Skip to main content

Juanita Rey

Lilapsophobia

A storm's moving in.
Please take care of me.

According to the weather forecast,
it will be as primal, as swirling,

as a Caribbean la tormenta.
Protect me from lightning strikes,

cacophonous thunder rolls.
I am embarrassed to admit it

but I am in abject fear.
You only know me as

the vivalavirgen,
the unserious Latina.

But the air is about to spin
in some violent vortex,

bluster wildly,
whip and shatter.

Look at me. My face is as pale
as brown ever gets.

My eyes crunch together
so I can"t see what I'm thinking.

My hands tremble. Knees thump together.
You ask "Is anything the matter?"

If you don't take care of me
then you're the matter.



You're Late

Mosquitoes save me
from impatience.
I’m swatting

one after the other.
And a motorcycle
roars down the street,

cutting the air in two.
My attention thanks
that machine tenfold.

I’m tolerant
at least for as long as
my neighbor’s dog

sidles up for a pat.
And those insects return,
more desirous of my blood

than you are of my
good favor, apparently.
You should be here by now.

Luckily, sunset is.
And so’s the blue jay
peppering the sky

with screeches.
It’s six o’clock and all of these
are willing to spend

the moment with me,
even the bright yellow tulips,
the young boys playing basketball,

and the mosquitoes
I thwack when they land on my arm.
You must have a better place to be.

I’ve only this one.
You’d be surprised
who appreciates that.



Juanita Rey is a Dominican poet who has been in this country five years. Her work has been published in Pennsylvania English, Opiate Journal, Petrichor Machine and Porter Gulch Review.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ed Dorn's # 22 From Twenty-four Love Poems

                                               from Jacket The strengthy message here in #22 of 24 Love Songs can be summed up in two lines: ['There is/no sense to beauty. . .' and '. . .How/ the world is shit/ and I mean all of it] What I also like about this brief poem is the interplay between the title of the book and the subject of the poems (love/anti-love (which is not hate)): it's all a mass of contradictions, like love. And I have to say that the shorter poems of the Love Songs and the last book he wrote before dying (Chemo Sábe) seem to me much better and more memorable than the Slinger/Gunslinger poems. These (generally) later poems probably attempt less stylistically, but are more sure-handed, hacked from a soap bar, maybe. Easy to use, but disappear after use. In any case, Dorn is well worth the reading and re-reading, for me, though he'll never become one of my favorites. And doesn't every poet want that, dead or alive? ;-) #22 The agony

Corey Mesler

  I think of you tonight, my Beats I think of you tonight, my Beats, and I am grateful.  I walked the narrow lanes of Academia and never felt at home. There were men and women in the flowerbeds, their heads full of theorems and poems. There were teachers who could lift their own weight in prose.  I was lonely. I was too loose.  I was a lad from the faraway country of Smarting. But I had you as so many before me. I had you and I knew secret things. I could count on you like a percussion. And now I want to say: I love you.  If not for you, what? I want to say. If Allen Ginsberg did not exist it would be necessary to invent him.  COREY MESLER has been published in numerous anthologies and journals including Poetry, Gargoyle, Five Points, Good Poems American Places, and New Stories from the South . He has published over 25 books of fiction and poetry. His newest novel, The Diminishment of Charlie Cain , is from Livingston Press. He also wrote the screenplay for We Go On , which won The Me

David Oliver Cranmer

Not Just Another Playlist Often, I sit in my swivel chair looking out the window, while jazz, country, or rock music plays. This pleasure goes on for many hours a mystic trance of sorts streaming—the glue maintaining my soul. I turn the best songs into playlists (once we called them mix tapes) puzzling over the perfect order. Does Satchmo’s “What a Wonderful World” kick off my latest list or make it the big soulful closer? And does “Mack the Knife” go higher in the set than “Summertime?” That’s an Ella Fitzgerald duet! “Foolishness? No, it’s not” whether you are climbing a tree to count all the leaves or tapping to beats. These are the joys that bring inner peace and balance (to a cold universe) lifting spirits skyward. David Oliver Cranmer ’s poems, short stories, articles, and essays have appeared in publications such as Punk Noir Magazine , The Five-Two: Crime Poetry Weekly , Needle: A Magazine of Noir , LitReactor , Macmillan’s Criminal Element , and