Joseph A. W. Quintela is an experimentalist writer and poet currently masquerading as a student of the City University of New York. Launched in May of 2009, his Twitter-based poetry project in140characters.com has been recognized for its innovative use of the 140 character constraint as form. His poetry will appear in forthcoming issues of Right Hand Pointing, Breadcrumb Scabs, and lines written with a razor. In actuality, he wrote those lines with a battle axe but they’re the ones publishing his poetry so he’s not going to split hairs.
Joseph A.W.
Quintela
It is at the insistence of the moon that
the shore bows
naked once each tide. the miles of
shimmering skin
stretched in long prostrate display. and
there. beyond all
expectation. a semicolon. buried nail first
in the sand.
point protruding like a finial eye. a
harbinger of invasion
or the remains of the invade.
opposition. the vast mammalian specter of life abruptly
stranded by the waves.
you. are my basilisk of language. you. my
lethal talon
poised beneath a calm transfixing gaze.
you. who never gave
a damn. you. who threw stones into the sea
just to watch
them sink. you. who reveled in the torpor.
braced.
unafraid. between two worlds that threatened to collide.
yet still would tremble at the waxing of the moon.
and while no one here is willing to admit
to a fear of
Virginia Woolf as she stands omniscient in
the foreground
it is undeniable that we find her freedom
with the
semicolon to border on the disquieting that
the long
breaths necessary to carry us through her
sentences have
left us in a simultaneous state of arousal
and asphyxiation
so that we sail like Magellan through the
moment our faith
propelling us where we dare not otherwise
tread
it is the same faith that will betray.
look. it is you. the
calf that stands there chortling as we
collapse into the
churning surf. words weighted like iron.
lungs bereft of
song.
and there. the poisonous semicolon. thrust
unto the leg.
