Spring 2013, Volume 14

Poetry by Peycho Kanev

Purity

The romantic painters knew it all:
what form the light adopts penetrating
the jar of plum’s jam and how the shadows
get thick behind some hairy, stormy cloud.
Five laws of light;
one law of living,
which is:
always paint the fat and ugly queen beautiful.


Shot in Brooklyn

The sun goes up.
They sit on the rusty fire escapes
and smoke reefers.
Laundry and sighs on the wires,
hung there like shot birds.
Everywhere is nowhere right here.
The sun goes down.
Their black faces are looking up
as the smoke is clearing over Manhattan.
40oz. of freedom is all they can afford.
And the night rolls up her dirty sleeves
singing silly songs of success.

Quietness

Emptiness is everything in this room.
Outside, the sky is not overflowing,
but pouring over the years.
What is the use of the numbers of time,
when she picks up the phone and says:

“Hello, please don’t hang up. I want to
talk with someone.”

But I am looking for spiders to build me
a clock out of silence,
crows for a poetry reading and rusty nails
for a different kind of farewell.

 

 

 

 

BIO: Peycho Kanev is the Editor-In-Chief of Kanev Books. His poetry collection Bone Silence was released in September 2010 by Desperanto. A new collection of his poetry, titled Requiem for One Night, will be published by Desperanto in 2012. His poems have appeared in more than 700 literary magazines, such as: Poetry Quarterly, Evergreen Review, Hawaii Review, Verdad, Cordite Poetry Review, The Monarch Review, The Coachella Review, Two Thirds North, DMQ Review, The Cleveland Review, Mascara Literary Review and many others. Peycho Kanev has won several European awards for his poetry and he’s nominated for the Pushcart Award and Best of the Net.