Exodus 15:21

Give-and-Take Ghazal

Jack Logan, Fighting Airman: The Case of the Red Bordello

<p style="padding-left: 0px;">On the green plastic chair she&#8217;s so alive<br />and blazing he can barely glance at her<br />as he drinks soda and Campari here<br />where tourists congregate like pigeons, and love<br />for just a day in Rome. He thinks her smile<br />is frightening. It yields such pent-up light<br />that he needs courage watching it ignite<br />not to flinch back. She is the sun. He smells<br />the fire and falters, almost mute, breath short.<br />He feels his stomach fulminate in red,<br />smoke his eyes from her flame of dark hair,<br />the breasts electric in her brown stretch shirt;<br />he&#8217;s splintered into kindling but upright,<br />and he keeps talking as flames drown the square.</p><figure class="wp-block-audio"><audio controls src="https://admin.rattle.com/audio/BarnstoneYoung.mp3"></audio></figure>

THE CATWALK WATCH by Eric Basso

To Hell in a Handbasket

Young Woman Drinking…

<p style="padding-left: 0px;">Patricia looks just like a movie star,<br />you know, the actress in <em>Jerry Maguire</em>,<br />what&#8217;s her name, the pretty one, and he stares<br />at her a bit too much, feeling a fire<br />ignite, of lust or the Greek sun. A tiny<br />yellow missile darts from the sky of glass:<br />a bee that stings her where her white bikini<br />bottom arches round her lovely ass,<br />and Jaqueline says someone must suck out<br />the poison fast or else the wound will swell.<br />He gets the job and sucks with modest ardor<br />while everybody laughs. Patricia Pouts,<br />&#8220;It hurts. It isn&#8217;t coming out,&#8221; then smiles,<br />&#8220;I&#8217;m sorry, but you&#8217;ll have to suck it harder.&#8221;</p><figure class="wp-block-audio"><audio controls src="https://admin.rattle.com/audio/BarnstoneTruth.mp3"></audio></figure>

Still Alive

HORSEPLAY

The Truth Is That He Never…

<div class="line">Each time the carpenter with a sharp rap sets a nail</div>
<div class="line2">then whangs it head and shaft into the tan flesh of the wood</div>
<div class="line4">and slips the hammer back into the leather belt,</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">I think of Achilles casting his spear so fast</div>
<div class="line2">it pinned the Amazon queen and her horse together</div>
<div class="line4">“as a man might impale some innards on a spit.”</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">Each time he sinks a nail he says below his breath,</div>
<div class="line2">“mmn-hmn,” as if to say, “Yes, that will do,”</div>
<div class="line4">then sets and sinks the next. Yes, he’s my brother,</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">but it’s enough to make me want to whack him one</div>
<div class="line2">as I jag my cuts, and ding the wood,</div>
<div class="line4">and warp the nail, and skew the screw.</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">His rhythmic hammerings make perfect stress,</div>
<div class="line2">tap-<em>tap</em>, tap-<em>tap</em>, tap-<em>tap</em>, but half my mind’s</div>
<div class="line4">trying to write a poem, so my hammering’s a mess,</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">like the failed lines I mouth below my breath</div>
<div class="line2">—until a hopeful phrase sends me scrabbling</div>
<div class="line4">for the flat, fat-tipped carpenter’s pencil and a square of plywood,</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">something about swimming at Spy Lake after work,</div>
<div class="line2">white flashes diving from the canoe</div>
<div class="line4">and concentric moonlight like rippled music,</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">the lakewater turned to black vinyl and my body</div>
<div class="line2">the needle that moves within the groove.</div>
<div class="line4">I wanted to write something about the shout</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">ripped out of the mouth by joy, the strangeness of being</div>
<div class="line2">a being channeled through time,</div>
<div class="line4">pierced by the needle of right <em>now</em>, and the way</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">we kill our life by living it, and the song of</div>
<div class="line2">all we were unraveling behind us, the song that plays</div>
<div class="line4">as a record spins to its end, and the sorrow</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">of that, and how I still sing in the shower.</div>
<div class="line2">That’s the poem that I wanted to write</div>
<div class="line4">but that was twenty years ago,</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">and every line I wrote that summer</div>
<div class="line2">went into the scrap and sawdust pile,</div>
<div class="line4">and all that sun-moist morning I hoisted</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">the pickaxe and made it sing on asphalt,</div>
<div class="line2">sank post holes, fucked up cuts with the SkilSaw,</div>
<div class="line4">thought literary thoughts, and screwed up.</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">And since I was more a poet than a man,</div>
<div class="line2">my brother sent me to buy studs at the yard</div>
<div class="line4">ten blocks off, and when I got lost in Boston</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">and dragged in hours later like a bedraggled sailor,</div>
<div class="line2">the crew just laughed and went back to their tasks,</div>
<div class="line4">And it’s time to tell the truth:</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">that was <em>thirty</em> years ago and I’ve gone on</div>
<div class="line2">to other crafts, the way today I take the pen shaft</div>
<div class="line4">in my hand and cast my mind into the void</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">and with each line I give a little “huh!” of joy.</div>
<div class="line2">And you don’t have to tell me how after he bragged</div>
<div class="line4">about his feat Achilles removed the queen’s helmet</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">and her blonde hair spilled free in strands of light,</div>
<div class="line2">and her goddess face shone, and, pierced himself,</div>
<div class="line4">he fell to his knees and mourned</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">the beauty he’d killed with his great shaft.</div>
<div class="line2">I know it’s not heroic to fix my mind to the page</div>
<div class="line4">in lines like a butterfly pinned and dried,</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">and I know just this of carpentry:</div>
<div class="line2">once the house is built the rot sets in.</div>
<div class="line4">But since making is what I have,</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">I make what I can out of this long unmaking</div>
<div class="line2">with what tools I have at hand</div>
<div class="line4">now that my power tools are powered down</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">and covered with a powdering of dust,</div>
<div class="line2">now that my yellow leather carpenter’s belt has stiffened,</div>
<div class="line4">its pockets stuffed with nails long turned to rust.</div><figure class="wp-block-audio"><audio controls src="https://admin.rattle.com/audio/BarnstoneCarpenter.mp3"></audio></figure>

POETRY! POETRY! POETRY!

What She Did Not Do

Why I’m Not a Carpenter

<p>When in the mist of a phone call you loose<br />yourself in thought and all seams an allusion,<br />when I take you for granite like statues<br />of limitation, and the one solution<br />seams to excape like hoarses from a coral<br />fenced with Bob wire, than thoughts go wild, gallumping<br />off, and take a different tact. The morale<br />is when I spread whip cream on your volumptuous<br />bawdy, when I gays at you awl rapt<br />up in duck tape of lust, its not enough.<br />We use each other viscously. We dangle<br />over a whole, unable to adept.<br />But cant we change? Lets nip it in the butt.<br />We kneed to see things from another angel.</p>
<p><small><em>Read by Author</em></small></p><figure class="wp-block-audio"><audio controls src="https://admin.rattle.com/audio/BarnstoneUsage.mp3"></audio></figure>

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June 2, 2010Bad UsageTony Barnstone

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June 2, 2010Bad UsageTony Barnstone

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Jack Logan, Fighting Airman: The Case of the Red Bordello by Tony Barnstone

Young Woman Drinking… by Tony Barnstone

The Truth Is That He Never… by Tony Barnstone

Why I’m Not a Carpenter by Tony Barnstone