©MMXVII Now, for the nonce, and nevermore, Fowl Feathered Review is purportedly the disorderly quarterly published by
Fowlpox Press.
This issue is dedicated to the many backs we walk on in both ignorance and with indifference.
Poems by
Hiraeth
The kiss filled the scarcity
Every shortage of life
Seeking an answer
Guarded in shadows
How to get there
Now that I am conscious
The old paradigm
is thankfully dying
Dream Cabin
Alienated defective existentialist
binary in utterances
a linguistic rupture
rains letters down
the realms of
imagination in the
search of ourselves
within the painted faces.
Amidst empty expanses
we find you.
the night brings
a wake sleep
revolution and dreams
erased in daylight.
Will any of
these name you?
Waters of Dispassion
Children, water evokes at your swollen feet
A calamitous trap reflects no escape
Clouds wash epidemic rain across the plains
And cover the world’s eyes
……. in forgotten plight.
Insects contaminated droplets of mist destroy the future
Seeds of disease interrupt your destiny to grow
Sunken despondent eyes cry tears of malaria
An allusion of who you are and
…….never will become
Kinship with no one the warm earth waits
The lens of history records a fictional play
Betrayal masked in far away luxuries
Dead bodies of apathy covered with
……. kisses and blankets.
Snowfall
Today, all it snows
are morsels: tiny,
abstract,
a restrained cover.
But last evening it
really snowed. Snow in an empty-handed
applause, a mad schizophrenic camouflage
of endearments: cold kisses and a subtle
dusting of affection, thick falling
loving father seeds that whip and pummeled
like songs. Life awakened, flakes in emphasis
rise to a crescendo of affirmation and
coldness, inside their souls.
The morning snow from a lazy sky
artificial stand-ins,
falling slowly,
into the fortitude of loss.
send word over the dark
Robin Wyatt Dunn
send word over the dark for your fond delay now really even bark no storm delayed or
sermoned shaled or fent or curled all ready for the even down the slate; current and glad
ecstatic shat mad sounded furled maddened emblematic crowded clouded married urgent and
drug under the long mercury night; liquid; shallow; standneck and murderous, no love for all the
wastrels in the symphony for my own heart; no reason but delight on my signature regard; no
pain meant for furling; no sentence centered for any divorce nor any mention of the words
carrying to my ear; no healing; no spout; no spell or spelling; no light; no ankles; no marriage;
and no rent; no sound; and no sneer; no parent; and no sparrow; for we are;
we made;
some ridiculous thing
some black baby
some burial rite
some born spastic light
clouded as fluid roaring to the all-cast vowels of love and misunderstanding;
the reason of the ocean
the reason of time
now hear; for whose reason should slip again
shouldn't we
shouldn't we slip again
down at night, and again
shouldn't we slip again
no powerful voice
nor powerful regret
who could announce the shape of the raft
marry me to year
marry me to cry
marry me to shape and sand
spark and spank
stray and strow
stake and spray
stare and still
scrape and scrow
no escrow
nor any blight
no year
nor days
but the Gulf Stream
hear my Gulf Stream
hear my Gulf Stream
so murderous
the jugular of night
the rich reward of the earth
bubbling deliciously under the surface of the water
under the surface of god
marry my future
underneath these tombs of English
outside French
inside German
Roman vowels
Turkish vocabulary
consonants overhead Arabia
African thought
blast the night
with my divorce
bury the scoundrel who said my name
black the burial rite of my name
buried the birth of my son
bountiful the breakage of my heart
sent over the horizon
a thousand kilometers a second
caustic and cold and winter
for a thousand nights
and a thousand days
in a thousand rooms
and a thousand oceans
on a thousand planets
made from a trillion names
strewn over the sky
marry me
whose voice shudders like an old man's
whose parents divorced him
for being a man
whose light never comes
whose name means nothing
whose grimace shirls the future
whose sound ignites the cellar over the potatoes
whose memory spouts years
miles
funerals
galaxies
maps
routes
trades
men and women with swords
over oceans that do not have names
marry me
for the blast
marry me for the liquid bright
luminous
numinous
hurtful harking near the baleful eye of sleep
bury me
under the future
over the kneeling fire
of sons
and sons
and sons
huge and ruinous
roaming the birds
and moving over the ocean
as a bullet over a forensicist's device
musically rewarding all the murderers with its flat and ominous sound
of guilt
guilty
and not forgiven
guilty
and not rewarded
guilty
and not spent
guilty
and not mentioned
guilty
not even drawn
there is no pattern
nor any name
over the ocean.
still, send me word over the dark
for I need to hear it; I thought I didn't; thought I could grow, without it, over it, some place where
words do not have sounds, where love has no thoughts nor actions, where cities do not grow
old.
The city climbs the galaxy but I only have a moon declining to moonlet, not even any orbit, just
near the edge, hardly even spinning.
what would the word mean? If I hear it.
if it reaches me
if you tell me yes
or no
water
or breast
Trieste
No James Joyce can rescue me
Nor schizophrenic daughter
no Italian publisher will redeem my rights over my future
No English nobleman waits on my genius
no men know my name
the city climbs the galaxy and I am climbing too trying to locate the trace of your word,
archaeologist and court recorder, making note of the tribes who passed through, from every
county, parts of France, the hills of Scotland, and the far west, inside the far west, inside the far
west, further than far west, under the night; whose shape is the beauty of your love, whose
righteousness is a mighty stream, whose name is winter, whose arms are the spiral milky way,
whose mirrors shine delight, whose Creon storms over my death, shouting betrayal, whose
nihilism is a joke, fit for retards and kings, resounding over the night, over the king's fires, from
Troy, from Africa, and the sun;
Well, now I hear a word.
Coming improbably over the Internet.
This meme,
This divorce,
This little step,
bent and pretty and not quite right in the head,
not sensible,
not even really listening,
not American, nor foreign,
not English,
it's not even quite the Earth,
or is it?
well, we'll call it the Earth. It looks like the Earth.
Feels like the Earth.
Makes noise like the Earth.
Shaped like the Earth.
Battling over the Matrix like the Earth.
A huge poem battling Frisbees™ and baked goods
A goat hall in a forgotten island
who never even got sacrificed
the music of the spheres
gladdening your heart.
Shakespeare clearly was wrong
for it keeps getting louder
and it's not beautiful so much as cheesy
the best joke of the week
so funny it hurts
your friends won't even talk to you
because it's so funny
and if you laugh
you won't stop
you won't be able to stop
you won't be able to mention the name of the country where the people originated this particular
joke whose humor gives the mind rhyme, whose food is fire, or pearls, who named your
children.
Name my children, for the bad joke on the Internet
who did not remember how to play
or how to travel
who did not know what a stone was
or where the galaxy was heading
who did not remember why we were
or where
but knew what the sound was
of my voice
shrouded under a sanded mirror
or just spat out of an armchair
stuck over the door
a bad post it note
banging the ceiling
with my broom
give me the broom on the ceiling
over your child's voice
not even mine
give me the night
over your light
give me the sound
of your memory over the breeze
bloodier than steak
holier than the ocean
with no name or reason
a park bench in a quotidien city
setting for a bad short film
with amateur actors
and an illegible script
entered in expensive competitions in New York
where it sits in some drunkards apartment
who can't get out of bed
love is a park bench who speaks
enunciating the name of god
brushing his teeth for a hot date
on a cold night by the water
a toxic plume on a liquid night
screaming out of your eyes
take me as a wanderer
take me as dream
now vulnerable
now dead
now mysterious
mute and shuffling
undertaker flirter
gravedigger love
give me your grave-dug love
shirked and scrounged to black dust
rich black dust
courteous and clawed to death
send word of your love through the dark
and though I be dead I will rise
as an improbable poem
insisting on meanings inside the water
over the sky
inside stars
over the hearts of trees
still dying by the thousand
our trillion graves
give me each one of them
Robin Wyatt Dunn writes and teaches in Los Angeles. You can find him
online at www.robindunn.com
From Cathy McKelvey’s D'ance: A Dancer's view of Dartmouth
Cathy McKelvey: My work is in private collections in NS, NB, Quebec and Ontario as well as the Nova Scotia Art Bank.
Solo shows: Gallery 78 (Fredericton), Craig Gallery (Dartmouth) Dart Gallery (Dartmouth) and ViewPoint Gallery (Halifax)
Group shows: ViewPoint Gallery (Halifax), and in New Brunswick (Saint John and Fredericton) with the photography
cooperative, SilverFish.
Poems by Emma Bruno
Morning Dew
bruises aren't lilac.
bruises are violet
because bruises are violent.
burns are lilac
because lilac is
sad
and
lilacs cry every morning.
Disappearing Act
I’m running away
but I don’t know where I’m going
I can’t find my way home this time.
I ran
into a gas station
and bought cigarettes but I don’t smoke
so I ran out.
Have you
Ever had a panic attack?
I was running and it was cold
and you were so cold
to me. Why was that? All I can think
is that breath is escaping me too rapidly
while you breathe so easily resting at peace.
I’m broken.
I’m running
in a paralyzed vessel with a cracking heart that can’t swim
in these emotions
that you’ve put in me.
I’m running. freezing.
I’m ripping apart
at the seams of my being because I can’t speak
to you
and so I mutter to myself
the lunacy that lives in my brain to try and make it make sense
I’m running, freezing. I’m melting.
but it gets crazier still. Because I’m lost.
I’m running, melting. Running,
So,
I’m running
I can’t stop. I’m broken.
I’m lost. You’re gone And I’m lost. Melting.
But she said I can’t find my way home
Wake up
swirling
2. my mind
3. the smoke
It's the incense
8. engulfing me, I think.
4. a lot
seeing things
escaping in the smoke
31. now
i’m distracted floating away.
16. dissipating
into the uncaring
universe
which 92. I
begrudgingly commit
myself to.
45. while I watch
not too innocently.
And the incense has burned out.
Emma Bruno is a a twenty- year- old writer and actor living in Los Angeles, CA. This marks her first appearance in print. Photos courtesy of Pixabay.com. Paintings: Jarek
Kubicki, born in 1976 in Gdańsk, Poland, is an artist, photographer, and web designer. http://www.kubicki.info/
Peace.