PETER MAGLIOCCO - POEMS

Peter Magliocco writes from Las Vegas, Nevada, where he's been active in the small press as writer, editor, and artist for several years. He has poetry in Oddball Magazine, Pulp Poets Press, I Am Not A Silent Poet, The Pangolin Review, Ariel Chart, and elsewhere. A multiple nominee for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, his most recent poetry book is Poems for the Downtrodden Millennium, from The Medulla Review Publishing.

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​Summer's Dance Mojo

I'm down for it, the flesh mojo
striating the fast air's vision until it
embellishes a face of infinite shade
with our slow dancing petulant sway
haunting byways beyond dormant weed.
Ah grace, gone from my insouciant gaze

your phone video catches in bumpy seconds
an aberrant appearance disappearing tonight
over the hallowed downtown city streets,
sidewalks beaten by a million footsteps
echoes the crying Vegas nightfall
bearing voices of its unknown dead

& living, who see the goldfinch in a neon eye,
sweet bounty of the dealer's fast hand.
I'm up for it, the lucent-talking bodies
of blowsy showgirls drunk behind stages,
the wend of lounge dancers heel-tapping
my mind's feast of aborted loves

& lingering rhythms of the starry night
band drumming a newborn code for tripping
around the lies of love's last gambit
in the sere rosary of your skin's necklace
caressed by the street prelates with horned fingers
who strafe seeds now in our earth's shadow bloom
​

​Night Shade

Slogging through the Vegas nights
when you're so sleepless & near burned-out
as fresh bird crap on your soul-windshield
hardening with each excruciating minute
flitting over your mind's sundial
when the dawn reveals only a black sun

is not easy to do when you're hung-over.
The night calls to your inner Dracula,
kindles sparks of perverse evil for you
to mull over on long coffee breaks
tasteless as old reused Folger grounds.
Nocturnal forces conspire to ruffle

& fracture your sorry-ass poker vibes
robbing you of the winner's good hand
or the straight flush of ultimate victory.
The Noir paints your eyes a black-out hue
where color disappears in the last magic act,
along with your energy gasp, free of charge

in the paucity of your long night's desire
eviscerating your reason like a bad tumor
just as the mysterious serial killer buzzes
your cell to congratulate you on being
the lucky winner of your wife's remains
now packed with veggies in his garage loo.
​

​The Cruciform Goblet

"The truth is rarely pure and never simple." -- Oscar Wilde

I'm lost in it, watching throwbacks
of the wine spill defacing
an immaculate white table cloth
from my overturned goblet
stolen, from a mosque, years ago.

All hip acolytes should taste
the last fallen, blotchy drops
before yielding as softly
the sky expands like a woman
releasing you from sorrow,

after you deny having cheated
to some dubious, oversexed  friend
in the L.A. suburbs, circa 1960s.
My house creaks with inert shadows
for your eye to blackout on,

though picturing the coolness
no one abided there for long
when the Manson murders took
news precedence everywhere
& truth pooled in horrific ways,

fomenting paranoid convolutions
of intricately ensnarled tendrils.
Then, overnight your watchdog
leaped into a void ripping-out
veins branching from the body

politic of the traumatized heart.
I'm the only curator there now
for hope in an eternal absentia
with itself & my transfigured vision:
It resembles a twisted cup

spouting a messiah's message
poured into eternity proclaiming
the anti-Christ's long coming.
And you, the married woman,
I could lead easily astray yet

with black magic's evil stride:
paint your intoxicating vision
with fleurs du mal & heartbreak
posing as memes on your brow,
branding the true beatitudes

of hate in full-blown glory again
onto your pouting Hollywood lips
puckering -- so hotly in close-up --
around flesh of your dark redeemer....
Your text messages later say it all:

That proverbial legacy of blood
on our young consciences remains,
& night flows seemingly without end,
until its red-colored manna oozes
fatally onto our crucified bones.
​