Oct 2, 2012 | Gus Stevens, Mom, Quatrains, Songs for the Dead
Blankets hide the holes punched through hollow doors and she covers the shelves with plastic dragonflies or ceramic angels bought cheap at dollar stores. Everyday some lone unguarded trinket dies, the victim of a clumsy hand or wagging tail. The epileptic dog will be...
Sep 29, 2012 | Gus Stevens, Moss Kingdom, Sonnet, Victorian Sonnet
Who is the maker of these mighty hills; what hands could draw these from the deep? Are they the battle scars of contesting wills —a shield shattered ‘gainst a granite keep? On the ridge there lurks a murder of crows scavenging the flesh from Nike’s broken...
Sep 23, 2012 | Aging, Gus Stevens, Songs for the Dead, Villanelle
He turns five today; all is future, nothing past. All his days are yet to flower, yet to come. Wherever he goes, he runs—those shoes will not last. He grows and his slumber is not, as yet, harassed by twilight’s pestering flies, those furies born from...
Jun 13, 2012 | Gus Stevens, Humor, Sonnet, Victorian Sonnet
After Andrew, Elizabeth Marie— second child, first daughter, I was to be, but the Canadian ultrasound failed and my parents’ baby-naming plans derailed. My name, Matthew, decided on a whim, somehow always seemed to fit me wrong and joined me to a wide and WASPy...
Apr 20, 2012 | Gus Stevens, Sinner's Psalms vol. 2, Sonnet, Victorian Sonnet
All flowers lift their hands to praise the sun— raising their lauds at dawn, their sexts at noon and vespers when the dwindling day is done— but the sea bends her knees to the moon. Such is the worship of waves and the liturgy of leaves. But what of human kings,...
Apr 17, 2012 | Bible Story, Gus Stevens, Rhymed Couplets, The Unspeakable Name vol. 1
Before the earth was swallowed up in sea Noah barred the doors and all skies darkened grey, for once the gate was shut, he heard no beggar’s plea; to flinch at life’s last moment could not the hammer stay. Did he hear their clawing hands in his dreams? The...
