FreeWrights Peer Review™

Please post your own submission or nomination of another poet's work for the June contest as a reply to this thread. Closes at 8 pm June 28. Thanks.

[align=center]if memory is a lie then so am I[/align]

[align=center]Proust searched his brain for memories that
made the man, could finally understand
that this changed him just by looking --
so he called himself a sentimental realist!

many a prisoner, in walls cast of shadows,
have escaped their fate etched in stone
and bars at Guantanamo, where they
remade themselves in the language of pain -

the poetry of misery or bliss to relive a life
that past has missed, to rekindle themselves
in the alembic of desire, their inner fire
because of the lie of memory; I am frisson!

oh, yearning moment, oh, swelling into dreams
come of these needful things, where open
skies and open roads and open fields
are little sparks in open places closed inside of me --

when this lightning sings my body moves
with the ghostly touch of numinous grass
and forgotten fragile flowers, the distant buzz of bee
and echoing twitter of birds sound again inside of me --

inside of memory is me, thereto is the lie
where holes are filled by imagination, a story I call
myself where fiction and reality are hopelessly
intertwined, undermining who I thought was me and too, mine --

this albatross of original stimulus, this
verisimilitude of the incongruous, mutable
impressions which fleeting fly dead-away
fall into the deep error of my earnest loom, memory!

the act of remembering changes me, so a fool I have
become, locked in shadows, staring dumb, I shun this outer lock,
sing my songs as they come from now on, making me in my own image
unbecoming,
unfettered,
unfinished,
undone ...
[/align]

The Wowl

"Star of the Freak Show--The Wowl, half-woman,
half-owl. . . . Inside a dimly lit room it was
possible to espy a feathery figure and a pair of
human eyes. . . . I used to visit once a week. . ."
Wendy Cook

It could be one of her poems, but isn't, so--
I will happily claim The Wowl as my own:
the leading edge of The Wowl's remiges
muffle her wingbeats, empower her silent

prowling flight of surprise as she surveils
the land for prey. Look out, poor poor Mole!
The Wowl's razor beak and steel-tipped talons
allow Her to kill The Mole before swallowing

Him whole. Man, perceive this wicked trick:
The Wowl is trawling for you now. Ick Ick.

Christopher T. George

Nominating:


Saore's The Shop

The Shop



This afternoon it will rain
and I will wrap my fingers around your throat

to submerge you in the rising water.
You will kick and wriggle, fight

because you won't let go of life voluntarily.
You are driven to wake up and turn on

the coffee percolator in your newly remodeled kitchen.
Driven to fill the pantry and read the New York Times.

You must find out if the justice was confirmed,
if swine flu mutated in North Korea.

Driven to give your wife multiple orgasms.
You're afraid she'll fuck another man,

a neighbor, or the woman she talks to
at the post office about how little you please her.

I will tighten my fingers around your throat
and cut off the air. Your eyes will bulge.

You'll be seconds from pissing in your pants.
This afternoon you'll give in to me

for as long as I want, wherever I want.
Here, in the Calvin Klein mannequin display.


and my Unliving in Limbo



Unliving in Limbo


My father was a puss hound and a drunk
who could sniff out bad snatch, or good rum,
a block away. A part-time handyman, he’d
semi-scam anyone to support those habits.
I was cheated out of a summer’s worth of pay.

He was a missionary, riding barstools and bedsprings
from sundown to sunup, then sunrise till dusk.
Everybody within elbow’s poke was a potential
convert. He thumped on me even after I was married,
introducing me to a waitress at a favorite spot,

I am the father, here is the son. Make him a holy ghost.
Their laughing lungs exuded a shroud of scotch and rum,
then she kissed him and ground her crotch on his knee.
Whatever you want baby, but you can’t run a tab on ass.

Later he charmed his way out of a beating and to a place
at the man’s table for Sunday supper. This shit carried on
night after night, day after day. He finally straddled a donkey
making roundtrips between Styx and the pearly gates, stopping
at neither until there were apologies or acknowledgements.

Our entries for this month:

Jerry's if memory is a lie then so am i

Saore's The Shop

Bluejay's Unliving in Limbo

Good luck to us 3!

Also, good luck to Chris who is representing a different forum this month.