FreeWrights Peer Review™

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casting
the backward glance
where perspective

feels for infinity --
death looks out
unbelongingly

at swollen men
all passing by
restless to be

extinguished in eternity...


OK I'll play, so I see SHE - "Girl in Fulton Street" - is looking down stream from the bustle of neurotic desire monkeys chasing spaghetti meanings holding onto their hats so as to shelter their fragile wounded reasons -- SHE looks earnestly without a doubt while all around HER are meandered lives walking the crooked road; bent is their path to eternity-- SHE is like the Goddess Kali and sees with tachyon bursts cutting through the dead forms and rituals of these swollen brimming hat men!

'All men make a God of their desire' -- Virgil

NEW VERSION (finally):

neverending now,
you flower on the sill of being

be:
       straight eyes, and hairy smiles
       calves tremble, cold--
      shiver.


and you see through this window, this
town. without care you swarm the grey
and are forgotten

we forge new scenes, skill new bodies
from air; muscle, grit, bone,
colourless aftermath of a vibrant past.

and yes, we could fix you. but we lied
you aren't broken, just lonely
like the flower and her sun.

Thanks for being the first 2. Feel free to make changes as you like. Here is a quick little take on the pic from me. This is not a contest entry, just something to try and jog some thoughts.



You are fresh to my cliché
the black to my white
the up to my down,
the left to my right
the pate to my potted ham
the brie to my cheddar
the champagne to my beer
the spoken word to my letter
you are the multitude
to my singularity
you are Picasso to my Whistler
ballet to my stomp
the velvet leaf to my thistle
you are the city to my rural
the hustle to my slow
you are the kind to my cruel
the fountain pen to my hoe
you are the in to my out
the cube to my ball
you are the mute to my shout
the wool to my flax
the sun to my moon
I am a face to your back.


ps, Leanne, this is not a deliberate attempt to do rhyme, just came out that way.


some are thinking, some are writing, some will wake and jump in soon


HAPPY WRITING FOLKS!

:) See, I'm getting to you.

Walker Evans--Girl in Fulton Street

A Ziegfeld gal maybe or a gangster's moll,
or p'raps just a shopgal, she's eyeing me
with hooded eyes, sad, bowed scarlet lips
below the Spaghetti sign as men surge by

us: the lunchtime crowd--derby-hatted guys,
young and old punters, few whiskey-breathed,
stinking of Luckies and Camels. Is she waiting
for a boyfriend to arrive to take her inside,
or expecting a gal pal? Does she like 'ghetti?

Am I man enough to speak to her, little Johnny
Rizzo, tending my newsstand, hawking Life,
the Daily News, the Times, smutty girly mags,
--or will this dame blow me off? I vend a copy of Life,
pocket another fifteen cents, pray I get more punters.

Christopher T. George

needed revision

She comes from out of the past,
a gangster's ex with an eye on her back.
She comes from spaghetti operas
and sex in warehouses,
all those smells of meat and seafood
floating through her nostrils
as her guy bends her over
with his sunburnt sicilian hands.

Girl in Fulton Street

They're not really men
reflecting off the windows,
they’re strangers
on a crowded
street. I’m with them,
a woman revoking.

Standing, waiting
amidst a crowd of cold shoulders,
fingering each pair of vacant eyes,
and every forehead forlorn
with my meddling thoughts.
Vacuous sights nailed
on their mundane paths
romance
my cobwebby existence.

Forget the Signifier

After Walker Evans' 'Girl in Fulton Street'

This is not the city Frank
wrote about. There are no
hum coloured cabs or men
stopping for a cheeseburger
and malt shake. Lana Turner
has not died and the sky
has not worn its funeral coat.
This is the city made of glass
where people wear alien nouns
like Fedora and Cloche Hat
and sniff the air like gundogs,
eager for the scent of their identity.

----
Written by Christian Ward

That creepy woman there
is scoping me out again.

She's the boss and when she's ready,
they'll corner me on the stairs
and make me into spaghetti.

Listen, you fedora'd men:
she'll catch you unaware.

(here's my entry)

Woman in Fulton Street—1920s.

You men, I hatched you all beneath my hair
and grinned as you whined on for mother’s tit.
How could you think I live to give you care?

I know—there’s something popping in my stare.
Dare you look amused—Dare ask: What is it?
You men, I hatched you all beneath my hair.

That leather book has made you unaware
of me, of agency. You only know what’s writ.
And now you think I live to give you care?

Don’t talk to me. Don’t wink or wonder where
my manners fell whenever I choose to hit
you men. I hatched you all beneath my hair.

Don’t stop for me or compliment my fair
voice, then pen poems that keep my lips knit.
How could you think I live to give you care?

I’m here, my chin a stone against the air,
awaiting not your queries, but my lover—Brit.
You men, I hatched you all beneath my hair.
‘I God!—to think I live to give you care.

[font=Courier New] [/font]


BUSINESS UNUSUAL

She looks away
in search of a safe zone,
a place to feel human,
as men in black suits
intersect from three directions.

They look beyond her
with business as usual stares,
as if she doesn't exist.
Her eyes peer through
starched shirts,
inside their cold stiff hearts,
unmoved, unbound;
then she breaks free.

Her gaze follows
a path of scars,
a spider web of cracked asphalt
and shadows from above.
Only buildings pull in the sun,
the heat transfer
unable to permeate the road.

Thoughts of moonlit skies
warmed her best
until her stars were removed,
one by one;
then coldness came and clutched her,
leaving her lifeless.
Still, today,
her eyes seek salvation
on Fulton Street.




Submitted by: aMourningGlory