Amanda Seyfried
A daydream’s fine,
a dairyman feeds,
sadder fey mania
a maiden defrays.
Arena maids defy
anaemias fed dry.
Daydream safe in
daydream, as fine
as marinade; defy
dadaism, near fey,
daresay named if
afraid.
Damn eyes.
Damn eyed safari.
Naiads feared my
naifs, drama-eyed
amnesia, fade dry.
Mania dares defy
adman; ears deify
seaman; add fiery
areas, dandify ‘em.
Faery adman dies,
afraid, sad enemy;
man afraid, seedy
semen day, afraid:
adman fairy seed.
Ad demeans fairy.
Daresay, mad fine!
Inside the Lives of Royal Bachelors
Moats overflowing with champagne, poured by serfs, then surfed by Dukes.
After a night of princely partying the next-in-line to the throne pukes
into a polished pewter pot embossed with runes and jewel encrusted;
his vomitus aristocraticus opulent with DNA is thus entrusted
by decree to the royal physician who fastidiously sieves the courser matter,
then cryogenically preserves for future generations vital monarchal batter.
Horse-drawn carriages careen vast castle grounds. Earls and Counts shout and shoot
pistols in mock duels, sip tea from delicate bone china and spear kiwi fruit
cubed for ease of edibility by vigilant valets. In colossal carved fireplaces
African Blackwood and Clanwilliam Cedar burns to ashes smeared across faces
like warpaint, princelings ascending tapestries, swinging like sovereign Tarzans
in quest of empress Janes to be ravaged upon the silks and quilts of imperial divans.
Scott Benjamin
Willing victim of junior high lunch
break ambushes: coaxed
milk launched out of quavering nostrils
like Old Faithful at its geysering best.
Tim Conway to his Harvey Korman,
I broke him down, igniting
explosive chortles predicated
on some nonsense only he
would get.
₪
Furniture in his family’s
living room, vacuum-sealed in see-
through plastic; seated on the sofa,
it squeaked. Summers, bare
legs stuck to it, prying loose
like a band aid slowly
peeled from a healed cut.
Larry O. Dean was born and raised in Flint, Michigan. He attended the University of
Michigan, where he won three Hopwood Awards in Creative Writing, an honor
shared with fellow poets Robert Hayden, Jane Kenyon, and Frank O’Hara, among
others; and Murray State University’s low-residency MFA program. He is author of
numerous chapbooks, including I Am Spam (2004), a series of poems “inspired”
by junk email, abbrev (2011, and About the Author (2011). A full-length
collection, Brief Nudity, is forthcoming in 2013. His poetry has also been
internationally translated and anthologized. In addition, he is a singer-songwriter,
performing solo as well as with his current band, The Injured Parties; he has
released many critically-acclaimed CD’s, including Fables in Slang (2001) with Post
Office, Gentrification Is Theft (2002) with The Me Decade, and Fun with a Purpose
(2009). Dean was a 2004 recipient of the Hands on Stanzas Gwendolyn Brooks
Award, presented by the Poetry Center of Chicago. Contact him at larryodean.com
