The March Selected Poet is Thomas Zimmerman
Please feel free to email Thomas at: zetataurus@comcast.net
EVIL SIGHT
A wolf-toothed baby sucks this city's blood.
The trees are stoned Medusa heads. The sky's
a strangulated blue. The breeze that dies,
then rises, bears the fallen angels' thud
from heaven. Zombies on the lawn eat skunks.
The ice-cream truck's a hearse. The neighbor's mutt
is Cerberus--Down, boy! If I just shut
my eyes, will all this disappear, like monks
when Tudors burned the monasteries down?
That ragged page is flapping broken wings
between the nails of Hecate, who sings
to turn my heart to startled hare. Her gown
glows urine-gold as wine she poured last night:
I drank, self-blinding all but evil sight.
EXHUMING THE MUSE
I took a crack at life, but found it cold:
a shroud of snow benumbed my bones, my screens
reflected ice, my fidget fingers tolled
like Edgar Allan's bells, and all my greens
decayed to grays. Accursed by words, I kissed
the blade I dulled to dig you out: the mud
and snow had sheathed the root, entombed the cyst
of you that festered, drugged my brain and blood.
New snow--no, white worms--no, my verse--like mold
had slimed your nose and lips, peripheries
so virginal and blue that I grew bold.
We wed. Soon grieved. Took separate beds, no pleas.
Doomed now, for any bard and muse I weep
who lust for false quietus: dreamless sleep.
THE POET AND THE NYARLATHOTEP
I can see everything with a monstrous sense that is not sight--
light is dark and dark is light. . .
--Lovecraft,“The Haunter of the Dark”
Malignant, mad, an eldritch horror fell
From far beyond the stars or oozed from deep
Within Earth's crust--not solid, but a stream
Or wraith-like dream of terror worse than Hell. . . .
I halt my verses here because I weep
to smell a fetid scent of crypt-pent steam
that pricks and shrinks my scrotum, cracks my lips.
A dirge-like murmur pulses Chaos blood
to flood my consciousness. A cosmic pall
enshrouds me while a talon shreds, then rips
from me the thing I'd called My Soul. Wings thud--
My brain is fizzing--Whoosh!--The heavens fall!
The Old Ones call--All universes rend--
My haunting avatar and I ascend!
CHIMERA
These hoofbeats in the heart, these wingbeats in
the mind. I'm riding where? I'm flying how?
Breasts naked, scrotum blue, my soaked mane free,
and freezing, frozen. Stunned pubescence hot
and burning off. Stretched lips hell-black: pray kiss
them, pilgrim. Be my bleating lover, too.
The destination's Hades--there's no rush
except these thoughts bunged up, bane’s wine inside
my skull. The bit of language cuts my mouth.
And hope's a rodent in my talons: puke
it later for the famished, nested young,
their mucus mouths as rank and old as sky.
Thomas Zimmerman teaches English, directs the Writing Center, and edits two literary magazines at Washtenaw Community College, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Poems of his have appeared recently in Red Fez, Muscle & Blood, and Paper Crow. Three of his poetry chapbooks are available at GenreMall.com.
