The Whirlpool

December 29, 2015September 5, 2020 Kevan Copeland

The Whirlpool

You stare from the wire that cuts sky from brine.
Effeminate desert, you thought it benign;
But inside—I collect corals & spines.

Currents twist as flesh curls to a fist.
Feel the form of my force:
In the core of the vortex, concussion
Is pure—the pressure of poetry
Waves into lines—

Breaks. On the bottom: funnelled
To finish,
Lies your mind.

This poem appeared previously on Monsters and Critics and Cosmoetica under the pseudonym Anthony Zanetti.

Dynamite 25

December 19, 2015 Kevan Copeland

Burning Candles

Dynamite 25

The birthday candle unravels its wax—
unfurling the curve that shatters its graph,
it rockets to Blonde—as man shimmers back.

A core, immortal, wills past—to its pax;
as grain culminates and unwraps from its chaff,
the birthday candle unravels its wax.

Unpinned from the wick, it bolts and unpacks,
as motion unsnaps from a still photograph.
It rockets to Blonde—as man shimmers back.

No breath from a wish can cool its attack;
when each note of song sparks from the staff—
the birthday candle unravels its wax.

Lethal: the drop from the sweat on its back,
its shock vaults through octaves and Richters a laugh;
it rockets to Blonde—as man shimmers back.

A sizzling blue vine writhes through cold blacks;
ecstatic—as ecdysis jettisons half,
the birthday candle unravels its wax;
it rockets to Blonde—as man shimmers back.

This poem appeared previously on Monsters and Critics and Cosmoetica under the pseudonym Anthony Zanetti.

Façade of a Montreal God

December 11, 2015 Kevan Copeland

mussolinihead

Façade of a Montreal God
photograph of Fascist HQ, Rome

I’ve stabbed a flag into the Fascist
March eye. You make the bullet
cry, you make the nation
sing. A sovereigned head on a coin,
the shallow inks of wings—align
to remind me: I’ve chosen again. In the city,
at the rally, they shout: he is strong,
il est fort. I find myself chanting along;
I can’t abort. Gods trapped
in a head—we are everything except free:
the azurite Italian, the glittering Mussolini—
orating and exhorting—mathematically
operatic—your head suspended
against the word repeating: si si si si

This poem appeared previously on Monsters and Critics and Cosmoetica under the pseudonym Anthony Zanetti.

Cheetah Conceived In Circuiting Speed

December 4, 2015 Kevan Copeland

cheetah-running

Cheetah Conceived In Circuiting Speed

Amber eyes hide: secret
in leaves—then summer unsheathes
in seizures of green. Livid stripes fly;
all spots blur off—spurred on,

he rends; his renderings gush.
He tears through the bars, past
cardiac blush. The trail of lost
spots lines holes in the mind.

The wild won’t rest—his run
can’t arrest—his panics
slash anima across savannah sands.

The span of an axis is the path
of his race; the scope of a globe,
after an appetite no man can hold.

This poem appeared previously on the Very Nice, Very Nice blog under the pseudonym Anthony Zanetti.

Singular Motherhood

November 20, 2015February 6, 2016 Kevan Copeland

eyes2

Singular Motherhood

Housewife, how benign.
That life’s not mine.

I raised them fine,
looked after each one.
Now I want fun, so I spend
what I’ve spun. Lives

Like my son’s, escaping
to college before his policy was claimed.
No more stomach pains for him.
So I turned to his kin,

Insured in the spring.
Her sickness now crippling,
I unfailingly sit,
holding cold nails with manicured lines
in arsenic white.
Her shrivelling cries, I always attend.
Paralysed by the love I inject,
in the hospital bed,

She’s just like her dad. Dead,
I had my way with his heart
through his stomach; both stopped.
Nobody thought
of what he’d been fed. “Hepatitis,” they said.
I got a cheque.

And I spent it on dresses, jewels and etcetera.
Creditors called,
Call my son’s what I said.
Since he’s not dead, he should pay
for my buying.
My logic is fine.

Though my credit is dire.
Bad cheques got me arrested,
and some friend was a snitch
about those needles I’d give
to my daughter. Her father, they wondered.
My son dug him up.
This needs to be done. “Of course,” I agreed.

Autopsy’s next week.
I needed a break, so I drove from our street
and our lives and their ends
and even our state. A new life’s what I’ll raise.

Something’s wrong with my brain.
That’s what I’ll say
to the next one I find.
And that I’m set to inherit, before dying
from some cancer of the mind.
I hope he likes blondes,

Because that’s what I see
in the future of me,
sort of like a twin;
the one I keep in
till she marries again.

This poem appeared previously on the Very Nice, Very Nice blog under the pseudonym Anthony Zanetti.