Richard Peabody – Three Poems


 

DeSoto Blues

Every single tailfin
from winged cars of the 1950’s

detaches
like a lizard tail

when junked

skims

scarred
gray asphalt

meets
pointed fins

square fins
lunate fins

down
on Highway 61

to brainstorm
the comeback

a need
for fins

deep seated

2)

Daytona beach
tourists

point out fins
slicing

through
their purview

“shark”
“dolphin”

can’t tell
them apart

spiny fins
mock reality

rise
gleaming

Plexiglas
instruments

of death
and mutation

JG Ballard
would be

so proud

3

plastic surgeons
attach

fins to runway
models

who coast
South Beach

sharply pointed
fins

in their tipsy wake

dorsal fins
pelvic fins

pectoral fins
anal fins

implants
and piercings

Ventral fins
split fins

all the rage

rounded fins
forked fins

soaring
appendages

flashing lights
beneath skin

until beautiful
people

move instead
toward

curious
extremes

the Dimetrodon’s
back sail

Stegosaurus’s
bony plates

or else
reject fins

for vestigial
memories

feathers
mermaids



Revenge of the Creature

Pretty as a coral snake.

Slippery as an eel.

I know better than to make
the same mistake.

But your slick voice
is melodic.

And I’m a sucker
for a song.



Pages from the Purple Book

Mr. Rebound
has a restless night.

Mr. Rebound
goes a wooing.

Mr. Rebound
takes the plunge.

The Reaping.

The singing
of the spear.

The battle and the marriage.

The doom of
Baala-Baala.

Semen and fruit.


 

Author’s Statement on Beauty

Beauty is the tuning fork of the universal. We seek it out, we feed off of it, and we desire more. We want to chain our hearts to beauty, to possess beauty, hold beauty closer than life itself. Inner beauty runs by different rules. Though I believe beauty is a force, an aura, an inner light, the mind of God, what have you. Both a palpable ideal and a subconscious hunger. We sense it, hold it for seconds in eye of mind or heart of hearts. We can never keep it. Beauty changes. But we know we beheld it. And in retrospect are glad we did. Beauty gives a bump to the soul. And for me these fluid moments are what life is all about.

Beauty is cars with fins, too.


 

Richard Peabody is the founder and co-editor of Gargoyle Magazine and editor (or co-editor) of 25 anthologies including Mondo Barbie, Conversations with Gore Vidal, and A Different Beat: Writings by Women of the Beat Generation. The author of a novella, three short story collections, and seven poetry books, he is also a native Washingtonian. Peabody taught fiction writing at Johns Hopkins University for 15 years. His most recent book is The Richard Peabody Reader (Alan Squire Publishers, 2015). More at: gargoylemagazine.com.