#able muse

We hadn’t pictured paradise with vultures circling overhead. Edenic lushness has a price we hadn’t pictured. Paradise seems changeless, but its clock’s precise. “It’s feeding time,” the watchers said. We hadn’t pictured paradise with vultures, circling overhead. ***** Susan McLean writes: “This triolet was inspired partly by the Latin phrase “Et in Arcadia ego” (which means “I too [am or was]…

The fruit flies find our fruit, they slip beneath the lid, a silver dome. The dark fruit scent has drawn them in, no other lures them out again. They settle on apples, puckered figs, they gorge in perpetuity, may never fly back to their home, (if they have ever had a home). An allegory of choice? Well, yes– in that we have no choice. The fruit is fine, the day is long. Let us feed, buzz,…

Always to long for someone else’s gift— To blow that blistering alto sax, to lift Into the flash-bulbed air For a reverse slam dunk while stunned guards gawk, To have a punster’s cheek or porn star’s cock, To capture, share by share, Gold-plated Wall Street fame, to meditate Beyond nirvanic depths or radiate Beatitudes of prayer Like any frescoed saint, even to make A perfect triple-decker…

I know you have no use for them, poems with their sly quicksilver words that won’t just speak their minds, but carom through your head like startled birds. Is that despair or longing in their cries? Their dolors make no sense. They’ll never buy you larger-screened TVs or seats at sports events. But someday, as you watch a pair hold hands and leap from a burning tower, as you wait for test results…

It doesn’t caw or hunt or fly. It can’t peck anybody’s eye, or even grow a single lousy feather. One-clawed, no match for any tom, it’s stranded on a leafless palm, regardless of the season, time or weather. Yet what’s the bird that, all alone, sticks up for you when gibes have flown and you don’t care to verbalize or linger; when someone’s mocked you to your face or cut you off or swiped your…

Nine thousand quarts of orange juice Five thousand loaves of bread Eight hundred fifty bars of soap Three hundred lipsticks (red) A gross of bras A score of scarves A dozen wallets (black) Ten cars Eight dogs Six cats Three homes Two canes One granite plaque ***** From Walking in on People © Melissa Balmain, 2014. Used by permission of Able Muse Press. Editor’s note: If this poem doesn’t look…

Whenever I wake up and don’t feel well, I like to read a women’s magazine. I know that I can count on Vogue or Elle, Cosmo or Glamour, Self or Mademoiselle, instead of pills, elixirs or caffeine, whenever I wake up and don’t feel well. Page Eight has bathing suits that look just swell if you’re six foot and live on Lean Cuisine. I know that I can count on Vogue or Elle. Page Nine’s a list of…

Calls for Submission: formal verse

Of the various publication opportunities specifically for formal/traditional poets, three are taking submissions until July 15, and four other formal-friendly publications have submission deadlines of July 31. There is no submission fee for any of them. Here they are – the links are to the submission requirements: Able Muse (magazine) Deadline, July 15.Submit one to five metrical poems (or one…