Louis Le Brocuy: A Picnic

Gerard Flynn

How people are stacked together,
On top of one another
In the sands
Or touching in an elevation
Like steps from foot
To mouth and on again.
What perversions still are white grains of land
Or twinkling in the ornate summer grand canal.
Four words and we all begin.
I am a sinner and here is the sin:
I saw this painting and had all this in mind
And so the winding staircase fell and so did
I.
I tried to comprehend
But that was like being foreign
And never seeing a crumbling sandcastle
Flooding as
of  a worthy find
Yet this I was talking to the traveler as he wrote
And spoke like his wheels upon a sod of mime
Which didn’t move, were broke.

flower children

yuriy tarnawsky

On this side
of mirrors,
by the marshes
of glass,
next to hands
that creak
like doors,
there live the yellow
descendants,
they button
daisies
instead of buttons,
on their teeth,
instead of on their shirts,
they watch
legs
full of seeds
like sunflowers
that follow the sun,
they pluck petals
from them
to better see
horizons
and their own skin,
they marvel at their fingers
that pull
endless blades of straw
out of their cheeks,
they water their names
with water
no one notices
under the print.

The mirrors turn yellow
like paper
and menstrual blood
full of shiny
scissors
cuts them up into strips
to get rid of
the traces
of babies’ feet
from the rusty stains
on themselves
and on suspension
bridges.

from ye-ye songs

Lyceum

by Raphael Moser

Arbitrary synecdoche cactus field
Dark artica
Fields

Hurtling directly into your path
It’s the river synth
Pressed into a sentiment

Blinding disgorgement
Spherical particles cut tracks
Mute sea green

Polyphonous serpent sparkling

Cities and Desire

by Elmira Oktayevna Elvazova

 

I like the way you leave me.

After the rain.

The way you came in.

I like watching you leave me.

It reminds me of desire.

The way you came in.

If you’re leaving you should stay

to watch the way I leave you.

We can go on this way

for years.

We will be old.

And it will be the last time.

 

When you came in from the rain

you brought the rain in

and I thought:

I’ll make it mean something.

I’ll stay.

No I won’t.

You know me.

You know me and you know I won’t.

Still, I’ll love a city.

I’ll love any city that will have me.

We went downtown in the rain.

Together.

And it brought me to you.

 

Celebration

by Raphael Moser

He sought a DeKooning that he could obliterate
he worked with an erasure
it was the Dutch Haarlem Streets
the Belgium blocks
The Senseless binging
Drawing rigors
Evaporating

a week ago

Susan Scutti

at the party the art opening the party
white wine was chilled and served and the people gathered

in a thickly accented
the woman spoke
the artist

how badly she wanted people to see
this most ancient of art forms
lacquer paintings that are so hard

she left her daughter behind when she was 12

and the artist has great purpose, such great purpose to share her work which is based on ancient methods so she travels around the world and she has brought forth life and cast it off as well and the daughter is
and the mother travels everywhere making herself known and felt and listened to and photographed

she wanted more people in the shot
calling out to others

and oh paintings crowded the walls of the crowded room the paintings made with gold leaf and black and red oil to form characters that seemed to melt into the background and disappear like marks made by a child’s hand

so much of life is lost and then there is what is remembered and stored in recesses of the brain to be brought into light or not

what occurred in my father’s mind while he was failing from alzheimer’s, what exactly is decline?

vietnam

yuriy tarnawsky

in Vietnam
color
starts
in the elbows,
red jungles
shake
black squares
next to the teeth,
green circles
jump off bone joints
and chase
the color of holes
fleeing
to the horizon
of fingers,
and fingers
shine
like mother of pearl,
skyscrapers
bend down among them
to shake out
glass shards
and staircases
from inside their knees
which crave
for tickling….

Let’s go
to Vietnam,
my love,
we’ll fill
the mouth of your hair
with my mouth,
we’ll find white and pink
flowers
between the surfaces
of our wrists,
we’ll throw
the wilted
wreaths
of our faces
onto the water
that flows
into South
China
Sea.
I assure you,
there’s a connection
between the intersections
of women’s laps
and street numbers
in London
and the wrinkles
on the faces
of these yellow
people.


from ye-ye poems