Resurrection: Poetry Flash

Good news! The Flash is back, and it’s full, as always, with news, interviews (a good one with Chris Abani, whose novel Graceland still burns in the part of my brain holding impressions of Nigeria), poems, and reviews, including some kind words from Richard Silberg for Plato’s Bad Horse by Bear Star poet and associate editor Deborah Woodard. Here is a selection from “Kore" to entice readers still unfamiliar with her work.

3.

Mother, they’ve strung up the head of the scapegoat
and I want him to open his eyes.
I’ll crawl past the bloodshot filaments, the tears
subsiding where his pain has not yet reached.
In this corner, a yellow barn cat,
fur licked flat about her teats; above, a wasps’ nest
no one has disturbed, the hay scent
and children’s voices hurtling down a ray of light.
Soon, I’ll be the mirror clouded by his panting.
I’ll be a bright penny destined for the locomotive,
and afterwards, the one who picks it up.
The mob gathers, siphoning green oil into their lanterns,
and I walk aimlessly with him
into the old city of the brain with its slant avenues.