INSIDE THIS ISSUE:

Michelle Bailat-Jones
Amit Parmessur
Steve Barfield
Fahredin Shehu
Karyn M. Bruce
Richard Gartee
Running Cub
Dejoy Robillard
Yuan Hongri
Lasz.o Slomovits
Silvia Scheibli
Stephen Sleboda
Alan Britt
Gale Acuff
Elisavietta Ritchie
Shutta Crum
Patty Dickson Pieczka

Duane Locke
Jennifer Burd
Aneek Chatterjee
Robert Nisbet
Robert Penick

Alex Ferde
Solomon Musa Haruna

Violeta Allmuca
Fred Wolven
 

Ann Arbor Review

is an independent

International Journal & ezine

Copyright (c) 2020 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 54 years all together....

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staff:
Francis Ferde
Silver Grey Fox
Running Cub
Fred Wolven
 

Submissions via e-mail:

poetfred@att.net

LEOPARD MOON

Despite what the leopard moon says,
I believe that certain symbols are beautiful.

I mean symbols are oysters sliding down
our psychic throats much the same
as Andre Breton’s hips made of dice.

Ah, but some symbols have lucent personalities,
an individual sense of what it takes to destroy
the old-world order of might makes right
via pure and simple common-folk sense
concerning what is right.

Remember, they’re not completely witless,
these symbols who always remember that they
hail from gentle mothers and humble fathers.

CRAZY SQUIRREL, SAY HELLO
TO THE 21^ST CENTURY

What will I do if a squirrel hops up to me
way down here in my aberrant basement,
down here in my sanctuary?

I don’t know what I’d do if a crazy squirrel
invaded my holy solitude.
I don’t exactly have a plan for some
misguided squirrel who happened by, looking,
no doubt, for escape from his own dilemma.

I suppose the odds of such a chance encounter
are slim to none.

But just the same I should have a game plan,
a constitution, a syllabus, a bill of rights,
or even a bible that can easily be corrupted
at any given time during any given millennium
by any given dumb as a bag of rocks world leader
shouting from a podium that he and he alone
knows what’s best for all of humankind.

Something tells me that I need to prepare
myself for this crazy squirrel.

LUDWIG IN LATER YEARS

That’s right, in later years, Ludwig honored
the cycle—speaking of his late quartets—
cyclic moments of violin and cello
that said, Set my demons free!
That’s right, even with predigital cognition
and knowing full well that death and deafness
lurked beneath the diminutive psalms of his
imaginary Florida room stocked with mangos,
guavas and lemon trees on the outskirts
of Bonn, he said, Get your barbaric hands off me
before I eviscerate you with hissing violins and screeching
cellos, you insignificant tone-deaf souls!

TWO TATTOOS

I was about to ask you something.

So be it. Ask away.

I was going to say, just before you
eased your left elbow into
that shadowy jade pillow,
your stigmata that taps existence
like a brass-tipped twisted hickory cane
resembling a spotted jaguar
with golden smoke rings as rare
as Napoleonic champagne bubbles
rupturing the surface of that son-
of-a-bitch’s aberrant gift to the world.

 

I’m still here!

As I say, I was hoping to find you moping
around your library of poetry books
scattered like dinosaurs leisurely feeding
beside abandoned tarpits.

But what happens when the planets shift,
as inevitably they will, causing cosmic
damage to the entire solar system
as we know it will?

Well, then, I guess I’ll just have
to manage, somehow, won’t I?
The zeitgeist will show me the way.
I owe everything that I am
to the godforsaken zeitgeist.
[With that the poet scooped up all
his awards in both arms while flexing
both muscular arms with sleeves rolled
above two red, white and blue tattoos.]

Alan Britt, Reisterstown, Maryland