New Poetry by Peter C. Venable

Angel-Dusted

and bath-salted,

he aimed a corkscrew into his palm

and twisted and twisted

until it screwed through

the dorsal skin nearly an inch—

like a badly botched titanium screw surgery—

and he reached for a bottle of wine

and I waited for the next twist.

- Peter C. Venable 2015

The Rational

“The Rational is Real and the Real is Rational,”

A buttress of Hegel's Mind

and my mallet-and-chiseled Absolutes.

How my Easter Island idols are adorned

with gull droppings and scales!

Come, tourists, and meander

in our taxidermist's museum of stuffed Beliefs—

are they winking at us with their glassy eyes?

Come, and ponder

as we go spelunking in Plato's Cave,

and meet our flickering shadows.

Let’s ascend our ancestral stairs

to Reason's Tower and marvel

at Syllogism's sculptures.

What, then, are these Monuments

which assemble our Real minds?

- Peter C. Venable 2015

The writer has written both free and metric verse for over fifty years and been published in such humorous poetry journals as Parody, Word Riot, Laughing Dog, and Hobo Pancakes. He is a semi-retired clinician, volunteers at a prison camp and food pantry, leads vespers services for senior citizens, and is graced with a happy marriage, daughter and son-in-law, and Yeshua. Hagar the Horrible is a role model