Poetry

Allen C. Fischer

My Facetious Me,
        An Autobiography

The poet part of me
puns himself
with supercilious frivolity,
writes, “I am…” But who? What
sort of hair ball caught
in-the-throat-of-talk am I?
A latter day Wallace Stevens,
belly up to the bar, punch drunk
but all business​? What about
Freddie Groffe on board his ass
galumphing down into the Grand Canyon?
Or am I Don Quixote bossing Sancho Panza?
Oh, the names I can pretend!
But suppose… I’m spelled i-a-m-b,
cultured pearl of poetry,
mother of pentameter,
father of the sonnet.
How do I sign on?
The trail balloon of my CV takes off.
But am I on board?
I look around,
but find only rumors to try on.

Men, Myths & Madness

Iago, the Somalian hawker, rose out
of the swelter of his mirth like a crazed
hornet chasing down Darwin. So heated
his folly, he could not stand but fall,
could not make love but hate. He stoked
sex with anger, focused his eye-sight
with obsidian. Born to violate, raised on
vinegar, he found fulfillment where it
fed on itself: snake swallowing snake,
cougar the loins of gazelle, Cain the
the blood of Abel, sharks the flesh
of anything that swims and bleeds.
Illustrating, metaphorically speaking,
how Iago could have become himself.

Dreams from a Diagnosis

I dream trash, of old
hags in my decrepitude.
I dream of flesh sallow
and loose on the bone,
skin that is barnacled and so
thin and wrinkled, it may
tear. I find a life that is
lost among the deposits
of its dementia, an incurable
disease that ages not like
wine but like old grapes
rotting on the vine. Of this
affliction, I dream and of
what is happening to me.

Allen C. Fischer, decades ago, completed a career in business and marketing. A student of William Mathews, Fischer went on to become a widely published poet in journals such as Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Laurel Review and Rattle.