Munyori Poetry Journal

Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal - Two Poems

Loud Voice

I could not
stop the loud
voice inside
my head.  It
screamed out each
morning. Come
to think of
it, the loud
voice was with
me all day
long.  It drove
me to this
place.  I banged
my head through
a wall and
the loud voice
only screamed
much louder.
I screamed back
at the loud
voice to no
avail.  I
lost my own
voice and was
put in this
place with men
and women
who heard loud
voices too.

Under a Bridge

I was living
under a bridge
with two broken
legs and two bucks
to my name.  But
let me tell you
it beats living
in this nursing
home, three people
to a room, and
little freedom.
The place is locked
up and I can’t
go to the store
to buy me a
beer or bag of
peanuts.  It is
hell living a
life where doctors
and nurses don’t
let you have fun.
I was living
under a bridge
and drinking my
beer without fear
or reproach.  The
two broken legs
were not really
broken.  I just
had this bad wound
which was treated
at the clinic.
I did not mind
the medical
assistance.  But
now that I could
walk I don’t feel
like being here.



Cameron Conaway - One Poem

One Morning

Moroccan mint
dripped over the lip
of the teacup as I slid
each slippered foot
across linoleum
from the stove
to our sofa where
she slept, silk blankets
swirled around her
like Degas’ dancers.
Morning sun rushed
through blinds,
lined her forehead,
predicted winkles.
I imagined the gray
of the room to be
the color of her hair.
Her nostrils flared,
the unavoidable
scent of mint.
She rolled over
in her cocoon,
I waited.


Aleathia Drehmer - Three Poems

Beating Her Chest

I tell my heart to shut up,
stop lingering
where she doesn’t belong,
beating in directions
she shouldn’t for the sake
of morality and social customs,
but she never listens to me,
never turns an ear
to the voice of reason,
never can remember
each time she has been cut
and stabbed or stolen
from the wrinkled edge
of my green shirt sleeve.

She calls out my name,
yelling about personal freedoms
and how I never let her
spread her love around.
How I keep her caged
for the properness of it,
and she raises her fists
to the chains that bind her
fast to one lonely soul
for all eternity.
She begs me to understand
that feeling love makes it real
despite my glooming cloud
of self-made guilt
hovering over us both.

She starts beating
her chest again,
hard and fast so I cant ignore her;
Reminds me that love
never dies or shrivels
or stays in one place
for very long,
but each time I find it
lying on my doorstep,
on the radio, in the grass,
on his face, in her eyes, on a kiss
that the rush of it
can still overwhelm me,
the warmth of it
feeling as good
as the first time
it was tasted.

Aleathia Drehmer 2007

Invisible Hatreds

Grandmother takes
the needles
from the pine bough,
threads them
with invisible hatreds,
each cotton string
dipped in a
fine coating
of shames.

She holds me
in contempt of
the old ways,
working her needles
into the core
of what makes me
a woman, a flower.

She stitches together
the earth and metal,
connects them to
the wood and sets
them on fire.
The water flows
over her hands
sewing swiftly
the losses and
taunting fingers
pointed in laughter,
getting more
embittered
by the minute.

She absolves
herself of the burdens
placed upon
her own head,
by her grandmother,
empties into me
the daggers
laid into her
for not being
a sun.

Aleathia Drehmer 2007


Fragile

Women spend their time
whittling away his heart,
soft as soap,
each tender word
slicing curls of lye
and fragrance
so easily melted
with careless, warm tears.

It is their American sensibility,
inbred ideals of
wasting, of unending
abundances, of grasses
greener in another pasture
while the seeds
of his heart prepare
to germinate with only
the thought
of a gentle touch,
so willingly cultivated
by glances ripe
with desires promised.

But these women
do not understand
the chemical composition
of something as fragile
as soap, as love,
something so simple
and pure with its powers
to cleanse all that is tainted,
to hold them upward
into rebirth,
into the sun that rises
above the morning fog
hanging heavy
over their lids.

Aleathia Drehmer 2007




Jéanpaul Ferro - Three Poems

Being Dead

Winter arrives, the birds all gone,
the skies stained in arctic blues,

we tire out easily through the hallucination,
our minds wet by the explosions,
we watch the thin rivers snake through the backyards
(looking for signs of life),
in dreams the bodies float like homemade boats
up to the frozen waterfall,

night unearths every mass grave—
the intrinsic momentum-phenomena of light,

we fall to our knees to petition God,
beg him like we beg him to be saved,
each dream lasts up past springtime,
beneath the DMZ, all the orbiting planets,
until a simpler life—the migrating birds,
smoke rustling about our chimney tops.

Secretary of State

It is very beautiful the way we are,
your blood drying into shiny red flakes,

your heel flipped backward,
incapable of doing anything fatal,

your body like the lindens out in the garden,
wet like narcotics in the hands of police,

the way I’m close to you with your skirt pulled up—
I always remember you on dark winter days.

American Review

I harvest you out of autumn fields,
carefully wash you, hands against rind,
peeled and then chipped,
working you one end to the other,
counter-currents extracting everything
that is good out of you,
liquid surgery pressing
harder and harder until every last drop
comes out from within you,

everything that remains just
something else that we can
throw away.



Martins Iyoboyi - Three Poems

Pathfinder

Proboscis probes vacant night
Wind, hope-pregnant to cheer
Happy rays, piercing through rejecting
Clouds of dawn; canopied forests
Throw rich shades on struggling shrubs,
Leaning on girths, seeking overhead sun.

Daily nights enclose rosy sepals,
Thin-necked, seeking ventilation,
And dimmed moon, behind lowering clouds,
Grow luminous when fresh zeal,
Opens ray-paths through umbrella tops.

The hope of Lot, when feverish dream
Petrified hard-nosed ears, and distant wreath,
Hovers about misty skies of discomfort,
Through narrow alleys, goblins lurk,
Viewing distance muffle with Lot’s temptation,

And when the proboscis perceives sweet
Paths of crowns, creative impulses
Look on the eye of the sky, smile
At close applause of perusing dawn,
When night is drugged away by day.


Sweet Meditations

Sweet sunshine spreads her balm upon the field
Where sheep and shepherd ply their hourly care
The air does chant the harmony of peace
And spread her effulgence towards the sky;
Sweet smiling thoughts visit the heart of youth
And guide with jealousy one love so dear
To keep in scorn even the crown of kings
And the wild merriment of pompous earth.
For though age and decay shall vent their spleen
And draw upon the soul the night of life
Your love unblemished shall my soul console
And keep aglow in the hour of the dark.
Hence, when the night of life assumes his post
I dare the creeping hour to do his worst.



The Landscape

Now stands upstanding tussock,
Fading far away,
Now rises hapless sorts
Everyday by day.

Eastern glow in the eyes mount
Enchantments of illusion,
Ruse-like memorials of time
When nothing has been won.

Today’s morrow’s transaction,
Facer in studies of time,
Till doom’s endless mission
In their portraits and signs;

Proximity defeats hopes,
Augmenting rays of better world,
While now, I, near the throes
In the guerdon of the crust.

Why ebullience of mortal hue
Dire ambition, study of stars,
Firm destiny while it rules
Till the season of the dark?

Perchance, glossy rays of the distance
Imbibe endless symphonies,
Sure elixir of soothing radiance
In blissful age of melodies.

Sleeping shadow, nigh their shades,
Ensconced in time’s resolved rule
We are that specie of each day
In stark vanities to build;

You moot of distant echoes,
Munch poesy cheese of the mind,
If you are close to our road,
Cheer melancholy of the time;

The landscape sung in arts, valiant,
Fettles in woes of horizons,
Now seem murk in the world of minds,
By season’s infinite cauldron.

O inuring blindness do
Alter chances of near-firmness,
Guest in halls of the good,
That virtue labours to send.

Killing obsession is done,
Moonshine retired in swift strides,
The virtue in earth is won,
Like a rare blameless bride!

Carouse nimbly not in blunt casts,
Divine worth that crave the heart,
Then you may be the last,
In wooing vanity’s pow’r.

Now yet stands upstanding tussock,
Fading far away,
Now rises helpless sorts,
Everyday to day.


Mark Jackley  - One Poem

Western

Her soon-to-be ex-husband,
who worked for the C.I.A.,
a bit of a cowboy, owned a gun,
she whispered. We crouched down
behind the door of his soon-to-be
ex-home as he pounded with his fists,
hollering ultimatums.
It was like the O.K. Corral,
though unlike Wyatt Earp
I trembled as I slowly
turned the knob. And not knowing
I existed, he
dropped his scowl and blinked,
and didn't say a word,
unsure what to make of
this latest change of script.