Swordfish

things fall
apart &

the two of you
can’t agree
on salmon
or
steak

so you 
start from
scratch

you
mention
chicken

but she
groans at
the thought
of chicken 

true enough

chicken
has been
done
&
redone
so many times

swordfish,
you say,
let’s try
swordfish

she shrugs

& says
why not

so you
do your
best, you
marinade
the swordfish
in rosemary
&
white wine
&
throw it
on the
grill

feeling new
you decide
it’s best to
rebuild 
with swordfish, 
a surer
foundation
than
having only
the napkin
on your
lap in
common

better 
than only
agreeing
on the
posture
of the

knife
&
fork

"13 Birds"

There is a yard,
somewhere,
where 13 birds all gave up at once.

They just tucked in their beaks
and gave up their will
to death.

Her mother found them,
little piles of crunchy bones
stacked in neat little rows.

She was told not to go there
because the disease was catching,
and a dead anything
was not for this child's eyes.

But she ran down that grass
with no shoes on,
and she did have a smile like syrup

when she stepped on
a white bone
cupped in a bed of black black black.

That bone splintered off in brittleness
and pulped that perfectly plump foot.

Her shout
must have sprang out
like a fierce heart inside a pocket,

but she knew she wasn't dead yet,

and she wanted just a white fearless pang,
a color,
that would finally touch her bird-less sky.

Harvard

Contemplating

the hallowed buildings

of Harvard waiting for the reading

to start, not looking

like a student nor

a faculty member either,

but trying to fit in when suddenly

it begins to rain.

I try this door then that (like a rat

in a maze) but I don't have a key;

cannot get into Harvard out

of the pouring rain

without a key.

Drenched, I have

a vision of Dad dead now all these

years, perking his head up

from under the hood

of his broken Buick, staring

at me, saying finally,

the cigarette dangling from

the corner of his mouth --

Serves you right

for thinking you could hang round

a place like Harvard.

Stacy Campbell lives in Hurst, Texas. She teaches English to special education students in Arlington, Texas.  In her free time she plays the guitar, writes poetry, short stories, and drinks very cold beer. She is previously published in Writer’s Digest, North Texas Professional Writer’s Anthology, Orange Room Review, Autumn Leaves, The Smoking Poet, A Little Poetry, and other on-line publications. She was a 2008 Commendation Award Winner from The Society of Southwestern Authors.

Outstretched  

The dirty cracks in a beggar’s hand

told more about me than him

A spurious smile transparent to his eyes

heaved humiliation upon me

as I passed.  Sliding thoughts

to a half moon place I pretend doesn’t exist

the fallacy of goodness falls flat to the ground

beneath the outstretched hand

of the needy I say I love

when I’m foolishly dressed in black

for a party.  The serrated words

hang in the air, like fog above a man-made lake

and I find I can hate myself duly; my cleanliness

makes fun of me in purchased fumes

that peck away my delight of lobster bisque

served in a hand made bowl from Africa.

Somewhere, he sits hungry on a curb, and I listen to

Miles Davis pretending I understand the meaning of life.

The Famous Dead Lady

The relevance of her life

is not for me to answer

she twisted her paint and oozed

her pain on you, her only son

with broad strokes of genius and torture

I am only a witness of the past present

in the dim light of a whiskey stained heart

bedraggled bodies now buried

hers, yours, mine

beneath tattoos of the trade, tricks

of the wicked

spray painted pretty

enough to eat, hard enough

to break your teeth

by thoughts abandoned

long before she was gone

a note from the bottom

my mood

has charcoal edges

it scrapes the day black

I can’t stop thinking about what is real

Sunless mornings

with scrambled eggs and sin

weighing me down

I cry

again    and    again

scratching mosquito bites

from yesterday

a jackknifed

woman still in bed

I know

I will only end

like

everyone

else

Forests of Atlantis

have i told you

that making love to you
is like
searching for atlantis,

       using a tiny wooden boat
       to navigate
       the riverbank of your mouth,

words foaming on the waves
and trailing
       spirals of smoke.

combustion
semisweet like sparkling wine,
fractal bubbles
breaking against the goblet of our bodies,

quoting the wind
and melting my need for words.

i bow my head to you
       like a deer toward ivy,

tree trunk periscopes
rising through
fallen leaves

as i feed you my fingertips
to taste,

and wonder
if you were carried here
in the beak of a pigeon
       who was trained to bring home
               to me.

Escape By Wing

if i spend all night
pushing through wheat fields,
dripping with saltwater tears
and beaten blue as a bruise,
my wings slicing like scissors
in the haze of airbag dust,

if i weave through stalks
where depressions are daisies
and the dawn is sketched in swirl
with bats hanging from the sky
like seed pods,

will you cry yourself awake?

will everything rise and fall
like the sea,
like your breathing

with "sleep" and "dream"
as the cardinal points on your compass,
the one you carry in your pocket
because it reminds you
of your grandfather

like the scent of juniper
and the feeling of crossing the border,
filled with the hope that just maybe
you'll never have to go back.

Proposal With Smoke Ring

if intently on the street corner,
i watch the way
you                exhale                smoke
from your cigarette,

it’s only because
i know the taste of your mouth,

know the sensations of caffeinated fervor
as we writhe in bedsheets,
         rocking chaotic
         like babes in the bathwater,
         your hands an umbrella over my skin,

curving together
before you snap me in half
and i become a stick of charcoal,
rolling between your fingers,
shading you
    with
         bruises
         outlines
         nuances.

if your eyes contain anything but images,
articulate me a map
of how to stay here forever,

teach me to pen us into a metaphor,
something like pulling the blanket
over your head,

         something like a hieroglyph
         spelling out proportioned rosebushes

because like a yacht drowning in waves
of engulfment,

                   i sail manuscripted seas,

occasionally pinched by recognition
and the crash of mutual neurosis.

we pirouette like pearls and skinned knees,
something sweet like vinegar in our veins,

                   and an agitant that would become
                   a photograph                you refused to pose for.

butchers' gaudy blades caress our bones
after our thighs repeat the creative process –


                                                        and i wonder if you sleep on my side of
                                                 the bed
                                                                                       when i'm
                                                                                 gone.

WHAT IS MORE DISTRACTING THAN CLOUDS

Everything is more distracting than the clouds

they are never there they move

on no one can say remember that

cloud we saw in college it’s still

there let’s go see it again they

walk their dogs in the park they

raise the plastic shade on the airplane

window and see a low region surrounded

by thin peaks all of it unreal

white needle shaped mountains like a scroll

of Chinese painting a landscape not even

imagined which disappears when the plane flies

through it and emerges in the blue

air over the monotonous sorghum fields below

and everything changes a diet coke sprays

open the distracting flight attendant glides past

but the clouds continue to gather they 

fail and dissipate they come from the

east where the sea makes them foam

up or they come from the west

full of ragweed and pollen too small

to see everyone breathes it all day

distracted by a song a friend sings

over and over white miraculous shifts overhead

the clouds reflected in the surface of

a cocktail completely ignored drink and cloud

ignored while a woman takes her clothes

off in front of a man who

smiles intermittently shaded by the passing helicopter’s

rotors tearing up the stratus clouds and

flinging now her shirt at him rain

falling in her almost unnaturally light blue

eyes when he looks closely reflected there

in the morning the whole sky is

a lusty pink lamp turned on a

little girl stands open-mouthed in her pajamas

she is his daughter it is five

o’clock in the morning the city still

sleeps the clouds fly out to sea

how many people saw them this morning

later the government uses its Confuse Ray

on its citizens who turn their backs

on the leaves and insects who turn

their faces to the light of their

rooms when the clouds are the color

and shape of flaming brigantines gone up

in a dark harbor but they’re distracted

from the mares’ tails if they looked

up they’d see there’s nothing to be

afraid of a high pressure system is

moving in the air is cooler now

the sky is a mild blue something

has changed

Obbligato, an Aria

I have to play the king to win the war, 

but my soloists are nervous.

the director bow-drills eyes 

notes dripping on the marble. 

clearing spider throat webbing,

he breaks the movement’s back.

the corridor is stilling voices.

pews tremble, veined in hands,

clinging desperately to church.

booted footsteps, Gothic light. 

while I light votive words,

praying quietly for wings,

the baton raps, taps 

the blood beat of the world. 

Sarasate smiles, 

earthquakes tear the sky. 

the rock of my soul cracks:

spreading an orchestra on the sea. 

and the China dances in the cabinet.

trilling up and down the scales.

A Lily Growing in Drummond Castle Gardens

I stood on top of a tower,

the old, venerated kind

that guards Medieval hills

against marauders that won’t come again,

the kind where you can look

down and count stone blocks still

swimming against the grass and

know for sure how long each has been there,

know who stood where before you

in exactly what spot, 

because you’ve read about it

on the bronze plaque in the courtyard.
 
I stood there looking back

into a wind that 

pulled music from the battlements,

and drummed from the turret’s ancient lid 

a challenge 

against the vanity of

towers 

and wished I could

unlearn everything I know.

A Lone Star Stomachache

A mound of brisket like a Boot Hill midden buries the platter before

the contestant. He plows through it, tilling the beef and protracting

teeth, letting barbecue sauce ride high on his face, sowing flecks

along a brow furrowed by early memories of caking kitchen salt

on his belly grumbling with hunger, on his education for devouring

everything in sight taught by pigs and cows on a human salt lick.

He recalls the first time the Rangers brought him back home, having

caught him chewing brands off cattle on a nearby ranch. He warned

them of his passion for revision, barbed canines like dog-blue pencils,

his endless nights with farmhands smoking Winstons and devouring

diaries of 19th Century women pioneers, which he recast into bawdy

limericks for dinnertime chants, iron triangle ringing, provoking a pace

in his veins like the hum of a corpuscular editor seeking buffets.

He yodeled "Belief...it's what for dinner" to faithful coyotes sniffing

for answers on the horizon, out where the antelope plagiarize recipes.

He remembers performing at the birthday gala of an ex-president

who dared Secret Service agents into matching him for each skirt

steak and sirloin slider, and only when the sun sank into his maw

did they look down his craw to a grunt's gut in Kandahar, stippled

with shrapnel and marbled with fat, the intersection of East and West,

all hanging out on the side of the road, by the sprightly poppy heads

bouncing in the audience as he neared his final swallow to the firing

of the ceremonial pistol and his father pretending to be tagged,

doubling over in pride and laughter, his state-sized son victorious

in his Plate of the Union address, the paean to consuming the substance

of others. The ululation of gullets crackled like stuffed M-16 carbines,

and journalists nodded as the tightened belts exploded like fireworks.

Unique Little Fellow at 4th & Central

You are blue stone,

rose quartz, a river

running uphill.

Shadows try to grab

hold of you and fail,

fall behind like leaves

from branches 

reaching for the sky.

You are secular homilies,

yesterday’s chewed gum,

a dab of paint in the background

on an artist’s canvas.

When you walk by

all phones ring

with no one on the other line.

When you absent yourself

all the wristwatch seconds

hold their breath 

and stand still—atomic clocks 

contemplate fusion.

Daughter of the Red Cliffs

You are cherry-red candy,

the blue of a Delft teacup,

the Albuquerque rain falling up.

After performing both music and poetry around the Boston area for twenty years, Derek Richards shed his fear of rejection and began submitting his work this past August. So far his poetry has appeared in over twenty-five publications, including, Lung, Word Riot, Cantaraville, Soundzine, The Centrifugal Eye, Opium 2.0, Calliope Nerve, Right Hand Pointing, Breadcrumb Scabs, Tinfoildresses, Poets Ink, The Foundling Review and Underground Voices. He has also been told to keep his day job by Quills and Parchment. His dog, cat and two ferrets admire his attempts to be honest, direct, brilliant and lucrative. Also, he wants you to know that he has compiled over 50 fantasy sports championships. Happily engaged, he resides in Gloucester, MA, cleaning windows for a living.

Sympathy Red

she was buried

in her favorite red

cocktail dress

a white rose behind each ear

she had been the dictionary of eighteen

and beautiful, streetwise innocent,

twisting curls around the hearts

of young men and old desire.

volunteered to work on the alzheimers unit,

pocketing pills no one

would remember tomorrow

there was never any pain, just a compulsive

ache to obtain more than enough

at twenty-five she'd been red-flagged

by emergency rooms throughout

a ninety-mile radius

hip pain and back aches

abusive boyfriends

anxiety

she would hold your hand and kiss your neck

while slyly stealing from your pockets.

we called her sympathy red.

when she raised her hand

explaining how she couldn't stay sober

couldn't sleep

couldn't love somebody who couldn't dare

to hit her back

she was buried

in her favorite red

cocktail dress

we thought white roses

might get her home

Confessions of Wayward Reason

liquor stores sell cigarettes and that sells me.

after the last valium overdose,

i decided to stop attending meetings

and focus on my lungs.

the rose garden across the street

is cursed with beauty and honey bees.

a place i want to stomp, rumble,

a pleasant haven for procrastination.

graveyards have never been quiet places for me.

there are songs i hear, love notes torn,

repeated phrases about pain, profit and purgatory.

and so i reason, i cry mercy, i wilt and stumble

all the while, pretending to hallucinate genius

april whispers december

april whispers

murder by barbituate

by clean thick water

accidents prosper along old cow paths

one way shotgun alibis

so who wants to dance down by the river?

who takes this hand

in sickness and in health

and in hell

who lights the merry may candles?

the weaker children steal our lighters

burn among the corn

smooth limbs rub the mud from baskets

while june encourages rain

we teach the tarnish of forgiving

gasp at horrors of wealth

the fourth of july tastes like suicide

when pillows dirty

and the chickens go mad

august whispers

prayer by flashing flood

for sweet dumb decay

holidays linger among young blind girls

raw cold switchblade prophecy

so who wants to dance down by the river?

who takes this hand

in sickness and in health

and in heaven

who cries septembers tears?

everyone goes home in october

thrust out penny-luck eyes

sheets of birch bark entertain fires

careless sex and busy angels

i am the tidal wave of torment and turkey

cranberry veins failed by church

dogs grow bored and fat as november begets

jesus, frost and fairytales

december whispers

ice curing the goats milk

glorious disease wrapped in paper

sacraments torn by sweat and glove

long lost morals fuel the furnace

so who wants to dance down by the river?

who takes this hand

in sickness and in health

and in love

we cry when we sleep