Joel Chace

from I Q


world of sad exams —
parallel structure, mayhem —
dusk, her large, gray eyes



rigidity rules —
top of the dark, steep stairwell —
murder, then, will out



while we lie open —
newspapers stacked in a shed —
this moon should turn blue



“ five percent,” she heard —
they were running for the door —
“there, right there,” she heard



in limpidity,
hard to see the corridors,
or any exits



white’s rapid increase —
even in the blue kitchen —
little-wow repents



evolution rag —
rats, briars, mosquitoes, burrs, ticks —
lie down, human head



first they came for us,
then they came for all our souls,
then they came for us



rope burn on ankles —
last frosting, list all crossed off —
sting of sea water



wonder if it’s time —
bought the wrong stamps once again —
black ice on pavement



fingers in the sky —
radio is a fine thing —
what we will do now



thunder and lilac —
Coltrane is playing in May —
Inhale, think again




Joel Chace has published work in print and electronic magazines such as The Tip of the Knife, Counterexample Poetics, OR, Country Music, Infinity's Kitchen, and Jacket. Most recent collections include Sharpsburg, from Cy Gist Press, Blake's Tree, from Blue & Yellow Dog Press, Whole Cloth, from Avantacular Press, Red Power, from Quarter After Press, Kansoz, from Knives, Forks, and Spoons Press, and Web Too, from Tonerworks.
 
 
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Diana Magallón

shivers

Phellipa & trivial

Phellipa esteparia



Diana Magallón is a Mexican visual artist and graduated carpenter. She is the author of Fábulas Furtivas and Fábulas Furtivas II.
 
 
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Mark Cunningham

[sort]
At night, the dark blanks in the grid of lights were the hills, which during the day were the only things we could see. He said, “Any point in space is an argument place,” and she disagreed. After we explained that the universe is a constant flux of ricocheting vibrations, it was easy to get the Pentagon to hand over $150 for a screwdriver. Duck, rabbit: life and death may be only points of view, but she doesn’t like to look too long, in case the pattern switches and she can’t get it to switch back.


[sort]
The people had names so normal—Helen Johnson, Ken Wong—that everybody thought they were hypothetical examples. She waffled: one day she’d speak for everyone, and the next for every one. The slide presentation about the “universal human nervous system” went on so long my right leg went numb from sitting. He explained the Theory of Relativity to us, and from that point on, everything was clear—except that, as Euclid and Buckminster Fuller note, points don’t really exist.


[sort]
We got together to discuss our report on individuality, and I said whatever she wanted to do was fine with me and she said whatever I wanted to do was fine with her, so we got nothing done. He tries not to think his own blood could drown him. She didn’t dream she was dreaming and then wake up: she woke up and used her watchfulness to try to become more awake, but that was so boring she fell asleep. Dear Prof. James: so the voices in my head are real after all. Our calculations showed there’s no end to the number of false infinites.


[sort]
Minus one hour for food and a nap, the terrier barked over once a second, over 3,600 times an hour, for eight hours, so it barked over 25,000 times. “It followed, therefore, that there had to be more than one old man and donkey, and indeed the woods were full of them.” Time for yet another “encore presentation” of Why is There Anything Rather than Nothing?

A note from M.C.:

"The term “sort” comes from John Locke’s “sorts of substances,” with our understanding of each substance made of collections of ideas that are “supposed to flow from the particular internal constitution” of the substance (An Essay Concerning Human Understanding 2:23:2-3), and from FedEx’s “sort,” the twice daily receiving and routing of packages at airport hubs.

"There are several quotations. In the first [sort], the quotation about “argument place” is from Brion Gysin, as quoted by Laura Hoptman in her essay “Disappearing Act: the Art of Brion Gysin,” though the he and she in my sentence aren’t Gysin and Hoptman. In the second [sort], the quotation about the nervous system is from The Shaman of Prehistory by Jean Clottes and David Lewis-Williams. In the fourth [sort], the quotation about one old man is from A Natural History of Western Trees by Donald Culross Peattie, on the Cherrystone Juniper. The bit about the dog is a fact."

---

100 Things I Think About, but Not for Long

Barrettes with Elmo from Sesame Street on them. Whether the red licorice is fresher than the black licorice at the mall’s candy store. Straw cowboy hats with the brims already rolled up to looked used. Fashion boots. Whether there’s any tungsten in the rings of the spiral note pad I use to keep track of gas mileage and oil changes. Whether the bank guard has any tattoos on his arms. The number of staples in the stapler at the first customer work station in the Kinko’s I’m walking past. Pokemon trading cards. Whether anyone sitting in the hospital lobby watches Miami Vice on DVD. Pocket flasks. Where the screw-on tops of plastic soda bottles are made. Cork screws on pocket knives. How many miles the wheels of shopping carts last. Ironing boards. The name of the person who regularly cut Michele Bernstein’s hair. Four-slice toasters. Where the lawyer in the TV commercial buys socks. Spiral pop-up laundry hangers. The name of the town where the person who thought the average wall outlet should have two sockets was born. Paper airplanes, theory and performance of.


What time the person in line behind me at the coffee shop got up this morning. How many gallons of water are in the water tower I can see a mile or so away. Whether the trailer hitch on that Mitsubishi has ever been used. How many slats are in the Venetian blinds of this dentist’s office. Rock-polishing machines. Back scratchers. Number of planks in the red-stained wooden fence in the backyard of the house I just walked past. Headboards for beds. What the prescription is for the glasses the woman sweeping her front porch is wearing. Brandy snifters. How long the signs on the interstate last before they have to be repainted or reprinted or whatever they do to them. Whether they repaint or reprint them. The fashionable length for sideburns among men under 25. Droopy cartoons not made by Tex Avery. How many bubbles are in a square yard of bubble wrap of any size. What the very first joke was. Which Joni Mitchell album is most commonly sold at yard sales. The most commonly sold Joni Mitchell albums at yard sales. The exact number of cans in the recycling bin in the grocery store parking lot. The percentage of ultra-violet rays the lab’s darkened corporate windows block out. Stickers of dolphins in yin-yang patterns.


The exact date—day, month, year—parallel parking was invented. Whether anyone has ever played stick ball on this street. What the T and the R in T & R Steaks are initials for. How many horsepower the gerbil running in its wheel in the pet shop window generates. Whether the first blade of the double-bladed razor really pulls the hair out so the second blade can shave can give you a closer shave. How many display tables are set up at the bridal convention. What René Descartes’ middle name(s) is (are). Paint by number kits with pictures of a castle with a background of snow-covered mountains. Where my high school diploma is. What color the man at the Lowe’s paint counter would call my skin rash. The average time in months before the metal chairs outside the Lebanese restaurant have to be repainted black or replaced. The type of print Fangoria is set in. Frisbee golf. Cross county running. Brut aftershave. Racing stripes on old Camaros. Whether it was cloudy or sunny the day the guy standing behind the plate glass window at the Toyota dealer decided to grow his goatee. Clear plastic bubble umbrellas. Chapstick. Where the models in the New York & Company’s ad were born.


The date of the Fed-Ex delivery truck’s last oil change. How many times a minute that air conditioner in the second floor window drips. Where the woman wrestling her stroller over a break in the sidewalk bought her flip-flops. What the terrier nosing around the crushed Pepsi can pissed on last. The number of hairs that just fell out when I scratched my head. Which vertebra that is that’s so beautiful in the back of that woman’s neck. Where the gifts in Asian Gifts are actually made. Whether or not the twelve-year-old wearing the Spider Man t-shirt can break a board with a karate chop. Riding mowers. Kentucky Fried Chicken’s $1 menu. What I was doing the last time I heard “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” by Bachman Turner Overdrive. Cottage cheese. Cat’s-eye marbles. Eating outside under big umbrellas. The name of the town where the cinder block was invented. Whether the woman looking at the frames in Hobby Lobby likes Bloody Marys. Kayaks. Butter churns. What the GPA was of the guy wearing the college ring filling his Subaru at the Citgo station. Where the owner got the large Miller Lite banner hanging over the couch I see through the uncurtained sliding glass door.


Wrap-around sunglasses. Radishes. Antique clocks that don’t work set on mantles as decoration. Where the electricity is going in the middle of the three wires stretched across the road. Whether that wire is actually carrying electricity. How often the red bulb flashing on top of the radio tower has to be changed. What the daily rate of beard growth of the mailman going into the Christian bookstore is. How long the “I’m Proud of My Eagle Scout” sicker has been on the back of the blue mini-van. How tall the 68-year-old woman was when she was 14. Romance Book Club editions. Rare stamps from Middle Europe. The NBA after 1980. What kind of trees were used to make the wood chips around that bush. Whether the deli put eggs in the potato salad I’m not ordering. The number of minutes the retired couple has been sitting on the low concrete wall in front of the public library. Whether anyone in line at the ATM is afraid of heights. The model number of my bed. What type egg “egg-shell blue” refers to. How many prickly seed balls are hanging off the branches of the sycamore across the street from the fire station. How many hydrogen atoms each photon passed on the way from the sun to my left forearm.




Otoliths has brought out two books by Mark Cunningham, 80 Beetles and Helicotremors. A chapbook titled Alphabetical Basho is forthcoming on the Beard of Bees site.
 
 
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Colin Campbell Robinson


Some Equations



seek veritas
in discourse
three parties
one abstains
no discourse

no verum



if no truth
only evasions
only pretence

pretence can be play
but it also can be lies

four parties
one lies
one believes
two repelled

develop a theory of secrets

one hides
one finds
two chasing bubbles

write fiction
as entertaining lies

lies to make you happy
is the title of this book
seek veritas
through struggle


then
in the last moment
resistance weakens
collaboration commences
reality bends
three resistants
one betrays
two slowly fade from sight

collaboration can produce positive results
but it can also herald death

four are in a room
two conspire
two are frozen out.

the title of this book is
as serious as your life



Colin Campbell Robinson is an Australian writer currently resident in the Celtic extremity of Kernow. He has been published in numerous journals around the world most recently in BlazeVox 15, Stylus and Ink Sweat and Tears. His book, Blue Solitude, a self portrait in six scenarios is a forthcoming publication from Knives Forks and Spoons Press.

The above piece comes from a recently compiled collection titled 'only now'.
 
 
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Martin Edmond


Melesigenes to Palamedes

I was born by the river, the old man said and then he paused. A cloud passed in front of the sun. A white cloud crossing the blue heavens unseen. He made an odd, crabbed gesture, somewhere between a shrug and a wave, putting all that behind him now. Over there, where the day begins. A long time ago. They said the river was my father but how can such a thing be? Are we living in the time of the gods? They said the river gave me my voice; yes, it may be so: in the hexameter rises the fountain's silvery column. My father the river. They meant something else: not that I lacked a father but that my mother had no husband. Which is a different thing. My mother, this story goes, was a nymph, a water nymph, dancing and singing with the other nymphs around the springs out of which my father the river rose. A daughter of the muses perhaps, or of old Ocean himself. Before the river cupped her concupiscent beneath his blue-green wave. Well. I cannot tell you anything real about my father, whether he was some visiting merchant or trader, some divinity in disguise, some seducer of young girls, some handsome itinerant—because, whoever he was, by the time I was old enough to look for him, he had gone. When I asked my mother she would not say. Or not in so many words. I think the thought of him caused her to feel pain. But my mother. Yes, I knew my mother, I remember her and, if she had once been a nymph and danced by the river, which is possible, she was no longer that when I knew her. My mother was I believe a slave, or the daughter of a slave, kidnapped on some raid into the west and brought into the land where I was born, thence to serve in the house of a rich man; who was not unkind but gave her no special treatment either. Perhaps he was my father, you are thinking, but that is not what she told me. On the other hand, would she have wanted me to think I was the child of a concubine, a rich man’s bastard, conceived in slavery? In the scullery of his house or on the kitchen floor? Nor did she ever say she was a slave. She said her parents, colonists from the west, died when she was still too young to marry and that, knowing their time was coming, bequeathed her into the care of this rich man, a friend of theirs, in whose house she lived; but when the rich man saw that she was pregnant, to avoid shame or to avoid suspicion falling upon him, sent her away, to another man’s house in another city. Another wealthy man. And it was while she lived there, in that other man’s house, at a festival down by the river, which she attended with her fellow serving women, that she came to term; and so I was born.

In her eyes the green of the swift water and in my ears the sound of its rushing motion over stones; its murmur among the quiet reeds along the bank. The clean river smell and the blood and amniotic fluid leaking out into the stream as the women washed her, and washed the caul from my face, if there was a caul, imprinting it onto a sheet of paper or piece of cloth, to be kept for later or for luck; and the vernix, too, which there must have been; and the afterbirth; and then she put me to her breast. The milk of which they say there is nothing sweeter. Something we can never remember, never forget. The taste of our mother’s milk, the feel of that smooth white globe, veined with blue, beneath our hand; the way the nipple fills the mouth. The repletion. I do not know the circumstances under which she left the house of this other man, her second benefactor; whether he insisted she take the child and go or whether it was otherwise, a decision of her own, a bid for freedom perhaps, to escape the importunities that men sometimes direct towards a woman who has no husband. Perhaps this second wealthy man wanted to take her to his bed and, when she refused, turned her out. Or maybe he did not want to raise the child, a boy, some other man’s son, in his own house. Or there was another reason that has never yet been spoken: she did it for me. But when I asked her she just said she had no choice; and so we went. Thus my earliest memory is of the road I have spent my life upon. The road that has led me here, to this colloquy with you; and which will in time no doubt lead me hence again. Over land and sea alike. But not before I have given you what I promised. These words and those others you have already written down. And those too which are yet to be written: as many as the unnumbered grains of sand upon a shore, as many as when a flock of birds, starlings perhaps, wheeling, obscures the sun; and their noise drowns out the speech of men and clouds our thoughts with darkness. Such is this writing and so may be its consequence: an end to memory, an end to thought itself. Or it may be otherwise: the beginning of something else, so marvellous and so new, we do not yet know what to call it.

Where are they, these two men, the old one talking, the younger one writing down, on paper made from Egyptian sedge, with his reed pen and the sooty, gummy ink, the words he speaks? Some liminal space, some placeless place, outside, under the sky? In a grove of trees perhaps, or in the forecourt of a temple dedicated to the worship one of the forgetful gods? Do I see a herm? Is there a boy who brings a tray of olives and cheese and bread, a jug of watered wine? A girl. She lingers a while, listening to the murmur of old men’s voices and tracing, with her toe in the dust, shapes like those the younger one scratches with his stylus into the papyrus. Those letters themselves like cranes in flight, black across the white sky of the page. The old man drinks and smacks his lips and casts the lees on the ground, making a lemniscate; and continues with his tale.

In the dust of the road I saw how the footsteps of men and women pass and re-pass and yet leave nothing behind but their imprint; I saw it from within my mother’s arms, or else from the sling she slung across her back, to carry me. She took work where she could, preparing food, carrying water, carding and spinning wool to make yarn for weaving into cloth. If I was not in her arms or upon her back, I was at her side, watching the slow way she worked, the orderly, unhurried movements of her hands, the sense she had of time, not as something which passes and is gone but as a thing you could be inside, a membrane, a container, a vehicle: to be inhabited, to be lived within, as a fish lives in water or a bird the air. That is what she was like. In the next place we lived the man gave her a loom. He bought wool and made it into cloth, for sale. Or rather, the women made it for him. Not many women, four or five. My mother sang as she wove. Old slavery songs she had learned somewhere. Thread she spun herself from the fleece and then she dyed. It was no small thing. The distaff and the spindle, the pots of colour in which the fibres were immersed and took on the purple, the vermilion, the yellow. And as she wove and sang, sang and wove, the warp and weft came together with the tunes and the words. I mean the songs were woven with the cloth. One and another then neither one nor the other; but something else, a fifth thing. And what she wove were pictures made in her mind; which were themselves out of old stories.

There was a blind singer who sat in the street outside the courtyard where she worked and I listened to him too. It was different and the same; instead of a loom he had beneath his fingers the strings of a lyre. An old tortoise shell sounding board, skin-covered, with seven gut strings stretched up to the cross-piece between the arms. Splintery wooden bridge that reverberated in the thrum he made as he strummed; when he picked out a melody, it made a weave with his words. It was the same thing—weft and warp, words and music. He played hard and fast and his words were chanted in a high-pitched strenuous stream that made it difficult to distinguish one from the other or parts from the whole. In time I learned that the way to hear him was to listen to the lines, for the shape of the lines. What happened then is that the lines entering my ears came to my mind like things entire unto themselves. The whisper of the shuttle, the hand upon the strings, the dyed threads unthreading from their spools above the loom, my mother’s singing, the voice in the street outside that court of dusty feet—all these disparate things came together in the lines. And with the lines, or really by means of the lines, the hexameters, the stories began to tell themselves. They were the old stories too: but what stories were these? Kings and queens, battles and feasts, loves and deaths. The gods and their betrayals, men and women in their fidelity and their infidelity, their grandeur and their shame, their splendour and their spite. The accidents of fate, which are not accidents at all. And the ordinary: caring for animals, the growing of crops; olive and vine, barley and wheat; food and drink, music and dance. The natural world, all about us, like a shroud.



Fantasia of an Afternoon

At 6.39 pm on the afternoon of 23 February, 2014, the lemony yellow light of the setting sun shone through a gap in the foliage of the gum tree outside, through the half-open window and into the full length mirror on the other side of the room. I was sitting on the couch, looking at a book on Matisse, when the reflected beams caught me, unexpectedly, on the right hand side of my face. I glanced across the room and into the mirror. It was a complex image: a square of dusty light lay on the surface of the glass itself then, past the twin hanging loops of the artificial red hibiscus lei and the shell necklace I picked up in Fiji years ago now, I saw the pollen-stained oblong window with its dark wooden surround framing a rectangle of leaves and branches on the tree outside and, beyond that, in the far depths it seemed, the yellow sun. Something strange was happening: it seemed that, for the duration of that conjunction, which must happen annually—and therefore, depending upon the growth and disposition of the tree’s foliage, might have happened before and may again—both time and space were held, not in suspension, but in abeyance. I could, apparently, in those few minutes, go anywhere and do anything. It took a moment for the implications of this chance of unparalleled freedom to reach my mind; by the time I realised what was before me, some part of that precious opportunity had already gone, not perhaps forever but certainly for another year. Nevertheless, as soon as I grasped what was happening, I drew some air into my lungs, left the couch, crossed the room and plunged head-first into the mirror: which opened the way yellow-brown river water does when you dive off an earthy bank into its golden depths. It was the bottomless lake that always scared us so much when we were very young. It was our old swimming hole in the bend of the Mangateitei just below the pa and before the river bridge. It was the pool at Akatarawa that afternoon when the dog, in an excess of enthusiasm, nearly drowned my sister. It was the dark promise of a green river I walked beside one leafy afternoon, beneath willows, when I was free and travelling on foot between two forgotten South Island towns. Further down the water turned a deep, amber-flecked, tawny brown that was almost black and then I felt a fine silt beneath my fingers and, like some lost monotreme, burrowed into the mud. Rocks and stones, flints and bones, ancestral voices muttering in my clogged ears. What was this? Zircon? Or Apatite? If you go deep enough into the past you come out in the future, the same way that lake, we knew, took you all the way to China. I crawl out onto the shore. In the future the air is sharp and clear. The razor grass cuts like knives at my armoured skin. In the surrounding forest, rain falls constantly from the canopy but up above the sky is blue as forever and the sun an orange, rolling through high sweet meadows of beautiful light. Elsewhere, the seas belong to medusae but the land is home to whatever you want to call the latest mutation of that clade of endothermic amniotes we used to be. Gleaming silver cities exist, but only in the minds of the dead, who must patrol, endlessly, the limits of imagination; we remain sentient in the synapses between what we were and what we never quite became. I am the next amphibian, crawling into the cutty grass on the shores of the mirror lake. My mind is a jellyfish. I hear my limbs articulate as if they have been engineered by arthropods. There are buds of feathers breaking through my punctuate, goose-fleshed skin. But the yellow light is fading and now, on the verge of taking wing, I realise, almost too late, where I am. It takes an enormous effort of will to go back into the water again; then I have to turn wings into fins, fins into limbs, flippers to feet. On the way back I see the cities of the red night. I see the place of dead roads. I see the western lands: each apocalypse is a dream and every dream a nightmare. And yet this interval of chaos and destruction is just a blip on the time-screen, what else could it have been? A momentary interruption in the Gaia Transmission. The meniscus of the mirror is impossible to pierce with any instrument, sharp or blunt; the only viable strategy is to try to kiss your way out. I do. I look at the clock. 6.43 and some; 4 minutes and 33 seconds have silently elapsed. Matisse is lying open on the couch right where I left him, at a colour plate of Bathers with a Turtle (1908), purchased by Joseph Pulitzer jnr. at a Nazi auction in 1939 and now in St Louis, Missouri. The turtle looks at me, I look at the turtle. We have a perfect understanding; but will have to wait a calendar year—or an eternity—before enlarging upon what that means.



Martin Edmond was born in Ohakune, New Zealand and now lives in Sydney, Australia. His most recent books are, with Maggie Hall, Histories of the Future (Walleah Press, Hobart, 2015) and The Dreaming Land (Bridget Williams Books, Wellington, 2015).
 
 
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Chris Wells









Chris Wells is an artist living in central Ohio. His work has appeared online and in print in several publications, including most recently SmokeLong Quarterly and Solitary Plover. Flaming Giblet Press published his debut novel, White Kitty, in 2009.
 
 
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Sabine Miller


Floragrams: Five Doors

Safe Passage

In Wildness

Theologian

Levee

Kansas

petals and/or anthers (tiger lily, calendula, wild iris, dahlia, pineapple sage) smeared with citrus juice or water on 5" x 7" watercolor cards, and sent


 
 
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Sabine Miller


Illuminated Floragrams

a seal voice /
that wave that brings /
the tide in

Tiburon

Gnomon

Woods & Notation

Valley Fire Rain

a gull calls /
are you staying /
wet in the rain

smeared petals and/or leaves (calendula, day lily, agapanthus, rose, dahlia, hydrangea, Japanese maple) with watercolor pencil, water, and citrus juice on 5" x 7" watercolor cards, and sent



Sabine Miller has a sensitive nose that dreams of discovering an art-filled cave. More of her pictures can be found in Otoliths, Indefinite Space, hedgerow, and Notes of the Gean, and on ISSUU (Shoals, Shiny Things II, and Remembering Dada.)
 
 
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Allen Forrest


Francis Bacon Revisited



















Graphic artist and painter Allen Forrest was born in Canada and bred in the U.S. He has created cover art and illustrations for literary publications and books. He is the winner of the Leslie Jacoby Honor for Art at San Jose State University's Reed Magazine and his Bel Red painting series is part of the Bellevue College Foundation's permanent art collection.

Paintings and Prints for sale:
http://stowawaygallery.com/allen-forrest-2/

Art website (paintings for sale):
http://allen-forrest.fineartamerica.com/

Twitter account:
https://twitter.com/artgrafiken

Portfolio: published works
http://www.art-grafiken.blogspot.ca/

 
 
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David Adès


Searching for the Unified Theory of You


Seduced by beauty, outward appearance,
I fall to your body’s lure,

try to find you in lovemaking,
try to find you in desire,

in limbs’ urgent undertakings.
You understand my flaws,

my body’s need, how easily
I can be deflected

from the constant search,
if only for a time.

I go back to the puzzle, try again
to find the elegant equation

that will illuminate every hidden thing,
peering through microscopes

in one failed experiment after another,
finding feints and firewalls,

fading footprints, deliberate
decoys, static and murk,

all grist to incomprehension.
I push up against barriers,

against the elusive unknowable,
with theories and hypotheses

small comfort, no bulwark
against the frustration of failure,

knowing you will resist me always,
with beauty your ally.



Still Searching for the Unified Theory of You

Still searching
       for
              the unified theory
                     of you
              I brushed
       your lips
with mine
       tried that clichéd equation
              placed my pulsing heart in your hands
                     studied the lovely sky of your face
              its winds its storms
       its ever-changing
unknowable world
       still searching for the
              unified theory of you
                     my lips brushed yours
              an incomplete equation
       you held my pulsing heart
in your hands
       the weather of your lovely face
              full of winds full of storms
                     an always changing
              unreachable world
       still searching for
the unified
       theory of you
              our lips brushed
                     the equation almost
              your hands held
       my pulsing heart
your stormy face so lovely
       your windy sky
              ever-changing unknowable
                     unreachable still

Perhaps I Was Mistaken Again


Perhaps I was mistaken again
in thinking something was other than it was,
the way a heart is prone to name as love

what is not love at all, the way shadows
seem to take on shapes the mind imagines.
In giving something a name, sometimes

we name not what it is but what our
temperaments incline towards
and then, once named, fix it in place

whether it belongs or not.
Is it obduracy or blindness
that constitutes our failure to see

the true nature of a thing?
Today, as my listing heart,
buffeted by waves, glimpsed

the dark sky above, so distant
it might vanish altogether,
I saw from a distance a woman

who brought me into her fold,
who made me feel welcome,
who came as a blessing,

whom I named as friend.
My attention turned elsewhere
and when I looked again

she had vanished, as the thing
I named friendship had vanished,
without warning and for no known

reason, by retreat and absence,
as if some mysterious weave
of lives linking us had unraveled

of its own accord leaving behind
the shadow of friendship
or whatever else the mind imagined

that was not what it was thought to be
but was sadly misnamed
and I, perhaps, was mistaken again.



David Adès is a Pushcart Prize nominated Australian poet currently living in Pittsburgh. He has been a member of Friendly Street Poets since 1979. His collection Mapping the World (Wakefield Press / Friendly Street Poets) was commended for the Anne Elder Award 2008. A chapbook, Only the Questions Are Eternal (Garron Publishing), was published in 2015. His poems have been widely published in Australia and the U.S. In 2014 he won the inaugural University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s International Poetry Prize and was shortlisted for the Newcastle Poetry Prize.
 
 
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Sarah Katharina Kayß


















Sarah Katharina Kayß, b. 1985 in Koblenz/Germany, is an internationally published photographer, blogger and poet. She is winner of the manuscript award of the German Writers Association (2013) for her poetry and essay collection “Ich mag die Welt, so wie sie ist” (I like the world the way it is) which was published (Munich, Allitera) in 2014. She edits the bilingual literary magazine THE TRANSNATIONAL and is currently a final year PhD student in the War Studies Department of King’s College London. Her poems, photographs and essays have been published in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, the UK, Italy, New Zealand, the USA and Canada.

http://www.sarahkatharinakayss.com/photo/
 
 
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Christopher Crew


Your Grief as Movie Poster

Streetlights
that always saw me
don’t now.

They arrow
I follow
dragging laws
find a new
building, yours.

You stir up,
pinch the dark
around your stomach
blanket down your shoulder
I can’t help painting.

You notice,
drop it, hug me.
Still, I am there,
your knuckles knot
grief, unmake.

Your eyelid
center of mass
my shoulder
lost wax.

You don’t let,
I don’t go,
we are the frozen world.

As We Feed Our One-Week-Old The Perseids scatter themselves over to gravity light. You can't tell your hands from the peripheral flicker comet tail we’ve all spun through. I’m our slow motion, don’t know the difference between our three hour orbit around your slowly quickening mass, and the turning of the zodiac, mobile of usury and glory. All I've got is other people's stories and the deals we've made I’ll prime the syringe, you &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  drink this stardust down. Speak up &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  if there's more &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  I should know.

We Worry, Binge-Watch Murder Mysteries we don’t see their nick your cheek surgical scissors’ beneath your tongue, At 4.9 pounds, dread (fail/feed/again) skeleton mob cement mixer locked to die in a walk-in freezer with a shadowy syndicate.

Epilogue: Technical Help

My mom can't delete the photos
from her phone and can't
take any more until it's solved.

She’s with us in Iceland
to see waterfalls, drink beer
after the boy goes to bed,
and mispronounce fjords
until I have to walk away.

First, I tell her, we'll download
them to Emily's computer.
Every photo she's taken

for the last two years flits
before us on the glass
coffee table and I realize
now what I didn't know
the summer my son was born.

That my dad would die
on Valentine's Day before
a second birthday party. That

between my sister's absurd Christmas
outfit and a basket of hand-painted eggs,
my mother's breath would hitch
at the skyline from the hospital room,
my dad, blurry and poorly lit in a gown

and then the spring would continue.
My son trying to eat a squeegee.
A mountain goat on the Olympic peninsula.

Her breath would hitch and I would say,
I know. And then I would trouble myself
with the computer, and fail
to delete anything. Fail
to restore the ability to take more

pictures. Fail, also, to hug my mother.
Fail to acknowledge that I
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp can’t fix anything.

Christopher Crew is working on teaching his child the difference between a coin slot and a CD player. In the meantime, he hauls a bike trailer up Seattle's many explicable hills. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals such as The Sycamore Review, The Marlboro Review, Natural Bridge and Poplorish.
 
 
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Melanie Dunbar


(Re)incarnation

Sunlight leans into the blinds and tablecloth left from our wedding I have nailed over the window for a curtain. The fabric is yellow and gold and brown, a pattern more fully described as “Byzantine”. I think we were then. The room, with its butter-colored walls, glows. A streak of sun peeks through an opening between the curtain and the window and illumines the black Madonna, an icon made from pieces of flattened straw. It hangs over the bed. From you. Her crown halo protects our frail bed from danger. I have a weakness for anything the color of lemons. A carnival vase with papyrus, you. If one was there, the other was too. We found each other every time— the Golden Age, Vienna. The Belle Epoch in Paris, in the American Southwest on a butte. We were on horseback and I wore white buckskin. We are starting to see the pattern, to seek each other out. I cannot travel fast enough and I don’t know where to look. You could be next to me, but I think I’d know it.

What It Was I Said

Burden the put you dare
second the only being of me
beach the walk go said I
see and kite a fly said I
sand yourself fuck you can
for ask didn’t I time
around be to anchor your
to want just I my shifts
man trash the ears my
better I’d early come
through sifting-late up stay
manuscripts of cake
batter the trying
mine and yours are that
with them total I one
how hear to want don’t I
after ingest I spiders
my climbing one find I


Nothing But Time

The doctor tends bonsai on the other side of the fence. His grass too steep to mow, he asks me to cut. I use scissors; rake the grass with my hand. The sun cuts a timeline. Acres to daydream, I see time is a kite. Long grass lisps, which fingers grasp and scissors snip. I feel antlers growing out of my head, or eggs about to split. For my head I make a nest; this grass, fescue, is best. I slip the nest between blades, which fingers slit. I rake with scissors. Between me and the doctor, the bonsai and the grass? I hear the snick of his clippers. I slip with scissors. With my antlers, I rake grass; nick fingers. A man stops to see if I’m fine. The doctor peeks through the fence. I point to time in the sky.

Melanie Dunbar tends flowers for a living. Her poetry can be found in the Silver Birch Press Where I Live series and Sweet series, escarp, Your Impossible Voice, Sweet: A Literary Confection and is forthcoming in Gargoyle. She lives in Southwest Michigan with her family and their rooster, Mr. Beautiful.
 
 
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Kirsten Kaschock


fromCircle of Fifths


11.

“You should know I’m writing again, for knot.”
This is the story one tells to a fork.
O road, I was done in by existing.
Halfway home, we parted ways to elsewhere.
I wanted to be well or less travelled
but was detached, and so paved empty lots.
Let go the mind—its wine-darkened logics.
By thin twist of twilight: a foolproof way
not to couple. Not to love. Love is thick.
Love is opaque as asphalt in our stars.


12.

I say “I never met him” as needles
misspell his name on my spine. I didn’t
say it. The tongue twists over the seashore.
We sell ourselves. Short. There’s an art to it.
Doves eat the air. And doves eat bread. Doves mate
they say for life. The only thing I’ve done
is shed dust and poems… a kind of child.
The kind you attic. The kind you don’t feed.
The ladder of my vertebrae is steep.
You can’t get anywhere from there. Not here.


13.

The best lies are designed for swallowing.
Each day for years, vitamins hurt the heart.
Some asanas release stress through effort.
I press my knees in tight as if my knees
want to pray. What does this posture promise?
The court of the floor rejects petition.
Such a small thing, I, my limbs not long.
For this world one must cultivate a whole
host of practices, a whole host. Do it!
And just when you begin to believe, don’t.


14.

Pound for pound, I’d rather Ezra. To pound
it down. Pound it cake, pat-cake, the racist
in me. A little Murica in my
life signifies we’re all mad here. Some tea?
Let’s get this party started—blow shit up.
Eleven-thousand gun deaths taste of black
treacle. The police state shows a profound
lack of will, and ambience. Build fancy
walls: the rich won’t hole-up, the sky will. Bombs
are so coldwar. Dead glaciers fail better.


15.

The plural of tsunami: tsunami.
Like fish, we don’t count the ocean. Algae
is/are failing to bloom. We are all bees
of the invisible and it has been
collapsing and this is seen but is not.
Scene. Duct tape cannot seal a house from death.
There once was a whale. Once too a dodo.
The maths are subtractions and exponents.
Once, three men in a tub meant lullaby.
Why, at goodnight, is there always rocking?




Kirsten Kaschock has authored three books of poetry: Unfathoms, A Beautiful Name for a Girl, and The Dottery—winner of the Donald Hall Prize for poetry. Her debut novel, Sleight, is a work of speculative fiction about performance. She has earned a PhD in English from the University of Georgia and another in dance from Temple University. A new hybrid text Confessional Sci-fi: A Primer is forthcoming from Subito Press. She is on faculty at Drexel University and serves as editor-in-chief for thINKing DANCE, a consortium of Philadelphia dance artists and writers.
 
 
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Bobbi Lurie



stutterer



Bobbi Lurie
 
 
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Willie Smith



POP CULTURE

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  Coax a pop from the machine of mom. Flip – in the den – guzzling Dr Pepper – through channels. Nothing on. Set empty on top of the Zenith. Peel duds till I, too, have nothing on.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  Enter – sack about to pop – the master bedroom. Remove from the closet a Playboy. Repair to the can to fix a prob.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  The girls look ten years older – twice my age. Bypass the duds. Pick the foldout. Jump her off the page to pump the last drops of horn, leaving me alone at the bottom of boredom’s dry swimmingpool. Air-dogpaddle back into the closet. Replace the wrinkled slick.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  To avoid drowning in the forever till I leave home for college, graduate, find a job to hate – locate the Colt. Wander into the kitchen. Blast mom bent over a roast. Only duds, I think, but how she throws her carcass screaming over the pot, maybe not.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  Pop mom four more times, horsing with the Colt. Till the action jams; anyway bored with the action. To keep from preserving the look on my face, reach from the cupboard above the stove the Milk Duds.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  Jump, candy gone, back into my duds. Drift back downstairs. This business of being a kid, I kid you not, not fun. Wait for, sprawled on the floor before the Zenith, the return of pop, at the end of the business day, to pop the dream.



TORSO TEMPTRESS

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  The moon had just begun to wax when I gave my sister fifty whacks. She kept coming after me to come to bed and there come together. So I gathered from the way she gathered up her skirts when giving me those looks. So, to keep pure, to keep clean, away I hacked, till of her remained but this bag of things over my shoulder thrown and on the basement floor a torso.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  Tossed the bag in the furnace. Interred in the deep freeze the torso, pending a later decision. Scrubbed and bleached the concrete floor. Replaced the cleansed ax in the tool shed.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  When Mom and Dad returned from their cruise through the Dardanelles and asked where had gone sister Nell? I shrugged, “Hell – am I my sister’s keeper?” eyes rolling up like curve balls of how could anybody be so stupid as to ask?
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  Inquiries got made. Posters posted. Bulletins put out. The web electrified. Our parents even sprang for a detective for a few exorbitant months. Nothing – Nell had apparently sublimed into thin air.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  I assisted the police as best I could. But in the end agreed with their bureaucracy’s relegating Nell’s case to the status of cold.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  Strangely, though, as the weeks drooled into the months, nightmares nagged me to horse around with the corpse. I even conceived odd bodily swellings that I interpreted as, for lack of a better word, love.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  One moonless night I sneaked from my bedroom. Dug out from under the frozen turkey legs and beefsteaks and icy packages of blueberries and beans the torso. Stuffed her into the microwave, but she was too big that way to defrost. So tossed her into a tub of hot water, adding a few kettles of the boiling, and pretty soon she grew pretty much as fresh and flexible as she had been at our last get-together, so many months before, the last time I had seen Nell all together. I swaddled her in a bath towel. Moved down the dark hall, cradling her chest in my arms. Entered my bedroom. Left off the overhead.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  Had Nell’s advances disgusted me simply because I feared she would not hold still? People moving around unconstrained indeed do make me nervous. I looked at her propped up on the dresser, thigh stumps coyly spread, rest of her shadowed in a garnet glow from the nightlight plugged into the baseboard opposite the dresser. Well, she’d hold still now…
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  I parted with a finger her nether, and only remaining, lips. Dry. The entrance slack, but distinctly lacking in the slick. Fixed that with a soup of toothpaste, Vick’s Vapo-rub, rubbing alcohol, Micatin and makeup remover. A recipe both greasy and sterile. Nobody was going to get hurt here. But… wait… forgot to ask. When you don’t first ask, there are always those who misconstrue the situation as rape.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  “Nellie,” I breathed. “Whoa, Nellie – knowing you got the hots for me, tonight I got for you good news. You wouldn’t mind? I’ll go gentle; soon’s I figure out roughly what it is here I need to do. How about I elevate the target with a pillow under those grade-A buttocks? Believe I caught you more than once admiring my own swell butt, we after all tadpoles from the same pool.”
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  Withdrew the finger. Stepped out of my bathrobe. Into a hand leaped my frog. Inserted into the prepared slot the pink croaker. Into the mind leaped medico slang: the croaker referred the torso to the sawbones.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  “’Smatter,” I joked, halfway in, to put her totally at ease, “cat got your tongue?”
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  Turned out humping every bit as groovy as hacking with the ax bit. Plus the climax drained my soul of anything and everything bitter.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  I cleaned her out with mouth-to-mouth. Swished around in my buccal cavity the mix of Crest, Vicks, seed, Micatin, etc.; spat it in a bucket. To make sure all whistle clean. Washed and dried her off. Repacked her in the deep freeze.

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  Went on for weeks like that. Sneak Nell out of the freeze. Thaw thing in tub. Lug her back to my chamber. “Lug” hardly the word. Nell was light. Couldn’t weigh more than forty pounds, with all those ungainly legs, fumbling arms – and most of all ugly fat head – hacked off.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  Actually Nell was a looker. Another reason I knew she carried for me a torch: beautiful chicks always herd after me. I heard it on the news. Another, by the way, nice part of the dismemberment – nobody has ever heard it on the news; because it – like any junky – has never been ON the news. Ha ha.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  One other benefit to our relationship: the total absence of jealousy. Her locked away all day in the deep freeze I knew damn well she wasn’t cheating. My own chastity, of course, never in question.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  How I used to worry, her gone all day at Amazon. Where she worked as some kind of programmer or spider designer or electronic fishfudger or something. Idling about in a sea of young nerds. I feared, without me around to lust after, she might perforce lose her virginity with one of those braintrustees or headhunters or startup-blasters or whatever. And think if she had bred with one of those monsters! Fearfully would I check the hamper every month, to make sure there were stains. Another reason to keep the ax sharp. Had there ever appeared no blood, I would’ve immediately implemented Plan B, i.e., seek her that day in her cubicle and hack the slut up on the spot. Fortunately, I never spotted any lack of sloughed egg during any of those monthly inspections.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  Tragically, after just a few weeks of nightly use, Nellie began to wear out. The repeated thaws, the time spent making wild love at room temperature, the refreezings – all contributed to turning her tunnel of love to mush.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  I felt bad about her wearing out. Like she was leaving me, running away for maybe another guy. But what could I do? She was already dead…
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  “Luddite!” I can hear her sneer. When she said that, back in the days when she was all together and walking around and going to work, she made me feel almost as rotten as when she was, right in the midst here of our blossoming affair, giving out.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  She didn’t really say “Luddite!” She was always quiet, modest, studious. Although that all probably smokescreen for her creepy lust for her own brother. But we grew up close, only eighteen months apart. Raised Catholic by our pure Austrian mother and our hardworking, somewhat henpecked, German-Irish father. I swear I could hear Nell think. Especially after I realized, shortly after this Christmas, that she was allowing herself to get hot for yours victimized.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  I don’t have a cell phone. Never owned a computer. I don’t even drive a car. Take the bus to work. Monroe only a forty-minute busride. Gives me time, each way, to catch up on the daydreaming.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  She thought other insults, too. But they all centered on my computer ignorance, my lack of being electronically hip, my impossibility to communicate with, due to my refusal to get an email account, or even so much as buy a simple mobile.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  Another reason I eventually got around to hacking her up. I couldn’t bear all the calumny that leaped out anytime I looked past the face into her naked mind. Inside, she had become what the textbooks might call a Circe or a witch or what’s the word… incubus!
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  Obviously, that inner rottenness was now coming out even in Nellie – my pet name for Nell after the surgery. Back in the days when she was all together I would never have thought of my intellectual younger sister as anybody but Nell. That was Nell staying late after work. Nell in the corner brooding over her laptop. Nell upstairs in the john yakking jargon into her cell, mumbling algebra to herself over dinner. And that was Nell, and yet almost Nellie, on the way to becoming Nellie, giving me those looks. She affected ankle-length skirts. Her own take on nerd-fashion, I suppose. And she actually gathered up her skirts, like about to cross a mud puddle, when shooting me The Medusa, as I called those weird leers that provoked erection, i.e., turned my unit to stone.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  My frustration over Nell’s growing advances was even causing me to act out at work. I was never what you’d call lax. But in the months preceding the surgery, I had been observing myself morphing into a strict disciplinarian. Take that prisoner, I forget his name, I caught red-handed with a balloon of morphine. I confiscated the contraband. Glared at the inmate he’d hear more about this tomorrow.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  I always carry with me a small cyanide cap, in the unlikely event I should be captured during a riot and become the victim of what inmates term payback, but what the world calls torture. Maybe I stuffed the balloon in the same pocket with the cyanide, maybe that’s how. At any rate, later that afternoon, walking past the offender’s cell, the balloon must have fallen out of my pocket. Fallen where he could easily reach it.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  When the evening shift discovered him, he was blue as past-pulldate liverwurst. The autopsy indeed did turn up cyanide; but the overwhelming consensus was the smuggled-in dope had in fact been a hotshot; perhaps itself payback for some underworld faux pas the inmate had committed on the outside, prior to his arrival at our facility.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  Then there was that incident with the rats and that guy in Block 15 who suffered from a severely abnormal, not to say downright ridiculous, fear of rodents. Him I was forced to discipline due to that morning in the yard I caught him looking at me decidedly sideways. Gave me as much the creeps as the battalion of rats I locked him up with down in the hole obviously gave him. He didn’t die, though. Just learned a lesson. We all need to learn – how come God put us here on this concrete earth.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  Well, maybe I had gone a tad too far, crossed a line with a toe or two. But it wasn’t my fault. It was those looks from Nell, and the things she kept doing with her skirts; plus the thoughts. All that of course now changed. Since the surgery, and especially since the beginning of Nellie’s and my affair, I’d on the job become noticeably more easygoing.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  I’d even – like the good old days – before Nell’s infatuation manifested – lapsed back into working crossword puzzles or playing scrabble with myself. I invented solitaire scrabble and would play it at the job all day long, if it weren’t for stopping to do the daily crossword, and maybe also one or two from a book, and of course the rare interruption from the odd inmate getting out of line. But the line had so much relaxed. I even turned a blind eye of late on guys doing dope. Hell, junk was their solitaire.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  I managed to prolong the affair, and thus the Era of Good Feelings, by hitting on the idea of turning Nellie around to explore oral. She didn’t seem to mind. Recoiled not in the least when I lubricated the throat stump, held her upsidedown by the ribcage and slipped down the esophagus on through what felt like her pylorus.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  Went on like that for almost a month. Till, once again under a waxing moon, I could no longer tolerate the consistency, say nought the stink, of the mush into which her upper GI had morphed. Not that I didn’t try like hell to ignore the deterioration. Tried concentrating on scrabble, while rutting away at her gooshy fetid foodtube.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  I loved the game. Played right hand against left. I’d had over seven years of practice – working for the State – of the right hand not knowing what the left was doing. So the competition came naturally. And, just as naturally, the left refused to share info with the right. A mental trick a yogi would no doubt admire, how I could play word games inside my head, one side against the other, without ever one hand tipping to the other. No different, like I say, than how we were trained to perform the job at the State reformatory. The miracle, my own personal stroke of genius, was transferring this professional attitude to a contest inside my own skull.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  Worked like a charm. I even upped the ante by entering a third hand – my penis. Arranging and re-arranging my penis’ letters into words extended the use of Nellie’s rotting innards at least another dozen days, till nearly full moon.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  Got a bit more mileage out of her in fondling the memory, while humping, of one of the few times Nell – when she was all together and working – actually did speak to me, and she went on and on about how the Cyber Age was going at last to force the bureaucracies to resort to efficiency. Because it would become impossible for the right not to know the business of the left. Because it is the very nature of computers to share information. They talk to each other. Talk to themselves. Streamline data; or stream data; or some such techie-talk. Nell, typical of today’s nerds immersed 25 hours 8 days a week in jargon, had virtually forgotten how to speak English.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  The final night I was able to get past the mush and the pew, when the moon had waned to a predawn fingernail paring, my crutch was laughing outloud picturing the rat-eyed bureaucrats overcoming the cyber challenge by not only walling off the right from the left, but by programming in a third hand, just as I had dreamed up dealing my penis into solitaire scrabble, similar to how I kept inserting my realtime goodtime penis into the festering torso.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  When push came to shove and Nellie had utterly and irrevocably betrayed me, I rented an industrial strength grinder. Set the device up in the basement. Shoved the whole torso through. Reducing her, bones and all, to a lean and rather tempting-looking, especially after drizzling on red food coloring, sort of people burger.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  Thing made a racket to wake the dead. But I had waited till Mom and Dad were gone on yet another cruise, this time the Caribbean, and the neighbors knew better than to complain about whatever noise issuing from the home of a grim-faced armed-to-the-teeth State prison guard. The parents had actually quit-claimed the house to me, Nell so long missing and presumed dead, they elderly and each with one foot in the nursing home, not wanting any hitches when the time came to be herded through the Medicaid bureaucracy.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  Cookie was delighted to get forty pounds of fresh burger. Meant he could pocket the dough the State allocated for purchase of one entire month’s supply of ground meat. I told him it was from an elk an old Army buddy had shot. Had more than he needed. Didn’t know what to do with the surplus. His freezer chock full. Cookie gave out a smile just as even as the signature blank on an IRS form. Said nothing beyond, “Hey, thanks.” Asked, not wanting to hear any more lies, no questions.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  Numerous compliments flew back about the quality of the new burger. Like I say, it was loaded with bone meal and lean as a 25 year-old female geek could be. I prided myself on how I was improving the nutritional content of the inmates’ diet.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  Not so much out of generosity, as out of fear of what we might otherwise do to him, Cookie shared the windfall with staff. Totaled only about $300, but we guards threw a nice little party for ourselves, even invited Cookie and a few other reliable trustees. Cake and cookies for all. Plus a case of Johnny Walker Black for the drinkers. I never touch the stuff. Clouds the brain so bad the daydreams get all mixed up, can’t do the crossword, scrabble makes no sense. I appeased my sweet tooth. Exchanged a few pleasantries. Left without receiving any other benefit. Chalked the debit up to my own innate sense of generosity.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  Unfortunately, three of the boys subsequently lost their positions. Seems once plastered on the scotch, they wandered off and gangraped one of the punks in Block 13. Would have been okay; maybe they’d’ve lost a day’s pay for intoxicated on the job; nobody would’ve believed the punk’s outlandish allegations. But the kid wound up dead, and that’s never good; somebody had to pay. Ah well, as they say, no good deed ever goes unpunished.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  Myself, I seem to have settled down pretty good. Took a while to get over Nellie leaving me like that. Initially, I couldn’t even masturbate; it just wasn’t the same without her cute little hunk to coax me along. But eventually the skill returned. I don’t ride a bicycle; never owned one; but, you know what they say.



PRAY FOR PREY

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  I wanna grok your socks. Stare at your dogs. Look up your dress while you mount the stairs – not a care in the world, unaware lust whirled through my blood, twisted inside the nerve, owned in a bone, arrowed through the marrow.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  I do not care about your name and address. Just wanna grok your socks, stare at the heels, peek up your dress – while you mount the stairs – whistling snatches from the wolf, praying – puckering – for a slip to flit into view, while zephyrs with your dress flirt.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  I wanna grok your socks, stare at your toes, look up your dress, while you archly mount the stairs, and I pray – with the rest of the heels – whistling wildeyed through the wind for prey.



Willie Smith videos can be found at YouTube
 
 
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Anne-Marie JEANJEAN


BANALITÉS III





It's because of this gas pocket around our planet
that we can be transitory passengers
on this astonishing sphere

This thin envelope in constant movement
in which the Earth rotates
allows incredible diversity
marvelous and infinite diversity
in the forms of life

!
But what is
this animal
greedy-insatiable-destroyer
i-gno-rant and narrow-minded
who is all ransacking all
?





Anne-Marie JEANJEAN was born in 1944; she has published around twenty books and lives in the South of France.

She questions writing in and through its material being, in and out of books
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp * by giving priority to the fundamental gesture of tracing the line (characteristic of her visual poetry)
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp * by questioning the letter, word and phrase in the breathing of them, in interaction with the material and space : works on paper, card, unframed canvas in all formats and modulable depending on venue.

See her collection TardigradéditionS on www.am-jeanjean.com

Her last book, Stèles pour un signe, is based on a few archaic Chinese characters and tells about women’s destiny. (cf. You Tube)
 
 
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Joshua Baird



Expiry







Joshua Baird lives in regional Victoria, Australia, and is currently completing his PhD in Creative Writing. He writes stories that explore the psychologies of madness and masculinity, and aspires to be a novelist and a university lecturer.
 
 
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dan raphael


System Don’t


When the system
we don’t understand
the wrong word
When so many
ignored like the first fly
the bite of an invisible mosquito
2 drops of blood stain my shoe

Microscopes in the sky
knowing the sun must be somewhere
to thread the eye of another dimension
A way of seeing inside your own body
catalogues from internal decorations
function & sway
clam pillows

Spin the plug three times before re-inserting
hand through a mirror
light with a child proof lid

When plastic rebels
When the boulevard refuses to take the blame
but the back streets have too many stop signs
lights away from windows
burning like lasagna

A sandwich large enough for gravity to notice
flying deep into the crevasse widening with sparkle
Why arent more of you in bed, off the street
a third of these cars havent moved all month
Go so far
fever collapse
water, sunshine and carbs

A crack so sudden you don’t see til almost stepping
connections work loose over decades
a house as old as me would be on roof 3 or 4
My bodys getting blow-in insulation
so i can be warm and naked anywhere
In the middle of the street i pretend i'm swimming standing up
the sun’s shining—one of 5 pre-requisites for action
Changing skin color means i’m part mercury



Bake and Quake


A hole in my kitchen pond as if something was thrown in,
is the mixer planetary or spiral, as the stillest pond continues breathing
with the suns warmth, exhaling beyond midnight, mindnight,
when my dough immediately springs back when pressed its time
to keep me from developing any further—bake me stiff, cage the C02,
a fertility engaging all that fly above it
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  bread with sausage,
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  bread with evaporated cod,
a loin of pork rolled in rock salt to clear a path through the snow of hunger,
this mountain pass so steep you can only carry water and a cloak
with many empty pockets
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  i see her exit the café twice in five minutes;
i see five men in the same suit and tie, coffee without coffee beans,
the neighborhood camellias threatened by the tea embargo,
so many unidentified plants steeped in hot water then given to strangers
with honey and an automatic smile

bakery used to be a warehouse—indoor soccer, testing grounds for paper airplanes
hurled by the weightlifters in the basement gym powering the ovens with their treadmills.
where do they hide all the pumps that hold up the taller buildings
why does no one say the next earthquake will be caused by all the extra weight
on the land around here, the former delta of large rivers negotiating a mutual surrender

the equilibria of entertainment—as many restaurants fold as open new,
money spent on legal pot means so many pubs and breweries closing,
finding new ways to cook, new gardens to raid.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  after a billion years of yeast,
tectonic dough folding toward the seethe while permanent icing and seasonal convection,
our ovens beginning to heat and who knows what crystalline lattice,
what heavy metal musculature, inert and anonymous gasses
releasing their eons of coreography as the dance floor unzips everythings genes
we have no idea what the stores will be selling or how we’ll pay for them



Stalking River



to town
where in
our mind

*****

how rain sprouts
what rains made from
incalculable
wont come when called

*****

a time of hand
close to the ribs
sticks to now
i smeared my cheek

*****

breakfast all day
this coffees going nowhere
no birds no eggs
if tobacco smelled like bacon

*****

what vehicle 4 or 6 of us could be
a flock of 7^th graders in frequent collision
glancing blows&nhbsp&nbsp&nbsp  swaying pelvises
what goes in the ear evaporates how

*****

calling in the ships
one last supplication
one sail can shelter a village
dig until water&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  fence with hard feet

*****

i only wear white at night
thunder on a clear day
hunger before supper’s done
deer between the trees unauthorized shining

*****

hoping the sun gets lost on my chest
i pull a 3 year old hair and savor it
my left foot has an appointment tonight
almost enough pennies for an hour of moon

*****

by dawn the village had moved
new shoes&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  a pack stained enough for emergency lunch
the black cat points west
the river hears me coming and holds it breath



Afoot


When the body’s afoot in dreams, the weight of sheets, intestinal dormitory
shifting allegiance, rooms nested in hallways, get through to get into.
one shoe has holes, socks too tight to get on, cross the street when i can
but not too soon, filtering pedestrians into chaplinesque machinery
powered by cyclists who need ten miles to know who they are,
through cars and over trees, winged guardian mountain bikes hovering our shoulders.

atmosphere thick with oil from steam from speed or could be the oven of bricks
from where we used to live, boards charred with age, doors whimsical incompliance
since we’re not cops but with the body cameras of our brains seeing childhood streets
dusted and grayed with cars that move like chess pieces rejected
coz of the complex inconsistency of their movement that could be spelling something
in time elapse aerial as the finish line nears, as the building that swallows us,
the long pants left at home, sweat as ID card, the door wont open if it doesn’t smell you.
no need to look up, we’re all leg and no wing though we’re told the breast is best,
white meat deep fried, boneless skinless, feet not touching the ground,
beaks that never come back from the shop

sandpaper sheets so i don’t have to shave, every time i roll over i add a little to the windmill,
get the electric meter confused about which way to turn, adept at the math of profit,
generously equipped for all condtions, like bicycle pants that are floatation devices,
through the gate, past the dog, a reel of dental floss snagged on my foot,
no sky, still air, only traffic when plan to cross, as if every driveway its own street,
people coming out of underground, cars sprouting instantly like jacks beanstalk
already populated and revving.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp  street widens as i cross, river grey as asphalt, median islands,
the pigeons are gulls are drones with cameras and the ability to increase gravity,
feeling 400 pounds with muscles only used to half that, like suddenly jupiter but temperate,
fuzzy shadow chills from temporal arms of giant windmill clocks generating energy
as time flows through. the air feels processed, not what i breathe at home, fast air,
commissary air shipped in blimps from industrial air farms so flights take a little longer,
almost none of kansas we can fly through, air compressed to take less space,
3rd lungs to wear on our backs like flying camels.
when we didn’t have to think about breathing or crossing streets or what came out
of the faucet and why it makes that noise at night when the reservoir shuts its thousand doors,
makes sure everythings in its place, no special orders, no take-out.

i’m learning to weld so i can make my own air-still freeing oxygen from logs
and abandoned buildings, all the air in tires memories, in fallen leaves
whose transpiration engines so cheaply made they barely last a season,
all this ramping up from winter where we don’t hibernate but our labor constantly monitored
cause cold air is slow air, wishing our feet could breathe without freezing,
snow chains for bicycles, magnifying lens helmets to warm our spines,
when time goes slower do we get more of it, cleaning times conduits,
huge cities develop where time zones change, where every night clocks are reset,
tuned to the internet muzzeins, 5 times a day we prostrate toward now,
toward langley almost washington

we chose a satellite to be our king, we chose the bible as our constitution,
all books are on the web, updated after each election,
the only version is today, since the lights always green we never can stop,
never charged for obstructing commerce or resisting profit, jail cells equipped with bikes
to earn our grits and maggots, to keep the ceiling from lowering.
certain i’m late but never knowing for what, cant dock pay i don’t get, cant stay
in the apartment i cant pay for but property management cant afford to evict.
people using money from selling brain time to apply for rentals they’ll never see,
i’m not buying this house just borrowing it from the mortgage company
til wall street magic creates a newer math where they give us the answers
and deny the existence of questions. our moneys not money,
3 hour commutes are part of what we pay so they might pay us, pump water to our house,
maybe put a fire out if it starts to burn & everythings so dry these days



dan raphael continues thrashing around with language in the Oregon rain. His 18^th book, Everyone in this Movie Gets Paid, will come out around 6/16 from Last Word Books.
 
 
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Anne Gorrick



fromConceit


The Being

Trailers of nothing in 1983
Boeing aircrafts stream in plank time finale
Bigdic(k)tionary.com
Dashboard dining room
Eve bedding in the Bing fields
The ghostship challenge, girl and always
We are a party of humanity, integration
Please sign the Bring Back James Bond Bill
I kidnapped your knowing
your negative big noise
your Africa pink light, your existence
phantom pictures, your quiet
your Bling Waycross
The Bering Strait separates our two continents
You are my bang predictor
my undetermined narcissist, my yolk
Hotdog, there are weird quotes that hover around that married Scorpio man
When x = suffering
Created significance, you are your own general contractor
What are the hours of operation again in this poem, this zoo?


The Creek

Valleys filled with locusts and round rocks
with white settlement golfcourse hard labor
with their boutique churchcasinos
Meaning doesn’t rise and drink out of the cradle
Fill out this employment application
Facebook is the new frontier
a form of hunting in Idyllwild, except without firearms
while home is a summary of kissbait and hours
Say “meadow” or “rock” or “brook” in actual Creek language
There are Smartevents in Singapore, in Spartanburg, SC
But the real question is
how many tears fell in the 1830s?
Sing the up-the-stairs song
Use up the underflow
Make a church made out of these vineyards


The Dawn

Your enemy is an English hillside
You appear covered with butterflies
and Bible students
This dreamtale might drift over Pakistan
An early light appears on a statue
its feathers, its testament in horses
its creepypasta adult swim hijack
Is this a correction to all of this industrial rage?
Spacecraft, their whiteness eventually purples


The Day

was a movie that could really happen
She was a summary of pills
before she came to rest
The exact day Christ died is classified
The day described in Act III is rainy
the one Einstein feared most, its disco
when fingerpickers took over the world
and God took your poem home
Sing a cantata of crowns and horoscopes
Heaven cried
when a boa named JFK ate the laundry
Khrushchev panicked when Kansas became a state
and her ass went psycho
Pigs die like newpapers
What is the basic meaning of jackals and falcons?
It was a day in quotes
when Wyoming almost lost all of its Detroits
Recklessly, we met on a frozen pond and held our breath
This is a keepsake karaoke


The Dead

and their pelican linger
Full episodes of weather
downloaded, seascrolled
buried like a summary of Cambodia
We are damned conscious of nothing
except our sonically reduced daisies
Distract yourself with caste and age
The days will not improve in the Dog Saloon
Dubliners don’t die
Let’s end this hayride with our eyes open
like dishonored eels, with safe keys, engines
These files are fake, we must cancel them
Torrential girls and their judgements
Horse shanty, horse cantina, horse theory
in vaulted arches
The Dead Kennedys know nothing of scripture
Roadmaps linger against marshes filled with milkmen
Nothing to do next door, no novels
Quotations never truly leave us
Let me explain winter to you
its pools full of movies and pale pigeons
There will be gangs of rabbits
Terrorists will toss in its waves
undead in valleys of vinyl
The weather will treat you like a primary number
This could be a modern story of Jamaica
or entire episodes filmed in a dead yellow


The Dream

in the center, at the speedway of history
Picasso begins
arrested in pros and cons
Let’s cry together at a church in Atlanta
where the downtown is a dictionary of duffle bags
We are the daughters of discography in this dirt race
Equestrian engines in a falsetto factory
Who will be your golf course girlfriend in 2014?
Give, in summary
Let’s sing some meatpacker hater songs
in a hotel in downtown Miami
Sometimes we’re alive and filled with movies
Let’s spend a real weekend in Cincinnati, in Santa Cruz
Will you make a juniper’s promise to me?
Morpheus keeper, kill the lights
download some lovemoney
I will wrestle a machine
I will take the mining company quiz
Each will be the other’s net worth
The common language of Gerontius is alive in Portland
in red chambers
Purple kiss me into unknown songs
Unfold me
Wake me
We sweat in syndicates, in team systems
Xtreme Elk Grove car racing
Your body, your Yamaha, your girl
Redeem and zip this sharebeast


The Ice

This poem is a fairytale hotel made out of storms
History is coming to Texas
Please
remove the virus from my cyber crime centers
Ice cube trays don’t really care about us
Let’s exchange sugar futures
There is an empire of data in Kissimmee
a house made of grapevines in Quebec
This poem is getting thinner under us
Inside your soul, this poem smells funny
is melting is nice and chichi, is peachy
Sounds like the king’s secret voice to me
It’s Japan 2013, or a lounge at the Sagamore
Networks figure skate around this neopet lookup
What are the true opinions of owls
in their palaces, their cherry groves?
We skate on this magic, this chaos, this knitting underneath us


The Living

Language is an actively international
aquarium, an air purifier
When you are not at home
the Barbies work hard on their balance sheets
To paraphrase, the Church of God is the only printable cookbook
Desert daylights, desert wild lights, palm tree TV shows, Christmas lights
What are your answers to this singular environment?
Can Lynn Behrendt make a single fabric of the world?
A “Brooklyn gallery” comes before “gun”
which comes before “god”
which comes before a “garden”
which comes before the “Great Lakes”
This poem is a human document
before it is a headless chicken
before it is a human curiosity sideshow
in infinite review
Her Ken doll is in the kitchen farm and dairy
writing a memoir of a mummy and the moon
He said, “Wear this Youtube nativity New Deal necklace
I made it just for you”
The ocean is filled with textbooks, oracles
The organisms in
this secret world, this habitat, this proof institute, this shark tank
are called what?
Maybe force-love-way-pledge-plate-tribunal-treasure-furnace or seed-soil-essay-poster
The universe and its unicorn circus
A vocabulary of comfort:
this zig zag




Anne Gorrick writes: ""Conceit" began as a little project where I took various poetic clichés, and found new poems (abcedariums more or less) around these words by searching and manipulating the text. "Poetic Cliché" became "Poetic Conceit" which simply became "Conceit." At one point, I got stuck and put out a call on Facebook for poets to supply me with more clichés, and the project grew. Writing these poems became an exercise in revisiting the poetry of the past, by smashing it up against the present."
 
 
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