INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
Patty Dickson
Pieczka
Deji Adesoye
Michelle Bailet-Jones
Steve Barfield
Gale Acuff
Elisavietta Ritchie
Solomon Haruna
Aneek Chatterjee
Karyn M. Bruce
Robert Nisbet
Laszlo Slomvits
Y. Przhebelskaya
Running Cub
Alan Britt
Richard Gartee
Fahredn Shehu
Amit Parmressar
Ann Arbor Review
is an independent
International Journal & ezine
Copyright (c)
2021-22 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 55 years all together....
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staff:
Francis Ferde, editor
Silver Grey Fox, editing
Running Cub, reader
Fred Wolven, publisher
Submissions via e-mail:
(She
had a pretty face, drove me wild—
I
even wanted her to have my child.)
~Robert Palmer
Get up when you’re already up?
Trampoline
bouncing supermarket superstition
into
the medulla I forgotta,
never seen
again,
but
new ones burst from superstitious
genes
despite teachings
that
permeate spongy imaginations fraught
with
star-nosed astrophysicists
inseminating colors not approved
by
the cosmic color wheel, excepting
that
symbolic bluegreen pocking the lunar
surface with Triceratops horns nudging
evolution into the newest of new
world
orders, order of skeletons
in
lockjaw unable or unwilling
to
retreat whilst others wield power
in
some lightsaber universe beyond
the
one we embraced the day
we
were baptized by drive-thru
churches & core curriculums.
GLORIOUS THURSDAY
Fireflies
tattoo twilight’s torso
that
resembles Nijinsky’s tights.
On cable TV
two dry-cleaned
bodies embrace.
One maple
syrup rabbit
screeches rusty warning
to
his mate in harm’s way;
I
whisper that we’re here—
my
Bichon & me—
before mate vaporizes
below
thick forsythia.
Croakers plunder darkness.
AC fans &
Yokohama tires
like
maestro flicks of the wrist
lick
the asphalt.
38 caliber
raindrops shatter
the
asbestos roof & invite
eggplant’s juvenile blossoms
with
goldenrod stamens
to a
romantic evening
at a
candlelit hideaway.
Croakers
give way to creepers,
creepers to cicadas, & like poets
not
fully indoctrinated, cicadas
become cheetahs, cheetahs
exhausted by DNA yet intently
focused upon their next meal.
SEPARATION OF CHURCH & STATE
(La
sublime mére du vínaígre . . .)
~Jacques Dupin
“Was Jesus a
child of God?” asked
Crabb
Robinson to William Blake
during one of their zany theological
discussions.
“Yes, he
was. For that matter, so am I,
so
are you, & Mary Magdalene as well,”
Billy
advised Crabb, inserting a metaphysical
splinter into their ale-infested fantasies
leapfrogging the fiery hoops of one woman
in
sequin bodysuit with hammers
in
her hips smashing archaic love affairs.
Then, again,
feral sax wails & crooner
croons that woman is slave to the slave
&
only after a bipolar vortex curls its white
knuckles around the turquoise arteries
of
hope, yikes, suffocating fate.
So, how long
will it be before we assist
those
who are unable to assist themselves?
VAN THE MAN
Sunlight
through the crack
of my
brain, I said, sunlight
on
the brink of insane
with
a diatonic harp’s
existential squawks
inside my holy black hole.
An alarm
scorpions the dawn
of my
worst nightmare, like
when
I loitered the streets
later
that evening
with
the Antarctic wind’s
walnut tail poised to sting
my
beluga penumbra.
& just like
that
I
opened up a window.
Just like
that I opened
up a
window.
ODE TO AN INCENSE TILE
The incense
tile is blind
as
she scooches beside me
during my dream.
I don’t know
whether to fall
in
love or to grow scales,
seeing as how it’s all
a
fairytale, anyway.
It’s 2002,
the season
for
religious abuse,
so, I
check my illusions at the altar
and
stroll
the
hollowed-out paradigms
of one
thousand generations,
past
lichen-covered philosophies
in
search of a sober existence.
And just
about then a wooden match
flickering its ladybug wings
sizzles the tip of one patchouli stick
before coughing up a lazy lotus
of
blue smoke.
Alan Britt, Reistertown, Maryland