John C. Mannone is a widely published award-winning poet. His poetry appears in mainstream journals such as the Iodine Poetry Journal, Thrift Poetic Arts Journal, Main Channel Voices: A Dam Fine Literary Magazine, and MO: Writings from the River. His work also appears in speculative fiction venues: Astropoetica, Sonar4 Science Fiction and Horror Ezine, Static Movement, and Liquid Imagination.
Professor Mannone teaches physics in east Tennessee and is a nuclear consultant. He is a frequently sought speaker in astronomy outreach events. He also founded PoeticWord Ministries through which he shares his spiritual poetry and Biblical commentary with local churches.
Painting Myself into a Corner
By John C. Mannone
I am a speck of ochre today,
between the blue, the orange
cracked and peeling paint where
once the sun had dappled ocean.
I spread acrylic to that corner
of the canvas, the sunlight
whispers through the brush
like wind, invisible, driven
by my hand swathing through
the gesso all the way to another
corner,
there, twitter of green leaves
underspilling sun into the vale.
I hear their quake; dabs shaken
with right shade of coolness.
In the distance, water stretches,
crests, turquoise fading blue,
then gray. The sun shifts,
setting closer to the far edge,
its red staining ocean—déjà vu
of violet tingeing oily waves.
The canvas darkens.
I paint a refuge in the corner
—a cleft in burnt brown hill—
weather the curling of paint,
the cracking layers of color,
and pray my clasp of hands
will not exfoliate and drop
me into the dark abyss
of another world.
