Sunday, May 26, 2013

Three Poems by Bill Jansen

Votive Candles

soft tom toms in car radios--
music interrupted
important news
about suspicious figs...

the President laughs

night traffic
stopped for miles,

votive candles
waste
in the sky

like a pride of luminous
lions
leaving the savannah

without permission.




Guide to Albanian Grammar


I sat at a vintage picnic table
in front of the Pizza Schmizza.
Christmas has been painted on the windows
using a dragon's tail.

Lediana and Platformsoles
strolled by with the seven muses on a leash
(on their way to the lagoons of Venice)?

A waitress practiced seduction.

The chatter of teenage girls
like the reasoning of angels. 





Delicate Moment in the Void


though stars got there first and wreaked the white hill
the nights are not disappointing

we think of Eisenhower in a jeep in London
briefly
but the new constellation turns out to be
a cosmic taco wrapped in a Jiffy Lube coupon

a fellow townsman drew us a map to this place
based on our credit card numbers

if you keep flipping through your high school yearbook
the dead Latin teachers warned us
you will end up racing hares

in Armani sackcloth for days into the redwood forest
now one of us must leave the safety of the group...

the cubic fog of evolution
invites our sleeping bags to grow wings
and leave us in the past.



Bill Jansen lives in Forest Grove, Oregon. His most recent work has appeared in Asinine Poetry and Hypothetical Review.

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