Two Poems by Alan Britt

ODE TO A COMMON SPIDER,
GREYISH-BROWN WITH ZEBRA
SUSPENDERS

There's this spider
webbed to our patio door.

Disappears, sleight-of-hand,
during routine human traffic.

Vanishes like the pea
in a New York City shell game!

Sure, I love his lust for freedom,
and emulate his fluid, arachnid guile,
buy, mostly, I'm jealous
of his endearing patience
for every fingernail moth of fate.



THE BEE
 

So, this portly black bee

with gold suspenders

hoisting his hippopotamus rear

dances our encounter.

 

He says to other bees halfway across the yard:

Don’t go near that patio. The man

sitting there is not a flower!

 

I wonder…my genteel Italian cologne,

or perhaps this faded sweatshirt

like wrinkled geranium petals fallen from grace?

 

Suddenly, like a drunken bullet,

the bee grazes my chin,

then vaporizes into tropical overcast

at the edge of the patio.

 

 

 

Alan Britt's interview with Grace Cavalieri for The Poet and the Poem will air on Pacifica Radio in January 2013 (http://www.loc.gov/poetry/poetpoem.html). He read poems at the World Trade Center/Tribute WTC Visitor Center (TributeWTC.org) in Manhattan/NYC, April 2012, at the We Are You Project (WeAreYouProject.Org) Wilmer Jennings Gallery, East Village/NYC, April 2012, and at New Jersey City University's Ten Year 9/11 Commemoration in Jersey City, NJ, September 2011. His poem, "September 11, 2001," appeared in International Gallerie: Poetry in Art/Art in Poetry Issue, v13 No.2 (India): 2011. His recent books are Alone with the Terrible Universe (2011), Greatest Hits (2010), Hurricane (2010), Vegetable Love (2009), Vermilion (2006), Infinite Days (2003), Amnesia Tango (1998) and Bodies of Lightning (1995). The Poetry Library (www.poetrymagazines.org.uk) providing a free access digital library of 20^th & 21^st century English poetry magazines with the aim of preserving them for the future has included Britt’s work published in Fire (UK) in their project. Britt’s work also appears in the new anthologies, The Robin Hood Book: Poets in Support of the Robin Hood Tax, by Caparison, United Kingdom, 2012, American Poets Against the War, Metropolitan Arts Press, Chicago/Athens/Dublin, 2009 and Vapor transatlántico (Transatlantic Steamer), a bi-lingual anthology of Latin American and North American poets, Hofstra University Press/Fondo de Cultura Económica de Mexico/Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos de Peru, 2008. Readings & Presentations: Panel Chair for Poetry Studies & Creative Poetry for the PCA/ACA Conference 2008 in Boston, Ramapo College in Mahwah, NJ (2009 & 2012), the WPA Gallery/Ward-Pound Ridge Reservation in Cross River, NY (2008), Ultra Violet Studio, Chelsea/NYC (2008 & 2009), White Marsh Library, Baltimore (2011 & 2012), Enoch Pratt Free Library (Canton Branch) Baltimore (2011), Pedestal Magazine Reading at the Writers Center, Bethesda, MD (2012). Alan currently teaches English/Creative Writing at Towson University and lives in Reisterstown, Maryland with his wife, daughter, two Bouviers des Flandres, one Bichon Frise and two formerly feral cats. Links: http://www.poetrysuperhighway.com/potw.html#fp1;

http://spectrumofpoeticfire.com/Reader%20Directory/Alan_Britt.htm;

http://theliteraryunderground.org/wiki/index.php?title=Alan_Britt;

http://www.therecusant.org.uk/#/morrison-on-saponia-and-britt/4556998367; and

http://aliensareus.wordpress.com/