SoFloPoJo's August 2020 prompt
C.T. McClintock
CALL OFF THE DISDAIN
follow the dancer call on the primas
sizzling on ice
like cherry vanilla soda pop
whore sex worker
a name all in a frame
they might be ballerinas and still fuck
they might both pirouette and throw glass bottles
at little girls from balconies
art discomfort
the poet said there are no hugs no difference between the two especially not and to wishes
by sculptors like Bernadette Mayer
kooks experts
just call off the disdain for all, I beg you the ones who told us that we’d all soon be as sick as ancient ocean birds
suffocating in an oil spill
call it off and the picture will cease to be bandy-legged, duck-footed
cock-eyed, pigeon-toed
a cult following of the necromancer.
C.T. McClintock lives in Brooklyn where she loves to ride train lines that are not hers to neighborhoods that feel buried. In addition to poetry, she writes creative nonfiction and studies memoir as an antidote for trauma. She is a Doctoral Fellow at St. John’s University in Queens where she teaches undergraduate writing. You can find her most recent poetry in the Remington Review and Amethyst Review as well as on her Instagram (@c.t.mcclintock).
Gene Stevenson
Overthink Tango
Follow the dancer after a tango
of their overthinking: nails out,
reopened flesh, red drips into
pools on the oriental carpet
older than their first meeting.
Drip, drip. Old Chinese torture.
They are their own torturers.
Fashionable to say Let it go.
Easy for others. December
thunder boomers bounce against
the ridges, rattle in the valleys to
the north, swell the creeks with
downpour so even rills slam angry
volume against their banks.
Temperatures will drop after this
rain, this storm, after the emails,
the texts, the phone calls slow.
One step at a time, one minute,
one day at a time until motion is
all there is, looking like curtains of
water sweeping the parking lot,
berms, streets, sidewalks, paths,
parks, stands of bending trees.
Gravity pulls the deluge into brown
streams, a hundred streams rush
downhill to seven rivers, through
watersheds into the bay, out to sea
from where their droplets rose.
Easy. Close the windows, muffle
the rumbles, wipe sill dry, drop
blinds, welcome darkness, brush
cheeks & find something to do,
trivial or otherwise, but keep close
counsel, forbid rain, evaporate flood.
Relegate today’s tango to the bin.
Eugene Stevenson writes to make some semblance of order out of disorder, to make sense of the unthinkable, to make still photographs out of daily rushes. His poems have appeared in Chicago Tribune Magazine, DASH, Dime Show, Gravel, The Hudson Review, Icarus, and Swamp Ape Review. He is the son of immigrants, the father of expatriates; he believes the world is round and goes around.
CALL OFF THE DISDAIN
follow the dancer call on the primas
sizzling on ice
like cherry vanilla soda pop
whore sex worker
a name all in a frame
they might be ballerinas and still fuck
they might both pirouette and throw glass bottles
at little girls from balconies
art discomfort
the poet said there are no hugs no difference between the two especially not and to wishes
by sculptors like Bernadette Mayer
kooks experts
just call off the disdain for all, I beg you the ones who told us that we’d all soon be as sick as ancient ocean birds
suffocating in an oil spill
call it off and the picture will cease to be bandy-legged, duck-footed
cock-eyed, pigeon-toed
a cult following of the necromancer.
C.T. McClintock lives in Brooklyn where she loves to ride train lines that are not hers to neighborhoods that feel buried. In addition to poetry, she writes creative nonfiction and studies memoir as an antidote for trauma. She is a Doctoral Fellow at St. John’s University in Queens where she teaches undergraduate writing. You can find her most recent poetry in the Remington Review and Amethyst Review as well as on her Instagram (@c.t.mcclintock).
Gene Stevenson
Overthink Tango
Follow the dancer after a tango
of their overthinking: nails out,
reopened flesh, red drips into
pools on the oriental carpet
older than their first meeting.
Drip, drip. Old Chinese torture.
They are their own torturers.
Fashionable to say Let it go.
Easy for others. December
thunder boomers bounce against
the ridges, rattle in the valleys to
the north, swell the creeks with
downpour so even rills slam angry
volume against their banks.
Temperatures will drop after this
rain, this storm, after the emails,
the texts, the phone calls slow.
One step at a time, one minute,
one day at a time until motion is
all there is, looking like curtains of
water sweeping the parking lot,
berms, streets, sidewalks, paths,
parks, stands of bending trees.
Gravity pulls the deluge into brown
streams, a hundred streams rush
downhill to seven rivers, through
watersheds into the bay, out to sea
from where their droplets rose.
Easy. Close the windows, muffle
the rumbles, wipe sill dry, drop
blinds, welcome darkness, brush
cheeks & find something to do,
trivial or otherwise, but keep close
counsel, forbid rain, evaporate flood.
Relegate today’s tango to the bin.
Eugene Stevenson writes to make some semblance of order out of disorder, to make sense of the unthinkable, to make still photographs out of daily rushes. His poems have appeared in Chicago Tribune Magazine, DASH, Dime Show, Gravel, The Hudson Review, Icarus, and Swamp Ape Review. He is the son of immigrants, the father of expatriates; he believes the world is round and goes around.