The Literary Review

Page 92

Page 94

Issue 10 Page 93

MIND

Number it

so you find it

so an arrow

traveling the page

calls up memory

and you have it

know it

chew it to mash

swallow and digest it

Well fed

you say it

repeat it

are its expert

Now what?

With your special cortex

Will you flourish or perish?

Vast knowledge

your baggage

Will you own it?

Discard it?

Despite or because?

Will you be?

Will you die?

Will you fly

CENTRAL VACCUUM

The wall was voracious Its mouths

over the floor around the room

started sucking

A whirlwind resulted, parlor devastation

and you lost all your things…

gadgets trinkets, papers and the mental

entities you thought had turned solid

Now you were free!

Nothing more kept you busy

To life!

Breathing kissing, fighting

gaming, rushing, snoring

ACTION

A soggy cardboard

wrap-around holder

for a tea glass

dropped a flight down

between the curved railing

and metal stairs of a spiral descent

hit the mouth of a cylindrical

wicker trash basket

and bells rang to celebrate

the visual acuity

dexterity

and daring

of the one hundred

six year old

master of the word

who had decided to wake up

and take action

IF

If Memory diverts Now

stops the New

If nothing is material

and thought a repeat

an Illusory to be

to laugh or to weep

don’t lock yourself

in a box

or rock like a hobby horse

propelled by magic

a special pill

or the lever your masters

will gladly pull

Spelling

Every time the words disassembled themselves

or even vanished, leaving a blank slate, or sky,

she would be there imagining a page

and reading each letter to me.

This was not the immediate process

of “spell check” on the computer

that does much better

offering related words to ponder

but it had that special tone of her voice

I hear coming from the other side

of this skull where the brain sits

with its history and mystery.

Had she erred,

I would have been quite happy

writing the misspellings,

quirks of one other than me,

and sending them out.

"C”

Mrs Woodbury in music’s Ansonia hotel

told me to add a middle initial to my name

I wouldn’t have to explain what it stood for

And I would go on to spiritualize money

write mysteries, a surprise to me,

like this life a ghost stands behind

as I rise with the solstice and dream myself back

to the start of life’s letter game

the one I will abandon

as I did the letter “C” which stood

between names given and received

Regarding money, there was no problem

I helped but sent no one to Las Vegas

And I wrote poems some thought mysterious

when they didn’t understand

Call me Carol or Carmen if you wish!

What does a name matter?

I carried my “C” well

It wasn’t too much

till, who knows the day,

I let go of that signifying half circle

But you can still guess who I am,

transformed and transforming with a letter

and what I have learned and forget

and what I was given and gave up