Monday, April 1, 2024: Alex S. Johnson's poem " Maps to Never"

By





Bio: Alex S. Johnson is a retired English professor, author and editor currently living in Sacramento, California. His current projects include the William S. Burroughs tribute anthology The Junk Merchants Volume 2, as well as the horror anthology Campfire Bloody Campfire. His poetry has appeared in 13 Mynah Birds, various anthologies and his 2012 collection The Death Jazz, which was praised by the likes of Ellyn Maybe, John Shirley, and Lemmy Kilmister of Motorhead.


Maps to Never


Unscrolling the land across a nodal grid

where pulses smoke-spoken prophecies of the high priestess

whose brown abundance mothers 


A fleet of luminous ships rigged out with blessings,

salvos of lyrical weapons hotly tongued


Limbs engraved with the language of solar deity

jungles seized with a jagged architectural sentience, 

manifesting pyramids with steps to meet the sun,


Regal crimson snakes, forests of laughing turquoise birds

folded from the vastness of origami skies

sheen of the muscles of omni-directional cats

moving like fever in the golden-green immensity


The aura of villages where the nude, 

possessed

citizens,

abandoning themselves to 

frenzied rites,

scarify their flesh with 

maps to never

scaling the heights of the stellar forever


© 2024 Alex S. Johnson

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Kevin Patrick Sullivan's poems "Camels" and "Surviving the 405 Long Beach Freeway and the Process to Cardiac Clearance"

By
Image
  Kevin Patrick Sullivan’s books include, First Sight, The Space Between Things , Unimpaired and a number of chapbooks .  His poems are in Solo , Hummingbird , Askew , Lummox , Miramar , and Spillway among  other journals and anthologies. He Co-Founded and ran Corners of the Mouth at Linnaea’s Café, a monthly of featured and open readings for 35 years, Co-editor of Corners of the Mouth A Celebration of Thirty Years at the Annual San Luis Obispo Poetry Festival. Poet Laureate Emeritus of San Luis Obispo and the Co-founder/Curator of the Annual San Luis Obispo Poetry Festival since 1984. Camels Three legs Two humps One pyramid shaped And two flat heads What a wicked sense of humor One hump or two The sand man has You barely notice his red eyes Guiding you through this desert Of sleep this daydream Of travel                      *after the intaglio by Anne Jenkins   ...
Read more

Call For Submissions: Poetry, Essays, Fiction, and Art

By
Image
Good morning! I hope your 2022 is going better than your 2021, 2020, etc. After two years of what feels like a standstill, the world is moving forward, and in many cases, taking the opportunity to travel to places and countries never before visited, or imagined. Dashboard Horus wants to showcase your best travel poetry, fiction, essays, and art. It can be a photo of the Eiffel Tower, a story about traveling to Mars, or a poem about a train ride to Kyoto. Real, or imagined. We accept submissions on a rolling basis and will nominate for Pushcart, and Best of The Net. Guidelines Note: historically, travel writing comes with social commentary (think Joseph Campbell, or Jonathan Swift). However, any writing that contains racist tropes, hate speech, or a whiff of totalitarian leanings will NOT be considered for publication.  Send your submissions to: marielecrivainpd@gmail.com. Poetry: Two poems, no more than 100 lines combined. We accept all poetry forms, and experimental forms are alw...
Read more

Thursday, April 4, 2023: Two poems and artwork by Ann Tweedy

By
Image
Ann Tweedy's first full-length book, The Body's Alphabet , was published by Headmistress Press in 2016. It earned a Bisexual Book Award in Poetry and was also a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and for a Golden Crown Literary Society Award. Ann also has published three chapbooks, Beleaguered Oases, White Out , and A Registry of Survival . Her poems have appeared in R attle, Literary Mama, Clackamas Literary Review, Naugatuck River Review , and many other places, and she has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and two Best of the NetAwards. A law professor by day, Ann has devoted her career to serving Native Tribes. She currently teaches at University of South Dakota Knudson School of Law. Read more about her at www.anntweedy.com. Axis I remember how it was to be strung along a highway that held all my aspirations– for fifteen years rooted at different points in that zooming, crawling, 1,400-mile frenzy, always within an easy drive to the magnificent, unthinkable coast....
Read more