Dec 21, 2014 | Gus Stevens, Seasons, Sonnet, Terza Rima, Winter
Wandering with careless muddied steps, I squish the gluttonous ground all drunk with rain in this city where the puddles never dry and the leaf-crammed gutters never drain ‘cept for a fleeting fist of golden weeks when the sun visits all brilliant and vain. And...
Dec 15, 2014 | Gus Stevens, Seasons, Sonnet, Victorian Sonnet, Winter
What can be offered to the afternoon but words and words; there’s nothing new to say and so I’m silent as the winter’s moon with her half smile over the brilliant day. The clouds have all been chased off by the sun, her sole companion in an empty...
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...
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...
