New Poetry by Stuart Barnes

'ELEMENTS'

1995: Mr. Smith – middle-

aged, eccentric, lived at home with Hamlet’s

evil queen – unleashed a beast: recall, if

not all, as many as possible of

the Technicolors that gleamed at the front

of the fluorescent laboratory

like kaleidoscopic, hypnagogic

celluloid scenes of that city in Oz.

I forget how many there were then (one

hundred and eighteen and counting, now); all

I remember is wishing for the Scare-

crow’s brain, the Tin Man’s heart, the Cowardly

Lion’s courage, and a pair of ruby

slippers to whisk me far away from harm.

Nowadays, more splintered than ever, I

stand each morning like a caryatid

shouldering her colossal portico

all alone over the grim electric

Omega oven’s stovetop, eyes sponging

its greasy, incarnadine coils (all four),

irresistible dials in between the

first and thumb of each hand turning on, off,

on … I can’t help myself: five years ago

zeppelins dropped their terrible cargo,

high school voices, in my mind (such echoes,

still!), and everything changed for good. Jesus,

one day I’ll be freed from the claws of this

disease, from the hells of my elements?

- Stuart Barnes 2010

BLOOD TAKEN

the waiting room’s

fluorescent, like Hell

a roily-faced girl’s

eyes are crazed as a feral cat’s;

and then there’s the stench of baby

crap     invalids

spin between doctors: kaleidoscopic

tops between children

a detached transaction:

my GP’s rote-learned questions,

my ‘yes’ ‘no’ answers

the dreaded tests are specified in puzzling

Latin on greying paper

at reception I

take a tarnished number:

pathology roll call

the nurse

snaps

on his

latex gloves, begins to

hum a golden

oldie like a vampire

– blackout

- Stuart Barnes 2010

JOSHUA

Tips of toes stroking his pink magnolia’s flowers, found

bound in final prayer. Sick at heart,

I never knew him well,

but well enough to fathom he was

forged

of the same tough stuff

as German Jews

or Harvey Milk,

the screws of Alcatraz. Red

knot in my deep, black throat,

sheet’s white ligature

puncturing his.

Why, why, why?

- Stuart Barnes 2010