Livio Farallo

Livio Farallo is co-founder/co-editor of Slipstream. His work has appeared in The South Florida Poetry Journal, The Cardiff Review, The Cordite Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Misfit, and elsewhere.

Easy read of the poems in the images above:

agyiophobia
fear of being in the street

what we didn’t say

was what walked a bloody path

simple as night breeze and

just as unseen. but

it can tap you on the shoulder,

raise your hair and make your eyes water.

it can finger a tree to thrashing.

all the uneven borders scratching

like neurotic nails on your back:

the granite curbs.

it is four-something

of a scar-dead morning listing

deeply in a storm’s water.

ten breaths for one cigarette.

twenty times in and out and nothing said.

nothing said times twenty is a small world

flung up against wind-soaked draperies: as

marilyn’s dress. i’ll spell it

however you like. you walk along

a bit lighter after getting up.

with every step, a sodden rain

of little silver-globed mercuries

squirt from your boots. you aren’t known

miles back. aren’t welcome around here.

whatever you say is spoken heavier than air

and finds a sewer. here,

we do not desecrate the street.

pharmacophobia
fear of taking medication

a covey of bones

and

walking sweat,

i am

nothing but

fragrance

downloaded

from a rose

i smear

on arms from

a vase thrown

into shattering sunlight.

i am

working toward

freeing myself

from a cage where

i am

nothing but

a tubercular monkey

phlegming out words

i was taught

long ago

that still want for fresh ears.

or,

i am

a dollop

of germ-resistant drug

that sits

uninfected

as a boulder in a uv desert

and tastes

like a white teardrop

of whipped cream.

now

slapping coughs

long ago

out of me,

i fever out of

sight.