Poem of the Week selected by Thomas Fucaloro:
Right now we are living through this tidal wave waiting for it to break. Kofi Antwi's poem “Tidal Wave” reminds us ...whatever stones, rebels, lay / beneath us—must pass, too.
Poem of the Week
Kofi Antwi
tidal wave
an unusually high sea wave that is triggered especially by an earthquake. an unusual rise of water alongshore due to strong winds. something overwhelming epically in quantity or size.
a ripple undercuts time, migrates bodies,
an overturn, deposits plights of war and or
love, withdrawn; the ghetto poet’s balcony—
honest brother’s doctrine, it was written in
blood, a vivid vortex redirects subjects,
erosion precipitates – a path clears and mirrors
synergy, currents heave one last wish; yesterdays
affairs remain prevalent, death capsulate time.
electric tendency surges through fazes,
contemporary art remains nameless, as air
stifles; time is ominous. its dialect at bay; we – tease possibilities
and placement, sell out in functions, buck, buck,
buck and pass, i am still awaiting the chronic,
to hit our shores, sea – speak our native
tongue of Twi. whatever stones, rebels, lay
beneath us—
must pass, too
***
Kofi Antwi is a writer, poet and a graduate of The Writer's Foundary. His poetry has been published by Kalahari Review, Breadcrumbs, and Rigorous. Kofi has a forthcoming poetry chapbook with Kattywompus Press titled Tidal Wave.
Honorable Mention
Brian Johnson
Rhubarb Leaf
No dogs in the rain, no flags, no newspaper:
Nothing smelly, soggy, flapping. Just the pane-gazing
One day, then hundreds more. Eye goes there—deathly street.
Have the buds come, the birdmix? Another ground to walk.
Greater, lesser, I know my age. And remember
My once face. There was a round table
In the family, and a spare feeling in the garden,
With a girl behind the rhubarb leaf.
That whispering, that first being nothing can slake
Or take—is God, is the curtain the rod pulls along.
***
Brian Johnson is the author of Torch Lake and Other Poems. He has taught creative writing at Yale, Providence College, and Southern Connecticut State.
Honorable Mention
Heller Levinson
Petrify
mangled in beer carcass in the opioid of bicycle theft in the expungement of all decency scrounging among fetid dung heaps calcified plummeted scourged found to be wanting, afflicted, pest-ridden, puss-oozing suffering from panic disorder hysteria identity deprivation agoraphobia claustrophobia acrophobia gynophobia eosophobia & phobias yet to announce themselves under the underpinnings of scurvy & rot, ratatouille & rum, deprived of salinity vapor breast milk & sanity berthed on the ship of fear sailing to dispirit through the isthmus of doom scurvied cataractious apoplectic scabrous wracked through infinite warps of
bombinating excruciation
appropriated by
this
petrification
***
The originator of Hinge Theory, Heller Levinson lives in the Hudson Valley.
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