Doug Tanoury

Doug Tanoury grew up in Detroit and still lives in the area with his wife and three children.

Doug has been published in Writer's Digest, Ego Flights and Alura Quarterly. Online he has been published on Spectrum Press, realpoetik, The Bridge, Sour Grapes and others.

The greatest influence on Doug and his work was the 7th grade poetry anthology used in Sister Debra's English class: Reflections On A Gift Of Watermelon Pickle And Other Modern Verse, Stephen Dunning, Edward Lueders and Hugh Smith, (c)1966 by Scott Foresman & Company.

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Produce Poems by Doug Tanoury

Potatoes I stood before a pile of potatoes In the grocery store today That somehow strangely seemed To awaken memories in me For they were large With irregular bulges and scars With a sandpaper texture Dirty and rough Like my father's hands And in the middle of crowded store I stood alone touching the potatoes Running my hands over their skin Gently stroking them Caressing them Cupping their roughness and Holding them in my palms for a long time Eggplant It is tear shaped for this fruit is the face Of the battered wife whose Bruised and beaten flesh Is ebony with traces of cobalt blue Like summer nights just after sunset Winter Pears On a wooden swing hanging From the highest bough Of his backyard pear tree We learned to fly at the Speed of dreams on summer Afternoons, leaning back And gripping rusted Chains and looking far up Into thick foliage that hid The dark limbs that held us. From the tall tree that grew Small winter pears I'd fly with him across the Summers and briefly Forget for a moment My parent's marriage, The family finances, My sister's sickness. In quick motion sweeping us Upward, we learned to fly. Before I knew of fallen fruit Or how spring winds Waste pear blossoms, I knew him. He flew Unfettered and without Cares where dreams Grew slow like winter pears On the highest branches To ripen and fall only In late summer. Today, under a pear tree Drooping with fruit I dreamt him here. Sweet Spanish Onions Not white not red not yellow But sweet Spanish onions that I seek In the bins of the supermarket produce aisle Looking for the color That is the sepia underside of sycamore leaves in November And the tan leg and upper thigh of a woman in July Felix Culpa I walk through an open-air market On Saturday mornings in the Spring, As I did with my grandparents as a boy, And with my father in years before, but now I hold her hand as we cut a path through The crowds past stalls where farmers, And flower peddlers bark goods and prices With voices echoing from a cathedral-like Clerestory and high ceiling. The market is a long awning with red brick Entrance arches in the Roman style, Creating a patchwork of light and shadow. We steal large purple grapes to feed each other, And pick strawberries as big as apples from Cardboard flats and hold them up to each Other's mouth tempting one sinful bite. I whisper chewing stolen fruit: "Felix Culpa" She laughs and pushes another grape in my mouth. Her breasts like little pears were Sharply pointed at their tips and Resembled the farthest horizontal Peaks of twin parentheses With Oranges I thought today of her awakening Her movements a shadow In the predawn darkness A phantom floating No more than a chimera of shape A nude that Picasso might sketch No more than a few sloping lines that curve Toward soft inclines and rise gently Toward feathered intersections And fall toward full divergence Backlit in silhouette from the bedroom window Her breasts and buttocks The simple elegance of lines in Erotic waves and fluid motion And as she moves near I smell the citrus of orange slices That is the fragrance and scent That forms a perfumed wake as she passes And the "sh" and "ch" sounds of her dressing Are a bird's wings flapping A slight rustling of fabric A finch in the shrub I am the slave of her motion The serf of her smells The prisoner of her naked beauty Who wakes each morning in bondage To the changing shape of curves To the texture of delicate sound And a still life with oranges Ripened Bananas on the Kitchen counter have grown Spots like leopard skins Tomatoes Picked tomatoes ripening On the kitchen windowsill. Neatly lined against the glass In descending order of size. Always gives me a warm Feeling of home. A reminder there's a woman About, a woman's touch, A woman's caring, A woman's patient waiting. Pale pink growing toward A deeper scarlet will mark Them for a special salad Sometime next week. Coconuts Two coconuts on the kitchen counter Awaken primal urges in me, Lying one against the other, Looking somewhat feminine, The rounded curve of breasts Or buttocks, picking them up With hands stretched open To see how much can fit within My grasp, weighing each with Gentle lifting motions, and hearing the slight slush of inner Juices. Ah, coconuts, call up A savage hunger. Autumn Inside Me I pick a pear from a branch Hanging low And take a small bite Just to test the taste It is sweet So the second And all subsequent bites Are larger It is cool after sunset I no longer walk Barefoot on the blacktop In comfort It is a marble floor Against my soles I eat the pear Seeds and all And only the stem is left To twirl between thumb And forefinger As I wish I had plucked two From the tree With branches Hanging so low I walk in darkness Just after sunset Without A remnant of light On the horizon Black Is the color Of fall nights I have tasted the season On my lips Across my tongue And there is no doubt It is autumn Inside me Las Sandias In Rivera's painting melons are Sliced and resting ripe crimson Bordered in bone-white rind open And inviting on a green wooden table That is the matching color of the melon Skins themselves and veins of black seeds Dot through the meat and accent its Redness and deepen its lushness The one piece bitten waits for the unseen Hand that set it down to pick it up again And lift it to lips and tongue that are the Matching color of the melon's ripeness

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The Voice Of Bartemaus - - Five Poems - - By Doug Tanoury

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Voice of Bartemaus

And I will say once again that darkness
Is persistent and gives way only
With great reluctance
In small spots as if to delay
And discourage

This I know for I have sojourned
Like Bartemanus a blind man
In plutonic gloom so dense
Light does not travel
Or penetrate its reaches

I have waited a lifetime
For one spark or shimmer
A lone glimmer a glint or gleam and
I will continue to call out
A voice from the darkness

A Slow Season

In am stuck
In the middle of this is a reluctant season
Within its heart of slowness
Its self-centered sloth
In a holding back in bashful reserve
Where the sun never shines
And the clouds hide a shy blue sky
Over trees sleeping so soundly
In self-conscious reserve
They do not dream of buds
Indeed this season
I am caught in
Is the triumph of timidity

And I too celebrate it
In my holding back for my touch now
Is uncertain reserve and I am paused
In tentative indecision for a moment
An hour
A day
A collection of days
Until there is nothing left to touch
But the starkness and realization
Of all that is missing

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A Study In Form I have mastered the art of approach
The dance of improvisational movement
Around a subject
Like the low brick facades on Main Street
Articulated by second storey windows

The movement of muscle
Sinew and bone
An expression of torso and limbs
My body bent into a word
Moving in a phrase
My breath upon a line of verse
Of what is and why
Toward what could be and is

This is the art of pose and stance
Rhythm and tempo
For I have mastered the approach
And am a channel for burning forces
That bubble up in blood vessels and brain
In nerve endings and spine
Twisted in all the expressions of form
All the permutations of shape

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Lost On Sunset I remember
Being lost on Sunset Boulevard
Gazing down smog shrouded streets
At the homeless pushing shopping carts
Filled with bulging plastic garbage bags
Moving slowly
Haunting and indistinct
Their forms vanish in the haze
Like apparitions
Seen for a moment in sidelong glance
Then disappear

I remember
Reading poetry in the evening
Under a tree hung with lanterns
My voice awash with the noise of traffic
Bad mufflers and clunking transmissions
The sounds of surf on the shore
That ebb and flow that makes
Every day of my past
Like so much flotsam and jetsam

I remember standing
Haunting and indistinct
Like an apparition
Seen for a moment in sidelong glance
Only to disappear
Lost in the noise
And neon magic
Of Hollywood nights

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Private Collection

A Hollywood Park Poem

In the moment
I saw legs and lower torso
Protruding from a cardboard
Refrigerator box legs twisted together
Toes curled

And I knew
A person no more fragile than
An appliance was asleep
In a cast off
Brown box like the hard skin shell
A locust will shed and leave empty
In the grass

That shelters in the shadows
That now serve as packing and
Shipping material for heartbreak
And rasping respiration
That sits along the sidewalk

And shelters the dreamer from
A cool breeze on a Spring morning
And from the first weak light
That rises softly above the

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