Featured Poet: William Doreski

"Hope the poems below have some fun left in them." Well, what he lacks in bio, he makes up for in fun, which required very little wringing because it was not so that there was little fun left in them; rather they were vessels of fun that were spilling fun and enjoyment everywhere, and I had to choose just three of the six poems he sent! O Sweet Flowery Explosions are happening on the site, with a greater volume of submissions than ever before. Don't worry; if you have submitted, you'll make it on. But things may have to change a bit. First, a reminder: Please remember to include a bio if you would like anyone to know about yourself or your style or thoughts or ANYthing, and remember to send three poems. If not, I will choose the three poems which go on the site. It's a bad idea to put anything on OSFR that you are trying to get published elsewhere; other journals may not be happy with simulinaity. Don't publish things here that you have done so elsewhere, either. No one here or on your end wants to end up getting sued over a poetics site dedicated to fun. Village Roaster Twenty different coffees roasted on the spot. No latte, no mocha, no yuppies served here. Debbie with her silver gray mane tucked under her cap doles out coffee to Democrats and Independents, fusses over dogs who come to join her Biscuit Club. She talks down her nose at Republicans who hate small business, who cozy to corporations big enough to devour small towns whole. The coffee, fresh from the roaster, makes its own way in the world. Columbian, Costa Rican, Sumatran, Kenyan, Honduran. Pour yourself a cup and relax outside under the umbrella and let the flavor plumb you, annulling all your complaints. A Naked Man Behind the funeral home the sea crests up to the parking lot and rattles a pebbly beach. As Jenny wades in the shallows with her skirt tucked around her waist I skip a stone toward the wharf, a blackened, half-collapsed wreck. A gray car pulls up. A door opens. Big and sweaty in the driver’s seat a naked man leers at Jenny. He looks so familiar I almost shout his name, but instead fling a stone that rackets inside the car and frightens him away. Only a stink of exhaust remains when the cops arrive. Jenny can’t identify the man, her expression simple as phlox, but I remember voting him into office twenty years ago when the surface of the planet felt smoother to the touch. The cops sigh because they knew it was him. The sea also sighs because Jenny has put on shoes and sits ladylike on the pebbles while organ music seeps from the draped room where her father lies flatter than he ever lay in life. Time to escort her to whatever rites will resolve the sudden absence of a soul. As we enter we note the naked man seated fully dressed among her father’s other friends. Of course he has eyed Jenny all her life although she barely noticed him and now she’ll always remember how colorless he looks in his skin. The ritual begins with a Baptist minister pronouncing death good; but I hear the sea rattling stones in derision, lapping Jenny’s thighs as she wades with her skirt up— and the naked man appeals to her with a gaze that rhymes with the slop of waves and a silence only a favorite obscenity can fill. Sharon Stone Naked Up late watching a movie featuring Sharon Stone naked as a caryatid, I’m afraid I won’t make my seven-thirty doctor’s appointment, the dawn obscured by the pearly rain combing the summer forest. Too late to go to bed and hope for sleep enough to sustain me through a day of obscurities. The doctor will numb my eyesight with tropicamide and peer so deeply into my retinas I’ll feel ashamed of having them. Maybe she’ll note some problem to necessarily alarm me; maybe she’ll grunt and scrawl illegible notes and dismiss me without a hint of diagnosis. Sharon Stone wields a knife. Maybe she’ll cut the heart from our hero and leaving him steaming like an Aztec sacrifice. Maybe he’ll survive to make a sequel. I’ve seen this movie before but refuse to remember how it ends. The rain won’t abate for many hours, its imperative as personal as my desire to see Sharon Stone reveal not only her skin but her motive, a dark psychosis that transcends gender to fill all available psychic space. I fear going blind. Maybe that’s why I’m staying up all night to see whatever this movie can show before something darker than dark decides to replace it.