Seeing things
that
aren’t there is a sign
of
genius or insanity or
simply an overactive
imagination from us
right-brained
artists
who
call it pareidolia.
Your reflection in a black
cup
of coffee swirls with
milk.
In the chaos
of liquid, a silky apparition
forms but for a moment
and
you answer back
with
a prayer of thanks.
Later,
with your head
in
the clouds, you see
another sign, a bird
like a dove but cottony
and
big as the sky, sun
filtering
through
its wings. You sing
another prayer.
You ponder all day
convince yourself
of
your sanity as the sun
sets
below a scarlet
drapery of strato-cirrus
and you know you are
no
genius, but only a poet
whose
imagination is tempered
with reality and
a light wind
whispers
through the hem
of
flowers. The sweet scent
of his small still voice—
answer to your prayers.
My girlfriend turned into a frog
and
this is not a fairytale.
She
won’t kiss me anymore, turned
into
someone I don’t know
—not like some witch cursing
a prince into a handsome
frog with matching warts,
who waits for a beautiful
maiden to kiss him on the lips,
hopefully before he croaks
into the full moonlight
arcing high across the sky
when the man in the moon
would see him real good,
and the princess, too—
She
turned into someone
I
don’t know, someone
who
jumped
away,
but
whom I still miss,
once
upon a time
she
missed me too.
After Watching Treasure Island, Little Jimmy Dreams
A Poseidon adventure
aboard a wooden pirate ship,
strong and sleek and agile, slips
through ocean waves. Its venture
guided by the seahorse prow
avoiding shoals and shifting sands
with rowing strength of many hands
if winds are slack upon the bow.
Swashbucklers ready at the ropes,
the captain’s eyeglass finds the
shore.
The anchor drops; the ship is moored,
then skiffs are launched with ample
hopes
from pending plunder of the buried
gold
and all the island’s
treasures they can hold.
It Feels Like the Very First Time
And I guess it’s just the woman in
you
That brings out the man in me
—Foreigner
It’s taken me centuries to find you.
I’ve climbed the highest mountains
and searched the deepest seas.
It was the very first time I was lonely
for someone like you. And now that
I’ve found you, come away with me.
We made love by glorious moonlight
filigreed with passion. And we moaned
and howled through the night.
It was like the very first time
when you clawed my back, my heart
bleeding under the werewolf moon.
For a moment, I felt human.
Landau & Lifschitz
Theoretical physics is my kind of poetry
but the equations were not always elegant
particularly during a struggle-rich summer.
I wrestled with difficult physics while
studying for my doctoral exams; the faculty
had simply disappeared from the university
offices. I suppose they wanted to play too.
There was no one to help except for a couple
of cats that looked at me lovingly whenever
I asked them those same questions
that professors were unable to answer because
they simply weren’t there, and unreachable.
I studied tomes of work from famous physicists
like the Russians Landau and Lifschitz. Still, I had
many questions. I began to rely heavily on the two
new kittens named after those theoreticians.
They would gaze back at me like I was a genius
when I spouted my understanding of advanced
quantum mechanics or electromagnetic theory.
But at first, they had that Heisenberg uncertainty
look on their furry faces, they faded in and out
like a couple of Schrödinger cats when I stared
back to the box they were laying on. Eventually,
they simply smiled in approval, and purred
with satisfaction. We had many such exchanges.
They were so much more helpful than all my
absentee professors ever could have been. Perhaps
it was the attention I lavished over them—
one was black & white, the other, grey
like so many of my answers. Maybe the felines
just tolerated me—they may have liked the soft
rhythms of equations spilling from my mouth
onto paper, like sweet milk. Maybe it was because
they were kind, certainly kinder than my teachers,
or just maybe because it was a special day
for them like it was for me when I took the exams
on that fall day in ’83. Today I remember
their disentangled tails, their independent spirits
and I’m smiling—today is National Cat Day.
Poet’s Comments: It was on National Cat Day, October 29, when this poem was first drafted a few years ago. My doctoral exams were also in October but many more years earlier. This poem is based on true experiences about my cats, their naming, my asking them questions, etc. The final structure of couplets was based the cats: two cats, two lines.
John C. Mannone has poems in
speculative journals such as Space &
Time Magazine, Elixir, Nebo, Eye to the Telescope, and speculative poems in literary journals North Dakota Quarterly, Foreign Literary Review, Le Menteur, Poetry South, New England
Journal of Medicine, and others. He won the Dwarf Stars Award (2020) and
the HWA Scholarship (2017). Some literary distinctions include: Impressions of
Appalachia Creative Arts Contest poetry prize (2020), the Carol Oen Memorial
Fiction Prize (2020), and the Joy Margrave Award in nonfiction (2015, 2017). He
was awarded a Jean Ritchie Fellowship (2017) in Appalachian literature,
Weymouth writing residencies (2016, 2017), and served as the celebrity judge
for the National Federation of State Poetry Societies (2018). His collections
are Disabled Monsters (Linnet’s Wings
Press, 2015), Flux Lines: The
Intersection of Science, Love, and Poetry (Linnet’s Wings Press, 2021), Sacred Flute (Iris Press, 2022), and Song of the Mountains (Middle Creek
Publishing, 2023). He edits poetry for Abyss
& Apex, Silver Blade, Liquid Imagination, and American Diversity Report. A retired
physics professor, John lives in Knoxville, Tennessee.
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