• Poetry

    Three Poems by John Findura

    August 31, 2019 /

    “Nineteen Minutes Ago”

    This morning I am here
    Nineteen minutes ago we might have met
    But we missed each other, somehow
    It is raining very hard but there is no thunder
    Where there is no thunder there are few thoughts of you
    Instead in their place is a stop-motion film
    Of wooden hands playing the piano
    Think of that – those wooden fingers on those ivory keys
    Pictures of a famous actor with a bad haircut
    An actress playing three roles in the same film
    None of them are stop-motion like the wooden hands
    I read a book about volcanoes 
    And the insistence of lava over everything else last night
    And as you know if it didn’t happen there it doesn’t happen here
    Or maybe the reverse,

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  • Poetry

    “Beavis & Butthead Do English Class: Guest Starring the Memory of John Ashbery in a Thought Bubble Floating over Instructor Bodaggit’s Fedora” by Tom Kelly

    August 11, 2019 /
    Beavis, like, bangs his head against the desk
    because the four-eyed fart-knocker by the podium
    forgot to button the bottom of his shirt,
    so when he blabs, his exposed belly does that thing
    where it jiggles like grandma’s gelatin mold
    & I say his navel looks like the Sarlacc Pit
    but Beavis says it looks like the hole in a Krispy Kreme donut
    but I say it looks like a nook where Beavis can stick his snout
    but we agree that if we squint real hard,
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  • Poetry

    “The Spider Spins” by Sean Karns

    June 28, 2019 /
    In its foliage, the spider rides the vibrating
    web. It is patient and waits Buddha-like,
    as if it knows something greater—
    that survival requires less consumption,
    that survival is basic— therefore its needs
    are minimal. When its hunger is met,
    it is blessed, so much so, it wraps its dead in silk.
    It seems simple, the spinning of the web.
    The spider’s world is instinctual—
    it ignores the chaos-order beyond its web.
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  • Poetry

    “Crepuscule” by Daisy Bassen

    May 2, 2019 /
    Vanity is important as snow,
    As the deer in the yard
    That is covered by snow, unpocked
    With boot-prints. She was more beautiful
    As a fawn. I wanted her to be mine,
    To come every twilight and look at me
    Because we were alike somehow
    And it was worth the risk to stand there,
    Like an India ink etching, a meal for a coyote.
    But I was irrelevant or perhaps deer do not see
    Very well when night is coming,
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  • Poetry,  Translation

    “The Author Dedicates These Lines to His Beloved Self” by Vladimir Mayakovsky (translated by Val Vinokur)

    May 1, 2019 /

    The Author Dedicates These Lines to His Beloved Self

    Heavy.
    Like six blows.
    “Caesar’s unto Caesar––God’s unto God.”
    But where is a guy
    like me
    supposed to go?
    Where is my lair prepared?

    If I were
    still little,
    like the Great Ocean,
    I’d get up on my wavy tiptoes,
    caress the moon with the tide.
    Where can I find a beloved,
    someone just like me?
    She wouldn’t fit into the tiny sky!

    O if only I were penniless!
    Like a billionaire!

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