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entrée à Danse Macabre NEW! DM 38 Stonewall Redux Danse Macabre du Jour About Us Archive du Macabre

Belles-lettres

Denise Baer - Susan M. Botich - Alan Britt - Alex Cigale - Nabina Das
Tatjana Debeljački - Katerina Fretwell - Ricky Friesem - Ronnie Kadish
Raina J. León - Linda Lerner - Michael Mc Aloran - George Moore
Matthew Preston - Octavio Quintanilla - Derek Richards - B.B. Riefner
Katherine Shabat - Matteo Spinetti - Thuy Truong - Farida Samerkhanova

villanus, a, um
Denise Baer
Time
Time melts with age.
Solid youth a poor listener
concerning wilted eras.
Unprepared for this stage,
body and mind a foreigner,
apart from a checklist of errors.

Reflect on love,
healer of anxieties,
pull closer to the Promised Land.
Sleep sound, a peaceful dove.
Open your heart to pieties,
when He extends a forgiving hand.

Susan Botich
The Hollow Places
When earth shakes
trembling bone and blood
and the hollow places
all the hollow places, unknown
tear, undying
apart.

Stories say
somewhere beyond this
a breeze
kisses all the sallow cheeks
a sun
caresses all the tired

http://dansemacabre.art.officelive.com/Villanuspoetica.aspx 8/26/2010


shoulders bent from too much
weighted trembling.
The very dust, there, a testimony
full-bloom in mystery.

Here, we stand on a crevasse
its danger eluding
even our best intentions.
Each foot planted
in a different world
we tremble, breathe
tremble, breathe.

Alan Britt
Metaphysical Life
The soul
is a blackberry.

It’s also
humidity,
fleas,
aluminum.

Each item
fills a stained
canvas sack
dragged
through the muck
of everyone’s
metaphysical life.

Blake, Donne, Marvell
were intimate
with the
talking soul,
imagination’s
tantric intercourse
with alchemy.

A hound barks
through
cool darkness.
His heavy wooden voice
becomes
part of
my soul.

A white
Chevy mini-van
sniffing
bare
legs
of lamplight
becomes a permanent
fixture
in my soul, also,
(as well as Shasta,
our 12-year-old Bouvier,
stretched out
beneath patio lattice
shadows).

Venus,
above the
maple’s black hair,
blazes
out
of reach.

Alex Cigale
Under the Black Flag;
Strong Drink Hardens Men
Gallows on the shore near the low-tide line,
bodies washed over, submerged by three tides
again and again then taken away,
the corpses coated with tar for display –
pirates hung in chains, were sent for dissection,
only then buried in an unmarked grave.
Sometimes the rope broke, the half-conscious man



hauled up the ladder to be hanged again;
not unusual for family and friends
to hang on the legs for agony to end.
Mothers and fathers, warrant your children:
the lives they led could end no other way.
Strong drink hardens men to committing crimes
bitter now to them as torture and death.

Nabina Das
Wood-Story Before the Millennium and Now
This is a table where we used to keep a glass vase in the nineties
the sun a syruping gooseberry often tumbling out of it reckless
a wooden table, smooth-plank body of a tree dressed for our
weekend dinners. Some clutter as it happens with faces clustered
coats of varnish and heavy-lashed lacquerware, dead-white ceramic
this will still be the same surface where we will spill the gravy
push the sparkling tea across, lick any fallen crumbs with thumbs
Keep the fast, it gives long life
to your husband, those elderly
women will implore and
let the table carry ornate
plates of offerings you won’t easily touch
only after the moon does first
its shadow on the water on your silver tray.
And then the table can sing like a cricket
all that crockery clattering
we will eat everything before
the moon-shadow devours the mind
ignoring what the women say.
In fact, you will know, I only cared
about just crickets because they
love the blackness of soul just as I do.
When I close my eyes I see my aunt lissome and dark with her braid
long like those thick twines for hauling country boats to shore
she smiles and shows a tooth we were told is of the elephant, rare.
I see her on her back on the bed tossing a red plastic ball over her chest
lob and drop and lob and show the gajadanta smile while my uncle
sits two feet away on a table, the one they never dined on, used as a shelf
for things, littered for the most time. He dangling his black-shoed feet as
if he is a kid watching the unbelievable enchantress woman’s trick
of lobbing a red-desire ball high up; the head of the old-fashioned bed
preventing him to leap forward, also because I zip into the room
looking for my cousin as uncle shifts, legs undangle, the table creaks.
The life story of woods
when they come from
forests of greenness
tell of more lines and stars
than found on our palms.
I don’t remember when Habib Tanveer or Gangubai the siren throat died
when was it bringing home wads of cash that quick dirty jobs paid was cool
money for home, food, electronics, but no song or lines; but I do remember
rehearsing one afternoon with Habib for a play we would perform in a street
where racketeers and launderers ran their shops; they watched, we stood
on the dust as if on breadcrumb crusts strewn on a table top, hewn uneven
because no one cleaned; a china cup stayed back, the old tea leaves telling
a tale of the millennium as they should, like all things emancipated and sweetly old.

This work is supported by Sarai-CSDS, New Delhi.

Tatjana Debeljački
Are there...?
Someone is breaking the branches?!
From midnight to the dawn.
The forest is trembling inside me.
My trees are innocent,
Thirsty of milk,
Firm hands and
The scent of effervesce.
I'm drinking my mint tea.
I'm bringing tranquility without the aim
And the flowers for the vase.
When I look at it is never the same.
I'm starting to believe in fertility of miracles.
Is there the flame, which could turn the heavens
Into the ashes?
Are there any hands to pick up my ripe apples?!

Katerina Fretwell



Royal Bearing
(To Aunt Kate 1910 – 2000)

Imposing at six feet,
your blue orbs bore down
as I rudely pushed you aside
in my nonsensical kinder-years.

Married into Mom’s bankrupt
family, her domestic
ineptitude stunned your
base-camp-survival mode,

you trained me to sew
zippers, iron Oxford cloth
button-downs and coddle
poached eggs just so.

Eschewing French-German
Honours to wed, you joshed
that the six IQ points short
of Mom’s 160 afforded you

house smarts. Raconteur
enthroned in a wingback,
you harvested us five
cousins—at your feet,

presented yourself—
Mrs Search & Rescue
in family mishaps.
Dying, Mom chose for

my coerced social curtsy
her frayed brown frock.
You nixed that, At least
give her the proper armour!

Modern Cinderella, I bowed
to dowagers on the dais—armed
in borrowed obligatory off-white.
Bless your common sense.

Ricky Friesem
Learning
Ankle deep in foaming surf
he glares into the ocean's maw
turns briefly to make sure we're there
then raises his right hand and orders
the relentless waves to STOP.
STOP he cries until his voice
gives out and he looks back
his pleading eyes demanding
that we help him tame
this stubborn new opponent.
He’s only four you see,
and still has much to learn

Ronnie Kadish
Challah
The gentle breeze gathered strength,
Gustily pushing us up the hill.
The scent of baking
Drifted down on an errant wind.
Two loaves of brown-breasted bread
Rested in their pan,
Cuddled, warmed, against the chill
Under a blanket, old and frayed.
“I put in a bit of this and that,” she said.
“Some golden honey, still-warm eggs,
A drop of water, flour from the mill.”
There’s something special about this challah,
It rises with the yeast,
Circles over the wicks
Floating in the bowl
Pulsating in the flickering light,
Reflected in the children’s eyes.
Love wasn’t measured cup by cup,



Into the dough,
But kneaded in by toil-worn hands.
A whispered prayer leavened it,
Wrapped itself around the family
In fragrant, blessed rings

Raina J. León
Exotic
My language has its own world
where he doesn’t know how to live
Yuko Taniguchi

He teased my tongue, begged me to say dick
in Spanish, to tell him all the names darkness gives
to the body’s salt places. To say was to lick,
fellatio of heavy breath panted into ear,
then the rush to reveal and get to the grit
the tongue implied. I succumbed to his pleasure,
allowed him to twist tendrils of indio hair
with index finger, wonder at how quickly
negro was reborn, the kink waiting for sweat.
My skin, the Caribbean Sea, he imagined,
though I had only swum its currents thrice.
Brown limbs? I was transfigured to coconut shell,
inside sweet water he would suck, but never,
never my name on his lips.

Linda Lerner
Here’s the Catch
let’s do catch up, somebody says:
If I could catch my breath
catch my life like a magic ball, catch on that fast
to keep the ball, the catch in the too good
to be true that is, like catching a shooting star
outside the song, catch in my voice
that keeps it from flying
to catch the day by its roots every day
a good catch my mother always said
of what always gets away
my cat caught: a string hanging
from his mouth I couldn’t pull out
and glimpsing the tail end of his catch
I mistook for a toy, tricked him with food
to drop, then caught the enormity of his catch:
way he stared at the spot where
the mouse I had gargbaged lay
this mouse that was big as the great marlin
Hemingway’s old man caught and lost without loosing

Michael Mc Aloran
in the craven winds
the banality of the searing flesh

the drawn hearse of the night drags its knuckles
through the echoes endless

the maggots are raised up by the sun to writhe in
the unceasing blood

teeth lay scattered idly in bloody soil

the sky caves in like the night erases
in the valley of meat the starved light is bled dry

shadows evolve in the outstretched palm
earth cavernous existence buried in the stricken flame

fists clenched draw out the the smear of the sunken eye
the burst dam whispers of tears of future abscence

burst stitches of wry smiles lick at the dust of the skyline
in the craven winds there are secrets ever yet unknown

George Moore



Iceland
There is nothing left to lose at dawn
when dawn itself has lost its suddenness
as here, when the night florescent
against the sky transforms all changes.

And yet I am alone, for years now,
which have crystallized into a moment
when separate meant release, freedom,
a fact of future truths encased in lies.

I guess I never knew the real extremes.
Mountains do not make people tall.
The enemies of the earth are its stases,
thinking that everything comes again.

Now the outlet glacier retreats, the sea
rises to compensate, in devastation, spring
does not pass but fades, summer seems
to forget there is no distance to the Circle.

I know only the land like a single word
forged out of the night, spread across
the cottongrass pastures of my brain
to seed the future in this foreign mouth.

There is something in being absent,
forgotten, something more in being here
and nowhere else. The arctic river beauty
reminds me spring and winter are the same.

But this land, cured in time and rocky
with the truth of primal elements,
breaks down into pasturelands and snows,
into farms spotting the mouth of fjords,

slipping into a warming phase, a death
uncovered in its caretakers, who shipped here
twelve hundred years ago, here and
elsewhere, shipped to the failing corners.

The changes do not tell me who I am,
they evoke but cannot conjure. The silence
rattles in my brain, breaks forth at last
to cause an eruption of pure consciousness.

Perhaps the land’s resuscitation depends
on the absence of men. The silence insures
a regeneration, the cycles endure. Or do they?
We are the sea, the land, differently dawning.

Matthew Preston
A Moment Between Us Beyond Us Above Us
Together we came upon the seashore seeking serenity in the sunset.
Together we held hands and passed enlightenment
through our finger tips--
all the while humming arrhythmic melodies
in the wind while the breeze made
our hair stick to our skin.

"Did you love me when you first met me?"

Heresy reverberating in the ears of a romantic--
leaves a resonant ever-after echoing
off the porous walls of my esophagus.
You answer me in silence and your eyes seem to say all is Ok.

The sun setting in the distance is sending pale orange peels shooting into the sky.
The waves breaking with a clash onto Cretaceous rocks,
your lips crash onto mine and my breath becomes you--

My love is your love is my love is your love

Bare asses rest on morning grass with legs crossed and chins up.
Deep in-outs soothe anxious silence and our chakras light up when the moonlight
hits our faces with warm radiance.

Shall we dance My Love?

In the god-pause between breaths I hear Sirens singing in the distance;
Angelic trumpets calling the righteous to revel.



Embracing the Chi surging from your hands on my thigh
I open crust eyes and blink seven times to make sure you are real.

Childhood innocence around a campfire:
If I had a guitar
I would teach you a song my father wrote...

Eyes closed and chin up, legs crossed and palms open.
Time has stopped here before me, a metaphysical anomaly
autonomously governing my psyche.

Oh, how the monkeys have forgotten their roots,
digging their graves with the bodies of their relatives.

My Ego whispers "This too shall pass"
And my Id is eager to be inside you.
tremolo crescendo of my desire excreting itself from my
vocal chords:

Do you hear me or is this all in my head?

Communication seems futile here
and so I drink some more of this tea you
brewed from the fungus you found on your farm and slip back into infinity--
I can only hope you will still be here when I awake.

Octavio Quintanilla
The Poor
Whoever has no house now, will never have one. Rilke

Who has stolen all the good ideas?
The chair is gone. The faucet
and the stove.

At night my body climbs out
of my thoughts. Born blind,
the hands lead it to the water.
It meets the tax collector
and the priest. I say, Good evening,
and I mean, You have somewhere to go.

I search the night
for what it has taken. Things
more made of anger
than of flesh.
It’s how history moves
backwards. The history of rivers
and of hands poisoned
by pesticide. Small hearts
emptied out of all grief.
America. Third world
countries. I walk backwards.
Is that the moon
or a bird on fire?
The road ends
at the garbage dump.

One hundred years from now, I watch
a news report about garbage scavengers.
Their life depends
on a rusty wheelbarrow

to carry the cabbage and rotting asparagus
to mix in soup. One of them finds
an aluminum can. A child is luckier.
He goes home empty handed.

Derek Richards
everyone...
everyone goes home in october
thrust out penny-luck eyes
sheets of birch bark entertain fires
careless sex and busy angels

i am the tidal wave of torment and turkey
cranberry veins failed by church
dogs grow bored and fat as november begets
jesus, frost and fairytales

december whispers



ice curing the goats milk
glorious disease wrapped in paper
sacraments torn by sweat and glove
long lost morals fuel the furnace

so who wants to dance down by the river?
who takes this hand
in sickness and in health
and in love
we cry when we sleep



B.B. Riefner



Birthing Instructions



When I’m dead,
Put me in an old oil drum.
Ask all my enemies to come.
Everyone should have
A crowd at their last rites.

Hold mine behind a shopping center.
Where only junkies gather.
Where the footing is slippery grease.
And only Jacobs sleep,
In darkened phone booths.

Lay out a feast
Of all the junk food I wouldn’t eat.
Let everyone beat on the drum.
Ask them all to be a pal,
And piss on it when it’s cherry hot.

Let them speak the truth about my life.
The one they collided with.
Remind all of them that their to morrows
Will always be worse
Then me and my yesterdays.

Tell them how
Once the sky was stars at night.
And they could see a watery reflection.
That the sun came up clear and hot.
Just like my coffin is.

Have them all sing a song.
Something not too long, not too new.
Let everyone sing in tune.
Tell them when they’re through
It didn’t sound bad at all.

But most of all
Before the can grows rusty cold again.
Remind them I promised God
No eye would be wet.



Farida Samerkhanova
Anita's Peaceful Death
On Wednesday morning she took a cab and attended her regular medical procedure.
In the afternoon she drove to the public library and borrowed 12 books.
At 6 pm she called my daughter and said she needed help for Thursday.
She had four dozens of big porcelain dolls and she wanted them cleaned.
My daughter promised to come and they chatted on about everything.
On Thursday morning Anita did not show up in hospital, neither she did on Friday.
They called to her relatives. The relatives called the police.
The police found her dead in her house. She was eighty.
My daughter attended the funeral. She said Anita looked pretty in the coffin.
She had never had fresh cut flowers in her home because she was allergic.
For her funeral she had ordered hundreds of roses, all pink and gorgeous.
Anita was enjoying their beauty, if dead people could enjoy anything at all.
The next day my daughter went to her house together with the executor.
She washed and dried the big porcelain dolls and polished them with a soft cloth.

Cпокойная смерть Аниты.

В среду утром она взяла такси и поехала в больницу, как обычно.
Днем она посетила библиотеку, сама за рулем, и взяла 12 книг.
В 6 вечера она позвонила моей дочери и сказала, что в четверг ей нужна помощь.
У нее было множество больших фарфоровых кукол, их надо помыть.
Моя дочь обещала придти, и они еще поболтали о чем-то.
Утром в четверг Анита не пришла на процедуры, и в пятницу не пришла.
Из больницы позвонили родственникам, те вызвали полицию.
Полиция нашла ее мертвой в собственном доме. Ей было восемьдесят.
Моя дочь ходила на похороны. Она сказала, что Анита в гробу была хорошенькая.
Из-за аллергии у нее дома никогда не было свежих цветов.
На свои похороны она заказала сотни шикарных розовых роз.
Анита любовалась их красотой, если мертвые вообще могут любоваться.
На следующий день моя дочь пошла к ней домой вместе с душеприказчиком.
Она вымыла и просушила все куклы и отполировала их мягкой тряпочкой.

Katherine Shabat
Awe
Reverence for the miracle
of conception and birth,
for my ageing body
that staunchly serves me.

Wonder at the variety in nature,
at diverse inventions of man’s mind:
the computer, link to the world,
that corrects my syntax and spelling
and accepts the title of a poem.

Marvel at the twin flames reflected
in millions of Jewish homes on earth,
at anemones on the festive table
and beyond the bay window,
at trees in the garden, gesturing,
their leaves like shadowy fingers
in the deepening dusk.
17th February, 2008

Matteo Spinetti
The thinking mirror
I rejoice,
when all is silent,
because in silence
I feel brave to write with the eyes of life
and to listen,
the lost beat of a heart.

I hate,
when all is silent,
because silence makes me absent
and seek,
in the din of life
a labyrinth of a mind with no escape.

Thuy Truong



Scholarly Parrot
In a far jungle, there was a stranger called Parrot.
He could imitate the voices of all sorts.
Everyone gave him the most respecting thoughts.
He spoke, he listened and had a showy coat; he deserved to seat at the top of court.

A case, a Warbler and a Sparrow together brought a quarrel.
The Parrot judge nodded and guessed their gestures all.
The story was both contended their home in the same hole narrow.
He pointed the North to Sparrow and South to Warbler, so followed.

Another, a husband Wren suspected his wife with the big eggs different.
Then the single mom alone exhausted to feed hers and Cuckoo’s children.
…

Then one day, a cat and a fox did not agree to share any parts of their prey.
On the justifying chair, the liar pretended to understand his civilian’s thirst.
He tried to delay, delay, but the cat became angry, and angrily stated,
“Hey, Fox! You could take the rat; I already had this flashy judge.”

Anonymous
The Hell-bound Train
A Texas cowboy lay down on a barroom floor,
Having drunk so much he could drink no more;
So he fell asleep with a troubled brain
To dream that he rode on a hell-bound train.
The engine with murderous blood was damp
And was brilliantly lit with a brimstone lamp;
An imp, for fuel, was shoveling bones,
While the furnace rang with a thousand groans.

The boiler was filled with lager beer
And the devil himself was the engineer;
The passengers were a most motley crew-
Church member, atheist, Gentile, and Jew,
Rich men in broad cloth, beggars in rags,
Handsome young ladies, and withered old hags,
Yellow and black men, red, brown, and white,
All chained together-O God, what a sight!
While the train rushed on at an awful pace-
The sulphurous fumes scorched their hands and face;
Wider and wider the country grew,
As faster and faster the engine flew.
Louder and louder the thunder crashed
And brighter and brighter the lightning flashed;
Hotter and hotter the air became
Till the clothes were burned from each quivering frame.
And out of the distance there arose a yell,
"Ha, ha," said the devil, "we're nearing hell"
Then oh, how the passengers all shrieked with pain
And begged the devil to stop the train.

But he capered about and danced for glee,
And laughed and joked at their misery.
"My faithful friends, you have done the work
And the devil never can a payday shirk.
"You've bullied the weak, you've robbed the poor,
The starving brother you've turned from the door;
You've laid up gold where the canker rust,
And have given free vent to your beastly lust.
"You've justice scorned, and corruption sown,
And trampled the laws of nature down.
You have drunk, rioted, cheated, plundered, and lied,
And mocked at God in your hell-born pride.
"You have paid full fare, so I'll carry you through,
For it's only right you should have your due.
Why, the laborer always expects his hire,
So I'll land you safe in the lake of fire,
"Where your flesh will waste in the flames that roar,
And my imps torment you forevermore."
Then the cowboy awoke with an anguished cry,
His clothes wet with sweat and his hair standing high.
Then he prayed as he never had prayed till that hour
To be saved from his sin and the demon's power;
And his prayers and his vows were not in vain,
For he never rode the hell-bound train.



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