Melange Magazine

Poetry

5 Pieces
By jesse ferguson

After the Fact

She went down to work every day,
sometimes walking, sometimes
running. The wind would trip her
up on the way. Sidewalks pounding
under worn shoes.

The sky would cloud dark
above her head. And no matter
the route she took, always
her son would be waiting
there for her—

thin boy’s legs stretched out
cold on the pavement.
* Nov. 9th 2004.

Sharks and Coffee
for Nicholas Lea

across briny oceans
of flickering
word-processor pages
his fearless cursor
slices its course

thoughts leap overboard
in last-stitch attempts
at translation
scattering on the screen
life-preserverless

Nick drinks down his coffee
locked in life-or-death struggles
with sly metrical sharks
that grin sardonic rows of teeth
and threaten to chomp off
bits of his nascent lines
to tear gory caesura
where none should be
* Sept. 2nd 2004.

Nightclub

dense wall of writhing
flesh, hits you
a hot tsunami

the reptilian brain
licks itself
into power
creeps from out
its ancient burrow
beneath the cerebellum
grips the mind with
keen claws
of pent-up instinct

you drown in images
of perfect limbs
curves destined for limbo
faces you won’t
even remember
wanting to
* Nov. 09, 2004.

Gut-Seed

Not everyone can drink like that,
twenty years old or not.
Take poor Jim -that’s where he sat
and drank more than he aught.

He’d pound em’ back with manly greed-
two beer, a bourbon, scotch-
he didn’t know he bore the seed
that bloomed above his crotch.

That seed, they claimed, was in his gut,
conceived with him at birth;
it drank his liquor, and you know what?
It laid him in the earth.

So, raise a glass to poor young Jim,
and cheer you as you need.
But pray with us that, unlike him,
your gut’s devoid of seed.
* Aug. 5th 2004.

Conductor’s Lament

I
pinched
her
caboose
and
was
promptly
run
out
of
town
on
a
rail.
* Nov. 1st, 2004