Poetry: “Fall or fly?” by Trevor Cunnington
for Bernice Gardner, may she RIP
Ringed around the rosy twilight park,
A cocoon on a leaf falls through the dark.
It lands on wet asphalt streets above the bulwark
UChicago's Oldest Literary Magazine
for Bernice Gardner, may she RIP
Ringed around the rosy twilight park,
A cocoon on a leaf falls through the dark.
It lands on wet asphalt streets above the bulwark
Night relaxes its eastern hand
Dawn inches forth, Quiet a vigil keeps.
The house about me now is still.
I sort through words while my lady yet sleeps.
I.
In the fall morning sky, high above the white glaze
of the brown mountain range, a raven would fly.
She’d flutter then plunge through the dawn light and fog
over fields filled with songs of the killdeer and dove –
Bustling check-in desk, suited men. Orderly queue –
duty free sake. Vexed boy humpfed away.
Eleventh hour tannoy inspirits discomfort. She lays
Japanese Red Army’s blasting cap. Oyster-white
peripheries shock to black
He puts himself
at the head
of the long table
in front of the
killer whale-sized
In the blackout storm, our wings
shear through ravages of cloud
seen only in flashes. Compassing
our trackway toward you, we wheel
into dirty weather.
Snow leopards are graceful animals with soft fur
the students type over and over again as well as
They live in the high rugged mountains of Tibet.
Does each word imprint like the leopard’s paw
set down in stealth on the cold white world where
I am looking out the window with my classical on as I ponder the rigmaroles of existence discussing such with the most fascinating person I know.
Every time I feel I’ve made a valid point or observation during my ongoing convo I like to whip off my glasses to add further emphasis
while highlighting a point that’s been made salient and to add further punctuating resonance
All night (when isn’t it night?) the flat fields sleep unsound,
the megacities spit and thrum with their overdrive generators,
babies shawled in naked terror howl for 24-hour shifts in test chambers.
Earth is round the way a cattle prod is round.
Electricity churns and spits, sprinting through Hell World, block after block.
Read More Poetry: “Prison Planet,” by Zack CarsonA poet I know lives on Noyes Street.
Not Dogma Drive
where what we see
is what we get,
but a neighborhood of wavicles, oscillations, uncertainties,