Late Flowers
By Christopher Bernard
Only now have they started to fade.
They had just begun to open
the afternoon I bought them
right before your birthday:
white lilies, red carnations,
clematis that clings to the eaves,
small pink roses,
little daisies,
against a deep green backdrop
of shadowy ferns and leaves.
Over the days that followed
they blossomed like a flourish
from a garden on your little table
in your lovely room
bright and warm and gentle,
the windows opening to the bay
and the northern reach of sunlight
gathering the day.
They opened like young loving,
they opened like the spring,
they opened like your smile
at the sweetness of all beauty:
a simple and artless bouquet.
Only now do they begin
to fade. Who could have known
they opened only for one
who would no longer see them,
in a room where you, in sleep,
the afternoon that followed
the day that you were born
(or so it seems, to the living),
fading long before the flowers,
were gone even as they flowered
beautiful as the day?
For K.
Christopher Bernard’s latest book of poems, The Socialist’s Garden of Verses, has received a stellar review from Kirkus and will be included as a May feature (Best Indie Books of the Month).
‘Wake up, Dream boy!’ explores the ordeals of a young teenage boy, Tom, through a dream he had. It combines geographic names, conceptualized characters, metaphysical locations and various thought realms.
Things turned upside down as Tom, in high school, became obsessed with horror films and books that had satanic themes. Anything scary caught his attention and he hardly paid attention in class. Left alone, he looked out for books flooded with zombies, ghosts and other extra-terrestrial entities. Tom’s friends eventually got tired of hearing about his special interest and kept him at arm’s length so they wouldn’t have to hear all of his evil visions of blood-feasting demons, cannibals and dark voices telling people to commit suicide. He became somewhat of a loner.
His mother, Sarah, whose husband had died shortly after Tom’s birth, tried to distract him from the horror. However, she eventually gave up, since she had two other children.
However, Tom’s nightmares played themselves out. For every action, and every obsession of humankind, there is an equal but opposite consequence.
These poems are conceptual although they read quite straightforwardly. My idea was to show those who were writing poetry that decimated grammar, syntax, and meaning that poetic language was no different than ordinary language and that aporia or uncertainty of meaning could be achieved in the most plainspoken English. The lack of finality of meaning simply accompanied language as a matter of course. The poems, I find, are a bit funny and hopefully are read that way.
the window of the shampoo ice
the kaiser roll of the sky is the law of the lake
to eat a burger on the open norse day
your old chewy ticket is the radio rock of the talon
eating a hungry hippo with a marble in my mouth
lending a measure to the crow
the breaking clone of the door
sleep is the rule of the great apple
the sleeping hum is the cloud of the wall
that walknut of the ironed face
the street puppet of the moth
the song of the lower limbs and the paint of the freezing face
this idea is the paint of the globe
this is the number of the roses and that is certain
to lake a lark
to win a letter of the working duck
the sinking fish
the lizard of the jumble
care for a chair (mcdonald’s coffee)
in the cave of the parrots
that coffee was in the shape of a rose
answering my skull when I’m in the rainbow shoes
the losing brick sauce
the navel orange is the bat of the produce
the household of mars
that apple plank is the standard of the forest
the bat’s head was like milk in the furnace
the winter seed is the diamond of the cacao
losing a worm to look for a wheel
that normal eye in the chair
the coin and that seventh myriad
my sleeping head swims
we are in the stomach of the goat’s raspberry
the shadow rabbit is the coil of the present
winning at the battleship game
bio/graf J. D. Nelson (b. 1971) experiments with words in his subterranean laboratory. His poetry has appeared in many small press publications, worldwide, since 2002. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Cinderella City (The Red Ceilings Press, 2012). His first full-length collection, entitled In Ghostly Onehead, is slated for a 2021 release by mOnocle-Lash Anti-Press. His work has recently appeared in E·ratio, Otoliths, BlazeVOX, and Word For/Word. Visit www.MadVerse.com for more information and links to his published work. Nelson lives in Colorado
Imagine running a business where allies of the Shadows seek revenge against humanity. I have a quirk about multi- location Cloud Attendance, especially
when the call to arms is augmented with global load balancing. The native name of Armenia is Hayastan.
Bird photography
In many ways it seems like the national park that time forgot. So, if you’re
looking at being more mobile for a bash on the unpredictable ground
there, then forgo sky- high stilettos & put sandbags over the legs.
