ON THE FREE FAKE TROLLEY OF CHARLOTTESVILLE

I am ashamed

That I am mostly disgusted

By two fortyish lovers

I scrutinized on the city's free fake trolley.

She scoured out his nose and ears

Over and over, devotedly,

Wiping the goo on her shorts.

Did she judge the goo to be his gift

Or at least her exemplary achievement?

She is as focused as a  deluxe surgeon.

Her not-ugly face never gets bored.

His head relaxes on her steadfast lap.

In his near-ugliness he is smiling.

The process lasts throughout the ride.

He also does not get bored.

She is the mother cat whose job

Is to preciously clean her kitten without stop;

Or is this vision

A sort of Pieta'?

Are they utterly in love,

In love above most other lovers?

Are they so free they can do such stuff in public;

Or are they bizarrely unashamed?

I devoted myself to staring:

Can my disgust be discussed?

Or do I admire such ugh-ness?

The clothing of the unwary  pair

Verged on being rags.

Will they be inexplicable icons

In my brain?

           © Stephen Margulies, 2019

CAT Trolley, courtesy of nbc29.com

Natural Love

Great bursts of chemical oozings

slide through ventricles

and disperse,

unhinge my sternum

and part my lungs

so my heart can push

at the thin skin of my chest.

My cranium becomes elastic, inflates,

its crown swelling - 

a transparent formation of overhead eyestalks -

giving me dizzying heightened sight.

My brain swims in its extra space.

My eyeballs bob back

and bounce off my

frozen-taut tongue.

I hear each deafening slide of cloth,

each rock-grinding foot shuffle

and each cyclonic breath-breeze.

I can hear your hair growing.

I can smell your hair growing.

The veins of my limbs

sprout bristles like crystals,

that sting then leave a numb ache.

Arms weakly waver and sway,

palms glowing warm

emitting waves of wet essence,

while cool fingers wake into

novel functions as antennae,

extending to sense airborne clues,

seeking any molecule of you.

My feet have grown suction cups.

I'm vacuumed to the spot.

It is all so lovely. 

And how I long for more.

           © Laura Seale,  2019

Jellyfish, photo by CarbonNYC
from Wikimedia Commons

Note Taken About My Body (After a trip to Sam's Club)

My left side leads my right side

and it has always been this way,

from, I suspect, mother’s womb

until, I expect, I find the grave.

My left foot anchors my right foot

each time I begin to walk steps.

Then I feel it solid on the ground

before I forward shift from the left.

As left hand hooks it, right hand plays

note found first before pluck or strum.

From this arrives one more tune

likely that again I sing and hum.

But so you say my left ear

hears a bit better than my right.

Well no surprise do I feel

always left carried the work and fight.

And from the womb to grave I go.

Being me requires this will be so.

© Dennis Wright,  2012

"Walking Man" by Alberto Giacometti