s w i f t s  &  s l o w s: a quarterly of crisscrossings

Smoldering Light
John Greiner & Stan Gaz

← back or next →

The Deception of Heat

Fall down in the darkness
captured by the smoldering
light.
There’s still bottomless loss
that the sun has no right
to center itself in.
Cold hearted is this deception
of heat
that carries on it’s back day
dreams
of sky pilots and spacemen.

Knock Knock

“Who’s there?”
So I said,
“Claude Rains”
just like the invisible
man
in the movies,
but no one watches
the old movies
these days.
I wasn’t heard,
anyhow.

It was a knock knock
joke
that got Adam
put out of paradise
in the days before
movie theaters
and television sets.
“Who’s there?”
Eve played the fall to win.
She became a queen of the screen.
It was a wonderful career to have.
Eden’s better seen through
Hollywood’s eyes.
She made the preacher man
that Robert Mitchum became
more radiant than any
of the angels above
fallen down.
We all lusted after her,
but eventually even she was lost
in the rush of the images
made by the billions
with their individual perversions
that pound- knock! knock!
None of us stop showing
that we have something to say.
There’s no need for ears.
Knock knock!
Who’s there?
She’s the origin story lost
and now none of us will come
into a myth worthy of comic books.
Claude Rains is forgotten.
The sky is falling
and no one knows
how to climb the Tree
to catch it.

Yucatan Pharmacists Have No Eyes

Mayan prescriptions
written in snow
on Merida streets
this hissing August
of snakes pulling
their charmers along.
The shamans and pharmacists
are long gone
leaving the Yucatan
in the hands
of Yankee Doodle
happy to break free
and wag his tongue.
Maria Everyname
slips her eyes over the ice.
She is the Mother of God
and makes that fact known
in every sentence she speaks.
Her sisters all say
the same thing.
There are a million sons
and a polytheism here
which always leads
to a three way.
Americans come.
They carry old Christmas cards
and suck on candy canes
as they stroll the Paseo de Montejo.
The Sole God,
who runs the Spanish motel
and talks about how
he’s never felt at home
since he left Madrid,
watches them make wrong
turns
as he waits for September
to come and bring him closer
to the Queen of May.
On the odd jukebox
Jimmy Durante sings
“Frosty the Snowman”
and all the Gods
and their mothers smile
the revelation.
The Americans smile too,
glad to be so far from home.

Poetry: John Greiner.  Photography: Stan Gaz.

← back or next →

John Greiner is a writer and visual artist living in New York City. He was educated at the New School for Social Research. Greiner’s work has appeared in Antiphon, Sand Journal, Sein und Werden, Empty Mirror, Sensitive Skin, Unarmed, Street Value and numerous other magazines. His books of poetry include Circuit (Whiskey City Press), Turnstile Burlesque (Crisis Chronicles Press) and  (Good Cop/Bad Cop Press). His collaborative work with photographer Carrie Crow has appeared at the Tate Liverpool, the Queens Museum and in galleries in New York, Los Angeles, Venice, Paris, Berlin and Hamburg.

The work of Stan Gaz explores themes of loss, memory and transformation. The imagery in his work is allegorized by the actions and effects of the hunter and the hunted. Gaz finds these roles to be oddly interchangeable, where neither is ever free of the other’s influence, but nevertheless transformation still takes place.