Live Nude Poems

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

Anamnesis 1. I pushed off with permission from the Electric City to Brooklyn. Broome’s green & dying sedan, Big Ed, rolled out of the slush, down I-90. Familiar roots dozed while winter sun lured me to a chastening, back to the city of my childhood from which to remember. 2. - For R. In his cups, my roommate, the professional dancer could grab a subway pole & pull parallel to the ground. He pocketed women & vested pleasures, secreted smokes, & taunted subway strangers with drunken melodies. He taught himself to drum just to join the band. For a week, he’d leave for Africa, returning with curios. He kept his room in a way I did not understand, owned an iron & several pairs of shoes. 19, I didn't decorate as much as find places to deposit myself. The day we met on 172st, we passed Washington Heights, & the hospital where a cop was killed, then drank good whiskey with ice. I plotted from a window how to start my l