Spinozablue: An Eclectic Journal of the Arts

Valentina Cano: In Amber

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Lockdown

 
I turned to stone
that Saturday morn­ing.
It wasn’t slow.
There were no gasps
as my fin­gers dried like corn husks,
or as my hair locked in place,
never to feel the breeze again.
There was no time for that.
In one sec­ond, I was star­ing
out of eyes sewn to our walls.
There was no blink­ing.
I was alone,
star­ing out into a room
I could no longer shut out.

In Amber

 
Softly, you turn.
Your face is a mask of ash,
drift­ing with the cur­rents,
with my moods.
You peer at me out of cot­ton­wood eyes
that reflect fires I’ve not yet set.
Cares I’ve not flung at you
like dirty clothes.
Stay like that.
Just like that, for an instant,
while I bring out
my words and boil them alive.…

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Eleanor Bennett: Battling Winds

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(Click on the indi­vid­ual phở­tos to enlarge and start slide show)

Eleanor Bennett is a very young and gifted phở­tog­ra­pher, whose art cap­tures a stun­ning range of land­scapes, peo­ple and other ani­mals, along with the purely con­cep­tual. It is obvi­ous that she intu­itively under­stands com­po­si­tion, drama, angles, lines, shad­ows and color. It is also obvi­ous that she has com­mand over her sub­ject mat­ter and a vora­cious inter­est in the world surrounding her. 

The above is but a small sam­ple of her work, which is best seen on her own web­site.…

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Christina Murphy: Ohio Green

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Green

green is cir­cuitous and cer­tainly cubic, and you need ask
only Magritte, Beckett, or Monet for the cer­ti­tude
that green has noth­ing to say of flat­ness, whether
hor­i­zon­tal or ver­ti­cal or even in planes  —  noth­ing at all
as silent as the game of spring hid­ing behind blue winter

green  —  play­ing the com­ple­ment of magenta and sel­dom
hid­ing from sight in trees and sprouts and stems
green  —  shin­ing as an impulse in the new and yet to become
green  —  as the élan vital or the end of joy as jeal­ousy
when the green-​​​​eyed mon­ster claims its bounty in envy

green invites, cajoles, makes us believe in youth and rebirth
lingers in emer­ald seas and rivers of regen­er­a­tion as the god
Osiris bids us to believe; but noth­ing gold can stay, as Frost
knows and eter­nity echoes  —  and noth­ing green can stay
before the end­less fad­ing to gold and eventual decay

in the twi­light, in the fall of evening, green is a kiss, a dance
spun by the faeries, who know that, within each sham­rock,
is a beat­ing heart of the mys­ti­cal, the celes­tial, that blesses
the poet, the bard, with voice and song; green as the holy,
green as every­thing com­plex and lovely and noth­ing sorrowful

– by Christina Murphy

Copyright© 2012, by Christina Murphy.…

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Penelope Mermall: Inner City of the Mind

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  Baby Jesus    

I drop in late nights and sink into a place that set­tles round me in a hush and the sight of bent backs lined up at the counter soothes me some. The wait­resses own a tough­ness that remind me of shoe leather and sweep past at a swift clip with plates piled in the crook of arms.

I sit in a booth look­ing out on a town where street lamps throw a foggy glow and passersby exchange a pock­et­ful of words. In the wide expanse of glass my hair hangs limp and a ghostly face stares back. I’m no stranger to myself in glass, where I exist nei­ther here nor there. Snowflakes float down and melt like salty kisses and the red neon DINER sign blinks on and off.…

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Emily Ramser: First Flight

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Heron Wings

For Justin Heron

heron wings float­ing
caress­ing clouds softly, they
glide through hot air drafts
.
shoul­ders extended
paint­ing shad­ows, blan­ket­ing
rip­ples and swim­mers
.
pat­terns on water
criss-​​​​cross slits of black and blue,
cobalt tipped feath­ers
.
soar­ing up into
the palace of the sun, bills
of light sun­shine straw
.
cradling new­born and
ancient in the crest of its
eyes. spir­i­tual friend.
.
wing-​​​​tips touch­ing souls
of those past and gone, send­ing
onwards and beyond

– by Emily Ramser

Copyright © 2012, by Emily Ramser. All Rights Reserved.

Emily Ramser is a high school author liv­ing part time between North Carolina and California. She has been pub­lished in a small school anthol­ogy as well as in the online lit mag­a­zine, The Crocodile Journal.…

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Ben Nardolilli: Gates and Mountains

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The 28th Palace

Plastered in a semi-​​​​invented tale
    lit­tle is recorded
enthralled broth­ers
starched blouses
    eyes as black
    as mourning

an end­less hour
called to eat
years shall pass
    even the lowliest poet

    go home
to a meal
sur­rounded by sneer­ing
skirts at night
    one slight man
hid­ing civil author­ity
    merely length­ens the shadows

on native soil
    that deserted road
 olive trees
one must be care­ful
on the shal­low grave
    a fail­ure
of red earth
    evil and the poet immortal.

…

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Howie Good: Ennui

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PROSTHETIC DREAMS

A bird I can’t iden­tify by its red mark­ings vis­its me, hold­ing a play­ing card in its beak. I feel elated to finally be remem­bered. But when I grab for the card, the bird darts away.

Come back, I yell, and the bird does. I real­ize then that its mark­ings are actu­ally splashes of paint or maybe even blood. The shock wakes me up.

I once took thir­teen years to write a poem, if you count the mass of scar tis­sue that throbs in our dreams.

ENNUI

Sometimes we talk like char­ac­ters in the kind of indie film nobody goes to see. To live, I say, dooms us to a life that’s never really ours. You think you know what I mean.…

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