Nine Poems at Fowl Feathered Review 8

Nine Poems at Fowl Feathered Review 8
Published April 2014

Clockwise Cats
Poetry
by Alison Ross

Miro’s ennui

Miro's ennui shook the foundations of time.

It isolated lethargy in a continuum of shadows.

Miro's ennui shocked the universe sublime.

It isolated apathy in a spectrum of windows.

Miro's ennui

created a hierarchy of shadows

that shocked a spectrum of apathy

into a lethargy of windows

(Black Heart Magazine 2011

Anachronistic anarchist

The anachronistic anarchist

uses post-it notes

to remind herself

of her dinner date

with the sun.

But the sun

has a cold

and sends a rain check

that bounces

into a

reverse

black

hole.

The anachronistic anarchist

sends two gmails a day

to her former self

but they are flagged as spam

and the user is blocked

from

the

future.

The anachronistic anarchist

wants to start a revolution

to protest the dictatorship

of synchronicity.

Her identical twin

outlaws coincidence

and abolishes punctuality.

So the anachronistic anarchist

shows up late

to her date

with the sun,

who is covered in post-it notes

about the revolution

against

the

anarchy

of

space.

(Calliope Nerve 2011)

Death is imminent and I'm still smiling

It's raining cats and clocks.

I drink an entire bottle of dreams (vintage 1919)
and drift down a road made of smoke.
The umbrella of my imagination
flies away
flies away.

I am in no hurry to die.

My smile blooms

like a cyst.

Further down the road

I meet the phantom of myself.

I say hello and she laughs.

I smother her with my raincoat.

She wilts like a wounded smile.

Sleep waves to me with its green hand.

I gulp down a flask of smoke,

and fall toward the clouds

erasing themselves from my memory.

I knock on the sky

and no one answers
except for the stars
except for the stars

(Wings of Icarus 2007)


Hours

The hours rain down
like soft sparkling skulls.
The children catch them on their tongues,
eat them like they’re stars, and become illuminated time.

Counterexample Poetics 2011)Miro’s scream 

Miro’s scream became
a new color of crayon.

His scream unfurled across the middle of eternity,

spattering the sky

with colors the shape of centuries,

and shapes the color of oblivion.

His scream cast a shadow onto the pavement of the sun,

climbed up the staircase of the moon,

and erased every star.

Miro’s scream ripped open like a red yawn,

and lullabies fluttered out like blue bats.

Miro’s scream became locked inside itself:

Miro had swallowed the key to eternity,

and oblivion unfurled like a new color of crayon.

(Cerebral Catalyst 2006)

Invisible twilight

Dusk dreams herself into being: the sun swallows itself whole, spits out slivers of lunatic light; an unknown hand scribbles graffiti of sightless eyes upon a mangled mask. The trees with their many quivering tongues speak a terror of truth to the wind. Birds weave a maze of melody, and cats stalk invented shadows.

Time bursts into tiny spiders who coil white shadows to snare snatches of twilight. The spiders gulp their prey, and grow plump with darkness.

Starved spiders shrivel, and dawn screams himself awake, flinging blood-stained shrouds over a memory of mad

moons and impossible twilights.

(Counterexample Poetics 2011)

Coma

The clocks weep an ennui of tears.

The black hour spills
through the eyes of the house
and strokes me with sleep-poisoned fingers.

The chimera licks me with her languid tongue:

I drown in dreams.

The clocks weep a euphoria of tears.

The white hour yawns

spilling pearls onto my sleep-fingered eyes.

I do not awaken

and I do not die.

(Medulla Review 2011)

Miro’s Nightmare

Miro’s Nightmare is coming to get you. It crawls into your mouth

to lay eggs
that hatch into dreams
of murderous blue.
Miro’s Nightmare bleeds cats onto your eyes and whispers fangs into your ears.
Miro’s Nighmare is an upside

-down clock

and an inside-out heart.

It is in love with death

the scent of blood-streaked mirrors,

and with the color yellow

when it used to be black

Miro’s Nightmare is coming to get you. It lays clocks inside your heart:

they hatch into cats
with upside-down eyes.

(Haggard and Halloo 2009)

The Clockwise Cat

The clockwise cat

is wise to clocks.
She knows their motive:

to tame the savage animal of time.

The clockwise cat

hisses at the clock-cages;

her fangs gnaw the numbers

and her claws rip holes

in the frayed fabric of space.

The clockwise cat

moves in counter-clockwise cadences

across the hardwood floors of infinity.

She stalks illusions of impermanence

which flit like shadows

across the paint-chipped walls in her mind.

The clockwise cat

tells time with her eyes:

they blaze like candle flames

in the dim closets of oblivion.

The clockwise cat

sleeps 16 days an hour.

She dreams about the minutes

she will devour like bugs;

she awakens to seconds

poisoned like rats.

(Cerebral Catalyst 2006)