Live Nude Poems

Sunset In Chicago February, 4:30 PM, the sun slants sharp through the large, streaked, boarding gate windows at O’Hare airport. Waiting for a flight home and for the sun to leave the sky around the same time, both of us heading west. The sun will sink beneath the broad tarmac of landing strips, turning everything between us into silhouettes casting shadows. Stuck in the airport waiting for a plane which keeps moving further away, taking-off later and later, hours delayed, allowing me to pound away laboriously at the keys of my laptop trying to wring poetry from the commonplace, pull profundity out of mere inconvenience. Yawning into the glare of the setting sun. M.J.  Arcangelini , born in Pennsylvania in 1952, has resided in northern California since 1979. He has published in little magazines, online journals (including The James White Review, Rusty Truck, The Ekphrastic Review, The Gasconade Review, Trailer Park Quarterly, As It Ought To Be Magazine, a...

Sometimes “sometimes I think I understand everything but I know I’m wrong” – Frank Stanford Age won’t deliver wisdom like a package To your door, followed by a photo e-mail To prove it had been left there, just in case Porch pirates beat you to picking it up. Wisdom seeps into your foundation like Moisture beading on cold cellar walls. It dangles off the ordinary like a frayed Thread hangs from a favorite sweater. Not the mere accumulation of years But a summoning from out of them. M.J.  Arcangelini , born in Pennsylvania in 1952, has resided in northern California since 1979. He has published in little magazines, online journals (including The James White Review, Rusty Truck, The Ekphrastic Review, The Gasconade Review, Trailer Park Quarterly, As It Ought To Be Magazine, and The Rye Whisky Review), & over a dozen anthologies.  He is the author of 6 published collections, the most recent of which is PAWNING MY SINS, 2022 (Luchador Press).

At Raquette Lake (1973) For Bette Fireworks seemed like a great idea to Celebrate our new-found friendship; The 20 year old hitchhiker and The middle-aged birthday girl. She had some stashed at the cabin. The moon disassembled and reassembled Itself on the surface of the lake as we Approached with the recovered fireworks And the remaining half of a half-gallon of vodka. She lit the wicks in turn and then jumped back. There was the sizzle, then the fizzle as Each one hissed at our disappointment. We left them, useless, near the dock, and set out To peek into the windows of Unoccupied neighboring cabins To critique their interior design. The bottle going back and forth, While we passed the cool night with Gossip, giggles, and secrets revealed. As morning eased into the landscape The lake emitted a blanketing mist which Crawled across the yards, a persistent Nudge sending us at last to our separate beds. M.J. Arcangelini  (b.1952) has resided in northern ...

His Fringe Jacket (1972) He figured he was at least half in love with her, most likely the half usually labeled lust. He was so in love with her that he gave her his tan leather jacket with the long fringe. He wore that jacket everywhere, even when the Ohio summer was too hot and humid for leather. He liked the way it made him feel, the weight of it, the way he imagined he looked wearing it at a rock concert. So when he gave it to her, because she told him how much she liked it, it was like giving her a dozen roses and a 2 pound box of Whitman chocolates. She liked it so much that she took it with her when she moved to the West Coast with her boyfriend. After she left he appeared diminished. In Oregon she soon tired of the jacket, which never really fit her right, and gave it to someone she'd just met. M.J. Arcangelini (b.1952) has resided in northern California since 1979. His work has been published in print magazines, online journals, (including The Jame...

An Absence of Snow It doesn’t snow here, although there Are winter mornings when the frost Is enough to make one wonder, Joints grind against themselves, Skin shudders, shedding warmth. It does not snow here, though all the Leaves have vacated their perches And the naked branches hang empty Anticipating the wet weight of snow, Even though it won’t snow here. The calendar can tell me when winter Has arrived or my bones can tell me, Or the aches in muscles which never Ached before when doing those things Which no longer seem worth doing. Bones know better than digital clocks, Better than daylight savings time, Better than the holiday displays in Every store and on every downtown Street where merchants ply their trade. Snow has no power on the California Coast, it is merely a distant relative Who lives up in the boonies, sufficiently Inclined to deep suspicion of outsiders As to greet all visitors with a shotgun. My Mother Grows Old (1931-2019) She hardly ever ...

M.J. Arcangelini A Quiet Ghost Luchador Press 62 Pages $13.00 reviewed by Rusty Barnes M.J. Arcangelini's  A Quiet Ghost is a quiet revelation. Through a series of short narrative poems, Arcangelini takes us through and beyond all the stresses that come with open-heart surgery. Even the epigraph from Moby Dick from which the book's title emerges, we see already the signs of a careful poetic mind setting a deliberate tone. In "Expiration Date" a poem which treats Arcangelini's heart as a product with a date beyond which lies death, the stanza is broken up by three indented instances of the words 'expiration date'  and more later on which serve to warn us that what is coming might uh, be grim. "Spread across three arteries,/repeated, a motif, a design, a sign,/my expiration date." We can see as the speaker does later on in the poem, this doom arising to greet him as the speaker observes the doctor, . . .he had/ seen my expiration date and/ he was ...

Lightning Within inside vast towering clouds lightning erupts sharp, arcing, illuminating massive ethereal bulk as though concealing tesla coils deep within their wet recesses the nervous electric flashes of a mad scientist’s laboratory in a black and white horror film flickering out of the 1930s – we fly west, level with heaven, as though we were equals - behind me and far below my mother is finally in the ground next to my father after waiting over 40 years to have a date carved in stone she joins him in death at last having been the devoted, loyal widow the whole time mourning him longer than she ever had him - outside the airliner window the lightning doesn’t stop it keeps cracking the sky we simply fly past it racing the sunset west set from the start to lose M.J. (Michael Joseph) Arcangelini was born 1952 in western Pennsylvania, grew up there & in Cleveland, Ohio.  He’s resided in northern California sinc...