INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
Deji Adesoye
Changming Yuan
Violeta Allmuca
Beppe Costa
Engjell I. Berisha
Narendra Kumar Arya
Akwu Sunday Victor
Michelle Bailat-Jones
Laszlo Slomovits
Stefania Battistella
Agron Shele
Lana Bella
Fahredin Shehu
Alan Britt
Silvia Scheibli
Shutta Crum
Running Cub
Alex Ferde
Irsa Ruci
Jennifer Burd
Paul B. Roth
Richard Gartee
Elisavietta Ritchie
Peycho Kanev
Helen Gyigya
Amit Parmessur
Sneha Subramanian Kanta
Robert Nisbet
Jeton Kelmendi
Duane Locke
Richard Lynch
Jean McNerney
Fred Wolven
Ann Arbor Review
is an independent
International Journal & ezine
Copyright (c) 2017
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 48 years all together....
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staff:
Francis Ferde
Silver Grey Fox
Running Cub
Fred Wolven
Submissions via e-mail:
DRIVING
Driving through fog
when the fog thickens
& I find myself inside a body
fog conduit
steamy blood
condensation
covering my skin
many bodies
inside the body I’ve invaded
shadow creatures
with ashen wings
diffusing
damp smoke
wisteria vines
like arteries
inside hydrogen violas
a bridge that enters
the lungs
of this body
of time
this body
of sensuality
this body
of grief
I could just as well
be strolling beneath
a gas lamp
on the streets
of Amsterdam
1842
or Seeing
a terrible misery
with poor souls
in a Bosch painting
a plague
of spiritual proportion
& still in fact
find myself
staring
straight ahead
on this road
to nowhere.
DUSK IN MARYLAND
A robin splashes his orange across the maples.
Dusk with a white rag tied around its head
strolls through our neighborhood.
Birds are elaborate
this time of day,
whistling across fences,
exchanging idle gossip.
As darkness enters maple leaves
I enter the long grass while clinging
to the hind leg of an industrious mosquito
who tips his Ascot felt cap
& tugs his ashen collar
when I ask him exactly
what year of the universe
we’re living in.
He muses, “Reisterstown is vast;
rumors rule the day!”
MANGO SKY
Allamanda flowers vibrate the green eyelid
of a humid afternoon.
Their yellow whispers
are delicate membranes.
Bronze butterfly floats the length
of your body,
your legs of glass,
your left elbow bent like a chameleon’s triangle head,
your torso of startled mockingbirds.
A three-quarters moon wriggles free
from the worsted wool pocket
of a mango sky.
FLORIDA DREAM
Warm breeze irritates a dry frond.
Rough yellow billows the stamen of a red hibiscus.
Cicadas encircle the afternoon’s waist—
as they shake their bloody castanets,
brunette rattlesnakes fall from palm trees.
A viceroy butterfly weaves waxen leaves
beside tiny star-shaped yellow flowers & etches
its wild shadow against a faded fence board.
Waving a black arrow, a blue jay shatters civilization
when he shifts from powerline
to lemon tree
with unconscious ease.
The blazing hips of the red hibiscus
open wide to receive rippling heat.
From their nests the purple tongues
of sabre plants compete for humidity
as tiny white flowers leap from their green throats.
Mature pink mandevilla flowers devour
the cracked white paint of a wooden post
that supports an aluminum swan-necked mailbox.
ENLIGHTENED BY BLUE METAPHYSICS
Deep sobs drop from elephant clouds.
Eventually there are no clouds,
no bearded thunder,
only the blue that floods the iris of a feral white cat,
her other eye a sapphire scarab
sifted from an Egyptian tomb.
Perhaps a Platonic blue that engenders
the wrath of Blake, since no one
has ever experienced this mythical color?
Perhaps a Renaissance angel balanced
upon the oxidized copper shoulder
of a slender woman once married
to a successful textile merchant?
Despite enlightenment by blue metaphysics,
sobs fall in clumps around thick shadows
causing us to lift our feet for fear of crushing
these gourd like jellyfish of grief.
In broad daylight, we form innumerable witnesses
like ants with cargo strapped to our backs—
by the thousands we hang upside down
as others join us to link a human bridge
swaying just above our dangerous earth.
Alan Britt, Registerstown, Maryland