Sep 23, 2014 | Gus Stevens, Sinner's Psalms vol. 1, Sonnet, Terza Rima
“Boredom: the desire for desires. ” —Leo Tolstoy What is the point of sitting here? I turn the pages chore by chore puzzling as I read, “He’s Near!” “He stands beside the open door,” it claims, yet I am still a man without a...
Sep 8, 2014 | Dream, Gus Stevens, Sinner's Psalms vol. 1, Terza Rima
It’s Sunday morning; I don’t make the bed. Somehow worn from an oversupply of sleep, I feel empty and overfed all at once. Should I eat or should I try a second cup of coffee, or the tea? I am too weary to decide and I tire of this mush of humid luxury....
Aug 20, 2014 | Commissioned, Gus Stevens, Moss Kingdom, Picture Challenge, Sonnet, Terza Rima
Yes; I could estimate the grains of sand the Colorado carries year by year carving with his crooked and cursive hand. But such reckoning is but a cashier’s math yielding a number I cannot know for in my mind the zeros disappear. Nor can I figure a new fallen...
Aug 16, 2014 | Dream, Gus Stevens, Italian Sonnet, Moss Kingdom, Sonnet
“It is the failing of a certain literature to believe that life is tragic because it is wretched. Life can be magnificent and overwhelming — that is its whole tragedy. Without beauty, love, or danger it would be almost easy to live.” “Beauty is...
Aug 12, 2014 | Gus Stevens, Seasons, Sonnet, Victorian Sonnet
What is it about the sea, that heaving mass of endless grey, that stills and saddens me and bends my thoughts like clay? Upon the undulating mass the waves warp and glisten like a field of broken glass and call to all who’d listen, “I am the mother of the...
Aug 3, 2014 | Commissioned, Gus Stevens, Moss Kingdom, Picture Challenge, Sonnet, Victorian Sonnet
Grasping blindly through the barnacled slab he hunts eyeless for his armored prey. He cracks the clam and ignores the infant crab who traipses by but is no threat today. Perhaps he will hide in the deep again before the great ‘Out There’ supplies fresh...
