Poem of the Week selected by George Wallace:
How many poets in the past few years have called for a radical course correction as they witnessed a dumbed-down American society fed blind 'nostalgia' for a past which was a lot nastier than the self-serving and reactionary slogans of political hacks? This week's winner, "We Used To Be So Happy," by Puma Perl, is a worthy representative of the brand, from its drenchingly ironic title to the snap of the beartrap in its crisp finale. "Nostalgia is a lie," declares Perl plainly, decanting the evil genie inside the bottle, just waiting to release the morbid carnivalesque back onto the land. "The emperor assassinated/ the ventriloquist's/ puppets pull strings.
Pinocchio hangs himself
And then there’s Alice
Who thinks she knows...
Pay attention to the man behind the curtain, people!
Poem of the Week
Puma Perl
We Used To Be So Happy
The emperor assassinated
the ventriloquists
Puppets pull strings
Pinocchio hangs himself
And then there’s Alice
Who thinks she knows
Nostalgia is a lie
designed to convince us
that we used to be
so happy
Pancakes and aprons
for breakfast
Repression for dessert
History hiding
in the shadows
Hula hoops
and strobe lights
Cigarette girls
and cabana boys
We pay our admission
to the show
and step up
into the fire.
***
Photo: Michael LaPorte
Puma Perl is a poet and writer, and a lifelong resident of NYC.
Honorable Mention
John Amen
Days of Love & Horses
Shame devoured my limbs as my wife fleshed her dream:
a stallion had bucked her to the ground,
towered over her, teeth bared, nostrils flaring.
I recalled the summer night when I was nine,
how a demon leapt from my father’s hands,
my wax-paper mom crumpled in the kitchen,
surrounded by coffee mugs. All June & July,
our flaming house was gaveled into smoky embers.
We sold my pony, the Morgan with the milky left eye,
gave away the weathered tack, those bales of perfect hay.
These days I rarely see a horse,
but that smoldering August
before the red glow turned to ash,
I found myself lost in Scriven’s Holler,
that pony carried me through Jones’s Gulley,
past the green & yellow farms, night crashed over us
as we reached the dilapidated barn.
Years later, May ’99, IC unit on the Oconocluftee,
I grabbed for rocks, branches, craving subsided.
Sprawled on a grassy bank,
still wet with booze, I dialed three exes
& apologized for stampeding through their sober lives.
A friend had warned me not to expect sorrys in return.
Good thing, I didn’t get any.
& last night in my own dream, my wife stood in that familiar kitchen,
frying slabs of meat in a bloodred skillet.
I crawled the floor, gathering the coffee mugs,
& woke to the canter of rain.
I haven’t climbed a horse in decades,
but when sleep eludes me,
skull burning with bad math & phantom schemes,
I pretend I’m atop my loyal pony,
we’re stranded in a minefield, blind beneath moonless sky.
I squeeze my thighs against her mahogany loins,
bury my face in her mane.
The champing in my belly calms, dawn returns,
the jumps I need to clear don’t seem as insurmountable
as when the world is smothered in darkness.
We make it home again, this time with light to spare.
***
John Amen is the author of five collections of poetry, including Illusion of an Overwhelm. He founded and is managing editor of Pedestal Magazine.
Honorable Mention
Matthew Hupert
communion
there’s a holy moment in the life of bread
no longer lone ingredients
not yet ossified
into loaf
”dough” is too inert a word for this potentiality
this soft skinned saint tremoring with sanctity
imminent & insensate
a holy moment before it’s baked into lifelessness
as holy as told in any scroll or scripture
a synod of yeast simmers holy
breath hallowed by the hollows of dough
a sigh
a wasp’s nest
a cavern
a lung
a cathedral
buttresses raised by exhalation
from fungal feeding
fucking
feasting & yeasting
an ecosystem orgy
a canopy
a gasp
a prayer
fecund fraught with possibility
ripening
writhing
rising
holy
in the bowl
on our kitchen
counter
***
matthew hupert yaddyadda poetry yadda stuff new york yadda yadda
Want to submit to our Poem of the Week or Flash Fiction of the Month?
We’d love to read your work!