Cells

When I think about nothing I
think about us

                       I don’t know why I think about nothing

I like being young                     I am good at it
but you are only as good as whatever god made you
Every worshipping has its shortcomings
and so is less rewarded
and so is less

A poor life can be beautiful                 the blurred nature of our borders
                                                            the pathetic vagueness of our crimes

How we do not ask for prisons
but are given them regardless so
we may appreciate the sun

We dream through our days
and sleep through our sleep
A fog of old winters hangs over the river
sheer curtains of clouds
people seem to enter and leave through
even on summer mornings

The pleasure to a cell is in the
rearranging of the furniture
the framing of it’s light

and when I think about fucking I
think about us

What new destination
can you become once
you have been traveled to

and the sunlight
is once again pristine
taking up the whole world

 

Mark Mazzoli is from New York. His poetry has previously appeared in Bombay Gin, Common Ground Review, Instigatorzine, Structo, and the Mississippi Review, among other literary magazines. He is not a witch, no matter what you hear on the street.

Ira Joel Haber was born and lives in Brooklyn. He is a sculptor, painter, writer, book dealer, photographer and teacher. His work has been seen in numerous group shows both in the USA and Europe and he has had 9 one man shows including several retrospectives of his sculpture. His work is in the collections of The Whitney Museum Of American Art, New York University, The Guggenheim Museum, The Hirshhorn Museum,The Albright-Knox Art Gallery & The Allen Memorial Art Museum. Since 2006 His paintings, drawings, photographs and collages have been published in over 230 on line and print magazines. He has received three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, two Creative Artists Public Service Grant (CAPS), two Pollock-Krasner grants, two Adolph Gottlieb Foundation grants and, in 2010, he received a grant from Artists’ Fellowship Inc. in 2017 & 2018 he received the Brooklyn Arts Council SU-CASA artist-in-residence grant.