Nothing Like a Genie


Christine’s eyes flickered like kerosene lanterns

vacillating between vibrancy & shadows.

 

Her Duchenne smile warmed icy hearts during days

without flames & navigated nights without star shine.

 

We knew she’s among us if we deeply breathed,

inhaling Hypnotic Poison perfume oil by Christian Dior.

 

Christine’s combustible temper exploded without warning

yet shillyshallied like an oil lamp on a floundering whaler.

 

She sought public affirmation when her glimmer softened,

hanging around cafés flexing round hips like a streetwalker.

 

Tender evenings by firesides, telling stories on barstools sustained

Christine’s good nature, attracting suitors—repelling disparagers.

 

 


Powder Down

 

Blue herons alight

on the wooden pontoon

gangly long toes touch down

exert diaphanous pressure

spread the same sparse webbing

that navigated salty marshlands

only moments before the siege

took to the sky resting on a raft

long enough to stand motionless

then stab fish with switchblade beaks.

 

Friends and I coax conversation, skreich

kut, kut, kut-kaaaoh…kut, kut, kut-kaaaoh! 

from the shoreline, distorting our arms

flapping imagined blue plumage on wings 

engraving wet sand with temporal footprints.

 

We marvel at their behavior,

mimic feathered digitigrade skeow calls

anew—muted by restless, crashing tides,

fall face first into surging waves

attempting to emulate the flock’s

balance, poise, and equilibrium

standing peg-legged, posing

like gender neutral Bolshoi divas

locked in graceful Pirouettes, bouncing

Ballonnés and breathtaking Arabesques.


 


Sunday Song & Dance

 

Brandon wore his dancing shoes to church

each week, ready to stand when others

sat down, anxious to praise his lord

with the old soft shoe while mumbling

mantras invoking the spirits of Bo Jangles,        

Rudolph Nureyev, Isadora Duncan, Gregory Hines,

& Margot Fonteyn—turning pivots, feeling

the fury of careening feet shuffling across floors

or standing on pointe, at one with a universe

cavorting in a sanctuary where parishioners

sang hymns in syncopated time, rollicking

down sacred aisles like Dorothy enroute to Oz.

 

 


Radio Daze

 

Hauling neighborhood kids in my crimson Radio Flyer

I misread love of a free ride as peer approval—

popularity defined by jokes, laughter & abuse.

 

Touching tired shoulders under sweltering Sahara

heatwaves, sweat chilling blistered cheeks,

my determined hands pulled two, three—four

siblings & their friends—as well as dogs & cats— 

over concrete driveways, though granite landscapes,

pea gravel backstreets, & smooth city sidewalks.

 

My passengers later asked about sidewalk surfin’

donated pairs of roller skates entrusting me to perform magic

& transform them to hipsters, nailing the hard steel wheels

to crudely cut plywood…bending spikes, securing

parts of the composite idem like an expert craftsman

often eyeing my ruddy 4-wheeler on end—neglected,

gathering dust, corroding behind a hot water heater.

 

I willed my pitted wagon—once smooth & cherry red—

to Grandma’s garden spirit that sat on stacked fertilizer bags

& roamed her barren vegetable patches planting seeds

of encouragement as her corporal body lay six feet under.

 

Below waxing crescents, compressed rubber wheels

ungreased ball bearings groaned & squealed yet again,

lugging cartloads of manure enriching dry, depleted soil;

I’d glance outside bedroom windows each harvest moon

witness her apparition towing my reclaimed Radio Flyer

to the curbside crammed full of buffalo gourds, cucumbers,

squash, zucchini, warty Jarrahdale & classic orange pumpkins.

 

 


Fog

 

Fog signaled Biblical obscurity,

established paranormal grey zones

            where imagination found literary footing

            rooted in Zeus’s mist spread in Homer’s Iliad,

            Percival’s Holy Grail quest, Hamlet’s Elsinore Castle

            rampart; gothic characters renewed foggy tales

from Catharine and Heathcliff on the moors,

to Poe’s sweaty lampposts in The Rue Morgue.

 

Black and white films featured Gypsy caravans

wagon wheels cutting through grey wash

            condensation, rolling over damp cobblestones

            passing hazy painted backdrops, searching

            for body parts, lost souls, and graveyard clues,

            evaluating each mad scientist’s prognosis

hidden behind scholarly guesswork, flashing

electrodes, frosty steam pipes, pea soup clarity.

 

Universal Studio’s horror movies aside

Hollywood fog immortalized Jack the Ripper

            terrorizing Whitechapel’s murky streets,

            glazed over moody train station lovers, had

            Claude Raines and Humphry Bogart disappear

            into ebon veils that hung like airport vapor screens,

Casablanca dry ice melting as they anticipated

the beginning of an enduring friendship.

 

In the permissive 70’s, Adrienne Barbeau

enjoyed a love affair with fog, its damp caress

            featured the actress’s womanly assets to her

            best advantage, dropping like affectionate

            dew drops on her forehead lighting up brunette

            hair like a damp diadem or angelic halo;

groaning as she escaped the lighthouse with a golden crucifix

vengeful revenants returning as fog, decapitating a priest.

 

 

An award-winning author, poet, and former Evergreen Valley College English Professor, Sterling Warner’s works have appeared many literary magazines, journals, and anthologies including Danse Macabre, Trouvaille Review, Lothlórien Poetry Journal,Ekphrastic Review, andSparks of Calliope. Warner’s collections of poetry include Rags and Feathers, Without Wheels, ShadowCat, Edges, Memento Mori: A Chapbook Redux, Serpent’s Tooth, Flytraps, Cracks of Light: Pandemic Poetry & Fiction 2019-2022, Halcyon Days: Collected Fibonacci (1923)—as well as Masques: Flash Fiction & Short Stories. Presently, Warner writes, hosts/participates in “virtual” poetry readings, turns wood, and enjoys retirement in Washington.