Dec 3, 2011 | Bible Story, Gus Stevens, Sonnet, The Unspeakable Name vol. 1, Victorian Sonnet
“But, my Lord, who will I say has sent me?” asked shoe-less Moses on his holy plot, expecting an answer from the burning tree. But the cloaking, indirect “I Am” is not a name but a refusal to be named— words that reveal as much as they...
Nov 27, 2011 | Gus Stevens, Sinner's Psalms vol. 2, Villanelle
A circle can’t be squared and still a circle be; the points are fixed, they cannot bend or sway. A man cannot be forced and still considered free. The change begins, the end we can’t foresee; some ideas do not mold as easily as clay. A circle can’t...
Nov 20, 2011 | Gus Stevens, Villanelle
I sat down to drink the wine and hungry fingers reached for a baguette but he stopped my hand and claimed “It’s mine.” Jesus Christ man! Whatever—fine. I don’t know why this guy is so upset. I sat down to drink the wine. What right has he to...
Nov 7, 2011 | Bible Story, Gus Stevens, Quatrains, The Unspeakable Name vol. 2
Amnon held his desired to the bed and, famished, smiled as he ravished the prey. Then he sickened like a man overfed; the flesh he sought, consumed, stank of decay. Absalom smiled too as he avenged the rape. But even the pleasures of revenge take flight; once the trap...
Aug 26, 2011 | Gus Stevens, Sonnet, Victorian Sonnet
Who could foresee how such a thing begins with the striking of Bouazizi’s match. The despots stare with their uneasy grins as the flickering fires of Carthage catch. The people of a thousand crescent lands cast off their shah, their colonel or their king whose...
Aug 24, 2011 | Gus Stevens, Sinner's Psalms vol. 2, Sonnet, Victorian Sonnet
Parallel lines extend along the graph and far as eyes can see draws mystery. All our lives we wonder if this paragraph is the final or the first of history. We see both hell and heaven occupied and know the perfect judge of all must be by justice or by mercy...
