DEBORAH GUZZI - POEMS

Deborah Guzzi writes fulltime. Her third book, The Hurricane, is available through Prolific Press. Her poetry appears in Allegro, Shooter, Amethyst Review & Foxglove Journal in the UK-Existere, Ekphrastic Review, Scarlet Leaf Review & Subterranean Blue Poetry, Canada - Tincture, Australia - mgv2>publishing,France - Cha: Asian Review, Hong Kong, China - Vine Leaves Journal, Australia - Scarlet Leaf Review - Greece, pioneertown, Sounding Review, Bacopa Literary Review, The Aurorean, Liquid Imagination, The Tishman Review & others in the USA. 

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A Scribbler’s Airport Xmas
​

jam the steroids in2 Xmass overdrive
a passport fiddlehead-fern-palmed         I
carol my way through the faux Peaceable
Kingdom       by-stepping lions & lambs 2
the nearest watering hole
 
                 i stir my Bloody Mary with olives on a
                 swizzle stick—moshed in2 the flotsam
                 & jetsam of Kennedy Airport’s
                 cosmopolitan kink with visions of
the Champs-Elysees dancing in my head
 
[next 2 me]
 
a Rudolphed-antlered Brit from Cornwall slathers
brown beer across his raspy tongue beside his
doe-eyed Blitzin 
 
Cornwall reminisces—his Costa Rica holiday fading--
                 a rain4rest squirreled away
                 4 dreamland
their cache of euro’s long gone
US dead presidents bought the beer
 
     searing vodka traces 
     waft through my celery &
     mix with a mouthful of pimento
 
[on the aisle]
 
a family 4some is kenneled          elsewhere
by the maître d in his dandy cummerbund
 
Xmass 4 adults here
 
    on fleek, pencil posed, i scribe
    aahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
    life on the highroad YAaas
    [1 could get used 2 this]
 

Photo by Deborah Guzzi

​Rhineland

​A snowless winter season crisp with hoarfrost hollows,
cobblestone paths ghost with bomb-blasted revelers.
Slick streets, voiceless, and shuttered, pass keen time.
 
Commerce, stayed by fearful thoughts and matters
grim, recalls the rabid wolf and rampant death with
wreathes whose red ribbons tongue the square.
 
By tick and tock from behind barred gates the piper’s
indomitable patrons come, sirens screech as vendors
gather in cedar huts. The scent of mulled wine airs.
 
Still, terror hobbles the holiday goers and concrete
stanchions ring soft targets who peer from transitional
lenses at this New Year’s state of affairs along the Rhine.
 

Down Dressing
​

​Snow cottons to trees; sleeplessness swirls,
flurries create gowns for conifer and maple boughs.
Flakes the size of button covers neck with birch
trunks while silver dollars sized dollies bodice
branches and skirt ancient tree roots.
 
Snow propositions the forest with water and ice
desirous of intimacy. Lilacs shimmy with come-
hither sparkle, seeming to clink-giggle as icicles flirt.
 
Snow besotted clings to limbs accepting each
crystalline kiss. Boughs arch and twigs climax
as each flake cascades burying gray-green
moss in winter white.
 
Snow melts as a jealous sun makes his play
peeling the ash’s elbow-high gloves, lowering
the beeches décolletage, lifting the hems of
wavering willows, he undresses them. 

Larimee
​

​Buddy Holly’s glasses
frame your blue agate eyes
today’s oil paint hid way below
the cringing, chewed, edges of your nails
your curls more Van Gogh then Holly--
 
a knife painter.
 
Waves froth your crown
finger-pushed                    shoulder-brushed
strands behind each ear – 
a handlebar mustache
tickles-kisses.
 
Nights sees your Cheshire grin
at coffee houses – acoustic tones rise
          as you bounce me on your knee
once, you framed me in sepia—nude
 
          mused, you flamed.
 
Where are you now Lothario,
artist and sage?
 
In Seattle reborn on a canvas stretcher
or strumming on a stage?