Ben Passikoff


Yet Once More, O Ye Laurels
 
New makings nix winterwoe.
Whoa, hold the ponies! Whistle end
to sinister soulfunk, nosedrool, aged snowplows.
Roots nose the potent earth, skies whorl
windlifted birds in skinnysong, all angel.
Lusting teens rhythm twisty pants
with white imagination of their hands.
Easter Jesus clambers to his cross,
his blood of grapes great with sot-promise,
panhandler eyes imploring history,
while altaring nuns unchurched treble hosannas
at his noon nailing to eternity.
Wormful, earth loops with wiggle
of spiral writhing from the feasted graves.
Come, let us birth together, dithyrambing
the lather of things in laughter lingo,
to avenue the days on lilty feet
sidewalking winter's coffin till
his next cradle.

Not One of Us

Considering the mirror
and other icy types of real
she was less total than she thought.

She was her hair. Perhaps.
Halo-headed, she blinded,
but the rest did not reflect.

She wore the rain.
Perfect snowflakes pattering
froze her into separate instants.

Molded by the clocks,
others passed hand
in hand with hours, their shapes

tied to the strings of time,
like mothers going to ovens
terminal, with children.

Saint something. She was warned:
       send signal, heart-red;
compose in key;

open to us aorta,
or you will be thirsty on the cross
in the middle of birds.

Her heaven was low.
She could not unkink,
like a bent pin.

When she blessed
with red kiss,
trouble was in the lips.

Alone in eddy, her shoes
full of stopped feet -
last chances branching
icicled trees.

God Himself is Incomplete Without Me

Giotto poured palette slather
into consonance of robes
on canvas or whatever surface
he made live beneath the cloth.
His soldi bought space
stretched to host the transient
swish of flesh, the living silk
of ladies.
                 Or the pierced extremes
of Christ under halo on newly
severed wood centered between
the writhes of suppliant thugs.
Giotto surged contort in the skin
unknown to hitherto brush. His mountings
in church hollows foretold glory
to his temporary corpse, he thought:
a clothe of soul in halo, harp,
and robe of eternal undulation. 

About

Ben Passikoff's work has appeared in the Quarterly Review of Literature, the Texas Revie3w, Atlanta Review, Harvard Review, Sarah lawrence Review, and many other journals.