Two Poems By Marc Darnell

Rachmaninov

Melodeer, yet mutineer to stiff
construction, wraith of pianissimo's
thunder tones-- I gasp and latch to lifts
of ired, caustic, winged arpeggios.

I have no urge to hear contemporaries
of you, for you provide harmonic fix--
for every coda in life I've failed to seize,
I fill the rests with your addictive licks.

F-sharp is your eye of hurricane--
the mad survive it, whirl with dark tinnitus--
what was sleeping in your clefs of veins
to smith the smoking hooks that never leave us?

There will be no tearing sounds like yours--
you jarred the thickest panes, then slammed the doors.

Hard R

I don't speak proper English really well,
but I'll be sure the grammar here looks great.
Living in this country can be hell

when people laugh at me, since I can't tell
what they say so quickly, my head not straight.
I don't speak proper English really well--

I'm from Puerto Rico, and I can spell
perfect Spanish, my life was a sad state,
but living here also can be hell,

for there I was a health professional,
but here with cashiers I can't communicate.
I don't speak proper English really.  Well,

at least here no perdedores sell
my son heroin, no OD's on the street.
Living in this country can be hell

cleaning a hotel for night school ESL--
the teacher with her hard "r"-- enunciate!
I don't speak proper English really well.
Living in this country can be hell.

Marc Darnell is a custodian and online tutor in Omaha NE, and has also been a phlebotomist, hotel supervisor, busboy, editorial assistant, farmhand, devout recluse, and incurable brooder. He received his MFA from the University of Iowa, and has published poems in The Lyric, Rue Scribe, Verse, Skidrow Penthouse, Shot Glass Journal, The HyperTexts, Candelabrum, The Road Not Taken, Aries, Ship of Fools, Open Minds Quarterly, The Fib Review, Verse-Virtual, Blue Unicorn, Ragazine, The Literary Nest, The Pangolin Review, and elsewhere.