[Michael Cantor]

I guess it's come down to you and me, Ralphie - two ancient codgers (but I'm a bit more ancienter) swapping brags and tales. Here's a monorhryme sonnet (I love monorhymes - you don't have to worry about using your rhyming dictionary) from my second book, Furusato.

Above Fat Papa's Bar in Casablanca

Café on the veranda: Ilsa sleek,
her hair now set off by a silver streak,
as beautiful as ever, still a chic
and polished avatar of high-boned cheek.

The room appeared as if we’d spent a week
in bed instead of just one night – the reek
of sex and flat champagne, two flutes, all shriek
of carnal, sweat-drenched, sweet reunion; pique
my appetite for more.
................................. But she seems bleak:
“It won't work, Rick. You've lost the old mystique,
and turned into an aging film-crazed geek –
a droning and obsessive one-note freak.”
She turns to leave, but not before I speak,
“We'll still have Paris, kid, and that was magnifique!”

[RCL]

So be it, Mikey!


The Vanity of Valentines

With crayons, he carefully crafted little hearts
and rhymes, but she refused his dinky cards.

The one with perfect Palmer Method strokes
evoked a tiny smile and big No thanks!

In flowing cursive lines at St. Jude’s High,
he wondered why she broke their date V’s day.

At Yale, his digitized ditties of lovers’ fables—
sweet tweets—made Rose call him predictable.

He turned to sonnets for their subtle nuances
as well-wrought urns, as glowing verbal icons,

and Skyped her Petrarch’s, Dante’s, Shakespeare’s songs.
His miming of these greats was rarely strong.

But Rose wed him. She bitched that he'd been wordy;
he could have had her just by talking dirty.

[Michael Cantor]

(Here's a villanelle-on-steroids I snuck into the long gone - and lamented - Eleventh Muse ages and ages ago.)

For Claire

I have begun to dream each night of Claire,
pale childhood ghost, her image not quite clear.
We were lovers once and young, and unaware.

Ash gray eyes, short-cropped-straw-light-near-white hair,
Breathless street waif look, so au courant that year.
I have begun to dream each night of Claire,

who found me at a bleak Bruxelles affair:
You’ve not yet been? It is, you know, so near.
We were lovers once and young, and unaware,

and drove all night to Paris on a dare:
We go? I know le tout Cite, my dear.
I have begun to dream that each night Claire

arrives with Muscadet, with fruits de mer -
fills my anxious mouth, and wipes away my fear -
she was my lover once, and young, and yet aware

that food and wine, and softly perfumed air,
would make my awkwardness soon disappear.
I have begun to dream. Each night now Claire

and I ascend to Sacre Coeur, her bare,
skin warm beneath a street-length cloak; and here
I am her lover, yes, and young, and unaware

that one day reveries of times this rare
will have an old man blink to fight a tear.
I have begun to dream each night of Claire;
we were lovers once and young, and unaware.

[RCL]

They Fled from Me

Song of a Senior

Where have the sirens flown
who wooed me with their eyes,
seductive songs and sighs
when I roamed all alone?

Enraptured by those raptors,
all with hearts of stone
that wore my flesh to bone,
I hungered for my captors.

They had me on the run,
and I ran down. Time flies,
but I still love their lies—
all lovers lie for fun.


From Ubi Sunt and The Withered Pap

[Michael Cantor]

This was in The Dark Horse, back around the time of the Punic Wars.

A Gloucester Love Song

She is, she says, a lighthouse keeper’s daughter,
and though she left the life her father chose,
it’s wind and rocks and ocean that she knows.
And so she sits and croons, and eyes the water,
then land, then back to sea, as if she sought her
place again; and blinks a smile that glows,
then fades. In here I’m called Four Roses Rose.
The second time around the smile is tauter.

She’s here, at Lobster Tom’s, most afternoons,
one hand around a glass, the thumbnail black.
We share a window booth, where she can see
the sea past rusted packing shacks, the ruins
of docks, the fishing tubs now gone to wrack,
and soon she’ll sing the songs she’s saved for me.

[Julie Steiner]

This sonnet series was published in the Able Muse Review several years ago. I workshopped parts of it at Eratosphere.

Sensory Integration

1. Color Blind

To you, it’s pink; to me, it’s putrid green.
Shimmery, too! I laugh. It doesn’t matter.
I love your gift—a coat whose hue will flatter
nothing I own. Beneath its gaudy sheen,
it’s warm and luxe. The silhouette is clean
and very chic. My reservations shatter,
their icy daggers melting as they scatter.
It fits. It fits that it’s from you, I mean.

Initially you, too, were not my style.
“No, thanks. We’re so mismatched, it couldn’t last,”
I pessimized. “We’d see things differently.”
“All couples do,” you answered with a smile.
Long married now, our outlooks still contrast.
And still, your rosy worldview’s warming me.

2. Tasteless

“No sign of any bullet holes,” you said
by way of small talk, during our surreal
first date. The pub had managed to conceal
its scars, but not the headline in my head:
Hostage Drama Ends with Gunman Dead.
(One hostage killed, as well.) But Buy One Meal
and Get One Free was such a killer deal.
Free Appetizer, too. So we broke bread—

became companions, in the Latin sense—
eerily alone, where a depraved
psychopath had forced collegiate Greeks
to rape some blondes, with carrots (!), only weeks
before. Our date revived the pub, and saved
you cash. Win-win. Why might I take offense?

3. Imperceptive

Endearingly—disturbingly—you fell
for me, though I kept trying to convey
that I could never think of you that way.
“I like you as a friend,” I used to tell
you, firmly. But you took it far too well:
“I’m proud to be your friend,” you beamed. Touché.
“I’m sorry friendship’s all I feel,” I’d say.
Once, though, you followed that with, "Do I smell?”

This flustered me: “You’re asking if you stink?”
“Not quite,” you laughed. “I’ve noticed when you’re near,
I recognize your smell. I wonder if
it works both ways.” It doesn’t. But I think
it’s lovely now, my best of friends, my dear,
that when you sweat, I never catch a whiff.

4. Insensitive

“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” you complain,
resignedly. You know I always will.
You know my scream’s involuntary. Still,
your rushing past, my panic, your refrain—
“I wish you wouldn’t do that”—form a chain
reaction we’ll reiterate until
one of us is dead, and can’t fulfill
the damage-dance our reflexes ordain.

We both feel wronged, although it’s neither’s fault
that someone large abruptly looming near
sets off my decades-old PTSD.
It wounds you that the wounds of my assault
pop open when you suddenly appear;
it hurts me that you’re hurt by hurting me.

5. Tone Deaf

I’d probably be fluent in it now,
two decades since your first impatient “No.”
You laughed, “What for? You had me at hello!”
when I aspired to go beyond nĭ hǎo.
I studied anyway, prepared to wow
you with wŏ ài ní. “What?” Wŏ ài ní. “Ohhh!
I love you, too.” I’d seen your grimace, though.
I xiè xie-ed thanks. That’s all you would allow.

You begged me not to bother anymore.
I lacked your perfect pitch. I’d started late.
Your parents’ dialect was Shanghainese,
not Mandarin. A waste of time. “What for?”
you asked, bewildered. “We communicate.”
But when we don’t, I harbor thoughts like these.

6. Extrasensory

We make a normal couple only in
the sense that paranormal sure ain’t this.
Nothing magic happens when we kiss.
Or not to me. I’m not your psychic twin.
You see and touch and smell and taste my skin
while telling me you’re lost in lust’s abyss.
Asexual, I’ve never dreamed such bliss.
Our comedy of Eros makes us grin

and groan. But our proclivities and quirks
get honored, cherished—even celebrated—
by one another. I won’t ever feel
what you do, and vice versa. Yet it works.
Those famous, flawless matches? Overrated.
What makes our love imperfect keeps it real.

[Julie Steiner]

I workshopped this one here, too, but never managed to persuade anyone to publish it. [CORRECTION: An earlier version was published as "Insecurity Breach" in the Summer 2015 Issue of Light. I think I like that title better....]


Lockdown

On 8 June 2014, Paris’ famed Pont des Arts footbridge was closed for several hours, because a section of fencing had collapsed into the Seine under the weight of thousands of “love locks”.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/lo...s-arts-n126246

Oh padlock, bind
my love to me.
He's not inclined
to constancy.
I wish that he
were so designed,
but you can free
my fretful mind.

Oh locksmith, find
our lock, lest we
remain entwined
eternally!
Catastrophe!
Oh, I was blind!
But you can free
my fretful mind.

Oh river, grind!
Oh gravity!
You two, aligned,
will serve as key.
Oh entropy,
you’re called unkind,
but you can free
my fretful mind.

My heart can’t be
unvalentined,
but you can free
my fretful mind.

[Julie Steiner]

This one was in the Hot Sonnets anthology:

Dear John (Drafts 1–4)

Dear Bluebeard—Yes, this means I found your cache
of body parts. You promised me, you swore,
and still you’re hoarding pornographic trash!
I'm gone. No need to hide it anymore.

Dear Dr. Frankenstein—I can’t compete
with patchworked fantasy. My flesh is real,
and therefore flawed. You only want its heat
to animate your scavenged, fused ideal.

Dear Don Quixote—Dammit, don’t pretend
I’m Dulcinea! Love me as I am,
not as you wish I were! I can't ascend
that pedestal...nor tolerate this sham.

Dear John—This isn’t working. You know why.
Go buy yourself a blow-up doll. Goodbye.

[Jim Moonan]

.
Julie, what a cache of ache!
They inspired this flash of love trash that I probably should not even include here but do:


Oh! What a cache of ache!
These love poems love to break
my heart in pieces.
I’m in pieces, bits and pieces.
Thorns and arrows cannot begin to convey
the cache of ache felt on Valentines Day.
.