LINKS
The editors of MORIA graciously included two of my poems. Here are the links:
ON THE EDGE AT DOG BEACH by Cece Peri
VANISHED PASSPORT, WILTSHIRE COUNTY, ENGLAND by Cece Peri
POEMS
It’s Noir
For some people, it’s hard knowing what’s noir and what’s not.
–Max Bloom
If there’s a hitchhiker
border crossing
or sudden change of plans
if someone’s named Vera
The Wall
or Lola Molina
if there’s a knife fight
gun fight
or bare knuckle justice
if a guy
lights a match
with his thumb
if someone’s after payback
a payroll
or the lay of a lifetime
if the dead
are buying land
out in the valley
if there’s a car
a cliff
and a claims adjuster
if a wife buys a black veil
before she needs
a black veil
if it’s night
if it’s raining
if the music’s complicit
the drugs are illicit
the whole setup–
suspicious
if the guy you’re rooting for
winds up hugging
a manhole cover
if even
the moon
ends up in the gutter
and if nobody ever
had a chance
to begin with
it’s noir.
Published in NoirCon, Busted Flush Press
Trouble Down the Road
At the flat top grill, he was all business,
flung raw eggs dead center into the corned beef hash
like a strapping southpaw.
In the alley, with me, he was all ideas.
Said he’d be leaving soon, had a shot back east—
a tryout for the big leagues.
Said his sister would loan him a Buick convertible,
and he’d fill it with malt beer and tuna.
All he needed was a woman to hold
his cat while he drove.
I like animals, I told him. Then I dropped
my cigarette into the dusty clay,
ground it out, slow,
felt the road under my foot.
Published, and translated into Spanish, in Luvina 57, The LA Poets Issue,
University of Guadalajara, México
The White Chicken gives a first-hand account
–from an Associated Press story
I love the red
wheelbarrow
rusting
by the barn—
my sturdy
nesting place,
my refuge
the night
raccoons
laid waste
the coop,
killed all
the laying hens
but me.
Farmer
buried them
in the far yard,
and Laslo,
the brown dog,
dug them
back up,
nuzzled each
gray bundle
against the long
hen house
and, there,
all morning
stood guard.
Laslo,
brother of my heart.
Published in Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond.
Body Heat / Almost Love
Ned, you’re in that place again,
neither awake nor asleep,
neither all-in nor all-out.
That in-between kind of thing.
The kind of thing in between
you and Matty, like a car window
she rolls up until her body
becomes your body wearing that floppy,
wide-brimmed hat she bought you
for when it starts coming down.
And it will come down
when her husband’s body is found.
In-between things like wind chimes–
those ancient links between
the natural world and the body–
like a couple of dozen chimes
hanging from her balcony
the night she said she’d be alone.
Thin chains of tiny o’s
and ornate oyster shells.
The ones you went to see.
To touch. You touched the o’s.
You touched the shells.
In-between things like
French doors she locked on you.
The ones you looked through.
The ones you smashed in.
All you needed was a timing device
set between not doing something
and doing it.
Now, you’re in jail
with bars between you and her.
You have nothing to do but think
how you could almost love
the ease of it: the hat, the chimes,
those doors–how each glass pane
held your face in a perfect frame.
Published in Pratik, The Noir Issue
BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN
for Elsa Lanchester
We have waited for her, breathless, through two reels.
She is conspicuously late. Right away,
there are signs things will not go well. See,
she’s high-strung and wrapped up in herself. But to the men
in the laboratory, and us in the audience, everything’s
forgivable in a seven-foot, grave but glamorous woman.
After all, she has put on a stylish dress, gotten her hair
smartly streaked and uber-permed. And she has caught
the eye of the groom. We are ready to see sparks fly.
The groom finds her appealing. He reaches
for this woo-man. She has found something appealing, too,
but it is not him. She is fixed on
her new legs, wants them to move more smoothly.
Wants her feet to set down more gently. Then,
she can get stockings and sling-backs.
Wedding bells cue the doctor to bring the couple together,
but she resists. Her face looks like someone, perhaps the groom,
has emitted a foul odor. Still, the doctor persists, forcing her
to find a voice. She screeches, hisses,
as in hissssss face is unsightly, hissssss hands clumsy,
hissssss jacket inelegant, hissssss happiness is not my concern.
And this is it, the moment in the movie when we all hang
suspended in the knowing that there will be no wedding
at the castle today. Electricity jolts
through the children’s section of the Culver Theater
where I watch this luminous creature throw a kiss-
my-ass bouquet directly to me—and I reach.
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Published in Speechless the Magazine, Poets Go to the Movies
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CECE PERI 