The December Editor's Pick Poet is David E. Cowen
Please feel free to email David at decowen@mapalaw.com
THE PLAY HOUR
the joy of children
friend visiting friend
games of skill
wrestling on soft grass and fallen petals
in the declining sun
rolling
honeysuckle marinating
their tender skin
two mothers on a veranda
smiling behind lemon tea
the one in the paisley dress
thanking her host
with a gift of blood oranges
opening her smile
to reveal razor incisors
the other whispers in consternation
I just wish Wolfgang
wouldn’t play with his food so
A SINGLE LAMP ON A DARK FOGGY STREET
shelter in open space
a diffused halo
circumscribes the stick figure leaning on the pole
a game of Hangman missing the letters
the frigid air makes no compromise with the glare
sounds
footsteps
claws tapping asphalt
all unabated
the only thing that can be seen
standing next to the black pole
the snow globe
with the one shivering figure
is an illusory fortress
outside the circle
shuffling announces the coming
is there shelter in the open empty
beyond the circle
To bask as a shadow
Hiding from shadows
Closing in on an otherwise easy prey
Is madness
At least in that empty
You are equal to what you cannot see
DALI’S APOSTLES
a yellow wind bellows orange rain
pounding folding sidewalks
the clocks drip
drip
drip
seconds fall
time flows through the street burrows
catching on weirs
built to slow its flow
but still clocks melt in the trees and drip
a man with the black coat
stands straight
eating a persimmon while a raven pecks his eyes
blind to the loss
he will suffer
his servants walk down the upstairs case
leading to the lower levels
between tri-positioned pillars
ever winding from end to beginning
alpha to omega
I am the light of the world
he says
then looks down
to see the flow underneath his soles
undermining his footing
a frost bears down in a frozen fog
searing the leaves
holding the clocks
the drip carries on
nothing can freeze the flow
thirteen men at a table
wait impatiently for bread
until the doomed one says
the one who gets this piece
will die by hanging
because he did what I told him to do
they scatter when Rome calls
with its message of bloodied wood
and dripping bread
the ground shakes under a darkened horizon
a solitary man hangs from a tree
noticing the two next to him are clocks
realizing that he too is dripping
drip
drip
with his blood and breath
washing him into the gullys
over the dam
nothing stops this passing
the man with the guilty bread
hoisted on a hill
watches the faces he knew
turn away
the father he thought he knew
turn away
why have you forsaken me
the clocks in the trees
cry out
the man drips
drips
drips
until he is flushed away
remembered for all time
tick tock
drip drip
believers open their veins
to feed the clocks
drip
drip
the yellow wind returns
to an emptied globe
hot from carbon
melted from abuse
drip
drip
the clocks fall from the dead branches
unable to hold
the weight of their swollen mass
the table of the thirteen is cleared
for the next supper
David E. Cowen is a trial attorney by trade and author of The Madness of Empty Spaces (Weasel Press, November 2014; a volume of dark and speculative poetry), which was on the 2014 Bram Stoker Award Preliminary Ballot. It was also nominated for the 2014 SFPA Elgin Award, as well as a volume of poetry entitled “Sixth and Adams” (PW Press, 2001).
David lives in Houston, Texas with his wife Susan and his two sons. He practices law in the historical city of Galveston, Texas which has inspired much of his poetry and photography. His poems have been published in various online journals, such as Eclectica, The Bri-dge, Gumball Poetry, The Cynic, Cosmic Debris, Wired Hearts, as well as hard copy journals published by George Mason University, University of Texas at Edinburg (formerly Pan American University), Stephen F. Austin University, Sam Houston State University and many privately published journals. His poetry was featured in the Canadian Broadcasting Company’s radio program "Outfront" in a 2005 tribute to 9/11. His poems have been included in the 2014 and 2015 editions of the Horror Writers Association’s Horror Poetry Showcase which was a bestseller in Poetry in 2014 and again in 2015.
Three short scholarly articles on the subject of zombie films written by David appeared in June Pulliam’s The Encyclopedia of the Zombie: The Walking Dead in Popular Culture and Myth. His short story, “Goth Thing,” appeared in the Exotic Gothic 5, Volume 1 published by PS Publishing. Other fiction has appeared in various horror and fantasy anthologies. David is an affiliate member of the Horror Writers Association, a member and attendee of the World Fantasy Conference, the Austin International Poetry Festival, as well as the President and a lifetime member of the Gulf Coast Poets Chapter of the Texas Poetry Society.
