INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
Lana Bella
Deji W. Adesoye
Chris Lord
Ali Znaidi
Francis Annagu
Olajide Vincent Ajise
Lyn Lifshin
Akor Emmanuel
Duane Locke
Running Cub
Paul B. Roth
Fahredin Shehu
Laszlo Slomovits
Silvia Scheibli
Michelle Bailat-Jones
Amit Parmessur
Irsa Ruci
Elisavietta Ritchie
Alex Ferde
Richard Gartee
Robert Nisbet
Alan Britt
Changming Yuan
Nahshon Cook
Peycho Kanev
Jennifer Burd
Fred Wolven
Karyn M. Bruce
Ann Arbor Review
is an independent
International Journal & ezine
Copyright (c) 2016
Francis Ferde
All rights revert back to each poet.
--editor / Southeastern Florida
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AAR history note: in print 1967 - 1980. Irregular publications 1980 - 2004. As ezine 2004 - present. Most of 47 years all together....
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staff:
Francis Ferde
Silver Grey Fox
Running Cub
Fred Wolven
Submissions via e-mail:
INTIMACY
If I told you
black scorpions
orbit the humidity
of your waist,
would you teach
me how to weep?
CROSSING THE BAY BRIDGE IN HEAVY FOG
Cranes on tugs barely visible.
Driving through sky
. . . through clouds . . . directly behind a phantom camper
with dirt bikes strapped to its elephant ass, I feel like I’m
driving through heaven, on vacation, only there’s no place
to dock the camper for the evening.
No horizon . . . only thick fog as I enter the first vague
draw span . . . driving through steel like penetrating the
membrane of some bizarre memory that I never actually had,
I reach land & am awakened by a crab diner’s whitewashed
walls, salt & pepper shingles, & denim blue weathered door
with cracks like antique whispers.
Invading the peninsula, leaving the Chesapeake behind,
a faded coral clapboard house stumbles into the foreground
where, beside a lazy stand of silver maples, one elderly Wye
Oak huddles beneath smoky daylight, straining beneath the
weight of the falling sky.
IRONIC WIND
He was an old composer. No, no. He
was an old poet! It’s getting harder to remember.
His fame fleeting . . . eroding like constant wind
sculpting mauve arroyos across the backs of his
hands.
Imagination eluded him his entire
life, but he was a great salesman, even though he
hated salesmen.
Today an ironic wind
Blows volcanic dust across his canvas shoes.
THE GOLDFINCH
The goldfinch pecks soggy ground
beside brown dandelions below the shade
of a split-rail fence.
Boeing 737 shreds a lonely cloud
like a handkerchief waving goodbye.
Garlic tongues push through black soil
while an adolescent sun arouses
young tomato plants.
The goldfinch ignites a brief spark
above a bare magnolia branch.
English ivy’s tiny duck feet braid
the ivory thigh of a rain gutter.
Two shaggy black dogs dissolve
in a dream of pedestrians & shadows.
White prophets emerge from the finger
bones of a lusty dogwood.
DRIVING TO MORGANTOWN, WEST VIRGINIA
The jade hills of Maryland & West Virginia
overlap. Steam rises o4 the poplars.
Below, a handful of tiny houses resemble
dice tossed against the mulberry trees.
Clouds billow like thick petticoats of Missouri
can-can girls in an 1882 smoky saloon.
Alan Britt, Reisterstown, Maryland