Vernon Frazer


Ranking Privilege


monetary breeds 
blocked the vertebrate palace 

     that historic rotisserie 
          dryly admonished finery 
                heeds discursive drinkers 

their formal semitone tint 
meant a force-fed brotherhood scored 
an inferior sphinx assortment 

hookah sextet sessions notable noumena 

     *

spectral failings sepulchral censure 
best discharging its acrylic epigram 

     taking the seat of a controller 
          while their last grinder remains 

    the greenback  repentance
         to school          imposed
lacing the misdeed         hawser vocative

      molding nonchalance cravings  

     *

a retrofit drunk
bent the flashbulbs
fingerprints the sonic 
   grandson 
the linear one  defers sycophantic leisure 
     to wisecrack fable gaskets 

architects confused leisure holographs



Hosting from the Audience


talk radio raves
against a papal simulacrum

     no bull
                 intended

at the cattle orifice
lowing the limbo record

referenda suffrage below intent

no blue
orchid streaming laser lines

     a spectacle of faith
     caught loafing with camera fish

          hinting udder cleavage
           slyly             styled

                   under the camera 
                     waving dreams
                     below passage

          aching bent over
                                     black stocking net
               fish
                     breath
                                leering

the vicarious dream of a neutered pantomime



Pimping Out a Memoir


weekly job colors 
lowered vengeance pulsation

hallucination freckles
collar the vortex shadow pickup  

              catering screams
              most new gropes  
              on cold sandwich  

                                      “lived effort”  

      crossed factotum call
          
swamp invader inside

    no creaks
    sure the scream  
                                    (“lived effort”)
streams welfare foliage
when hanging out work
at thickwaisted awning 

           creak
           the truth as public 
           into line
                                   “now get tight”

     last glance and let slide

cushion hope good

(“effort lived”)



The Line Bottomed


the dark now
ozone left completed
its goal post irony

          perpendicular fashion
          the cost of a lost lapel
          vents a scalpel sundry

     intrusion master
     caught in
                    a breathing remix

          pecuniary ambiance 

spreading a tabloid 

      delta coding
      mixed revelation filler
      across
                 a fried swipe

no voltaic stanza to scratch
a pedicure insomniac gone electric 

           the slither of
           textual fiberboard 
           scaled back

                  its shadow reflection 

                       annulled

                            as a finished line



The Tincture Guarantee


placebo dawn
the entourage assuages
future meat groups

     portal receivers
     return a midship flesh license

emergent scion receptors
     greet spoonbill generator axons
          with maximum platelet cleavage

a medicine show
    for the vaunted mastiff

         itself                                  barking
an accumulated                    persuasive
        genre                                   fiction

 sold by the jar                 under the counter

*

riddled sphinx genders
occlude the spared horizon no sand
and its  like the present
of sprayed uncertainty
           a generic turning

     before the squint’s allure
          deforms the slight envisioned       taken   with a
              to include the pure      grain
              of sand

its post-columnar implications greatly diminished

     almost gone the way
     adrift lost control of the rudder

*

medicine shows
   the desert cures
          stop oasis
     while tide limps
                              larva groping a minor sport

          a
      game under 
     played  false
light

Vernon Frazer’s latest poetry collection is Gravity Darkening.

 
 

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