and the sidewalks are frozen. But inside here there's a fire and ghosts which are alive. subaquatic the sea is bright green, almost mystical in the sunlight as it moves beneath me a tugboat with tires on the side drifts quietly past the jetty a dragonfly whispers in my ear something nothing and somebody's fingers weaving palm fronds into roses and daydreams as the sun-ravaged old man whose hair is a white flame wanders off-shore with his cast net, a gull distinctly cleverly cries bluefish like little pieces of silver mind leap outside the breakwaters and below my feet, the sea is playing mournfully her deep and timeless nocturnes M.P. Powers has poems published or forthcoming in The New York Quarterly, Slipstream, Ghoti, Main Street Rag, Zygote and many others. |
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