Joseph R. Trombatore
Joseph R. Trombatore: a Pushcart nominee; whose award winning collection of poems, “Screaming at Adam” was published by Wings Press, 2007. Recent poems have or will soon appear in Babel Fruit, Clean Sheets, JASAT (Journal of the American Studies Association of Texas), Origami Condom, Right Hand Pointing, Spoken War, Oak Bend Review, Dead Mule, Ken Again, Word Riot, & Offcourse Literary Journal.
Editor/Publisher of the online Literary Journal of the Arts: Radiant Turnstile Excavation after Willem DeKooning's painting, 1950 Fog heavy as plump oysters on the half shell rich humidity women love for their supple skin the inept hairdresser women with big bouffants despise the wind hums in this stillness of skulls as lines of coal miners form at 3 a.m. black lung, lunch pail, pastel eyes dense as a dark room draped in film smoldering stars & crows so incredibly black & still I expect a hairy Lon Chaney Jr to suddenly appear & myself without a silver bullet & a torch to light O Evelyn? Woman in a Blue Hat after Pierre Bonnard's painting, 1908 Her magnificent hat is a blue norther rushing in like startled swallows This is the color cave men knew before fire learned the taste of flesh A burden for such delicate shoulders she could be off to start a war carry baskets of fruit to the front line She keeps bees inside her head licks honey off her lips tastes her lover A remnant of the Big Bang cosmic & primal With her azure wings of mythic stallions long feathers for landing gear she is definitely up to something Just look at all that gold lapping at her feet The Songs of Ossian after Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres's painting, 1813 We are a people of war the balancing of blood in wooden bowls while running with staff & spear We are an ancient tribe of blonde & bone Bonfires remember us how they played with our dead We are white with passion stars blaze in our women's hair The touch we return home from battle for Our borders, our enemies always changing Forms from forest, sails slapping coastlands We resolve to habits Fathers taught, & theirs before arms of strength, strategies under cover of darkness Dreams we have for our children |