Festa dei Morti: l’uomo pingue s’accinge a deflagrare
Feast of the Dead — the rotund man sets about exploding
*
a furia di arieggiare s’invola anche la salute
by dint of airing out health has flown away too
*
Dedicato ai plagiatori seriali
l’inferno attende chi giunse in cima con un copia e incolla
Dedicated to serial plagiarists
hell awaits whoever got to the top by copying and pasting
*
nel vicolo la vernice non copre la croce celtica
in the alley the paint doesn’t cover the Celtic cross
*
pellegrinaggio: tutte le forme degli stronzi di cane
pilgrimage — all the shapes of dog turds
*
vita in provincia: nulla di più triste del teppista anziano
life in the province — nothing sadder than the elderly delinquent
*
al quiz serale dopo ogni vincita migliora il look
on the evening quiz show after each victory a better outfit
*
in riverente silenzio per Beethoven tutte le piante
in reverential silence for Beethoven all the plants
Maurizio Brancaleoni lives near Rome, Italy. He holds a master’s degree in Language and Translation Studies from Sapienza University. His haiku and senryu have appeared in Dadakuku, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Under The Bashō, Horror Senryu Journal, Cold Moon Journal, Scarlet Dragonfly, Memorie di una geisha, Rakuen, Haiku Corner, Pure Haiku, Five Fleas, Shadow Pond Journal, Haikuniverse, Asahi Haikuist, Plum Tree Tavern, Wales Haiku Journal, Kokako, Pan Haiku Review, The Wise Owl, Trash Panda, Haikukai, Password, Hedgerow, Fireflies’ Light and Modern Haiku. In 2023 one of his micropoems was nominated for a Touchstone Award, while a horror ku originally featured in the Halloween-themed issue of Scarlet Dragonfly was re-published in this year’s Dwarf Stars anthology. Maurizio manages “Leisure Spot”, a bilingual blog where he posts interviews, reviews and translations: https://leisurespotblog.blogspot.com/p/interviste-e-recensioni-interviews-and.html
Who among us is unfamiliar with the holocaust, forever etched in history and to some, their memory?
In Duane Vorhees’s introductory poem from his latest work Between Holocausts: “A Mind Rewinds” Vorhees captures something indescribable, when he writes:
My psyche is littered with living Its/ Disregarded superegos still whine/ Od and Ob hiss between young green vines/Bony hilltops strain to catch day’s first light/ their bloodguilt insufficiently contrite/My psyche is littered with living Its…” Perhaps he is describing sephardic warriors of yore and in extant …who were “disregarded” [and[ deemed “insufficient”.
I found the book’s neurodivergent style instructive, creative, intuitive, alarming and haunting….as it grapples with a subject matter such as the holocaust with a sort of classic poetic indirectness that reads like a literary puzzle with a cartage of sometimes obscure literary symbolisms and references that compels further investigation.
Take the use of “midnight”, which in literature can symbolize death, despair, hope, a place between life and death. For example in poetic forefather Walt Whitman’s poem “A Clear Midnight” midnight represents death as a peaceful ending of the day. Whereas in contemporary Chinese literature, midnight can suggest despair OR hope, emblematizing the emotional incongruity in the culture.
The repetitious nature of the poems make for a particularly eerie experience, like an ominous cautionary tale emanated from the sagacious tongue of someone GRAND..whether grandfather or grandmother, you want to lean forward in attention and anticipation. The author achieves preternatural phenomena in the way that he presents his writings, which I found quite refreshing.
Scholastic philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas of Sicily– who synthesized Christian theology with Aristotelian philosophy, contended that the “supernatural” comprised of “God’s unmediated actions” while the “natural” is “what happens always or most of the time” and the “preternatural” is “what happens rarely, but nonetheless by the agency of created beings…”
In “WHAT I DID LEARN”, Vorhees goes full throttle for the macabre and melancholy in this “preternatural” self-revelatory poem. I say “preternatural” because having been voraciously reading early 20th century poetry like Robert Frost and E.E. Cummings since the 8th grade, I have never come across a Vorhees-like style and I consider myself as having been around the “poetic block” a few times…in WHAT I DID LEARN, he writes:
“My music group’s hit singles/stopped so many songs ago/I’ve learned my shakes and wrinkles and still I wait for wisdom…”
As I read these words I felt like an exposed viscera on legs, figuratively inside/out vibes…for I too am learning “my shakes and wrinkles” yet still “I wait” to acquire the wisdom that I presumed would come with the drudging accumulation of years.
LIke Frost, Vorhees investigates complex social and philosophical themes with mastery but with a poignant bout of relatable and humbled vulnerability which is the plight and euphoria, conundrum and exaltation of any type of artist.
Could Vorhees be described as an itinerant troubadour, who in the middle ages were the shining knights of poetry?
Troubadour from an old Occitan (an ancient province that stretched from south of France from east to west) word meaning “to compose”? Perhaps. Or maybe he’s just a guy with something to say about some things that matter to him and he conceivably hopes that they matter to you as well.
The poems read like a heuristic and Socratic exercise replete with mythical biblical and literary symbolisms.
While we’re at it, why not add Mimetic Theory to the list? This terminology is described as a theory of human behavior and culture that explains how human desire and imitation lead to conflict and violence:
What better way to exemplify the ideologies of mimetic desire-conflict- and scapegoating than the horrific and fugly HOLOCAUST!
Here is a synopsis of Mimetic Theory, it’s inception and evolution:
Origin The theory was developed by French philosopher, literary critic, and anthropologist René Girard (1923–2015).
Process Mimetic theory moves through four stages:
Mimetic desire: People imitate others and want what other people want.
Conflict: People compete for the same goods, leading to conflict.
Scapegoating: A group singles out an individual or problem as the source of their problems and violently expels or eliminates them.
Cover-up: Human culture springs up around the scapegoating mechanism to cover up the founding murder.
Throughout history, scapegoating has been the instigator of many atrocities. From the inception of slavery, to Adolf Hitler’s holocaust exterminating millions of Jewish people and what he considered “undesirable” people to the Chinese Exclusion Act of the late 19th century and now Haitian immigrants, both having been branded as “dog and cat eaters” which makes it easier to draft laws against them for you must dehumanize to make it easier to vaporize them from the planet, right?
Although the book is replete with an infelicitous subject matter, after reading it, your resistance to transfiguration could conceivably be an exercise in futility; you will emerge from the chrysalis of self-consciousness to a wise sage having been dug up from the darkness of an egregious past and exposed to ebb and flow of a reformatory present through poetic light and historical literary erudition.
Nothing is nugatory, every word, every nuance seems carefully selected. Vorhees is serving fluid paradoxical wordplay and intrigue, cajoling the reader to read on and hopefully decode the cleverly coded script.
Vorhees writes with ingenuity, authenticity and authority. A MUST read for anyone willing to trek a trip down a dark path with a promise of light ahead. The stuff of LIFE! A familiar trope done in an unfamiliar way…a literary TRIUMPH!
Duane Vorhees’ title Between Holocausts will come out later this fall from Hog Press.
Duane Vorhees is an American poet in Thailand. He is the author of THE MANY LOVES OF DUANE VORHEES, HEAVEN, GIFT: GOD RUNS THROUGH ALL THESE ROOMS, MEMORIES ARE LINKED LIKE OASES, A CONSIDERABLE SHARE OF FELICITY, and THE WOMB AND THE BRAIN. Born in Farmersville, Ohio, USA, he graduated from Bowling Green State University with a doctorate in American Culture Studies. He has taught at Seoul National University, Korea University, and the Asian Division of the University of Maryland University College (now the University of Maryland Global Campus).
Jacques Fleury
Jacques Fleury is a Boston Globe featured Haitian-American Poet, Educator, Author of four books and literary arts student at Harvard University online. His latest publication “You Are Enough: The Journey to Accepting Your Authentic Self” & other titles are available at all Boston Public Libraries, the University of Massachusetts Healey Library, University of Wyoming, Askews and Holts Library Services in the United Kingdom, The Harvard Book Store, The Grolier Poetry Bookshop, amazon etc… He has been published in prestigious publications such as Muddy River Poetry Review, the Cornell University Press anthology Class Lives: Stories from Our Economic Divide, Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene among others…Visit him at: http://www.authorsden.com/jacquesfleury.
gone
it’s the first time
since she went
that i’ve been back here
to this outdoor café
in a crowded square
by the busy beach
at the same time
in the late afternoon
i use to come here
twice every week
after i saw her
spent an hour or two
with her
in the nursing home
where she lived
for years
today i came here
at the time i use to
and am feeling sad
as i thought i would be
and thinking lots of her
while having a coffee
enjoying the sun
and reading the paper
i suppose thoughts
and feelings
are expected
coming back here
as i’m missing her
and still find it hard
to believe
mum is gone
Stephen House has won many awards and nominations as a poet, playwright, and actor. He’s had 20 plays produced with many published by Australian Plays Transform. He’s received several international literature residencies from The Australia Council for the Arts, and an Asialink India literature residency. He’s had two chapbooks published by ICOE Press Australia: ‘real and unreal’ poetry and ‘The Ajoona Guest House’ monologue. His next book drops soon. He performs his acclaimed monologues widely. Stephen had a play run in Spain for 4 years.
At night
curves in the road
multiply
when there are no
street lights
on those posted-
25 miles per hour
and they mean it
two lanes
Excessive drinking
is what the young
and the feckless islanders
do
tourists as well
willfully riding
their motorcycles
rented mopeds
ATV’s
dune buggies
without helmets
where none are
supposed to go
Their roadside
memorials are
everywhere
homemade paint chipped
white crosses losing
their luster
Death Comes to the Harborside
Historic turn of the last
century hotel and lounge’s
self-immolation produced
smoke and flames
visible on mainland
miles away
We wonder what happened
to the speakeasy ghosts
the good time girls
flappers and spirits
of the murdered and
those who died of natural
causes
Days later numbered
striped cue balls
are found unearthed
from rubble along with
a long forgotten
floor safe
Marked cards inside
Tally sheets and chits
IOU’s dated and signed
100 plus years ago
A community of crows
gathers in yew trees
bordering the inland
cemetery
The oldest headstone
date back to 1700’s
but the crows are timeless
By dusk there are
hundreds of them
silently inhabiting the trees
Surfing the Hurricane
A few 12 packs
and surfing the storm
seems like a great idea
a plan
“Oh, man, look at
the swell”
The rip tides
and the submerged
rock
the killer waves
The Chainsaw Artist
works nights in
a barn lit by flickering
kerosene lamps
Such an uncertain light
for carving dread beasts
never seen anywhere in
this world except
in his mind
When they are finished
the artist hides his creations
amid the clutching brambles
the decaying drooping trees
where hikers come upon them
in unexpected places
Unearthing these creatures
instills the kind of fear
that can never be erased
leads to illness
and despair
The woods feel haunted now
alive with unseemly beings
wherever the artist has been
We can hear incessant
tolling of church bells
from the far side
of the great salt pond
where no structures
are
Such a mournful sound
propelled across
the surface by a steady
off-shore breeze
We listen wondering
why we are being
summoned from so far
away
Rubina Anis is the Headteacher of Harimohan Government High school, Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh. She has obtained her honors’ and masters’ degree from the department of Arts and Crafts at Rajshahi University.
