Devery Landrum

Mariner’s Love Song

the breath of her sex blew me far off course
of any charted map my heart could design.
her unworldly scent wielded whispered force,
galed my senses a whirlwind unrefined,
with buoyant gusto i drowned swimming her girth
a thousand times.  my blowhole sprouting Queen Anne’s Lace
betwixt her this, and, that flesh quivering mirth,
enamored, my sighs swayed her bangled embrace
to engulf my tenuous sanity,
unleashing languid cement i bestowed
inside her gimmicky love, lust, vanity
i assailed to cherish but could not decode. 

vessels she gave me ran afoul upriver.
cargo she craved, i could not deliver.


Heirloom Angels

they knew not why they magically appeared
double winged singin’ God’s first spiritual
halo hued and hallowed their Grace reigned imperial
brazenly bronzed, was it their skin they feared?
so dark were they from them, judgements were clouded
their wings sheared, haloes replaced with chains
work bequeathed sun up til sun down, they lost names
and tongues native, the african moon became shrouded.
Angels.    uprooted, replanted in new world soil
to field king cotton and america’s lust 
made quadroon angels octoroon a quaint must
supine and restrained they never knew love’s spoil

promised forty acres and a broke mule
fallen angels never knew a world so cruel

Devery Landrum has worked as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker specializing working
with children and adolescents for over twenty years.  He has been writing poetry
since he was in high school and has had poems in The San Fernando Journal, Blindman’s Rainbow, Writer’s Cramp, Sounds of Poetry, The Sunday Suitor Poetry Review, Lucid Moon, and the Society of American Poets.  He is a member of The Writers Center in Bethesda MD.