Tag: Guernica

Categories
Poetry

Jericho Was No One’s Lover

By Ryan Quinn Flanagan

JERICHO WAS NO ONE’S LOVER 

Musical resonance, the skeletal grind,
wheel well tumblings on a red vineyard clime –
Sardinian giant wormholes, shivering,
stuck on a what in the world island,
heaving cardamom can’t work corners,
the formation of sand and mixtape spools,
a cursory lust over the wanting membrane:
frothing, feasting, ruthlessly ensnared
And Jericho was no one’s lover,
scorned his heart for an apple-bride’s cleaver,
drove scurvy from the harbours,
devoured the worm from the bottom of the bottle,
held Man high as the oldest scar,
taunting the land with boundless shadows:
inventor of the first way 
to die.

Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage.  His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Borderless Journal, GloMag, Red Fez, and Lothlorien Poetry Journal. 

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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

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Categories
Poetry

War Poems by Michael Burch

Guernica by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). Courtesy: Creative Commons
SURVIVORS
 
In truth, we do not feel the horror
of the survivors,
but what passes for horror:
 
a shiver of “empathy”.
 
We too are “survivors”,
if to survive is to snap back
from the sight of death
 
like a turtle retracting its neck.
 

VEILED 
 
She has belief
without comprehension
and in her crutch work shack
she is
much like us ...
 
tamping the bread
into edible forms,
regarding her children
at play
with something akin to relief ...                                 
 
ignoring the towers ablaze
in the distance
because they are not revelations
but things of glass,
easily shattered ...
 
and if you were to ask her,
she might say—
sometimes God visits his wrath
upon an impious nation
for its leaders’ sins,
 
and we might agree:
seeing her mutilations.
 
SALVE
 
The world is unsalvageable ...                                              
 
but as we lie here
in bed
stricken to the heart by love
despite war’s 
flickering images,
 
sometimes we still touch,
 
laughing, amazed,
that our flesh 
does not despair 
of love        
as we do,
 
that our bodies are wise
 
in ways we refuse 
to comprehend,
still insisting we eat, 
drink ...
even multiply.
 
And so we touch ...
 
touch, and only imagine
ourselves immune:
two among billions
 
in this night of wished-on stars, 
 
caresses,
kisses,
and condolences.
 
We are not lovers of irony,
 
we
who imagine ourselves 
beyond the redemption 
of tears
because we have salvaged 
so few 
for ourselves ...
 
and so we laugh 
at our predicament,
fumbling for the ointment.

Michael R. Burch’s poems have been published by hundreds of literary journals, taught in high schools and colleges, translated into fourteen languages, incorporated into three plays and two operas, and set to music by seventeen composers.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Kindle Amazon International

Categories
Poetry

Wars are for Powerful Men

By Sutputra Radheye

Guernica(1937) by Picasso (1881-1973). Courtesy: Creative Commons
COWARD LIKE ME

there was a sea of dead bodies
and a sky of jets passing by
when i scrolled the curtain
of my window this morning

yesterday night was loud
i could hear the firings
the screams and the cry 
for help but like a coward
i hid behind the walls
praying to see the sun again


i know i am not the ideal citizen
but why should i be?
wars are for powerful men
and not a poet like me

Sutputra Radheye is a young poet from India. He has published two poetry collections — Worshipping Bodies(Notion Press) and Inqalaab on the Walls (Delhi Poetry Slam). His works are reflective of the society he lives in and tries to capture the marginalised side of the story.

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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL.