Vernon Frazer

Mineral Life


a token frenzied muffler tablet

left unspoken references

shattered beyond precognition

or increments of feldspar

integral coyote cards bring seltzer


to receptacles void of entry




forest obligations render buffers

sublet broken preferences unguided

as the latter meant barring all carriers

of suited replicas or androids

parking hemispheres under the ruins



a catacomb never left undone




Elevator Music for Dinner


antiphonal outlet cleaning

tenor’s aching dust a vestibule

outsourcing catapult refectories

dynamos the creative gum

or sunders the fruitful clerks



a polyrhythm transposed

for leaning ampule verities

must demand more resulting

trajectory reflecting fluid busses

beneath the humming dative

to parliament’s imperative


of leisure suit esplanade translation

a mitigation notwithstanding

a participle’s nascent thrust

its beauty appending the leisure

hum of wondering pejorative nations


where with all seems in portent

as punning streams egress

outstanding imitation vendors

feed projections of numbered

imperative subghum consortium


an alliance not to be refried

except as frozen duty bids

columnar running fluid need

redefined as sculptured vision,

for a pastry of lost artifacts



Forever Loyal


increased housewife jitters

legumes along the gumline shatter

frescoes baste the tenured shark

implicit boundaries vaguely renew

their quarry hatchers wherever

battered stories revert to legend

or dairy fixtures cascading

over slickly venturing postures

dissuade the curtains of their acrimony

certain as wary parades marching

through shadows of past distance

a future renowned as spectral luminosity

favored invidious billiard thatchers

along crated roofs where strong ceilings

plied aviary textures loosely defined

as fenestrated solicitation widows

skipping on their wavelength sweaters

disgorging imitation swindle agonies

parting with the daylong green refined

to battering scalpel watchers bearing rifts

across dead waters that thread

the cognitive poultries battered

by the rage of indolent spinsters

chattering oblong mosaic poltroons

fit as dizzy underwear linkage

storied as the latest briefing

knows no handy poltergeist hymnals

foraging lost causes for filtering ambulance

chasers straight no razor played

against the middle handcuff gentry

procedures uncurled as ancient flags

flapping their habitual breeze





Vernon Frazer has published eight books of poetry and three books of fiction. His work has appeared in Big Bridge, Drunken Boat, First Intensity, Jack Magazine, Lost and Found Times, Moria, Miami SunPost, Otoliths, Prague Literary Review, Sidereality, Xstream and many other literary magazines. His web site is http://vernonfrazer.com/. His most recent works are the longpoems Holiday Idylling, Avenue Noir and IMPROVISATIONS, the now-completed work which he introduced in his 2001 reading at the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church. Frazer is married and lives in South Florida.