Ocho #29

cover art by John Korn

OCHO #29 A PUBLICATION OF

Bloomington, IL www.mipoesias.com ©2010 OCHO Contributors

ii

OCHO#29

iii

C O N T E N T S DAVID KRUMP ....................................................................................... 1 VUSY VODY ............................................................................................. 1 MELISSA MCEWEN ............................................................................. 18 HONEY BABE ........................................................................................ 18 ALABAMA ............................................................................................... 19 RON ANDROLA.................................................................................... 21 WITH HIS HAT ...................................................................................... 21 SLAPPING JAYNE MANSFIELD UNTIL HER HEAD ........................... 22 MARKO’S SILENCE ................................................................................ 23 MICHELLE MCEWEN......................................................................... 24 PEACH JUICE ......................................................................................... 24 MIA............................................................................................................. 25 ALSACE-LORRAINE .............................................................................. 25 HOMECOMING ...................................................................................... 26 MARIE-ELIZABETH MALI................................................................ 27 STRIKE ANYWHERE.............................................................................. 27 THE LOUD TOWN................................................................................. 28 WILLIAM STOBB................................................................................... 29 CHANNELS, CURRENTS, CROSSINGS .................................................. 29 CLOUD OUT OF SQUARE ..................................................................... 31 WILLIE PERDOMO.............................................................................. 32 WEDDING HOUSE ................................................................................ 32 BIRTHDAY CAKE .................................................................................. 33 BANK JOB .............................................................................................. 34 GRACE CAVALIERI............................................................................. 35 POINTS IN SPACE............................................................................ 35 SAM RASNAKE...................................................................................... 40 WORLD WITHIN THE WORLD ............................................................. 40 A POCKET PLATO ................................................................................. 41 i

IN A ROAR OF GRACE .......................................................................... 42 STEVE HALLE ....................................................................................... 43 UNTITLED.............................................................................................. 43 UNTITLED.............................................................................................. 48 A LITHOGRAPH OF VILLAINY............................................................... 49 MATTHEW HITTINGER.................................................................... 50 ARACHNOPHOBIA ................................................................................. 50 BAMBOO TATTOO ................................................................................ 52 DONE GONE AND RILED KINGSTON UP AGAIN............................ 53 THE ASTRONOMER ON MISNOMERS................................................. 54 NULLA DIES SINE LINEA .................................................................... 55 HOMOGRAPHY ...................................................................................... 56 MARCUS SLEASE.................................................................................. 57 SPANISH FORK................................................................................. 57 ANKARA.............................................................................................. 58 A KISS AT MIDNIGHT AMONG THE ERRORS OF MOTHS .................... 61 NICOLE MAURO .................................................................................. 62 IT’S A SMALL WORLD ........................................................................... 62 PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN .............................................................. 64 JOHN KORN........................................................................................... 66 THE DOCTOR SLIDES A SCOPE DOWN SOMEWHERE AROUND THE MIDDLE .................................................................................................. 66 THE BOTTOMS ....................................................................................... 69 I KNOW THESE LINES ........................................................................... 70 SURVIVAL FANTASIES ........................................................................... 72

WILLIAM KECKLER............................................................................ 73 ANDY WARHOL............................................................................... 73 SONNET: EVERYBODY HATES LYRIC POETRY NOW..... 77 SONNET .............................................................................................. 78 SONNET (MYSELF AS CAMILLE CLAUDEL ON FACEBOOK) ....... 79 CONTRIBUTORS .................................................................................. 80

ii

David Krump Vusy Vody It’s easy to think of Saint Tarcissius ferrying bits of bread through the streets of Rome to early Christians in hiding. The centurions will ask him to open his hands. He will not open his hands. This is what running drugs is like in June; the seasonal crackdown is on; snitches make deals with assistant DAs to convert felonies to missies. June is a thin wire taped to the shaved chest of some motherfucker who doesn’t know your name. You pull up in a stolen Camaro; you didn’t steal it, sure. His eyes are shifty. He’s given it up, his poor hand. You’re not even the dealer here so run and run. The area’s surrounded poorly. You, The Unknown Runner, decide to find work with little to no running involved. It’s June. So you take a job waiting tables. Now you’re running and making less money and your hands smell like grease and garlic and the Pelicans in the marsh are mating. You drive your friend’s car; it’s not stolen, you’re sure. You watch pelicans and think “treeforts I’ll never build.” Write this to an exgirlfriend and regret not sending it: The canopy I built you of leaves, I meant. My weakness was not there in that. She might need to hear she may be weeping now. June is a month for Pelicans and checking up 1

on pot plants growing in the tri-county woodlands. Deer will take what they will take; yours is the rest. As one trio of plants grows taller, someone discovers them. You press your fingers into official bootprints tagged in dirt. You are part scout now. You know what a well-treaded print means, a heel’s star. Do you let these nine plants go? Favor the others? Sure, but tear them out of the ground first. Ruin it. At the restaurant, you’ve taken up cocaine. Your customers love you or don’t tip. You’re moving low amounts at work and front-house manager offers you the best closing shifts. Others can’t understand it. So quickly? I’ve been here three years. Thursday nights were always mine… You close the place out alone. A couple comes in. The woman shows you one of her breasts when her husband goes away to piss. In June wives do this in restaurants. You refill iced-tea and bring out featured entrees whose descriptions you practiced last night at home. Your friend is waiting in the parking lot after your shift. His eyes you know, know what they may mean. In June, it’s time to beat the shit out of someone who’s ordered their own ass kicking rare. It won’t be good, but he’s pretty, so you don’t hit his face. He’ll likely sell stereos in the future, but then… He admits to everything. You’ll never see the money again and they’ll never see Isaiah. It’s a wonderful day for jumping 2

and here you are on the ground, said Oliver, the German parachuting enthusiast. It was in June that the man with no teeth and a bad leg jumped in front of the commuter train. You weren’t very old when that happened. How quickly a body can break apart. It’s like a new film, burying your first body. You’ve only seen this before from designated angles. Now you are the camera. Your hands blister on the shovel. It takes five takes before you can dig one hole two feet deep without hitting roots. Two feet is what he gets. Two feet and 40 pounds of bagged lime to break him down. You know the speed a body can break apart. You’re counting on it. In June when fresh dead find burial in woodlots where only hunters go and only for two weeks in November, which not part of June, not yet. In June, when the deaf boy speaks to his turtle and words bounce off the terrarium glass. Nnnahhhsha Vatch Cuhhnta Biuuur. Unnn Booo Gree Booor. What’s given heaven a gin water vent in a poptop Volkswagen van. In June they ventured on life support across the Northern States. A stop for pancakes in Moorehead. Apoplexia in Veda Antrolasses. This is a trumpet for all the nerds. The world will end in June and nothing the educated have to offer stops any rape. They took the van across the northern states. 3

They didn’t expect to get raped. Raped came like bad weather in Idaho. June. Easy. Blame bikers or truckers, but accountants? Sure. Accountant rapists in June at the end of the world. Golgotha, bring down

your babies.

We have a dagger for everything in need of daggering. A penny for your dagger. In June, prices. Consider the clavinova. Convene with the insider. Go to any ballpark in June. Leadoff hitter walks every home game. I have a baseball in my throat, says the boy in June, when he strikes out at the plate and his father’s pipe smokes from behind the backstop watching. Come to any game, he said. Please, Pop. I’m getting really good. Not good enough. Here’s some Italian Ice and pizza and here’s the sound of the boy’s cleats on the linoleum. The boy feels official in any uniform. How was the game? Ask them. Go throw stones at Mr. Willi’s truck. But they are unripe stones. It is only June. Stones aren’t ripe until they hit Saint Tarcissius in the head over and over. Even the Centurion can’t stop the mob now. There goes the body of Christ. Someone take it from him. Maybe you’ve heard of stomrastinson? Good. Forget it. It is June. Stomrastinson 4

is a form of violence in an alien bedroom. Aliens never sleep in June. Neither do pornographers or zombies. All the love in the world sometimes is June. It’s easy too die and so hard to kill. Some vet should say that in June, when he’s mowing his lawn short as his hair thirty years ago. It will need water. He will bring out the hose. He’ll place his thumb on the hose end. It’s good for something. Hose end. Thumb. Watch for low-flying rainbows, Rambo. Zombie with a hot dog and shake twisting the mustard bottle to plastic bits. June, you just might be good for something yet. At Lytle’s Landing, Bob is painting a boodylicious chrysalis on his wooden garage door. What does it mean, Bob, that glass gallon of cheap wine shattered in your canoe’s bottom? It’s official Take Your Kid Fishing Day. It’s Errfinkle Took War Kib Fourshn Der. In June, in the Marsh, a turtle suns on a log. Yer fucked up, Turtle. When much younger, you must have wandered through that six-pack’s plastic ring. Your body now’s a figure eight. How long can you live like that? One month of Junes. Miss Marm, sad licker, punishes everything. It would be good if in June a prophet delivered some water to the waterfall or cattails down stream going I growon doo. During the war one year, June was the one month we weren’t willing to eat buttons. Also were July, August, and September, 5

for a while, until the cows were bombed or taken, the fields done down, trenches and tank treads. Then buttons were fair game, and toad’s attitude too. What happened to the fair weather? June, I’ve gobstoppen tury non. I’ve jinkten flite bonnap. Then again, no need for allegories, I suppose, but what about allergies? No need for them either. I have a friend who is allergic to feces. Chuck Berry liked to be shit on in June. Blueberries make people shit in June. Not in Antrolasses. Imported blueberries to the tune of maybe and Farhamson. Went apple-day. So it did. In June, a woman entered an outhouse in a State Park. When she got up from shitting, she looked down and saw two human eyes staring up at her. Was it guilt in the eyes, or the pleasure of a sommelier? This was not Chuck Berry, but the police department called the fire department, because the suspect got stuck chest deep in waste. The fire department pulled him out with a winch, called the HazMat Team. Evidence. If you’re planning to climb into a public outhouse wear sunglasses and rig a winch up just in case. “Sorry for scaring you. I just wanted to be shit on. I’ve been down here two days and I’m stuck, so hungry,” isn’t what most people find need to say to a screaming stranger. In June, think of all the fat spiders down there. They’re fat because shit draws audience always. Fat spiders, ya, and ser creepy people, love; favorites. You’ve buried the body, but now it’s time to show your real strength. Pull this 747 6

with your ear. A cucumber is everything right that has gone wrong with a pickle. Take me fishing. Bring me with you fishing. Come with me fishing for you and me. Lord, is forgiveness to be found in water ever now? At least, the monk returns my phone calls. Told him about the body. He made a cross at me. I’ve grown sorry on this soy sauce all over my plate each night. Should help. What the soy sauce salesman said. Help your ails and cure your help dead after a month of eating it. What kan a tay? Beecha hout unyun gravsey betoun. In June, a patois rivets the plane wings. Okay, now pull. Life after killing is like life before killing, except you set aside things: money, a used car with a rebuilt small block and hot tires. You can’t tell when the news could catch a story about the body and detectives with pug noses and files on us all might place the sequence but they don’t read poetry, which doesn’t suck for murderers. “We know he was moving for________ and we all remember the upsurge in June violence between __________ and ____________ but what we don’t know is how this happened when we were watching every damn pot plant in the county.” They use a dry erase board to graph it out. There’s lots of /

/

/ teacups

and also it goes down and up some more we can’t do everything for you, say the aliens with

7

at the apocalypse

They set the cups in their

saucers gently Some think June lasts forever. These people, avoid. There’s nothing like being shit upon to put things into improper perspective. Hey, I’m covered in shit. Will you go to prom with me now? matters less. In June, when you are holed up in a cabin under assault by zombies, it is best to place bureaus and chests of drawers in front of all lower level windows and doors. After this, run upstairs and make certain that no tree limbs capable of holding a zombie are anywhere near a second floor window. Who among us would like to discover a zombie waiting for us on the second floor when we were so damn sure we were safe and had merely to survive until sunrise? In June as the bodies we bury merely surface like cooked ravioli and the midnight boomtrain horn sounds beyond the undead clamor in the distance. How many to stop a train? One zombie will do the trick. If it looks so very human and is seen from some distance on the straight rails outside Minot, where zombies are now. Engineer blows the brakes to stop the train. The train will not stop soon enough. It will cut the zombie up but what value is life to a zombie? Zombies we are told in June sacrifice themselves for the sake of the Zombie cause. Zombies do not like being shit upon because there are no brains in shit in June. 8

When spirit visits, frequently he unrights dirty jam jars in cupboards. Snips clotheslines so trousers and towels a snail or a slug a piece have to be brushed off in June when you stir to take in the wash from the line and there it is Here comes the apple day princess Here comes the apple day princess Here comes the apple day princess And now she’s gone away Any young country woman can count to ten before hearing the envelope ripped open at the podium in the high school to announce the queen of whatever commodity Butter Queen, Catfish Queen, Railroad Tie Queen, Sunfish Queen, Paddlewheel Queen, Sunset Queen, Queen of Poison, Shoulder Pad Queen, QTip Queen, a Tractor Trailer Trailers a Tractor for miles down the county road. There are rules that say a slow moving vehicle has to pull over to highway shoulder, but not before four vehicles close enough to say are following it. In June, no shortage of queens on parade floats or shortage of children to chase beside the float with the candy necklaces and butterscotch but mostly men over seventy five collect butterscotch and for months and day or wet they will reach into their pocket mid sentence and pull out a butterscotch it’s magic a real magic unknown by old men who know 9

a like sort of magic called eating the fat off of meat cut all the magic left our world and you just need to survive a few months before you can use a tuning fork properly to understand small engine repair. Ding. This is the spark plug separator. This the bad meteor in a small machine. Extraction yields hard visual data and understand the secret to touching any woman you want to in front of your wife: Call them sweetie and treat them gently Extraction yields barn casual factotum or understands magic as less known than done In June or most months, old fingers turn and turn a butterscotch until old minds remember the magic required to unwrap butterscotch while speaking There is butterscotch in June and Cavalry Divs marching con variouii bend sinister and look at the laces on those frrr boots, a universal noon, magic and superstitches In June, I understand Vietnam by its clear shape— a stretched S. Here is land, S. Stretch it and this is poor man’s geography found not by June but in treacle pings and long waits for ferries for some a mill by wait, meanwhile two motorcyclists edge uncomfortable border patrol dog snouts for finds as his agent vowels up a proud bald man beside that rebuilt Chevy How long until the ferry arrives? Will the Chevy owner pop the hood to show patrol his chromed headers and rebuilt smallblock? and there is the ferry and K-9 is moving now through two queues 10

cars have made and the shorter third one for cycles and bicycles But what about the 82nd Airborne landing in Sicily to take out beachhead guns and then moving on and all those wooden gliders wrecked in farm fields and the paratrooper stuck in the oak tree dancing like Chaplin as the German M-42 punches his body until the barrel’s hot and hisses as rain hits it Naw, that didn’t happen, in June. Maybe it did. Can’t look up everything in the world to make it register revery. I’ve got a problem with my plants on radar and then there’s this call about a burning building and are you involved in any of this because we need to know now And the Fraternal Brotherhood of Electricians Are they involved in June? Yes. And the Nusmatic Order? Could be. The students are leaving town. Piles of cans and bottles and couches a mattress where Molly’s Bad Paul pissed on her in his sleep every night they spent together Dear Molly, Paul is bad and the moon makes these piles of furnishings and chairs and cheap end tables sing Bad Paul, you are a bad Paul. This goes beyond June, Bad Paul. In June at a rural party, I gotta hug the sheriff’s son 11

whose brother killed himself last December but nod away, forgetting misplaced turns. Can’t meet me here in June, okay. Make it up. Go along. Notice how grass grows and fog heavies morning and there’s sun like something from a fantasy novel almost time for chores now so dally. Gonna gunnta. This is June. We speak all night. His son sleeps in truck. He tells me about his brother. I tell him his fucking father keeps arresting mine weekly. He loans me three books from his passenger seat and I lose his number and see him months later. I turn away from him who sentineled night and helped me lay up heavy hay the next ugly day, both of us sweating like hell and the water from the well was so cold I could hear it saying, you will fail this man. So what’s his fucking name. Ask and axle on. June, Molly, Bad Paul, Sheriff’s Son whose name I failed, here is my phone number. I miss you. If June is a shape, it is a short slide. Our discarded toys gather at the bottom where cat-shitted sand swallows them partly. A dinner bell rings and hired hands slide out from under an Alice-Chalmers wipe their hands and their workboots fall apart and they’ve got a whiskey bottle in the bunk and cornbread and beans and the evening milking and that bottle is better than a beautiful song. We will live this night or the month will live it for us all. We’ll steer the old diesel truck well for miles before we roll it hard into Jorgensen’s cornfield and we’ll even remember two prayers but someone will not survive this June night which started like a June every hired hand might survive 12

hay climbed the elevator into the loft and the cows were fresh and the heifers friendly enough and the dandelions outside the bunkhouse were poormen’s flowers and we lived there and we lived and the apple trees on the hillside. We had plans for the honeycrips and to drive to the city and duly build a fruitstand to rival them all Here comes the apple day princess Here comes the apple day princess Here comes the apple day princess And now she’s gone away That was the song we sang once how does this happen was the refrain we never made in the bunkhouse over cards and dull knives, whetstones, and a flywheel and M blades rusting on the shop wall. Look, where are you going at this hour? … Just make damn sure your asses are here and milking at six in the morning and if the tin arrives, we’re re-roofing the hog shed but it was raining when we tried to pull Al all the way through the windshield because it’s got him halfway already and that’s the worst way we can imagine the worst way we imagine to die is halfway but we don’t spend much time imagining much beyond the fruitstand I say about and now Al’s can’t build the apple crates and we’re not gonna spend the money on motel rooms and a truck our own we’re not gonna impress any October women That June ruint us, ruint, ruint, ruint and rain 13

I used to be a younger man a better man I was a hired hand I don’t even know these people in the wheelchairs they’ve bunched me in this hallway with where’s Merle Haggard? where’s Al’s apple orchard? This June, a man with his face gone to shrapnel counts motherfuckers he’s gonna kill from the last row in the theatre There’s the Jassinsky brothers. Dead. There’s fucking Hector and his sister and his father. Dead. If that’s lush Jason he’s fucking dead too. Prolly a queer. Don’t recognize the barbed hair of the two punks four rows up center. But dead too. Punks, dead. In June, the world imagines its way through murder despite the cement trucks spinning their cargo down the highways and foundations waiting to be poured. You know it’s hot? Cement. Not just June. But any month. It eats skin and clothing and continues to harden and give off heat for years and brittles and some June men arrive to tear it up and lay down a new driveway for the man who collects red MG’s and the man who collects nothing and a woman with a lazy eye and biggish tits in June This is the woman a man could fall in love with if he knew or never cared which eye watched him and which eye scanned for enemies on the horizon in June Just ask any member of the 82nd Airborne if Hitler knew anything about asparagus farming in June in Sicily. They’re taking this bitch to the house. This bitch ass gun won’t fire again. Detonate. This beachhead must be cleared for men who come to shore not singing. Take the bunker and leave it wrecked, guns toppled 14

just ask anyone in June what size charge you set to crap out a Krupp cannon. They’ll tell you it depends on whether it’s got a bad level and a broken balance to be advantaged. What sort of holiday has June prepared us for? Seventeen men in tiny cars. A man juggling three cats but only one is real. A pewter ashtray whose secret insignia is significant to only ten men on earth. Nine, now that one of the men has drowned himself in a kitchen sink after seeking forward absolutions of the most unknown variety from June. All revolutions begin in June and end in June and hotdogs in the hands of angry children are no exception. Just once, to die so, if the harlot and the harem agreed on loyalties. Just once, if the clever nerd with chapstick and the newest dungeon game would stop talking while there’s this dance going maybe the young man could show off his new blue jeans and the county would let fall the horrible rumors about his father. Hup, hup. That he’s a doctor sent and here for ruint and plague and have his children said a word in class yes many words but none of them our words then take them out of class and teach them ruint and teach them gravy and biscuits and lefse and mortuary grieves the ferrier mun mun mun mch ch These are new jeans we’re talking about but the nerd keeps talking about level nine orcs and the nerd this June is his best friend and how do you walk off into known danger while your friend sits on a folding chair at the edge of the gymnasium ad nauseum like this, does the boy, like this and either he becomes a rapper and rises to boast his acclaim 15

or he drowns in the lake of the known whose waves swallow up the unknown and there is applause and booty for the nerd too or there is him screaming from the shore as one fat fist pushes the young man down as he struggles to kick free his jeans and resurface for a breath less than one minute is what it takes to die in any environment, even outerspace in June has no conception of June. Go and watch a falling star and get with child a dirty boot and tell us how you’d gawk fifty miles at a planet changing colors. Knew a heavy man called it June. Go and catch a mandrake root. Get a child for crying out loud. There’s nothing worth mentioning about June that involves carousels. Yes, there is. Not here. Apple day princess, you’ve ruint June them all No, say dagger. No, say plinth. No, say the boy in the wet blue jeans. her kommen grit cropel in the wheelchair Moon June Spooky goes the air in the bar as the man walks in with blood on his shirt and orders a beer before telling the bartend “You better call the cops. I murdrt my ole lady.” But his old lady’s brother is there because this is a small town 16

and there’s a pool cue to kill and later puke and bartime forebodings as the Miller Lite sign falls crooked and neon gas vents out until the sign reads ill Li e a guy told me this But blood is real and so even are sisters at this hour. The police will find her wrecked on the short hallwayed modular home. Cheerios on the floor. Blood on the refrigerator door and on eggshell carpeting and the three children wandering the small park like small zombies who have lost their taste for brains who have lost and lost again as their grandmother will kill herself this same June, but warn don’t work in reverse I know this city no one tells about In June no tambourines will expel sorrow She took my tambourine and left with a Hell’s Angel to San Francisco, where two dozen paratroopers said yes and nobody knew June just knew that it was over.

17

Melissa McEwen Honey Babe Even though the others before her were called the same thing it's starting to sound like her given name —the way he calls her that and nothing else. The way he says it in public. In Stop & Shop when she went ahead to get the clementines, he said, Honey Babe, I'll be where the bread's at. It took her by surprise the first few times, but now she's used to it like she's one of those girls that are Darling and Sugar for real and got birth certificates to prove it. She wants to tattoo it on her hipbone or the center of her lower back because she's so sure that even though the others before her were called the same thing, they never heard it like this. He says it like he means it, like it's permanent, and even if they split he couldn't help but still call her by it.

18

Alabama When I was young, father would drive down to Alabama in the middle of July. In the front seat, mother, with her toenails painted red, would put her feet out the window. In the backseat, I'd stare out the window wishing I wasn't so young, wanting to wear burgundy red lipstick to impress the Alabama boys that lived next door to father's mother. It is because of them that I looked forward to July. I remember one July, staring out grandma's bedroom window, I watched as the boys' mother hung wet clothes on the line. She was young & not from Alabama & so light skinned, people call her "Red bone," or just "Red." I remember her, too, when I recall the July trips to Alabama, just as I remember the radio in the kitchen window of my grandparents' house. I was glad to be young, then, dancing & laughing in the kitchen with mother. & even though we were in grandmother's way when she cooked her cakes— pound & red velvet, she didn't complain, said, "Dancing ain't just for the young," & would join us & twist & shake & sweat in the July & kitchen heat. Smells & sounds floated out the window & all around Thomasville, Alabama. I wanted to stay in Alabama, the place where my father & mother 19

were raised. All year round I'd never have to close the window because the weather would always be hot or red hot & not only in July but November, too. Wanted to go where they went when they were young & having young fun in Alabama, before July became the birthing month, before Sarah became "mother" & green-eyed wife, yelling when she caught father looking in Red's window.

20

Ron Androla With His Hat The guy dresses like Abe Lincoln. Time sticks at 1980. That cake Blood in Kentucky where well-water tea Greens the edges of moss shields. He Wakes alone to become his thinking Development. Abe Lincoln walks The streets of Erie flooded with Peep-frogs & praying mantises Generals with natural sword arms Below the gray sky of Abe Lincoln’s Eyes. Steer clear as he enters a factory Locker-room like a quiet clue. If Abe’s intense, wounded face was Real we’d die, but we know Madness when we see it & He is not dangerous. Even the Boss snickers as Abe strides To his screaming machine. The white balloon of the moon On his head under his hat. Look, A foot of black air beneath His boots, walking Back home after 2nd shift to his One room apartment, leading the North.

21

Slapping Jayne Mansfield Until Her Head

Rolls across roadside weeds where toothPick crickets on crutches & pear-shaped Gelatinous protozoa hang on the brush. Red salamanders who are direct descendants Of Pyramid Egyptians squiggle quick under black Boulders, & the trees are cigarettes packed with Gunpowder & the urge to ignite The night, the darkness, star lint. Jayne knows her massive breasts are Soft pillow moons, dream erotica, certainly doomed, But she feels like a flame. Men are predictable Moths, horned moth amoebas inside fat blood bubbles, Hatchet-shaped moth amoebas inside champagne bottles. Men spring-board off their cocks, Spears made of ice, they mist By the time her flesh is a target. Wet from the fine spray of cum, she’s sexier Than a tub of diamonds. Jayne coos for you Her Final Breath from a severed head in the dark weeds.

22

Marko’s Silence

The birds in East Liverpool are shreds of thin work rags. No squirrel survives two years, chipmunks last a few Quick months. But the spiders, hell, they are the size of A desk, an oven. They evolved away from web-spinning Years ago, & now subsist on paper. They eat The poems, the stories, the dreams, & continue to grow & crowd the clutter of disaster. It’s not like the spiders Only eat paper, they love feral kittens, trees, & puppy dogs, too. Eventually the spiders, large as refrigerators, Stay where they crash, developing vocal speech for their needs. They insist on being tube-fed armfuls of Autumn leaves, crushed, wetted generously with vodka. They have evil freezer minds. Their brains ice lava blood & glandular, gaseous hatred. It’s all they know. It’s how they are. You are their slave, their ice-cube pet. With sheer mass they Can easily suffocate you if you disobey. In & out the broken Back door, armfuls of dead leaves trail to the tub where you Pour bottles of vodka & with a shouldered log crush & crush The concoction into a substance suitable for tubular injection Into each spider’s Freon asshole. They curse & shit on you All the time. You never smile. Robin migrations, avoiding East Liverpool air space, form a cunt of wind streams along the Sides of the city.

23

Michelle McEwen Peach Juice When she is in Georgia, she eats peaches as if she's never had them before— leaning back on her cousin's porch. Eyes closed. She is no longer a mother of four then, no longer a wife with an ever hungry man. That peach bigger than her hand, bigger than her mouth— she is Sarah Nell of the south: not the woman who moved north for work, not the woman with water on her knees and trouble with her grip. Sticky from her fingertips to her elbows, she is LueBertha's child again— baptized in peach juice, her old-new skin shiny in the sun.

24

Mia Alsace-Lorraine Paris on strike. Ten thousand tourists hanging out at Montmartre, up and down the funicular, I was feeling kind of ill and couldn’t care less about the Louvre or the famous Blues Grotto. I just Had to get out of there. So I took the train to Strasbourg, last leg of the trip, spring colors flying past the window, my face resting in its oval dish saw no more past the rim, I slept under the wheels of a turning sun. Exit Here, where I should have paid attention to streets, names, numbers, left/right, East/West I was overcome with a sense of loss—not mine. Mother had said, “look up my grandmother’s name and see if you can find her father’s house,” only souvenir she had asked for. Old mortar mixed in with the new, hotels and complexes, porticos with flowers and a bright red scarf tied to a chair. What was sidewalk to one man, was home to another with a set of rheumy eyes. How could my mother know the impossibility of her small request? How could I tell her the world had gone on without her? A world that had never heard of Karolina DeLozier? Then I did what I always do in a city: I located the nearest café, had a cup of coffee, fed the pigeons and never told her I had gotten the name wrong.

25

Homecoming Dream the child, house on top of a hill world-beautiful through vaulted windows. Doors wide open slight birds flew in carrying the speckled sun on their backs as twigs fell from their beaks. Waiting for the child, three angels passed in front of the house, all three looked through me I clutched my bare breasts. Behind the house, a double wood Saxon green and yellow yew, a voice spoke, “do not drink from these when the river runs hyacinth.” Then my child with olive skin jumped out of a parked car. I touched her hair, “go in she’s waiting for you.” The woman who drove the car stood just so, I hardly recognized her— my sister from long ago.

26

Marie-Elizabeth Mali Strike Anywhere When I say I love you, I mean you are the Cyclone in my Coney Island, the hirsute giant in my tent, my snakeskin boy. When you say I love you, you mean you place your heart on a dartboard, let me take ten throws. I mean I hand you a shotgun and toss my clay pigeon heart in the air. I mean hot coals and bare feet, a day at the beach, no sunscreen. You mean every time I swing the mallet, the bell clangs and I win another pink rabbit. You mean you can catch every ball thrown from any angle, at any speed. When I say I love you, I mean I built you a raft out of matches and hair, lay down on it naked, and handed you the strike pad.

27

The Loud Town All sirens lack an off switch. Arguments tumble out of bars after last call. They shout and stumble home to their cages, lulled by the lullaby of dog-song. The few that read lips work at the general store, the post office, and the bank. They get the best jobs, but no one complains. No tulips or daffodils survive in window boxes, their ears too delicate. Only succulents can take the din, low to the ground as foxes. At Cacophony Hospital, nurses pass out baskets of mini-earplugs for newborns. Not one new mother takes them, lovers of the soul-expanding red sound of home.

28

William Stobb Channels, Currents, Crossings At Gimli, for the Wrights: Doran, Erin, Spenser, Gavin

~ No road in 1960, so they dragged the cabin across ice, installed it after thaw. Forty years later, sun- and wind-tired, four children lounge in front of satellite television. Four parents, old friends, stand at the windows of a screened-in porch, trying to gauge a reasonable level of concern: against heavy northerlies, four foot swells, a motor boat struggles to pull a sailboat back toward Gimli harbor. Eight p.m.. Boats barely advancing. The two men hunkered in the hull—friends? brothers? afraid? We put the children to bed. When we come back out, the boats are beyond us. ~ Alive again into light past eleven— like looking down at something shining in deep water—we view our former selves. The lake grows louder by the hour until, baffled, overtaken, I try to turn in but can’t quiet my mind. I turn on the lamp, read about a woman who emptied herself, became a conduit for other passages. “I find the current behind the current. 29

What requires me channels through.” My thoughts returned to the two men, probably drinking at a bar, telling their brave tale or dreaming through the crest and trough their bodies are slow to surrender. ~ After three, I drift back to the porch to see the sun skim the northern rim. Wind’s calmed some but the agitated lake still hacks at the beach. This place seems impossible. The expanse of water, frenzied or frozen, too great an obstacle. Thinking toward the furthest reaches of my own life I watch starlight bounce away from the chop— many precise trajectories woven above the surface of the lake. I wonder if I am awake. Then our youngest cries and late dissolves in early. The last look I gather’s a gray field punctured by the peak of another first sail out of harbor.

30

Cloud Out of Square From the top of the city bakery pours an enormous cloud of steam even when it’s warm out and calm up through industrial oven hoods circular cluster of hook-shaped vents a metal bow streaming ribbon on a stucco gift but today at wind chill minus fifteen heat and bread scent billow panic white inside out into blue flatten over Cass Street to rapidly cool curl on a down draft the old hotel splash on pavement and rush back across the intersection all around me

31

Willie Perdomo Wedding House First kiss, baby. Baby, first fight. Fight, last baby. Here comes the end. Seen the EXIT sign, didn’t see the “No” written in easy marker. The triptych broke after the first week. The wood crib, stand-up nights. El que hizo la ley hizo la trampa. Here comes the night all dressed in flight. The first floor, the last door, it was there. The backdoor, the front to the middle and back again. Certificates, copies. We have spoken many times about the issues. El que no tiene hechas no tiene sospechas. Attachments, buying king-size sheets for full-sized beds, hitting me over the head with things have to change. Whether your demons talk to you soft or the way you never kiss me the on the lips before you leave we must talk about the future and our eagerness to use guns. Tap kiss empty a sign of love skinny. Dips to the left, to the right everything is leaving now. A sign of love skinny vases break, never no symmetry. Everything is leaving now. Look at what you put in the jar, keep count of the quality seconds all images are final. Used to be you needed bars to see. Time to blue, always at this time.

32

Birthday Cake Sopla. Are you one, are you two, are you siempre. Erasure deals you a blow from which you cannot recover. Candle freaks for the Valencia cake. Pineapple filled Dominicans. Walking between racing cars and the groom sticks to the bride showers. Flash, batteries. How much is that money in the window? Sky blue streamers, blood red table runners. How old is your subjectivity? Enough to know that it’s possible to take eight steps at a time. Más vale pájaro en mano que cientos volando. 395 years old like Aunt Esther. Are you one, are you two, are you always. Next year it’ll be a millennium nano. Ribbons, gifts. Presents, riffs. The flavor of cream berry you are new today. Trick, candles. Feliz, feliz, a tu muerte…. How many poets can you find in the biscocho?

33

Bank Job Insurance bling. The fiduciary swagger of a five-alarm song. J.P had it. Brother Lo always said that it’s scientifically proven that a brother can put the universe in a headlock. One of those 80s, downtown, let’s go vick some blancos headlocks. Tighten the meaning and fill the garbage hunger. El que tiene nariz que no mande a loer. Tellers always ask if that will be all. Told always says I need. Paper sprint to the finish line. Seen a poet’s notebook in archive, all he did was keep track of his accounts. War papers cut scissors bang rocks. Es como el perro del horterlero, que ni come ni deja comer. Nobody wants to hear your dedication. Slam final proposal is always a dollar away from ninetynine cents. This is a stick-up, don’t make it a Bonnie. Pay all those emergency money crooks back in one shot.

34

Grace Cavalieri POINTS IN SPACE 1. Flower Covering She has a name you can’t remember or never heard the child in Somalia you pick up, her face wet. Changing her cloth diapers, you hold her on your hip so she’ll cry no more. This feels like a thousand years of love. The coffin they’ve made is lined with dead grass embroidered with inconsolable stars a moon of burrs for the pillow. It has her name on it. The handles are of dried mud. They pull it across the plain following us, where we are planting the first tree of the morning.

35

2. Crooked Pond The poet acts as if her thoughts are good enough and indeed they are. They are hers aren’t they? When she said them aloud the deaf man swore she was not talking and swore it to his death. They shared their love in common and a grief hammered by change, but all those thoughts she had she has no more and no one ever heard them.

36

3. Pure Cold Abyss Not knowing everything we said counted I still knew enough to run ahead of someone who would steal my voice. Thought without light made me forget how to pray although losing something over and over should have taught me of New Hampshire with its red poinsettias in the snow and the ice flecked waters where sharks swim underneath where tenderness was put aside in a silver dish just as if we could afford it.

37

4. Wilderness Mound A door opens cutting light The drawers expand to carry secrets The walls are a criticism The ceiling a connection No one is here to illustrate this room The trees make a sturdy path down the lawn and back as if there were something to celebrate within the center of the chest where grief lives like a richness in the earth.

38

5. Supreme Rushing Do you know what I can’t do I can’t stop crying You know what I can do I can stand on one stone and touch the other without bending my knee I walk down the hill carrying a large oak leaf There is sun on all sides I pass the piano teacher’s large white house with its buried place of dreams which remember names better than I do In the music of the past will be a place near the water where once I found my husband and the children which were real.

39

Sam Rasnake World within the World Huang Chen-hsiao, Gathering at the Orchard Pavilion, carved ivory, 3 5/8" x 1 5/8" (1739)

Only the most delicate of fingers would attempt to bring the lives of trees from ivory – the elephant forgotten, and shelter not the point – the path as purpose, the clarity – along the way there will be a moment to speak, to give yourself to nothing, to know that your feet in motion is the point

40

A Pocket Plato Flowers are just flowers, except the one in my head. It has lines and shadings that are pure defiance. A tree’s a tree, a pencil, a pencil, and the stress ball is stress ball. If I lived in a cave, I would never be tied to chair, thinking the commerce into The Republic (paper or plastic?), one nation, underground, tattooed and pierced against the shift of planets. Our music is loud. Our food, a barrage of spice for days. Colors here, a succubus for the nomadic eye, declare allegiance to the moon’s sticky seasons – sunken in the West.

41

In a Roar of Grace Isadora Duncan, New York City, 1898

Imagine then her practice, bruised purple into inner thighs—

a raucous churning of the body’s demand, pinked tissue and bone, that sweats the metaphor

to The Rubaiyat— evident, venereal. Under the breasts, in a roar of grace,

her solar plexus loosens both bare feet— toes grabbing the world when she lands.

42

Steve Halle Untitled

In The Bruised Fruit Market, the Happy Perfectionist weeps above D’Anjou skin: gouged and abused

red peppers wither like grandmothers periplum

whose Spoiled Babies scream and paw, pander for candy their dissonant yells pummel the Perfectionist’s ears until she wails too pointillist in disappointment

I came here for chicken feet but left with a rabbit for roasting

citrus hits the floor: an Old Man’s cataract of thick-skinned nectar in polyrhythmic thuds

43

hands fondle cantaloupe below the Mural of Sky

the Newlyweds steal the Old Man’s cart

rancor ensues 99¢/lb. Roma Tomatoes!

Hot Young Immigrants buy honey slither black pants down the Aisle of Oil and Spice and simmer like sale-priced soup, hot on a winter’s crusty bread and melt

Macho Men bullshit over meats, not shy abt their own hardness in word or image or indeed the spurts and grunts of colorless fluid exchange

The Bruised Fruit Market Checkout Girl says credit or debit cash back? every timer Perfectionist

44

tits in Polish magazines are yesterday’s papayas. winter drafts affect skin, a sweatshirt enough she says: eat up, it isn’t

and wasn’t the feckless Old Man’s cart rolling away reckless ranging wild from what corral? ********************

yoga for insomnia / yoga for narcolepsy

so much for the Hippocratic oath

nutritionists and fashionistas are unarmed Sandinistas teach the populace to toggle between adoration and revulsion: a waif-like waist line or Anna Nicole’s Olympian bust line?

some of the chosen merely sit & breathe while others bustle over concrete shapes of themselves or relatives frozen in a blast 45

of furnace ash

journeyman doctors reach the end of the mind and find Tiresias but no palm empty pillboxes but no donkey, no praise of no immortal soul sing softly until I end

my song never reaches top forty

neither Anna Nicole nor Kate Moss will ever love me, neither, in life nor in death

regard the posture: posture is all posturing

on the Big Time Dating Show Leading Always to Sex, Tiresias waits behind the silk curtain with a copper coffer containing a self-devouring snake, all sinew and shimmering scale 46

for the next Oprah

after choosing a mate, Tiresias lounges beneath Egyptian cotton longing for the androgynous mate who has slipped into something more comfortable

& old body parts hidden like lotus petals unfold hormonally altered by pills his beauty half-withered her member half-hard

47

Untitled it's seeing and being seen. like, i'm naked but shopping for an infinite wardrobe. i thought no matter what i could get There, but then it was skirt over skirt over skirt. then dryness, numbness, exhaustion. an ellipsis of transcendence. then i think how often reading is like taking a shower. (or writing like a shit.) afterwhile, no instructions needed to repeat and no memory of soap bubbles or water. left arm lather chest torso right arm left leg left foot balance right leg right foot balance crotch back ass head face neck rinse then (unless i masturbate) water off and dry. how many armpits get fingered looking for forgotten old spice? music is no different. i needed to play giant steps or stellar regions to recall i'd heard it. and then not. it arrives fully formed in echoes. a synaptic brainradio. i lather myself with notes and words, but is once enough? process or event? with diligent mending can one outfit last indefinitely? in the morning i lay out my nakedness and sometimes still clash. we kiss as prelude to frustration. layer over layer over layer of clothing seems scandalously sexy. the golden mean-curved chalk outline of the body departs as air. as levi-strauss mused i forgot i wrote this because it is finished.

48

a lithograph of villainy or like fucking and the anti-man comes: pinocchio pan, romeo rally spasm fall. as if winter being cold is not flame-retardant. i do not wither blister burn peel. on wild nights wild knights eat lean meats. to joust and choicely cut why so impale and wan fond oven. stable desire in horsing around good but i'm a maniac a man arrives at a there it's me! forty (i'm forty) lashes for believing (given the existence of a personal god who loves us dearly with some exceptions man wastes and pines abandoned) salmon salad served at the teddy bears' picnic. mother stitched its eye back on. mother to stitch on parts. on the run. my parts (i am doll legs) and you! o the chase! fairy tale eyelashes you scandal. you talk of me when i need you to be thinking. raggedy ann andy push them together together what freckles come out cry change me change me let me to milk. you think of me when i need to hear your voice. bum man with his bum teeth and flood pants over the fire of the barrel in winter i paid him to drink pee. you stare at me absently (if you will / it, it is / no dream) only when you think of absence and i vanish.

49

Matthew Hittinger Arachnophobia Last night, Amalie, I dreamt a ten thousand year old dream. Light caught the globes of a hundred eyes. I woke to a shadow on the sheet, thought spider but not a spider, just my cactus caught in spot lights from the neighbor’s back porch. No shadow followed Uncle Matthew the day you were born for no light shone, the power grid a figment. Some people saw stars they had never seen and felt their first moon wane. The spider came weeks later, exactly when, though…well, who knows when or even how spiders enter, but beside the garbage can she sat, the size of your palm. “Spider,” I said, “Why have you come?” In the angle between carpet and baseboard, she paused, said Instinct. The leaves did have that rustle when the wind blew, and the crickets’ desperate song did lull me to sleep, but it was not quite apple time, and so I thought she should go. “Come, the night is still warm,” but she dashed when I tried to catch her in the Power Puff Girls milk bottle etched in red and blue and green. “See Mr. Caterpillar there on the screen? He makes his own home, knows well enough on which side to stay.” She laughed, perched 50

on a corner of the kitchen rug. He will return new, beautiful. I have laid my eggs; let me live out these days beneath your stove, and under the stove she went. One hour I spent coaxing her out. A hanger. A stick. A ruler. Nothing worked. Her eyes winked, flashlight freezing her body. I should have left her to eat the Eastie Beasties. But now she's out in the trash.

51

Bamboo Tattoo One man had his phoenix scratch tap tap tap And one man had his lizard patch tap tap tap And one asked to be a chameleon in Chameleon Blacklight ink all blue glow UV react tap tap tap Some come in search of the bamboo stick want to heal quick want its ancient trick that tap tap tap Some come ready to be bamboo to be bullet proof in a full body suit mark and hatch tap tap tap One brought his bamboo tumescent now bears scorpion sting on his broad based shaft tap tap tap And one paid to stay for thirty days while I tapped out his name his life his fame trapped in tap tap tap But the last wanted a skull wanted a rose a cross a heart I scolded hell I don't do flash tap tap tap Call me hammer call me handpoke call me monk call me tat no name will ever match my tap tap tap

52

Done Gone and Riled Kingston Up Again Ida down the power man at four am Uda melt resort light VACANT in the gutter Ida stole the rooster call and laid a hen Uda cook bluehead wrasse and fried em with butter Uda melt resort light VACANT in the gutter Ida let the cabbie honk once every ten Uda cook bluehead wrasse and fried em with butter Ida gone pretend to be Inez’s dead husband Ida let the cabbie honk once every ten Uda floor it when the clock read four am Ida gone pretend to be Inez’s dead husband Uda photo protogynous transformation Uda floor it when the clock read four am Ida came and like a plague of cicada went Uda photo protogynous transformation Ida ask the doc what protogynous meant Ida came and like a plague of cicada went Uda stay in the corner, a moth all aflutter Ida ask the doc what protogynous meant Uda bled a pen to cloth like light through a shutter Uda stay in the corner, a moth all aflutter Ida stole the rooster call and laid a hen Uda bled a pen to cloth like light through a shutter Ida down the power man at four am

53

The Astronomer On Misnomers Was the silence perfect? Look up and see. What you see, I see. And yet not quite true. Sound and monstrous shape. Draw point A B C D E : Wonder Woman's crown, old Cassie upside down. If we share this point of view then there is nothing left to say or see. But say you saw from Alpha Centauri : add point F for our sun and the crown shoots left a zig a zag. Shapes change. Start with C : how easily it becomes V or Bflat fifty-seven octaves below, the tune of a black hole. It's all parallax, see? Names we make to designate so quaint : freeze or bang, rip or crunch, they're all big all blue shift or red shift Doppler Effect and C is a doppelgänger : the one verse breathes expands and contracts, a bounce, a blink. You see I see and what does what we look at see? A we? Come hear that constant middle C.

54

Nulla Dies Sine Linea A line a day. Four lines box the date “15” corner bound a slash over number through box each line multiplied echoed day after day shared borders indefinite not days stretched into weeks but one day one line waiting. One day one line. A line a day. Four-lined highway Interstate 78 split to 81 South cut through Pennsylvania fields hills in twilight lavender light yellow line leapt to life glowing as if this second is the birth of yellow the first yellow seen. This day this line. A line a day. Four lines cross your face 25 years of wait light through venetian blind rust-orange halo of street lamp reflected divine in each eye head haloed by pizzeria table light your body striated bands of shadow of light. Of line of day. A line a day. Four-lined stanzas divide 7 quatrains recombined through the language of rendering not fishing line linear demarcated but atmospheric gray gradations born from line but effused scumbled out across page : from line from day.

55

Homography Half-asleep when the phone rings proofs vanish into the receiver single-sheeted booklets a heavy stock the title blocklettered cream on green the poem green on cream cuts breaks new words in red. A voice urges compare the drafts revisions and changes. The voice changes into yours cutting clear across the state. The line scratches snow fills your block near the Allegheny past blast furnaces while the Lehigh’s steel mill rusts. What did the dream urge? The weight of a lost thought as I try to follow: use two sheets of paper then iron the tablecloth; a candle too hot; jagged square of blue glass congealed vanilla. The line cracks. There is a gulf of mountains trees and rivers as if state stood for state one that allows gulfs to form between dreams and acts between we two men cleaving. Sketch this? In pencil? in pen? How to write what a dream re-keys?

56

Marcus Slease from Alien Memory Machine SPANISH FORK 28 December 2009 I began in a failed society mushy peas and fried pineapples the present is a baffled weather it is a gamble to get off it is a gamble to declare yrself missing, oh i lit my pocket trumpet my head is in another socket the streets soaked with melting snow we linger like I’ve had this air only rarely morning drops itself into the keyhole warts are in the markets kiss me in my slow croaker I smelled the snow I'm not spooning a single soul

57

ANKARA 11 Jan 2010 It is 03.28 on the second day and my fridge is full of Pınar Doğal Yoğurt. There is a haze of lights outside my window. We were at REAL shopping centre. Prayers crowned the air. I was a translated clam. This is where the world's nuts are made. I'm waiting for the ruins of a Roman bath. I'm waiting for the temple of Augustus. I'm waiting for the Monument to a Secure Confident Future! Everybody seems hard on the face but soft in the mouthholes. It is 06.42. I've slept one hour. 15 min till I am supposed to awake. It was a night with my life. Or parts thereof. Snow and microbrews, ping pong beer, erotic nights in hotel rooms. Paper routes and swimming pools. Little boy and big boy. Dusty hands against the window, sweaty trousers and moldy cheese. Hands on the nightstand. Running & running round the tracks. Jesus on the ceiling. Angel light from passing trucks. Tootsie rolls from Mormon missionaries. Las Vegas lakes and rocket ships. It is 09.00. It has rained and the red clay of Ankara sicks to my soles. The stones glow at the old gate. This is an ongoing nomadic poetics. I'm drinking Seftali Nektari in the east campus cafeteria. In this garden of dark howls i search for my twin. Cleaners clean around me. When you awake what sticks to your skin? Who colours these keenings? The old has been sold. Culling the senses in this cold wind I have felt the devouring. Praise the whirling dervish. The ecstasy of petals on an empty platter. The non-arousing of hotel erotics. The corona is in the clinic. I'm 90% glutton free.

58

12 Jan 2010 Cybele Cybele centre of the Anatolian pantheon ritually castrated a hidden noise is woven into this Turkish rain drumming dancing and drinking upon the long sleeves of a priest the Turks did give the Dutch their tulips veni vidi vici

59

13 Jan 2010 the lunar bull is damp with sweat and I am amid the testicles of another wet winter a stranger is at my doorsteps a stranger spoons the silt of Turkish coffee into my cup I have eaten Ayran sour yogurt with Kansik Pide & Ali Nazik Kebap

60

14 Jan 2010

a kiss at midnight among the errors of moths what is whiskey without rhyme what are mermaids and bluejays without rhymestones and telephones and shadows and milkcows and blue brains and fools and belated classics nibbling at the gutted backslap of plasticity of outter space the people are still moving unassailed and they are free in their pussies and crocks free to love in the wet clay & cigar roads of Bilkent University

61

Nicole Mauro It’s a Small World Look, there’s some playing Jai-alai in Himilaya. Look, there’s one waving beside the blowhole of a blue whale. Because violins and banjos together, because carpets here fly over the most long eyelashed animals. And you actual children—you’re all starers. We made this for you—you like it, don’t 62

you? What about the one charming an asp out of a basket without an adult? To coax from the inanimate life. It’s unsupervised, but it is how the grown hope. Now that you see. Look, at that one—how well it does fish, and this one, CanCanning for us as we drift.

63

Pirates of the Caribbean Avast, me hearties, more death, more boats. Somehow we became under the impression you like watching the skeletonized remains of adults. How clicketyclackety, ‘dem bones. Shiver these skies…Louisiana, Yemen, Anaheim…alit like eye-white. You are afraid. It shakes all the time. You don’t know this but that chirping isn’t us, but gulls, 64

and far away and long ago they made that noise over oilmen in bayous, in gulfs. We have our endeavors. Argh, they fizzlefazzle a lot, so we concoct and pull levers. It’s all, after a while, a plumbed depth, and we believe too especially—especially in flesh. But it comes off, and we’re left, we’re left with the bonedry, the clickety-clack of the everpumping derrick. 65

John Korn the doctor slides a scope down somewhere around the middle

My bed so old that a spring began To rip through the fabric poking my back once or twice drawing blood. I would fold small blankets and pad the spring And lie and read And read. I began to write. 2000 words a day. My stories go on forever. I see the words march across the glowing Blue screen of an ancient word processor That my dad had stored away in a closet. I loved that little thing. It was like playing an instrument. I had no job. I signed up for school. I thought I wanted to be a writer. 6 years later I am in a doctor’s office. I have not read a book in a long time. I am reading Parenting magazine Because that is all they have. Sitting next to me is a 50 year old Man with schizophrenia. Sometimes he believes Scientists killed his mother. I remind him his mother was old And cancer got her. 66

He has no teeth. He eats a lot of pudding complains about his feet hurting. The doctor slides A scope up his nose and down His throat checking For cancer. He gags And his skinny lizard like tongue Wants to reject the scope And spit it out, but he manages to relax. No cancer. The doctor sends him home. He talks much about the neighborhood we drive through There is a block of time that he knows very well And can point out landmarks and tell you every detail Like he is describing a friend’s face But as he talks he notices that face Is not his friend? But a stranger Who may resemble his old friend… Then he trails off and grows silent. I drive him back to his apartment. He is bundled in a giant coat Too big for fall weather. Top of his head sticks out Like a shy turtle. He walks through a Swirl of dry leaves yellowed. some of his pages are ripped out. Some stuck together. The cover gone. The title unknown. You plunge in somewhere around the middle And the story is unaware of where it began… It remembers a few lines here and there Of the first few chapters… 67

But that story seemed so different didn’t it? How did that character Developed into The one in these pages? Surely this is not the same story. All these books All these pages Falling from our thumbs You see them? Like bright colored leaves…

68

the bottoms

his brother shot Gina Brook with a brick bone automatic in the face behind Sally’s hair salon she was sleeping with Timmy Teeth discretely but word got out and Bobby with his voices and the word of god took his demon tanks down a mud path in his brain he grabbed a load of cobble stone and paved a wall in the attic sealing her body in the crawl space. when the police knocked it down rats were nibbling on her cheeks. Timmy Teeth was found in the river rocks in his pockets half his head like a zippo lighter flapping in the current his eyeball like an under cooked egg on his chin they say the sickness is in the family his father was all blood and brandy and the mother used to drown cats in the spring but ole little joey never hurt no one you can see him on the train bridge singing jesus jews and infidels he buys cigars and sweet tea swallows pills and mint leaves blames the doctors for hammering his mind out into the sun 69

I know these lines It’s been over a year now since My parent’s moved from the house I grew up in. Sometimes when I wake up In my apartment For a few moments I still think I am there. I can hear the neighbors Below. A muffled sound of a television And I think it’s my father up, drinking coffee. I often drive past the house. I don’t have to. I mean it’s rarely on the way To any destination, but I will take a little detour Just drive by it and look. Once I got out and looked but didn’t spend much time. So strange to be a trespasser to a home That was your life for a long long time. I don’t know what I am expecting to see. Someone standing on the porch? Strange children playing in the front lawn? Do I feel sad I can’t go to that home anymore? I remember so many things But it’s like photographs From someone else’s family album. It’s all familiar. Cookouts. Fights. Sicknesses. My niece taking her first steps in our kitchen. The way the curtains moved in the large side window. How when I used to stay home sick from school I would sit on the sill and look at the little dust particles Swim through the air. I know the wood framing in those windows I know where the paint was pealing. I know what It feels like to run my hand across it. I even know the dusty smell of the old curtains. But I will never actually be able to do this again. I have a desire to walk through it now, empty To stir memories that feel faded. The whole summer the grass was overgrown there. 70

The hedges taller than they have ever been. The front window had a broken portion of drywall jammed On the inside blocking the view. While living there I dreamed of being and doing many things. Most if not all never actually came to be. Instead I move from place to place Never quite sure what I will be doing next. Often it feels like waking from one dream To find myself in another. I sit here now But one day I will awake in another home And perhaps for a moment While still coming into focus I will mistake it for being this apartment.

71

survival fantasies Oh lady It’s winter Pretend like the bed Is an igloo we dug in the snow There was an avalanche Our friend peter froze to death He is blue and his fingers snapped off like icicles We had to eat them Now in this igloo We must press our bodies close And since you are at higher risk Of hypothermia I must rub your body all over. I must undo my belt And thaw you out Oh please understand My friend we were hiking In the jungle And you got jabbed by the thorn Of a poisonous plant And your veins will close off So you must strip down And we must go into the hut the only vaccine Must be applied to my lips And I must kiss you where the poison Went in But of course We are not sure where the poison Went in so no inch can go untouched this must be done with urgency.

72

William Keckler ANDY WARHOL 1. I have a secret. 2. People were only sent here to fuck with the idea of people, which is a relatively new invention anyway. I mean. Like the concept of the individual person. 3. You can't sit there. 4. Adding color instead of content is one way to conduct all your human relationships. 5. Some doctors, some novelists and even politicians do this. 5a. Some lovers do this. 6. Your lover or patient could be dying, but if you keep adding color you will probably look blameless from the outside. 6a. You might be dying and screaming at your lover, but if they keep adding color you may be fooled into thinking this is a satisfactory response and eventually just quieten down and die. 7. Rural Pennsylvania can teach you a lot about the genius of boredom. 8. You can do what you want with people. 9. Of course, they mind. But it's the minding that's the funny part because they they have to get excited and talk, and you don't. 10. I believe it's called "power" in other quadrants, but this is art so shut the fuck up. 11. I have a secret. Did I say that already? 12. I found AIDS to be "aesthetically limiting." 13. I'm just a girl. 14. Shhhhh! The museum is trying to think. 15. Sometimes when I walk past a museum I giggle but that's because there are no shop windows in front. 73

16. If an idea is dumb, it's probably underutilized. Dumb ideas make the best weapons. 17. A sucker is a vacuum cleaner. 18. Infinitely reproducible just like a pill popping poem. 19. The absence of value is what makes it worthwhile. Promiscuous sex or eating when you're not hungry. 20. I thought the telephone was divine. 21. If I could have married the telephone, I would have. 22. My thoughts on gay marriage are this: if you are going to have a gay marriage, you should marry a man. 23. My thoughts on straight marriage are this: if you are going to have a straight marriage, you should marry a house. 24. Please don't call me homophobic. I don't like big words. 25. When I was alive, it really wasn't all that different. 26. I would have been as happy if it were shoes instead of paintings. 27. The only difference between Andrew Carnegie and myself is that he's dead then and I'm dead now. 28. I pretended to find human self-destruction interesting, but you probably know better. 29. What color is human destruction? 30. You see what I'm saying? 31. When the prettier ones die, there is a chance to apply color. 32. I met Saul Bellow once. I thought he had come to fix the furnace. 33. Quantity is the only funny value. 34. Quality is the only pathetic value. 35. Sometimes I wish I could exploit people in ways that are truly destructive, but this always leads to sentences with complicated grammar, and I'm so not about complicated grammar. 36. When I died, I thought it felt like a wet towel. 37. When I was dying, I realized absolutely nothing. It was such a relief. 38. Monotony is a form of religion. 39. In that sense, I guess I was religious. 74

40. My brother makes art using chicken claws that he puts in the freezer. He uses them to apply paint. He keeps the old name: WARHOLA. 41. I'm sorry I missed Mika. He's pretty. 42. If you suck my fingernails, you will get a dopamine high. Even now. Dead. 43. I think I identify most strongly with Goya, although he stayed in the house too much. 44. I'm proud that I toned down the drama queen. Goya had a problem with that. 45. All my art is deaf. That's one way I'm like Goya. 46. When Valerie shot me, I thought she was joking about being serious. 47. When Valerie shot me, I wanted to silkscreen the ceiling. 48. Why do people get so intense about their art? Is it the ownership thing? 49. I'd rather fight over a coat than a painting. 50. It's not that I'm not sexually attracted to men. It's just that it involves asking so many things. 51. Why does anyone ask anything? 52. Wasn't Mylar fabulous? 53. Imagine a cemetery covered in snow, in the dead of winter, and all these silver mylar balloons tied, one to each tombstone, catching the sunlight. 54. The thing is you never know if anything is ever really over because usually nothing is ever really over. 55. Except maybe cooking. 56. I wanted to do a gallery show of burnt cookies and invite everyone I hated. 57. I didn't really hate anyone. 58. But you get the idea. 59. I wanted to film them eating the burnt cookies. 75

60. And then I would apologize and say we had nothing to drink, not even water. 61. Is the world still full of things people call beautiful? I wouldn't know. I'm not there. 62. The wrong color made me happy. In a painting or a person. 63. I heard they put some of my Flower pictures in hospitals. 64. I like to imagine the terminal patients looking at them. 65. Well, I used to. 66. Okay. I'm lying. 67. I liked money. Money made sense to me. 68. It was when I stopped caring that I began to believe in work. 69. Not "the work." 70. That's a load of shit. 71. I collected people. People collected me. It appeared sloppy, but it became simpler because the absence of recognition was soon taken for granted. 72. I think that's what Heaven must be like...I mean if all that God stuff is true...the absence of recognition. Over and over. 73. I could imagine an eternity like that. 74. People just saying "Oh yeah, right!" over and over. Lying to each other's face. Pretending to recognize one another. 75. And angels lying around like dogs on the couches. 76. I feel inspired. 77. I'm going to go take a nap now.

76

SONNET: EVERYBODY HATES LYRIC POETRY NOW Everybody hates lyric poetry now It chews its emotions like a big moo cow It doesn't understand that process is what's cool It serves up emotion, that icky human gruel Everybody hates lyric poetry now "Erato, she love herself more than Tyra Banks" Everybody's just sickened by the whole schlemiel It's like trying to watch or believe Tom Hanks Everybody hates lyric poetry now Constantly taking its own temperature, its pulse There's nothing we haven't already seen in that e.r. There's nothing that can even successfully revulse Lyric poetry Go Away, Go Play on the Freeway Go paint your toenails black, waggle some schmuck's rod It's just more kiddie middle-age fucking or dying Getting your Anne Sexton panties in a wad

77

SONNET I think I may really be Camille Claudel I feel I have been fucked-over by many Rodins as she I feel I have been fucked well by earth's poetry I feel I love her and she, love she and me I think I am really Camille Claudel My family and the world expected too much of me I only wanted to understand incarnation-Why does that happen to bodies and poetry? I'm actually sorry I can't have a period I'm sorry I can't get in synch with the Moon The others seem to do it beautifully I wish I could shed eggs from a tree Camille, why did you abandon form those last 30 asylum years? Did you get pissed that neither bronze nor marble nor a man hears

78

Sonnet (Myself as Camille Claudel on FACEBOOK) I feel bad when I get rejected by a poet on FACEBOOK When I get rejected by a young poet with a douche beard I feel bad when it happens I feel bad and I Google the poet to try to find out I try to find out why the poet rejected me Is it because I am too old for a douche beard Is he gay? Is he straight? Did I stalk his boyfriend? I don't understand these complexities of life! Should I ask the douche beard on his face why? If he's handsome in Google Image Search should I feel worse? Does he feel I'm a liability to his poetry? Is this a form of psychoanalysis provided free? Should I write him and beg leave of my senses Should I worry I am merely dreams that pose as defenses?

79

Contributors David Krump's work has appeared in Colorado Review, MiPoesias, Poetry, and Poetry Review (UK). He has received the Ruth Lilly Fellowship from Poetry, the Lorine Niedecker Award, and the Poetry Foundation/Newberry Library Fellowship in American Poetry. He co-curates, with William Stobb, the monthly reading series at the Pump House Regional Arts Center, and assists in the beautiful project that is Oranges & Sardines. Grace Cavalieri's new book is entitled Sounds Like Something I Would Say (2010, Goss 183) Her new play is Anna Nicole: Blonde Ambition. She founded and still produces The Poet and the Poem for public radio, which is now enjoying 33 consecutive years on air. John Korn lives in Pittsburgh PA. He began publishing poetry around 2002. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for his poem "14 young women" which is included in his collection 'Television Farm'. John also draws and paints on occasion. Marcus Slease was born in Portadown, N. Ireland in 1974. He is a nomadic poet and has lived in various places such as Żory, Elbląg, Jastrzębie Zdrój, London, Seoul, Las Vegas, Seattle, and North Carolina. Currently, he teaches English composition and academic skills at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey. He is the author of Godzenie (Blazevox 2009) and various small chapbooks. Marie-Elizabeth Mali is a co-curator for louderARTS: the Reading Series in New York City and a poetry editor for TIFERET: A Journal of Spiritual Literature. Matthew Hittinger is the author of the chapbooks Pear Slip (Spire Press, 2007) winner of the Spire 2006 Chapbook Award, Narcissus Resists (GOSS183, 2009), and Platos de Sal (Seven Kitchens Press, 2009). He lives and works in New York City. Melissa McEwen, whose poems have been published in various journals (in print and online), lives in central Connecticut with her son Izzy. In January she was featured on WOMR's The Poets Corner (hosted by Jose' Gouveia) in Provincetown, MA. 80

Mia is the editor of Tryst. Michelle McEwen – a writer living in central Connecticut – always has her head bent down in some book. When she isn't reading, she's writing or doing something poetry related at theblacktelephone.blogspot.com. Her work has been published in many fine publications such as O & S, the Best New Poets anthology (2007) and The Caribbean Writer. She was also recently nominated for a Pushcart prize. Nicole Mauro has published poems and criticism in numerous journals. She is the author of the chapbooks Odes (Sardines, 2003), Dispatch (co-authored with Marci Nelligan, Dusie, 2006), The Contortions (Dusie, 2007), and Tax-Dollar Super-Sonnet (Pendergast/Dusie, 2009). She is the co-editor of an interdisciplinary book about sidewalks titled Intersection: Sidewalks and Public Space (with Marci Nelligan, ChainArts, 2008). Her first full-length poetry collection, The Contortions, was just published by Dusie in 2009, and her second, Tax-Dollar Super-Sonnet Featuring Sarah Palin as Poet, is due out from Black Radish Books in 2010. She lives in the San Francisco bay area with her husband Patrick, and daughters Nina and Faye. She teaches rhetoric and writing at the University of San Francisco. Ron Androla lives in Erie, Pennsylvania, with his wife, Ann. Sam Rasnake’s poetry has appeared recently or is forthcoming in Oranges & Sardines, Shampoo, BOXCAR Poetry Review, Ekleksographia, Metazen, The Smoking Poet, and Naugatuck River Review, as well as the anthologies Best of the Web 2009 (Dzanc Books) and Deep River Apartments (The Private Press). Inside a Broken Clock, his third collection, a chapbook of poems, will be published by Finishing Line Press in 2010. Rasnake edits Blue Fifth Review, an online journal of poetry and art. Steve Halle is a poet, editor, and educator from Normal, Illinois. He is the author of the collection Map of the Hydrogen World (Cracked Slab Books, 2008) and the chapbook cessation covers (Funtime Press, 2007). Halle edits Seven Corners (sevencornerspoetry.blogspot.com) and writes reviews for Poets & Artists (O&S). His creative and critical work has been published in Another Chicago Magazine, Cordite Poetry Review, Jacket, Milk Magazine, Moria, and PFS Post, among others. He is a PhD candidate at Illinois State University. 81

William Keckler has published several books, including Sanskrit of the Body (Penguin). He is seeking a publisher for another poetry collection, as he has the publishing "seven year itch." He lives in an imaginary city near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. William Stobb is the author of two forthcoming collections: a chapbook of assemblages entitled Artifact Eleven (Black Rock Press) and a full-length poetry collection entitled Vanishing Acts (Penguin Books). His 2007 collection, Nervous Systems, won the National Poetry Series prize. Stobb’s recent poems appear in American Poetry Review, Colorado Review, Conduit, Jacket, and MiPOesias. He hosts the miPOradio podcast, “Hard to Say.” Willie Perdomo is the author Where a Nickel Costs a Dime and Smoking Lovely, which received a PEN America Beyond Margins Award. He has also been published in The New York Times Magazine, Bomb, Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood and Centro Journal. His children's book, Visiting Langston, received a Coretta Scott King Honor. He has been a Pushcart Prize nominee, a Woolrich Fellow in Creative Writing at Columbia University and is a 2009 fellow in Poetry from the New York Foundation for the Arts. He is founder & editorial director of Cypher Books.

John Korn’s art graces the cover the OCHO #29 Didi Menendez edited OCHO #29 www.mipoesias.com

82

David Krump Melissa McEwen Ron Androla Michelle McEwen Mia Marie-Elizabeth Mali William Stobb Willie Perdomo Grace Cavalieri Sam Rasnake Steve Halle Matthew Hittinger Marcus Slease Nicole Mauro John Korn William Keckler