The Fifth Limb & Other Poems

In the equation.

Forever the seeker,

I hid from

fate

for once, whispering

“please don’t find me.”

Forearm-over-eyes

count

to twenty-two.

“Ready or not-”

Behind tree,

the split branch,

I tread in

father’s garden

“Here I come!”

Aggressive,

as boys tend to be.

Wheelbarrow &

scapegoat.

Likewise, they speak

of growing

in brutal tones,

a moral sin to know such

things.

“Whose fault is it,

then?

I didn’t act on it.”

To collect the

shards

of Robin’s nest,

runny

through slit

fingers.

Saltiness.

A potential

family,

scrambled.

My limb extends,

like his

reflex, a boat

in storm,

smacking moor

of forehead.

She swore,

“Never again.”

And even through

all the years

I spoke atrocities

upon him.

A vociferous

pitchfork tongue

chainsaw,

bitter as scorched.

Teething his

bark,

overheard

while in the garden,

that nest,

already shattered.

I was only finding then

pieces

of what’s been

broken,

a jigsaw of

flash

which made the

sun.

We won’t know

our star

has burnt out

until countless years

after,

& much like that

child

in garden.

By then, it will be

far too gone

for any

number of appendages

to resurrect

a

yolk

which has

bled

from its shell.

*******

Haiku on Haiku

A Haiku is hard                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 to write, because you often                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           run out of syllab–

 Paul LaTorre is a 25-year old poet/teacher from Newark, NJ.  He currently resides in Montclair, with his soon-to-be-wife, Melissa and their 2 cats, striped turtle and leopard gecko. A graduate of Bloomfield College, with a BA in Creative Writing, he is working on attaining his MFA in Creative/Professional Writing, starting this fall. Paul’s aim is to one day soon be a professor of Creative Writing and Poetry. His two crowning achievements as an undergrad were receiving the Joyce Carol Oates Award for Creative Writing, as well as founding ‘the Live Poets Society’, an organization formed to cultivate and further an appreciation and formulation of poetry at Bloomfield College. Paul’s poetry is a sprawling, elliptical whirlwind combining wordplay, syllabic rhythm, topical issues and pop culture references. Often personal, but also tends to toe the line on commentary on many divisive social issues.