Stone Soup Servings is a regular series for Oddball Magazine that features upcoming performers at Stone Soup Poetry, the long-running spoken word venue in the Boston area that has recently partnered with Oddball Magazine. Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m.

This Monday, we feature Diane Sahms Guarnieri and g emil reutter all the way from Philadelphia. Read their work below and be sure to check out their online journal, Fox Chase Review. Also, if you’re in Philadelphia, try to attend their Fox Chase Reading Series.

 

Sycamores

Oblique heavy rains pour through hurricane’s noisy endless parade
of fast flying chains dragging, hitting against four story
sycamores (82 years old) relentlessly swaying,
blown feverishly, waists bending along Longshore’s seven
hundred block of stone homes, anchored rock piles, one hundred
miles inland.
                         My bedside lamp burns through portholes like prayer;
dog half- asleep on my feet and all the while chaotic
howling, hysterical exhalations, a wild woman named Irene
with uncontrollable spasms like trillions of conch shells
unspiraling sea wrapped sounds, unbraided choruses of
Siren’s deafening.
                         My tree slavishly beaten – grueling
groans, moans, pillaged limbs. Tug-of-war: rope-rooted hold.

Bleached- sheet of morning sky in aftermath
breezes, Sycamore varicolored, mostly
pale yellow with lines of intersecting
branches, hangs numerous dangling pom-poms
out to dry, held by simple, lovely homespun threads.

–Diane Sahms Guarnieri

 

Filament

They are not like the people who talk to themselves on the street
shadows linger inside their minds and like the hairy brown spider
they spin their webs patiently wait for their prey to become
entwined in silky threads of words. Spin and plot they search for
the right lure, always a smile, the right compliment, they encase
their prey, spin and weave about them never a warning of what
is to come.

I walk the dark streets of nowhere, pass others on the congested
lonely streets; keep an eye out for those who lurk in the shadows
of their minds. To their distain, unlike the others, I am safe, keep
a distance, never allow their silken words to lure me. They prey
upon the lonely, who fail to heed warnings; listen to the silken
words; watch the spin and weave. There is artistry in the con, faith
in the lure, an encasement of such detail an architect would be
proud.

Gargoyles sit on cornices of yellowing buildings, moss gathers in the
Cracks of worn cement, covers clay bricks. Dead lights on ornate rusty
Poles line the street. And there she is, mumbling words, from her toothless
mouth holding a sign, “ Will work for food,” just above the head of the
fat man whose endless vomit dribbles from his mouth, floats along the curb
where naked skulls roll onto the street crushed by driverless trucks. Dog
prances with a femur in his mouth, as the cat tears at the flesh of the
underbelly of the corpse in alley.

The long faced man stands at the doorway calling for all to come. One by one
they line up as the temperature dips. He smiles at each of them as they step
across the threshold; fall into the dark endless shaft, until rolled over, suspended
in silky string, looking up into the eyes of the large brown hairy spider spinning
silk around their mouths.

–g emil reutter