zine
cubicles
HOME  ABOUT  FICTION  POETRY  ART  SUBMIT  NEWS  MORBID  ZINES  ODDITIES  BEWARE  CONTACT  SCARY  SHRIEKS  JAY.WILBURN  BOOKS  FILMS  STORE

David Hoenig

The November Editor's Pick Poet is David Hoenig

Please feel free to email David at lionetravail@gmail.com

david

CORPORATE DISCORPORATION

His cubicle is like a rifle:
there are many like it, 
but this one is his.

It seems bigger than it used to;
he can admit to himself that
maybe it's because he feels smaller.

He's not sure if he's still alive.
It seems unlikely to him
when all his dreams have died here.

He stands and looks around.
He feels curiously light,
like his cubed life used to fit better.

He feels the hum of business
as all the little cogs whir around him,
and wonders if he is just a ghost in the machine.

And, lost, it is no great thing
to bring a rifle to his cubicle,
and invite others to join him in discorporation.

HOW HOPE FAILS

Wings pinned to cork,
suffocating behind glass:
the metamorphosis led to beauty, but not joy.

She’s no trophy butterfly,
desiccated and dead—
she just wishes she were.

Aridity is not her problem, 
as oceans have fallen from her eyes
to be dashed on the worn precipices below,

but she feels the same isolation,
as though mummified and isolated,
the husk of her on careless display.

The pills don’t work,
talk is empty of meaning,
and hope is a Golgotha.

She has forgotten how to dream better days:
there is no ‘perchance,’ 
there is only the desire for oblivion.

THE ARGUMENT AGAINST

I gave my heart to seek and search;
this sore travail given to man
is vanity and vexation of spirit,
madness and folly.

Therefore I hated life,
all of it! A cause to despair,
for what has man of all his labor
wherein all his days are sorrows, and his travail grief?

Should his soul enjoy 
that there is a time to die?
A time to break down?
A time to weep?

I said in my heart:
men, themselves, are beasts
who see evil done
and- marvel!—sleep sweet.

It is better to go, mourning 
that sorrow is better than laughter,
for sadness is the gift
that destroys the heart. 

For he that loves 
shall not be satisfied; no.
He that loves shall take nothing of his days
but sorrow and wrath.

David Hoenig is a practicing physician for whom writing is his ‘second career.’ He recently won a short fiction contest (Espec Books) with “Ride into Legend,” and placed third in another (Morning Rain Publishing) with “Madness is in the Eye of the Beholder.”

He’s had multiple stories published/accepted to different anthologies with Horrified Press, including “Asteroid Christmas” (sci fi), “Win Some, Lose Some,” “Salted Earth,” and “Rough Adolescence.”

He has had poetry published in Ad Libitum, and also in a Horrified Press anthology (“Supernatural”), and is working on a novel at this time.