ABOUT

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

 
TWO POEMS
by Jeffrey Morgan

The Man Who Hates You

The man who hates you sports a violent coiffure,
a sycophant's cravat, and doesn't know what's good for him.
Once, he called your mother feeble and licked her face.
Another time, he pointed at your father's groin and laughed.
When you're not around, he objectifies your lover; unleashes
his sugar tongue and disaster rears its crinoline head.
When he sleeps, biblical insects steep out of his open mouth.
He dreams of his long fingernails defacing the moonlight;
he is both a writer and a critic. He billows like a steam engine.
He's Latinate ad nauseam. He's slang-proof
and the author of everything horrifyingly pronounceable.

Dear Crying Shame,

Somehow I've put the "un" in understanding. I forgot myself...
now you talk of an irrevocable split... can it be left at that:
life on the cusp, lost words accumulating towards a precipice?
J'accuse the discussion of a constellation.
C'est la vie under a bad sign.

The window slices up the outside: a cross section: evening
half-light disassembles the afternoon.
Stars begin to burn the night in place.
I seem to be capable of nothing more than overture.

And now, I'm left imagining us imagining other people forever.
I deserve my imagination, but silence is such a slippery thing.
In your absence, all ideas become things: I'm drowning
in clutter: this pile of me is not my name.
I'm sorry. Please write me a letter.