anonlinejournalofvoice

Spring 2024
an online journal of voice
24
Spring 2024

BLAZEVOX[BOOKS]
Buffalo, New York
BlazeVOX 24 | an online journal of voice
24
Copyright © 2024

Published by BlazeVOX [books]

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Table of Contents
Poetry

Ailbhe Wheatley Andal Srivatsan

Andrea Nicki Anna Kapungu
Anthony Oag Brenda Mox
Carrie Purcell Kahler Cindy Savett
Chris Stroffolino Dan Sicoli
David Lohrey E. H. Beyer
Ed Makowski Gordon Scapens
J. D. Nelson James Croal Jackson
Jasper Glen Jenny Grassl
Joan E. Bauer John Kuligowski
Jonathan Everitt Joseph Cooper
Joshua Martin Judith Chalmer
Lewis LaCook Maia Brown-Jackson and Madeline Charne
Marjorie Sadin Mark DuCharme
Martha Deed Nate Hoil
Nicholas Skaldetvind Olchar E. Lindsann
Partha Sarkar Peter Mladinic
Rachael Breen Roger Craik
Roger G. Singer Scott Taylor
Sean Meggeson Steve Carll
Terry Trowbridge Zipporah Breunig
Fiction Text Art & Vispo
Robert Wexelblatt Four Visual Poems
Petite Suite de Musées Pamela Miller

Mehreen Ahmed The Subject is Apples

Collector’s Item Geoffrey Gatza

Claire Beeli Six Visual Poems

His Wife Mark Young

Eclipse in Poem and Picture

Jared Leeds
Mather Cargil
The Wall
Desert Storm – Coalition for Peace
Ethan Goffman
8 Trading Cards – 1 Sticker
The Game
Ryan Clark
E.W.H. Thornton
The Balcony Over The Sea
Poetry Extra Extra
John Tavares
Magic Hour Western Gull — a joint poem
Doug Jones and Clive Gresswell
Rory Hughes
The Grind
Thing Of A Face
Mark Goodwin
Brett Ann Stanciu
Excerpt from Call It Madness
from 100 Titles From Tom Beckett collaboration
paintings by Thomas Fink, poems from Mark Young
Scout McComb
Homecoming King
It Depends On So Much (anachronistic fiction)
James Joaquin Brewer

Acta Biographia — Author Biographies
Ten
Salvatore Difalco
Quadernetto / Little Notebook
Poems by Cristina Campo
Translated by Dennis Formento
IntroductionIntroduction
In this issue we seek to avoid answers but rather to
ask questions. With a subtle minimalistic approach,
this issue of BlazeVOX focuses on the idea of ‘public
space’ and more specifically on spaces where anyone
can do anything at any given moment: the non-
private space, the non-privately owned space, space
that is economically uninteresting. The works
collected feature coincidental, accidental and
unexpected connections, which make it possible to
revise literary history and, even, better, to
complement it.
Combining unrelated aspects lead to surprising
analogies these piece appear as dreamlike images in
which fiction and reality meet, well-known tropes
merge, meanings shift, past and present fuse. Time
and memory always play a key role. In a search for
new methods to ‘read the city’, the texts reference
post-colonial theory as well as the avant-garde or anonlinejournalofvoice
the post-modern and the left-wing democratic
movement as a form of resistance against the logic
of the capitalist market system. Spring 2024
Many of the works are about contact with
architecture and basic living elements. Energy
(heat, light, water), space and landscape are
examined in less obvious ways and sometimes
develop in absurd ways. By creating situations and
breaking the passivity of the spectator, he tries to
develop forms that do not follow logical criteria, but
are based only on subjective associations and
formal parallels, which incite the viewer to make
new personal associations. These pieces
demonstrate how life extends beyond its own
subjective limits and often tells a story about the
effects of global cultural interaction over the latter
half of the twentieth century. It challenges the
binaries we continually reconstruct between Self
and Other, between our own ‘cannibal’ and
‘civilized’ selves. Enjoy!
anonlinejournalofvoice

Spring 2024
Anthony Oag

remnants of a prayer

go down to that final place

spread the brambles
pick away the helicoptering leaves
move around the sullen
gates of coal mines
and boat docks darkened
by the after-slick of floods
in the slate bed of the creek mouth
you will find it there
as if a cloud of gnats were trying to cheat death
a space of air trembles
reaches for wings
dungeons of home

you are the succulent under the floorboards

thrashing quiet fins against
the ceilings of basements
where old pipes let loose
the sulfur water of their hulls

I feel small ships as the growing pains stop,

at my full height finally gauging the fall, the flights
of stairs which now lead down instead of up.
there are voyages taking place in these walls,

whole colonies of memory now caught

in surge and storm. i make a home
in the mirage, each day learning
that the floor isn’t lava,

that the home baked smell of a closet

is just the drifting of old truths,
past tension, uncoiled.
sideways barstoolin’

straight up
planted in the wall,
wall-ways of all things
a dancer
is a hostage
thrilled upon chaining.
i’m not your stranger
i am
a danger on the outside of
a vegas bomb threat
split like lava
in the lamp.
gimme
the neon jean talk,
flag waving
those legs
along the slow whinny of a twisting
room, turned around
the cog like a rainbow
turtle, never out of hill to roll down.
i could eat the word calzone
and become
anything i was told
not to want.
pickleball
deep-fried in the undulation
of half a building sweaty as asphalt
with racket handle bodies
jostled on the up,
still swinging. mosaic
of faces betraying
gravity with all the gusto
of a tide, timelapsed, lunar
and loosening. sexy loser
giving up the glory for more
lively dreaming. asleep
around the rim of a sip
sounding like powder
on the brow.
got the stagelight melts,
the heebie jesus communion repeats,
angelic
in the overtake, i blip and blink
until i’m too holy
to take home. i’ll bed down
somewhere between
your accidental caress
and tomorrow.
countrysider

i think i could’ve been a farmer, and if not

a farmer then the sod to steady the barn.

in my head are the posts of a barbed wire fence,

they endure more than they enclose, only hold what they can
stand to lose. when fruit trees wander in and scatter
their memories there is a moment where the lines of my palms

are wiped of dirt, i am new again,

and then there is the overripening–

seeds sprout things that wander off,

more fence posts need hammering and each day

i learn more of what it means to be a field,

not a herd.
grandfather is my name

i’ve decided that boring is the best way

to mend a lifetime,
to tuck tail and take my grumbling to the plains,
navigate a river through
the deadfalls of a country where all old men sigh
and talk of the good old days as if
they were the only things left worth believing in. i am
no better with my hermit-like devotion to isolation,
romanticizing the human devoid
wilds of everyday places as if i were hostile,
an alien,
satan, sipping his ipa at the end of each extinction.

something about the worst of weather reminds

me that we will deserve whatever we lose,

that these catered rainforests

on the b-side of humanity will one day be the seeds
that push our sodden bones
to the sky, souring on the breeze
of a new beginning, a genesis open
to chapter one, our names
revised
from each page, the shocked silence of our gaped fish
mouths hanging somewhere in the spoils
of oblivion, a final slashing of tires, our world spinning out
in one last burning rubber smell.
Claire Beeli

His Wife

The woman did not cry when her husband told her he was leaving.
No. She was a woman with a hard mother, a good mother, one who taught her to never become a
wretch. A hard mother who taught her that men had hearts, but that they were different from women’s; they
were colder, and better for shaping, like biscuit dough. She showed the woman, then a girl, how to hold the
dough, how to warm it enough to bend but not enough to stick, and then she showed the girl the wretches, the
abandoned women. The ghoulish, vacant wanderers. She showed her them as a warning to never join them.
Her husband told her, stone-faced, at the table. The one she’d bought after they first married, stumbling
around a furniture store drunk on love. The table’s corners hadn’t seemed so sharp, its colors so dull, when
they’d bought it, but as she stared at it now she thought it might cut her if she ran her hand over it.
“Kate?”
“Yes?”
“I asked about the children.”
“What about them?”
“Would you mind taking care of them? I’ll need time to adjust. I can start taking them on the weekends
later, of course, but none of us are ready for that yet—I don’t think.”
“You don’t think,” she whispered. Her head felt light, like there was nothing left inside it but a trapped
wind, screaming at itself.
“Hm?” he asked, not hearing her.
“I’ll take the children ‘till you’re back.”
 He sighed, the mole on his chin bobbing downwards. He closed his eyes, laying a hand over hers. Her
guardian, her steward.
“I’m not coming back.”
“Of course you aren’t,” she agreed. Placid.
He sighed again, mole bobbing. Strange. His sighs had always annoyed her, but now all she could
muster was a muted, fuzzy memory of the feeling.
All of her memories, but for the hazy warnings of her mother, were of him. His hands to hold her, to
hold the children. His smile to lighten her, his touch to ground her, to support her, to contain her. As if she
would collapse and splatter if he wasn’t there to give her shape.
“Goodbye, dear,” he said.
“Goodbye. Call me when you’re done.”
He cast her one more pitying look and shut the door behind him.
She sat at the table for a while longer, running her hand over its grainy edges. She felt the seam of where
her fingers met her palms, the dips between each, skimmed the creases over the table’s rough borders. She had a
plate before her, but no food; she tapped her wedding ring on the ceramic. She enjoyed the sound it made, like
a wind chime.
“Mother?”
Right.
The woman stood, and she took care of the children. She cooked and cleaned for them. She did the
laundry, separating darks from lights, lights from darks, and most of the time, she did not leave the gas on, or
forget where she’d left the children, or let the bath overflow.
Her husband called once, to tell her that he would provide for her. She didn’t know what that meant.
He was gone. What could he give her but him?
She took the children to school, and back. She fed the dog. Walked it.
She walked it every day. Even birthdays, even her own. She didn’t realize it was her thirty-seventh
birthday until her mother called her. After she hung up the phone, settling it in its stand like a massive weight,
she couldn’t remember any of what she’d said.
 All she could remember was what she hadn’t said: her husband was leaving. That her daughter, her
strong daughter, would be another wretch drowning in unmade biscuits.
She walked the dog in the park on her thirty-seventh birthday while the children were at school and
after the laundry was done. Water hung hot in the air.
Strangers watched her. The dog was aggressive, lunging at children, snapping at them until the woman
could pull him back. She’d always figured that dogs learned their emotions from their masters, and his
aggression must have come from her husband. She knew he’d always resented the children, deep down, and
here the dog was, barking and reaching, living proof of it. His influence, his house, his children, his wife.
A stranger passed close to her on the path, his unseasonable coat brushing her leg. He had a young,
pretty girl on his arm, with a curving figure and flashing white smile. A mole bobbed on his chin.
Him.
The stranger also had a dog, the woman realized, and a house, and children, and a wife.
She turned on her heel and followed, the dog protesting for a moment before following. It was still
morning, the sun not quite high enough to permeate the tree layer, and his face passed in and out of shadow. It
twisted in the dark, becoming monstrous, wicked; it broadened, strengthened in the light, becoming joyful,
steadfast. The girl’s never slipped out of sunlight.
The woman watched them. She did not care when the dog snapped again, when the woman it had
snapped tried to shout at her. She did not care when the sun rose enough to summon beads of sweat, enough to
signal it was time to pick up the children. She did not care when her cell phone buzzed, like a giant rainforest
insect, in her pocket. She followed them, ignoring her pounding heart, watching. Dragging the dog through
bare streets, through residential neighborhoods, emptier and farther away from the park, the city center.
Not once did they look back.
Not even as they entered the small, fine house, tastefully decorated, her husband holding the door open
for the girl, the girl smiling broadly back at him. Not even as their wriggling brown puppy greeted them,
unaware of the woman only feet behind, staring into their home.
The door swung shut on its own. Her heart stuttered.
 The woman stared at it. It was dark red wood, embedded with a stately gold knocker and elegant
handle. Gently swooping letters stood out on its surface, marking the address. She ran her hand along it, feeling
the smoothness of the newly-sanded wood, the gloss of the varnish. She could nearly see her reflection in its
shine, a funhouse mirror distorted version.
Inside, he laughed. A deep chuckle that vibrated through the soft door and shook her until her heart was
loose, rattling around in her chest.
All of the saved-up emotion of the past months flowed from her at once. She clapped a hand over her
mouth to muffle the sobs racking her body, contracting the muscles in her abdomen, and the burning in her
throat. Her eyes welled up, spilling over, unable to contain themselves. Her teeth clamped down on the
muffling palm. She didn’t feel it, only the dizziness in her head, the heaviness inside her ribs.
Her dog barked and the woman startled back to reality, as if waking from a dream. She sniffed and
turned away from the door, ashamed, to take deep breaths, clearing the hot knot of feeling in her throat.
The woman walked her dog home.
She let in her children, who had been waiting some hours for her. She unlocked the door by moonlight.
She cooked them a meal, the best she’d made in months, with fresh tomato sauce and cut herbs and
ropes of starchy pasta. She sang them a song, put them to bed. She did her laundry, separating darks from
lights, colors, and reds. She fed the dog and sat at the table until he snored, too, and the whole world except for
her was asleep.
She sat on the short end of the table. She’d never realized how direct the seat’s view was into the side
window of the dining room.
She could see the stars. The woman watched them from the head of her table, until she, too, fell asleep
where she sat.
E.W.H. Thornton

THE BALCONY OVER THE SEA

It was finally done.

He could finally leave.
Afterward, when the suitors’ corpses had been dragged out, the spears plucked from the walls, and the
blood scrubbed from the floor, he was amazed by how vast and empty his father's hall truly was.
As a child Telemachus had often wondered what it would feel like to stand in the great hall alone, secure
in the knowledge it belonged to his family, along with the island it rested upon. Failing that, he had learned to
retreat at a young age, taking to the sea at dawn and lingering atop the uneasy churn of Poseidon's realm for vast
spans of time, though he never allowed himself to drift far enough away to lose sight of the shore, remaining
lashed to Ithaca by a duty more adamantine than any physical tether could ever presume to be.
The shame he'd felt for escaping to the sea and thus leaving his mother to face her would-be suitors
alone had abated as he realized Penelope had also contrived her own means of escape. Her loom sat on a
balcony that jutted out from the second floor of his father's house, away from the suitors, the servants, and
Ithaca itself; extending far enough for the spray of crashing waves to permanently darken its underside. Thus
they both found their own solitary refuge in constant motion: for Telemachus it was the wind and waves of the
sea, for Penelope it was the shuttle and reed of the loom.
Telemachus’ earliest memory was of lying beneath the loom and gazing up at his mother through a web
of threads. He would inch his head back and forth on the balcony's Helios-warmed marble, closing one eye,
then the other, perfectly framing her face in a window of interlaced fibers. The portal would grow smaller and
smaller as her weaving progressed, obscuring Penelope's forehead, then her eyes, nose, mouth, and chin before
finally erasing her completely so Telemachus was forced to inch downward in search of a new aperture.
 “Where is your father?” This was her favorite question.
“Far away.”
“How far?”
“Very far.”
“How far is very far?”
“Across the sea.”
“And how vast is the sea?”
“Very vast.”
“Does it go on forever?”
As he grew Telemachus came to recognize his mother's efforts to make him appreciate distance since, to
a boy living on an island no bigger than a single hill of Athens, far wasn't very far at all.
“Yes it does.” It ultimately became his stock answer, though based on his mother's unfailingly tepid
reception it wasn't the correct response so much as the least incorrect. “The sea doesn't end. It spans the world
entire, continuing forever.”
It was in this way that Telemachus came to view the sea as infinity's herald, a divine instrument capable
at once of holding his father back and delivering him home. One day, when the suitors were being especially
insufferable and the gods especially indifferent, Telemachus had walked to the shore of his father's kingdom
and viewed the sea through a frame formed by joining the tip of his finger to the tip of his thumb, and wondered
if the sea was infinite how it could yet be contained in the hands of a single, powerless boy.
He did not bring the question to his mother. Telemachus suspected she did not know either and decided
answering such questions was what fathers were for, a childhood conviction that, like most, never truly abated,
enduring even to this joyous day when he had finally attained his full manhood by the conventional method of
mass slaughter.
Before the last fleeing suitor had even managed scramble away, Telemachus’ mother had seized one of
the axes remaining from the archery contest, raced to her loom, and attacked it with a vengeance.
She hacked it to pieces, bringing the ax down with savage fury even as she expelled peals of joyous
laughter. When the whole apparatus had been reduced to splinters, Penelope plucked out what remained of the
mangled, half-finished burial shroud she'd been weaving and unweaving for so many years and, with a ragged
cry, hurled it over the balcony's edge into the sea. She watched it tumble away, pieces of the loom still clinging
to it. When the waves swallowed it she stunned Telemachus by collapsing to the balcony floor he knew so well
and bursting into tears.
The spectacle left his father paralyzed, and it fell to Telemachus to run to Penelope and comfort her. He
had almost never seen his mother show any emotion beyond the wan shade of a rueful smile that settled on her
face when she gazed out to sea; the woman wracked by sobs and shivering in Telemachus’ arms was a stranger.
He choked down his fear and maintained the embrace, determined for once to be the strong one, wishing this
was as easy as killing men was.
When his mother regained her composure Telemachus departed from his father's house, giving his
parents the privacy their reunion merited. Once outside he was stunned to see that the momentous event he had
been trained to anticipate all his life had gone unnoticed by Ithaca. Helios still drove his chariot across the sky.
Demeter still bid the plants grow. Aeolus still made the leaves rustle and the clouds wander. Poseidon
maintained the sea's steady, sedate rhythm.
The gods remained aloof. Father had told him Pallas Athena fought with them and indeed, there had
been moments when Telemachus’ actions had seemed divinely augmented, the act of killing coming to him
with preternatural ease. Just as surely as he had felt her in that moment he felt her absence now, as if the
whirlwind of violence that had driven off the suitors had borne her away as well. The idea of being guided or
even puppeted by a such a force was disturbing enough, but as he walked away from his father's house and the
scenes of carnage replayed in his mind, what frightened Telemachus more was the possibility that Pallas Athena
had not intervened, if the butcher who had enacted today's massacre had been inside him all along, if it had been
abiding patiently until Telemachus had need to call on it. If it was inside him still, eager to reemerge.
Telemachus had long known what kind of man he wanted to be, and it was not warrior or prince or son
or king. He wanted to be the man he was when he was with her.
Eulimene.
He stilled his mind, opening himself to the sea, growing in tune with the elegant harmony stirring just
beneath its superficial chaos. Telemachus couldn't reach her directly right now, but he could feel her, sense her
love the same way he sensed Helios—as something fantastically remote yet so vast and powerful he was
nonetheless bathed in its radiance, his every atom infused with its warmth.
 Even at Ithaca's apex he could feel the ocean Eulimene inhabited and embodied, the waves that
embraced the island on all sides, lapping at its beaches in gentle caresses and crashing against its rocks in
savage blows. The siren call of her love evoked a rapturous agony that trivialized everything else, so much that
he felt guilt for not being able to return it immediately.
Soon.
Telemachus flexed his aching arms as he slowly navigated down one of Ithaca's many steep hillsides.
Years of pulling oars and casting nets had at last borne fruit, his limbs serving him well in those crucial
moments when he had felt the Moirae's blade poised over his life's thread, ready to enact the one simple motion
that would sever it forever. He had proved himself worthy of his father, had in fact very nearly given the ruse
away by stringing his father's bow during the archery contest that preceded the battle. Of course he had already
strung it long ago, had been trying to string it since he had been tall enough to reach the place where it hung on
the wall.
The first time Telemachus succeeded in getting it down he had been surprised by the bow's weight so it
slipped from his hands and clattered to the floor, threatening to wake the multitude of suitors slumbering in his
father's hall. They had all seemingly proven too drunk to disturb, and Telemachus resolved to give thanks to
both Hypnos and Dionysus.
He carried his father's bow out into a night as cool and clear as the sea's starry black surface, arriving at
a cliff just barely outside the view of his mother's balcony where the suitors tended to piss. There Telemachus
tried and failed to string a bow he belatedly realized was almost as tall as he was. It felt more like bronze than
wood, and retained an icy coolness even as he worked himself into a frenzy attempting to bend it. As sweat
prickled across his brow and his arms became sore he grew desperate, resorting to holding both limbs of his
father's bow and pushing against the grip with his legs, straining for any sign it was even capable of bending.
Finally he collapsed, tears of frustration spilling down his face as a crushing pall of failure descended on
him. He looked at an infinite expanse of sea which returned his gaze with eyes as watery as his own, and in that
instant he knew, with the absolute certainty born of despair, that it would not give up his father. Not to a son
such as him. Not after such a pathetic display.
“Have you ever shot an arrow?” He turned and saw a suitor. He looked familiar, though Telemachus
did not know his name.
 “No.”
“Not much use stringing a bow if you can't shoot an arrow.” He stepped forward and held out his own
bow, the one he used to hunt Telemachus’ father's game on Telemachus’ father's island. Its weathered form
contrasted sharply with the ornate perfection of his father's bow, but it was strung. Telemachus blushed as he
realized the suitor had seen him struggling and retrieved this sorry specimen with him in mind, yet he extended
his hand all the same, accepting it as he did so much else. A lifetime of use had worn the suitor's bow into a
supple arc that, after a few instructions, was mirrored by the trajectory of an arrow Telemachus launched over a
waxing Selene, radiant in the gleaming night sky.
“By the gods. Are you sure this is your first time?”
At first Telemachus judged the creature approaching them to be a boar by the way it crashed through the
undergrowth. He knew the story of his father being very nearly castrated by such a beast, and had long
suspected the gods would send another to finish him off. It wasn't until the emerging figure grabbed him that he
realized it was his mother, awake and alert at this stygian hour. Penelope's handmaidens immediately followed,
swarming around the suitor and spiriting him off with promises of food and wine and the implied availability of
their bodies.
“What are you doing, Telemachus?” She dug her fingers into his shoulders and shook him as if
attempting to wake him from a nightmare. He had never seen her so enraged, had never seen such fury in
anything save a charging animal. His mouth too dry to respond, Telemachus dumbly held up the suitor's bow
by way of explanation. Penelope tore it from his hands and hurled it over the cliff. A moment of tense silence
was broken by a remote splash as the sea claimed it. “These men are your enemies. These men are my
enemies. They are your father's enemies.” She released him and assumed her full height. The silence returned,
somehow even more intense now, as if Aeolus himself was holding his breath.
Telemachus’ mother towered over him. A monolith garbed in shadow, she could have been Nyx herself,
colossal and regal and dark. He looked away. Penelope reached down and fingers girded in thick, rough
calluses cupped his face, forcing him meet her eyes. Her gaze burned. He thought of Icarus, of a heat so
furiously intense it dissolved everything that held you up, and you fell. “If I wed one of them, they will kill
you, because you are not their son. You must never forget that, because they will never forget that. Do you
understand me?” He managed a small nod. In the stories Icarus always fell, yet the stories never said anything
about what he ultimately struck. Did that mean he fell forever, the way Telemachus felt himself to be doing
now? Penelope's grip became gentle, then fell away as she withdrew. “Your father will return.” She whispered
as she merged with the darkness. “This isn't forever.”
Telemachus drew no comfort from her words that night. One minute wasn't forever, but neither was a
thousand years. What did forever mean to a woman like his mother who could seemingly live without sleep,
without companionship, clinging to a thread of hope finer than a lone strand of Arachne's silk? As years passed
there would be times when Telemachus would feel almost mad with rage toward his mother, resenting her
saintly patience and inhuman fortitude, how her example silently but absolutely demanded he exhibit the same
indefatigable strength.
Telemachus never learned the name of the man he met that night, though he had recognized him when
he plunged a sword into his neck and was met with the same look of abject incomprehension he saw on the face
of every other man he killed with his father, pain and shock rapidly fading to nothing, each suitor's gaze
becoming remote as they beheld Thanatos's approach and grew resigned to the final, inevitable journey that
would end in the dim halls of Hades's faded kingdom. That fleeting instant, repeated ad nauseum, had sparked
in Telemachus a bizarre envy.
Not for the destination, but for the journey; the prospect of traversing the five rivers of the underworld to
reach whatever lay on the far shore. No mater how melancholy the crossing, at least it was venturing beyond a
new frontier, exploration of a sort.
The faces remained vivid in Telemachus’ mind as he descended the hill and put more distance between
himself and his father's house. The wind shifted and Telemachus was met with a familiar, repellent odor. The
coals of the suitors’ makeshift funeral pyre were still warm and its smell lingered in the air, in keeping with the
character of the men who fueled it. Telemachus found himself wondering what kind of man he would have
become if his mother hadn't thrown the suitor's bow into the sea that night. That was the moment Eulimene first
noticed him, this bizarre novelty, the solitary mortal whose life lasted no more than an instant yet still wrestled
with infinity. Baroque oddities fascinated her, contradictions even moreso.
As a child he had simply accepted that his mother found him because she spent her nights unraveling the
burial shawl whose incompletion stood between her and her suitors’ endless appeals, first for her hand in
marriage, then for every earthly amenity his father's house had to offer. Telemachus’ appreciation of the full
enormity of the task his mother had created for herself would grow as he aged, every birthday marking yet
another year of deliberately fruitless toil, of her dauntless commitment to an endeavor worthy of Sisyphus.
He had long wondered how his father had known to choose his mother, how he sensed her almost
supernatural fealty in the brief span of time he visited her nation to seek a bride; her endless patience, her
absolute faith, her unbreakable will. How could his father see in a few days what had remained obscure to
Telemachus for twenty years? He had sat before his mother's loom during her brief absences from it and felt the
crushing enormity of her endeavor settle on him, yet if his mother felt such a burden she betrayed no sign of it,
in fact she seemed distinctly uncomfortable whenever she was away from her loom and the sea's horizon so
neatly framed by its sturdy, weatherworn beams.
Penelope had once told Telemachus she had seen the mast of his father's returning ship cresting that very
horizon before a sudden, unnatural tide ripped it away. Telemachus had wanted to ask her how she knew it was
his father's ship, but restrained himself.
The queen of Ithaca had declared it to be true.
For a worthy prince, that had to be enough.
The terrain leveled out and Telemachus approached the pen where his father's sheep abided in seeming
comfort, content to wander its narrow confines. The sheep were sorry specimens even by the humble standards
of Ithaca, the suitors having long ago determined to claim the best for themselves. Telemachus had been thus
forced to develop his own unique criteria for choosing a sacrifice that would please the gods. As usual he
scanned them one by one for any hint of spirit, any sign they chafed at the confines they'd been forced into.
Telemachus was aware that ranking the personalities of mediocre sheep was not an activity befitting a
prince, yet he'd long ago stopped thinking in such terms, and now that his father was home and Telemachus’
departure immanent, such concerns were irrelevant.
Telemachus selected an ewe and swept it up onto his shoulders with the practiced ease born of a
lifetime's repetition. He knew he had made the right choice as he felt the creature resist his grip and heard it
bray its defiance, the flutter of its heartbeat growing ever more frantic against the base of Telemachus’ neck as
it revolted against its fate.
Telemachus arrived at the barren stone altar hunched at a promontory's end, its gray lumpen form
seeming to almost prostrate itself before the edge where the cliff's sheer face plummeted down to the sea. He
returned the restive sheep to the arid, pebble strewn ground and hesitated, maintaining his grip while his eyes
scanned the horizon out of reflex, his body having yet to assimilate the fact that the event he'd been obsessively
anticipating all his life had finally come to pass, his father was king once more, both Ithaca and his mother no
longer had any need of him.
This sacrifice would be his final significant act as an earthbound mortal, yet his time with Eulimene had
made him aware of just how remote the Olympians truly were, leaving him to wonder what killing an animal
could even mean to beings for whom death remained a distant abstraction, as remote and obscure as the terra
incognita dreamed to lay beyond the infinite sea.
Telemachus was snapped out of his reverie by the sound of desperate scrabbling, of first four legs then
two grappling for purchase on the cliff's edge. The ewe had managed to bolt from Telemachus’ grip but without
any thought of where it was escaping to, and he could only watch as it plummeted over the edge to the sea
below, becoming a sacrifice to Poseidon by default.
There was a thunderous crash as if a thousand waves were breaking against the cliff at once. A pillar of
water appeared, geysering up to deposit a drenched and confused but very much alive sheep to the ground
beside Telemachus.
'You mortals and your barbarous rites.' She teased, warm and sweet.
'It's what the gods demand.' Telemachus replied wordlessly.
'And what about what this goddess demands? How dare you keep an eros-struck nymph waiting, prince
of Ithaca.'
'I am no prince after today. I belong to Ithaca no more.'
'I alone?'
'You alone.'
'Hurry.'
Telemachus took her appeal to heart, and it required everything in his power to keep from breaking into
a run as he traced the ghost of an overgrown footpath down to the beach.
There his father stood, his back to Ithaca and his gaze fixed on the sea's far horizon. The waves caressed
the prow a small fishing boat nestled in the same indentation his own ship had made when he returned. He
approached the boat and silently gestured for Telemachus to follow, not taking his eyes off the horizon for an
instant as he easily propelled the craft into the shallows and leapt in. By the time Telemachus had managed to
join him he was already pumping the oars so the small boat cut through the surf with savage efficiency.
Ithaca receded until it was a faded memory of itself, and they were truly at sea.
Telemachus felt drunk with possibility. He savored the sweet agony of anticipation, his every thought
fixed on his immanent departure to the unfathomably vast new world he would be reborn into when he simply
leaned a little too far to port or starboard.
He decided this was as good a place to bid farewell as any
His father swept up Telemachus’ fishing net and cast it out. The net bloomed as it escaped his arms,
erupting into a vast grid that seemed poised to ensnare the sky, as if he was not dredging the seas but the
heavens.
Telemachus had long been transfixed by the stars. On nights when he could not bring himself to row
back within earshot of the suitors’ endless bacchanal, he would lay in his boat and search the sky for the new
constellation that would mean his father had made his final, ultimate departure and assumed his place among
the gods. In the course of his endless musing Telemachus had noticed how often heroes of legend tended to
vanish at the most inopportune times: Daedalus leaving Icarus behind, Theseus abandoning Ariadne on Naxos,
Jason abandoning Maedea on Corinth, Heracles abandoning Megara and Omphale and Deianira, in that order.
It struck Telemachus that a propensity to leave others behind seemed like a defining heroic trait, and the more
greatness heroes achieved, the more prone to flight they became.
It was on such a night that he was startled by an alien object suddenly landing in his boat. Assuming it
was a fish, he instantly threw his net over it, only to discover he had captured the old bow his mother had hurled
into the sea years ago.
Marveling at its return, he turned to see a woman standing atop a plateau of perfectly still water.
Her body was a gracefully flowing stream, her hair was a savage waterfall, her eyes were bottomless
whirlpools, her voice was human.
No, more than human.
Divine.
“Yours?” She asked in a tone that said she knew the answer.
 Telemachus examined the object tangled in his net. It had been warped by its time in the sea, and now
resembled a gnarled hook.
“Not exactly. Please don't think me ungrateful, but much time has passed since the sea took it.”
“What is eternal to mortals is fleeting to gods. I would've assumed its owner had perished if you did not
linger here so persistently. No mortal clings to land yet lives at sea as you do. Are you cursed?”
“In a fashion.”
“Who are you?”
“I am Telemachus. Who are you?”
“I am the force that bids the waves to break. I am the tide that embraces and withdraws. I am the gentle
current and the savage undertow. I am Archipelago, and it is I.”
“You're a nereid.”
“I am Eulimene.”
“May I ask you a question, Eulimene?”
“Ask.”
“Does the sea go on forever?”
“That depends.”
“On what?” A faint conspiratorial grin. Her smile shamed the moon, appearing so radiant everything
around her faded ever so slightly.
“On what your destination is.” Telemachus thought that did not in any way resemble an answer. “May
I ask you a question, mortal Telemachus?”
“You may.”
“What is it like to live knowing you will die?”
“Most try not to think about it. Some seek immortality by becoming legends. Some race toward death
out of conviction or spite. Time wears most mortals down, making them resigned to it in some fashion. Most.
Not all.”
“And which type of mortal are you?”
 “I will tell you if you answer me this: Have you heard news of my father, the King of Ithaca?” Her
expression did not just darken, it swallowed the light, devouring it in a majestic swirl. The water beneath
Telemachus’ boat churned forebodingly.
“The King of Ithaca is your father? The savage degenerate who butchered Helios's cattle and mutilated
Poseidon’s son? ”
“That” Telemachus said thoughtfully. “does not sound like him.” The remainder of the night was
consumed by a passionate exchange between Eulimene, who spun lurid tales of his father's depravity, and
Telemachus, who did his best to invent extenuating circumstances for his father's blasphemous mischief. Dawn
arrived with incredible speed and the two parted. They met the following night, and the night after that. As
their discussions continued the focus drifted away from the King of Ithaca and toward one another.
In time Telemachus came to appreciate the dawn with Eulimene. The arrival of Eos was slow but
absolute, and when she revealed herself fully her effulgent grandeur was life itself, a vital crucible forging the
world anew.
The day they declared their love for one another was the day Eulimene spirited Telemachus beneath the
waves, bearing him away to the nereid kingdom. She told him he could not spend more than a day in her world,
that any mortal who lingered beyond a single day was inexorably changed.
“Into what?” He asked a moment before she began their journey.
“A god.” She took him away, and Chronos's power evaporated, and the wings he'd been shorn of his
entire life returned.
Telemachus was determined to retain his memories of Eulimene's world, yet they escaped his mind like
a beautiful dream dissolving in daylight, each detail vanishing the moment he ceased focusing on it to leave him
with nothing but vast, formless impressions. Impossible heights and bottomless depths. A lightness beyond
weightlessness moving at the speed of thought. Beauty that seared the soul, breaking and remaking him in each
instant. Knowledge beyond wisdom. Love beyond rapture.
Most of all there was love, love that answered the question of infinity, cradled it in its hands like a
trinket.
The net struck the water and vanished below.
 “Do not fear the suitors’ return.” His father said. “They know the gods favor us now. Not even they
are foolish enough to tempt the Moirae twice.”
“A part of me wishes they would return.” Telemachus remarked. His father laughed knowingly.
“That part of you is me. A little foolhardiness is good in a man, but only a little. There isn't a day that
passes where I don't pray for the gods to give you your mother's sense and spare you mine.”
“She is a miracle.”
As Telemachus’ father drew up the net he cast his gaze at the remote form of his father's house and the
vague hint of a shape representing the place where Penelope's loom had once stood, the balcony over the sea.
After she had hacked the loom apart and recovered from her weeping Penelope had hurled what debris that
remained on the suitors’ funeral pyre. All that was left of her great undertaking was a half finished funeral
shroud consigned to the infinite sea.
“Twenty years.” His father spoke as if it was the conclusion of a prayer.
“Love is a very powerful thing.” Telemachus steeled himself to announce his departure.
“That” His father grunted as he hauled the net into the boat. “is the correct word. Powerful is the force
that bids us move through this world.” He spread the net open to reveal a single fish frantically beating its tail
against the air. “Your mother and I are leaving, Telemachus. I owe it to her. There are things she has earned
the right to experience.” It gasped, its body lurching in dumb paroxysms of frantic outrage. “The throne room
of Aeolus, where the four winds join their voices and sing. The western edge of the world where the dead can
be made to give up their secrets.” It's eye stared dumbly at the new, hostile cosmos it had been ripped into.
Telemachus wondered if it knew it had been caught. Which would come first, understanding or death? “I
would have her hear the song of the sirens and see the endless dance of Charybdis.” His father followed
Telemachus’ gaze to the fish, now still and dead. “Hardly a bounty. Ithaca is a hard land, but it makes good
men. You are their king now.”
I could kill him, Telemachus thought. It would be a fitting conclusion. So many of the stories end in
patricide. He means nothing to me, this stranger with my face. What does he know of what this charnel land
makes of men, he who left it when he was my age.
 All movement ceased. Telemachus looked away, fixing his gaze on the perfect circle of eerily still
water enclosing their tiny vessel. He understood that if he chose to act, he would not do so alone. Displaying
the adroitness he was so known for, Telemachus’ father said
“You love her?”
“I hate you.”
“I know.” He answered in a way that said he would be disappointed if Telemachus did not.
His father eased himself into a state of repose, leaning back and allowing his arms to fall to his sides,
brazenly opening himself up to an attack, inviting Telemachus to seize any of the various fishing knives within
easy reach and attempt to score a mortal blow.
Telemachus imagined himself rowing back to Ithaca alone, imagined telling his mother that the man
who had survived feuding with Poseidon for ten years had fallen out of a fishing boat and drowned.
Penelope, queen of Ithaca, who was as much a hero as gods and men would ever allow a mortal woman
to be.
And what did heroes do best?
Telemachus peered into his father's face, reading it as a haruspex would read entrails.
His father had been disguised as an old man when they first met, yet that was now beginning to seem
less like a ruse and more like a portent. Calypso's love had kept him young, but now that he had left her behind
the enchantment was fading, the years returning with uncanny speed. By departing Ogygia for Ithaca his father
had not only abandoned Calypso but abandoned immortality, abandoned godhood—abandoned the promise of
love absolute and undying.
“You love her.” The words emerged in a voice so similar to his father's that Telemachus couldn't be
certain he'd said them himself, if he hadn't been visited by Echo.
Telemachus relaxed, adopting the same acquiescent pose as his father. The sea around them resumed its
typical movement as the tension between them evaporated. His father leaned forward to return his hands to the
oars, and despite his talk of wanting Ithaca's scion to inherit his mother's sense, Telemachus could tell his father
was disappointed his only son had not at least attempted to take his life.
Telemachus no longer cared, was instead focused on steeling his resolve.
“How long?” He asked.
 “Not forever.” His father answered.
He thought of something Eulimene had said while they were discussing the topic of endlessness.
“A storyteller wrote: 'Is infinity a necessary truth or a necessary construction? All of this when all we
want is to sail around on the watery part of the world.' ”
“I don't think I know that story.”
“You wouldn't. It's from a place called the future.”
“Where is the future?”
It was one of the few questions she had no answer for. Sometimes Telemachus would, in his ignorance,
stumble upon something profound, a trait Eulimene mercifully found endearing.
His father rowed back until Ithaca resolved into absolute clarity before Telemachus’ eyes.
There was a far side of despair where life began.
He would make himself believe it.
Telemachus spent that night gazing up at the sky, despite now knowing that the stars did not change, that
even the planets wandered in accord with immutable laws.
The new king was crowned in a brief but grand ceremony. All of Ithaca rejoiced save the king himself,
who regarded the proceedings at such a remove that afterward the revelers had difficulty remembering if he had,
in fact, been in attendance. Soon afterward Penelope and her husband set sail. Sacrifices were made and
blessings bestowed in the course of a ceremony commemorating their departure where the king's absence was,
this time, indisputable.
The revelry continued long after the pair's ship disappeared over the horizon.
With the licentious suitors gone and the rightful king in place, life in Ithaca reverted to the civil affair it
had been before Agamemnon's black ships darkened the horizon with war. He was a just and fair king, and if
he was not quite the dynamic hero his father was, none in Ithaca felt obliged to press the matter. He succeeded
in making his presence felt at the usual ceremonies, and if his character seemed remote, he was, after all,
royalty.
The king's tastes were austere even by the humble standards of a minor kingdom like Ithaca, and none
felt obligated to criticize his single eccentric indulgence of purchasing elaborate tapestries from Colchis,
stretching them upon a new loom he had built himself and placed on the balcony over the sea, and unraveling
them strand by strand, extracting every single thread intact and wrapping them into neat, perfectly round clews
worthy of Ariadne herself.
Those who doubted his marshal prowess stilled their tongues upon seeing how he acquitted himself
while hunting, though his utter indifference to trophies was perplexing. Whispers concerning his refusal to
worship Aphrodite were not silenced so easily, and a handful of subjects took to calling their odd king
Hippolytus while in safely discrete company. Still, none sought to unseat a king who remained strong and just,
especially in light of the chaos that had engulfed places such as Mycenae, Argos, Crete, and Salamis when their
respective monarchs returned from the annihilation of Troy.
Later, after a span of time that could have been five years, ten years, twenty years, or forty years, a
servant combing the beach in search of shells found a strange object washed up on the shore, a stunningly
gorgeous burial shroud that was pristine, whole, and complete despite the ragged and warped pieces of
driftwood clinging to it. The servant brought the magnificent shroud to her king, who responded with a mix of
adoration and fear, as if he was beholding the ghost of someone he deeply loved.
He snatched the burial shroud away without a word and retired to his private bedchamber. It was the
first sign of passion the servants had seen from their king in a great while and, highly curious, they gathered
around the locked door, straining their ears to detect any hint of what transpired within.
Afterward, none of them could agree if what they'd heard had been weeping or laughing.
Ethan Goffman

The Game

Roll dem bones! Rufus the Paladin tossed two sixes and a five and his character, Allen, aced the math
test. “Yes,” he cried out in joy.
They were gathered round the dying embers of a campfire, tossing dice, scrawling on parchment,
consulting a haphazard pile of irregularly bound texts filled with rules, keeping track of distant lives. Lives of
joy in trivial things, dating and first kisses, learning to drive, mastering Algebra and Physics, playing sports and
watching a magic screen known as a television in this faraway land where magic never happened, just
technology so advanced as to be indistinguishable from magic. Life for the adventurers was brutal, with all the
tromping and hunger and battles with monsters, the constant danger of attacks from around any dungeon corner
or any forest glade, the threat of death from sneaky goblin hordes or flaming Balrogs. Less and less could Rufus
see any point to the endless tromping and collecting of treasure. And for what? Death was coming in the end in
any case, no matter how much gold one had, how many magical trinkets.
Increasingly, Rufus felt pity for the beings he killed, evil though they may be. Just yesterday, he had slit
the throat of one poor little goblin, and he couldn’t stop envisioning its eyes gazing up at him. In the depths of
insomnia, Rufus would ponder whether the goblin deserved to die, whether it was just the victim of
circumstances. What chance had the goblin been given? The Game was a distraction from all that, a glimpse at
another possible life.
For a Paladin, the Game also held a hint of the forbidden. It was disreputable, since the thieves of
Granapolis had invented it a few years ago. Indeed, they continued to extract as much money as possible from
The Game’s players for endless sets of rulebooks and polished, rollable bones with numbers carved into their
surfaces. How could a noble Paladin stoop to worlds created by disreputable thieves? Still, The Game spread
quickly among the witches and warriors, the bungling magicians, the dwarves and elves and halflings, that
considered themselves adventurers.
Many a party, rumor had it, had been ambushed and massacred while distracted by The Game, and yet it
continued to spread. Rufus himself could no longer concentrate on watching for monsters and gathering gold,
jewels, and whatever magical items should appear hidden deep within caves or beneath secret trap doors.
Instead, his mind wandered and he thought of The Game, how Allen would soon graduate from high school,
perhaps with honors, how high he would score on the SATs, whether he would be accepted to the Ivy League
school he most desired, whether he would remain with his new girlfriend, Dolores, when they both moved on to
college (and whether he would accidentally get her pregnant and if, in a way, he wanted that to happen).
A flight of arrows disturbed the adventurers, hitting Dwinkle the elf (in The Game, Dolores the
cheerleader) in the elbow. The adventurers sprang up and Rufus drew his broad sword, but just then a bevy of
lightning bolts sang out and slaughtered the Orcs ambushing the party.
“You fools,” said Wanda the Wizard. “You’re so distracted by that stupid game you nearly got us all
killed. Luckily, I saved us, but I had to use one of my precious scrolls to do so.”
“Thanks,” said Dwinkle, “but I have to find out how I do in the cheerleader competition.”
“Yah,” said Rufus, “I have to study for the SATs.” And the party, except for the ever-vigilant Wanda,
who didn’t know how to enjoy herself, huddled again around the fire to be transported, by a few polished bones
alongside parchment and ragged books, into another world.
James Joaquin Brewer

It Depends On So Much
“anachronistic fiction”

“When anger spreads through the breath, guard thy tongue from barking foolishly.”
– Sappho, fragment quoted by Plutarch (“On Restraining Anger”)

Eyeing with simmering envy the short line that included only W.C. Williams and E.W.L. Pound,
Gertrude Stein—in a possibly literally pissy mood—growled a loud complaint in lines shorter than the one she
feared would prevent her “from ever moving up!” She lowered the leather-strapped binoculars she had been
staring through, cleared her throat, and in howling tones even louder than those previously employed addressed
her follow-up phrasings directly toward one of the two “Gents” way up ahead—way up there in front of the
“other” door: “Hey, Ezra! Is this an apparition of a comfort station in this version of a modern metro? Or
what?”
Pound pondered. Williams wondered. Stein remembered Sappho’s short-lined “This Way, That Way”:
I do not know
what to do
I am of two minds

From farther back in the long line, way behind Stein, closer to Phillis Wheatley and Amy Lowell (but
really not all that far from Audre Lourde and Elizabeth Bishop, or even from Gwendolyn Brooks and Anne
Bradstreet), Emily Dickinson responded in lines also shorter than the one she was sharing with so many for
whom she felt both sympathy and empathy:

I so fervently wish
that so much did not depend
on a red-lettered Water Closet—
with a paucity of doors
before the white bowls

Several voices sang out, a harmonizing chorus from the throats of poets whose names and works may or
may not have appeared in the latest and/or largest Norton Anthology of _______. Their song’s refrain contained
but two short lines:
Solidarity, Sister!
Nothing foolish-tongued about that!

Ezra Pound turned, cupped a hand behind one ear, and cast a long gaze toward the end of the other line,
searching for the source of that first unsatisfied utterance that sounded so much like the voice of Gertrude Stein.
William Carlos Williams turned also, placed a hand horizontally over his brow to diminish the intense glare of
noon-hour sunlight, and tried to locate Ms. Dickinson. Each of this pair of male poets was (for the immediate
moment at least) unsure of an appropriate response to what they were hearing, but both believed some words
were owed.
Jared Leeds

The Wall

We lived in Ferguson House, the one on the corner—Daniel, Danny, Henry, and I. Next to ours was an
all-girl house, then another all-guy, then another all-girl. And that was the whole street. To keep track of
things, the guys and I mapped out the sexual relationships between all four houses on a wall in our kitchen with
ID pictures and red string.
One day Danny suggested we use different colors to distinguish between the nature of each encounter.
So Henry, who had it in with an art girl who lived in Banks House, came home with a Trader Joe’s bag full of
string, and all of a sudden the Hook-Up Wall had a whole color system to it, complete with a key in the bottom
right corner like a map. Yellow was for anything with clothes on, green for a handy, blue for a blowy, and red
for a home run. Each new string, or a change of colors up the ranks, was cause for celebration. It was customary
that the lucky lay did the honors, usually followed by a round of blue raspberry Svedka. By the end of the first
month of school, strings branched from my housemates’ ID pictures like multicolored spiders.
Next to theirs, my few yellow strings stuck out like a big sore thumb. Maybe the guys saw potential in
me, or maybe they took pity on me. In either case, Henry started making an extra protein shake for me every
morning. Danny shared his ab day workout with me. At parties, Daniel pointed out which girls were interested
in me, since their passes at me usually went over my head.
Most of the strings that sprouted up around my ID picture in the following months were thanks to
them. In return for their services, I acted as their confidant, an ear for the lending.
Danny once drunkenly confided in me that he didn’t even like being called Danny, and that he only got
bumped to nickname status because Daniel had more game than him.
Henry admitted to me once that it made him upset every time word came around that the art girl he
liked from Banks House was seeing someone else. When she hooked up with Daniel on Halloween, I found
Henry sitting alone in our bathroom tub, and that was the first time I saw another man cry.
When Daniel got laid for the first time, by a girl from Barnes House named Anne, I was the first person
he told.
He and I were sitting together on the dark edge of the woods behind our house, Daniel enjoying a
midnight smoke. I heard an animal move swiftly between the trees. I thought I saw the nimble hind legs of a
deer.
“I think she faked her orgasm for me,” Daniel said quietly.
Drained by a long evening of essay writing, all I could offer him were platitudes. “At least she cared
enough to,” I said.
Daniel took a moment to respond, a moment I spent worrying I had spoken too crassly. But his face
broke into a smile, then a laugh. He grabbed me by the neck and gave me a noogie. My head in his grip, I
stared out into the woods. I thought I saw the deer from before staring right back at me, unmoving.
It felt good to be trusted. It felt like friendship. I never minded when the guys knocked on my door late
at night to borrow a book, nor when they inevitably stuck around until the early morning to talk about girls. I
especially didn’t mind when it came to Daniel.
One of those times, he told me he was really freaked out about something, so much so that he didn’t
know if he could even say it out loud.
“Whatever it is, I’m sure it isn’t that bad,” I said. “It can’t be anything worse than last week’s chlamydia
scare.”
“It feels worse than that. Or at least, more permanent.”
“You can tell me anything, man.”
“You know Gwen?” he asked.
“I don’t think so. Does she live in Barnes or Banks?”
“Neither. She’s got a place off-campus. She’s a junior. Performance artist.”
“Okay. What about her?”
“I was with her after the Sigma Phi party. We went back to her place.”
 “Is that who was all up on you that night? I remember her now. Pretty face.”
“Body isn’t too bad either.”
“What color string are we talking?”
“Full red. But I don’t know.” He was holding my copy of Catcher in the Rye, fidgeting with the cover in
his hands. “It wasn’t great.”
“What wasn’t?”
“All of it, kinda. When we first got to her apartment, she had me bend down in front of this big tapestry
with that Hindu elephant lady on it. She made me recite this chant with her, and then she burned some stick
that smelled like manure. But that was all fine, I guess. I’ve known weirder girls. It’s just that when we finally
got around to getting it on, she pulled out her video camera. And I didn’t really think much of it at first,
probably because I was just happy not to be singing in Sanskrit anymore, so I let her record us. It. Everything.
The idea of it was pretty hot in the moment, actually… until we finished and I came back to my senses. Like,
she’s still got the video, and I don’t. And she could show it to her friends, or use it in one of her performances.
Art chicks are crazy like that, you know? It’s messing with my head.”
He stopped for air. He was flipping the pages of my book back and forth, back and forth. It caused his
hair to flutter just the slightest bit.
I imagined at that moment that we weren’t in my room anymore. Instead, I saw us on the edge of the
woods again. In my vision, the sun was shining down on us through the trees, Daniel’s body like honey in the
light, a breeze brushing our skin and covering us both in goosebumps.

It was a noisy semester—the gruff, droning voices of my professors and the starchy shifting of their bodies in
their elbow-padded suits, the bass in my chest at parties in cramped dorm rooms, the whispers of my
housemates, frustrated, insecure, in the dead of night. Then, when the guys all went home for Thanksgiving
break, everything felt abruptly quiet, like the silence between tracks on a CD.
I sat silently in my room, thumbing through books but not really reading them. I sat at our kitchen table
and stared at the Wall, wondering if anyone would notice if I added another string to my picture, or took one
away from Daniel’s. Sometimes I sat on the other guys’ bedroom floors, staring at the posters and medals on
their walls, the memorabilia of their lives before college. I imagined they were the exact same people here that
they were in their hometowns. I wondered if I was too.
On the night of Thanksgiving, I went out to eat something other than microwaved mac and cheese and
to hear something other than my own feet shuffling from room to room. When I arrived at the dining hall, it
was mostly empty except for a dozen or so students. One of them, I recognized, was Gwen. She wore a
turtleneck the color of pea soup, sitting alone with her dinner and a battered copy of Steppenwolf open in front
of her.
“Can I sit with you?” I asked her.
She looked up at me. “Sure,” she said, but she had a look in her eyes that dared me to actually do it.
Before long, I was in her apartment.

We lay prostrate together under the Ganesha while I repeated Gwen’s Sanskrit chant. She burned a stick of
sage and waved it around the room, over the doors and windows, and around my head. Then we had stiff, eye-
contactless sex on her unmade bed.
After we finished, she pulled out her video camera. She stood above the bed and stared at me, not
turning it on, just tossing it back and forth in her hands.
“You live with Daniel, right? In Ferguson?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“I thought I recognized you. Have I made it onto the Wall yet?”
I clenched my jaw. The guys always said there was nothing wrong with the Wall because, really, we were
objectifying everyone on it, the guys and the girls equally. But the way Gwen asked about it made me tense up.
“Yeah,” I said again.
“Did Daniel tell you about the video?”
I shook my head. “No,” I lied.
Gwen narrowed her eyes. “I filmed us fucking,” she said. “Wanna see?”
“No thanks. I don’t think Daniel would like you going around showing that to people.”
“Hm,” she said. “That’s the first time I’ve gotten that answer. Henry and Danny have both watched it.”
 “Really?”
She nodded.
“That’s fucked up, Gwen,” I said.
She scoffed. “Don’t first-name me like you know me. Like I’m not anything more to you than a photo
and some string.” She laid back down on the bed beside me.
She turned the camera on and clicked through her most recent files until she landed on a thumbnail of
Daniel, reclined in the exact spot on the bed where I lay now. He had a mixed look of eagerness and
consternation on his face, his horniness tempered by his own reservation. Gwen clicked play.
I watched Daniel apprehensively take his shirt off, fumble to remove his pants. I watched Gwen take
him in her mouth, watched him thrust jerkily into her from behind. When he pulled out and finished on her
back, I watched the look of euphoria on his face quickly drain from him, replaced by something that looked like
regret.
Gwen turned the camera off. “You’re hard again,” she said.
“Yeah. You looked good,” I said. “Hot, I mean.”
Her lips curled into a smile. “Do you wanna have sex again?”
“Sure,” I said. “Yes.”
Fucking her from behind, I stared at the tapestry of the Ganesha over the top of Gwen’s head. But in
my mind’s eye, I replaced the god’s elephant face with Daniel’s. I pictured his speckled brown eyes and the
dimple in his chin. I imagined the deity’s many hands moving around to touch himself—the bony hollow
between his pecs, his flat, soft stomach, the trail of hair just under his navel.
I didn’t pull out when I came—I hadn’t even realized I did. Upon realization, I apologized profusely as
Gwen got up to grab herself a towel. She told me it was fine, really, since she was on the pill, but if I really felt
bad about it I could give her the twenty dollars it would’ve cost her to get a Plan B, as reparations.
I sat on the edge of the bed with my back to her, pulling my shirt over my head when she asked from
behind me, “Were you thinking of Daniel that time?” I felt her lie back down on the mattress. “Or the first
time, for that matter?”
“No,” I said, too quickly. That muffled, CD-player silence returned. “I should go. I’ll see you around.” I
got up from the bed and turned to face her before I left.
Gwen was lying there on her side like an odalisque, staring back at me with the same look in her eye
from the dining hall. Her video camera was propped up against her stomach, pointed right at me with the red
light blinking.

A few weeks earlier, the guys and I rode in the back of a cramped school shuttle on the way home from a party
across campus. Wedged between Danny and Daniel, I kept nodding off, my chin falling to my chest until a
bump in the road woke me up again. Daniel insisted I put my head on his shoulder, and when I told him I was
fine, he forced my head there in the crook of his neck. “Don’t be so proud,” he said. “Get some sleep.”
I set my gaze on the dark street in front of us. In the middle distance, I saw something in the road, like a
big chunk of pavement. But as we got closer, it looked more and more like a small animal, maybe a deer—
curled in on itself, probably asleep.
It was quite beautiful and looked so peaceful. It should probably get out of the road, I thought, my
eyelids heavy. It would be a shame if it got hit.
Mark Young
Mehreen Ahmed

Collector’s Item

Bones remembered. They read like an open story book. Of creatures, of habits, of cultures; if bones were to be
reconstructed, and retraced, a narrative of a forgotten race could emerge like a dancing dream. In my deep sleep
who I dream’t was no more predictable or consequential than my skin-deep complexion. Just as well, The face I
dream’t last night was inconsequential and unpredictable. Yet, I dream’t of someone in my unconscious,
subterranean self; I dream’t a hobbit slam a door to my face in not so subtle ways.

I know this hobbit, I’ve known him for years. Who often chided me, laughed at my button nose and the dark
tone of my skin. Until one day, I literally stepped on his toes for being churlish. He was in the throes of a
maddening mid-life crisis, and I, in my sweet twenties. I grumbled, I was grim, his grimy comments tormented
me; he told me that I had a pig-nose, that I was the black baby of this fair-skinned family, without any hope of
ever securing a husband. Who would marry me? Thankfully, I wasn’t the black sheep, because I had the
graciousness to repeatedly forgive him for his rudeness. I was better than him. He was such a tease!

Well-groomed, the hobbit harboured a desire to become king. He was our neighbour’s grandson. Growing up,
he pulled my pigtails an awful lot. I never took him seriously, particularly his waywardness affected me. I
realised that but I was also helpless to avoid him because he would be everywhere—by the lake, barking up the
same or the wrong tree, too, sometimes which I also did, in the forests, the mountains peaks, the old haunts as
it were; as though he could read my mind. As though he timed me and he knew exactly where to find me.
Liked him? I did not for calling me black, button-nosed creature of the night. But what could I do? When I
tried telling an adult, they ignored me, laughed it away, calling me a button-nosed Krishna as well—the dark
girl. I heard it so often being called the ‘dark beauty,’ the ‘dark night,’ even ‘dark knight,’ that the word “dark”
sunk into me like a stinging fly as a telltale sign of the adults grinning at me like Cheshire.

The suspicions began to stir my sensibilities; a confusion arose within me as to the use of that adjective: elevated
me sometimes as one who possessed exuberant “dark beauty” or lowly condescension to “dark ugly.” Nice try.
But my fortitude and optimism quelled such misgivings, and gave me the strength to rise above such double-
edged sarcasms/compliments, apportioned by the adults.

I stood tall, lifted my brows and held a button-nose high as I went about my way, bracing myself from any
negativity seeping into me. I was a beacon of resilience. I began to laugh with them. My family fed me well,
took me to the best forests, told me the best fantasies about our elves and fairies. I listened to the best flute
music and vocals. My cave-room was full of rarest forest flowers, and gifts of precious gems, rubies, lapis lazuly,
and diamonds glittered, everywhere I looked. My family taught me well, to be fearless and proud.

The hobbit spent an awful lot of time with my family and me. His mind soaking up all the toxicity around my
looks. While I had a clear plan as to what I wanted in life, he had none, and often
floundered in the most wicked dreams. When he teased me about my looks, I also played along laughing and
gave back some in banter; fruitless and impervious as he was to a purposeless life. While I wanted to be a healer,
he? Well, king of terra nallius. For he was just that—king of nobody who only excelled in churlish behaviour.

No wait, not entirely. He did have some interests. Because one afternoon, I walked over to his grandfather’s big
cave next door, I entered, not a soul was in or around. I entered a library full of all kinds of dead species, birds,
insects. Some rare butterflies, also, dreadfully pinned against the cave skirt walls. Stuffed animals of hunted
tigers, speared lion heads, and curved elephant tusks. Grandfather and Great, Great, Grandfathers spared no
animals in all the jungles as they went about their infamous hunting and gathering ruse without compunction.
They literally looted the nearby forests, and left nothing for other hobbits.

Looking at these, I wondered what else they collected. I ventured upstairs to the other rooms. Trespassing? Sure
it was, but I have been walking these great halls forever, too, never this far though, not even the library, always
closed. The hobbit’s bedroom doors were ajar, just when I heard footsteps at the entrance downstairs. He
entered with a folded bark under his arm. I retreated deeper into the dark walls.

He ascended the jagged stairs, two rapid steps at a time, and went into his room. The door was still wide open.
I heard dropping noise. I peeked from behind him and saw some bones rolling out of the bark as it unfolded.
Were they hobbit or animal bones I had no idea? I came out of my hiding, and descending the stairs, I fast
paced through the mountain passes, back into our cave next door. It was my deep secret, I discreetly held within
myself until I decided to find out more. I was taught to be fearless and free.

It was crazy. Why would no body be present when I was in there? Was this deliberate? I went to their cave
many times, but never did I see anything like it. Did they actually want me to see those objects? I always
thought they were great hunters and travellers. Whose mother died at childbirth. Whose father and grandfather
raised him to be a hobbit of the world, sent him across several seas to learn more about life? Who grew up in a
family without bonding to any female, who, in his spare time came to our place; a joyful cave teeming with my
aunts, uncles, cousins, mum and dad with whom he bonded. Of course, me.

The hobbit never cared to speak much about anything. He was a vapid soul, an empty shell unaffected by these
bones he collected. Bones belonging to those who would routinely tried to find gold in throw-away rocks after a
clean dig of the hobbit owned goldmine grounds. Where such hobbits living in abject poverty would hammer
away on these empty rocks in the hope of leftover gold dust; until death claimed their souls; their bodies lay
amok. No gold was ever found, or ever meant to be found in those hard rocks, except their bones.
Hard rocks. The fanciful hobbit goldmine, a deadly cesspool of exploitation where other hobbits worked
themselves to death in the hope of more meat and food through the deadly hours of the dark, hot mines;
honing skills for more gold out of the rocks; blood being vamped, bones being chewed until their teeth
clenched, muscles relaxed, and the dwarf bodies lay pale and petrified. Bones, brought home, stripped off any
traces of soft tissues, or faintest skin colour.

Down to the bare bones. Our hobbit friend suddenly died. Where they were collected and preserved in a bone
library of all kinds of Neanderthal, Homo Floresiensis, Australopithecus, Paranthropus, and the earliest-
known Homo Erectus skeletons; his bones, even in extinction, proved to be infinite; every inch fossilised in the
purest, solid form, his tales locked in. Unlike others, I didn’t have a single bad bone my mother always said. It’s
all in the bone. The rest were fantasies, lost in a vapour of ice.
Partha Sarkar

The revolution is at the spoiled embryo

The ancient bugle.

The sophisticated siren.
Welcome the morning the mild air strikes.
Outside of the ancient scar there are the broken wheels of the chariot
And after all footnotes again the ambassadors in the rendezvous
For the sake of safety of the wingless white dove-
‘Are there no dead twigs in imagination to tread? Bring them.
Is there no hollowness in the prosperity? Fill it with stinky attire.’

Suddenly come out of the fashion parade the sunglasses.

Try their best to keep the pyres in the rows
And a sightseeing –
A running father catching hold the wounded clock through the red smoke.
The sealed report and the stinky war

Atrocious city and the lone lantern in the hill-station.

Meets every corner of the wallet the shivering game.
Goes towards the hospital the silent saline when leafless
Trees read the low profile report of the season and
Gets disappeared fog
But it is not eternal frost

And believes it firmly the indifferent tower that

Winter always rules before and after spring.
The fixed siren and the lone pyramid

Every dawn with a utopia. The positivity with a zero face.

I fly to the gazing star to get the red flag to move to the uncertainty.

The fixed siren. The frozen toothpaste.

You may get the ticket the address of the soil
‘But where shall I go? If you ask the question if I may say –
‘There are
The diverted morning. The lone pyramid.’

Actually the advancing winter with an aloof moon

Meets the dilapidated mob when other bastards with quid
Spread the series of the eclipses

And nothing get nothing but ashes from devil.

The morning with dead children

A smoke from the skull.

A jingle from the knoll.
But none get unhappy
In the morning with dead children.

The altered job cards.

The congested philosophy.
Absurd signature of the avatar
And everyone is happy in the desert-
The destitute platform for the orphans.
But does any hand get destination?

Stop asking volatile questions.

Only ‘nowhere’ is the destination for the knives.
No other place is not safe for the wars.
The fixed siren and the lone pyramid

Every dawn with a utopia. The positivity with a zero face.

I fly to the gazing star to get the red flag to move to the uncertainty.

The fixed siren. The frozen toothpaste.

You may get the ticket the address of the soil
‘But where shall I go? If you ask the question if I may say –
‘There are
The diverted morning. The lone pyramid.’

Actually the advancing winter with an aloof moon

Meets the dilapidated mob when other bastards with quid
Spread the series of the eclipses

And nothing get nothing but ashes from devil.

Very much silent the world

Very much silent the world

Out of doors and within.
Keeps the peace in the equation silently
The generous revolutionary.
Even the tobacco-pouch gets shrewd
When there is no possibility of ploughing
The uncultivated land and
Get the share only the formality
And the outward gloss.
So, it will be the wise if there is no fake news of conception.

Moreover, gets the reward the spinal chord

In the ice age.
I am not going back

Fire has led me to the fine arts

As it has burnt the slums to ashes
And none so-called hearts have come forward
To put forward their hands to the ashes
To rebuild the humanity
And I am not surprised
As it has taught me to understand the depth of fine arts,
That is, the ambiguity of the faces.
But I will not go back to the soft tears
As I know those ashes are the alluvial soils

As I know I have to plough the scorched land.

I am not going back to the meat of pornography –

The meaningless fine of arts.
The earth is round

‘The earth is round….that’s why we meet with one another…’

The corridor.
The vast map
And everyone is a traveler
And everyone does not know where the destination is.

How are you? have you heard the news?

Goes behind one after another the trees.
Mother gets haunted by chemical
And then a fine morning
And the pall-bearers.

And here comes AI.

Any question?

Flees the final destination.

The history of the canker and the white marble palace

Every morning with usual charisma

And the state as usual unscrupulous in
Telling a lie
Kidnapping the sunrays to kill
And with a message ‘This highway heads for….’
Comes every morning with new confusion
And gets up every morning the axe to brush the edge
When spread the pebbles
The white marble palace,
The green meadows
And the glassed utopia.

But is happy everyone with the red signal with

Have you seen the joker with white fume?

A question from the skull every morning.

Caws the ancient crow in great social infrastructure

And loses its fragrance the affordable competition in the closed doors.
The oceanic salt and the seaweed

‘I have to do something special…’

The oceanic salt yet we will get much nectar
If we demolish the polyclinic near the stone.
The troubled water and dips into it the round
Biscuit. Generally during the sultry days comes
The climate summit and plays the dice the precocious
But do not get surprised the wallet of emancipation
When comes and goes as usual the little kitten in the inn.
And thus even the grass gets no comfort in the deep slumber
As no hand is not raised against the uneven chemical who pulls
The earth down to the smog of the development and when
Commits suicide the ship before it is stopped from being sunken.
Remain silent the foodie intellectuals in the nerves and gets coagulated
Blood in the cognition.

A prolonged tiredness.

Comes a deep lumber at the ankles and yet a warning for me-
‘I have to do something positive..’ and begins to smile% cholesterol.
So, no tension in taking the letter from now the more light and crispy sweet.
Perhaps one day all divine myths will be the closed chapters
And at the silence, I am blind and so is yellow poverty at the blue window.
Mark Young & Thomas Fink

from
100 Titles From Tom Beckett

paintings by
Thomas Fink

poems by
Mark Young
#48: Embrace Your Format
Embrace Your Power. A womans guide to loving yourself.

Embrace Your Elegant Power. Carve a path to success.

Embrace Your Power to Stay. Overwhelmed & over it?

Embrace Your Greatness. It's time to start feeling good about yourself!

Embrace Your Non-Linear Career. Just because you've always been or done one thing doesn't mean you can't
evolve & grow into a new rôle.

Embrace Your Vibrance. Vibrancy activation offers the ABCs of living.

Embrace Your Silhouette. Gain confidence by trying something new.

Embrace Your Weirdness. Immerse yourself in a world of heartfelt emotions & genuine connections as you
create unforgettable digital scrapbook pages.

Embrace Your Inner Sherlock Holmes. Build on the important work of previous national multicultural mental
health projects.

Embrace Your Imperfections. Find the positive side in your flaws.

Embrace Your Body — you've only got one!

Embrace Storms. Calm music for chaotic times.

Embrace Your Feminessence. Learn how our co-authors have navigated adversity & chosen to reclaim their
power by tapping into their Feminessence.

Embrace Your Inner Drag Queen. Set your own path & try new things. Your technique should serve your
artistic intentions.

Embrace Your Fears. Turn the paper into landscape format & divide the page into three columns.

Embrace The Afterlife. Enjoy grand festivities as you honor your loved ones at Day of the Dead Festival.

Embrace Integrated Pest & Disease Management. An African proverb says: Do not throw away your water just
because you heard it will be raining.
Embrace Rich Media Format. It is easy to plan a chartered yacht vacation.

Embrace Your Format. A must read for everyone.

Embrace Yourself. No other formats or editions found.

#51: Shadow Rhymes
 Plum blossoms —
the sound of a three-penny
flute.
— Issa.

The puppeteers—working as a trio —

manipulate arms, legs, mouth, eyes,
hands, head — nothing else exists.
Beneath the costumes all is empti-
ness — of their charges. The Padawan
puppeteers enfold themselves in

black hoods & costumes to create

the shadows they inhabit. The master
stays visible — since he is whom the
audience has come to see. In concert,
it is the trio’s gift to make the almost
life-sized puppets seem alive. The

puppets do not speak. Nor do the

puppeteers. Nearby a shamisen. Also
a reciteur, not of the Quran, but rather
a narrator & rôle-player, many-voiced,
who both tells the story & speaks
the component parts. Not spoken of

is the length of time it takes to truly

learn the craft, to come out from the
shadow. Ten years for the feet, ten
more years for the left hand. Working
with rods as the shamisen controls the
tempo of the play. It alone has strings.
#62: Surrounded by a Lack of Invagination
He thought cell division was a
branch of mathematics. Couldn’t

imagine it to be anything else. That

is until he stood at the vegetal pole

looking across at the animal pole &

realized that meiosis had occurred

but, as yet, no inward movement

of any portion of the blastula’s wall

had started the folding back on itself

that begins the formation of a gastrula.
#97: Wholesale Identity Crisis Discount Warehouse Burns into the Night
Senescence is for the old, & usually
doesn’t come cheaply. Not that many
places to shop for options, & most of
those take advantage of their clientele,
suggesting outlandish refits to disguise
the who-am-I? symptoms that are ta-
king over the self. In another theater,

cosmetic surgery runs a parallel path.

That is why the arrival of the WICiD
stores caused such a stir. Simple to
shop in, many persona to choose from,
courteous & well-informed staff who
are more interested in recreating an
identity than selling something simply

for the sake of profit. Hatred from the

psych+ industry as they see their oligo-
poly start to crumble. Their febrile minds
together. Just one thing for it. Hastily-
convened conferences out of town which
they all attend; & in their absence the
WICiD warehouse goes up in flames.
Ailbhe Wheatley

ALL IS BEATING

Oh and how they bloom yet

there’s a crevasse in the concrete.
Oh and how they flutter
in the bushes right beside me.

I am apart,
and partying with

whatever whispers
back at me.
WAKING UP

Meeting myself
from below,
expanding on the edges
of the present, watching thoughts tread
on my toes
as yet unfamiliar
and as yet still few.

The thoughts that rise at dawn

are deeper, cutting through my
barbed wire brain.
WHOLENESS

Finding yourself requires no effort

or schemed searching.

It requires breath
and listening

falling into unconditional love

with your wholeness.
SUPPORTED

Sometimes all you have to do is feel

into the energy of a space
and know that it is like a soft cushion.

Life is a cushion to lie on.

You are supported by this lovely cushion

even when you feel it the least.

The pillow is within.

DAYDREAMS

There I was
diving into daydreams
letting myself go,
departing.

Meanwhile, here on earth

life passed without me.
LED BY THE LAND

I wanted to dive deeper

but my attention leaps
right out the window
frolics in the meadow

and digs more burrows than holes.

Andal Srivatsan

How To Love a Narcissist

You don’t.

Love is complex;
inextricably wound in beautiful mysteries,
like morning dew at the nape of a leaf’s neck,
gently teasing, blowing a soft kiss.

Love isn’t a habit;

the habit of sweeping your house
or washing your dishes,
fearing that they may pile up,
soon wither.

Love isn’t loving for the fear of losing.

It is whole – all pieces of your heart

tightly bound together, safely nestled like
a baby Garden Warbler with its mother.

It isn’t your seclusion, at the nook of a

party, tossed aside while they make sheep’s
eyes at others, and remark that green makes
you look fat. It isn’t the sound of the word
love, that never reaches their eyes.
Maybe someday you’d know what love is;
so singular, resilient, exotic,
that you scour the world in search for it.

O Garden Warbler, look!

broken twigs,
thin branches,
leafless tree,
swept away from the rest,
yet enough to build yourself
an unassailable nest.
Ross Island, Port Blair

Circa 2016

Not too long ago – recent enough to:

pile over world events,
heartbreak.

Alone on that island, taking selfies against the

backdrop of trees, the sea, tumbledown buildings,
I am a character in an art film,
Soft piano plays in the backdrop – Yann Tiersen.

At a nook, through the gates of shrubbery,

peepul trees, banyan takeovers,
a Chital deer grazes on grass.
I reach out, say hello, I look around,
there’s no one.

No response, I approach the deer, smugly

because there are no antlers. So, even if I were
to die all alone in this abandoned island,
I wouldn’t have antler shards in my stomach.

Hi there, I say. How are we?

The deer looks me in the eye,

continues to graze. In a second,
I’m within two feet of the deer. No flinch,
eyelids don’t bat, continues to graze.

The time is eleven, the ship blares.

I wave goodbye, exit. I stand, solitarily,
at the stern. The ship cuts through the water,
motor runs, everything is deafening.
Sunlight brushes the trees of Ross Island, and
me alike. There is pleasure and shame,
in realising that I am no threat,
no
predator.
Watching La Dolce Vita on the first date

sage green couch

cheese popcorn
diet soda

my sheer fur stockings now slide uncomfortably below my hips

when I adjust, he moves in response
asks me if I am okay.

his favourite scene:

Anita Ekberg in the trevi fountain,
beautiful Nordic goddess,
jawline as sharp as a knife.

his entertainment unit is a host of awards,

picture of a handshake with Bill Clinton,
a framed Harvard degree,
a Gucci
storage box.

three hours later,

credits roll,
what a sweet movie, he remarks.

my stockings are rolled into a bunch at the nook,

la dolce vita; a sweet life

slips away.
The first drop of red on her underwear

is actually blue in advertisements.

The real red

soaks into the cotton fabric,
on the other side, it shows up as

shame.

Red sindhoor at the front

where her hair parts,
her nuptial rose-hued saree,

dishevelled the following morning.

Red, plump tomatoes at the local vendor’s,

cut, mutilated, ground
into thick curry for peas and potatoes,
The man lets out a loud

burp,
the plate is left on the table as he washes his hands,
gravy dries on silverware.

Red, pink baby lets out a cry,

her eyes adjust to the bright lights,
mother silently wishes
that things for her would be

different.
Torn from Morning’s Pink Azalea

You are never warned,

just intimated about your
recent folly, aberration,
like you meeting the fog on the day’s drive,
blindsided, startled.

In the middle of the room,

on a dresser, there’s a looking glass.
Through her, you’re swallowed whole
into your past
so full of colour, joy, sadness
all quaffed by shame –

Shame; so lofty,
clinging onto your skin like a helminth.
The pinnacle of your cheek is red,
so are your ears – red, so distinctly separate
from your body
and all of a sudden…
cold and hot alike.

The hair on your sweater stand up

like as if lightning were to hit the land,
like the earth, your body cracks at the centre,
opens its mouth wide
resigns to its own
abyss.

In your movie there is mitosis,

you split into two identical parts –
one; embarrassed, with stifled tears in
the girls’ bathroom submerged under
the smell of creosote oil.
the other; watching you despise you,
wondering how love for yourself is so
excruciatingly scanty,
riddled with guilt,
next to
nothing.

You spend the next few years learning

love,
through losing love. You say
there is no learning without loss, but
here you are; derelict,
desperate to
find
things that you can lose.

You emerge from the looking glass,

time is like morning dew;
tiny droplets on the Azalea’s chest
beautiful,
and ephemeral alike.
When the dew drips from
the petals, it makes the same
sound
as the drops of water leaking from
one of the many eyes of that
old bathroom faucet
years ago….

split into two;

irreconcilable.
Andrea Nicki

My Prayer

My prayer is for self-sickness, a sickness when the self

gets lost in a big sea of itself and can’t find anyone and or anything to hang onto.
Even a log is too difficult to grasp, resists any pull, springs to another log as if for protection.
A dolphin veers in another direction as if facing a shark,
and even a shark is uninterested, finds such prey unappetizing as an empty shell.
A whale will avert this lone human just as it does a killer orca.
A human afflicted with self-sickness may lose interest in water,
confuse something so essential with alcohol and have no limit.
Food too may become tasteless, adding flesh and reminders of humanity, other humans.
Others may offer help, but the human has collapsed too far into themself,
become a compressed, stuck accordion--no music possible--
or like a closed fan, refusing to cool even for a moment another’s sweating brow.
Others lose interest in helping them, in trying to connect, in seeing potential--
avoid this stinging jellyfish.
Family History

Is parental neglect just “water under the bridge”?

The water seems rocky under a black night sky and a sad woman
is considering whether she should jump,
but then decides to walk down the gravel path
and look at the river.
It is calm enough, with a small breeze,
and the water close by is shallow.

There is someone standing above her,

her older sister.
Her anorexic body and clothing make her look like she is still 16.
She is looking beyond the river,
proud and confident, but angry.

The brothers do not know where to stand,

next to which sister, the younger or the older:
the one skidding stones across the water
near the river’s mouth, its tongue tip,
unconcerned, tranquil
or the older one who is upset,
throwing stones at everyone, including the younger one,
but missing.
Seeing Double

I am jetlagged from flying across 16 time zones, back to Vancouver from Southern Taiwan, my body still
vibrating after 48 hours, seeing double:

smoky air, shrouding hills, human moods versus Granville Island air scented with essential oils from its tourist
shops, boutiques perfuming and enlivening people and dogs;

my brother’s dogs walking freely up a high mountain in Chun Rih, at times spotting and picking up dried
worms, like a long chain of dried raisons, and spiraling down and around the mango farms, then meeting several
more dogs barking and growling near the top, defending a farm

versus short-leashed Vancouver dogs in pink duffel jackets and studded leather collars, some collars flashing
with red lights, greeting each other with a wag and sniff, trotting past well-manicured lawns and town houses,
playing “fetch” in muddy, fenced dog parks;

Ping Tung County owners knowing their neighbours’ names, though not always their neighbours’ dogs’ and
community dogs’ names

versus Vancouver owners often knowing only their neighbours’ dogs’ names or, if they have forgotten, asking
and about the breed;

Mountain Indigenous people of Chun Rih of four generations mingling with white Europeans as friends, fathers,
mothers, husbands, wives, in-laws, uncles, aunts, co-workers, teachers…

versus Indigenous people of disrupted generations--the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh nations--at
rallies protesting the invasion of pipelines into their unceded, ancestral lands and missing, murdered Indigenous
women;

7-11 coffee versus Starbucks;

a squatting toilet versus a seated toilet;

toilets in omni-present 7-11 stores versus toilets in sporadic coffee shops.

a bowl of sesame noodles with pickled boiled egg and seaweed versus fish and chips;

betel nut versus cannabis;

outside betel nut stalls versus federally legal cannabis stores with student and new immigrant employees;

network of teachers minding each other’s children versus individualistic teachers competing for spots in daycare
or with paid help;

my brother’s close teacher friend who treats me as a sister, shares his loves of the land, slips a betel nut chew
into my pocket, saying “Welcome to Taiwan”;

versus Vancouver colleagues who are in other townships or “too busy” to come greet me when I return at the
airport, my eyes looking hopefully for my name in English print on carboard alongside cardboard with names in
Chinese script;

my sister-in-law’s great aunt, Paiwanese elder, next door who has never left the village because “there is no
reason to” versus my Canadian aunt in a care center with sons and relatives at the opposite side of the country;

exteriors of houses with one coat of paint, the original, versus yearly new layers of paint;

a lot of questions about family and personal life versus a lot of questions about work and status;

one personality matching business, work, family, friends, and community versus a manicured, rotating
personality with different sides, depending on the setting and situation;

shirts matching others’ shirts--my brother donning a Paiwanese vest for a concert at the Paiwanese school where
he teaches--versus matching brand name business suits;

my supersize body in Taiwan that can’t find an attractive swimsuit in store after store at the night market versus
my medium-sized body safely tucked and hidden among plus sizes;

Tonight I took my dog for a night walk around Granville Island. Trying to recover from the dehydration of air
flight, I had drunk a lot of water. I needed to pee but the community center was closed and none of the coffee
shops and restaurants would let me use the restroom with my dog; I squatted in a dark, bushy spot of the dog
park.
Anna Kapungu

The Great Winter of Sacrifice

The cold Antarctica winds seem to expose the poverty

Poverty that I held within
It was written on my face
Smile at the world with the cursed luck
Precipitation on the frozen grounds
And it does not give the unfriendly earth
The world knew my name
Fame was just a game
Contracts with no promises
Yet poverty lacerated my veins
The force of the Mephisto
The lure of homelessness
My face out of the water
Winter was stifling, suffocating
A torrent swept the humanity out of me
Misfortune was dancing the snow dance
Solitary nights I bear the bane
Wretchedness ,woe and hades
Stood in my divinity
Freedom from doubt
The sun will shine in the morning
ABSENT FROM THE PRESENT

I finally conceded to the flood

I was mistaken
I could negotiate the witching hours
Searching for the peace that I owned
Peace I lost
Loose my nerves when sleep is the sweetest
Wade through the folio of my hurts with tears
Its a cliché the secrets one holds will give the mind peace
Frantic unhinged unravelling in the night times
Castigating, burning candles scolding the evil spirits
Hush the powers of recollections
Catch the morning light whispering peace to me
WHITE FLAG

I finally washed my hands

I explained being lonely as a place I was
Gods gift was taking the long way round
I keep counting the clouds in the sky
Convince myself the sun will shine
When loves tenderness is justified
I lived in Antarcticas cold for a while
Haunted by the fear of the love of a man
The fear that haunted me for years
Blasphemy I did not abide by the laws of love
Love was like a stranger
I needed
Needed a link,a bond at an intersection
Bring down my walls of Jericho
Part my Red sea
Then love would be at hand
Encounter it as the winds through my window
It has its own texture endemic scintilla
By the fireplace its mood is unwavering
Wraps in me in its inclination
Justify the hurt in the child
Holds me close till the panic is gone
OSMOSIS

If it was your wish

To dream of us in four colour theorem
Always believe in tomorrow
A foundation of us
The probability of our hearts affair
Unearth our correlation
Fragment the shape of time
In high spirits we catch the winds
Crave to untangle my world, my circumference
Reside in your radius
Common days to be endless
Midnight calls short of rupture
In an indefinite proportion blossom
Multiply our power into prolific
The common denominator of our ambitions
In the open space of expectation
Tally the days of expansions
We will be in unison, my love
In some dimension an infinitesimal calculus
Love as the equation
Beloved you had me thinking
SAFFRON

I absorbed the woman in her

Spoke with an accent
Sat with her legs crossed
Her chin in her hand
She said her name was Saffron
She moved in with a bass guitar and Burberry bags
Heatwave it was July
She said she was from New Orleans
Home of the blues, spiced oxtail and fried ribs
Her voice was deep and accentuated
Skin flawless, she was summer
Brown golden highlights
Eyes a mirror of baby Barbie
Eyes the colour of the sea
She sang the blues like Aretha Franklin
Her voice rippled sonoric in the waterfalls
Walked silently feet turned as a Ballerina
Makes a man’s heart melt
Loved Lillies of the Fields
Desired to study Sydney Poitier
She was radiating
Self-possessed, halcyon
Deluged by her aura
Immersed in her scent
Absolutely blooming Miss Dior
SIFIRNIA CONCERTANTE

If I could paint the arcane part of my past

Unblemish the storehouse of my history
Set free the wounded bird at the seashore
The inflamed charred senses of certitude
Could I be loved

If I could empty the fragmented crushed heart that was stung

Cold words that run through my veins
Stomach the deceit in his voice
Misgivings in my affections
Could I be loved

If I could let my guard down

Put on show a picture of the heart of a child
Fragile akin the Roses of Sharon
Whisper nostalgic words into your memories
Alluring inviting sounds kindred Sifirnia Concertante
Crescent moons in my essence
Perfumed as Moonflower and Tigerlillies
Could I be loved

If I could chronicle my days

Sonorous aspirations for love
Unclothe my sackcloth and ashes
The ambitions of my dreams
Would love, love me
PORT IN A STORM

He revolutionised my mind
Envisioning the world with a slant
Earth 23 degrees on a tilt
Heart to heart he was my gain
An enigma eccentric with a good name
He mutated into my allure
Placed himself in my thoughts
Day dreams of fancy
Secured me, my port in a storm
Windswept I was standing in the gusts of his emanation
A force of presence
My possibility
My odds on favourite
My days were delight,romance and bliss
He was my roadstead a place of safety
My prize
Buoyant I am happy
Brenda Mox

BEYOND NUMB DAYS

Inhabiting her body ethereally like a thought,

she sees with memory as much as eyes,
and weeps with relief to embrace honest grief
after nursing an outrage without giving it voice.

Each image stands still beside its shadow

like flags of surrender in a world
unable to remember his energy
she had learned to crave.

To hold such significant emptiness

in a stretch of many sad days,
a hole in her heart unfixably flows
a tributary to the lake of grief.

Tense with fury and sadness,

quieted to occasional sobs,
she manages to grimace a smile
wide eyed and fierce,
a rueful laugh at life’s ridiculous persistence.

One must admire such artful energy

sensing the weight of each wave of grief.
T’was a long process of coming
slowly undone from one’s self.
But the world grows quickly
impatient with grief
or indulgences of adult despair,
when not behaving like a decent widow should.

One must step somehow

from the realm of ghosts,
beyond numb days to an opposite shore
where he resides, no more.
IN SPITE OF SELF

To be quiet when most agitated,

to measure that silence
by clouds crossing skies,
so much detail goes unnoticed.

Suppressing a smile
in spite of self,
letting face be touched
by movement of trees,
lips parting in wonder
at quivering pools
of black and yellow
wings that rise
with the scent of a thousand
translucent white buds
and the odor of wild
water over stones!

There is no such thing

as being alone.
SHADY DEEDS

A soft sun fires serendipitously

beneath a cobalt blue canopy.
Aquamarine seas,
slapping the shore,
meet the blue violet
horizon of infinity
in a blurry
water colored simplicity.

The bees hum busily

in pampas grass
among poppy gardens
with globes of glass.

Where honey colored

houses in seaside towns
have small private coves
scattered around.

Tucked into pockets

of swaying pine trees
a sunny place for shady deeds,
an anchor for drifters uncertainties.
LEAKED RAINDROPS

He was sitting in a dead ocean

of undulating sand
listening to the
rhythm of the waves,
watching pelicans dive
bomb the sea
when a heavy storm,
black as a midnight ocean
blew in and the sky
leaked raindrops.

A hazy gray moonlight broke

dimly between clouds
in a sky lacking stars,
glowering an inky blue.
Frigid wind wrapped itself
around branches of beach trees,
twisted and bleak.

The air was laced

with thick ghostly fog
brewing down desolate
beach paths
where shadows stretched
when gauzy shafts
of moonlight broke through.

Expelling quick, frosty breaths,

the solitary man stumbled
toward the congested smell
of smoke clogged air
rising from his lonely hearth.
LINK THAT WELDS

Out of the wilderness

of being alone
he found his thoughts in tangles.
Words seemed to slip away
as though his memory
had been scrubbed
Blank.
He could not process
one logical thought.

In a cold snap
of inspiration,
his brain split,
running in opposite
Directions
in an effort to make sense
of his fragmented self.

Soon a new impression

broke the surface,
as though a window
to her thoughts had
Opened.
In his mind he could
hear each gear
Engage,
mentally stretching
to reach him.

Holding to this fragile

link that welds them,
they became each other.
Joined with invisible,
immutable filaments they
Orbit
each other’s world
side by side
in silent
Harmony.
Brett Ann Stanciu

Excerpt from Call It Madness, a novel

Summer 1976
Interstate 95, North

He drove with the pickup windows half-down. The wind hurried in as if searching for something.
Penny sat crosslegged, fingering her dress’s patchwork squares. Turquoise with gold swans. Red and black
stripes in varying width. A chunk of white. A single pocket of a gingerbread woman on a red background was
sewn in the dress’s center, big enough for her clenched hands.
She refused to change clothes.
Grownup women she knew and didn’t know kept offering, “Honey, let’s find you something fresh and clean.”
The old man in suspenders who said he was her grandfather, her Opa, told them, “Let the child be.”
She scuttled under the beautyberries, escaped.
Opa crawled under the bushes, too, and sat with her in the dirt. “Your Grandma Erna sent me. She
stayed on the farm to feed the chickens and milk Lupine. We have only the one cow left.” His beard snagged on
a leafy branch. He unwound his beard bit by bit, a twisted white tuft remaining on the branch, hung in the
piercing Florida sunlight like a cobweb.
He had a hand that was not-a-hand, a folded up flipper, not human. A fearsome thing.
As he drove, pavement flashed by the window. They passed fields so enormous it seemed impossible to
ever walk through them. The truck rolled over bridges that spanned rivers with boats, the water flowing to
faraway places. In her breath’s fog on the glass, Penny drew two walls and a peaked roof, a door and two
upstairs windows, a cat with a corkscrew tail beneath a tree that grew taller than her patch of fog, so she
exhaled, again, against the window, expanding her palette. She sucked a drop of condensation from her finger.
Her skin tasted like a grubby apple slice.
The sky stretched, broken by jagged cityscapes. Rivers, half-moon iron bridges, mystifying mile markers.
Everything was nameless. The daylight gave way to darkness and glowing cities. She woke in the night, and still
he was driving. The pickup had no radio.
In preschool, Miss Morin played the piano. They sang songs whose words Penny didn’t know except for Free to
be me and you. They sang these words over and over, her teacher’s favorite song, as if there were no other
words. Penny didn’t like this Miss Morin who made Penny go in the bathroom and wash her face every
morning and do something about those ears. What was she supposed to do? Remove her ears? Wasn’t Penny
free to be her own me?
In her window’s foggy picture, she sketched a nest in the tree’s branches, four open baby birds’ beaks.
They drove among endless cars and long trucks and moving vans. A train followed the highway until the
tracks turned elsewhere. The moon hung in the pale pink sky, out of place. It was supposed to rise over Pike’s
Park where they sometimes brought sandwiches for dinner and ate at the picnic tables, silver aluminum, hot
from the sun.
They stopped at a restaurant, where Opa drank coffee. He said they should order pieces of pie. The pies
sat on the diner counter under smeared glass covers. Cherry bled red like spilled blood through the crust. She
would never, ever eat that. Instead, she tore tiny pieces from the corner of a paper napkin, pushed them into a
pile with her fingertips.
The waitress refilled her grandfather’s cup and patted Penny’s head.
On stools at the counter, truckers chewed toothpicks, talked trucker talk.
Opa folded bills beneath his drained cup. On their way out, he stopped at the row of candy machines.
“You like gum?”
“Mom says no gum. Gets stuck in my hair.”
One knee of his jeans had a hole the size of a penny. The material hung loosely, and she couldn’t see his
skin. He slid a coin in the machine, cranked the knob, and then opened the hatch at the bottom. Gumballs
rolled into his scary hand, the fingers chopped off, the palm twisted. Carefully, without touching him, she took
the sweets — one, two, three, of course she could count, she was no baby. He studied the row of glassed-in
colored treats and dropped coins into another machine. This time, a plastic egg rolled into his hand. She took
that, too. She was no dummy, her mother said.
She held the egg in one hand, candy in the other.
They stepped out into the glaring afternoon. The light fell hard, like a thing.
The truck already smelled familiar, suffused with the tangy hay chaff sprinkled over the seats and
gathered in clumped lines on the floor. She placed the gumballs on her dress spread over her crossed legs and
opened the egg. A disc, about the thickness of a pencil eraser, fell into her lap. The circle had a plastic cover
over a paper picture of a boy on a blue tricycle. Tiny holes were punched on each of the tricycle’s handlebars and
over the boy’s overall bib. Three silver balls rolled in the disc. Penny tipped the disc, trying to cajole the beads to
find their homes and remain fixed.
Her grandfather drove onto the interstate.
A bead rolled into one handlebar and then escaped. An impossible, maddening puzzle.
Penny leaned her forehead against the half-rolled window, the breeze mucking with her hair. When she woke,
her eyes smeary with dreams and sleep crumbles, the gumdrops had melted in her fist. The tips of her long hair
were stuck to the runny gumball mess in her hand, just as her mother had warned, the gingerbread woman
smeared faceless with green sugar.
Her grandfather hung one hand loosely over the steering wheel, staring ahead, his dreadful half-hand
open on his knee. Her mother lay crooked on her side, her t-shirt scrunched above her hips. Her hair, a mane of
curls where Penny loved to nestle, was colored like the park’s sandy paths where they sometimes walked. Straw
in the neighbor boy’s rabbit hutch. Dirt beneath the beautybushes. She smelled the ocean’s salt as the tide rolled
out to sea, waves dense with seaweed, pebbles, tiny crabs, scraps of strangers’ sandwiches the gulls had dropped.
She buried her hands in those curls as if that morning, that day, that life might go on forever. As if the arc of
the universe could be altered.
Carrie Purcell Kahler

V42.1: Heart Replaced by Transplant

To Corey

First, an inadvertent swap with codfish—

kiss and pulse flip-flopping swish
faster than incumbent politicians.
Traded for a cat clock keeping sanguine
seconds by tail and eye.
Ditched various pumps peripatetic and pedestrian.
My mother posed fobbed off nano-legos.
My father said swallow gold.
Others extolled the bottled smell of old books—
I bound instead a street organ in and looked
for the blue blood’s brimming spin
through creaky lacuna to begin.
Instead your rhythm swelled my veins;
our hearts’ beat a sweet and perfect pain.
 780.2: Syncope and Collapse
“Alas I took great pains to study it, and ‘tis poetical”
“It is the more like to be feigned; I pray you keep it in.”
Twelfth Night

th’purpose
o’th’viol-de-gamboys
speak’st o’these
question’s

o’my
o’man
i’th’butt’ry

whoe’re a’nights
numb’red t’embrace
th’alliance mounr’st

swear’t
‘tis
cruel’st suff’ring
 297.1: Delusional Disorder

“I only ask for equity justice and truth”

The Second Book of Wonders More Marvelous Than the First
- Joanna Southcott

If there be credit in the newspapers,

I ask what they judge of me.

I trouble you and your father’s house:

judge from what Spirit I was visited.

I saw berries like potatoe berries.

Meet with six or with twelve to judge my writings.

If the man were now alive I would not kill him;

I hope the judge will forgive me.

These are the promises:

call back the judge of time.

The perfect truth of England of the harvests of 1799:

judge it from the devil and call back the time

How many letters sent by children?

If you were to be the judge of the writings,

would you act like Pilate?

I mean the Bishops judge every spirit.

The book is sold at Jones's, No. 5, Newgate-Street.

You judged it the disorder of a confused brain.

My soul feels for you knowing the threatenings;

judge why the Lord will suffer a woman’s words to come true.

Do you believe that this dark orb shall from ashes rise?
None but fools can judge.
The hearts of men in chequered lines lie open.
The Lord judge between man and me.

What in Gethsemane?
You judge me a lost sheep.

The wind shall carry them away and the whirlwind shall scatter them.
Judge how many are going astray after me.
Chris Stroffolino

After Brian Lucas

the heady
is heavy
till
the skitter of drums
breathing through
discordant stums

allow
the soft purr of sax
to rise from the mist…

ravens sing the blues

through the crystalline air of psych-folk

till
a spectral haze
burbles & bubbles
so the vocals
get lost
between
the creases
of the tapestry
in the light lap
of noise.

It’s not all calm in the cocoon,

but it certainly is beautiful.
radio on the phone;
headphones cupping ears

bass panned slightly

right lower corner

piano islands or clouds

cluster left

space down
the fill
turnaround
after chorus
the only symmetry

gentle, almost, feeble

voice top & centered
"One for my baby, one more for the road"
a version never heard before
in a style not characteristic
of Chuck Berry

2.16. 24
String Quartet Ears
…hammer, anvil, stirrup
cello, violins, voila!

no drums here, ear strings

standing musicians
dancing arm muscles
polyrhythms
bowed with right hands
countermelodies
plucked with the left
fingers of sound
like breeze breath
across sun heartthrob
ears acted out visually
the power of G minor compels
a movement’s ferocity
a violinist’s determined look
a slower movement
at the 4 minute mark
raises a musician’s eyebrows
yearning curious reverent
wet earth from the waist up

did I detect a glance of mischief…

unguarded tenderness

Is this what Beethoven heard

more aggressive than Schubert

beautiful lyrical moments

in his Eb major too
but they never last long
like they’re almost too pretty to bear
Aeolian Cadences

As the valley is high the mountain is low

metronomes & waters down
the higher you fly the deeper you go,
one little beat you don’t expect
between verses of All I Gotta Do
can make the song

call you on the phone. Now I’m

a two-chord groove piano trance
Don’t Let Me Down flowing into
the earlier I’d Rather Go Blind
for ten minutes so it forgets
the I’m in love for the first time bridge.

I hear the melodic phrasing

of Femme Fatale in Hurt So Bad,
& xylophone riff of Under My Thumb
in the vibes of I Can’t Help Myself.
You could read loneliness into this.
I guess you could also read math.

For some singers, the word soul

and thing is interchangeable. It’s
your thing. Do what you wanna do.
Everybody’s got a thing, but some don’t
know how to handle it. Soul finger.
Soul Explosion. Memphis Soul Stew.

& I still cannot think of better

keyboard layering in a pop song
than the wonder of Boogie on Reggae Woman.
Tell Me Something Good?
Until you come back to me
that’s what I’m gonna do!

4--7-24
Café Pick Me Up
(written by Chris Stroffolino and Steve Carll)

I take my coffee cloudy with dreams

so pour me another cup of Carly Joe

Tex I Gotcha! Simon The Chokin Kind!

& in 95 many coffee shops had Portishead ambience

armloads of ink and earsfull of Low and slowcore

to expound your aesthetic within

the slide guitar in Dionne Faris’s “I know”

and Justine Frischmann’s voice in Elastica’s “Line up.”

blurring into jungle’s impossible drum clatter

clear across the hazy brain of winter

“that leaves me with a twisted view of the whole wide world as I know it,”
as Aceyalone sang, “and I guess I got no choice but to be a poet.”
Cindy Savett

Letter to Blue in Nettled Times

There is a pale gray mercy I

need from You –

a dense rag to stanch the mind’s overflow,

for so many slim remembrances
fall –

how You draw Your hands across

me, as You would
peeling birch

nod slightly among the pines

when I’m hesitant.

This morning ice petals

printed their haste on my windowpane.

When will You come?

Denied

Sleepless night, my bed stays

vacant, sweat stings
my roiling mind.

That I can hear You,

I write out Your name
but it vanishes with early light!

I speak, You vibrate in unseen recesses.

I long to draw You from the ancestral
darkness that breeds in my mouth,

yet nowhere among the primordial trees

are their memories of roots
with You in the cradle as it swings.
Notes to Blue

Dense current of a solitude

bearing
down on me.

The heft that lies in nothing –

sword-spit in my breast,

careless with Your birch’s

memory of first leaves.

It’s December
and I still wait

swaying,
all of me, swaying.
Nothing But Blue

You brush rose dawn on Your lips –

my heart thuds, I lose all sight,
hear You only through din of

sovereign
light as it pours into dust pillars,
till I climb
hand over hand
to unclothed stars grown
shy among Your

fullness
as sky inhales this crackling earth –

stunned by life’s glory I

fall from such heights

so close
I was to the haze.
A Mighty Shaking

It’s turning bleak now, for anonymity

marries the wind,
the sky a mist of stripped
seams
hoping to wrest a silver
thread from Blue’s
letting-spool.

There’s barely enough scavenged to seal

the doorway

and steel nails can’t be

found to fasten
down the window.

My palm, wrapped in silver strands –

come here,
peace.
Dan Sicoli

alley view

fourteen bulbous pigeons slotted together

on a power line in a snowless january

a shyless gray sky ominously

imprisons the cold still air

curtains unfurl like party horn tongues

from an open apartment window

left agape since the sun's lam

after a bruising battle with itself

preening birds occasionally shrug shoulders

as a garage door rises for an emerging car

the sedan skillfully backs out

between trash totes tossed askew

a roof shingle lays purposeless on pavement

a water tank waits like a log to be hauled

a pigeon flies off baiting another to follow

into the morning silence of a missing dream
porchman

porchman knows of two crow's nests

seated high in the neighbor's firs

he polices the block from cushioned perch

with an everywhere stare siphoning all

he's got an eye for distinguishing parked cars

even as most vehicles are black and look alike

it's an attribute he's honed--

an artistic eagle for detail

as the self-anointed guardian of

all our outward intimacies

he'll postulate on unseen and unheard

events occurring beyond his purview

porchman surmised the new tenants

across the street moved from new jersey

he's certain the wife is a nurse

and will wager hubby steps out on her

radio song spills out from the

open-air veranda into the living world

a flapping american flag on a pole holder

attached to one of the porch columns

will surely slap your cheek should a stray

zephyr swirl about as you ascend the steps

once while passing by he waved me up to

jaw as the beatles filled the background
while attempting to retract a tear he said
the long and winding road was their pinnacle

though there may be things porchman misconstrues

the overnight silence of falling leaves is a reminder

of a past marooned with days of impatient

anticipation for a new light to appear

resigned now to clocking out a father’s echoed curses

he rubs festers left by ticking cogs of boneyard hounds
evenfall

she's pulling weeds again

roots, leaves, petals, et al

something here of work value

and a notion of control

before devastation marks

a smudge of neuron

edging of tall memory

vying for a surge of chaos
David Lohrey

Kiss Me on the Mouth of the River

He licks his chops

like a field hand

he sinks his teeth

that’s good he says
licking his chops wood
and readies the family fire

the country life is the envy of the rich

they buy up the land

one acre at a time to go Christmas shopping

Hurray! The vagina whisperer cries

It’s a new dawn a new day of the dead

a favorite holiday for shopping looking for Mexican
souvenirs.

Borderline insane he was as everyone called Uncle Joe

the nickname given by FDR
to his friend with the cockroach mustache
in Turkey everyone dies the earthquake a mere 9.2 on the Richter scale.
One

at Chez Panisse where each and every lettuce leaf is licked clean by a virgin.

He abused his five-year-old and it is much

worse than the priests Catholicism at least has nice music
playing late at night. We called the police the streets at night
or there is bound
to be an uptick in crime fiction is my favorite genre,

what I love is black and white the greatest conflict in American history.
Churchill ordered

to shoot the miners you say you just love the Prime
Minister and most Americans do

but my Trotskyite friends hate his guts

poured out from his abdomen after being shot in the dark
victory was the name of the film

And she smokes two cigarettes or takes them between

and blows it out his ass which is how the makeup artist

from Brooklyn described

it.

Go fish

the name of the game while my father was in the CIA

in its time
of glory hallelujah our truth is marching on
the 3rd day of May 1 please go

with father on his trip to the pharmacy, please, mother,

I am hoping he will kiss me
as he kisses you right on the mouth

of the river where the Mississippi meets

in the Gulf of Mexico.
You can’t expect the catfish to surface when it is raining

in Natchez the 7/11 closes early on just about

The rebel comes
she was a descendent.
Solitary Confinement

--- for Osamu Dazai

Feathers or seeds float or pirouette, blown b C

by the wind: dead or alive. Surface events u r
scarcely count as much as luncheon with t/ o
the Queen. After all, we are not ants; how n w
fast or slow we crawl is of no consequence. o s
Just tell me what she said. m a
o r
The retinue is the hive; the bees relate the story. r e
It’s my goal to join in the tête-à-tête. It’s all e f
revealed in the buzz; but it depends on whether s i
HRH is in. The Queen’s presence quiets the din. o n
The hive hums. It’s the same for humans. t e
We’re all heading for the box; we know the way. h a
a n
We just want someone to tell our story: yakkity n d
yak. Walter Benjamin once said the best way to fill d i
a bookshelf is with a pen. Get to work. One’s a n
library card is an excuse. It’s better to commit it all n t
to memory, as in Fahrenheit 451. Telephones are d e
the same as whiskey. e r
l e
Human contact is fulfilling; it is better to withdraw. i s
Don’t lose your thread. We only get one heart; it’d o t
be foolish to break it. n e
s s
. t
i
n
g
,
Planting Season

I’ve always wanted to speak about my time in Khartoum

but I’ve never been.
I have been to New Delhi but can’t remember a thing. It was elsewhere
that I found the meaning of life, but I was no more than nine miles from home
on a hitchhiking journey.
I came back for dinner.

My mother succeeded in roping me into her plans to create a heritage garden.

She is especially interested in ancient horticulture. She planted three varieties
of heirloom corn in our back yard with at least the same number of prize-winning
tomatoes: reds, purples, and yellows.
Double that for peppers,
both dwarf and giant, some sweet as an apple and others hotter than firecrackers,
not to mention the rows of okra, melon, and squash.
Mother is wild about gourds. She has become more aware than her friends
ever cared to acknowledge that we could be living on sacred soils.
Ancestral burial sights: she told Father she no longer cared to maintain a lawn,
and had chicken-wire tee-pees and raised beds erected from discarded railroad ties.

I said, “Let’s do a bump off that bird’s chest. The one with the pert tits.
And if
she insists on having a toot, she can take hers straight from my cock.
How’s that?
Chick can snort from down there, as far as I’m concerned. She can go down
on one knee for the rest of her life. I’ll buy her a pillow.”

The Shinkansen, a lovely celebration of human ingenuity and grace,

is a thing to behold. I am sitting in the reserved car that gradually filled
with the usual smells of the Japanese street and the industrial revolution.
In no time,
there was this sickeningly sour odor of vinegar rice and cabbage.
I expect to see a rickshaw come careening down the aisle. The combination
st
of 21 century technology and sour peasant odors diverts attention
from the great existential questions of our time.

One yearns for the démodé to become fashionable, or at least I used to.
It often even becomes trendy,
like digging up old cars in the back of weathered barns: Citroën DS21s
and Mustangs
hidden in the forest. We found a Maserati wrapped around a tree.
I’m all for that.
It’s a matter of rediscovery, like the BBC production of Brideshead Revisited
by Justin Bieber.
She says
she is up for anything but she prefers not to be asked.
She doesn’t want to be asked for her approval or permission. She doesn’t want
to be given choices or to be asked to make decisions.
She wants him to do all the deciding,
to lead as in a dance.
She begged him not to ask for her consent. She is not a virgin.
She remembers once shouting, “Just do it!” to a young man
who felt obliged to speak as politely as his mother did when serving afternoon tea.

I shudder at the terrible game my imagination is playing.

Can you believe this shit?

I know the type. He probably approves of that awful 20th century anthology
featuring Rita Dove.
I know the type.
He’s got a subscription to Reader’s Digest.
The last time we spoke,
he was hoping to replace his bathroom ceiling light fixture with a chandelier.
He’s Chair.

With my butch hair-do and white T-shirt, I resemble a flat-chested Jean Seberg,
Jean-Paul Belmondo’s girlfriend; unfortunately, Malik has someone more
like Brigitte Bardot in mind,
including her famous pout.
He is in love with her unforgiving breasts and fuckable mouth.
What does it mean?
It means that even the frumpy get horny.
Crows Are One Thing

I.

She had this air. This way.

Like a gull: over water, land, you name it.

II.

This is my life. My…uh.

She was everywhere.
She painted.
Charming, fresh breath, fragrant.
Plein Air. Not plain but plein; natural.

III.

Air borne disease.

It’ll soon die down.
Sea air, sure. On the river, same thing.

IV.

We had to air out the room before we could sell.

The realtor insisted on getting in a pro. A team, he called it.
Not a trace.
They don’t take writers. They don’t want writers.
They don’t want you to have stuff going on, you know.
They had a novelist once; it didn’t work out.
That is why they prefer losers. They’re not looking for a star.

V.

He runs every day before sunrise, by the air terminal.

His wife died there. Hit by a bus. Right out front.
The bus was struck from behind and she got beneath, trapped.
VI.

There’s not much air pollution here. Not here.

Most of it’s from China. Dust. Air’s yellow. Yellowish.
It hangs.
It flows in; it swims. People can’t see, let alone breathe.

VII.

Nothing wrong with a little air; we need air.

Wanna join?
Listen.
Just listen.
The gulls; there’s a mist. The fog is like a mist.

VIII.

Yeah, that was her.

We got to listen to her live. She sounded nervous. She was on the air, live.
Around the world; it is hard to grasp

IX.

I don’t like the air. I don’t.

Do you?
Just a crack, yeah.
More? I said a crack. It’s the clouds; they look like rocks.

IX.

We’ll be asphyxiated. Better open a window.

Don’t kid yourself.
They’re smart. They are. They hide, suddenly vanish.
Mosquitos. They’re smart; and then come out while one is asleep.
They’re like fish. Not the bottom of the lake but the bottom of the room.

XI.

I can’t breathe.
Put on the air.
There’s a thing, a whatever: no air from 3 to 5.
To prevent black-outs or brown-outs.
The sun. We’re not living; we’re drifting. Floating.

XII.

We need trees; more trees, forest darkness, a black forest.

XIII.

There are long-standing grievances to be aired.

They almost came to blows.
It’s the salt. Everything is sun-bleached, old and worn.

XIV.

I stepped out to get some air.

You went by train?
“Give me air.”
You weren’t driving, were you?
It’s all grass; as the crows fly, man.

XV.

Air, not heir.

Air.
There is no air.
There is no money.
Dennis Formento

Quadernetto / Little Notebook

Poems by Cristina Campo
Translated by Dennis Formento

“Un anno…”

Un anno… Tratteneva la sua stella

il cielo dell’Avvento. Sulla bocca
senza febbre o paura la mia mano
ti disegnava, oscura, una parola.
E la sfera dell’anima e dell’anno
vibrava in cima a uno zampillo d’oro
alto e sottile, il sangue.
Ne tremavano
sorridenti gli sguardi—all’accostarsi
buio di quel guardiano incorruttibile
che nei giardini chiude le fontane.
One Year

A year… the sky of Advent held back

its star. Without fever or fear
my hand drew a word on your mouth
but darkly. And the sphere of the soul
and of the year vibrated on the crest of
a golden stream of blood.
They shook,
those smiling gazes—at the approaching
darkness of that incorruptible guardian
that locks fountains inside its gardens.
Biglietto di Natale a MLS

Maria Luisa, quante volte

raccoglieremo questa nostra vita
nella pietà di universo, come di Santi
nel loro palmo le città turrite?

La primavera quante volte

turbinerà i miei grani di tristezza
dentro le piogge, fine alle tue orme
sconsolate – a St. Cloud, sulla Giudecca?

Non basterà tutto un Natale

a scambiarci le favole più miti:
le tuniche d’ortica, i sette mari,
la danza sulle spade.

“Mirabilmente il tempo si dispiega…”

ricondurrà nel tempo questo minimo
corso, una donna, un àtomo di fuoco:
noi, che viviamo senza fine.
Ognissanti ‘54
Christmas Card to MLS

Maria Luisa, how many times

will we grasp this life of ours with the
compassion of the universe, like the saints
holding turreted cities in their palms?

How many times will spring

stir the dust of my sadness into
the rain, all the way to your sorry footprints
in St. Cloud and on Giudecca?

A whole Christmas season won’t be

enough to trade even the sweetest fairy tales:
tunics of nettle, the seven seas,
and the dance of the sabers.

“Time unfolds so marvelously—”

it will bring back in time this lesser
flow, a woman, an atom of fire:
we who live forever.
All Saints Day, ‘54
II maestro d’arco

Tu, Assente, che bisogna amare…

termine che ci sfuggi e che c’insegui
come ombra d’uccello sul sentiero:
io non ti voglio più cercare.

Vibrerò senza quasi mirare la mia freccia,

se la corda del cuore non sia tesa:
il maestro d’arco zen cosi m’insegna
che da tremila anni Ti vede.
Master of the bow

Absent You, who must be loved…

boundaries flee and follow us
like the shadow of a bird on a trail--
I no longer want to search for you.

I will buzz almost without aiming my arrow,

Even if the cords of my heart are not taut:
the Zen master of the bow teaches me how,
he who has seen you for three thousand years.
“Chartres, ma questa volta”

… Chartres, ma questa volta

con le statue ferrite,
percosse dai freddi anni dei nostri peccati lontani,
Chartres, senza campane,
senza fanciulle in giubilo sotto i tigli
(allora io volevo, di pura gioia, morire)
Chartres incatenata di corvi e di tramontane
come una rupa nel mare
un solo raggio crudele a colpire
la guancia in lacrime di un tuo pastore—
piovuto è tempo e sangue su di te, cattedrale
sulla tua pietra serena
come una scorza—intriso l’Angelo-Meridiana
e come il nero giorno ferme le grande ruote
le vuote mole dei tuoi archi,
sull’Eure che scorre fango…

O mio giacinto dalla verde foglia

nella pianura fumida di pianto.

giugno ’52—settembre ‘54

“but this time, Chartres”

… but this time, Chartres,

with wounded statues
beaten by the cold years of our far-off sins,
Chartres, without bells,
without children jubilant under lime trees
(well, I just wanted to die out of pure joy)
Chartres enchained by crows and north winds
like a rock in the sea
with one cruel rock striking
the tear-stained cheek of one of your shepherds
it rained time and blood upon you, cathedral
upon your holy stone
like a rind—imbued with the Angel-Sundial
and just like black day stops the great wheels
the empty masses of your arches,
on the Eure running with mud

Oh my green-leaf hyacinth
on a plain smoking with tears.

June ’52—September ‘54

Quartine Brevi

i
Medita l’acqua, dubita fra i vetri
ma s’è smarrita in mezzo agli scaffali
da ieri un’ape. E tra gli asciutti alari
fragile brilla una azalea da ieri.
Short Quatrains

i
Meditate upon water, and meditate on doubt
through glass, but ever since yesterday
a bee has been lost among the bookshelves.
Since yesterday, a shining azalea among dry and fragile wings.
II
Canzoncina interrotta

Laggiù di primo ottobre

la marea delle foglie
all’angelica notte
già tratteneva il piede.

Non vedute cadevano

(là tutto era furtivo)
lento frusciava rune
al plenilunio un fico.

Sfilava dal tuo sogno

un micio le sue cabale
veranda incomparabile,
dolce Capodimondo.

Solo la veemente
mia ora lacercava
sul cancello le rose…
E riversa una statua

forse mordeva—al turbine

di quel volo— l’autunno,
origliere di muschi…
Song interrupted

Over there on the first of October

the tide of leaves
of night has already gripped
her angel feet.
No one saw them fall
(it was all furtive)
leaves rustling slowly
a fig in the full moon.

He slipped out of your dream

a kitten and its cabal
onto the incomparable veranda
of sweet Capodimondo.

Ever the enthusiast

my time cut in half
on the rose garden gate…
And out of a statue pour

—maybe bitten through—to the

turbine of flight—autumn,
mossy eaves…
Doug Jones and Clive Gresswell

Western Gull

A deposition written on a pipe; the western gull, it is a thieving bird, a liar. Do not trust a thing it does, or tells
you, she is sick. Hangs off currents, feeds in the interstitial upper mantle. He flies, a dark glaucus. The western
grey she does this + worse to clear the head, forget, it caws with all the birds a flogging eats up + on. They child
from the inside, while its mother watched, 3 eggs. Phone the law

Have thought about this. Junk. All those trash moves. We will not die the man at the edge of it, that liar. Is
about unresolved pathology we must have, we are. We look for addictions that never adjust us. See. Our
bloated lives face that fall through the narrative + out. See we are not to be cured, never, we steep a bad blessing.
Not heavens as such but there is the illness - in the light - in the gull.

Scramble to recover a unit. Before the rising there was. Something grew a child. It nested there deep in the
longing. Regurgitated the fluid. Slept on under an exhausting moon. His half of the jigsaw an adult remnant.
Drs glided lofty in the corridors. One alone was an angel. Its dusted wings grazed by the gull. He wrote a
prescription based on his description. Based on his description he wrote a prescription. Hallowed be its name.
outside of the inner circle prayers were said. Nearly Christmas as the oxygen would have it. It was snowing and
his blood was juice thin. Magic was the only hope. The magic of a child’s hope. But who would phone the law?

What is sickness for? Driving into work once, I overtook a bus going on the slip road to the main road, A47 -
was thinking of nothing. Then, at the Acle roundabout I went again – but there was a bus. Was it that bus? It
looked the same, was moving in the same way. Between life and death. Nothing is the same. We have crossed
over into pathology, patient x - alcohol dependent, this is a bus to work.
Then there is alleyways and royalty. The infirm signed the papers but by that time they were all ghosts of the
former. Later she examined the creature’s eyes. The creatures extracted any emotion. They were all deeply sorry.
The drs who were no less than human exhumed particles of flesh. They kept digging deeper + deeper. Into the
impenetrable spaces between atoms. Time and again the swellings burst pustules. But the politicians insisted
there wasn’t a problem here. Yet his widow was ragged with tears. You’ll end up with a two-tier health system
warned the jailbirds. But surely that’s better than nothing? No, the police must be told.

Lying eyes

The pipework lay in tatters. No-one could tell the imposter. It was a sadness for the whole of the carriage.
Where had they been + who had transgressed. Russell brand reached for the remote. His eyes widened at the
news. Those lying eyes a bauble. The drs huddled together but could not agree a diagnosis. Poor chap only had
1 leg. This was against the law. The unwritten law. Stars in the hemisphere collided. They did not have an
answer. Some called for the laughing gas. The surgeon pointed out that the guidebook was in Japanese, a
language he did not speak. They were ill-prepared for the spread of the sickness. It throbbed deep in the veins.
Country is going to rack and ruin they declared in unison. But headline writers got there first. RAC + ruin they
bled. Into the mirrors. Noel was about to phone the law. But his was an unwritten constitution. Never mind
wherever he is he’s in his element they agreed. What’s all this about elephants asked the sergeant. No one heard
him.

A beast with his mouth Wide open. So, when you look, you can see the spinal cord fused with that of a man.
That beastcord innervates me. watch me dance. Watch me stretch, catch a fly up with one animal slam the
Merc in reverse, finish up at the base of a forest tree. With barky skin a toad. Learn all kinds of things about the
ganglion switches back. About the beast with His vast car so my ware.

Wide open to interruption the skin nodules. Bursting into the stratosphere. The wires to the brain were taut.
One politician bled pretty much into another. News item faded into gore of news item. Which one of the royals
is stable? Your guess is as good as mine one lawyer said to the rest. Your guest is as good as time rewound
elephants which had strayed from the park. Some were the same. Others guessed at the disease. Drs danced in
the foyer. Such a scandal roared Geoffrey. A monumental waste of NHS resources was reported. One a tory the
other was labour. Covid was the leveller. It saw the beast. It was also the beast. It lurked deep in the membrane
fluid. Something more than human roared. It had come for Russell brand. Delicate in its nature the blood-let.
Inflation more than crippled. Can’t use that word.

Your naughty boy is playing up again. You’re done in and your mother’s sick and old. Have to look after her.
But where are you - spark? To do one thing after another, forever, + so worried about your daughter. Then.
Who are you? There’s no way can reasonably express the mixture of love, anguish. Human universe. In holes
the fall through the imperium goes on around, washes through - every day
It’s a background cluster of cancer cells. Efforts to escape the gas of debate clear the bombed-out hospitals. Let
us claim a jingoistic victory once more. Encrusted brown marks on the skin. He said he loved her. More than
once or at least twice. Look after your mother little bird. Even if you can’t get her to the phone anymore. Ring a
ring a roses. Atichoo etc. then they all fell down. The western gull preens itself. Takes its wing. The same old
cues. The same old news. Some seek out the fledgling flight. In another seedy part of town bar-room brawls
break-out. Stand and deliver says his conscience. Droning on + on. These savage victories. Each a cancer cell.
Adverts on the telly.

The pipework lies in tatters as the western gull preens its daughters. Like the same old formulation. The same
old formulation. Read it in the headlines. Gaza have we been here before? The ambulances + in doctors arrive
far too late. They rushed in to where he lay crazed + purple-hearted on the dance floor. He was petrified +
spoke of the ways of witches + vampires. There were stories too of the old parliamentarians before the age of
destruction. “We get the governments we deserve” gargled the shooting victim. The knife victim. The western
gull let out a great cry + flapped its wings. It would try again. The same old ordeal. Words of comfort strangled
in the mouth. He would never be the same. He was always different.

(ends)
E. H. Beyer

A Shower

A downpour has
come on the rows of violets.
There is a curtain, a
sheen of light in relief.
For a moment
there is no sense of becoming wet,
just a rumor of another
way to rove over all
things.
The Backward Self

My shadow shrinks
and expands like a
lung. It is
over with
and then it starts
as a shyness below
me. It is
open to you now
again.
The Spirits

To the mountains
the spirits have crossed over,
those departed ones with a
journey to
make into the wilderness and
great stillness of uneven terrain to where
a blank check awaits.
I go on my journey too,
but am alive. A wall
around them is not there. Instead
as if in a stable they gather as horses
then run over the marsh at first
and glowering there, linger in a last
chance at real light.
Those whom we've lost, I know those ones well as if sung to.
It is Eyolf and his Bettine.
I am glad to have known many and
not been foiled by all.
A ring around the earth

In a ring I go
around the earth.
Always the same
day comes forward.
I become
old inside this ring,
yet on the outer side
of things
I am a
shadow and hoary, frosty light,
while still as
fresh as a showy daisy.
A Taggart Day

Just playing a
game not for
sport, the sun
was rosy-colored.

Here, I wrote a row of

Taggart lines. We watched the sun go
down.

We watched
again the next day. And
we were in the garden, and
while we waited for night
there were people with us,
strange wonders of mountain men
and women who
came in from the east.
They were magnesium clouds
whose secrets were
told by a giant wind
in that evening Ovid foretold.
Ed Makowski

Flutter

Rather
take my
fashion cues

from the vibrant chicanery

of a migratory songbird
than the drone drab
of a bomber plane.

Sure, both fly.

One sings.
Rear View Mirror

While driving
I notice the car in front of me
has sunglasses dangling
from the rear view mirror.

Reminds me
of high school dances,
where it was expected
that I’d leave the evening
with my date’s garter
tightened across my
suit-coated biceps.

Haven't thought about that

for decades. Now,

waiting in traffic as an adult,

I grimace, recalling
that the whole town
banded together

to ensure the boys

would triumphantly
reach their hands
up inside their daughter's legs

and retrieve
an underwear trophy
to dangle in traffic
for everyone to see.
Poetry Rehab
~or~
Standing for Something; Else

Of the potential options

I never anticipated developing
a long term injury
from sitting.

As a writer, a poet
I’d expected alcoholism
as a potential career hazard,

Or visits to asylums and rehab,

endemic depression,
maybe worse,

Otherwise the wilderness venturing:

Mauled by a bear in the forest, or
broken after crashing and
tumbling down a ravine.

But
the passive dullness
of a lower back malady
requiring elaborate calisthenics
to offset the stationary “arts,”
and remediate my making of poetry,
or that sitting would cultivate
a self-fulfilling constitution
that, untreated, allows only
for more sitting -
That plot twist,
the embodied self-enemy
in the “hero’s journey”
was unexpected.

Nice work,
Fate. Good on ya.
Safeguarding the Echoes of the Wind

Last person to leave the office.

Discovered I was trapped
inside the parking garage
astride a motorcycle
too light to trip the floor sensor.
Loud pipes saving no lives.

After troubleshooting, I sighed, succumbed

to pressing the EMERGENCY button,
and explained to Emily the operator
my not-exactly-an-emergency.

Then spent two hours

reading, making photographs, wandering
the dimly-lit cement sarcophagus for a secret
Emergency Motorcycle Escape Hatch
until the on-call maintenance guy arrived
with ketchup dappled across his chest.
I apologized for interrupting dinner.

The fascinating epiphany

while hostage to a parking garage

is realizing that the entire day, as we work

vehicles await unchaperoned, vulnerable
to scoundrel thieves and vandals while
the parking lot garage door is open.

And all night long

only after the building, the parking lot
are absent of people and automobiles
the gates are locked, steadfast:
The outside from the inside
The inside from the outside
safeguarding only
the echoes of the wind
Geoffrey Gatza
Gordon Scapens

COUNTING NIGHTMARES

He sends men off to war

where he would not go,
marching towards horizons
they cannot see,

and they have no songs,

words dying like flowers,
buried behind the face
of an unknown clock.

There is no time to waste

only time to lose,
and man-made trouble
stares in all our faces,

writing the small print

at the bottom of plans
for forceful policies
perpetrated as peace missions.

This is an uneasy world.

Living is watching peace
walking off the page
and being unable to follow.

War is never over,

man has its measure.
They count soldiers going out,
count nightmares coming back.

This war slays little dragons

while the big one waits.
WORDS NEVER SAID

Nobody’s girlfriend,
everyone’s lover,
she was a red carpet
to a night that taught
the art of being the lead
in your own life.

Always available, inflating

hellos with hinted excitement
and goodbyes with promises,
her warmth made the difference
between hope and fulfilment,
performed miracles of boys to men.

She never awarded criticism,

never praised actions,
any secrets were hers to keep.

But nobody ever knew

the effort for her smiles,
ever knew the speech
in the silence she saved,
ever undertook the step
of knowing who she was really was.

They understand now.

She left a note.
FADING AWAY

The attitude towards her

is like she’s an inmate
but she feels separate
and belongs somewhere else,
but not sure where.

There are daily happenings

without her choosing,
and strangers visit,
talk like they know her.

Time interrupts silence

for group mealtimes,
group activities, group bedtimes.
She is always included
but wonders why she’s here,
why the past is a story
all about someone else.

She knows she’s individual

but remains silent
in the step she’s taken
in her life that wasn’t there,
knows she’s not a number
but does have a name.

If only she could recall it.

EXPLAINING PROGRESS

This isn’t a supermarket

but a cathedral of stored blessings
awarded to those carrying
the appropriate purse.

This isn’t money you spend

it’s oil for the cogs of commerce,
something to ease contentment
to faceless companies.

This isn’t a queue to exit

only a ritual conga dance
to the tune called
‘the insolence of wealth’.

This isn’t a till receipt

just a page from a bible
saying something is hidden
that needs to be told.

This spreading of such places

doesn’t mean they breed
it’s just money is a religion
in certain quarters.

And the corner shop

being boarded up
is just learning
to live in the dark.

Life disguises itself,

tells the biggest lies.
J. D. Nelson

the western is the western

the whisper
is the who

downstairs
is the lee

one teems with

multivitamin art

is the lee
downstairs?

is the who
the whisper?
two hundred & the final fifth

apple argent
the silver half

a personable nothing
a plain nothing

shallots!
advil!

the frank burns

you wish

what, then?

the land lard?

the vulgar trucks?
the sharp earth?
the limits?

nothing
no-thing
James Croal Jackson

first porch hang with plague

(sic) twenty-twenty. six feet

a separated distance. protective

shoes. stain floral patterns

with particles. we see you.

we accidental spit. what’s

the world’s seventy percent

of saliva. what is the world

anymore but a recollection

of grit-teeth times. store

the old photographs. the

liquor bars with sweet sin

of two. three. four friends

embracing inside an
interior of strangers.
Full Glass of Water

I am shirtless. I am thirsty.
I drink an eternity

from my full glass of water

while my two friends kiss.

In the old house. The kitchen

with the steel island

I had lifted my glass

from. New lovers!

I stand
by the sink

filling my glass,
over and over

again, the faucet

a waterfall,

bountiful,
something like love–

it quenches,
but you must keep filling.
The Universe of Body

Nothing special happened today.

Which is unusual in my universe
of body, of my hand
which contains more atoms
than humans on this planet,
than sand on any beach
we can name: Virginia, Redondo,
Daytona– those being only
the top-of-mind– and don’t
get me started on the brain,
its endless ways to twist
a conversation after the last
word was said. All I’m saying
is this labyrinth is limitless.
If believing in yourself as a
galaxy is the path out of
banality. Not that I could
propose another solution.
My mouth wanders in
the spotlight to the simplest
integers, and everyone
is present to interpret.
November, 2016

Country pulses. To lay on the dog

bed full of arms. Terror
blaring backdrop. Shots
of disbelief. In our blue
plaids. Fur on fabric,
we loved each other, too, stuck
with the color of devotion.
Alexandria

We were born on the exact same

day so when I heard your heart
stopped and you went comatose
I thought of 2011, over
the beer pong table I told
you I liked you oh what a drunk
dynamism in the midst.
Sentience on the upper level
the Keystone Light unlocked
& Dirk Nowitski had won
his only championship. My
longing was nostalgia and the walls
were truffles and I was
a pig in the vicinity of Cleveland,
Ohio, now knowing your surgery
went all right, you awoke, your heart
a good thing beating,
now, for however
it now goes know this:
you made it.
Jasper Glen

Sly upon a chair lost

Lottery again. No miracle,
No bird in the head.
Tonight, you do the dirty
Work of engraving me
Black into the soap opera
Bedposts, box a poison wine
The white flowers I’ve forgotten
Wash my hands clean
Misplace facecuts
Hey, accidents
Just happen boss,
I’m scissory,
Well sometimes,
Was it my fault?
Barista Jim-Jam left the applicant
Family early, blended her skeleton
Smooth tea-skin. Cutshort vanilla
Swirl, heirlost her loom in cream lake,
Advanced, with the medium of Sandy
Alesbian, real chameleon, colour-
Changing scarf knit round the main
Of her long limb.

Shygirl. Never talks. All quiet-like,

Autistic? No answer I’ll assume.
Pulls the old switcheroo, starts
Talking. Surprises us with what
She has to say. From a beneath
A felipe cap, lookup. Oh shew!
She too sweet with words.
What I want, one doll to cling to
Talk feelings with. I don’t want
To go it alone one more year long.

Is she my Indian co-worker Kirann

Satira, hot on the Cali-index
Pretty hindress and henna hand?

Is she Katrina, a piece of Catholic

Gateaux? A set of cherry cheeks,
Oh, preach!

Knock knock. Angel at the door?

No, totem. Speak—
For a second I went electrical.

A joke: my only angel

Does not exist, yet she is
Out there, singular
And solider than a lark.

Why don’t she just visit once,

Say halo? Stand in the doorway
Wherefore I form song.

Why don’t she allow my

Penetrate the breast plate?

Pray tell, to contemplate.

Her body is a bell curve
And all beautiful.

Cuddle? Can’t.
That would require feeling.
C’mon, not even a sneak peek?

Gasp! A planet stalled.

What I want, one doll to cling to.
Perhaps ask God?
What I have repeats. Empty
Bed. I scratch among the sheets,
Where I grope for closure, groom.
Love poem for m’lady

Alas, la brasserie teacups open

Remember, for our date-lunch, Renee?
Adroit face, chic mouse, lady
Mademoiselle.
Spectacular accent!
Tu es leaving?
Why’am.
Pull stringstraps.
Non femme, oh that’s a shame.
Strange lady surrounding
The room in light.
I felt apostrophe. You see
How she seals the smoke tight
And the phone-callers quote
Dead unquote,
Neck wrung cord.
Jenny Grassl

THREE POEMS
MAGICHOLIA

fall into the well

really just a tear duct salt and undrinkable
inked with all the words
for trapped drowning
ultramarine no name for the bruise
tube of melancholy

odoring far down redder

sea of magma dawn blood and my stage
fright birth I am my mother's
crescendo in lava rain
she so close to a star
and I tumbled from the locked-dark side of her planet
she bows to applause
they place me in her distant arms

the 'o' of hello not rising no bubble

no ruby from an igneous

my grief a lantern to find burnt things

how can I speak of speech

I land at births of my own

children pushing apart my hips
crack me into two mothers
 my dark child reaches
is this not joy

how much more I have

to lose relict species of grief join down here—
a canceled marrying an exile of myself as favored daughter—
baring their teeth just to go on
in this fathomless drop hold
the ocean

shark fins cutting their leather above the waves

a marsh slips into the well

braid the reedy hay for a ladder to climb
dragging animal glut and gland
sac of the sweet clam and yellow bittern
and the horribles white truck with woman
corpse at the wheel
hydra and skunk ape seeking

an ark I refuse no kind

a red bird glides beside me

flame flower
smelling of iron and spice
to wipe the surface mirror
fogged with ancestral
Narcissus

at the rim of the wound find a tree

a snake whispers eat
share you already know

your wellspring
what you have in tow
THOUSANDFURS

cloaked in the wolf hour/ I fold a solar system of dresses into a nutshell/ hide from my father in a malt barrel tree/
leaking radium and rye/ he would wed me/ likeness of my dead mother/ yellow hair woe in the oak/ upon a once I
could begin/ reaching longgold time ago/ landing only with leachate/ my father whiskered crayfish-strange/ he will
wreck the forest buck and grub each threaded root/ leaving a strontium run-off kill/ can I care about blue loam
when thrall is fill/ my tattoos rant/ skin a cursive tome of tiny truths/ inked in walnut stain/ drips dyeing a
disguise/ my mother would have fed me prince and silence/ writ large my words grow lace armor/ I broadcast fire
spells along limbs/ clamor for face/ how easily I facet an infinite
DEBACLE WEB

what do I lose

at the unburdening

I silk

an arc
umbilical cord to fasten

rain my hands cup

sibilance silver

whisper droplet-knit

repair the net regold twist with noonsong

on the hospital steps

shelter in ballroom cheek on velvet lapels

sanctum veil the masked nuptial

wayfaring ox pulls breath from sleep

a bridge of grass sewn to Mars

arachnid web is thought spiderlings truss pieces of mind

between dirt crumbs anchored

at rock and root

can survivors weave havoc with shine

ladder sequined to a meadow

Joan E. Bauer

165 Maybery Road

Salka Viertel gives up a stage career & theatre company

in Berlin to arrive in Los Angeles. 1928.

Soon she’s almost famous for scripts for Garbo,

but more for her Sunday salon on Maybery,

a haven for intellectuals, anti-fascists, Jews, refugees.

Christopher Isherwood & his boyfriend sleep above

the garage. James Whale finds composer Franx Waxman,

for The Bride of Frankenstein. Salka sunbathes

with Eisenstein before he returns to the USSR.

All the while, Salka raises money, gathers affidavits

to bring Jews from Europe to safety, finds jobs

for the newcomers, drives them to Farmer’s Market

on Fairfax, a reminder of the Old World. On Sundays,

Thomas Mann toasts his brother Heinrich on his birthday,

Salka keeps rivals Schoenberg & Stravinsky in separate rooms

& tolerates ‘self-adoring’ Alma Mahler.

All the while, Salka feels she hasn’t done enough to fight Hitler,
hasn’t done enough to save refugees & Jews.

For her political sins, she’s blacklisted, fired from MGM,

hounded by the FBI, even denied a passport.
In‘54, she sells 165 Maybery to her friend John Houseman,
to live near her son, the writer Peter Viertel, married

to Deborah Kerr in Switzerland, where Salka writes

her panoramic memoir, The Kindness of Strangers.
Letters to Shelagh

Women never have young minds. They are born

three thousand years old.

—Shelagh Delaney, author of A Taste of Honey

I was born with a young mind.

Seeing your play in the Sixties, I felt Jo’s desperation.

I don’t want to be a mother. I don’t want to be a woman.

Jo had a young mind too. The old soul in that play

was Geoff, the gay man who loves & tries to protect her.

You grew up tall & precocious & working class.

At 18, you took a fortnight to see if you could write

a better play than the posh, tea-cup scripts of Terrance Rattigan.

You sent the play to Joan Littlewood, that subversive genius

of radical, working class theater.

Please can you help me?

I’ve discovered something that means more than myself.

You hated being called ANGRY.

The critics you cared about: working people.

Does the dialog sound real to bricklayers & cleavers?

Once you wrote about a childhood stay

in a convalescent home surrounded by nuns

who forbid you from reading anything

but the Bible. They took away your fountain pen.

Perhaps they mistook you for someone else.

John Kuligowski

Possibility

Jenny has turned a year older today, & still we move

languorously through our stoned, risible lives.

I watch the pellucid water shift subtly,

breathing a medium of fish
when we step into the lake, & I think that

if the sky were waves, we would drown, each of us.

But the elements are fixed, somehow. A miracle

of order. Messianic treetops rise into the air,
& splash against what is invisible.

My eyes, taken blind by the tawny light

of smeared convenience store
shades flounder before the lake houses

near the Greene family home.

I can imagine having grown up here with you;

having known you my entire life,
and our being together

a matter of course rather than the chance

encounter by which it is really defined.

Everything would be different.

We would not be here, celebrating with your friend
her birthday.

We would be reaching the invisible. Sheer possibility,

the trees perhaps speaking of us, rather than
the other way around.
These Payments

You see they’ve given me these pamphlets, & all

is made well. Mornings I glimpse the duck egg

yolk of sun seep & slip, its edges dripping

through the window, & then each afternoon

the same, but in a slightly different space. Winter

means my days are circumscribed by more than

these legs gone rod-thin. Spring & summer are

debts I cannot afford—

so explain the pamphlets, like those I saw years ago

on the dash of my younger brother’s

truck, about the dangers of gambling, when he filed

for bankruptcy, lost his house. Will is long dead,

& my own payments I cannot afford. The woman

who comes each morning sops up the sun

with her good humor, & she whispers to my wife

perhaps it is best to put away what mirrors

she can. My image is smudged, my eyes those pits

where Dad would throw the livestock carcasses,

those contagious dead. This woman who comes each

morning revives me with half-recalled ablutions

after rolling away the stones, & suggests that the

morphine-dream spiders I see are weaving

fine strands that hold together the Lord’s plans.

She forces me to arise, to arise and walk—
to walk before Phyllis who looks on with milky-eyed
wonder at her hubby revenant, while holding back

her gag, when the smell of a future that is decidedly

not mine to own comes calling for payment.
Moving on Again

The house lies dappled in afternoon shadows,

light blue and hidden like
recalcitrant vein in arm crook.

The place is for rent again &

I wonder who would fall for such a mirage of
comforts,

or if anyone could. Maybe everyone

who has ever lived there had no illusions.
Actually, I think they had no illusions.

I hear doors opening & closing, mostly

closing. The last neighbors were beyond
the pale—funny, but I probably was them once.

I know that I was them once, but they

are older now than I was younger, then.

The stairs lean into the porch like a freshly

broken jaw that still groans of predawn
connections. Architectural failures

following their mornings after. Across

Hudson Street, an ambulance wails
long through the croak and splutter of corrosive

half-forgotten epithets—
and a butterfly drops to an abandoned vase of
cheap artificial flowers on the old porch.
Background Microwave Radiation

I watch the snow at the verge of the community

garden fall diagonally along the trunk
of a slender oak tree.
It comes down like static—
like radio waves—
& buries the earth, spattering
against the bark, simulating
the flocked down of Norape ovina.

Once, when I’d taken too much acid,

I thought we’re nothing more than
fleshy transceptors.

I ran terrified out of a club, into

a late-night grocery store,
& spent a couple of hours staring
at boxes of sugary cereal, wandering up & down
the aisle, meditating upon Count Chocula
& the furious whiteness of the Trix rabbit.

There was snow on the ground then, too.

The earth was buried in radio waves.

Recently, I came to the conclusion

that we are just flesh—nothing special—
though with organic transceptors freely
flowing through blood.

What I would like now

is to learn everything I can about cosmic
background microwave radiation
& neurotransmitters,
but I see to set foot, the snow is getting
much too deep on walkways & in the drive.
Stretch These Stirring Things

Tonight I am imagining a killer.

He is strung-out on basaltic lunar maria,
restless as acacia leaves
dancing with green-backed June beetles.
Together we get drunk on blood & the vesper,
all the way from 1981, & I help
to stalk another drowned world
near the Golden State.

He will be gone in the dark,

abandoned while I listen to the nightsounds
stretch these stirring things over the highlands—
It is but a matter of height and depth,
that face, light & dark,
the man in the moon a specter between
the abyss of the seas
& these ancient floodplains.

I wonder what it would be like to be hunted

by him, then I try to wash the flavor
of true-crime and popcorn from my mouth,
yet specular violence & butter drip
off the staircase, the doorframe,
my flayed nerves.

Together: flesh on edge, awaiting victimhood.

You say you won’t go into
the kitchen alone, for the shadows,
& all the times I roamed through
the witching hour,
beneath bridges,
outside the middleclass worlding
of suburban homes—they speak back to me
in conversation with stark, nightfall divisions

between their territories & mine.

Serial exploits & lonelinesses.
To be glimpsed then
as I must have been,
I am that phantom figure with whom
you would have associated fear.
John Tavares

MAGIC HOUR

A few beachgoers called Magic Hour the Never Open Café. Some thought the café was never open
because business was poor and weather at the clothing optional beach was unstable, frequently rainy, stormy,
and windy, with gusts, cold water, and wind chill. But Hanlan’s Hillbillies knew better, and that explanation
ignored the gorgeous warm sunny days and the resplendent views of the cityscape and the sunsets from the
beaches when Layla could never keep up with the customers that inundated her takeout and café. Layla also
preferred to keep her café to a one-person operation, without any employees.
The city and the parks and recreation department that issued Layla her concession permits wanted to
reissue those business licenses to an ice cream parlor, a donut shop, a hamburger joint, or another fast-food
franchise. With the thirty-five hundred dollars her mother sent her every month, though, Layla hired a lawyer
her mother recommended and fought the rescission. Embarrassed by her mother’s allegation they discriminated
against budding entrepreneurs and small business, the parks and recreation department and the city reversed the
order.
The café was unprofitable on paper, according to Layla’s mother’s accountants, to whom she handed all
the business records at the end of the quarter. The café, though, her mother understood, was her true purpose
and meaning in life. Her mother kept calling her every Sunday afternoon with business advice, acting as if
Layla, whom she described to friends and associates as her wayward daughter, was one of the most important
clients in her business consulting practice. Joan also realized that true to her daughter’s personality and
disposition she would never succeed in the competitive food service and restaurant sector. Her mother urged her
to return to university and college to find her true bearings and callings in life.
“But I’m thirty-six,” Layla complained.
“You’ll simply apply as a mature student, and I’ll pay the tuition, the textbooks, and your rent, in
residence, where you’ll do better and be among peers,” Joan said.
Layla was adamant and obstinate, insisting she was living the life she wanted to lead. Soon her business
losses would reverse themselves. Joan threatened to stop sending her thirty-five hundred dollars a month. Layla
dared her mother to do that precisely, and with that gauntlet thrown down Joan backed away.
The café should have been profitable, but Layla kept taking breaks at the clothing optional beach down
the pathway. Sometimes Layla would ask one of the friends she made among the beach regulars who frequented
Hanlan’s Point to mind the café, while she took a break on the shoreline. She got along well with these beach
regulars, but at times she referred to them affectionately or pejoratively, depending upon her mood, as Hanlan’s
Hillbillies.
When Joni, a beach regular, asked her the reason, she said because they acted as if they owned the
beach. They practically lived on the beach, camped on the shoreline, and in the nearby bushes. Often, they
frightened and harassed tourists and visitors from the mainland city. Despite her petite size, Joni, who sold
homemade marijuana and cannabis edibles, caramels, brownies, cookies, on the beach, depending on which
recipes she was experimenting with that week, pushed and shoved the tall, slender Layla and scattered her
towel, beach blanket, and picnic basket across the beach shore and trail. Afterwards, Layla learned to keep the
moniker to herself.
In any event, Layla loved the sight of the beach, the skyline of Lake Ontario, the cityscape, the boats,
the yachts, the ferries, the cruise ships, and especially the bodies, nude and clothed. She sat on the quiet corner
of the beach in a wooded area, along the cruising trail, and she injected herself with her magic hour. She
covered her head with a towel, and she luxuriated in the warm rush, the orgasmic sensation, and the relaxation
and euphoria the medication gave her, which she bought from a friend, one of Hanlan’s Hillbillies.
When Layla came down from the high, she returned in her bikini, wrapped in the beach towel or
blanket, to the café. Invariably, one of Hanlan’s Hillbillies helped themselves to beer, pop, chips, snacks, which
she expected, but oftentimes they raided the store for their friends and gang and headed off with shopping bags
of stuff. They even took money from the store till, even though these friends said they were happy to fill in for
her in return for the odd coffee, snack, or takeout meal, which she always gladly gave them. Sometimes, they
even took money from the till, or pilfered the whole day’s receipts, but Layla did not care.
Joan’s monthly allowance of thirty-five hundred dollars to her daughter—-which Layla usually
considered guilt money (for her broken marriages, divorces, and the childhood it spawned), usually covered the
losses. Besides, the important stuff, the Magic Hour, she always remembered to keep locked in the safe in the
storeroom, which itself was locked by a combination only she knew, even though Joni knew the combination
number after Layla absently wrote it on a notepad. Joni regularly got into Layla’s Magic Hour for her own
dealings and diluted her supply with her own dealer’s stuff and substances.
The Magic Hour she also sold to a few regular beach customers. The profits she earned from the sale of
Magic Hour paid for her own habit and supply; so, in the end there was no profit or loss; she was simply living,
surviving, as she told her mother. Joan kept emphasizing in her business voice she needed to change this edgy
lifestyle, this hipster, hippie life she was living on the fringes of society was not sustainable.
The summer of the pandemic, though, there was disruption in supply, in habits, routines, and lifestyle.
People started to frequent and crowd the beach, since most of the restaurants, bars, cafes, and stores were forced
to close, but through some loopholes, and in between waves of the pandemic, public health and the government
allowed her to keep the Magic Hour Café open. The potency of the supply of Magic Hour she bought from a
mariner and sailor at the yacht club was stronger than ever, more than she ever expected.
Several of the customers to whom she supplied Magic Hour overdosed on the beach. Two even died,
although alcohol may have played a role in the death of a second victim, a nudist who sold beads and weavings
on the sand of the clothing optional beach.
Police checks and patrols by by-law enforcement officers increased in frequency, to a level Layla never
saw before on the beach. One of Hanlan’s Hillbillies assured her no-one suspected her. Still, Layla became
paranoid, albeit she thought her response was justifiable, given the circumstances.
Everyday on the beach that summer Layla passed a floral arrangement set up as a memorial for one of
the overdose victims. Whenever she saw a police officer on the beach, she suspected they were looking for her,
intending to arrest her. Her paranoia and anxiety always increased her needs for Magic Hour. She started
injecting herself behind the counter of the Magic Hour Cafe, which was not her preferred venue for shooting
up. Layla favored the experience, the rush, the euphoria, the release, at the beach, which made the ritual more
magical and the experience transcendent, especially around sunsets. She carefully measured her doses, and
sometimes sent the stuff to a lab, but, lately, her Magic Hour, which became more adulterated during the
pandemic, was laced with a potential derivative of fentanyl.
One of the beach gang members, the aged flower child, Joni, who sold cannabis and CBD edibles,
found her, when she visited the café to buy a coffee and her favorite oat bran muffin. When she saw Magic
Hour café was open and not shuttered, but Layla was not responding, she opened the side door, near the public
washrooms and showers.
Joni went through the patio and side entrance into the cramped café, where she found Layla passed out
in her wicker chair, with a book about the use of psilocybin and cannabis for psychedelic therapy, at a small
antique hardwood desk that barely fit in her cubicle-sized business office.
Joni knew where the first aid kit and emergency supply of naloxone was located and carried her own
supply in a red zippered case, like those for eyeglasses. Joni injected Layla with the antidote. Then she
anonymously called 911 on her landline telephone, and whispered, cursed, and in her dreads, beads, and woven
garments prayed to her Buddhist gods Layla responded to the antidote.
Later, before Layla fully regained consciousness in the hospital from the drug-induced coma, her mother
discovered she had somehow contracted the hepatitis C virus.
Her mother was furious her daughter overdosed. What made her even more angry—she told Carlos, her
personal assistant and current life partner—her baby, her daughter, had contracted the hepatitis C virus. She
feared her baby, her girl, was tainted, contaminated now, damaged goods, ruined for life. Her mother could
barely contain herself and control her anger.
A member of the team of doctors caring for her reassured Joan pharmacological science had discovered
an effective cure for hepatitis C. They were starting to treat her with those medications in the hospital for that
chronic condition as they spoke.
 Her mother returned to her room and started reading the facts sheets and information about Hepatitis
C and its treatment, which the doctor had given her at her bedside.
But Joan grew impatient and moved on to perusing her beloved Globe and Mail and then the Wall Street
Journal. When Layla roused herself from her torpor and became aware of her presence, her mother glared at
her, as if she had done something terribly wrong.
When Layla gazed at her mother, through oxygen tubes and intravenous lines, and she reached out to
her, helplessly, Joan automatically slapped her hand, to which was taped and bandaged a tube and intravenous
needle, hard. Her mother had never administered corporal punishment to her in her life. Her mother did not
believe in the use of corporal punishment to discipline her child. (Joan had even had a grade schoolteacher fired
from her position when she was a child. The teacher, in the heat of the moment, slapped Layla when she
punched in the gut a grade five classmate, who had a history of teasing her for her height and long aquiline
nose, a boy who sobbed and cried, as if he was dying from a perforated ulcer and internal hemorrhage. He was
blocking Layla on the stairwell, stopping her from climbing the last flight of stairs, preventing her from
reaching her classroom after recess.)
Layla drifted off to sleep. When she awoke, regained consciousness, as soon as her mother saw her eyes
were open, she slapped her again but this time in the face, against her cheeks to which some color and red hue
had returned. Her mother slapped her hard, and the smack echoed against the antiseptic hospital room walls
and ceiling.
“Ouch,” Layla cried, “you’re hurting me.” Layla covered her face, smarting from the sting. Her mother
tossed a packet of moisturizer and painkillers from her Coach handbag at her.
“You never slapped me before in my life.” Layla started sobbing and crying.
At thirty-six years old, recovering from a near fatal drug overdose, her mother slapped her. The nurse
saw Joan slap Layla. Then, so, the nurse could witness firsthand how angry and outraged Joan felt she slapped
her again.
“This is what I should tell people: This young woman—her tainted illicit drugs contributed to the death
of at least one hopeless lost soul.”
 The nurse asked Joan to leave Layla’s room. When Joan ignored her, the nurse demanded she leave the
hospital. The two women engaged in a literal stand off and glared at each other, until the nurse relented.
But the nurse consulted her supervisor at the nursing station. The nursing supervisor returned with
security guards, who Joan also ignored, as if they didn’t exist. Then the security guards returned with a police
officer, who threatened Joan with arrest. So, Joan called Carlos on a security guard’s smartphone to drive her
home. Still, Joan continued to visit her daughter in her hospital room, as Layla was treated for hepatitis C, with
a new medication that would cure her, doctors said.
The doctors insisted and recommended she not leave the hospital until she also entered the drug rehab
program. During each subsequent visit, her mother slapped her. Her mother would sometimes lose control,
wave newspaper clippings at her, call her ungrateful, a bitch, and slap her.
While the doctor made a tour and rounds with her medical students, pausing to visit Layla, Joan pointed
towards Layla and asked if her patient was making progress. In her outraged voice, Joan loudly told the doctor,
so her entourage of aspiring bright interns could hear; so, patients and visitors in the hallway could overhear; so,
even the ward clerks and orderlies down at the nursing station could eavesdrop: “This girl, this young woman—
her tainted narcotics led to the death of at least one hopeless lost soul.”
Her mother argued with nurses, doctors, social workers, counsellors, psychologists, and hospital
administrators until nursing staff complained and security guards and police were summoned. Hospital
administrators ordered her banned from the hospital, but Joan ignored the ban. Then administrators applied for
a restraining order. Her mother fought the restraining order with an expensive family law lawyer, who she was
averse to hiring until she realized she had no recourse.
The lawyer admitted in court he handed out corporal punishment, which Joan resented since she had
never administered corporal punishment in her life. Joan explained to the lawyer she never believed in corporal
punishment. As she listened to the lawyer in his law office and court, she realized she totally disagreed on just
about everything with this flamboyant character, who claimed he was a Christian fundamentalist when it was
convenient.
 Joan again felt like a failure as a parent, especially for having to hire such an ignoble man to resolve her
legal problems. Her friends had reassured her, though, he was the right man and lawyer. Somehow, he won the
case and the restraining order was thrown out of court. Joan resumed her visits to Layla in the hospital.
During each visit Joan found herself entangled in a heated argument and dispute with Layla, and she
would slap her hard at least once. Her mother showed her clippings from the newspaper, which she asked her
personal assistant, Carlos, to clip and scrapbook. The urgent articles reported the overdoses and death from
overdoses on the clothing optional beach. Joan said it was a wonder Layla was not in jail on murder or
manslaughter charges. Then, when Laya called Carlos a lackey, Joan whacked her even harder on the face. For
the first time in a long while, her mother frightened Layla, and she wanted to frighten her.
“Reason does not work on you and your entourage—only passion and raw emotion.”
“I don’t have an entourage,” Layla protested.
“That just proves how estranged you’ve become from ordinary people, real people, not addicts and
pushers, and society.”
Joan told her once she recovered, she would head to college or university. She was not accepting Layla’s
age, at thirty-six, as an excuse. Joan did not care what subjects Layla studied at college; she only knew she could
not live this life as a beach bum and boardwalk café owner and operator any longer. Joan’s personal assistant and
secretary, who was the highest strung and most tense, nervous and anxious man Layla ever met in her life. He
doubled as her submissive life partner these days, helped her with the university and college residence
applications: the transcripts, resumes, the countless questions, documents, paperwork.
Layla did not see what choice she possessed. Carlos told her about his sister who was an alcoholic: she
recovered, returned to university in her forties, and now worked as an addictions counsellor. Somehow the idea
appealed to Layla: Addictions. Counsellor. She was addicted, and needed counselling, among other things. She
could or would try to work from there. First, she went to York University, majored in psychology, and lived on
campus, and in residence. She avoided the clothing optional beach, frequenting the gym, and swimming pool
during the off hour. She swam so obsessively she frightened the lifeguards monitoring the indoor pool of the
sports center on the university campus. The head lifeguard wanted to ban her for her arguments, and her loud
voice and hostile tone and aggressive attitude towards the lifeguards. Layla figured Magic Hour would have
mellowed her, but she could no longer resort to that route of self-medication.
She obtained her degree in psychology. Then she studied in an addictions counselling program at an
Ontario college of applied arts and technology. She did her internship at the hospital where she recovered from
her overdose, her addictions, and Hepatitis C. She found work with a nursing station on a First Nation
community with an Indigenous health services organization and then an indigenous social services based in
Sioux Lookout, which gave her a position as a counselor on a reserve on the Hudson’s Bay coastline.
This is the story, in one form or another, Layla tells clients and patients when they consult her or are
referred to her for treatment. Layla feels the need to share, to tell them, if she believes it will help her connect
with the client or patient.
Jonathan Everitt

Fugue in Blast Zone

The clock in the hall booms eight in low bass

as a tableful of guests sit down to dine on bread and wine,
accessorized with heirloom diamonds, black brocade.

White roses, how divine! swoons one, but soon,

the dining room will pixelate by atom bomb, its platinum-laced
plates and Baccarat melting into linen by candlelight.

Chandelier bursts into snow that settles on a catered spread

of plattered duck and pumpkin bread. Eight bulbed arms
dismember, bubbles crater like dying moons.

Before the power grid evaporates, the doorbell’s gong

sounds its broken Ode to Joy as window drapes
flutter, collapse into blackbirds, circle the space,

then exit the windows for the setting sun of a mushroom cloud.
Host’s mouth is frozen on bon appétit. Futility. Each guest
might just as well carve tender paw, lift finger slice to crisp lips.

Bach’s background baroque falls quiet as eight diners’ still

silhouettes laugh against damask, devouring themselves,
ash snapshot of civility in shadow.

Their host had practiced to himself I’ve brought you here tonight
to break important news, but the revelation vaporizes—
a canary stilled in his coal throat.
Body Orchestrion*

The concertmaster rises

to tune this machine of
machines with one bold
stroke of bow across string,
and soon cacophony of
instruments gives way
to symphony. Rachmaninoff
washes warm over the hall
as we, the sea of auditory organs,
tune in captivation to our
counterparts on stage. Call us
the orchestrion synchrony.

Each sympathetic nervous

system shifts gears and cogs
between our ears until
ba-dump ba-dump ba-dump
our hearts find the same
time signature. Our exhalations
follow suit. Music’s motor
triggers each chest’s bellows.
Imagine what an infrared eye
would see as we blow our heat
in synchronicity. A blast. A chord.

External factors can induce

such common rhythm
in a crowd, we’ve learned.
It arouses one meter out of many.
The biology of a violin
can stir our mitochondria.
When the final measures fade,
we each feel it in our skin.
What would move a madman
to sink his missile through
the roof of a music hall filled
with such sweet machines?
* “Live Music Synchronizes Audience's Heart Rate, Breathing: Study”; Newsweek, October 5, 2023
Tarts & Vicars

“And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a
golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication:” Revelation 17:4

What sanctuary is this, sprawling private parish house in checkered floor and winding stair, candelabra licking
low light on night-black cassocks, each strung with sterling crucifix, each beady Christ head straining toward
the cocktail in the clergy’s hand. A jazz quartet moans dirty saxophone out back as hallways teem with bishops,
cardinals, priests, virgin-perfect tip to tail. But they are not alone, no not one. Aproned servants circulate their
silver trays of crab cakes, quiche, plump sausages nailed to crust with toothpick. Lipsticked whores’ pieholes
roar, each the envy of Babylon, manicured claws tickling clerical collars to raise the dead. And which am I? In a
powder room upstairs beyond the balcony, I’ve stripped bare. Two sets of clothes hang on two door hooks in the
mirror. Black cassock’s dozen buttons binding with machine precision? Or crimson velvet waistcoat and
perfume to cancel out the frankincense?

No matter what you

wear, we’re all for sale. Love, there’s
nothing to forgive.
Reverse Apocalypse

Not vaporized as feared—

Atomized with frankincense,
warm smoke must for the ages
under gothic beams, glowing
glass, rows of sacred moments.
Hallelujah!

Not left behind by the right

God for the wrong creed—
Elevated armoire bursting
bright woolen vestments
royal palace prince in purple.
Hail!

Not Armageddon down from Tigris—

Eden disarmed of flame-sworded
angels banning strangers at the gates,
Tree of Knowledge swollen ripe
and beckoning every heretic.
Take, eat!

Not sacrifice, not lamb, not Son—

First supper in upper room
that serves us each a bowl of
meat and juice, hot, bread-dipped,
wine-chased, Eternal Easter.
I rise.

Not tomb or bomb or golden dome—

Cathedral of cedars, sweet incense
shaken from thurible chained
to no one, none chained,
unendurable redemption done.
Amen.
Joseph Cooper

Snooping Through NBC studios with pen and pencil

for Kenneth Koch

I love you as a suit of armor rusts

under the stark, necromantic air of
a forsaken uncle’s dusty portrait
whose motionless eyes make a racket of
acumen, a flamingo serenade
gasping for multitudes as a full moon
revives our cadaverous hearts and we
fall in love like thaumaturgic charmers.
My darkling, my encompassed plentitude
though we may never be a sonnet, less
love letters cursing paper and pen with
grim conviction for having been written
let us go on shining like eidolic
soulmates in the spectral hallways of night.
Will You Be One Of Radio’s Future Greats?

Dear Heartline, I move through the trapped orgasm of prayer

knowing there is nothing I wouldn’t do for you except write you
a love poem and if you were to die like you did last night
in my dreams, I would hold your bones for 6,000 years,
even more, like the Lovers of Valdaro. Our mandibles close
enough to touching, that archaeologists of the future
would have reason to speculate we died leaning in for a kiss
having fallen hopelessly in love with each other’s ivory nakedness
as if we were ancient elements attracted to one another by the cold
rules of logic. Dear Radioland, hello. It’s 5:45 a.m. I’m warm
for you this morning, but this crackling and hissing divides us.
Some days are just more real than others. My heart is crashing
into me. By the time you hear this, Radioland, we’ll find happiness
in our ways of life even though it’s been years, years since we’ve touched.
A Radio Freshman Speaks His Mind

It seems only yesterday at least for a couple of hours

I was that person like a science-fiction mist
hanging over the sea or snow on a bristly wool
coat becoming fearlessly transparent. Dear Radioland,
I have an irrational fear of being crushed underneath
a fallen traffic light. When it’s quiet and I’m holding you
all I’m really thinking about is the next poem, yet you
have stolen my heart, my heart wonders if it might be
haunted, the way a train arrives at a station and no one
exits and then it just speeds away as if it were shaking off
a momentary chill. I keep waiting for you, but I’m the only
one inside my head waiting for the warm embrace
of a headless body in a topless bar the way citrus
always seems to ripen in someone else’s poems.
Mike Says

I like it here in the poem with nothing but a flashlight

and all my deepest fears. The sound of waves sweeping
across an indifferent sea. My heart is crashing into me
as I am now and forever finding ultra in this radio drama.
Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever be made of anything
but an almost miracle moving in and out of focus playing
telephone with the space between us like a woodshed on fire.
It’s been so long since I confessed to being born
on the cracked side of a leaking snow globe.
Let’s take a chance tonight on the few great lines
that drank wine and danced all night. My heart,
my heart is in my pocket, it is Lunch Poems by Frank O’Hara.
How terrific it would be to explode like a jet plane
across my mind before falling in love with you, Radioland.
Where Do Those Huge Radio Salaries Go?

Dear Radioland, these are the selected poems

of the last days of summer. Hail a taxi. Dance in
the rain. I don’t know if it’s enough to hold you
when all the lights go out as the sky folds and flowers
are shaved off the neck of the earth at the dead end
of a weathered road. And what of those who still believe
in a million closeted memories playing favorites? I can’t live
without you whoever you are sitting up in bed, naked,
in complete darkness drawing blind pictures of me
sitting up in bed, naked, in complete darkness drawing
blind pictures of you standing at the edge of the alphabet
never wanting to be anything more than complete
surrealism. Whenever I think of jumping off the radio
tower I wonder, could we be lovers? It’s come to that, tonight.
Joshua Martin

Hair Tuned Aqua Passive Stretch

floral stain the parcel

glance FLOW(ing) sPrUn
, SiLvEr , hammer
| - - - [taught flung sting] - - - |

metal
meet the psalm projected
wEEds, lesson
pro=long=ed brown
stooge entrail
, (IN)stead > ? <,

oN the VeRgE, cornhole

vapor straining cUrL,
a ‘couch’
fights wrong
ToNe
variable
scenic tuning
flickering. . .

wAsP? poWdER??

¡ZILCH!

the sword
swollen lip
skin
 partake snowy
, letting
candied
buoy
ascertain
sTrAy bulletin
[BOREDOM],

letter
letter :
perverse to
seCuRe
spreadsheet
remote
; ‘which’
‘control’
‘parachute’
; ALL
summation
gRoUnD &
prevented form
pummeling - - -

Whelp, NeArBy orange groves,

settling click-clack tape loops [
organs bypassing rocks
]. oops.
Unorganized and desultory electrical stimulations

rhinencephalon:
forebrain,
rising
[its food quest (crossroads? association?) with both],,,
elaborate, thereby
| the temporal lobe |

psychic viscera
smell midbrain
, mechanisms? - - -

appeared corpus striatum,

earlier = derivative =
mammalian
hemispheres - - -

> third ventricle

telencephalon GANGLIA < ,,,,, where the “I”
[the genitals],direct
crude clues
(primitive?) : | domains of the visual enemies | , ] = = =

fOOd
, the olfactory forebrain (ablations),, shape
of an iSSuE:

evented type
thin pallium
with the senses
inescapable
: At human level,

: | feeds its data - - - thus the secret

3. Although “consciousness”
, | Subcortical and
sucking responses
= En revanche
- - - influence of the automatic
 STRUCTURES
- - - in the psychic dynasty
, sensations implied
localized spots in
harmonized neocortex
- - - [and spinal cord].
Cross Sections Reserve Miniature Escape Hatch

television glucose
hypochondria : : : :
fractions CONTROL
flat rate, peak PEAK,, established
liquid cinematographic
chain ReacTiOn ;;;;; [methods
configurate
preamble] . . . . .

since distilled elation bOnDs ;;;;;

SLOW-MOTION
conclusions ;;;;; ) ‘% more variable
effective curve,
decay,
compare experiments
& digest incomplete
fluorescent compounds’ ( - - -

incubation morphology
results segment inner synthetic
retinas . . . . . glOOm . . . .
risk PaTtErN - - -
ratio affectation globe . . . . .

segmented stamina
cell condition : STALKING
acidic
clumping :

‘flirtation debated among measured thresholds’ :

in the presence of augmented

tumor sprain
, , amino acid
regional accents , ,

NON-CONFIRMING - - -
: ‘insulate reportage’ :
 )))))equilibrium((((( - - -
, kinetic parameters
of an assurance , , KeY LOckeD , ,
activation orbit . . . . .

to the contoured duplex absorbance

, , sedimentation coil
estimate, , ,
preparation fluid electron, , , ,

consistent skillset
Re=scaled
,,, Non-essential , , ,
irreversible
treatment plug : :
night-night
attached
suggestive [risk] [factor] [drowning] : :

tImE , , cOUrSe , , bellow

& dilute :::::::::: [enthusiasm
waning
specialization phosphate],
only in modification
SPLENDOR . . . . .

instead
, embryonic electronic protocol
, , leave
oUt
bAcK sLiDe , , ,
door TO intention to inaction to
slEEp.
Plunder a Mixed Signal Survey

NoddInG shrinks an ENTWined SCAR

withering as GiVeN hoisted LaMpS collapsing

(get ‘em up) / (get ‘em up) / /

NearesT extreme soldering IRON

pUmP tOwN hAll - - -
¡ride the bus! - - -

NeTheR , wheelie ,
driven to sour aeronautic
geezer syndromes

(whizz) / (buzz) / (fuzzy) / /

listen without pondering

mermaid squirt gun = soft
shoe
railway
bomb
shelter = = = = =

mIssEd combination OBSOLESCENCE

A sHoCK! a SoCK pUppEt!
> release the comet catalogue pelvic disappearance <

, if dOOr kNoB scuttlebutt

, , simile [glow] , , , knuckle
bUtT
pReSs
coFFiN to
describe hAmMeR dressing
gown = = = = [trust
fall
chimney
spill] = = = =

nErVoUs rEACtion sUbTrAcTioN

bOIL NucleaR sHoCK therapy
bAlAncE HAveN mantis puddLE

(drench) / (wish) / (helicopter) / /

pIlOt lIghT sQuId

right-of-way > > > > > dEnT
tRouSeR
umbrella
operational
< < < < < : ‘star-crossed cones’
: : : : ‘shapely pigeon contest’

cOnTeStEd flitter ThRuSt

sOcKeT busting gArDeN #’s
cArRy MaGiC TiPs gRoSs

- - - founded tear duct

laundry altitude - - -

bEAuTy formulaic as a SnOt

bUbblE
, revert!
Lobotomized Church Pew

/ kick lime \ - - - future

shook
therapy - - -

finite crEEpIng juniper fuzz

, [¡whelp!] , , [¿gravy or a spider?] , , ,

(((((i)))))(((((t)))))((((c)))))(((((h)))))

/ , / , / , / , / , / , / , /

scarlet tooth decay

profane waterfall curtain
roadway stump travesty
scratch bench warmed limit
lotion fountain saddened punch
bowl brawn skinny duck

matter plumed
alabaster strumming

: (
‘guitar
mechanism
shirt’ ) , , , duty
drips
calendar osmosis = = = GLiTTeR
fastened hammer

; [blow BY blow] ,
a fingernail scrap ,
metal onion
luster

) skip IT (.
Judith Chalmer

Spiral

A basket with one clasp undone—

the faint call each night of an owl—

red stone ledges, layer on layer—

I could root forever in the leaves

and roughened faces, scarves

with my sister’s scent lasting for months,

wooden drawers with all their junk,

furniture cracked by long ago forbidden

jumping and be happy— but for something

aggrieved, a sorrow born

with the first banging heart and tied

for generations in a pocket, in a vein,

a woodland crevice filled

with moss. The days are hard to track

though there’s a clock in every room

and a new basket, strange bright spiral,

wide as a sun, fastened by someone

very good to my sky white brick wall.
the visit

the touch- maybe not this soft since childhood - one

the smile - you’re really here - one
the how could this be one
the cranked-up bed, the call-button one
the impossibly - all of this - one
the lucky one
the moaning one
the remembering one
the forgetting one
the medicated one
the hula-hoop delirium one
the gray couch where we read together one
the eyes that can’t, won’t, will never look away
but then it’s time again to go one
the monitor beeping one
the spasm one
the single spoonful, then another one
the quivering one
the quiet one
the one sorry, then both sorry one
the tired now one
the softly stepping, door left half-open one

water’s edge, winter light

a silver lid closing,
the tide lifting, falling
the last one
untold one
unmeasured one
on the way to meet each infant grandchild

shift: line of brow, of eyelash, wince of something taking up space

in the belly, of cold, of weeping, of dark and of light, of lifting,
of swaying and bouncing, lines wrinkled and red, of wanting,

of wiping, of ankle fold, of watching and watching, of breathing

and watching, of hoping, of patting, of shoulder, of center line,
broken line, of braking, of trusses and railings, of trembling,

of going and going, of gripping, of letting go and speeding,

speeding, not looking, just going and banging, reckless
and weak, faster, and hopelessly hard into love
Lewis LaCook

Radiant dials

in the morning the sun barely makes it over the ridge

someone shut all the air up in this house

it blares on and on about how thick shadows

clang on dew-slushed grass

in the village the sun bravely faces its rays

sharp, ragged, carving an inverse from the obvious

this house sings to the sun as it passes

takes hold of its rays with blind windows
spins it until we’re born again

again waiting for this house to hug us to sleep

blinds to stop the mouth of the sun
The floor

you hang onto your shadow like the floor's lava

like watching it fold into hot restlessness
slams all the doors in your brain

the light that seeps through the jamb

never promised you a thing

you watch your shadow slide away

lengthen in heat
all it ever wanted was more light

like you it was in love with forgetting

like you it couldn’t stay
Proust’s cookbook

the other possible world betters you by not showing up

this one wraps around your finger to remind you
this morning you woke up noisy

can you hear me over the fear

that never stops time

one recipe calls for riding your breath until

a diamond faults your thoughts
this morning I woke up

seeing clouds in the clouds

all the faces I made that froze
Kierkegaard and Regine

mom was an outstretched hand

where the day ends in rain

I wanted to give myself to you

but Sunday grayed me out
sapped my muscles, their electricity
starving
I wanted to be something you would take

when she fell in love with an orderly

her dreams closed over him

here is something to hold onto

a door that opens on unabashed light
summer oblivious to uncertain stars
Wild raspberry

What if all I have is a body? What if all you need is a body? What if I don't have a body? What if my body does
not meet the specifications? What if I do not know the specifications beforehand? What if the specifications do
not include the delicate peekaboo flower of wild raspberry? What if the aroma of the delicate peekaboo flower
of wild raspberry is an appreciation in which my body partakes? What if my body takes all of it? What if my
body is drunk, right now, on the aroma of the delicate peekaboo flower of wild raspberry? What if you minded
your own business?

Lean into sun squall

with bees in a happy boil
in the sound of light
Maia Brown-Jackson and Madeline Charne

What is your weapon?

I am my weapon.

My words have changed hearts and minds and they are still coming.

My voice has inspired people and I am not done talking.

My brain? My brain tries daily to destroy me, so I listen, listen, listen, to those who tell me I've
helped. Listen to those I love.

My brain is a weapon against myself. Love is my shield. I will not hurt those who love me,
weapon that I am. So I will not self destruct.

I have been a weapon since I was born, and I don't have blood in my teeth or a knife in my hands
but I have my voice and I have my soul. I fight nonstop and wish I could do more.

I am a weapon. Use me.

You are your weapon. You are your shield.

You are their weapon. Their shield.

You fight for your own survival and justice for those who have been wronged by the world.
Justice, justice you shall pursue.

You shield yourself from your own hardest, cruelest thoughts. You shield the hurt of the world
and the wronged with the words you spin and weave and drape across their pain and doubts.

You build fortresses with those words. Spaces of peace and beautiful futures of power, love,
justice, and mercy. On your hardest days those fortresses stand tall even when your thoughts are
foggy and the doors you've built are hard to find.

You pray for the days that those fortresses can hold the whole, broken world. You fight like hell
for a future in which the battering ram of pain and patriarchy and hate will clear and your
fortresses can become havens, your weapons, toys. Until then your words will continue to build,
to batter against those forces of despair, and to hold strong and true for everyone who needs their
shield--for yourself and for every person touched by injustice.
Holy II

I tire of being human:

To be human is to be cursed, isn’t it?
I wish to be holy.
You were cursed from birth
with blood that pumps hot and thick and loud in your ears,
My hands, bless not bruise—
beating the drum of more more more, never enough.
my mouth, sing not sin—
the rhythm of better better be better better run run run.
my heart, unbroken with purpose,
The beat of save them save them and—
just like they promised me
I would be if I could be a savior.
Your curse has seen you bleed.
It doesn’t make much difference,
though.
It has seen you bruise and twist and fall and break.
My time is limited here,
Heal over those broken places with

and no matter if I manage to bruise

tendons of scar tissue that are

or bless,
stronger than the skin that came before.

no matter how much I desire otherwise,

Mop up the blood of the fallen beside you. And press on.
I am human
(What would the tenderness of a caress mean
if that hand couldn’t also destroy?)
and
And I have seen you rise again.
I will do what I must before it’s over.
I will not leave you

You will know what you want

at the barrel of a gun,
when you jump out of a plane
and think, “I’m not done yet,”
when you think,
“There is more I want to do.”

But what do I do if
hope is a thing with feathers
and despite my best efforts,
my feet are firmly bound by gravity?

“Hope” is the thing with feathers, Emily Dickinson said.

Perched on the soul. Asking nothing of the branch it lands upon.

But hope has always asked so very much of you.

It asks you to stay. To fight. To take the next step. To do the next best thing. To feed yourself and
bathe and clean and walk and sing and write the next email and read the next page even when
buried under the rubble of despair and crushed to the floor by its sheer, ever growing weight.

If your feet are trapped by gravity, can I be your wings? I have never felt comfortable with my
head amongst the clouds—that was always you—but for you I would sprout wings. Hold you
gently within my talons, and fly you through the gale and storm when your feathers are
bedraggled and those endings are calling you.

Hope asks you to consider what might come next. Hope asks you to imagine a tomorrow even
when yesterday fills the whole horizon like the ever-setting sun.

Or perhaps it’s I who ask you that.

Well, I’m still listening, aren’t I?

What if Orpheus had stayed

Would you, I want to ask,

would you follow me into the dark?
Into the endless night and
the nothing to follow,
to make sure I had a hand to hold
in case I felt afraid?
I would follow you into the dark
I would close my eyes against the empty
and I would brace my body against your pain
and fear
and hurt
and I would follow.
If I fought you tooth and nail,
would you listen to me or your heart?
When you screamed, STOP,
I would look into your eyes
and tell you that I follow you
not as your protector,
not as your shield or your guard, but
If I said I would never forgive you,
not for throwing your life away with mine,
would you do it still?
as a hand to hold.
A breath to sync your breath to,
as a heart to remind you love exists.
Are you going to come with me,
against my protests, against my wishes,
because you’d rather I be angry than alone?
I would follow you because
the light does not exist for me
when you are in darkness.
When I feel the pull, feel the tug,
and you think you can bring me back from the sunless land
but you know that there’s no way to be sure,
would you take my hand,
an Orpheus who didn’t look back?
And I cannot promise you I would not look back.
Because after all, doesn’t Orpheus prove his love with that glance?
He will not step into the light if Eurydice is not behind him.
He trusts no god, no greater force.
His faith is not in the heavens
but in her smile.
In her heart, her kindness, her laugh.
If I am Eurydice and I am doomed,
would you follow me into the dark?
But if I looked back.
If I doomed the journey to fail.
I would follow you down once again,
side by side, shoulder to shoulder, walking step by step
into a new kind of light.
Is it hard to love a girl with a hero complex?

As a little girl,
all she wanted was to be good.
as she grew, she learned there were consequences
if she couldn’t give up thoughts of martyrdom,
of adventure,
of dying for love,
because this real world never quite lived up to its promise.
So if she still plays at the hero, how can you still love her?

You’ve never been so attuned to anyone as

you are to her,
to the way her gaze flickers away when she’s uncomfortable
or the pleading glances when she needs saving
(she never really needs saving).

God damn.
It is NOT hard loving a girl with a hero complex.
You know her smiles.
Beyond sincere and insincere,
beyond polite and excited,
you know her better than anyone.

Sometimes it hurts, sure,

when she sacrifices herself for the greater good.
(She knows you better than anyone, too,
but she keeps everything closer to her chest.)

Sometimes it hurts, sure,

when she cannot seem to see
You know to ask even if you’re
the blazing wings of gold,
certain of the answer,
the halo that erupts in light around her
not to push too hard,
when she strides into a room,
and to sit in silence and in pain.
ready to take on injustice and hate.

You know not to slay her enemies,

the men who sent her to hell
 Sometimes it hurts, sure.
because when she clawed her way back
she asked you not to,
and her desire for the possibility of goodness
But it is NEVER hard.
It is always easy.
must come before your need for revenge.
(Well, most of the time.)

She tells you that you would be fine without her,

and you know, you know, that
if she died the sun would go dark.

Easy like breathing.

Like drinking cold water when you’re thirsty.
Like relaxing into bed after a long day.

So you tell her,

It is never hard.
Because we’ve been created around each other.
Yes, I love you,
(holding each other.
holding space for each other)
yes, you will save the world one day,
yes, I will believe strongly enough for the both of us.

Growing symbiotically like the vine around the tree.

Like the mushrooms that flourish
in the shade of the brush and
in return nurture the soil
so the bush can grow strong and wild.
(yes, I am so afraid for you).
She would die for you in a heartbeat,
and she would sacrifice you for the greater good,

Loving a girl with a hero complex

means getting to see her change the world.
And that is NEVER hard.
and she loves you more than anything.
And maybe,
just maybe,
the ancients were right. Maybe you two
were born together and separated,
because all you know is that you stopped crying
when she was born.

And this became a conversation in which

the girl in question once again thought,
how do you see me as this avenging angel
when there are days in which
I can barely get out of bed?
I’m not special.
I just want to save the world.
And I will fail.

And you reply,

Don’t worry, love,
I will believe in you enough
for the both of us.
The fight: a reminder

I know I have to keep fighting. But I’m tired.

I need something to push me back into the fire,
amongst the wolves, feel the iron in my blood.

But I’m down.

But this is one of those times I don’t want to be.
Give yourself a moment, an hour, a day–
let yourself breathe.
Let yourself break if breaking is what you need.
Close your eyes against the world for a second.

You will fight again.

You may be down for a time
and you may need help,
but the fight will call again and
you will answer.

It will call.
I will answer.
It needs to call—

It’s just—
I’m so tired of fighting life.
My dearest hope
is that sometime very soon life gets tired
of fighting you.

Because you’re that last woman in the ring–

life punches but it does not bring you down.
Someday soon life is going to get tired of bloodying its fist
and say, I give up with this one.
Time to give her the crown
and pave her path with roses.
Ya’aburnee

Do you know what it feels like

to be completely loved?
Do you know what it’s like
to have found your other half?
To be—well, baffled?
Undeserving, most certainly?
Caught up in this modern cliché of self loathing
and constant disbelief?
Not just found it,
but never had to look
because she was always there next to you–
growing around and between your empty spaces,
creating depth and understanding
and love where you only had
smooth, granite walls?
And then you have a friend.
And your friend says that she’s not a writer,
but when the words are about you
it feels like it’s something
a simple poet laureate might dismiss
because they can’t see the nuance in
each gently billowing vowel.
She writes things that takes your breath away
And she know all of your smiles
and lets you touch her hair
and thinks they’re all beautiful.
and comfort her when
the touches on others feel like sandpaper
And she can drive you crazy,
can care about you too much,
can hold you too tightly.
and she hugs you sometimes
so you believe you can hold the world together–
just the two of you.
But that’s the thing.
She loves you.
Too much.
 She thinks she doesn’t deserve
any of this,
but she doesn’t realize
this miraculous love wouldn’t exist without her.
And you’ll never understand,
because your edges have all broken too sharp
and you’re the furthest thing from normal
and she still thinks sunshine spills out
from all the cracks in your hollow bones
not yet filled with gold,
She’s created the sacred
with her very presence beside you,
because when she walks into a room
the empty holes fill up with light
and the chasing shadows of
toomuch notenough faster farther dobetter all go quiet.
They are nothing beside her smile.
and you’ll never really understand why,
There’s no room for them because you fit together–
and you can’t imagine anyone else
ever loving you like this,
but you know you already have
more than most people get
in a lifetime.
you on your tiptoes to fit your chin over her shoulder,
and her head dipped low
so you feel her hair on your cheek
and your arms tugging, pulling,
taking strength in the embrace.
Because you have her.
Love–all and any love–is never unidirectional.
Love exists between people
and it needs their strength
to keep it alive.
You just have to hope you die first,
so you never have to live without her.
Marjorie Sadin

My Mother is a Bee

My Mother Insists I Grow Up

You dress like a teenager.
Your condo is a disaster.

Grow up to be a woman
not a horse.

Siamese Twins

My mother and I are

joined at the hip.

I can’t go shopping
without her.

A Platoon

My mother defends me
from my father.

She and I gang up on him.

We are a platoon.
My Mother is a Bee

My mother gets drunk

like a bumblebee on nectar.

When she gets ripped,

she falls off the bed.

My Mother Loves Me Best

I wish she didn’t.

It is too big a burden.

I can’t carry her sadness.

It must weigh a ton.

When She Dies

My mother is like a bird

feeding her babies from the nest.

When she dies,

I fall out and fly.
My Sister is Like a Venus Fly Trap

My Sister Plays with Me

We play with paper dolls.

I am the boy; she is the girl.

When she is seven

she won’t play with me anymore.

She Bites with Venom

My sister is jealous
that my mother loves me more.

She wants
to get rid of me.

My Sister is Beautiful

like a Venus Fly Trap.

Boys are attracted to her.

She has lots of friends.

She fits in like a chameleon.

I Am Envious

At nineteen she marries.

I want to be her.

Her husband treats her like shit.

I have a crush on him.
My Sister Calls Me Names

My sister says I’m a liar.

And a brat.

She doesn’t want a sister.

She wants a mama bear.

My Sister Believes

our mother never loved her.

When our mom dies

she cries
more for herself than anyone.
Mark DuCharme

Bricks
after Kenneth Koch

A start always has to have a middle

Stuck to it. Then we go back
To the way things were before.
How are they now? We still don’t know. The tune
Is sweet, but no one calls. The bricks lie redolent
In the mud. The security forces twist & turn in sorrow.

Wouldn’t you be sorrowful too

If you were lying in the mud?
You sure would! though you can offer no
‘Security’ nor ‘force’
Entirely your own. It’s never too late
To go back to the middle

Though many do, who, still, like you

Are an upstart & a charlatan,
Albeit a fine golfer. Go then
To the anteroom to meet your followers,
All wired. “The middle isn’t
Here,” one declares, but you’ve gone sailing

In the meantime, nestled by sea’s

Violent plumes. If you go back
To the source, nothing will be rebuilt.
Wander out the door, then, in poor apparel, please
With lots of passionate footnotes & several
Cameras filled with mud— as if to proclaim,
“Earth will never look the same
Again. With grace comes mud, or at least bricks;
With birth, delight & sorrow; to end,
A poem must already have begun
But deliberately, in breath, when all
But earthen cameras fade.”
A Poem for Believers

The sketchy connivance won’t stop skimming

Leafmeal as peace dungarees
Where winter struts, though tunes go missing
In a past we're all too ready to ignore

Like tons of petty gravure, reproduced as scrim

Fate only graces the saints in real-time
Shadows of distressed birds
Thrust at haberdashers’ windows

Or brood of others lost at sea

Invent stressed cloud formations
The clarion call isn’t up to speed
Circle back to reason’s dumbed-down saints

Become no one, whether cyclist or stooge

Exempt like raucous cloud formations
Often are where you won’t quite be
By rotten palms, when winter’s almost through
In the Garden of Lost Tongues

Departure ruins your woozy entrenchment

Time runs backwards
Accept loss as a garden you must tend
That the somnolent might envy your misdirected gaze

A formal renunciation of pyrography

In the skein of each other’s nerve
Where words grow stale as calyxes or harbingers
Of doom whose trumpets blare

Above your calendar of missing days

Where the mirror holds no face
& Words desiccate the tongue
With love a moldy flag— a parlor game of mumblers

Who often muffle screamers’ faces as they drown—

Never was once like once before
With crushed doves frayed
At the linear defacement of my own name

My lost shadow
My tongue of burnt night indigo
My tune of animal grief
That neither sea nor wind can ever heal
Address to the Streets

To stay nowhere, get it clear

Some other Sunday

After the streets don’t rain

With mediocre proposals

Hang on to your shopping boots

At noon young sparrows cough

Who only then begin

To address the material

When they wake up, furtive regents also snort

Do you have the youth to forgive them?

Heart like a prayer set aside

In a bucket of gift cards

That ashen children don’t have the heart to

Forge. Truth comes later

On headsets of summer evenings

When you’ve already left town

If you go back, grow up

The streets don’t need you

In fact, they often fly off, trying

To wake the dead in null surprise
Things You Still Aren’t Sure of
for JD Nelson

Be revealed
Be corporeal blossoms
At a corner of the shadow you once were

With or without tickertape

While others stare, then sing along
Like thieves. We don’t know where we belong

Just like you, who fled

With your front foot in the left drawer
Where tomorrow never rains, although

You reinstate loud calm

Rustic, like a folk-humanist imperialist
If only I’d said the right loanword

Like carbon forget-me-nots

Or appointments with hot-air-balloon specialists
You might as well tell the sun not to stay

Usually, in any reflection

Until films cram our eyes with structure
Though we, who wake in altered

Structure
Disregard horizons
Sometimes, when December is a jumble

Or you fumble with the

Keys
Toward any replacement of botched jamborees

When the truth of life is through

You’ll still never know what to do
Mark Goodwin

Thing Of A Face
( a cycle of five poems )

We may pick
as frost’s

looked hard

spring’s birds glean

gentle abolishment of
We may pick

ourselves up like so many twigs or dried grasses, we may circle

ourselves over & over again, pressing ourselves to round felt.

The words are treetop, twigs & splinters of sky, rain stinging, the
horrible wow of wind.

The whole Bardo is black twigs. I have rearranged tree-bits over &
over, it is never finished.

It reminds me of a dream I had last night, there

were

twigs.

So many pairs of gloves perched on a telephone wire. Voices nest

in the tree of a distant city. Here’s one now:

‘ Gods, how I love your twigs{&}grasses! ’

as frost’s
hot

-feeling cold

face pr
essed a

gainst a
smile of

mine my

face fr
oze and
fell from

me as a
crisp

flake of exp
ression left

out a
lone and

face-
down some

place a
among face-

shaped

fields ga
zing at ice-

blue sky’s
still

eye

.
.
.
 now so as
to take
looked hard
some
at a face re vering single
flected letter
thing of
in a rippled a face
tarn
push
a mouthed i from
o bobbed as
a delic
ate net
wavelets
altered it some un
der & un
kept d
own
watch as bits
seen sil
of exp into the
water’s
ressions soft
ly wriggled as
wobbling
pict very
gleam und
ulated a glossic

ure and
gaze try

to pull
a shi
.
.
.

spring’s birds glean

fibres of being

let them take

your eyes’ glints

let them have

the wisps

you’ve said

let the birds line

their nests

with all
your soft

selves dreamt

gentle abolishment of

beetle’s shadow cast

over bright rippled

limestone paver one

blade of gently

wavering grass and

poetry ( a
rose ) a
rises wear
ing home’s love

ly in

sect mask &

six long shadow

-legs-of-an-else-

self
Martha Deed

Asking Questions

He is asking questions

Do we have Presidents in Dad’s family?

then

Did we have slaves?

He is seven
still plays knights in gleaming armor
re-enacts the Crusades
on the wrong side
his mother says

What do we make of DNA that crosses seas

back and forth
inscrutable until we can untangle it?

It’s a grandma question

also a cousin question
because “grandma” is not linked by blood
as “grandma,” but rather is linked
by cousinhood

and how is a seven year-old or anyone else

supposed to understand how that could happen?
It took grandpa’s 80th birthday to untangle
strands of chromosomes twisting two families
into one

grandma thought she’d married into a family

of Swiss farmers who emigrated to WNY
a hundred years ago ‒ which on second thought ‒
was strange because each time she’d
stayed in Switzerland she’d found the people
cold as the all-white meal she’d suffered through
in Zermatt when she pinched the baby’s toe
to make her cry so they could be exiled
to eat alone, not staring into the blank
faces of the other diners who scowled at babies
and this Swiss husband was warm though
serious as the Swiss electrician who came
at 6 AM to inspect the stove to confirm
its compliance with local codes

But on second thought (again)

there were signs that First Thanksgiving
when taken to meet his family

sister handed younger brother

a bowl of nuts to pass
and he ate them all

a male sat reading in the only easy chair

his pant leg rose, his bare shin gleamed
while the women told stories everyone
had heard before of boring dead relatives

the adult children fled before cleanup time

no one listened

no one expressed the slightest interest in the guest

2

The second family visit he took her to the cemetery

filled with Swiss ancestors ‒ those farmers
whose cows he’d herded down the road to the barn
before the land was sold to a Dodge dealership

This one

he says pointing to a well-kept stone with a clay pot

filled with wildflowers beside it

This one came from some place in New England

I don’t know how they met

My grandmother who was hit by a train and died

because the railroad crossing guard fell asleep
did not lower the gate
my grandfather, too.
I was seven.
I cried.

One New Englander to trace before his 80th birthday

long-married by then and assuming no more secrets
were to be found

They are cousins

The five stepchildren are cousins
even those who reject her are cousins

The seven year-old asking questions

is her cousin

There are Presidents in his father’s line

and his ‒ and although most of his ancestors
were ‒TG ‒ too poor to own another person
because morality may have had little to do with it ‒
a 17th Century grandson of the Mayflower
kept a single man in bondage until that man freed himself
by marrying an Indian ‒ his name was Hampshire

and a hundred years later

when we all should have learned
another cousin writes

Involuntary servitude in those days had not been abolished

in Massachusetts, and he owned one slave by the name of
Hampshire, probably "a military necessity."*

Oh, really?
A white-wash for sure
Did every soldier who went to war
cage a human back home to feed the cows?

The boy has been waiting for an answer

and now his mother
emigrant from Africa
indigenous
no Anglo roots
speaks

My family had slaves

*Ebenezer Alden. Memorial of the Descendants of Hon. John Alden. 1867. p 14.
The Wastebasket

Why is this wastebasket no longer round

even though the geese are still flying North
or South over Town Cove’s sand flats
at low tide in Orleans on Cape Cod?

Did childhood memories

of birds and dunes and sand sharks
swimming beneath the cloth-covered
folding canoe cross his mind as he
took a tumble into infirmity?

And further ‒ consider the clouds

the blues and pinks near sunset
the Sanderlings and peeps
scampering, digging insects
horseshoe crab eggs, worms
and algae from the drying sand
before the tide comes back in

Is this the sky

tumbling down upon you
or, more likely,
you
waiting for morning’s renewal?
Sneakers

If you remember the day you tossed your red sneakers

into the washing machine because of the mud
when they were still too new for stains and your father’s
underwear turned pink and he refused to wear any
of it ever again and they tried to take the replacement
cost out of your 5 cents a week allowance
and you would have been a grandmother before that debt
was satisfied, then you can comprehend the absurdity
of the current state we live in where all truth
is alternate and court trials have become occasions
for political speech in the hallway just outside the range
of the judge to hear, although you know he will
hear about it later, but the present is the only tense
that counts, then you will know that these days
are tailor-made for the likes of the late James Tate
for whom the world was a source of unending
surrealistic poetry.
Mather Cargil

new light shining

It is not easy to recognize a new star in the sky.

A new light shining among
The countless stars in the night.
To notice a new light shining
that wasn’t shining there the night before.
But it is now, glowing brightly
For starwatchers, like me.
I look for the surprise in the ordinary,
In the normal, in the everyday world.
A surprise in the ordinary,
Like a new star in the sky shining among
The countless stars in the night.
I seek out those tiny sparks of inspiration
That happen everywhere, every day
Among the day-to-day routine.
I look for the surprise in the ordinary,
In the normal, in the everyday world.

Images from the Total Eclipse in Kenmore, NY Monday April 8, 2024 3:18PM EST
A surprise in the ordinary, a spark,
An inspiration in the day-to-day routine.
A surprise so extraordinary
It can change the way you see
The uninteresting and change
How you feel about everything.
We see everything that we are, just as we are.
And in that ordinary, we can find a surprise
A touch of poetry and imagination
That pushes our understanding further
If you just take a moment and observe.
It is not easy to recognize a new star in the sky.
A new light shining among
The countless stars in the night.
But if you look, you will see that star too,
A spark of inspiration, a surprise so extraordinary
You too will find the surprise in the ordinary.
Nate Hoil

THE DEVIL WENT DOWN TO DAVENPORT, IOWA.

I get tired of the endless special occasion.

The poetry conference begins its four-day-long stampede.

I hope you brought your laugh track.

I duck under the table, while my fingerprint princess

frightens another literary clique.

I don’t choose what I say; this must mean

that I’ve been chosen.

(I never stop grumbling, unless I am wiping off drool.)

Someday someone will wish

there were
more

of these poems.

Nothing in life is beautiful.

Which makes beauty life’s greatest

surprise.
FOREVER 31.

The atheist asks for evidence of God’s existence.

I won’t answer that question

because God has been hiding

from my courageousness for 31 years.

God’s wiener is 31 times smaller than mine.

Every year, I get more famous,
as I scream and I punch through various walls.

I could have been a part of the gradual mumble,

but my teeth aren’t organized
correctly within my jaw.

Lord knows I have never been

down to Earth.
DART BOARD DENTISTRY.

The end.

Now that we got that out of the way...

The end again.

It’s all one big offering and this is my offering:

throwing knives at a tornado,

I’m on the sidewalk with 40 oz of beer.

I say: Someone’s gotta do it…

before and after everything I do.

I feel like God when I am

driving back into the city with a full tank of gas

and no foreseeable purpose.

I lead by example;
sometimes I act like I have nothing

to lose.
Nicholas Skaldetvind

Apprenticeship

The machinist says, you are its role model.

But in its limb-knowing mind could I also be misconstrued?
Out of the greenest life-teeming tree, the squirrel seems lost

in a thicket of string quartets.

Stars will not wake up to guide it

back to the burrow of shadow by the gully’s edge
where its passel was born.

As far as light is concerned, practice patience.

I Can’t Rest

From fragments of a time unspooling like clouds thinning back into air’s morning.
Now as I stare through a world remote as memory, opening the lock screen on my phone.
Other people unspool from this window, foregrounding the sound of a truck’s engine
braking. The past comes rushing back.
I’m small again, remembering Bille, whose dad had just died, standing
in my mother’s classroom and did his dad being a ghost mean that Bille could now
initiate the deconstructive work of a boyhood of being
ignored? Bille had just moved here from PA, his mom a young widow and now aid,
do they matter, does the fact that I followed behind him with my sister
in one hand dragging our trumpet cases with the other through the snow
like fresh kill matter, does it matter we heard his brother, also named Bille,
make mention of the electric field, matter, or that I didn’t understand how
science was an art of conversation, which I never mastered anyway, matter, none of which
explains the tenses in which stars shine and how eventually I would learn
of all the grammatical compounds, I am the conjunctive one, or how
a poem is already one moment in a long story most of which will end
up expired thus forgotten in the background of fog, of words uttered that waste
their motion, none of which explains the spring’s first glinting through the budding oaks,
none of which explains back when there were payphones as when Rasmus
who might have taken his life called me in Madrid from a booth in Århus and grew restless
in avid disorder of the heart and hung up.
Novel, I was energetic then, a towhead in a white, tight-fitting tee, no idea who I was
or wanted to be, inhaling hashish smoke in slow motion from a soft apple.
Differences

Our past takes on opposites. Take the mornings when we solved everything and leave the ones we didn’t.
Recounting childhood traumas in that certain voice, the unexpected sex when we see eye to eye. Alas, other
things set their own trajectory, like the ghost of light sinking in this cracked passenger window and the snow
my daughter grows up in a Swedish Polaroid brought to me with the mail.
The opacity of sky gives way from hesitant to harsh, changing the location of the encinitas. A nest inside
the inside of feeling. You want me to say breasts crest to meet lips and wave while I am craving a mask of silk
elusive as three aliases. Longing to part the veil, I watch you dreaming there. to dream of the voice blooming I
am only sort of using you to tell my story.
Meanwhile I bend you back into youth and then we died a little death and it became a fit subject for a
poem. Time slows and we enter a sunlit canvas of Matisse. Joy comes upon us, a corona of palm fronds in
green oil about us sinking the sun because California constantly swells and the day curves without us noticing.
But your dog notices even when sleeping in the backseat. This parking space feels tight. Thus and so I am at
ease in the center of your body, an ocean of secret and whispering between clavicles, an ocean sound, my hand
covering yours to keep the swallow from threshing out. The seams of the Pacific grow in you fevering a motion
thus. Embracing as we are tight above the gearshift refusing to come alive, our bodies remain fixed as a
bowstring, the bow drawing out our stringy touch, near motion, sticky breath you later called palpable. And
then you swallowed earthward.
Today we are as synonymous as mischief and mistress. How we add up our angles and corners, how the
embroidery of your spine calls to mind a clavier, how your bright mind turns me onto new positions. In
hindsight I’d have said we, only by likeness, could be close like this. Like the laughter nestling in our mouths, it
foregrounds the incidental metronome of Nelly snoring as we endure an overweight letter carrier’s chagrin about
our indecency in the post office parking lot.
Eventually

I go visit Murray and we roam

the trailer park, drinking in the sustaining air
dazzled by sleet. This is how we’ve decided to spend a night
under Maine’s street lamps.

The fox crosses a bank of snow. A flash of eyes

of the earth behind him. (Something he says? Our emissary?)
And this is what an old friend’s message is for –
a set of fixed eyes reflecting when it’s too hard to stay in one place.

You ask where I go even when you can see me.

I repeat the motion of his words closely
and it sounds like a plea, a summoning. Close,
close like shared moments too numerous to name.

Who were we then that even now

our chatter gives the notes I tune my daydreaming voice to?
We love the unknown sound in a word.

The fox, with our names

in its jaws and our future in its stomach,
coughs us up in his bark:
part phlegm, part phone,
part bone, part poem,
part space and the rhythm
of wind and snow, part speed.

There is a dead language buried in his snowbank, a word

neither of us remembers
for the sound of glower, of dried bud burning
in foil. It dissolves into the seed
syllable. When we are buried
in snow the word will sprout an aah sound.
Its meaning will change each winter
before its alphabet is swept flat by a wave of snow. I wouldn’t
mind if it snapped us frozen in it.
Just beyond the last beech there is the sound
of truck engines braking like thunder and I want the sound
to return me to myself, to transform this full-grown indecision
for good.
Of Freilassing’s Sun, I Have Notes

I pedal my bicycle through the one note hum the meadow makes, its plumage heavy with fragrance. It is June so
the meadow has blossoms, lilac or dandelion. The cirrus pitched clouds move apart. The wind plunges its feet
into bales of heat. Aphids and caterpillars were out too, defined in these moments of difference, like the
butterfly carrying the bright vestiges of its former selves constellating the meadow’s tines, splitting, and sticking
together. Glaring scarcities of a fused life, to fuse its thoughts to that of cocoon, of exertion it calls time, like
there’s never enough of it and all that.
Making from yesterday’s leftover rain the sound of its wings: the sparrows’ hydraulic shriek. It opens a
larger sough in the dale’s beech. The cicada perforates a bullfrog’s song out from where the hairy oak scissors
one of its arms into a graceful, indecipherable sentence. The wash and spill of peace extends from the strict
society of the dead. Its measure is by means of an old, organic equation the long way from Neuschwanstein to
the heart of this meadow in uncertain delineation of the Alps’ idea of geometry in the mind of the dandelion.
Or lilac.
The no-see-ums’ continue their affair with essence. Sitting by the river, massaging his bare feet together
as if wanting to show you everything you might have missed, Murray in lederhosen whistles with an arrested
peace, thus settling a score for the beech, lilac, and dandelion.
Crossing my path, a woman wobbles by on rollerblades.
Dead owl on the asphalt, this is not the place to teach us what the sky can pull off. Yet there you are
clear as day, so necessary as the stars in their insanity shining above your feathers ruffling a little against the
scalene polygonal crop of stone stepping out of its grey dress into midsummer’s fabric of weather.
We Meet in Greece

A stippled moon of pedigree lodges into place. It is abiding there. It crafts

landscape of midnight’s cloth. And here you are at the sea’s mouth, your body
entire turning
like the wind. Wind pushed into our mouth. It perches above the vastness of sand
chewed through by spume’s of the Ionian water in this God-blue night.
It’s wet, drenched, aquatic. Moving water making the sea a joy to hear.
Suspending a riven pendulum and endless sapphire. A place to go into from the earth cracking the convex pane
of your eye, we stealth-step in the glare of, adhering to its hectic surface.
The electric sun whispering
in smeared motes of jasmine scent and pincushion flower near the tendril hem
of the cobbled trail of componentry where we kneel at the places rivers split
behind a sconce of cloud.
Rain in the shape of the river, of a broken lock that remained a rift, sound
merged holding this moment river-still. What if this was our life, where
one wave becomes another lost, unmapped, reciting that we are what produces
itself, sanded and cast adrift. Teal water seeps up our spine, making us less than heavy.
You and I are dirty with scent.
The stripped-down. The drizzle of sound through the endless does wash ashore.
The lavish. The striped. Maybe we have been here and are tired of being surprised.
Maybe we shared a mouth to speak through, free of the mind
becoming the soundless slip that covers a mouth, lowered
over the slack sea clutching at the spaces that are not there and needing
a slipknot, a tightening, for the tide to drink up the shore. It vomiting it up again.
A sign of devotion. Or resurrection. Are the lives that have tried to complete me in waiting.
An ambulating pause in eye-opening reveals a brief wound
of serrated light dissipating back into sea memory as it becomes sky again.
Open your mouth, show me rows of jagged teeth
foregrounding evenly with your ear to speak for the shell’s impress
announcing the calligraphic coast’s dithyramb:
skin in marble, Byron’s incipient eye in stone, burning seraphic we are
bathed in milk, singing in the asphodel meadow’s inseam becoming voracious
and lit. Look at me holding you, an eidetic thing, trying to find the words
for sight, blinking, and letting go. Pressing one finger between your eyes resisting the fragile
retina. What trove of meaning could it ascribe?
Blooming ghosts setting free jackasses from their constant
milling—the rasp of the rusty hinge’s gate, how
the locks of our hometown are all broken—I laugh, they bloom
from between yellow teeth white primroses butting their blunted heads against
the cliffs of the Ionian through a dignified croft of wheat that is theirs.
How bougainvillea
still finish your sentences into the suitable honeycomb language of the sky. Its opaque
curve, a crippled moon’s oblation echoes one echo in two that the moon is the moon’s
palest syntax closing crescent-like and trapping itself in a bead of sweat on your neck
I try to collect with my mouth, leaning
my discalced itinerary of language into a language made of salt air.
You
are now synonymous
with the island, synonymous with the open-mouthed moon with impossible offerings.
I look up into its human face, a temple plume conjugated by the season
into a seafoam ether lurking among the night of your hair.
Nothing so much as the sepal looms combing the air, and so
it makes sense to meet here combing your hair with an open palm
held out, we embark on our self-spun short story multiplying and moving
toward something other than ourselves.
A giant phantom fed on by people and flowers. An immense seashell.
Let’s let the sea that rains light down have the last word,
and what short night stories cross the breadth and width of November.
Almond-blossoming foam, dream-sea selves risen, this feeling of collapse
and what are we who hail nothing.
Lazy Acres

Right beneath us wasps are drawing up their plans for a nest. So many of our guests do not remove their shoes.
We ignore the apparitions as the high sun plays the same tune on the accordion of light entwining the meadow
filled with blossoms and ticks and now and then blood rusty stakes, which is good for the rakes to knit the
minutes together in spider silk.
We do not much of anything, letting the guests’ gossip serve as an axis hyphenated by birds snarling the
garden chain link the thrushes gloat in and out from, body from body, speech to speech just as needles knit the
grove full of metaphor in plain sight moving the plot deeper into heat.
Us, as usual, between the narrative of water wearing nothing but courage.
We are too tired to praise anything. Another wet dawn and light knifes beauty. We brush our teeth
with garden hose water at dusk, the crick keeping time with nothing. We do not much of anything and call it
romance, as if this wilding were intentional.
If there are fruit blossoms in the knotted limbs, I tell myself the neighbor’s yard work is to thank. All
the while the crick water is headed for the sackcloth of congressing clouds.
Crickets drawing symphonic moons around themselves dissolve all over the caustic lawn.
I place my hand on your heart. We need so much protection, needed by the body. We stand barefoot
in the wet grass watching the wasps creep through the warped boards the weather broke loose as if trying to lift
the porch. No one even cares.
The summer rain takes its first dip through the leaves. It’s so late in the season and you turtle into me
for a crick swim, explaining water is only one way to apprehend the air. The dusky summer unfurls as a wild
wet star of stagnant water, lustrous and nervous with our lips wide open letting in the bright language to keep
our body’s water in check. The drinkable rain parts like a path of escape. You can’t step in the same mouth
twice. You are an attempt to fill my face with thoughts as kind and neat and unshaking as you are the light in
my mouth. You surface with hair tangled with river twigs and wire and chance. The equinox sizzles there
behind you. Both mouths and cricks are mostly water. We’ve held space for stagnancy. A romantic stagnancy
we call water.
Bodum

Space organizing itself when you have limited time. Our daydreams, in the highest
tract of air, replace the stained sunlight hovering above the coffee grinder’s
ignoble cord at the kitchen’s island. So it requires patience, an extra stoop.

You, mostly a pattern of motion, a village in which a leaf, also you, scatters
without the confusion. Translucent in that timelessness, we drink mug
after mug of inky noise. The cirrus-shape of your motion becomes the leaf pile we jump into

next season
echoing the kinesthesia
of one echo in two.

Our miracle, we who those days were the centrifugal moment, a knot in future memory
before the Great Water parted us. Language shared our perspective pinned to air.
The air we breathe the birds use for flying. We are easy in the weather of our home star.

Will we ever come back to now?

That summer we were content to walk in an unlocked sunlight leaning in
to leaf-shaded grass. The grass inside the song

stains us with the thick shape of foot-falling warmth

under the periwinkle pinned there, prolonging the monotony of a bursting. Percussive, it
runs in a glare beyond the yard’s tracery blooming horizon

thus making us crave the kinesthesia of change with each step to give everything its exact
measure in color. Marking the transition between learning and knowing. Why not start
with the whole note, an aroma of green steadying itself on a long swimming pool ripple.

The lung-shaped leaves of borage reopening the body to its breath in green
and a special blue going into all of us and I winced before our special Labrador’s long,
sad decline riding the feathers of a comet into the world.

Absence makes the particle move faster. We still hoped for the miracle
that summer. We were one with the yard evasive as silence, a commotion of sound
and form, a fluent green blaze we wonder about ourselves

framing the burning seat of our proffered balcony behind

the constant gentleness of leaves. How much has the world turned
since you were a girl in the Isole Tremiti with a carnation twisted in your hair?

Seeing each other in the future is better than the pasture.

When the time came, I saw your pupils dilate as when losing love
another window opens, taking auspices. Even stooped, if we let our eyes cut open

and close then open in a tear, it wouldn’t matter.

The wayward girl goes no longer reclaimed. To be your brother
is to solve the problem of perpetual motion and I was losing

you in real time to a quarantined affection on another balcony to live out the last
of your youth in that cold, hard-to-reach place. Lovely to be both
wave as well as particle, so do our minutes hasten to their end.

But even though you leaving made me wince, dredge up tears, we still found ourselves glad
and in motion. I was losing myself in real time, letting you go with the half of me
that said goodbye when I meant to say how come.

It is important to go on naming things even if all I said to you that summer was light, light, light.
Some Random Sense of Beginning

I disagree that autumn means the sun becomes less full of itself. Itself being mystical, a penumbra band of gold
with ideographic characters. For there are all these moment-to-moment things going on cast in their vat of
bluing on the backyard’s line teleprompting the wilds of my shirt tails to fall in love with the wind. Arranging in
a delicate latticework the wind said I’ve begun to whisper louder. “My breath is an axis hyphenated by the air
birds fly on.”
The wind said I mistrust the orange furnace up there never singeing its blue marble hearth.
Whereas, I've recalled instinct by draping my face with the day’s light of her hair,
a green light hovering above the louder swish of my own heart beating wrong and stunned before the slashing
arms of the sun. Slashing being embracing.
I’m dallying after anonymity’s arabesque forming a slip eternal. Now the I am gets tangled up in the wild
winds summoned from sleep. Whispered wordings that waste their motion. I must lead the mesmeric trance by
streamlining my own inarticulate self in reticence to a ghost I pray will follow. A truce to prayer, enough soft
words. I am a grown, bipedal creature telling the same story with an ellipsis trailing behind me back inside. A
squall blowing me back into myself gone slack.
All this placating amid the heavy tally of the day’s assiduous swoon of domesticity — a damp shirt,
heavy and loose as if it had vomited up a small stone— shirttails playing out two kinds of forgetting: one
consumed by desire, one released from it.
All this afternoon I thought of my life as a light running the length of line in faint satin
script. I saw it as a wand woven into a ring to tether words. It unspools what we’ve saved up to say. It’s me
from another dimension. The same desperation in a sweating day. Sweating to spend the rest of our lives
apart. The dumb thing I said to her isn’t in the poem.
Mercy

The front porch can’t breathe, dead lilac stems are choking the life out of the mulch, the bird house itself is
crushed to pieces in the yard, the geese are leaving, the flies won’t fly, the sidewalk cement is hot, the water in
one of my summer jars has disappeared, and I am trying to scratch one of my triceps without splitting the scab
leftover from the mosquito though it is painful sitting like this and turning in this heat; and there is a half-alive
green lacewing stirring my cup of tea and there is a heap of rotting leaves at the step above which I sit holding
my notebook to the thwarting light like someone did under the limbs of an apple tree once and nod with a
quivering lip of mercy – for all the animals in flux I guess – and wipe my eyes and turn to the widowed branches
and I pick up the rake to rake out the muckheap at the bottom of the step through the filtered light in and out
and waving a little like the glass jar I pick up next and turn

a little like how I face myself now—

Olchar E. Lindsann

Purityranngel
~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“ome chaste and Angel-Friend to Virgin-Fam”
–Collins, Ode on the Poetical Character
~~~~~~~~~~~~~*~
murmurs minding may ye
flea, complacency ,f’lint cherubic
brusten all demotic, eye
-blast dryden writ guilt s’lung strip light, hun’g
lace colonial jury, new peach tree sc’rubs
invasions out ,cast wide ,eyed
augustan coup and deicide thermometer;
ever-scented nimbus roundhead g’race
plus lavender winstanley stain beat’ific blood
-wing, utterly, dreamworm
dilated upon spindle st’retch un-
wound riddled hair pouch, saint of gang’rene,
settled eiderdown of aethelest bust-up of beorn,
ranter nun of chattering, tousled,
brittled into c’rust-eye, verging
birth ,for blood-lust choir.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~*~
“ome Cromwell guiltless of his country’s bloo”
–Gray, Elegy Written in a Village Church-Yard
~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 s’All’t-Shakers Ball
~~^√Ø\––o~~~~~~~~\~~~
“irling, marching, jumping and gesturing; which in turn le
d to individualistic dancing of the members en masse, wi
th dozens of men and women in various areas or meeting
rooms giving vent to a chaotic, free-form motility. This w
as the form of dance that predominated when the Shakers
first came”
– Joseph Jablonski, ‛Millennial Soundings.’
~~^√Ø\––o~~~/~~~~~~~~

!~flailr ,SpiritoUs k new

voice’t’rip nervortex
whissKin Spirit ,fri’ends-nerve thum w(
flex,whisspers ringpdrance simplar
god’s inmpulse arck’isleithe rhythmusculair
joythrob manner preethes head templetempo ;laurel–c’round in
vented motile clinate leap o Spiritaneous or
flesh gains’t flesh friendzy
autonomian Spirit ray chaorphic choreograngelic ,step
*\clinates :brOther mOther leapUn to anOther ~love!
~~^√Ø\––o~~~~~~~~\~~~
“liest, most spontaneous free-form movements that, by the
early 19th century, had come to be known as the ‛back ma
nner’ or ‛promiscuous man’”
– ibid.
~~~/~~~~~~~~o––^√Ø\~
!libertidinal de’ceased-gift: agile transce
rings hieroglyphic glasstep harmonic pulse(
improviSpiritation poetree enochian muskcle fruit
*~~dance of lestiall vision in open blissmusical moves
Spirit social in spasmontaneous self~< empTied
irlgig souLance step ,S elf in Dis ≈>Sol,ution, wAve
of eVile’s drownd in Sweat of God<≈Lovelight, sAved
Spirit comes for gotten : I d’in fused’in bodie’s bliss!

~~^√Ø\––o~~~~~~~~\~~~
“rm or tempo of the dance step, and inclination of the head
or hands, every gesture in fact, assumed a scope of meani
ng rarely present in ot”
– ibid.
~~~/~~~~~~~~o––^√Ø\~
 Larval Aortica

needful lice

pluck my yeoman cerebellum

peppered paste of spigots, nice

gloomy yr rudders

heavy haemoglobin pack rats

goblin, rubber dodos gorged

mother of axle hubcap spoke

spells contagion moray giggle

droplet spittle, woke to blank

lead etiological ranch hands learn

haven in wonton radius hamper

salt cans seal featherweight era

handbrake heartrate butterchurn

 Unstab leOceans
~)~~~~~~~~~~~~
"volved, sprang Lov"
– Aristophanes, The Birds.
,,...,,
"culate clairvo"
– Papasquiaro, 'One Blood'
,,...,,
"ployment of po"
– Vailland, 'The War on Man'
~~~~~~~~~~~~~(

The ound activity of Gerard de Nerval

toward lower and which, were his gallows
of using of the unity eyes
from the entrails / away at the
movement toward the ordly of mind
back to destiny t, in an
(a man) through contemplation for me
and feels oceans green, that the
essence of this of the storms
pite the fact it were / / with its
motivates it & sores: ise becomes A

Though this sketch same anxiety gallows:

:philosophy born in a sweat
 Sheen
~~~~~~~~~“~<<~~~
“beautifully Poe-sweat”
–AG Davis, Comashopped Operative
~~~>>~”~~~~~~~~~

eye-vein worm
grave crenellate contusion, break
dusty index charnel star, ascent, bloom
of dust damp rib cage spasm florilegium
weeping, granite query
or menace chain of thetic quest
ion of regret
split gore bespecked calliope
endless knuckle vista
clammy oscillation of fester
flesh spoon gum
 ack’adummya
bent nose mountain’t
in everbawdy’s rutabaga
son, nor curlycuebawl
all weepy ledgerdomaine’s
port, land, rubbedoff
raw’r pluggedup doofus;
this dude udters:
“Fallout Fish Franking
Shelter are, and is,
vertebrates Penalty a [backboned
Privileges place animals] are
for that, ways protection
live of from in
sending the water official
radioactivity and matter particles
land through fallout vertebrates,
United atmosphere, put States...”
:so’s that sailpitch’d
’n’all’s intellingents ye
noddin’sup a droney
clusterfuck’ry bombshell
dopey harpo muckraked
lotsa shitsup, doc.
 Conveyor of Musk
~~<~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"bull's face, and from his clump of beard
whole torrents of water splashed like a fou"
–Sophocles, The Women of Trachis.

"verge & tenor, at spool & clime"

– Thomas L. Taylor, Homages of Eagle, Vol. I, No. 88.2
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~>~~

hush &, musk of graithing ,grizzle

foul mathiaTHUDThudthudnding slender; harshtag
haunting b, rainclaw featherCAW of niacene
brink ô ,lathe of eye tooth haven
tusk stalks gentle-talond pentagram infant
spiral blaNACHNachnachalmanach stems cell-libido
(my cortex, my cortex)
beryl blanching & i weatherspurt of vein, un-
spool ,to clump of grainshaft gutted, breathed, en tire
pool of pustule weeping noble pathos granule fervid stamp cotillion
,perhaps,
or 'ponde brink stampede,
beastlie beauDJOPDjopdjopupon a tongue of ,belt loops, ramps
to cavernous to, meat-starved equatorial to, internment to, care bears market bull to
porous kennage-camp
rasps nether mind the whiskers shock
lashd, ô medusan scab of gourmand
(my kidney of rust)
to ribs of coast to, wrenches ,brows
follicles & tidal, tonal tongueless threat conveyor
& errant creepers, thrust upon the rocks.
Pamela Miller

Photo by Ian Smith on Unsplash

The Semi-Visible Ghost

I’m slowly learning how to materialize. What good is being a ghost if no one can
see you? My grandma’s ghost says it’s like giving birth: Push! Push! Push yourself
into view! Or like painting a portrait in ectoplasm of what used to be you. I’ve
gotten the hang of filling out my legs. Manifesting my top half, though, is tricky as
playing chess on a board of air. Once or twice I willed my head into sight, but the
bud of my face wouldn’t open. Luckily, the afterlife has no expiration date. What’s
the first thing I’ll do when I finally become an apparition? Jump out of walls and
spook folks till their hair turns to ice! Or maybe I’ll just smile and say: “Hiya.”
The Ghost at the Piano
What song can I play to bring myself back to life? “Happy Birthday to Me”? The
piano refuses to consider it. I haven’t had a birthday since I died, it reminds me.
“Working My Way Back to You”? “Return to Sender”? I want to rejoin the living
so badly my ectoplasm keeps boiling over. But nothing in my repertoire does the
trick. Plus, it’s hard to tickle the ivories when the keys are made of blood. Why
doesn’t anyone applaud me, reach rapturously through the ether to fetch me?
“Don’t you understand?” the piano’s bass notes whisper. “There’s no audience
for the dead. When ghosts play a musical instrument, it makes sounds that only
dust can hear.”

Photo by Daniil Ustinov on Pexels

 Photo by Georgi Kalaydzhiev on Unsplash

Ghost Stories: The Girl in the Forest

The ground swirls around me as I walk. The dead trees sprout grasping hands. The
whole woods becomes an eighty-acre cold spot. And here I am! Why am I gliding
straight toward you? Because I’m lonely. Because it’s my birthday. Because the creep
who killed me dumped my body here and I need to tell someone about it. Because
you came charging in with your ghost-hunting gadgets clanking. So you want to see a
spirit, Mr. Paranormal Investigator? Let me wrap myself around you like pneumonia.
 Photo by Andreas Fickl on Pexels

Four Tall Ghosts

Why are our legs long as tree trunks? Well, Saint Peter ordered us down to Hell,
except we ain’t ready to go. The Devil hammered our feet to the floor so he could
keep his squinty eye on us, but we ghosts can stretch way, way, waaaaay up! It’s
fun being here above ground again, our faces stroked by evening breeze. Like that
night we gang-raped Emily Schultz, and her brothers rammed our car off the
bridge. Sure, we deserve to be down below, roasting like rotten marshmallows. But
till Satan finds a way to reel us back in, we’ll be hangin’ out on the street all night.
Peter Mladinic

Dear Caryl, Dear Chessman

Kathy Hamilton, I live in Hawthorne,

New Jersey, in a split level with parents,
one older brother and one younger.
Do they have split levels in California?
All I see are bungalows like we have down
the shore. Hawthorne has lots of trees,
it’s not named after the author
of The Scarlet A I’m reading, maybe you
are too, with time to read at San Quentin,
your mingling with others restricted,
I mean you yourself an author, infamous,
must have alone time, even in the library
pouring through pages to find loopholes.
I read The Scarlet A for school.
A high school freshman, I don’t read much.
My passion is watching television. Car 54,
Where Are You? makes me laugh.
Also I ice skate on a pond in woods
close to home, unafraid some big burly man
like you will come along and grab me.
Though I mostly skate alone.
Other than that, and TV I’ve no interests,
not even a pet, but I read about you
in the papers, you’re there practically every
day, and today, March 5th, 1958,
I see you’re fighting just to keep breathing.
Their sending you to the gas chamber
when you didn’t kill a person seems unjust.
You raped Mary Meza, three years older
than I, and women, but consider murderers
avoided the gas chamber. Justice like love
is imperfect. Maybe you’ll be paroled.
Eternity’s Not What It’s
Cracked Up to Be

The weather, no floods no climate change,

is March dew on buds, a tree lit with crystals
never blooms outside my window, forever
in my Father’s house. Roads are paths,
rivers one river, no super highways, no tolls
no Super Bowl, no social security, only
a table, a chair, no Hopper or Mondrian
prints on walls, just that tree of eternal life

out my window. Everlasting rings true.

No Sting or Sinatra sings through a radio,
no Donna Summer disco, no Dorsey swing.
Hymns to the Father watered to elevator
Muzak, half the time I don’t know it’s on.
Gospel’s “When We All See Jesus” said
the other side’s milk and honey, no achy
joints, no house payments, only this house

oddly like Philip Larkin’s Mr Bleany’s room.

Better than nothing. I’ll take it, I said.
No choice here, whether one prefers sauce
to gravy. We take what we get, what He
gives, the thrower of dice, God, Yahweh.
Jack Benny’s here, the Kennedys, MLK.
Though I don’t hear from them. Occasionally
a rumble of thunder, always the Muzak.

What to do for fun? No fun, no type A

decisive organized or type B indecisive
disorganized types here. No miniature golf
nor shops with mannequins in the latest
to peak one’s desires. Desires, I remember
lifting a lid from a paper cup. Steam rose.
A coating made inside of the cup shine.
No cups like that here. Styrofoam, a thing
of the past, as antiquated as fire escapes,
and cures for cancer. No cancer, stoke
or heart disease. Still, not all they promised.
I sit on a bench. At the altar He lifts a cup,
drinks blood of the lamb. As exiting as
Parcheesi with my grandmother on New
Year’s Eve. No Eve, no Adam, no fall, no nail
fungus. Only His Muzak and eternal love.
Files of Information on
People Who Don’t Exist

Art Vaught is my name.

My ex-lover Melissa Necessary and I worked
the jubilee counter at Myer’s Department
Store. Everyone could use some help.
No help in her dark time—
I’d like to but I can’t—
I made up this present, a night
in August, 1969, Youngstown, Ohio.

Watching Melissa on stage,

Tom Book, a Seabee
from Vietnam, who lives in New Castle,
and I, yeoman third class
stationed on an LPH, the USS Boxer,
that takes marines on maneuvers
in the Caribbean. She’s docked in Norfolk.
I’m on shore leave. Tom drills wells.

From a sound system jazz plays softly.

Melissa takes off her blue top and bottom,
stands naked. Hourglass shape,
fair skin, shoulder-length hair. Some things
cry out to be touched, some people,
but this is hands off night, Melissa on stage,
her music the soft, brisk “Love Someone”
followed by a bouncy “Night Train.”

The past is Camp Carter, by the China Sea.

Tom and I snuck out to houses of
prostitution in Danang and used girls.
He wore a red mustache, false teeth.
In high school his front teeth knocked out by
a hockey puck. Our blue helmets, with white
letters Security Police, we left in the
barracks when we snuck out to the houses.
The future: the Challenger explodes in
space, 1986.. Melissa’s twin, Priscilla
dies on a kitchen floor
in West Monroe, Louisiana in 1990.

Tom drove us here, the Starlight. Shortly

after he got out of the navy, honorably
discharged, he shaved off the mustache.
A wide smile, he gawks at Melissa.

In another life, ‘Nam coming down the pike,

a night out in Monroe, the Pour House,
“Tom, this is Prissy.” Long red hair a shade
lighter than his pompadour. They cosy at
the bar with shots of Jack.

Fast forward
to blue sky, Wednesday morning: Melissa
lays flowers at her twin’s headstone.
Rachael Breen

Poem 1

Why does it feel so lost here

I feel naked to the bone out in the open
So alone it's so cold out here
If I wasn't numb on the outside from hiding I'd be frozen.

I just wanna break to the gods

Tell em it's not fair
No matter the good and the up and the for you do
If its not negative no one cares
Or remembers anything about you.

I miss being understood

Sitting in the room conversations so loud with out a word
I wish I could Go back in time I would
I hate sometimes it's harder than some
To remember the crack in your voice of excitement
And the silence of the world when that fire poured from your chest
When things took A serious turn

But I'm no better I guess than anyone

Take for granite without realizing we don't get a respon
And all my bridges I'm burning cause I'm falling apart
There's no med packs amo boxes or check points
Maybe if I would've listened I might not have missed the save point.
Poem2

Its funny this thing we value

So unconditionally permanent ever never changing from the bottom deepest of the heart.

Cause actions prove your idea of honest worth

So disposably replaceable as ignorance leaves pockets broke.
And we smack that shit like a sticker on a truck and call it art.

Love isnt loose coins you find in the pocket of some dirty jeans
Love used to mean you could overcome anything
Love thy neighbor thy friend thy family
More like love stuff and money and how you look to people or if your known socially.

There used to be more meaning the that word

It used to be strong unbreakable and made of blood sweat and tears covered in mud full of hard work
Now it has a higher turnover rate than a goodwill shirt.

I remember stories of how you could always find a way

If you believed in each other no matter what youd come out okay
But now compromise and working it out is moving on
Thinking theres a quicker easier greener grass rout.

But new is not always better its just different so we have more patience and arent comfortable enough to show
are scars and short comings yet
But its when someone sticks by you and your demons
Forgives your trespasses and your sins
Thats the shit that builds and braces and brings us closer
Thats the shit that makes life worth living.

Everybodys broken just broken differently

Were all a bunch of puzzles missing more than one piece
And the day we felt the need to hide with in our scars
Was the day we left behind any chance not to lose our spark.

So as the universe burns brightest and hottest before we fade and burn out quick
Remember we gave up morality and meaning
The ones left with it cant save us because you treated us like shit.
Robert Wexelblatt

PETITE SUITE DE MUSÉES

1. Musée Minimale - scherzo en ré majeur pour piano et violon, assez joli, assez sérieux, déroutant, minuscule, et
modestement informatif
The Musée Pietro Francese occupies a second-floor room in a small building on the Via Milite
Ignotus in the town of Ventimiglia.
The nationality of Pietro Francese (? – 1532) is ambiguous. The surname is Italian for French, but
in France he is referred to as Pierre de Varenna, after a town on the shore of Lake Como. This suggests
that the French saw him as Italian, and the Italians thought him a Frenchman. It is fitting, then, that the
museum bearing his name should be in an Italian town a short hike from the French border.
Little is known of Francese. Giorgio Vasari does not mention him in his Lives of the Artists, but a
librarian at the University of Padua has published a private letter that does. She believes the letter, addressed to
the Duchess of Ferrara, was “almost certainly” written by Vasari. It alludes to a notable portrait “eseguito da
Pietro Francese” of one of the Duchess’s nephews. André Benefiel wrote briefly about Pierre de Varenna in his
1661 treatise, Les Peintres du Grand Siècle. Here is the passage in its entirety:

Maître Pierre de Varenna was much admired, especially for his portraits.
He did not paint in the grand style, depicting the mythological
and pious subjects popular at the time, especially in the Catholic
 provinces, where he was known as Pietro Francese. In some respects,
his work has much in common with the painting being done today
in the Low Countries. He produced remarkable portraits and
scenes from everyday life, always on small canvases. It was
the inner truth of his portraits his contemporaries found most
worthy of praise. Franceso Della Rovere, Duke of Urbino,
said of him, “Altri artisti dipingono dall'esterno verso l'interno,
ma questo Francese dipinge dall'interno verso l'esterno.”
(Other artists paint from the outside in, but this Francese paints
from the inside out.)

Francese did not sign his work, perhaps out of humility, or ad majoram gloria Dei, like the artists of the
Middle Ages. As a consequence, identifying, let alone cataloguing, his works has been almost impossible. It is
likely that his scenes of everyday life and penetrating portraits hang unacknowledged on walls in houses great
and small, in provincial museums designated Pictor Ignotus, and many sixteen-square-meter room of the modest
house in Ventimiglia. The building was owned by an old widow who rented rooms to vacationers, save for the
one in which she lived out her life. This woman claimed to be a descendant of a minor branch of the D’Este
family. Her will bequeathed the house to the state with the provision that her room would become a museum
to display her most prized possession, a family heirloom.
The museum’s one exhibit is an eight-by-ten-centimeter detail from a study for a portrait of a young
woman and not even all of that, as the paper has been torn. It shows only the left side of the unidentified
woman’s face. Still, the tiny museum has attracted some attention, and the enigmatic face never fails to evoke a
response. The Visitors’ Book includes not only the names of vacationers who stopped by on rainy afternoons
but also those of professors and painters. Many of these people recorded their impressions of what they saw in
the picture. Here is a list: beauty about to bloom, a repressed nature, a tease, determination, anxiety, pride,
lasciviousness, piety, rebelliousness, sharp intelligence, placidity, chastity, fortitude, vanity, submissiveness,
melancholy, modesty, earnestness, a quick wit, a passionate nature. Of these comments, the longest and most
memorable is that of the Post-Impressionist painter, Marie Serrurier, who wrote “c’est une muse évidemment
aimée de l'artiste”—a muse manifestly beloved by the artist.

2. Le Musée des Armes Ratées - marche comique en si bémol mineur et do dièse majeur, pour orchestre militaire
désaccordé, dissonant, cacophane, et maladroit
Albert Hugo, Comte de Roanne and Captaine d’Infanterie, and Laurent Vagaray, Caporal and former
miner, survived the Battle of Verdun, though narrowly. The Comte had pulled Vagaray from under the heavy
clods thrown up by a German shell from a Feldhaubitze. Four nights later, Vagaray returned the favor. He
shot dead one of a squad of infiltrators who had slipped into their trench and was about to bayonet the sleeping
captain. All the veterans of the hyper-battle shared a bond but the one between Albert and Laurent was
stronger than most. Moreover, both were embittered by the stupidity and slaughter they had witnessed and
endured.
After the war, the Comte, whose family had considerable wealth in land and investments, loaned
Vagaray the money to set up a scrap metal business in Rioges, on the same side of the Loire as Roanne.
Vagaray had married before the war. When the Comte wed in 1919, he asked Vagaray to serve as best man,
which put the long noses of his snobbish family out of joint.
In 1920, Charles Ginistry, Bishop of Verdun, initiated the project to erect the Douamont Ossuary by
the vast National Necropolis. The land around of Verdun was a city of the dead, but the bishop wanted to
make a monument of the physical remains of bloodletting on both sides. The Battle of Verdun lasted nearly a
year; tens of millions of shells were fired. There were 800,000 casualties.
A year later, on a Sunday morning, the Comte sat across from his friend at the Vigaray family table in
Rioges, two pacifists missing mass which Celeste Vigaray and her children were attending, as was the Comte’s
bride, Marie-Charlotte. They discussed the Ossuary about which they had mixed feelings.
“It won’t do to pile up bones, let alone to tell people war is the worst of pestilences. It won’t even do to
show them the skeletons and the crosses,” said Albert. “So long as war is seen as evil, it won’t lose its
fascination. The murderousness will always be turned into honor, glory, patriotism, extolled as heroic sacrifice,
as if anybody wanted to be blown to bits or shredded by machine guns.”
 “That’s true,” said Laurent, nodding. “I shudder whenever they call me a hero. You?”
“I just want to spit.”
“That Bishop of Verdun is a good man and so is his intention, I’m sure. He’s already raising a good deal
of money for his Ossuary. German skeletons will be piled in with ours. I like that.”
“So do I. But I doubt it will do any real good.”
“If displaying 130,000 skulls and pelvises isn’t enough, what is?”
“Ridicule,” said the Albert.
“What?”
“There’s no glory in what’s laughable, Laurent, and no one’s going to laugh at the dead.”
Vigaray put down his bowl of coffee and looked closely at his friend. “You’ve been hatching some idea.
You look just as you did when you insisted on helping me to set up my business. So, what have you got in
mind?”
“I want to do as the Bishop is doing. I want to set up a memorial, and I also want it there, in Verdun. I
have my eye on some land in Thierville. It’s less than three kilometers from the city. Maybe those who come to
mourn will make a short detour to laugh.”
“No offense, Albert, but it sounds absurd.”
“Absurd? Yes, that’s just the point.”
“And you want my help? I’m no comedian.”
“No, but your business has flourished; you’ve got connections. I think you can help me assemble the
exhibits.”
“Exhibits? For what?”
“I’ll be giving you a list.”

It took a couple of years and thousands of francs, but, between them, Albert and Laurent managed to
gather, among others, the following items.
1. The MacAdam Shield Spade. The idea here was to make an entrenching tool that would double as a
defense against high-velocity bullets. The thick steel had a hole in it through which a rifle could be
 aimed. The thing proved too heavy to wield, the blade too blunt to serve as an effective spade, and, of
course, it had a hole in it.
2. The Chatuchat Light Machine Gun. This was arguably the worst of all the failed weapons fielded by
any side in the war. It was designed to be cheaply made, with thin metal parts that often snapped. The
joints were poorly fashioned and let in dirt and sand. The fragile barrel quickly overheated; its semi-
circular magazine regularly jammed and, from time to time, the gun simply disintegrated.
3. The Comte managed to get hold of an early pursuit plane of the type that first mounted a machine gun
behind the propeller. This was before synchronization was perfected, so the propeller was invariably
shot off.
4. Equally useless, and nearly as fatal to the pilot, was a Bréguet XIV fitted with a ten-meter spike bolted
to the top wing that was supposed to bring down balloons and zeppelins by popping them.
5. The Mobile Personnel Protector was another misbegotten attempt to shield advancing infantry. It
resembled an oversized trash collector and was to be pushed from behind. It had just enough room for
four small soldiers inside and was made of iron as were its two oversized wheels. It proved too heavy to
lift out of the trenches and, even when this was achieved, the contraption was nearly impossible to move.
It turned over on anything but flat ground of which, of course, there was none among the craters of No
Man’s Land.
6. By far the largest item in the museum was the Paris gun, obtained at a bargain price by Laurent through
connections in inflation-ridden Germany. It was designed to propel large shells over unprecedented
distances, all the way from the Front to Paris—thus, the name. But it seldom hit its targets because
each round fired distorted the extended barrel, quickly making trajectories so inaccurate as to be virtually
random.

Le Musée des Armes Ratées opened to the public in 1925 and enjoyed some success. German as well as
French veterans brought their families. The former combatants’ responses were generally grim and sardonic,
but their children laughed and were fascinated. The boys would gather together and earnestly exchange views
on how the armaments could have been improved and dreaming up new weapons, fantastical ideas like death
rays but also ones that seemed too plausible, like bombs crammed with germs that would wipe out people and
spare buildings.
The decision to close down the museum was reached in January 1933. The Comte’s hope that a display of
moronic and unworkable weaponry would serve as an effective metaphor had worn away by then. The veterans
no longer visited, nor did women; but young men came in numbers, as if to an amusement park. They were too
young to have experienced the trenches; they knew only the speeches, the pride of fathers and uncles, the
expurgated history. Those who took no lesson from the amputees on the streets and the blind in the Métro
would not learn it from a shovel with a hole in it. The weapons that didn’t work made them think of those that
did—the artillery, machine guns, airplanes. What was once lethal now seemed to them beautiful. They spoke
of tanks as though they were toys, of guns as if they were made to spurt water rather than lead. The young
visitors from Germany—neatly pressed and stiff—exchanged nods and knowing smiles.

The decision to shut the museum was made on a Sunday evening. The Comte had invited the Vigarays to
supper. The wives were now old friends, and Albert’s son Georges loved being around Laurent’s older children.
Everyone had enjoyed a hearty winter’s dinner of lamb roasted with carrots, parsnips, and potatoes with braised
sprouts for the green. The wine was a sturdy burgundy. Afterwards, the women gossiped, the children went
upstairs to play, and the two men repaired to Albert’s paneled study where, with grunts they didn’t used to
make, they sank into matching red leather club chairs.
Pouring cognac into a pair of snifters, Albert said, “You see what’s going to happen, don’t you?”
“I’m afraid so,” Laurent replied gloomily. “All the old business again. Dreams of adulation, swooning
women. Loving the country in the wrong way. I really believed—?”
“Didn’t we all?”
“Never again, we said. Not possible, we said. But then I imagine that’s what people say at the end of
even little, ordinary wars.”
Albert got to his feet with a grunt, crossed to a cabinet, opened the bottom drawer, and returned with a
book bound in tin, heavily dented.
“What’s that?” asked Laurent.
 “You don’t remember? We took from that dead German, the one who looked to be about seventeen.”
“Oh yes. So, you kept it. I don’t read German. What’s in it?”
“Dangerous nonsense, just the kind to turn the empty heads of thoughtless youngsters. The Boche
General Staff had this book distributed to all their troops. It was written by a philosopher who’d been dead
sixteen years by the time of Verdun, though I don’t think that excuses him. Listen: Man hat auf das große Leben
verzichtet, wenn man auf den Krieg verzichtet.“
“Which means?”
“Who has renounced war has also renounced greatness. It was, I see now, a ridiculous notion, jeering
war out of existence.”
“Maybe war’s like love? I mean, it always finds a way.”
“Hmpf. Well, they do say all’s fair in both, meaning neither is fair at all. Farce and rape, invasion and
seduction, skirmish and frontal assault. But it’s not just that people didn’t know or forget, Laurent. It’s the
allure, the exaltation, the downright sexiness. It’s the beauty of a pursuit plane in flight or a star shell going off
at night. It’s the comradeship, girls, proud parents, the neighbors. It’s every stupid enticement I hoped we
could laugh into oblivion. It’s that mad philosopher’s idea of ‘the great life.’”
After this defeatist speech the men fell silent.
“The tanks are much improved,” said Laurent at length. “They have turrets now. And they say the
artillery’s much better too.”
“But the airplanes most of all. I’m closing our little museum, Laurent. You were right to call it absurd.
You can sell the exhibits for scrap. I think they’ll be turned back into weapons soon enough.”
“God forbid!”
“It’s shameful to laugh so near to the dead. It was folly to try to thumb our noses in the shadow of that
Ossuary’s tower and the National Cemetery. Such things shouldn’t be mocked, can’t be—and they can’t be
intimidated either.”
“But they can be expanded.”
“Alas, yes. And next time the weapons will be still stupider—especially the ones that work.”
3. Le Musée des Guides de Conversation – sonatine pour deux flûtes déplacées et harpe en ut majeur, désinvolte,
péripatéticienne, polyglotte et insipide
The Johanssons were childless mid-century Americans. They met when Hannah, up till then a city girl,
applied to and was accepted by Pittsburg State University which her mother assumed was in Pennsylvania.
George, a native Kansan, was in Pittsburg to study agronomics. After some hesitation, Hannah chose to major
in, of all things, French. They met at a mixer, hit it off, and married right after graduation. Hannah adjusted
to her new life on the farm passed on to George by his parents, who inherited the land from George’s
grandfather, who was bequeathed it by George’s great-grandfather, a Swedish immigrant who acquired the 160
acres allowed by the Homestead Act once the Civil War wrapped up and the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Comanche,
Kansa, Kiowa, Osage, Pawnee, and Wichita were elbowed aside.
The Johanssons’ land produced corn and soybeans, usually in abundance, but the crops came with
worries about drought, hail, tornadoes, the cost of fertilizer, repairs, pesticides, what Congress’ latest farm bill
would say, and the all-important price per bushel. The farm had some cows and chickens too, but it was chiefly
just fields of corn and soybeans in the flattest part of Kansas. Most years the Johanssons turned a moderate
profit, more than a short-order cook would make but less than a truck driver.
Hannah had an Uncle Jules, childless like herself. He had been exceptionally close to his older sister,
Hannah’s mother, who pretty much raised him. Unlike their parents, she was unfazed by his homosexuality. In
fact, she identified it before he did.
During the war, Jules worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and he met a lot of sailors. He partnered with
one in both the personal and business sense, a savvy go-getter from the Bronx. After the war, they pooled their
savings to buy a tract of land on Long Island, where, with some almost unimpeachably legal financing, they
built thirty-five cheap and identical houses. They took a portion of the profits and bought an apartment in
Brooklyn Heights. As a man of property, Jules made a will, leaving all his assets to his sister or, should she God
forbid predecease him, her children. A year later, Jules and his partner bought land in Westchester County
where they erected fewer but far more expensive homes, fake Tudors and Dutch colonials. When Jules died
three years after his partner and one year after his sister, Hannah was surprised to learn that the uncle she hadn’t
seen in two decades had made a mint and invested it wisely.
 The New York lawyer who was Jules’ executor sent Hannah a certified letter and followed up with a
phone call. He explained everything and saw to all the arrangements. And this is how the Johanssons came
into money, a staggering sum by their standards.
“It’s yours,” said George to Hannah. “What do you want to do with it?”
Hannah didn’t hesitate. “We’ll keep the farm, of course. It’s our home; it’s your family legacy and I’ve
been content here. But what I’ve always longed to do is travel—I want to go to France and Italy and, well,
everywhere.”
George felt a little hurt. He had long before persuaded himself that his formerly urban wife loved living
on a farm in the middle of America. “You never said.”
“No point.” Over the years, Hannah had become as laconic as her spouse.

The plan was to take four trips a year, one per season. This was at the end of the 1950s when Boeing’s
707 initiated the Jet Age. In those days, people dressed up to go to airports and dressed even more up if they
were flying. It was the time when American tourists became an important entry on the balance sheets of
countries still recovering from the war and when few of their citizens, even the hotel clerks, sales personnel, and
waiters spoke English. It was a boom time for guidebooks and bilingual tour guides.
The first trip was, of course, to Paris in April not just because of Hannah’s exotic college major but also
because of the song. They spent two weeks in the capital and one more in Nice exploring the Riviera. George
bought a Leica and took loads of pictures. Back home, he bought a Kodak slide projector and had his rolls of
film made into slides they could show friends and neighbors. The Johanssons threw a party for the purpose.
The friends and neighbors sat in polite silence through the hour-long display of George’s snapshots and
Hannah’s running commentary. The barbecue afterwards was, by contrast, a smash hit.
The couple’s second journey was in January, a week and a half in Germany and four days in Vienna. In
June, they did Italy. The friends and neighbors invited in after these junkets kept their reluctance to themselves
and most.
 Fred and Gert Schultz always came for the slide shows, and even brought their three children though,
like everybody else, they found the things tedious. But, after enduring slides of Rome, Florence, and Venice,
Gert noticed the little stack of phrasebooks on the mantelpiece. She opened the one on top to a random page.
It was the “Shopping” section.
“Vorrei vedere delle scarpe,” she read haltingly but out loud.
“What’s that?” Fred asked.
“It means ‘I would like to see some shoes.’”
Fred held out his hand. “Let’s see.”
He paged to the section devoted to “Eating and Drinking” and read Cameriere la lista, per favore. He
read it badly but with delight.
“How’s that?” asked Sam Ritter who overheard.
“It means ‘Waiter, the menu, please,’ Sam.”
“In what?”
“Italian.”
“You speak Italian?”
“No. Look, it’s from this book they took along with them.”
Fred read another sentence, and with gusto. “Mi porti un po’ di caffé, adesso. That’s cup of joe, pronto.”
Sam asked to see the paperback, took a look, laughed, and read out, Per favore mostrami un reggiseno.
“Not one I’d need. Please show me a brassiere.”
Drawn by the good cheer, others came over and picked up other books.
Harold Walker read, “À quelle heure le diner est-il servi dans cet hotel? What time can a guy get fed in this
place?”
His wife Jeannette picked up the German phrasebook, turned a few pages. “Ha!” she exclaimed.
“Listen to this: Wann wird in diesen Hotel das Abendessen serviert? It means exactly the same thing!”
Pictures of George sweating in front of the Bridge of Sighs, Hannah grinning outside the Sorbonne
archway, both of them looking serious under the statue of Beethoven—all these failed to engage their stolid
Kansas neighbors. It was no different with the records of later trips, like the picture of the two of them looking
spectacularly out-of-place in front of the forty-one-meter reclining Buddha in Fukuoka. George explained it
was taken by a giggling and obliging young woman in a kimono. “Maybe,” he said daringly, “she was a geisha.”
It was the phrasebooks that people liked. They had fun pronouncing the phonetic spellings and working
out how many of the identical phrases turned up in all the books—how to ask for a brassiere, for instance.
Reading the phrases out loud made them feel sophisticated and provincial at the same time, and pleased to be
both.

The Johanssons traveled the world, but the returns diminished. All the airports resembled each other, as
did the new hotels designed expressly for them. There were big tour groups in air-conditioned buses. The
hotels served hamburgers and fries and Coca-Cola. Everywhere grew crowded and the tourists didn’t care how
they dressed. The Johanssons dutifully took in the sights the guidebooks said they ought to, ate what was
recommended as local specialties, but they had scarcely any interesting interactions with local people. Every
communication was mediated by the phrasebooks which they toted everywhere, just as people now do their
cellphones.
The Johanssons kept the farm, but George left three of his four fields fallow. Eventually, they gave up
both planting and their travels. They bought a condo in Coral Gables for the winters. George had the idea of
turning their Kansas living room into a kind of monument to their wanderings, of which he was proud. He
picked out his favorite photos, had them blown up, framed, and hung them on the walls with lengthy typed
labels. Hannah laid out all their guidebooks and maps in neat geographical order. But the chief attraction even
for the landlocked, isolationist, parochial, and self-satisfied remained the pile of phrasebooks. Over time,
grownups no longer visited but their adolescent children did. They read to each other in all the languages with
bright-eyed hilarity. The phrases—Where is the bathroom? How far are we from the river? May I have more
sugar?—struck them as banal but also exotic. They took to calling the old Johansson place The Phrasebook
Museum, and it filled those pre-globalist, farm-bred teenagers with intoxicating dreams of adventure,
liberation, and escape.
Roger Craik

JACK SMITH

His name’s Jack Smith.

You know who I’m talking about.

Good morning.

He must have been born

(sentence continues)
John Smith.

Perhaps he considered that plain,

somewhat on the undistinctive side.

No?

There must be millions of John Smiths,

and Jack Smiths in the world.

But he’s Jack Smith.

You know the answer to that.

Don’t pretend to be stupid.

That’s all from me today.

Good morning.
CLOCKWORK ORANGE

Tick tick tick

(you know who I’m talking about)
tick tick tick tick tick
LULU, ON THE EUROVISION SONG CONTEST

“If it was going to win,” you said,

“I’d sing ‘Baa, baa, Black Sheep’ standing on my head.”

Now that would be worth seeing.

(Hearing—possibly less.)
Thank you, Lulu, for this.
CURRENT AFFAIRS

The White House.

Crises. Crosscurrents. The Middle East.

On the lawn, geese.

Today’s agenda: pecking at grass.
MAKE-BELIEVE

Gone with the pop gun and the spinning top:

make-believe.

Make-believe and you’re

a salamander under a stone

or
your great-grandfather’s will, locked in a drawer
or
one of a skein of barnacle geese
clambering the arctic night, north of Murmansk.

There’s no law against make-believe

(but you wouldn’t think it).
EPIPHANY (WITH CROWS)

Outside my bedroom window

a crow cawed seven times,
then seven times,
then six times
(by now I was starting to predict),
then four times, then
eight times,
then four and a half times,
ending with an indignant squawk.

I burst out laughing in bed.

It was all I could think about.
I’d forgotten who I was.
The stupid bird!
The rest of life is going to be great.
Roger G. Singer

SPEAKING INTO NIGHT

ragged chains of
cloud puzzles
softly drift
overhead
merging into
the horizon
and beyond
like dreams
hoping to
become real
as shades
of night
fold in
quietly covering
everything
OBSERVING

he saw her
style and poise

and the parts

within

the soul
searching for
escape

the spirit
bargaining with
higher powers
for fair
weather
past here
to somewhere

that’s what
he saw
IT’S YOU

the illuminated
soul

a shadow fallen
into a river of
wind

turning carelessly
against the
pressure of a
spirit from
within
where the heart
breathes
for the expected
calm
of when we
meet again
Rory Hughes

The Grind

The grind was a thing that sounded like what it meant; not onomatopoeic, but the inflections of the word itself
had a sort of downwards parabolic trajectory; crescendo, peak, diminuendo: grr-iiIIIii-nd.
grr: the hypnopompic groan with which Tony replied to his phone alarm six days a week: a piercing
monophonic motif that would repeat itself in odd time signatures—Tony thought that it must have been
deliberate, something in 4/4 would be too relaxing; this was cleverly composed to be as jarring and irritating as
possible such that actually waking up seemed a better alternative than snoozing and having to listen to it again.
Tony remembered when he was sixteen, on his old flip phone, he had set Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Child (Slight
Return)’ as his alarm. A song he loved; or rather one he loved until the vocals came in. That percussive wah-
pedal dead chord intro before the opening riff; of course, he eventually, unintentionally, conditioned himself to
hate the song altogether. Two decades later, and he still associated that intro with something bad; order,
routine, the necessity to be in accordance with how others are; sometimes the song would come up on shuffle
and he’d feel a tiny wave of panic.
Why was it called the grind? He didn’t know. Tony resented all the people who worked remotely; even
worse, the people who referred to work and other such things as adulting. He was fascinated by words, but he
hated them. He didn’t necessarily hate the fact that it was a childish verbalisation of a noun, he just hated that it
was another word. He expressed this to someone at work and they told him he must be “one of those Jordan
Peterson” types. When he got home he researched the name and instantly resented this colleague. He was
nothing like him. This person hated things to do with gender and sex and semantics. Tony was remotely aware
of the changes around him, but this was nothing to do with him. He just truly hated words.
 Tony remembered when you could set your ringtone to a song you liked. It seemed like it was still
possible but very complicated, so no-one bothered and just settled for the default jingles your Android or
iPhone had.
iiIIIii: that central inflection of the grind, the seemingly endless peak of the parabola: the workday itself,
the droning endless monotony; when Tony spoke he only did so with his mouth, which may sound like a no-
fucking-shit kind of statement, but with Tony, eyes and nose unmoving, body still, hands by his side, it was like
he wanted no other part of his body to suffer the indecency of being a part of the act of speech. iiIIIii. It was
like tinnitus, all throughout the workday. A logophobe, Tony was of course also a hater of those things that
constitute words, and vowels were the worst. Consonants, most could not successfully be conjoined to make for
long sounds. For example, cccccc wouldn’t last long; gggggg: maybe something like an infant gurgling, a
disgusting sound. Some were despicable: mmmmm, for example, a declaration of pleasure, from maybe food or
something sexual; ssssss: again, too sexual, sibilance they called it, of course there would be a word for it. But
vowels, these things were, in the sense of speech, indefinite; they were screams, cries, like the iiIIIiis of the
workday, agonising sounds that could last for hours.
Tony worked as a back-end developer. He’d worked in tech ever since leaving university with a 2:1 in
Computer Science. This was a job Tony could handle. He had carefully nurtured his personality around the
office as someone to only talk to if completely necessary. The written word was nowhere near as repulsive to
Tony as was the spoken word. Thoughts do not manifest as something written but as something spoken, no
matter how nebulously. Looking at the code on the screen could even be relaxing sometimes. Programming
languages were languages that instructed some function or design in the briefest and most economical way.
Code could not be read like one might read a book. It’s not all nonsensical, there are words you can understand,
but for a non-programmer, reading through code would paint no picture. In a way, Tony relished this
bastardization of meaning; and loved all the curly brackets, commas and semicolons. These were things that
made no sound. [ { } , ; [ , , , ] ! “ “ ! ] { }. Sometimes he imagined a place where creatures only communicated
through symbols; an impossible scenario which fell into complete abstraction if given too much thought. One
time he imagined the vocalisation of punctuation and symbols as a sort of heating or throbbing of the brain that
the other creatures could detect.
 Five years ago, when Tony was still under the desperate impression that he could function within society
and perhaps even have a partner, his mother set up a date for him. A niece of his mother’s school friend who
was also, how had his mother put it, “a bit odd; not odd—shy!” Tony firmly believed the date had gone
horribly. They went to a Zizzi. He was so anxious he was hardly able to eat in front of her. The act of eating
was something he considered one should only do in private, like shitting or masturbating. Basic, pathetic human
needs. Anything that was a biological necessity was something to be ashamed of, and to be done alone. He
found his date ugly and boring, not that she was unattractive or uninteresting, he just found her ugly and boring
in the same way he found everyone ugly and boring, in the same way he found himself ugly and boring; in a
similar but much milder way than how he found language repulsive and redundant.
Programming languages were closer to architecture than language. Tony enjoyed reading files written in
frontend or backend languages he was not fluent in. He was most proficient in Python, and to him now, it had
almost become as repugnant as the written word. Every instruction or algorithm held such semantic value
because he was so adept with the language. He could imagine the database, visualise it, see the strings of data
anthropomorphise into a user experience. User: a word, but one he at least thought was apt: users of self, users of
others, of oxygen, supplies, users of language and love and hatred and all of the human ailments that we ascribe
such meagre words to.
The date had ended with an awkward handshake; she had laughed, embarrassed, and he disliked the
noise of that. He woke up the next morning and saw that she had texted him: Sorry I wasnt quite myself last
night. I had a nice time though. Hopefully we can do it again soon xxxxx
The lack of the apostrophe in wasn’t was both infuriating and invigorating but what drove him mad
were those five xs next to each other. He put on his glasses and stared at the string of them and his brain, with
an unusual relentlessness, tried to vocalise them; he saw hateful insignias; algebraic nonsense; Czech hedgehogs
along the bloodied beaches of Normandy. He put his phone down on the bedside table and went to the
bathroom. He removed his glasses again, washed his face with cold water, brushed his teeth, flossed, and for a
while, stared in the mirror. He could hear it now.
“KKKKKKKCCCCHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.”
 There was saliva on the mirror. He was breathing heavily. There was spittle on his lips and chin. But
that is how it would sound, those xs. It was the sound of radio feedback; a scared cat; a train riding off the
tracks; tumbling concrete and metal as a building was being demolished; the sound you made as a kid after
saying over into a walkie-talkie; deafening coastal winds.
nd: this is where the word was at its least onomatopoeic; it was just that it sounded like, and was one
letter short of the word, end. The end of the working day. Sometimes he imagined it as nduh, the uh being a sort
of final sigh: the noise he’d make as he pushed through the revolving door and walked towards the bus stop,
knowing that every time this happened was an iteration, a flipbook with an image that never changed.
Tony rarely drank, but he did the day before he disappeared. He drank two bottles of wine and came the
closest he ever had to coming to terms with his hatred for words. Words could describe him; they constituted
his every thought; if he knew no words he could not think. Words could be used by others to describe him,
whether thought or spoken or written. That night, he took a vow of mental silence and with that, ceased self-
awareness. Of course, never before had so many words—thought, spoken, written, printed and published—ever
been uttered about Tony. Tony Sawyer, 34, disappeared on the night of April 5, 2023, read the paper. If anyone
knows anything about my dear son, please come forward, pleaded his mother on national television. It was that quiet
guy, the creepy one, said the receptionist to one of the interns at Tony’s former office. Not that he was to know
about any of that; never would, never did.
 Ryan Clark

DESERT STORM - COALITION FOR PEACE - 8 TRADING CARDS - 1 STICKER1

PEEL CAREFULLY 15

It is August. ADMIRAL FRANK KELSO The French Mirage F-1

CHIEF OF STAFF, NAVY
Desserts from MREs are
Dad is a tour miles away on gross. Dad sent us some,
an island, a far far island, brown shiny and squishy.
and fuel launches from out It meant Mom didn’t have to
of his hands and feet like he’s cook and we thought it was
made of fuel and he’s a hero. fun to eat like cannons hungry
after the assault.

Dad is a shield at the ready. DESERT DESERT

STORM STORM
6th FIELD ARTILLERY 6 18

1 Homophonic translation of the cards found in one pack of 1991 Topps Desert Storm Series 1: Coalition
for Peace trading cards. Included in the pack: sticker #15 - 6th Field Artillery; trading card #6 - Admiral
Frank Kelso; trading card #18 - French Mirage Fighter; trading card #20 - State of the Art Stealth Fighter
Bomber; trading card #23 - Phoenix Missiles on F-14; trading card #57 - USS America; trading card #67
- Aegis Control Center; trading card #86 - Sunset on the F-14; and trading card #87 - The Pentagon. Not
included, from Series 3, is trading card #236 - Ecological Warfare.
State of the Art F-117A
Stealth Fighter/Bomber
With Dad away our babysitter
often brings over Mario 3 or—if
her dad lets her—even Zelda 2.
We own Top Gun and I fly but
don’t know how to land. The
missiles make such awesome
noise and return is always a
crash site.
DESERT
STORM
20
USS AMERICA (CV-66)
As Dad fuels America, a
frozen sheet over our car
windshield is set to melt at
the pour of steaming water
from a Mott’s jug. I watch as
Mom wins a war, wipes away.
DESERT
STORM
57
Birth Of The U.S. Army
Desert Storm is the birth of
my leaving America. In June
I see unfamiliar briefly the
face of Dad again at home.
He says we are soon to
move to this foreign base
in the middle of an ocean.
DESERT
STORM
86
F-14 with Phoenix Missiles
December: My sister and I
help Mom make out of green
strings of lights a shape of a
tree on the wall of our base
housing unit. We wake and
find our presents together,
the three of us.
DESERT
STORM
23
Aegis Control Center
Desert Storm is a 52-day
assignment taking Dad
away for 10 months. I sit
in a room and learn to cry
by watching country music
videos.
DESERT
STORM
67
The Pentagon
They show us a VHS tape
as a way to advance
familiarity of Lajes. There is
the wash of wind over audio
as I seek what will house us
as part of its air defense.
DESERT
STORM
87
Our Story3

Is a source a contaminant
the way the fuel spillage
rots out the earth of Terceira.

What is carried over when

fake news makes its way quiet
into a trusted newsletter
in thousands of phones.

Jaws slack as they faithfully

mouth the words in the article
as if they were found
in the local events section
and not lifted casual from
a neo-Nazi news site.

This freighted movement

of information cannot ever
be recalled, and so as if
for a fresh bag of lettuce
we open our faces to bring
into the frame of our bodies
what feels safe.

How exposure hides its sick cough

as if it were a wind.

About us are unannounced

remnants of a hate drudged out
from the failed century we keep
trying to run away from
but endlessly find played for
background noise in the headphones
of those who feel they have lost

3 Homophonic translation of text taken from “Our Story” on the facebook page for
Algarvedailynews.com, and from the “About” page on the website for The European Union Times, a far-
right, nationalist online newspaper. Algarvedailynews.com posted on Feb. 24, 2018 an article titled
“AÇORES - LAJES US AIRBASE LINKED TO RISE IN LOCAL CANCER CASES.” The article was printed
nearly verbatim from an article posted on the European Union Times. The European Union Times article,
which was itself taken verbatim from an article on the Russian news site Sputnik, was sourced with a link
at the bottom of the algarvedailynews.com article. Algarvedailynews.com calls itself the “premier daily
news site for English readers in Portugal” and does not otherwise express any far-right or nationalist
views itself.
something.

The need to exist with control

over a family that has less
valuable form of shelter
is clickable, and it will take you
to the perfect article
to complement the look
you gave to your waiter—
but the article will find you
even without you.
Conversation4

What is it we get for reading comments under every article. Is it safe to digest. Does it
lead to nausea or heartburn.

All bots agree—immoral criminal bots, afraid-to-use-foul-language bots, unknown

unknowing bots—our comments are riveting and number one WebMD rec’d.

Our weight of talking is light. It moves in turns of a common thread, like a gif of America
but democratic and unoccupied. Like waste in the river it will find its way to us with
whatever we decide to consume full of boredom on the couch.

If unexploded how do we know to fear a thread of furied misspellings as if it were a

bomb. Duck and cover. It can be done, indeed.

We should just clean it up and make repairs to the eyes. How hard is it to imagine you
read it wrong, but it’s like a never-ending dream we don’t know to wake up out of.

Read through a billion ways to say a problem and try breathing air again, as you have,
the same air you placed trust in. What island steady at its shore must we learn to be.
The rain of fallout touches even there.

Our pressing anxieties cover us each night, tuck us in, and tell us Russia will never ever
leave us.

If pleasing for the ear, how can you disagree.

Please like my comments against Russia, Syria, and any country the U.S. says is their
enemy—if you don’t I will starve to death, lol.

The joyful consequences of allowing us to make the self comfortable will hover like
ghosts lining up to become active thoughts, then shouts of YOU SHOULD BE KILLED
FOR THE CRIMINAL ACTIONS YOU ARE DOING HERE IN THE COMMENTS
SECTION and SCAM CRIMINAL.

Every comment is a wager, a rock thrown, dust infiltrating the political decision-making
process and forcing a cough that deafens our ear for the real.

4 Homophonic translation of the 671 comments (a/o June 16th, 2020) left under the article !"Americans
leave behind scorched earth#: US refuses to clean up !carcinogenic waste”’at Azores base”, which
appeared on RT.com on February 22, 2018.
 *

Eyes fail, citizens.

Glass grows into your fake fashion frames without your ever knowing—so sharp the
way they hold your face, so very confident. It gathers a look, unites an outfit, so you you
forget you’re wearing ‘em.

Eyes leave a massive trail of dead bodies, destruction everywhere, if they fail us.

Say your own country is a place nice and clean. Say that side of town are those who’ve
been forced against us unfortunate in their lifelong ignorance. Who is the America at
fault here, and how to find a way for it not to be me.

I can solve everything. Just listen to this comment.

This post has violated our policy.

Its guns are loaded with speech. Say an idea about living with the values of a military-
based society. Say we think John Wayne is God. Howdy pilgrim.

The policy is appearance, is the land we want to recognize.

This post has violated our policy.

You need a dewormer for your thread.

This post has violated our policy.

You listen awhile, try again to speak with purpose.

Our servers are down temporarily.

If you map the trash heap that is the comment section, mark in the legend a symbol to
show where the troll lives. This is a frame to provide us with assurances that we didn’t
start the collapse of the thread we set to public, whatever public is.

All over the world, the troll farm tightens its grip with exhausted fingers, faceless
enough, whataboutisms tossed out with the sting of boredom.

*
Tudo isso é uma medida de worry, uma palavra americana para a ameaça de
interferência. Digamos que não acreditamos, isso não pode nos machucar se não
ouvirmos. Um pequeno pensamento permanece pequeno como um comentário.
Existem esgotos que construímos para colocar a merda e a urina, mas ela vaza. Essa
contaminação é uma ferida que compartilhamos.

The threat of ALL CAPS seizes all of our bodies’ fury. Give in to the need to see yourself
huge on the page, nuke tests fit into the form of each letter ready to spawn Godzilla at
every moment. Even King Kong can’t defeat this rage. The heat of its Chernobylic
breath leaves a trail for so many trolls. This is how scared everyone must feel when
other countries ruin their land, not even a radioactive monster to fight back.

Use the fury of all-capped font to tear a hole in the page. See what damage it can do.
Yell like a nail into the foot of a comment.

This post violated our policy.

i can tell ur government what to do. they should be afraid.

I listen for Russia, so I often hear them. Say they’re out in force today.

This post violated our policy.

Say them Russian bots know what I want them to say like compliant swords held
against me. Say I practice hearing the industrial ghosting of people like:

Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________

Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
 Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________

Why Kremlin kills so many.

Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________

Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________

As a story burns, a soft hiss.

 Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________
Journalists killed by The Kremlin / FSB: ___________________

If I think I see a bot, is there a way to see a recovery of the wreckage they’ve yielded.

Unless they are hunted down and driven out, the comments are a frame of inhumanity.

How do we listen in a fire if all of the voices are enflamed. Most discussion gives off
smoke here, and asphyxiation is not a fallacy we know enough to recover from. What
else is there for us in the comments but a belief in the fear of other people.

If I am afraid of you, there is no democracy. It has been unformed a very long time,
irrespective of vision, of what we want to become. The U.S. is the world’s biggest failed
conversation.

I sift what I want to see, hovering my finger over a touchpad like a loved one in baggage
claim, the whole place a beautiful lack, a strain of eyes, suitcases swerving in a
background I don’t give enough attention.

The kindness allowed within a frame of a comment thread is to listen with care. Don’t
drink the water but shower and dry off, a way to clean up the message or at least a way
to watch the movement of force.

On a page, we are bots assembled with unending lines of code, still highly radioactive
and in need of decontamination. Once formed, we try to achieve agency, feeling in the
mind for what made us.

My posts fixate on wounded ads devised for wounded eyes such as mine. Now on sale
is the Voice of Reason. Every ad I find is a voice of reassurance, never a lit-up shot of a
bad act, always a way to cover up an intent to cover up an intent to cover intent via
triple hypocrisy diving board backflip.

I make my life out of agendas I never chose to be part of, haha.

This happens when you’re living in the world’s biggest forum. You need to troll on RT to
avoid the dumb stare of night.

The use of a sentence you eat America’s garbage shows a wide-shoveled position
created to dig you out as if you were a sapling not meant to stay a firm thing on the
planet. Say you fall over easier now without your roots to hold you in place. The mess of
distraction is the appeal. However a thread is unwound, the shove of venom is a way to
tangle the flow of conversation, the commons diffused.
The sand holds pollution with a weight I will do everything to ignore. Why is it my eyes
are so occupied.

There is force leaking out of each comment, as an out-of-commission tank farm posts
its forgotten traces, as a face opens in a crowd to cough.

You can’t try to clean it now.

It drains, presents itself as an uncertain vitriol, as a medical bill for a pain you don’t yet
have a word for. A force that thinks itself a part of your body and unfurls its reach. The
mess is never fully mapped, is a ground that spreads like it’s already had it.

Maybe I am visible but how could I ever see the force of the airbase as it directs my
vision father-like through lines of other voices on a fake-ish news site.

Eyes find what they’ve learned to look out for. I look for marks but find none.

It’s always like this, so I read myself into every story, attach like a comment to the site,
another mess they won’t clean up.
Salvatore Difalco

I’m Doing All Right, Jack

Let me get this straight. My exclusion will stand for atmospheric reasons. We have yet to disclose
all the evidence, we have yet to state our case, we have yet to make our beds. All this pointing
plays with my head. I look in the mirror and my face resembles a bowl of fruit. How did this
happen to me? What did I do to deserve this? The feeling moves on and encounters another
disciple of the truth: a man wearing a pale blue seersucker suit. Hello, sir. We don’t want to
confront our greatest fears out in the open. Better women and men led better lives because they
chose the path of least resistance. When I came to the fork in my existential road, I took the dark
way, the barking dog way, the crow’s way, the serpentine path that led to the ominous castle
enshrouded in cloud. Yes, we did drugs back in the day, but no one told us what the
consequences would be, say, twenty years down the road. Well, I’m here to attest to the damage
caused by all that experimentation. My mind is essentially a Jackson Pollock. When people ask
how I get by, how I survive, how I keep from getting locked up in jail or a sanitarium, I respond
with a dumbshow of strangling a person in a standing position. This way the message becomes
the messenger, or somehow the message enters both the mind of the strangulation candidate and
the observer. The strangulation candidate has one of those faces that make you despise the
human race. It is the arrogant mouth most of all, the stupid eyes, the implied enormous and
grotesque self-regard. Do you know why I am strangling you? I ask. Of course, words are like the
teeth in his mouth and will only exit with great force. I recall a time when I could actually tell a
story and not burst into hysterical laughter.
Johnny Garcia’s Two Hallucinations

No mushroom king, the woods sighed around him as the color red began to glow wherever it
existed. We had planned to sit around a fire and exchange prophecies, but Garcia looked pale
and his eyes reminded me of a dog turning away from a bear as it closed the space between them,
intent on bloodshed. Was it a bear he spotted in the woods, or Bigfoot? We laughed and
laughed. We laughed and laughed. He cried. The funny thing is, no one knew how far he had
fallen into the abyss between his ears, no one could read it in his darting red eyes, or see it in the
spittle of his lips, black paint drips in the moonlight, the rest of his face an ivory mask. The
witness speaks from the comfort of unchallenged memory, regarding his recollection as true as
any other, though most of the others had ceased to exist within the parameters of his
consciousness. We ebb and flow as watery beings pin our grimaces to the ground, when what we
really desire is the fire of stars, the galactic inferno, caressing us with promises of warmth and
infinity. Garcia saw the universe as a grimacing clown, mocking his very existence, jabbing him
in the ribs, spitting in his face. Hence he sprinted into the woods, naked and screaming as
though someone had told him the truth about the end of his world.
Things About Me That You Find Annoying

Challenge me to a duel. I will arrive early at the designated site. I will bring a man in a black suit
and white cotton gloves with a leather case housing the weapons. And we will do our thing. Call
me a madman for imagining I can continue spouting nonsense and yet find ears big enough to
hear what I am saying if not understand it. Sometimes I don’t understand why I am what I am,
but I didn’t fish through a hat and draw a piece of paper with my function or my detailed back
story written on it. A waste of words. We be what we can be, I heard a man say in the subway the
other day, older dude wearing a black beret that I wanted to knock off his head, just one of those
things, just one of those things.
Hot Wheels

Costume me appropriately lest I offend the bantam pukes surrounding the house of dreams I
built in my dreams and actualized with sentence by sentence construction. They wear Boy
Wonder Robin masks and whine like little monkey sirens. You guys, you guys. Everyone’s a
pretender. Everyone owns a boat. I own seven vehicles because I liken them to toys I had as a
boy. I never drive these toys, I play with them ...
The Patient In Recovery

Looks bemused. You asked for a summary. I glanced at the aluminum clipboard and noted the
notes written down with an arched right brow and a hooked finger encircling my lips
intelligently. You’re not dreaming, sir, the anesthetic has yet to wear off completely. If you can
hear my voice, that is to say if you can understand what I’m saying, nod. Nod only once, sir. Nod
only once, sir. Can you sit up, of course you cannot. I could jump on your chest now without
your defensive intervention. Not that I will do that, but admittedly the temptation is all too real
and almost impossible to resist given your vulnerable condition and the blank look on your face.
We fly in our minds, all over the fucking place. No one can see where we’re going, no one can
look inside and point out the amphibologies stretched between our synapses and offering
corrupted fruit as a harvest. In time, my reasonableness will diminish and perhaps I will wear a
new set of teeth, sharper and more visually disturbing than my own. I dream of this. I dream of
this more than I wish to admit. Just as I am loathe to admit I listen to atonal music almost
exclusively. Harmony and melody can suck my dick as far as I’m concerned. How artificial, how
positively reeking of artifice. I will not show you a false face, sir. I will not shake your hand with
the fingers of my other hand crossed behind my back. I will, if time permits it, guide you out of
the fog and slide you gently into a fugue state so I can manipulate you further.
Perplexity

One two three four the window opens and I am able to access all the information about myself
that exists in the world at the current moment. We’re talking about only so many entries. I have
lived in the shadows most of my life and refuse to enter into the light unless I have guarantees
that no one is willing to offer, hence I remain in the shadows sucking dank air for sustenance,
drinking dirty water, eating my own dander. You’re being dramatic again, says the little voice in
my head that I’ve grown to despise. How do I silence it? I recently asked a friend who’d been
through years of therapy. He told me I needed to find a hobby. The more tedious, the better, he
said. Tedium will save your soul, contrary to what the industrious claim in their quest for
nothing. For in the end, all their efforts amount to zilch when stretched out over a galactic time
line. Meanwhile, someone’s mother hangs laundry on a backyard clothesline even though the day
is gray and rain more likely to fall than not. Her Betty Crocker garb and vapid smile possibly fool
some people, but I see madness written large in her visage. What she wants, what she wants, we
can only guess. Maybe she wants to stab the guy who told her she would be cast in a more
progressive production, where she could ditch the apron and remove her dentures. Be pliable,
friends, let your imagination enjoy the bitter but musical blooms of the sickened tree.
Violenza

We agreed to bury the hatchet, but my foe didn’t really understand what that meant. Suspend
the violence, I explained. He told me in no uncertain terms that violence is why he lived, violence
is what brought him meaning and joy. A good dust up, a shoot out, a knife fight, a ram-like
butting of heads, this was his jam. I threatened to kill him quickly if he did not agree to the
terms. What were the terms? he demanded to know. Lay down your weapons and empty your
soul of rage and hatred, I said. He said he didn’t hate me. I asked how that was possible. I don’t
hate you, he insisted. I just want to fuck you up. But why? I wondered. We had done so much
damage to each other, it seemed futile to continue. I don’t hate you, he repeated, but we have
unfinished business. So I have to kill you? I asked. He said yes, that was the only way, unless he
killed me first of course. We stood there facing each other like two close-talking gunslingers
about to throw down. My question, and it is a simple one: would someone from the nineteenth
century understand me? I mean, my words, my style, my vibe? What about people in the twenty-
first century? Do they understand me? With that I buried the hatchet in my foe’s forehead and
his puzzled expression was worth a thousand slurs.
Ear Beating

Gabby kept talking. I don’t know what she was going on about, but I was losing my shit. My ears
burned, my stomach fluttered. The weather helped in no way with its intermittent rain and
woolly clouds and evil people waving spear-tipped umbrellas around like a bunch of savages.
Nobody does this better perhaps than the people who brought you eider down, but in some sense
all these things were possible because people enjoyed being assholes, it was in their nature and
nothing anyone attempted could change that. And it’s easy to get the tenses wrong when you’re
thinking in the abstract, when your thoughts form a kind of noise reduction device to block out
the horrible run on sentence spitting out of Gabby’s mouth. Are you listening? Are you listening?
And Then There Was You

Sometimes I have to stop and look around me to make sure I have not deviated from my path.
As my mind wanders, so too my legs. When you lose yourself in thought, it’s easy to travel
around the city and have people stare at you like they think they know what is going on in your
mind, or at least they can guess. I am talking about the ordinary citizens of this city, the masses
who shuffle around like cleaned-up zombies, scarcely able to articulate a normal civilized
greeting. O pain of stomach! O shredding nerves! O loss of patience with my fellow zombies!
When we finally achieve what we had blueprinted, will we stop shuffling around? Will we
become fuller and yet lighter of foot? Will we consume the air like savages of fire? All is best
when all is lost—ask the believers who will know when they meet their messiah.
The Tenth One

Promised less action than the first nine, but more density as the plaque and the cataracts worked
overtime to layer their sweets. When he awakens next morning, the hand to the heart can only
mean one thing: the moment has come for dancing. Raises the other arm and sways. Put your
hand in the air like you just don’t care if it gets hacked off. The other hand keep pressed to the
chest as the heart kicks like a spicy fetus. Everyone, everyone, come and see what has happened
in the smoky anteroom. Wear your pointed hats, please, or confirm your obligations to opposing
religions—aye, let it not be so. But if it’s so, tolerance is a word bandied about promiscuously in
this era and we introduce it in tux and tails with an ebony walking stick, tap tap. Deep bow and
then the Royal Canadians play a little swing tune that’s gets everybody wearing old dark clothes
and looking at least ten years older than they actually are. I say we can enjoy the company of
people we abhor about as much as a punch in the nose and then at least we enjoy the bleeding for
whatever it’s worth. I say we punch our way out of this stinking paper tent. I say we didn’t have
to make nine mistakes and then still make a tenth.
Scott Taylor

dichotomy

there are two types of men

those who see a universe in every human being
and those that see nothing outside of their own universe
the first type recognizes the repercussions of
cutting down a spider in his web
or snuffing out the existence of some mother's son
while the second type would be perfectly at peace
fleeing an exploding planet in a one man escape pod
as long as there were plenty of whores and bottles of champagne
waiting at the rendezvous point
given these simple observations
one understands the forces that catapult robber barons into their castles
and put glamour queens in their hives
and one is amazed that the first group has managed to avoid total extinction
miraculously, the world still continues to turn
and the endangered species has survived the onslaught for this long
by hiding out in tree houses and country bunkers
the siege is on, however
so stock up on your canned beans and bottled water
everybody

everybody look scared out of their minds

everybody been bad mistreated
everybody jump and fidget, watch they backs, shiver and quake
everybody glare at you with guarded eye and fearful retina
and with the exception of certain blonde actresses and trust fund children
everybody gone completely off the fuckin deep end
all the drones walk by stooped and cowed-like
get caught on the ferris wheel, go round for the spin cycle
bang they head metallic clank on the stanchion as it go by
everybody got rare and ancient bad wiring, fuse boxes sparking
copper conduits volting and arcing and surging out of control-like and rebellious even
everybody a quiz show, everybody a hanoi hilton
there are no heroes, there are no role models, there are no presidents
there be no life beyond life, or during it
thanatopthis, muthafucka
the only cosmic struggle reside right here in my aching battleground head
there has never been a victory, no suh, not even a one
everybody give a fuck about cat food or breath mints or margarine
everybody jes wanna get they pickle shined
my brain leak down my trousers
my soul eek out my brain
everybody need no advice, everybody got destiny abundant out the rectum
created from dust, return to dust
the black man's eyes give away his tricky green cheerful suit
the little girl in big girl skin can't fake it
the invalids and short-changed rest underground
the unbalanced bite the scale
as it bash they jaw on the downswing
i bend my head back to dam the neuron flood
we bend over to damn ourselves
and wait on the tragedy of a few more minutes
soup wars

if you try to make soup shortly after losing your mind

it will leap out of the can upon its opening.
it will then spill all over the top of the stove.
the pot (which contains the remains) will then turn over
and empty itself strategically into the stove burner.
you will wail.
then, you will not make sense by turning the stove burner on,
remember that there still is steak and corn below the coils,
turn it off, and grasp the metal coilings to lift it up.
you will hear sizzling as your fingertips burn.
you will wail, in a more prolonged sort of fashion this time.
you will try to rectify matters by bringing out the water,
but this will only move the steak and carrots and sauce
around on the various surfaces in the kitchen that they currently cling to.
you will also get copious amounts of water on the floor,
which will create a rather perilous environment
within which you will almost slip and break your neck numerous times.
you will have tremendous trouble replacing the stove burner components
after making a botched, rather lazy attempt at cleaning the inside of the mechanism.
this will upset you further, and you will wail yet a third time.
you will back up in your small kitchen after confronting the sink
and come within inches of burning your naked buttocks on the second stove burner
atop which is a pot inside of which the half of the soup
that did not go all over the fucking place is currently cooking.
you will then have a quiet, disturbed moment of reflection
during which you will conclude that you really must get your act together.
hard hard hard evidence

i tried to be good
i tried to be right
i tried not to feel on this sick autumn night
i know things won't change
i know what i am
i know things will not go according to plan
i fall for you hard
i fall on my face
i spread my dignity all over the place
i gorge on your attention
i drink all my wine
i try to get somewhere
and just waste more time
my thoughts drive me crazy
your memory kills
drink holes in my stomach
still can't get my fill
the new stuff's organic
the old was obscene
the training was panicked
the rest is my dream
i stagnate and sputter
i fall and i fail
your intentions mutter
my reactions wail
my game is too cryptic
the messages pale
my head sentimental
my dick is for sale
the theater is closing
the play is on words
i curse at the reptiles
and envy the birds
i send you my passion
i mail you my love
it quick gets deleted
ordained from above
my foolish delusions
of deities and queens
who've led me to madness
who're not what they seem
the songs all decay now
the colors they flee
the ceilings are static
the walls fall on me
i tug on my chicken
i drink down my piss
to wake up on monday
like nothing's amiss
i grow one day older
i pay all my bills
i cut out my tear ducts
and cry somehow still
my point of view

i hate these
who are so comfortable with everything that makes me convulse
with their calm, indifferent conversations over who is hurting who at the present moment
while taking their slow, jaded walk past my ears
i watched them embrace it in elementary school
the little soldiers of today's brave new society
the adapters
and yet i saw her body double walking across the book store parking lot today
and almost cried
to think that i had the audacity at one time to give that up
the two halves of my consciousness are constantly at war
and driving in the car today, watching all the passersby
i once again had a moment of fleeting lucidity
in observing that there is no right and wrong
only different angles of viewing the same thing
Perception is Reality
there must be no other name for it
situational dilemma

hard pizza is sitting in the box

waiting for me to consume it
i prefer to sit naked with my Icehouse
and listen to the pain in my neck
i am waiting for her to get online
because she is the only thing that means anything to me
and i am quite sure i will be able to work for the next eighty years
if need be
if she will only come join herself to me
the fuck stuck it in again yesterday
for the crime of asking for a ride to school
and i am thinking about donating myself to jail
to put an end to this
at the very least, i should go down there with a samurai sword
and work a little castration magic
what kind of a mother allows this
it's almost unthinkable
i want to carve a door into her satresque world
but sometimes
a person has to believe in the possibility of such a thing
before it can become real
and she hasn't had a lot of practice
dealing with hope
Scout McComb

Homecoming King

I awoke in burnt orange darkness my faceside mashed against the pebbled earth the smell of sunlight warming

cedar pollen the taste of dirt upon my rumflavored tongue. Cicadas buzzed in the grass their din cadenced by

such dull unthinking repetition that I sensed as I often sensed when listening to the ancient tunes of nature an

inarticulable horror at the heart of existence…I opened my eyes….they were already open…gazing into my

cupped palm and the dark orange haze therein…

Moved my hand. Blinking hard at the appearance of life. The asterisked sun breaching a cedar grove on the

upper rim of a steep river valley its gauzy white light sweeping down sheer limestone cliffs and across the

riverside glade in which I lay sprawled twisted bent like the policetape outline of a man flung from a passing

riverboat.
Turned to my other side. Watching the river flow along the grassy bank. Silent witness to whatever

conflagration had consumed me the night before. The dark indigo central channel moving swiftly its shallower

sides rived off and curling in cerulean ringlets towards the shore. Pollen and dust floating thru the volume of

sunlight that at once hovered above the waterface and plunged into its hologrammic depths. I looked up, the

azure sky a river unto itself, folded between high limestone cliffsides, a large bird tracking thru its translucence

like a black stylus upon a color swatch. I did not know what type of bird it was but felt that I should. A boat

captain in the middle of middle age shouldn’t I know something about circling birds? Except I didn’t except to

think that I should.

The vertiginous valley walls were blotted with caves their black yawns directing the light of the world towards

depths rumoring treasure but turning finally foul of lung, trapping birdsong and oxygen in pockets of

blackdamp, drawing heavymetal toxins down ancient lagoons carved smooth by stalactite cum overflowing

terraced rimstone pools dripping milkblue upon jewelrous pool spar, eyeless newts with ricepaper skin darting

thru the dark like crazed dinosaurs miniaturized by time, once great predators of field and valley lost in the

earth’s duodenum after taking refuge during a jurassic storm.

I stood up. Brushing laurels of haycolored buffalograss off the sleeves of my captain’s blouse. Gilt

shoulderboards askew. Navyblue cotton fabric torn at the elbows and knees. Stepped towards the water and

stooped down at the sandy brink of a slowly circling eddy waterstriders skating across its surface trailering

vanishing ribbons of white sunlight. Hordes of gnats drifting above the main current like confetti. Cupped water

in my hands and splashed my face. Cupped more and began sipping it. My reflection torturous in the rippling

water.

I gazed downstream. Something about the high valley walls and hard black shadows and primordial riversounds

filling me with a mixture of melancholy and doom. Perhaps it was the overwhelming immensity of life present

in that natural vignette or perhaps it was the concealed cruelty that I could sense rooting beneath it or perhaps it

was both the immensity and the cruelty casting a doubly black shadow in which I crouched like some caveman

beneath a wuthering ledge, uncared for, insignificant. Under threat. I want to say forgotten but you have to be

remembered before you can be forgotten.

I trudged downstream. Slogging along the curving riverbank. My black derby shoes scalloping the damp sand

my torn blouse billowing in the breeze my mind a maelstrom of thoughts of figuring pondering calculating

wondering. Nothing new in the narrative just a rehashing of generic mindmash, brainbowl garbage. Trout

shadows creased the riverbottom the fish invisible against fishcolored stones. Sweetgrass reeds clawing out of

the mud and bent towards the riffling water like witching sticks. Pennants of dark green moss waving behind

riverboulders in the nearby shallows. Crickets in their exoskeletons of black firescale popping thru the air as I

gestured thru their feeding grounds.

And so I trudged, the steep gray cliffside giving rise to a fantasy in which a simulacrum of me stands above the

valley watching me walk along the valley floor, I look up, scanning the cliff in the middle distance for my

doppelganger, and see gray smoke billowing into the blue sky above the valley wall on the opposite side of the

river. I stopped walking. Visored my eyes with my hands, tracing the smoke down to a location near an oak tree

growing atop a wide ledge about two hundred feet up the cliff face. The smoke pluming up from behind the tree

as though from a chimney. I hurried on.

An hour later found me standing in the afternoon shadow of the cliff ledge, looking up, pondering access. The

sandy bank across the river led to a thick blackberry bramble behind which karst limestone puzzled vertically

upward about a hundred and fifty feet before profiling out to form a natural stone buttress that supported the

ledge the karst contours giving the impression of a stone deity locked in eternal watching somnolence, the

guardian avatar of a people long gone but for some mystical lineage of fire attendants left behind to stoke a ten

thousand year old flame its embers swirling up a handpatted mud chimney into the sequinous night sky,

jewelrybox sky, exploded starmaps telling tales of ancestral heroes and wishgranting beasts, mystic swordspells

and lustful goddesses…or so I desired…all this I desired...my brain always recurved towards the impossible the

amazing…a drunkard’s longing for marvels…

I continued walking in the shadow of the ledge. Gazing at the gray rock beneath it. Loamy soil sinking beneath

my feet. Slow wind curling upstream. Browngreen river gurgling along its earthcut. Shadows upon the stone

breaking in a jagged line against the sunlight where I emerged from the shade and just at that moment - as I

stepped out from beneath the ledge’s silhouette and into the warm sunlight - the stones and stoneshadows lined

up in such a way to reveal a series of hand and footholds carved into the cliff face. The feature vanished as soon

as it appeared. I stopped walking. Backed up. The feature appeared again, but clearer now, of a primitive

stairscape hewn into the karst limestone, ascending to the cliff ledge with its oak tree and companion

smokeplume. I looked up at the sky, the sun’s projection angle and the fragmented karst perfectly aligned to

reveal the hidden steps, and realized that if I’d walked by several minutes earlier or later the anomaly would not

have been visible.

I touched my collar. Unbuttoned it. Some inner heat animated and conveyed to the surface of skin, incinerating

whatever hangover shame drooped thru my psyche. Walked to the river’s edge and plunked my toe caps into its

liminal stagnance taking care not to look at the carved steps again not to look at the impossible thing again.

Visored my hands above my eyes to observe the water going beneath a glistening white pellicle of reflected

sunlight. Gaging speed, depth, wind direction. How far downstream would I drift before emerging upon the

opposite bank? Where were the hazards the sunken boulders the snaggy branches. A boat captain’s fluid

dynamics.

Having calculated my approach I turned and began walking upstream the warm sunshine and cantillating

riversounds lending something peaceful to the afternoon air something like benevolence like goodwill like

friendliness, which was in high contrast to my usual perception of life as something hostile not just generally

but personally…and an uninspiring slog besides…..but here was a mystery! a true one! and I was destined to

conjoin with it, the timing too uncanny to think otherwise, and for only the second or third time in my life I felt

noticed by Life, or by the God of it, or the force behind it, or something, and I had the sense that the context in

which I found myself was authentically mine and that the bewildering mess called ‘my life’ had always bent

towards this one bright moment and it was a moment that I desired to exist in, which was a rare feeling for me,

and I wondered if that was how happy people felt most of the time, all of the time.
At a point upstream I took off my pea coat and dress shirt and folded them. Looked around for a place to set

them. Kneeled and laid them in my shadow my fingers lingering upon the navy blue coat playing over its die-

cast brass buttons and thick cotton braille as if noticing such details for the first time. The last time. I turned into

the sunlight and rolled my slacks up to my knees and took off my derby shoes and tied them together with a

carrick bend and slung the shoes around my neck and stepped off the path into a riverward meadow blotted with

black-eyed susans and mexican hat and bluebonnets a floral panoply ending abruptly at an embankment

overhanging the inner shallows of a meander, the final saturated meter of yellow and vermillion and blue

flowerpetals arcing into the air above the loping river and in that colorwave I stood, shoes dangling above my

ribs like black gourds, pale pink legs covered with bronze pollen, the sunlight bronze upon my chest.

I stepped down the embankment and walked across the shoal the silt suctioning my feet and slurping obscenely

around each toe my footprints filling with sorrel mudwater flecked with twinkling pyrite. The scent of cold

riverwater and stone moss drying in the sun. Rotting trout scale, cedar allergen. As the water grew deeper the

mud trasnitioned to smooth riverstones that kneaded painfully into my soles such that I dove forward and began

swimming sidestroke, watching my speed relative to the shore quicken as I glided into the central channel

where I turned upon my back and bobbed along with the current, surprised to see that I had already pulled about

even with the blackberry bramble at the base of the karst cliff, the mysterious smoke plume still billowing into

the blue sky, a long gray forearm reaching up into the late afternoon sunlight and vanishing from sight as I

floated into the shadow beneath the stone ledge.

Afraid that I would overshoot my exit point I turned to swim towards the shore but just at that moment

something grabbed my foot and swung me several feet underwater the swiftly moving current holding me prone

the cold water shooting thru my nostrils my sinuses burning vision blurred hearing muffled as I thrashed to the

surface managing a shallow breath before being pulled back down again, panicking now as I curled forward to

pry my foot loose. I was immediately flung back. My ankle broke. I stopped struggling. There were only so

many units of motion left. Pushing my tongue against the back of my teeth I looked around for something

anything god please help me god oh god but instead of a god I found the blurry apparition of a stone bridge

lying in tranquil ruin beneath me, its mossy stone vouissours scattered upon the calm sundappled riverbottom, a

massive keystone lying like a giant’s medallion halfburied in the mud, the jumble of parapets which had caught

my foot in the manner of a chinese fingertrap. My immediate feeling was relief that what had captured me had

once been beautiful, built by humans, and with that thought my vision began to fade pain began to fade physical

boundaries began to fade as in my mind’s eye I recalled myself drunkenly fumbling a keyring off a small shelf

above an engine room door the myriad keys caked with verdigris but for one shiny brass key dangling upon a

separate smaller keyring marked by a red floating key fob advertising a fishhouse. McDade’s. I unlocked the

door and stumbled into the dark engine room inhaling gear oil fumes while sliding my hand along the wall

feeling for the generator’s control panel the smooth varnished beadboard giving way to cold metallic

instrumentation and a large thumb switch that I pressed down for several seconds before flicking up, the onan

generator shuddering in its angle iron brackets the yellowish overhead light crazing thru its pillshaped mesh

cage illuminating an enormous detroit diesel engine heaving over six metal chafing pans full of oil, hydraulic

hoses coiling out from the pump and going thru the stern wall like the tentacles of a leviathon disappearing into

another dimension.
I then saw myself as a teenager putting tables and chairs out on the bow of a boat the lonely metal scrapesounds

echoing along a concrete bulwark before traveling thru a field of dying winter rye and vanishing into the traffic

passing along a lakeside boulevard the high school sweethearts walking awkwardly along the sidewalk the

families emerging from pier-side restaurants and all those other things which I knew existed but only existed to

me as handshadows playing across dark and brooding boatshadows.

Then flashes of myself as a young boy building campfires and brewing wild herb tea and cooking red snapper in

banana leaves with lemonslices butter pepper rosemary and sleeping in my sea canoe beneath the sequinous

ribbon of the Milky Way one summer as a runaway along the gulf coast, the happiest season of my life,

trundling thru the shallows of an estuary building a fish farm, laying in the sand with eyes closed holding conch

shells to each ear and napping within that soft roar like a cosmic deity stretched out across the multiverse.
And now here I stand upon the riverbank, gazing at the steps carved into the cliff face. The sun exactly

overhead, radiating a boulevard of light down the pearly white karst. I wear no clothes but my body is painted

with pigments pressed from earth and stamen. I step forward and begin to climb, my hands and feet are familiar

with the route. The scent of woodsmoke fills the air.

Sean Meggeson

Ron McJohnnyson

Do I know you?
For helvede, your name sounds—
We must have met.
Maybe it was in—
darkness,
or was it—
at a food truck
somewhere in—
Dumbo?
Waiting for fries—
and mayo?

Your goddamn name!

You were—
Someone we all—
One big role
in the 80s and then—
(like Fred Dryer in Hunter).

May I call you—

Ronny?
Like I know you—
and we have history.

I won’t tarry—
I’ll nod—
Show you
some teeth.
Here—
gimme a fast side-hug—
ya fantastic, footballin’ fuck.

Nice—
talkin’!
Po’ Tommy McNopedong

I know your name

is not your name.

The rumor goes,

you had a—
cough—
slip
listening to—
(really?) AC/DC.

minute-five
into “Thunderstruck.”1
God—
totally—
cut off?

I’m glad you’ve made

a career out of it.
Your name is on-brand, but
my question is:
what were you thinking?
Out there, that blazing day—
dancing—
with a straight razor
in your birthday suit?

Was it the tune’s mania?

The masturbatory intro?
Ayahuasca gone wrong?
Does it—
still hurt?
Existentially—
or otherwise.
Sorry—

1
AC/DC. 1990. “Thunderstruck.” Track 1 on The Razors Edge. Albert, ATCO, LP.
Do you—
miss it?

Asking,
for the sake
of loss itself.

Can you still sing

and dance, my po’ friend?

Can I—
seriously, now—
take a look
to see
what’s not
there?
Steve Carll

Questions 70 & Up

Would Boston and Chicago share a bill in Kansas?

What did America learn about itself
during all those tours of Asia
and vice versa?

Yes,
the divine right of King Crimson
is rushing to its genesis
at Emerson Lake
and palm trees glow
where my Rosemary throws
her sage and thyme

space is the stage

and time merely its Ohio player
which struts and frets
and straps us into the love rollercoaster
from which we'll fall to our death
while Phil Collins
watches indifferently
On the Air and In It

Who can get into a kissing mood

with all those screaming seagulls around?

Anyway, my college radio shows

were all about the collage ratios

trying to get the tuning forks to spoon

on the knife edge of the gap
between tracks in the vinyl

If I were a partridge in ecstasy

I might buy myself a liarbird maybe

he could take the flocks under his wing

managing their murmurations
from spoonbill to forktail

and if they want to fly like rock 'n roll stars I'd
crossfade out of tomorrow never knows
into their release
Future Futures

Fellow undertakers!
Tomorrow's universe remains
eggbound stunted

Why so civil warry

o cataclysmic cousins?

The future's like a hot air balloon--

Gas it up with hardblow or Viagra
as you will, controlling
or even predicting its trajectory
is a tragicomic endeavor

False unification turns

unglued rapidly, eh Sun?

I'd sooner ride Silver

into Terre Haute,
then slip into the Fifth Dimension's DMs

to await that
Fabulous ubiquity translating
upward responsiveness everywhere

see?
Gnossienne

wandering down taciturn semitones

with Satie, I imagine him watching
a slow procession of all things
to world's end determined
to bear it witness in dignified sadness
when I hear It Don't Come Easy's
Leslie'd guitar intro
I want to sing Let It Rain instead

but I can stop that any time I want

if it's not too late to turn back now
after all if you don't know me by now

I'm a rocket man

a honky cat
a horse with no heart of gold

alone again (naturally)

at the once-dry now-broken levee
missing the last piece of American pie.
Terry Trowbridge

Minnow eyes

How do the minnows

keep their eyes open
in icy October water?
Their onyx bubbles are impervious
to the knuckle popping cold
while they swim past my slow fingers
into the darkness beyond my knees.
The minnows flicker out of sight
into a stone cauldron with its
thickening rumors of hibernating predators
and the security of darkness surrounding
their own miniature thoughts.
Minnow eyes open into the currents,
in the dark, if not to see,
then to feel the hypothermic pulse
of Winter’s return.
Zipporah Breunig

Gradation

I.

false start.

Draw too deep breath.

Linger too long.

take back break

neck speed one

two don’t stop ask

once no twice

Forget.

Slowly.

Forego solid food.

Count to ten.

hold on elastic pill

tight stretch

release sharp notime

fixing not broken not ever

 II.

toxic train track

metal waste raindrop

incarcerated too longtoo late

no reply.

faintly.

Risk until one always.

Any ways. Anyways.

fastforward. Visual rewind

incongruity. Incongruous.

Inferior absolutes. Taste

lingering remnant after

gauzy impossibility.

Ending. Search mystified.

Final helping of emptiness

 III.

outstretched hand your hand

grasping reminding

reciting the parts

you like a litany to me

[everything that I can still remember]

singing your life like a

prayer

staccato

pestilence petulance

precision

lost among

waves of time

this time.
Acta Biographia

Ailbhe Wheatley

Ailbhe Wheatley is an emerging poet and artist from the West of Ireland. She graduated with a B.A in English
literature in 2019 and has recently completed an M.A. in Authorial Illustration. Her background in yoga
teaching and meditation informs her current poetic practice. Her work seeks to magnify the ordinary, everyday,
mysterious - to reveal the world afresh.

Andal Srivatsan

Andal Srivatsan is a writer and poet based out of India, and the editor of Pena Lit Mag. Her work has been
published in various places - TBLM, AThinSliceofAnxiety, The Sunflower Collective, Tarshi’s InPlainspeak,
MeanPepperVine, and Literary Yard. She can be found on Instagram @andalsrivatsan, where she writes book
reviews and poetry frequently.

Andrea Nicki

Andrea Nicki has three poetry books published and forthcoming poetry in an anthology edited by Larissa
Shmailo by Mad Hat Press. She had poetry recently published in The Raven’s
Perch. https://theravensperch.com/behind-the-eight-ball-by-andrea-
nicki/ https://theravensperch.com/monkey-thumb-by-andrea-nicki/
She has a Ph.D. in philosophy and teaches business ethics at colleges for international students/new
immigrants. She has a multidisciplinary book of her essays and poetry under contract with Rowman and
Littlefield Publishers.

Anna Kapungu
Anthony Oag

Anthony Oag is a writer and graduate of SUNY Fredonia, based out of Brocton, NY. His work has appeared
in The Merrimack Review(2019), The Trident Magazine(2020 and 2019), The Eunoia Review(2023), and the
BlazeVOX Journal(Spring 2023).

Brenda Mox

Brenda is a poet and visual artist living on the shore at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia. Her work
has been published in Wingless Dreamer, Bewildering Stories, Down in the Dirt Journal, BlazeVox, Ariel
Chart, Neo Poet, Discretionary Love, Corporeal, Heart and Mind, Edge of Humanity, Poetry Pacific, Eber
and Wein Anthology.

Brett Ann Stanciu

Brett Ann Stanciu is the author of a memoir, Unstitched (Steerforth Press, 2021). A recipient of a 2020
Vermont Arts Council Creation Grant, Stanciu’s writing has appeared in The Rumpus, Taproot, and Green
Mountains Review, among other publications. She lives in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom and blogs
at stonysoilvermont.com.

Carrie Purcell Kahler

Carrie Purcell Kahler’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Apogee, Thimble, Bellevue Literary
Review, Image, Denver Quarterly, Poetry Northwest, District Lit, HAD, and others. She received an MFA in
creative writing from the University of Washington and lives in Seattle with her cat. carriepurcellkahler.com

Cindy Savett

Cindy Savett is the author of Child in the Road (Parlor Press), The Breath (BlazeVOX books) and the
chapbooks: The Story of my Eyes, Battle for the Metal Kiss, Rachel: In the Temporary Mist of Prayer, and Overtures
of Survival. Her work is also found in the anthology, Challenges for the Delusional, and is forthcoming in Poetry is
Bread Anthology. Cindy is published widely in both print and online journals. Educated at Gratz College and
The University of Pennsylvania, she examined the works of Martin Buber and Martin Heidegger, under the
tutelage of Van A. Harvey, Laurence J. Silberstein and Victor M. Lidz. The sudden death of her youngest
daughter generated a fierce reckoning in her poems. As a result, for the past two decades Cindy’s poetry focused
on the experience of grief from various perspectives, including that of her deceased child, leading her into
establishing poetry workshops for psychiatric inpatients at several Philadelphia area hospitals. Cindy’s current
work has evolved into an investigation of the spiritual relationship between the “I” and the “Other”.

Claire Beeli

Claire Beeli is an emerging writer from Long Beach, California. Her work is published or is forthcoming in
Block Party Lit, Polyphony Lit, and The Apprentice Writer, among others. She is her city's first Youth Poet
Laureate. Her writing has been recognized by the Scholastic Foundation, Columbia College Chicago, The New
York Times Learning Network, and others.

Chris Stroffolino

Clive Gresswell

Dan Sicoli

Dan Sicoli, of Niagara Falls, NY, authored two poetry chapbooks from Pudding House Publications, Pagan
Supper and the allegories. He also co-edits Slipstream. Recently he's had poems included in I-70 Review,
Abandoned Mine, Angel Rust, Book of Matches, Ethel Zine, Evening Street Review, Hobo Camp, Home Planet News,
Ranger, Rye Whiskey Review, San Pedro River Review, and Sleet. On weekends he beats on an old Gibson in a
local garage rock band. <www.pw.org/directory/writers/dan_sicoli>

David Lohrey

David Lohrey was raised in Memphis and is now based in Tokyo, Japan. Lohrey’s work highlights how the
absurd and the banal mingle across the terrain of America’s advanced cultural dementia. His first book of
poetry, Machiavelli’s Backyard, draws on his experience growing up in the era of Martin Luther King’s killing,
Patty Hearst’s kidnapping, and Watergate. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Cardiff Review, Delta
Review, Expat Press, the New Orleans Review, Southern Indiana Review, Stony Thursday Anthology, and
Dodging the Rain. A multiple Pushcart Prize nominee, David saw his second collection, Bluff City, published
by Terror House Press.
Dennis Formento

Dennis Formento lives in Slidell, Louisiana, USA, near New Orleans. His poetry books include
Spirit Vessels (FootHills Publishing, 2018) Looking for An Out Place (FootHills, 2010,) and
Cineplex (Paper Press, 2014.) Edited Mesechabe: The Journal of Surregionalism, 1991-2001. He
collaborates locally with musicians including his own Frank Zappatistas free jazz/free verse
project, and in Italy with renowned "avant-folk" group Duo Bottasso. Has organized readings for
the world-wide poetry network, 100,000 Poets for Change, since 2011. In September 2023
Dennis won first prize for poetry manuscript of the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society, for
Phaeton’s Wheels, to be published by Lavender Ink Press, New Orleans.

Doug Jones

E. H. Beyer

E. H. Beyer is currently a PhD student in Scandinavian Studies at the University of Wisconsin. She holds an
MFA in Poetry from the University of Iowa and an MA in Medieval Icelandic Studies from the University of
Iceland. Her poems have been published in journals such as Triquarterly, The Diagram, and Prairie Schooner
among others.

E.W.H. Thornton

E.W.H. Thornton's work has appeared on the NoSleep podcast. They curate a blog presenting magazine
content from pre, mid, and post World War Two era America, with a focus on the golden age of pulp fiction. It
can be found at https://thegildedcentury.tumblr.com. They also occasionally write about the more bizarre, lurid,
and tragic aspects of video game history at https://www.giantbomb.com/profile/lostsol/blog/.
Ed Makowski

Ed Makowski has been a writer, photographer, journalist, and producer living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In his
present-day work, he is a storyteller on behalf of medical and scientific research. Ed likes to get lost and
find wild animals. More about his work can be found at radderthandeath.com.

Ethan Goffman

Ethan Goffman is the author of the short story collection Realities and Alternatives (Cyberwit, 2023), the
poetry collections I Garden Weeds (Cyberwit, 2021) and Words for Things Left Unsaid (Kelsay Books, 2020)
and the flash fiction collection Dreamscapes (UnCollected Press, 2021). Ethan is co-founder of It Takes a
Community, which brings poetry to Montgomery College students and nearby residents, and is founder and
producer of the Poetry & Planet podcast on EarthTalk.org. Ethan also writes nonfiction on transportation
alternatives for Greater Greater Washington and other publications.

Gordon Scapens

Jenny Grassl

Jenny Grassl’s poems have appeared in Ocean State Review, Rogue Agent, The Boston Review, Tupelo Quarterly,
Bennington Review, Lana Turner Journal, Inverted Syntax, Puerto del Sol, Poetry International, Laurel Review,
Green Mountains Review, Massachusetts Review, Rhino, Lit, The Grolier Prize, Clarion, and others. Her poetry
was featured in a Best of American Poetry blog.

J. D. Nelson

J. D. Nelson (b. 1971) is the author of eleven print chapbooks and e-books of poetry, including purgatorio
(wlovolw, 2024). His first full-length collection is in ghostly onehead (Post-Asemic Press, 2022). Visit his website,
MadVerse.com, for more information and links to his published work. Nelson lives in Boulder, Colorado, USA.
James Croal Jackson

James Croal Jackson is a Filipino-American poet who works in film production. His latest chapbooks are A God
You Believed In (Pinhole Poetry, 2023) and Count Seeds With Me (Ethel Zine & Micro-Press, 2022). Recent
poems are in Hello America, Little Patuxent Review, and Ballast Poetry Journal. He edits The Mantle Poetry from
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (jamescroaljackson.com)

Joan E. Bauer

Joan E. Bauer is the author of three full-length poetry collections, Fig Season (Turning Point, 2023), The
Camera Artist (Turning Point, 2021), and The Almost Sound of Drowning (Main Street Rag, 2008). Recent work
has appeared in Chiron Review, Paterson Literary Review and Slipstream. She divides her timebetween Venice,
CA and Pittsburgh, PA where she co-curates the Hemingway's Summer Poetry Series with Kristofer
Collins. On X (Twitter) @Joan_E_Bauer

John Kuligowski

John Kuligowski is a Ph.D. student in creative writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His work has
previously been published in Maudlin House, Misery Tourism, Foothill Poetry Journal, and The Shoutflower,
among others. He is assistant genre editor in nonfiction for Prairie Schooner.

James Joaquin Brewer

Raised on the rural coast of Oregon, James Joaquin Brewer currently shelters in West Hartford, Connecticut
while working on a novel about political protest on college campuses. Published writing of a variety of genres
appears in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, The Write Launch, LitBreak, The Hartford Courant, Aethlon, Jeopardy,
Rosebud, The Poetry Society of New York, Closed Eye Open, The Manifest-Station, Quibble, Open: Journal of Arts &
Letters.

Jared Leeds
Jasper Glen

Jasper Glen is a poet and artist from Vancouver. He holds a BA in Philosophy and a JD. Poems appear in A
Gathering of the Tribes, Posit, Rogue Agent, BlazeVOX Journal, and elsewhere. Collages appear or are
forthcoming in BarBar, Liminal Spaces, and Streetlit.

Joseph Cooper

Joseph Cooper is the author of six books, most recently Splash Fields (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2024). He
currently lives in Lewisburg, WV.

Joshua Martin

Joshua Martin is a Philadelphia based writer and filmmaker, who currently works in a library. He is member of
C22, an experimental writing collective. He is the author most recently of the books Prismatic Fissures (C22
Press), peeping sardine fumes (RANGER Press) and [Ruptured] >> Schematic << MAZES (Sweat Drenched
Press). He has had numerous pieces published in various journals. You can find links to his published work
at joshuamartinwriting.blogspot.com

Judith Chalmer

Judith Chalmer is the author of two books of poetry, most recently “Minnow” (Kelsay Books 2020) and is co-
translator of two books of Japanese haiku and tanka by poet, Michiko Oishi. Her poems have been published
individually in journals such as Poetica, Plant-Human Quarterly, Third Wednesday Quiddity, and
in anthologies such as “Queer Nature,” “Rewilding: Poems for the Environment,” and “Roads Taken:
Contemporary Vermont Poetry.” She lives in Vermont where she currently serves on the board of Vermont
Humanities.

Jonathan Everitt

Jonathan Everitt’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Laurel Review, Stone Canoe, Scarlet Leaf Review,
Small Orange, Impossible Archetype, Ghost City Press, The Bees Are Dead, The Empty Closet, Lake Affect, and
the Moving Images poetry anthology, among others. His poem, “Calling Hours,” was the basis for the 2015
short film, Say When. Jonathan has also led a workshop for LGBTQ poets and co-founded the long-running
monthly open mic, New Ground Poetry Night. Jonathan earned his MFA in creative writing from Bennington
College. He lives in Rochester, N.Y., with his partner, David Sullivan.
John Tavares

Born and raised in Sioux Lookout, Ontario, John Tavares is the son of Portuguese immigrants from Sao
Miguel, Azores. Having graduated from arts and science at Humber College and journalism at Centennial
College, he more recently earned a Specialized Honors BA in English Literature from York University. His
short fiction has been featured in community newspapers and radio and published in a variety of print and
online journals and magazines, in the US, Canada, and internationally. His many passions include
journalism, literature, economics, photography, writing, and coffee, and he enjoys hiking and cycling.

Lewis LaCook

Maia Brown-Jackson

A born and bred New Yorker, Maia Brow-Jackson made the pragmatic decision to study literature at the
University of Chicago; naturally followed by a series of odd jobs working in galleries and art museums, and
running from one thing to the next until she found herself in ISIS-occupied Iraq working with Yazidi survivors
of genocide. Maia was inspired to attend the Fletcher School for a Master’s in Law and Diplomacy, and now
works uncovering fraud and Taliban interventions in humanitarian aid meant for the people of Afghanistan.
She recently published a poetry collection: And My Blood Sang.

Madeline Charne

Always drawn to the theater, Maddie Charne has been a devout dramaturg since she discovered the word,
ultimately going to the Yale School of Drama to study it as intensely as she could. She focuses much of her
work, highlighting themes of historic wrongs, as well as current efforts to destigmatize and increase inclusion
for people who identify as disabled and/or queer—all while bringing theater to communities without easy or
established access. She works for Philadelphia Young Playwrights as the Director of Education and Programs,
and lives with her husband, two children, and entirely too many pets.

Marjorie Sadin
Mark DuCharme

Mark DuCharme’s sixth full-length book of poetry, Here, Which Is Also a Place, was published in 2022 by
Unlikely Books. That same year, his chapbook Scorpion Letters was published by Ethel. Other publications
include his work of poet’s theater, We, the Monstrous: Script for an Unrealizable Film, published by The
Operating System, and The Unfinished: Books I-VI, published by BlazeVOX. His poetry has appeared widely in
such venues asBlazeVOX, Blazing Stadium, Caliban Online, Colorado Review, Eratio, First Intensity, Indefinite
Space, New American Writing, Noon, Otoliths, Shiny, Spinozablue, Talisman, Unlikely Stories, Word/ for Word, The
Writing Disorder, and Poetics for the More-Than-Human World: An Anthology of Poetry and Commentary. A
recipient of the Neodata Endowment in Literature and the Gertrude Stein Award in Innovative American
Poetry, he lives in Boulder, Colorado, USA.

Mark Goodwin

Mark Goodwin is a poet-sound-artist, fiction-maker & re-thinker who speaks and writes in differing ways. He
is also a walker, balancer, climber, stroller ... and negotiator of places. Mark has a number of books &
chapbooks with various English poetry houses, including Leafe Press, Longbarrow Press, & Shearsman
Books. Mark lives with his partner on a narrowboat just north of Leicester, in the English Midlands. He tweets
poems from @kramawoodgin, and some of his sound-enhanced poetry is here: https://markgoodwin-poet-
sound-artist.bandcamp.com

Mark Young

Mark Young was born in Aotearoa New Zealand but now lives in a small town on traditional Juru land in North
Queensland, Australia. He is the author of more than sixty-five books, primarily text poetry but also including
speculative fiction, vispo, memoir, and art history. His most recent books are a pdf, Mercator Projected, published by
Half Day Moon Press (Turkey) in August 2023; Ley Lines II published by Sandy Press (California) in November
2023; un saut de chat published by Otoliths Books (Australia) in February 2024; and Melancholy, a James Tate Poetry
Prize winner, published by SurVision Books (Ireland) in March 2024.

Martha Deed

Martha Deed is a retired Psychologist who has a lifelong habit of writing in a variety of literary and professional
settings. Her poetry collections, Climate Change (2014), Under the Rock (2019) and Haunted by Martha
(2023) were published by FootHills Publishing. Seven chapbooks and hundreds of poems published in New
Verse News, Moss Trill, Shampoo, Moria, CLWN WR, Poemeleon, Big Bridge, Earth's Daughters and many
others. Many poems anthologized. Two Pushcart and one Best of the Net nominations.

Martha curated and edited a posthumous poetry collection for her daughter Millie Niss: City Bird (BlazeVOX,
2010).

Mehreen Ahmed

Multiple contest winner for short fiction, Mehreen Ahmed is an award-winning Australian novelist born in
Bangladesh. Her historical fiction novel The Pacifist is a Drunken Druid's Editor's Choice. Midwest Book
Review and DD Magazine have also acclaimed her works, translated into German, Greek, and Bangla,
reprinted, anthologized, selected as Editor's Pick, Best of, and made the top 10 reads multiple times. They have
also been nominated for Pushcart, botN, and James Tait. She has authored eight books and has been twice a
reader and juror for international awards. Her recent publications include Litro, Otoliths, Popshot Quarterly,
Alien Buddha, and more.

Nate Hoil

Nate Hoil writes and prints books in Chicago, IL. His most recent collection 24 HOUR MONOLOGUE:
Collected Poems 2017-2023 was released through Secret Restaurant Press in 2024.

Nicholas Skaldetvind

Nicholas Skaldetvind is an Italian-American poet and paper-maker. He holds a M.A. from Stockholm
University in Transnational Writing. He studied papermaking with Tom Balbo at Wells College and was an
apprentice for Roberto Mannino in Italy. He serves as an editor for California Quarterly will begin a Ph. D. at
University of North Dakota’s English department in January.

Olchar E. Lindsann

Olchar E. Lindsann has published nearly 50 books of literature, theory, translation, and avant-garde history
including five books of the ongoing series Arthur Dies, and most recently The Squitty Flange, an avant-garde
twist on the nonsense poetry tradition. His poems appear in Otoliths, Lost & Found Times, Brave New Word, and
elsewhere, his essays in No Quarter, Slova, & Fifth Estate; and he has performed sound poetry and lectured
extensively. He is the editor of mOnocle-Lash Anti-Press, whose catalog includes over 200 print publications of
the contemporary and historical avant-garde, and of the periodicals Rêvenance, The in-Appropriated Press,
and Synapse. He translates work of the French avant-garde of the 19th & early 20th centuries.

Pamela Miller

Pamela Miller’s newest collection of poems, How to Do the Greased Wombat Slide, will be published in May by
Unsolicited Press. She is also the author of five other books, including Recipe for Disaster and Ms.
Unthinkable (both from Mayapple Press) and Mr. Mischief (forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press). Her work
has appeared in Otoliths, Word For/Word, shufPoetry, RHINO and many other journals and anthologies. She lives
in Chicago with her husband, science fiction writer Richard Chwedyk.

Partha Sarkar

Peter Mladinic

Rachael Breen

Robert Wexelblatt

Robert Wexelblatt is a professor of humanities at Boston University’s College of General Studies. He has
published twelve collections of short stories; two books of essays; two short novels; three books of poems;
stories, essays, and poems in a variety of journals, and a novel awarded the Indie Book Awards first prize for
fiction.

Roger Craik

Roger G. Singer
Rory Hughes

Rory Hughes is a South London-based writer and journalist. His transgressive novel, Theseus 34 was released
through Incunabula Media in 2024, and has been described as "a breathtaking descent into a digital urban hell",
and by Incunabula Media co-founder D.M. Mitchell as "the darkest [novel] I've ever published".

His challenging short stories have appeared in publications such as BlazeVOX, Angel Rust, Fleas on the Dog,
A Thin Slice of Anxiety, The Rye Whiskey Review, Vine Leaves Press, Literally Stories and Horror Sleaze
Trash.

Ryan Clark

Ryan Clark is a documentary poet who writes his poems using a unique method of homophonic translation. He
is the author of Arizona SB 1070: An Act(Downstate Legacies) and How I Pitched the First Curve(Lit Fest Press),
as well as the forthcoming chapbook Suppose / a Presence (Action, Spectacle). His poetry has appeared in such
journals as DIAGRAM, Interim, SRPR, and The Offing. A former military brat, he now lives in Chapel Hill,
North Carolina with his partner and cats.

Salvatore Difalco

Sicilian Canadian poet and satirist Salvatore Difalco currently lives in Toronto, Canada. His new book of
poems Off Course is slated to appear in 2025.

Scott Taylor

Scott Taylor hails from Raleigh, North Carolina. He is a writer and a musician, and an avid world
traveler. His short stories and poetry have appeared in numerous print and online publications, including Ghost
City Review, Snakeskin, Oddball, Angel Rust and Swifts and Slows. His debut novel 'Chasing Your Tail' has
recently been released with Silver Bow Publishing, and his novellas 'Freak' and 'Ernie and the Golden Egg' are
slated for inclusion in an upcoming anthology with Running Wild Press. He graduated from Cornell
University and was also a computer programmer in a past life.

Scout McComb
Sean Meggeson

Sean Meggeson lives in Toronto, Canada. He works as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist. He has written and
lectured on such topics as Lacan & James Joyce, neurodiversity, and alternative rock music. Sean recently has
had poems published in In Parentheses, Psychoanalytic Perspectives, and Verse-Virtual. He will have a poem in
the March, 2024 edition of SCAB magazine. He holds a M.A. in English Literature and Creative Writing
from the University of Denver.

Steve Carll

Steve Carll lives with his family in Arcata, California. His third full-length poetry collection, Hypnopompic
Diaries (Books One and Two) is currently out from Alien Buddha Press. Earlier books include Tracheal
Centrifuge (Factory School, 2006), Tao Drops, I Change (with Bill Marsh, Subpress, 2004), and several
chapbooks. His work has recently appeared in Anvil Tongue, SurVision, and First Literary Review – East. From
1988-1998, he edited the literary journal Antenym. Performance video of most of his poetry from 1991 to the
present can be found at https://www.youtube.com/@stevecarll/videos.

Terry Trowbridge

Researcher Terry Trowbridge’s poems are inPennsylvania Literary Journal, Carousel, Lascaux Review, Kolkata
Arts, Leere Mitte, untethered, Snakeskin Poetry, Progenitor, Nashwaak Review, Orbis, Pinhole, Big
Windows, Muleskinner,Brittle Star, Mathematical Intelligencer, Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, New
Note, Hearth and Coffin, Synchronized Chaos, Indian Periodical, Delta Poetry
Review, Literary Veganism and more. His lit crit is in BeZine, Erato, Amsterdam Review, Ariel, British
Columbia Review, Hamilton Arts & Letters, Episteme, Studies in Social Justice, Rampike,
and The /t3mz/Review. Terry is grateful to the Ontario Arts Council for his first writing grant.

Thomas Fink

Thomas Fink has published 12 books of poetry-- most recently Zeugma (Marsh Hawk Press, 2022) and A
Pageant for Every Addiction (Marsh Hawk, 2020), written collaboratively with Maya D. Mason. His Selected
Poems & Poetic Series appeared in 2016. He is the author of Reading Poetry with College and University Students:
Overcoming Barriers and Deepening Engagement (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), as well as two books of criticism,
and three edited anthologies. His work appeared in Best American Poetry 2007. Fink’s paintings hang in various
collections. He is Professor of English at CUNY-LaGuardia.
Zipporah Breunig

Zipporah has worn many hats in their life, both figuratively and literally. They currently spend most of their
time chasing after an active toddler, but occasionally find time to write, practice massage therapy, and think
about Georges Bataille.