Speakeasy Anthology
Check out a few samples from last year's anthology!
Speakeasy by Adam Kaufman
Today by Tahneer Oksman
time sits down to smoke a butt by Marcus Zarnow
Trashoot by Drew Melbourne
Crescendos by Melissa Duclos
Porn Store by Tim Coble
Speakeasy
A modern call to poetry
sort of timid
because this is a time for other arts.
We do not ask for fermenting revolution.
Any simple tail or idea
Fragment.
Give us one image
of a boy and his dog
a girl’s first exam
or a rose- if you undertake cliché-
Seen different.
This is a modern call to poetry.
The cost to benefit ruled out trumpets
but we have a web page
and poetry pencilled in our schedules from 8:30 to 10:00
on alternate Wednesdays.
-Adam Kaufman
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Today
today you wore a shirt
that i remembered from the days when we
were
young
you were a pimp and I
a pimpernell
racking up trust in the yellow eyes
of boys in jeans
last night at the symphony
I thought of that and just that
the girls thought you had the greenest eyes
that matched your shirt
your mother and I used to sit on the porch
she would let me drink her lemonade
and we talked about what you would do
and the rebellion that you were
you were
ripped jeans and a bust of muscles
a smile curt and mean and hard and
sweet as a cartoon
we drink cappuccino now
and I dont think
youve called your mother in a while
a burst of:
"not this weekend/I do what I can/
theres not a chance/I'm late for a meeting"
but darling
we are all late for a meeting.
-Tahneer Oksman
4
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time sits down to smoke a butt
time sits down to smoke a butt
and the room is circled again
thoughts are fat and slow
(they stick in your neck)
and your head yearns
to compensate
for the vacuum they create
image of scroll
ancient incantation
written in dust from some moon
unrolls and scatters alphabets like
cave magic
sitting is slow on the ground pushes
you away
like being free and the heavy burden
of loneliness
-Mark Zarnow
Trashshoot
In the little room, the shoot door opens.
The can tips—the trash spills—down, down, down,
down.
One piece, two, three. Crap, crap, memory, crap. Lost.
Reach. Gone. Reach. Gone. Reach. Handful of crap. Gone.
Little things, lost again. Little things, forgotten,
remembered, lost.
Reach. Crap. So hard to let go. So hard to catch hold.
Slipping. Slipping. Falling into darkness.
All gone. The can is empty. The shoot door snaps.
The can is dragged away. All gone. The little room is empty.
-Drew Melbourne
5
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6
Crescendos
I want my life to flow like jazz
each day picked out like the notes on a bass
each day moving with a rhythm,
slow and sensual
and sweet
like the juice from a nectarine
rolling down the chin.
I want to lick my life off the tips of sticky fingers
fingers that know for whom they play
fingers that still taste like the music
they carved out of smoky air.
I want my life to pour like vodka
ice cold and running slow
each shot taken with an expectant toss
of the head
I want my life to be all
quick pulse and flushed cheeks and breath moving in time
to
the jazz
and the crescendos
dancing with eyes lowered and hips swaying smoothly
rolling with a rhythm unheard
but felt,
moving the way air rises and falls,
the way a note rises and sets
like the moon hung heavy on the horizon
round and yellow and dragging down the sky
setting slowly
like ripe fruit.
My mouth hangs heavy
sets slowly
waits for its life to be played.
-Melissa Duclos
9
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Porn Store
Purple neon porn store,
or church or temple
as I prefer to call it,
where sacred dildos lay beside bibles of erotic
positions
all in honor of the holy art of sex,
for sex is holy
artistic
animalistic
fear of God,
of the dark messenger of impotence.
To aid the
Passing the genetic pulp in order to defeat God
or savior as he prefers
lay this Mecca of sexual revelation
where man battles divine.
Remove your clothes,
for on holy ground you walk.
-Tim Coble
10
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