'Never satiated' (published in Big Red Cat Issue #2)

published
Scream if you need to go faster, if that's your desire, say the old adage: the customer is always right, is king, and so survey their subjects with dispassionate eyes, demanding. I order some nibbles and remain at the bar with every fibre, despondently slotting them in like a 10p machine rigged against us, until the bowl is clean. The light dims and kitchen closes so I settle and slip home. Never satiated with another bite, another course; a cigarette with the ash hanging on. Drag this skinny fry through that mayo and swallow whole. I feel like an eclair slammed in a car door, dairy on passenger seat, on headrests, which detach if you were sinking as weapons with which to smash through a window and escape. I keep one to hand now. The rest is articulated elsewhere, not in words but senseless consonants clattering in gibberish. I have no business to settle with you. The conversation ends, and here you are: playing chess as both colours to win.
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Figments, a poem

published

The vacancy, the lack of,

stirs stronger an image than ever

explicit witness could convey.

A jigsaw with the corners and edges

fitted so, to frame the lid promise, unseen;

with reams of sky, grass patches, an ankle

astray in the borders, blanket tassels, stream,

ice cream, long damp hair: easy to stare, easy.


Pour, now, opinions of the missing

evidence in tandem; some educated guesses

to conjure a tableau of captured happenings.

Rinsing the synapses of their broth

is risky in the morning, before routine

occupies the world apparent and near

with deeds and duties, tokens of prayer

for a lifestyle that never comes today.


Primary impulses should be overridden eventually

such that no action disregards the next.

Consigned to horror and derision

are sweet peaches and honey;

but is satisfaction necessary here?

Instead those suggestions run free

as improbable certainties, ever tardy;

as figments of antelopes eloping from dust,


painted stronger in a dream, wilder, than colour

could describe to an eye, and the time flashes by.


— Giuliano Piacentini © 2023



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