Bullfight With Hemingway

artwork: pablo picasso

Bullfight With Hemingway

by F.J. Bergmann

Tell Ernest that I am quite willing

to attend the corrida

as long as they promise, if the bull wins,

to give me the ears

of the matador.

~ first appeared in Right Hand Pointing

Three Aspects of Desire

photo: w.e. lox (?)

Three Aspects of Desire

by F.J. Bergmann

I.  The Oscar Meyer Weinermobile:

            I incorporate the desires of the flesh, in all its senses.

            No picnic or parade is complete without me.

            See! I am shaped and colored like a penis grown monstrously large,

            with a pulsating engine and a steering mechanism.

            I am the waste parts of animals made savory

            for everyone to want and want and want.

            Devour me! Eat me!

II.  The cloisonné Chinese horse:

            I embody desire as well, but I serve the haunting needs of the spirit.

            Arabesques of colored love overlie the metal of the soul,

            which gleams through the glossy enamel in recurved ripples of gold,

            like fissures in rock showing the magma underneath,

            like a shuddering awareness of divine intervention.

III.  The soapstone coyote:

            I am the trickster, the messenger, the slippery one.

            I carry the purloined desires you let remain unvoiced,

            the unsent letter you forgot to burn and ransacked the house for.

            I race under snow-heavy boughs and across the frozen, wasted fields

            and cross the boundary between this world and the next.

            I make sure you get what you thought you wanted.

            I can talk to gods you would not dare to name.

~ first published in Malleable Jangle

Dead Pheasant

Dead Pheasant

by F.J. Bergmann

the bird was more fragile

than whatever part of the vehicle it hit

a posthumous revenge on the windshield

sunshine-yellow corn spilled in the snow

slit open the dappled breast

pull back the soft shroud of spattered down

to expose folds of cartilage and bone

the origami ancestor beneath the elastic, feathered skin

a wake is feasting

stuffed with buttered bread crumbs

and dried mushrooms soaked in warm red wine

to incarnadine succulent roasted flesh

in dreams of bird heaven, a crane floats over ocean,

wings beating a steady rhythm blurred by the murmur of waves

flying arrow-straight through cloud toward the horizon

where it is snowing on the mountain

~ first published in Main Street Rag