Brian Rosenberger

The September Second Selected Poet is Brian Rosenberger

Please feel free to email Brian at brosenberger@earthlink.net

BEWARE THE WITCH

Dorothy’s dilemma
Left grasping at straws
As the Scarecrow runs away.

NEVER SIMPLE

The Girl with white hair bitches and whines.
Her beau, the Sorcerer Supreme of Earth,*
drunk on potions and illusions of Grandeur,
high on home grown herbs, and preoccupied with adventures concerning
Holistic medicine, adventures he shares with other would-be travelers,
strangers who might possess arcane knowledge but sadly lack
any bathroom etiquette. And still the bills arrive.
Clea wishes her magic man would use his Cloak of Levitation
and levitate his ass off the sofa and find a real job.

*With apologies to Dr. Stephen Strange

MISCONCEPTIONS

They think it starts with the fangs.
Ivory daggers poised at the neck, the wrist,
or for the more risqué, the inner thigh.
True but not true.
It starts with the heart, slow to beat,
but eager. Eternally eager.
The blood is fuel, bringing life to unlife,
powering immortality. Teeth merely a tool.
The rest is just costumed drama, Gothic fashion,
and fairytale make-believe.
The heart decides, Undead or not.
In that, we are not so different.

CHILDREN OF THE ATOM

They see us in films, Hollywood imitating our lives,
on TV—the national news and commercials,
selling everything from fitness videos to designer capes,
gracing the covers of supermarket tabloids, and the lucky ones,
they see us between the clouds where Gods belong.
They love us, want to fuck us,
but when they witness the fruit of such unions,
the tails and extra limbs and wings,
powers to save or destroy a world.
Then they live the horror of the fairytale.
Happy ending not guaranteed.

A TRIBUTE

We keep our loved ones alive; their images part of us.

I show him my tattoo, a wolf above my index finger,
tribute to my fallen husband, victim of a hunter’s silver.

“Amazing detail,” he remarks. “The hair seems so real.”
A claw reaches to touch but pauses in respect.
“So sorry for your loss. Your mate would be proud.”

In kind, he reveals the portrait painted on his ribs.
A woman, a tornado of red hair.
Her hands, busy with a wicked, curved blade.
Her face, a portrait of intensity.
Beautiful in her rage.

“My Queen. My Oath. Captured before the weight of the Crown, in her youth. Every year, Her King and I honor her memory with a seven day feast. On the last day, we unleash the inferno on any would-be threats to her Kingdom. The fires paint the horizon. She would have loved the landscape. Sadly, time was her assassin as the hourglass targets us all.”

I nod my sympathies, longing to touch his painted scales, the illusion perfect.
The Dragon lowers his wing, his loss and love, his Queen, again concealed,
protected in death as she was in life.

Brian Rosenberger lives in a cellar in Marietta, Georgia and writes by the light of captured fireflies. He is the author of As the Worm Turns and three poetry collections.