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Sunday, April 30, 2017

Featuring Paul Koniecki



you are the angel of light 
who ruined the world


wine 
blunt

bed
balloon 

micron of onyx
atom of pearl

clio urania 
calliope 

nine muses 
swimming

star-fall
fountain-break

mother of all 
colors

vespers
transom 

consciousness 
slayer of day-worlds 

pause before 
insanity poetry kiss

open touch
caress 

cry out 
in the night

you are this for me
you are this for me

now then 
always



---------

gnomon


in defense of the
question mark's disinvention 
lower case apostrophe s's silent 
gesture of a shout 
hysteria recusing itself repeatedly by 

anesthetized thump 
landing as a rock to the head
boulder
avalanche 
kiln fire 

thrown pot of a moment's
momentum falling 
from the source 
material
the 

paragenetic sequence found 
in mineral 
formation
alchemy 
witch-hazel 

pore cleansing 
true
definition of
what it means to be 
slate 

curvature of planets and skies
meeting like fingers under 
the blanket of the night
all this 
as

the bottle of 
white wine in the trunk 
presented itself too
warm to guzzle immediately 
and we

ingeniously determined
we'd take the chance
to drink it over 
gas station ice
in a to-go cup

in the hourly motel
you called the mozy-wozy 
whispering you have 
to marry me
ice sometimes called rocks 

tumbling clink
conch of cold lips tingling
whispering brushing 
bottom fleshy opening
of the mouth 

waiting to be bitten
sect and cult 
are not synonymous in
delivering the difference
between now and what

we want our nows to be like
sea urchins 
having been proven 
to exhibit 
personalities 

from
reticent to outgoing if
studies are to be 
believed
i turn

our bedroom 
doorknob closing
opening
drop into bed with you
and go

parts of a sundial 
you are the parts 
of a sundial
the disk plate and

the gnomon
the triangular blade that casts
the shadow without time 
screaming

we are the flames
orange
heat is oxygen's
fault

---------------


knead the ground crawling - -


unlicensed  urban ember

when
the future

stretching
tip
to blind
finger
tip

sees
fields
of sightless farmers
pairs of collapsing
matrices
broken servers
hexagons
epiphora of
nectar and light
deaf mute beautiful lonely
earless
eyeless
webless 
guileless 
persons

every-one 
is a migrant 
for love 

a blind plowshare 
a ruby calamity 
a lost fire-handler
a true rural destiny

bent over furrowing 
and tied

considering 
adrift
bee abandonment 
pillory 

beyond legion
beyond lust
beyond flags nationality 
partisanship 
label
redaction

each becoming one
with what is left of us

dirt
the rain-catcher's prayer

a square 
of sacrosanct soil
the ground under us

all that a 
human is
turning over
in our stalwart windway 
hands

flue 
open land
last gift
tomorrow 

blue house

how will i ask

how will
you find me


-------



may these poems help 
to keep you warm
and may you always have 

more wool than a lamb 


i wished 
as we walked into the target
on i30 and eastchase pkwy 

that the cashiers and the 
cashier's registers and
the cashier's manager's

till-balancing spreadsheet
software could understand 
how rich we were in love

bounced checks aside our
empty pockets intimately 
understood the timeless

twin stars we were soon
and always forever to
become and as prophesied 

now becoming by the light
of the disconnected electric
bill burning in the mirror of 

the cashier's antithetic eyes as you 
jumped on the roof of your car
in that valero parking

lot between our apartment 
then on fort worth avenue 
and the world's smallest 

farmer's market and you
matching perfectly 
the mythologized reimagining 

of the first time i ever saw you 
between bites of sea-salted cashew 
on the roof of a car in an 

oak cliff valero parking lot hollering
i can whip any of your
motherfucking asses and 

your hair and your eyes 
were identical and the exact
color of stone on fire 

backlit by the fast-setting envy
of a fast-setting summer sunset
if stone on fire were the centerpiece 

of bellerophon's family crest
before perseus and heracles 
were ever born and i knew 

instantly and simultaneously 
as we should all know
and hold tight in our hearts

you could whip anyone's ass
including heroes with giving
and helping and teaching and light

first-sight cliches and references aside 
and i knew then as i know now
i love you forever and all the

pure-hearts in this whole 
world and all of reality too and 
i loved and they cheered for you 

on the roof of a car in an oak cliff valero parking lot between bites of lime
soaked corn on the cob

witnesses' adoration and disbelief 
licking at the beachhead of your feet
and i loved you even then



BIO: Paul Koniecki hosts Pandora's Box Poetry Showcase at Deep Vellum Books in Dallas, Texas. His chapbook, Reject Convention, was published by Kleft Jaw Press and his poems have appeared in a variety of journals and anthologies since 1985. Richard Bailey's film, "One Of The Rough" contains several of Paul's poems and was shown at The Berlin Experimental Film Festival in December of 2016.  He once featured at the Fermoy International Poetry Festival in Fermoy, Ireland. 


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