Two poems by Alan Britt

HOLIDAY PRECEDING OR OTHERWISE

OCCURRING AFTER A CIVIL WAR

The battlefield clogged with smoke,

cacophony of booms deafening,

tracing basement steps into silence,

blood-stained, bleached, goat horn

curved into an ice thorn like an anthem.

                               ψ

Don’t flip that drachma at me;

I’d rather ransack the ant farm tombs

of the pharaohs than be buried with a cruiser,

cabin type, one propeller down, 30 to go

before sunrise bakes my bricks

into the coral horizon.

                               Ω

Mary Wollstonecraft & Billy, or William,

depending upon Wednesday light

slanting the horizontal rain, light

fractured into daughter, Mary, Jr.,

plus Percy, Lord, Claire, Polidori

& who knows what paparazzi lurked

behind the ivy. Mary Wollstonecraft

& William Blake, Mary Wollstonecraft

& William Blake arm in arm through the slurs

of their day. To this day, until this day,

this day of official proclamation, this day,

November 23^rd, hereafter known

as William & Mary day.

                               ♣

The end.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

10,000 BCE

From shards swept into black dustpans

hinged to three-foot splintered imitation maple

handles trapping the aberrant & saddest among

us, reptile beaks slough the sun at riptide

onto paper towels dusted with coffee grounds

& one milliliter of pale straw amniotic fluid

sloshing the corners of eggshells

well known by priests millennia ago

but known today as grunts, Raquel Welch groans

& electrostatic beats crossing swords with

a purple & green opalescent dragonfly

overlooking communion overlooking

the union of the commune raising

its children among fields of wild marijuana

& sugarcane, among the owl-spotted wings

of moths that decided to perch, anyway,

up & down painted boards supporting lattice,

their last testament of Democracy . . . as if lattice

holds the psychological key to the next 10,000

years BCE.

Author bio: 

Alan Britt served as judge for the 2013 The Bitter Oleander Press Library of Poetry Book Award. He read poetry and presented the “Modern Trends in U.S. Poetry” at the VII International Writers’ Festival in Val-David, Canada, May 2013. Sponsored by LaRuche Arts Contemporary Consortium (LRACC) he read poetry at the Union City Museum of Art/William V. Musto Cultural Center in Union City, NJ in May, 2014. His latest books are Parabola Dreams (with Silvia Scheibli): 2013 and Alone with the Terrible Universe: 2011. He teaches English/Creative Writing at Towson University.