Time out NY 12.12.14
Honored to be featured with these other great writers! Thanks Tiffany Gibert, Books Editor, Time Out New York
Read more, http://www.timeout.com/newyork/books/10-chapbooks-to-read-now
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Thank you to John Ebersole & the Philadelphia Review of Books for publishing ” This is a Love Poem,” which will appear in my next full-length collection.
by Leah Umansky
I will herald my ghosts
I will braid our pasts
I will unlid secrets
I will forest bruises
I will strange love
I will cabinet the lies
I will haunch the hurt
I will expunge order
I will temper the liked
I will pale the bad
I will away the soiled
I will hush the undone
I will stab the fault
I will dream the lie
I will sweet the love
I will still the brood
I will play the stars
I will pronounce the naked
I will index chance
I will darling the crookt
I will soldier the dreams
I will pageant the breaks
I will cycle the jitters
I will sing the caring
I will belly the upset
I will feast comfort
I will turn the certain
I will empty the dark
I will flame the barbarous
I will shun the ills
I will repine…
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Sometimes the thing is to keep the worth to stave-away, flaunted, and to kind what is uncertain. Sometimes the nave of a barrier is wrapped in story; the vice of what seems innocent is easily imitated and horned. Sometimes vestments are just barricades; careless wounds are just applied sadness. The afternoons are just wide-losses. The pleasure of what we see with our eyes is brief and the love we want is in the boughs. Sometimes the gathering of delight is seething and we are born into this too late. Sometimes time is a trick; the trick is time, or the trick is to not think about time. Sometimes we feel we have come too far already. Sometimes is a long word. Days feel moved. What is cast, is netted. I want a sea-wind to roam in; a call to send me home. Sometimes I show the last-times to my heart. I hold the wide-open with prongs. I want to free the crimson that hovers. Sometimes, I sing to the very end. I change the legend. Sometimes, I am the legend. Sometimes, the legend becomes this.
© Umansky 2014
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and this is not about the line of duty,
but the bloodline within the heart.
In love, there is a bleeding over,
a letting out, or letting in.
Let me in on this, Snow, for six feet from the heart
is better than six feet below.
Below this un-handed world,
life is a myth: words are re-imagined,
into a rigorous tease and a learned dark.
You know, there is more blast, here, in the heart.
My world is strange enough with its ifs and its elses
The eager wild is what awards us.
The musted love anews.
Don’t let the tender, doom.
© Umansky 2014
Posted in game of thrones, series | Tagged game of thrones, jon snow | Leave a Comment »
I will be wide-flung in the next
uncollared
lingering.
there will be no need for signing in
I just want to grace it. I want to swing heads blind. I want to de-clutter the expectation. I want to objectify the past. I want to cast the plunge. I want to sun the hours. I want to courage the empty and then, scat away.
Love slips
This would cause an end, or broaden waters, but the moment passes.
I am not seen in what turns.
I am one of yours
and yours
and yours.
We can share the filth.
I’ll lift
You’ll lift,
till, we lift off.
The stone of a moment is a foot beneath
© Umansky 2014
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Don has the authority and Peggy has the emotion, but that’s in the past. She wears the pants and Don is crying alone in his apartment. Peggy lives in the not-knowing, each breath a gasp. Don lives “in the now” and “the know.”
His failures are a ladder, and she climbs it wrung by wrung. Her hands reach up but her feet hesitate to follow.
They are two parts of a stumbling whole. Their pasts, a splintered truth.
One small tear at an ankle, could bring them to their knees.
When Peggy needs Don, he is glad to be needed, but it is the needing that desires, not the work. The needing is a haunt
Peggy asks, “what do I know about motherhood” and Don takes a moment. He simmers in their intellects. He lets her stew.
She looks at him: “you love this,” and he does, but not in that way.
He loves what she is capable of. She is Manhattan. She is growing and growing. Her arms are pulsing with the blood of the next century.
When they dance to Sinatra, it is like every childhood memory they wish they had, except she is not a child and Don is not her father.
There is a tenderness there, in their package of equals.
Their sale is not dependent on their cleverness.
Their sale is not dependent on their skill.
Their sale is dependent on their love.
And when Peggy puts her head on Don’s shoulder, and the moon outside is wide-brimmed, their love is pinned in the stars of the city. Their love is based on their independence. They both only know one way, my way.
© Umansky 2014
Follow @lady_brontePosted in mad men series, poems | Tagged don draper, friendship, love, mad men, manhattan, memory, music, new york, peggy, sinatra | Leave a Comment »
I will fight injustice with justice, she says.
and, I bring you a choice.
But what if she said, you will obey me?
That pride is a pit
and Khaleesi is no peach.
Brute. Burden Beast
She is Bullied, Brazen and Bare.
She has scrabbled with man, horse and spirit.
What is fire-born can be fire-ridden,
for, one hand has five fingers
One digit could lead the others astray
This hand is reaching up
as she is of the air.
She says, I will see each of their faces
When she says each, she means all.
What if, in the moment that she leans in close
to the lens, there is a smear of sap
What then of womanhood?
A mother of dragons
is still a mother.
Her stare is blue:
a fire, not catching.
a stunted sun
a contorted kiss
a vein left turned
this hand gives allegiance
and this hand, the heart.
and this heart beats
with the roar of a wingspan
so big it could cover us all
in darkness.
© Umansky 2014
Posted in fantasy, game of thrones, series | Tagged game of thrones, george r r martin, khaleesi, khaleesi says, poem, series | Leave a Comment »
Kevin Thomas, of HORN! Reviews, was kind enough to illustrate some of my Mad Men poems from my #madmen inspired poetry collection, DON DREAMS AND I DREAM. The poems are, “The Times,” and “In My Next Life, I Want To Be An Ad Man.” (Thank you, Kevin).
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- “In My Next Life, I Want To Be an Ad Man” – watercolor by Kevin Thomas
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- inspired by “The Times,” from DON DREAMS AND I DREAM – watercolor by Kevin Thomas
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- The Beatles’ REVOLVER as “DRAPER.” (by Kevin Thomas)
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged ad man, advertising, don draper, don dreams and i dream, draper, kevin thomas, mad men, MadMen, peggy, poetry, pop culture, revolver, the beatles, the times | Leave a Comment »
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