GAS Featured Poet: George Wallace

George Wallace is a NYC based poet and spoken word artist with 42 chapbooks to his name, four albums of spoken word poetry streamed worldwide, and an active schedule of appearances in NYC, nationally and internationally. Recent national appearances include the St. Augustine Poetry Festival, National Beat Poetry Festival, Lowell Celebrates Kerouac, and a poetry soiree in San Luis Obispo Ca; international appearances at the Turrialba Poetry Festival (Turrialba Costa Rica), Boao Poetry Festival (Hainan China), Silk Road International Poetry Festival (Xi'an China), Piacenza Biennale (Piacenza It), La Cave Cafe (Paris Fr), Aldeburgh/Suffolk Poets gathering (UK) and Human Underground (Athens Greece).  As writer in residence at the Walt Whitman Birthplace since 2011, he is creator of POETS BUILDING BRIDGES, now in its third season, triangulating groups of poets from different regions of the world.

 

YOU MUST LOVE ME

you must love me, like this, unreasonably, hopelessly, wide awake, as i love you, voluptuous and honest and prayerful and true, for i am relentless, and i am true, i live among the pillows, i am indebted to your grace, my face tilts in your direction like the morning sun; you must love me like this, like the sun loves window curtains that hold momentarily in the breeze, like the breeze itself, which blows thru bushes

and stops awhile, like i wake to your sleeping like a morning thrush, like clouds wake to the multiple song of birds; you must love me like this, like a small child who has burst into the bedroom and is surprised and a little confused by what he sees; like a penitent who kneels in prayer before a god that he is not even sure exists but prays to anyway, like a finback whale loves the sea, like a single-celled creature knows no limits, 

like an honest man praying for justice, or a liar for forbearance; 

you must love me, just in case there is a god listening, like this, like i love you, a marble goddess with clipped wings deep in reverence of flight, like the bearded one with eyes like a burning bush making up the rules as he goes along; like a petty little god who exists in the minds of those who serve him, or a redistributive god who exists in the hearts of peasants and prisoners and forgotten people, the mad and childlike, the one who go on serving their life sentences 

without complaint while the courts mete out their punishments and rewards; 

you must love me like this, like an outlaw who feeds the poor; like a lost city in the everglades, harboring criminals; like a novitiate who knows the kind of mercy that lives fleetingly in the shadows; 

like a river that loves the land, mad to be one with the soil, to be lord and servant to earth's contours, to be jealous of and guardian to its freedom, a river that bursts its banks whenever it can, and escapes onto the broad plain, flooding tractors farms and women and men; 

you must always, always, love me, you must love me like this

as i love you

     even when you stay true 

to your banks

COLTRANE ON THE TURNTABLE, DEVIL IN MY HEART

coltrane on the turntable 

devil in my heart

a love supreme 

is playing hypnotic 

& slow, and i still love 

you just like i used to

   in the blue notes

      in the grace notes 

   in the silent notes 

o heaven that moves me

as if one vibration!

the wind picks up

pigeons take flight

the stars come out

and we make love

and the furnaces

and the factories

blow and blow

and the east river flows 

like any river flows;

sing me a song 

that will take this 

needle from my brain

sing me a song 

that will pour me 

back into you

little sister, 

slow and pretty 

as a morphine metaphor

midnight rolls in

and i still love you 

slow, little sister, slow

we all roll in, we all run in 

(slow as hell, this is how we do)

& hell's got nothing 

on me & you tonight

listen little sister

i'm eight feet tall

and live on the roof tops

i write these lines for you 

because i can do anything 

you need me to (yes 

i can do anything)

surprise me like you used to

surprise me like you used to

surprise me like you used to

paradise lost, but the night still shines

AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT AND BREAK OF DAWN

Some say the Devil does things 

by the numbers, he drives a flatbed Ford 

and steers clear of places and situations 

but some folks down in McAllen Texas say 

when things get hot the Devil starts dancing

and the devil was a looker all right in a three-

piece suit, one half chicken leg the other half shine

and like I say the devil does things by the numbers

and knows how to a burn a little girl or two 

on the dance floor, when his eyes rotating 

this way and that -- like a disco ball 

like a nine-tailed armadillo –

and frying hell with his infamous eyes 

and one night in McAllen Texas 

in a joint called Boccacios

the Devil walked into the room 

and took control of a girl named Navé 

and started her dancing

the DJ was spinning and spinning 

that vinyl out of control 

he was a genius with the music 

and the 7&7s and Bavarian beer 

were flying my friend 

and the underage boys 

beat a hasty retreat 

from the land of the wallflowers

and the Devil and Nave 

danced and danced and danced, 

until a couple of bouncers 

bounced him out 

     three times for show

          three times for show

     three times for show

bounced them out, through a 

double bolt steel lock 

emergency door

and some folks say it never happened 

and some folks say it did 

and some say they saw 

the Devil himself 

crossing the borderline 

in a flat bed Ford

crossing the borderline

at the speed of light and break of dawn

and that’s good enough for me

FOR ALL WE KNOW THIS IS PARADISE

(from the 2023 Roadside Press collection RESURRECTION SONG)

What if apples were still apples, 

snakes still snakes, and we are

all still living in paradise; what if

Eve is in the summer of her years, 

running with the antelope, thighs 

supple and alert, her face tan; 

what if nobody has had to 

crawl on their belly on account

of some fairy tale crime; Adam 

lies blameless in a grove of 

ripe pears, admiring Eve's gait, 

admiring how evening light arrives 

in Eden on hushed wings to remind

him of love's caresses; no temptation

no shame, just a curious bird, singing in 

sweet ellipses, singing with the trees,

a song with no words, about God and

summer and sunlight in waterfalls; 

a simple song, about how perfectly 

a pear fits in Adam's hand, equally

perfect in Eve's hand too; and how 

generously its juices spill onto 

his chin and hands and chest, 

(almost as if it was by design), 

singing how we are all of us 

two halves of a single fruit

hanging from a paradise tree.

EVERYBODY IS A FLOWER

(from the 2023 Roadside Press collection RESURRECTION SONG)

In the beginning everyone was a flower

and had their moment in the sun

and thought things would stay that way forever

         But they don't.... do they

Seasons change. Winter comes.

To survive is to go hard in the heart.

To survive is to go mean and blind, too.

To cover up in ashes and overcoats 

and play dead to the body.

       To endure... rock hard to the elements, 

while the gods quarrel with each other 

and make plans. and we hunker down 

in our homes and hovels... 

we hunker down, in our factories, 

our offices our laboratories 

our grease traps our garbage cans,

all the hellholes of material regret

       and we wait...

But then out comes spring!

out comes spring!

we made it!

     office workers are glad

     salesgirls are glad

everything shines like a plate glass window

schoolchildren laugh and misbehave

everything is liquid and cool again

 the entire world belongs to us!

we throw open our hearts

we take a deep breath 

Hey everybody! shrug off your stale meager existences

give your bodies back to the sun

the gods haven't forgotten us after all.

Everyone’s a flower.

    Everybody's a flower.

Everyone is a flower. 

GAS Featured Poet: Linda Bratcher Wlodyka

 

Linda Bratcher Wlodyka is the Massachusetts, Beat Poet Laureate, 2023-2025. In the summer of 2023, Linda was chosen as a contributor to WordxWord a summer poetry festival in the Berkshires where she collaborated with a team of poets creating a very large poem that was read aloud for the audience at The Mount. She also has held the position as a docent at The Mount, Edith Wharton’s summer home in Lenox, MA from 2002 -2006. She retired as an educator from Mt. Greylock Regional School District in Williamstown in 2020. Linda’s poem, Secret Cottage, was voted Best in the Berkshires in 2012 and she was invited to the Colonial Theater in Pittsfield, MA to read that poem. Linda also has had three poems published in Red Barn Volume I, in 2016 after attending Peter Bergman's workshop at Arrowhead the historic homestead of author Herman Melville in Pittsfeld, MA. Linda has 3 chapbooks previously self-published, Her Spirited Cameo, Voices from the Blue Room and Tick Tock. If Brambles Were Bookends Collected Poems, is Linda’s first full length poetry collection released September 2023. Her poems have been widely anthologized throughout the United States. She is a member of the Florence Poet’s Society and has recently been involved reading and choosing poems for publication in the anthology, Silkworm and Naugatuck River Review.

Days Infinitesimal Like the Lives of Mannequins

 “It’s strange how time can make a place shrink, makes its strangeness ordinary.”

-Veronica Roth

 

Sunrise unzips another dawn, days infinitesimal

I count time in hours, minutes like a clock

that ages this ragged world. If all clocks

stopped, would I know of time and its essence?

 

I imagine time standing still like the lives of mannequins

in storefront window casements of uninhabited

businesses. Sometimes clothed, often naked, 

their posture is unhuman-like, bent in erratic

 

eerie positions, while their vacant eyes gaze 

endlessly, focusing on nothing, complexion flawless, 

figure slight. A purse dangles from a wrist ready for an

outing, a date, a chance to escape this window’s prison.

 

Another wears a wristwatch not set to correct 

time a convenient denial. Time is just a construct 

to manipulate history and human activity.

Sundials an ancient time teller clocking the day’s

 

passing seems an appropriate alternative.

Sundown zips up another day as dusk fades to black. 

I watch night’s stars flicker, a comet soar, an 

orange moon appear from behind a mountain’s 

 

crest, a falling star. I ignore time and its passing, 

revel in the black sky, the illumination of  fireflies,

their ability to create light within their tiny bodies 

never bowing to sunshine, married to the night.

Palette

 

It was the gray furniture I chose to buy. 

The pandemic caused shortages.

I wasn’t sure the likes of elephant skin gray, dolphin gray,                                                                                                                                                              

or tree bark gray could wow or enhance my living room. 

I say, “It’s the yellow walls that matter.”  Benjamin Moore 

paint offers a Hawthorne yellow which glows amber.  

It is also an exterior color seen on two hundred year old 

colonial houses. It suits my walls.

 

I chose poetic pillows: “Happiness depends upon ourselves.” 

Not that I love throw pillows all that much. They cannot replace 

a bed pillow for comfort. Decorators call them accent pillows.

Leave them on an unoccupied chair, accent complete.  

 

A crafter from Etsy made them. I presume they saw this room. 

The pillow is gray, yellow, white and black, patterned in swatches, 

a random collage.  Butterflies, three black chickens, (which I could 

have sworn were crows from the online image), vines, leaves, flowers 

and a hashtag of stripes comprise this collage. My curiosity kills me 

when it comes to the chicken wire fence. It looks like the chickens 

flew the coop proudly perched up on that branch.

 

I add some furniture scarves which are the same color as the pillows.

Tiny flowers, berries, vines, kittens, butterflies and tiny black, white- haired 

nymphs which appear to present as female sit amongst the flora. 

I believe I chose this wonderland to keep fantasy alive in my living room, 

lend some magic to a mundane moment. 

 

New lamps seem to be in order. They are metal, donning black leafy vines,  

with white shades. I imagine the cats and nymphs will someday escape their 

lair, hoist themselves onto the vined lamp, sit pretty grinning at me 

like the Cheshire Cat. Then they’ll swing off the lamp, plop into my 

cold drink, talk gibberish while swimming in my Pino Grigio.

 Uprooted Persimmon

 

More than the silence I ache for a whisper

wanting to know why all these turquoise bottles

were packed in a box too heavy to be moved

and why the linen napkins were now

posing as packing material when they belong

with fresh tablecloths and the shirt you wore

when I saw you last year.

 

More than the silence I ache for an envelope,

expressions of polite gratitude, a complimentary

high five to your recent successes, but there were

none to be had in a world so troubled by doubt, fear, 

anxious people wanting something to reach for besides

another day of solitude preferable to the loud screeching

of tires that sped down the auto raceway three houses away.

 

More than the silence I ache for familiarity

the smell of clean laundry drying on the line

rose scents wafting across the meadow into a yard

so bright with orange lilies and yellow sun drops even

a caravan of carnival actors could not appear this brilliant.

Remembering a cascading waterfall coupled with our 

drenching  hair last summer, is all that I can fathom now.

 

More than the silence I ache for a small token,

a shiny bauble like a crow would place by your door,

a lost charm from a broken bracelet, the engraved message

now worn, weathered, beaten down by time, 

hidden for years near a culvert where a young girl

climbed off a young boy after kissing him on the mouth

snagging her wrist amongst the grapevines where lovers hide.

 

More than the silence I ache for the taste of luscious fruit a

riper than ripe peach, strawberries, sugared rhubarb, fresh mint,

and the oolong leaves you placed in my ceramic pitcher, iced to 

perfection like the cubes a bartender drops in a cocktail glass.

I recall a ten dollar bill that was left on the bar the last time I saw 

you. You, always a generous patron.  I was already out the door 

walking to a place that I call home hoping you were in pursuit behind me.

 

 More than the silence, I ache for another page to turn, 

I read your stories, a familiar poem you finished for me when 

tears flowed down my cheek, landed against your forearm. 

Even now you still blot the streaks of fluid that leave a salty streak 

against our flesh, your tender kiss like a tincture. This poem survives 

in all its first line repetition, like a cherished relic, a coveted object. 

If it were not for the uprooted persimmon I’d call out your name in tongues.

 If Brambles Were Bookends

 

If brambles were bookends, 

my hand would gingerly slide 

three leather - bound volumes of 

your original poetry books off

your shelf. Each word I read aloud 

would place emphasis on your

interpretation, never mine.

 

This shelf, a mesmerism, shared 

by bibliophiles, poets, sages, 

wordsmiths, etymologists, and those 

indulging in brambles, is a stoic shelf,

not meant to cast doubt. One

might inquire as to its architectural

stature, its organic origins, its ability 

to protect itself. Like poison ivy it

innately lies in wait for its victim.

 

Each bramble nods as if to agree

that its purpose for being is more 

than your poems, more than what 

I meant to say, as if the beginning 

never mattered, more substance

given to what lies in between.

 

And what lies in between feels

coarser than words spoken, 

more trying than the discourse

between the end and the middle

of poetic words. The ones you

once made reference to as 

pretentious; words brambled.

 

If brambles were bookends, I could

place a wreath adorned with blossoms,

not toxic fragrance like Rappaccini’s

daughter exhaled, but fragrant like 

honeysuckle, dew of nymphs. Each 

blossom would enhance a bramble, 

expose its prickly fibers,

tempt others to touch them.

 

If brambles were bookends, your

books, your words, would be 

believed by every naysayer known.

No matter what scorn one feels, it

would be revealed in your words.

One could drink from the cup of your

poison nostalgia, interpret each phrase as

a critique to live by, secretly abhor the 

temptation that your bramble belies.

 

I would return the three books. 

I would place them spine side in, 

revel in the fact that none of your 

words were anything but bumbling 

idolatry admittance of your innermost

phobias, deserving of a shelf of 

scrub-brush bramble.

 

If brambles were bookends, I would  

dismantle the barbs, allow them and 

your books to fall away through the cracked,

rotted floorboards, to an eternal doom,

the lost language of you.

 

 

 

 

GAS Featured Poet: Nicole Kimball

 

Nicole Kimball is an emerging poet from SLC, UT. Her pieces are published in Sunspot Lit, Mom Egg Review, Sky Island Journal, 12 Mile Review, or are forthcoming. A four-time Best of the Net Nominee, her artwork is featured in downtown Salt Lake.

Burdens 

I am the burden of life– the sound of night 

breaking into two, beading into fine firelight.

My worry of things that will never happen stay transfixed in wax 

where a listening ear once was connected to a head. 

My body speaks like a mule. Hemoglobin 

slowly heats before thawing past the point of excitement. 

Is this when love is turned to grease? 

On cold days, the roses of the garden drool in sugary scent

until frostbite enjoys the whole meal.  It is sad, but yes–

the most beautiful things grow old and collapse into the hands that 

gave them life. 

Reunion 

This very same light once flooded you–

the fluttering orb of child’s play. The light 

of a dance above the sea, the tides lost in the sand’s milk. 

You felt the peace of owning the right heart, ventricles 

sewn thickly with human bone and human falter.  

This very same child once flooded you–

The bareness of what you love and what you know 

you shouldn’t.