Free Verse

 

 

Zvi A. Sesling, US   Area Code   Somewhere inside eleven hundred pages of non-acid free white pages black ink shouting names, numbers addresses – how many I do not know is your name in one of many permutations: maiden name, married name – the first second or third or maybe you have made up a new name, perhaps hidden like a wind blown thistle in a bush maybe with a fourth married name that I can Google or Dog Pile or use some other internet search engine to reveal your current personal information like a face in a crowd of protestors avoiding the past     Blood   The sky is cold dark and gray like your heart, the eerie scratching of rats in dumpsters is your song You have the fangs of the bat the thud of elephants on my heart Yesterday you left with someone or for someone, it makes no difference Your escape is my freedom, rows of birds on wires sing their song is for me as the the ice melts in my veins and brain Once when I was young four boys ganged up on me and my blood was red-black when they finished and also when I avenged each of them one-on-one until red is my blood’s color again for my revenge over poured blood      Hometown Blues   They have all moved away my friends who lived within a few blocks and went to the state university then stayed there and bought homes, while others went to California, Texas, Florida or are dead like the stores now boarded and decaying, the houses with peeling paint, missing shingles, overgrown grass, cars rusting in driveways, are homes for kiddie drug dealers and teen prostitutes, schools have holes in windows and police wish they drove armored vehicles and I hit the gas pedal, wave farewell to the city of my youth, my idyllic past     Memories   Evil from the past creeps up the spine like cold soup, a chill, a shiver, a sliver of memory squeezing under the closet door There was a time in the teenage years we all thought we were invincible fast cars, drag races, jumping off bridges we were a clown in the circus Then one died in a car crash another jumped into the water of paralysis so we grew apart, forgot our past the way we forget a cup of coffee The mind is like a recording machine that replays when you do not expect it – usually at night when alone, when we do not need it     Old Friends   What has happened to my old friends Some have vaporized in saunas Others have become autographs in Someone’s yearbook or on loose pages There are those dead and desiccated In the jungles or rotted in deserts Some became statistics on highways While others counted dollars as if They were pebbles on a distant beach The rest I look up to at night Bid them farewell, make a wish and join the waiting pillow     Secret Signal   The acne faced moon stares down each night until its last smile insults many with a blackface imitation then returns to the full face of the intelligent to the reflection of our own misgiving We used to lie in cool grass dew forming on our foreheads as we stared up and you said the moon is a she and stars her children while I argued it was Earth’s war shield The other night I looked up and studied that pimpled face as it winked and reminded me of all those who have shared the grass bed, whose dew had been a secret signal     About Zvi A. Sesling, US   Zvi A. Sesling has published poetry in numerous magazines both in print and online in the United States, Great Britain, New Zealand, Canada and Israel. Among the publications are: Ibbetson St., Midstream, Poetica,The Deronda Review, Voices Israel, Saranac Review, New Delta Review, Plainsong, Asphodel, Haz Mat Review, Istanbul Literary Review, The Chaffin Journal, Ship of Fools, Chiron Review, Poetry Monthly Interational, Matrix, The Tower, New Vilna Review and Main Street Rag. He was awarded Third Place (2004) and First Prize (2007) in the Reuben Rose International Poetry Competition and was a finalist in the 2009 Cervena Barva Press Chapbook Contest. In 2008 he was selected to read his poetry at New England/Pen “Discovery” by Boston Poet Laureate Sam Cornish. He was a featured reader in the 2010 Jewish Poetry Festival in Brookline, MA. He is a regular reviewer for the Boston Small Press and Poetry Scene and he edits the Muddy River Poetry Review. He is author of King of the Jungle, (Ibbetson St., 2010), which has been nominated for the Massachusetts Book Award and a chapbook Across Stones of Bad Dream (Cervana Barva, 2011) and a second full length poetry book, Fire Tongue to be published by Cervena Barva Press.