SurVision Magazine
An international online magazine
that publishes Surrealist poetry in English.
Issue Fifteen
DARRELL PETSKA
Numbers Game
In dream
the cursor winks always
here
your disguises varied
your motives uncertain
your mind a grab bag
stuffed with joys, sorrows, fears
here
touch is color
number adumbrations of feeling
to run toward or flee
all words skewing a quarter turn
from waking's dictionary
here
time's roulette wheel
flies to zero: you will lose
even should you win—
wakefulness being the leveler:
call "7" all you want,
the croupier has your number.
Red Dress
Sunrise
on the blue saloon,
stabbing abject olives of regret
with broken swizzle sticks.
Cowards would leave,
fools stay.
Bedeviled, defrocked,
heart steamrolled on the floor,
ramparts assailed
by clarion cries, machine-
gunned words and molten tears
dashed with lemon
till sunset's surcease
when sleep pours the drinks.
Redress, O red dress,
sweet midnight absolution.
Darrell Petska lives outside Madison, Wisconsin. His poetry appears in Muddy River Poetry Review, Chiron Review, Star 82 Review, Verse-Virtual, 3rd Wednesday Magazine, San Pedro River Review, SurVision, etc. He has worked a third of a century as communications editor for the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
