Species Recognition
Establishing hegemony over that small portion
of the Universe still under their control, stiff
spindle fingers open, ferret through, extract
a tissue from, then shut, the small beige purse
on her lap. Pursed lips warm on beige skull-
skin: dim eyes smile, trained on a boy chasing
blue marbles on the airport carpet. She dabs
her small turnip nose, looks deep - beyond
affection and cognition - into the child slyly
endangering the world at her feet. Caught, he
eyes her back, alarmed. Species recognition.
Skinny Saturday
If you were a dancer in the Mardi Gras parade,
still berried on the bush, plump, tight and newly
ripe, but only one of many, lost within the glittered
cornucopia of other jiggling glistening fruit, I'd spot
you anyway; in hot pursuit of you I'd be, and wouldn't
stop till I had plucked you off your tree and cosseted
and cupped your berry butt in both my hands. That's
what I'd do if you were dancing in the Mardi Gras parade,
but you are not. And so I stand here on a steamy
New York street and face my lot. I see you bike
away alone - like that. It isn't Tuesday, and it isn't fat.
Summer in Vermont
Nuances of prick and sting
you'd no idea were possible:
these late June days
accrue a hellish molten haze
so hot it toxifies the skin:
you itch and sweat and bubble
in and out: a font of
troubled mammal heat;
mosquitoes feast. You chant
beseeching orisons to God,
who's surely bungled.
Vermont today might just as
well be Amazonian jungle.
Jelly on Your Toast
I should like to moan a sonnet,
tie onto a triolet a pretty bonnet -
offer it to you with some petit pantoum -
or scat like Ella - boom
some hiphop villanella - perform
something to cool or warm
you, as you pleased:
to put you at your ease,
give you the flavor
you might savor
most:
be jelly on your toast.
I'd love to be the riot-
ously pleasurable diet
you consumed in your preferred venue.
But first you gotta see I'm on the menu.
Bio: bio: Guy Kettelhack has authored, co-authored or contributed to more than 30 nonfiction books. His poetry has been featured in Outstretch, Van Gogh's Ear, Melic Review, New Pleiades, Malleable Jangle, WORM 33, Triplopia, David Taub e-motion, Poetry Life & Times, Poetry in Emotion, Das Alchymist Poetry Review, the PK list, The Rose & Thorn, Heretics and Half-Lives, Desert Moon Review. Two of his poems placed in IBPC competitions in 2004. His poem, "Alter Ego", was selected as a quarterfinalist in the Lyric Recovery competition in March 2004. He won the Margaret Reid Poetry Prize for Traditional Verse in November 2004. Approximately 20 of his poems appear in the New Pleiades Anthology of 2005. Book 1 and 2 of "Soho Poems & Drawings About Drawings" (collaboration with Norman Shapiro) can be found at ufemisms.com. He lives in NYC.
