The Absinthe Review Network Forums

This is a thread for things that no one will publish.

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Lemme start off

Morning heat

morning heat, listing to the Doors
“…on and on and on…
…drown myself in mystic heated wine…”
mystic heated wine?
when i was younger i bounced
a wine bottle off a tree
it came back, and
hit me in the head
“i christen this, day of Dionysis” thud!
we were artsy and drunk,
in the kudzu. it was a hot day
we took off all our clothes

august, the harvested rye
brown stubby stalks, in rows
dusty rows, we ran through
happy zealous dogs
life in the present
anxious and blurred
rising dust from bare feet
back-dropped by plush kudzu
dry soil, ashy, softer than
beach sand, between the toes
amidst rows of stiff stalks
cut short, near the ground

it was religion, then
christ, a cheap bottle of wine
god, the words exactly, rolling
through kudzu, the sting
unbroken wine bottle
against the forehead
a hangover, later
a real religion

I like the middle section best but what do I know?? Some really nice images, especially the descriptions of soil softer than sand. I get visual images of real soft, powdery soil. Nice.

That one is ten years old.
Here's one that publishers really hate.

glass of bourbon

lips crack and thunder
thumping skin
Hitchcock proud,
thrashing in silhouettes
licking the throat warm
“dad”, you’re distant dulled
in paint thinner fingertips
the smell of the breath, stringent
dishes, skeet shots
into the wall
in the rant, love
in stuffed animals tomorrow
fists full of sheet rock
knuckle hair and blood
powder white and crumbling
their bodies crumpling
melting into linoleum
the door jars
and I explode into sidewalk
glittering

Publishers hate this one as well.

The ride (for Plath)

“Are you my poet?”
The reigns splits on fingers
The mouth coo’s and spits
The call envious
Moving through the air
Molecules vibrating
In whips of motion
That is ours
In the air that we move through
Calling to break
Heels to death
Digging the corpse
Out of air
Out of ground
We live in shallow breath
Fallen longitude
Equators of sharpened noise
Hardly the words fall out
Of my mouth
The air out of my veins
And we fall back to the ground
Nearly sober
Out of night

spring wash

i saw a blackbird.
i wanted to make pie,
while distilling the words
to say goodbye.

the blackbird in the birdbath
rustling and shaking its feathers,
slung the water around
and evaporated in the sunlight.

But what of Superman’s
blue black head
and black beak
that was larger than a crackle
but smaller than a crow.

i still want pie,
to know i was Wrong.

pay for what you love
in pounds of flesh,
because the flesh is not dead
until the cat steals your breath
and the man with the blade
on a stick comes.