Poems by Peter Magliocco
Thought-placard for the epiphanic mind
Life rivals a piece of art in perpetual change
exposed daily to the grim social elements
your face accepts its mandate of wrinkles
as the days paint you into significance
the feminist credo humbles the great artist
scumbling the clouds of heaven forever
existing in a prejudiced mind of sexism
other visions ascend from spanning bridges
to see the clouds erupting into timespanned
portraits of earthly revolutions where
survivors wait remembering the fallen
one impaled by the intolerant atmosphere
victimized by invisible windshear signs
littered with carnival tent show trash
& shredded sonnets by Shakespeare
perhaps their lives are heralded beyond
that choice aery mind & vision-full
drawn like the breath of luminous swans
we depict in cyberlinked thought-placards
in spirit we are all sexually equal chalk artists
scrawling our unique visionary art for all
over sidewalks a million feet can’t smear away
—
When Susan Sontag Wrote About Women In War
They had to revive (& remake
holocaust tactics like a bad propaganda film)
in Bosnia & Kosovo in order
to rival the Jews of their possessive heritage
& condemn a neo-Christian generation
of Albanians to the same treatment.
Beyond possessiveness there is only war’s evil
& it belongs to everyone
or every
being trapped by Goyaesque disasters
uprooting bone, flesh & unregenerate
spirit matters.
Those unrelenting tears & blood drippings
of refugees
beyond any means of escape, like listening
to radio ads for mass consumer products
again &
again.
Dispossessed, also, from the Zion-connected
thread of cultural traditions, the refugees have no
temples of mass communication to benefit
from any prime-time holy business
or sweet salvation,
& no blessed camcorders to self-document
their own ethnic cleansings
for purgative, & other worshipful, purposes.
… Mother, please hear them: I cannot bear
to see your long marching through red seas
— mud-clogged with misery —
nor listen to your singsong lamentations over
women & human rights:
Now that you’re heavy with
the dying child
of just History.
About the Poet
Peter Magliocco writes from Las Vegas, Nevada, where he’s been active in the small press as editor, writer, and artist for several years. He has poetry in I Am Not A Silent Poet, Ink In Thirds, Literary Yard, Harbinger Asylum, Midnight Lane Boutique, and elsewhere. A multiple nominee for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, his most recent poetry book is Poems for the Downtrodden Millennium from The Medulla Review Publishing.
