POEM: ‘BRUJA’
From “Salome Libretto”
Through the fercockte gawk-stalkin’ hack stackers
of antiquity trickery lexically-licked sticky flickering
Salomé, you are bringing in the big guns
Opening the sluice gates
with your hyper dramatic excess
Flexed with swishy riffs, pithy spiff grifters
Like a shattered chatter box schadenshow
like a discordant accordion
like manna from mayhem
you are ebullient as you blow
like a feisty
zeitgeist, a forever riviera
and i say hula lily hillbilly, billiard bombast
ho-hum hum de lilah bruja hoo-ha slap trap
of schizmatic revisionism
And take your slinky hijinx, pixie
fixity of prurient lure of twirly whirlers
a contretemp tempestuous extempora & lay me down in
an elixir mixer of lexically robust postulates
which say ce soir bette noir,
of gnarly parlors
in a coughing scoffed cacophony of
acrostic biscuits
a miscued skew of super cinder cendre
slippery ceiling singing
in the flotsam frayed refrain. stay
Why I became the Forward’s editor-in-chief
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— Alyssa Katz, editor-in-chief
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