Live Nude Poems

Stay Home I should stay home more often that way I would know my destination. I believe the bathroom mirror would make a fine photographer. The fragrance of my perfume is all for show for the woman I love. Work makes me feel like taking a day off. I brush my teeth with garlic to keep the vampires away at night. If I had more time to live, I would forget so many things. I never know which way I am going. Born in Mexico, Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal , lives in California and works in the mental health field in Los Angeles. His poetry, poetry books, and poetry chapbooks have appeared in Blue Collar Review, Homestead Review, In The Grove, Kendra Steiner Editions, Live Nude Poems, Poet’s Democracy, Propaganda Press, Pygmy Forest Press, and Unlikely Stories. His latest poetry book, Make the Water Laugh, was published by Rogue Wolf Press.

 Blackguarding Merles   You mock a dahlia’s faith in rain And March’s hieratic pain In Wotan’s one good eye. I show The only serious dog I know   The absence of a final task.  (His bark becomes so plateresque.)  Jocasta’s hardship melts the snow… The only serious dog I know   Is on precocious wisdom’s trail. Your apperception tugs his tail. For Tiresias, you set aglow The only serious dog I know.  Jake Sheff is a pediatrician and US Air Force veteran. He’s published a full-length collection of formal poetry, “A Kiss to Betray the Universe” (White Violet Press), along with three chapbooks: “Looting Versailles” (Alabaster Leaves Publishing), “The Rites of Tires” (SurVision) and “The Seagull’s First One Hundred Seguidillas” (Alien Buddha Press).

HI DEATH It may come to me like a telegram, only a few words, terse, impossible to ignore. Or it may be seductive, wooing me (are people wooed anymore?) and knowing how my flesh is weak, I’ll give in. Maybe it will come like a plane’s shadow over our house. It only takes a second. My grandfather died that way, crossing a street. It may come like that picture of Jesus knocking on our heart’s door, half god, half salesman. I can choose to not be home—or can I? One day I may welcome it, however it comes, body, spirit, used up, ready to leave, holding a blanket before letting it go. Kenneth Pobo (he/him) is the author of thirty-three chapbooks and fifteen full-length collections.  Recent boo ks include Bend of Quiet (Blue Light Press), At The Window, Silence (Fernwood Press) and It Gets Dark So Soon Now (Broken Tribe Press).  His work has appeared in Asheville Poetry Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Amsterdam Quarterly, Nimrod, Mudfish, Hawaii Review, and elsewhere. 

Wax Cups The bridge over the Long Island Expressway was a jackdaw cutting through holiday traffic. a father flanked by young daughters, McDonald’s sodas in hand, bundled in winter coats, watched the cars below. The daughter to the left, her ponytail unfurling with flyaways at the temples— in middle school we called them “wings”— jumped, pointing at cars, as we slipped along underneath. They were 495 East sentinels celebrating a winter ritual. Years from now, with the snow falling sideways, they’d recall icy hands pressed against waxy cups, while the world sped under their feet— their dad in the center of it all. Museums exist, hovering over small towns, contained entirely in watching bodies. We tread well-traveled paths until we reach the bridges suspended above our childhood. “Remember?” the girl in the pink coat will ask her winged sister, and they’ll see times they didn’t know were sacred until much later. Jane-Rebecca Cannarella (she/he...

  Line by line retranslation of Ashbery Waiting makes time democratic, you just said so Then a white horse ran by, repeatedly running back and forth Like a messenger passing straight through various rooms from the front door Out through the back door, I waited like this for twenty-seven years. Initially it was the honey of distortion brewed in the rooms distorted in your convex mirror And that gesture was both an invitation and a refusal Unfolding for me a moment that fluctuated incessantly A crack that exists, the circulation of water in the ocean A ring formed by a self-devouring serpent in motion In between is the void filled with power This mirror of others reflects oneself at the same time Allows all the images of leaves stacked in the depths of the mirror to remain Like a demon in a bottle floating on an infinitely transparent surface Longing for the light of your face, symbolic stones They only stop temporarily in order to focus Forming some kind of meaning, then they are qu...

An Affair on Lombardy Street The landlocked Airbnb has a nautical theme and an irregularly shaped board nailed to one wall that might work if they installed hooks, I offered to the man I’ve loved for 24 years before we kissed and carried each other into the bedroom. The backyard is at this time off-limits to guests, though we are encouraged to dispense of our trash there due to an ant problem for which we may be charged. Renters may also be charged for using acne products immediately prior the towels. Likewise, silicone lubricants are prohibited. The Airbnb sits a block and a half from the marketwhere my cousin and I used to buy croissant sandwiches when the jazz bar closed where the man I’ve loved for 24 years used to play. The Airbnb has a keypad for a lock and I give him the code. I wake to his face for the first time in years. I send him home in a shirt wearing wrinkles and the perfume my ex-husband sayssmells like my mother. My hosts have left two thick, hooded robes hanging in th...