Amy Jo Trier-Walker

Planting Fireflies

Bleak-mountains, my beautiful is crooked:
I hear the sounds one cannot live through,
so I didn't give her dry socks
even though she had black hair.
narrow bows        sitting on the window.
They were wood in all those paces,
as curled as myself,
as grained as born,
as ground as once.
Me not saying anything in the dream
or anything else for that matter.
She saw thorns gathering under the skin.
We were planting fireflies, unloved.

Amy Jo Trier-Walker

Tending the Echoes of Dust

Amy Jo Trier-Walker

Wind must be sewn
into every direction.

To read by axes,
a shadow of brittle.

A palm not set,
a line of birds unplanted
and looked it.

Amy Jo Trier-Walker

Seeds of Sugar that Tremble

Amy Jo Trier-Walker

Notes:

"Seeds of Sugar That Tremble" is a cento of Valerie Mejer's Rain of the Future (Action Books 2012), which was edited by C.D. Wright and translated by A.S. Zelman-Doring, Forrest Gander, and C.D. Wright.
"Tending the Echoes of Dust" is a cento from R. Erica Doyle's Proxy (Belladonna* 2013).
"Wind Must be Sewn" is a cento from Cole Swensen's Goest (Alice James Books 2004).

Kristin Maffei

Sea Song

Rusted over little fish house
RMS Lusitania
I love you.

Brown water oil slick, I love you.
The underwater lake forms in endless night
where some creatures will never
touch a solid thing their whole lives.
I love you like no solid thing.

There is one lanternfish for every cubic meter of ocean.
I love you like mermaids love lanternfish, streetlights of the sea.
I love you like the flooded house,
all the heirlooms on the second floor
three feet of water on the first.

Kristin Maffei

On the Shore Where the Sand Darkens by the Breaking Sea

Once, you picnicked here, bit
into ham sandwiches with the crunch
of sand, cheeks seared red
by salt wind. Once, seasick
on the ferry, you shuddered.

Tie your apron, the linen one,
and fix the meal, first or last.
Make cream with pepper.
Stack bricks around twigs,
set ablaze, feel hunger, begin again.

You have come to sleep
but there will be no rest here.
On the cold beach
at the edge of a forest,
first you build the empire.

Kristin Maffei

Lazarus

You lie in the gallery of the healer.
He grinds cinnamon, twists the pestle
and sprinkles the dust into each of your eyes,
across your chest. There is a pouring of oils,
a laying on of hands. He takes it out of you.
The tips of his fingers ring the rim of your nostrils,
tap and patter along your throat, knead your stomach.
He pulls off the bandages and breathes
over the wounds, which heal in gold.

You remember dancing with your sister, a wedding somewhere,
and her neck encased in beads, everything filled with wine.

There's more. The dreading
slipping away. A light. Darkness.
He presses harder now, and the table is dripping.
His fingers on your temples, a dull ache in your skull.
Your eyes sting from the spice and a new light.
In this place, there is no thought. There is no I.
In this place, behind a stone, cold, there is only
your flesh, and his hands, kneading and pressing.
He breaks your legs and says, walk. You do.

Mark Ducharme

from Defacement

Defacement 9

To be on a continent of shadows
Moving through the rain

To the ends of an idea        crashing
On the surface of the night

Night's surface devours        pigments
Does not reflect        the color white

To touch night is to question the existence    of weather
The color of the wind in summer

To move into night's pores
Is to forget language

To swallow the idea of yourself
Moving through time    through the course of the sea

Through colors' violent swaying
Against which nothing's formed

Mark Ducharme

from Defacement

Defacement 10

The evening face of the sky's welled up
Seizing us by thought

By reach of non-appointments
Against which nothing's forged

Evening surmounting seizure
Beneath the swollen rain

In birth to be stunned stained
By mirth

The sky is disappointment
Blooming in reverse

Where we sing, & everything

Else, which has been lost

Mark Ducharme

from Defacement

Defacement, a Prime Number

To still be levitated, or to blink
Scorched by summer's tuning

As if anything were proper
On your face, an inky sky pulverized

By feeling's demons,
Torched anatomies

Which midnight does not choose
Until some of this is true, this stalemate

Blooming into darkest night
Swift, like summer apples

Where we sing, & everything
Else, which has been violently omitted

Mark Ducharme

from Defacement

Arrive

Just because the air is filled with light

Just because silence        is filled with ourselves

Enveloped by [enclosing] when we go
                    Like everything in colors rushing outward

Until we are anything again, brokenly
            With ourselves almost full--

    When does it stop? Why

                            Do we, in fevers, wake?--

≠

    Scratch out the words which
Scratch. Usher them

                To a fire   smoke    eyes burning            terribly
        Over here. It is all

Over or under    
                        Here    it issues from itself when                itself

    Issues frantically


                                    The boat has left
                                    The boat has left


Arrive at a place where you issue
                                                        Through scenes

        We are all not any of them--
                                                        & This never was

Mark Ducharme

from Defacement

Here

                "farewell notes from those gone
weave through the composition"
                                               [...]
"may you be forever strange"
                                             --Anselm Hollo

aMUSEment never in the sense of
Staying still or grounded in the day's            recitals

When we say we'll go back
We'll go back

        Windward into weather
                That surrounds us        drowns us

Say the word
                        & Word is free--
        "I am the Sea," & you

                Who are no longer here

Alison Strub

Discussion Of End-Stage Liver Disease Calculator

What I want to know is how to calculate risk, so I can control the future.

I have wondered about jumping from the sky: what if I fall before I am ready, descending in circles curled, my hands ungrasping as they become colder.

I wake from this and I am within a spotlight of a lamp, the knob worn down to the grooves by me: turning on, turning off.

The deer even crosses the street when it knows it has to, its lampblack eyes and velvet nose staring when the beams illuminate his eyes. His horns just pierce his fur, white and short. I know, for this he has risked his life.

Alison Strub

Discussion of Wildcrafting

It was raining. I removed my frock and the water hit my skin. I dug up the hair-cap moss with my trowel.

Naked, there was no reason for being. Naked, the body would not obey even as clothed.

The world is full of all good things: the saltbrushes -- spinach, swiss chard, sugar beet.
I run my hand over the thistle's purple flowers. My hands are not pricked. There is no pain.

Alison Strub

Discussion of Scottish Plague, 1644

I am outside again in the open air, and you out there living your life like any other person, and it is still inside as you lift the apricot from the plastic bag, selecting one that it is tender and soft.

Despite the myth, victims were not walled up in the closets and left to starve. There was organized quarantine. Those infected enclosed themselves in their houses and displayed a white flag from the window. Bread, ale, coal, and wine were delivered to them. A doctor would visit. The doctor, in reality, could do little to help.

I also select an apricot, leathery and sweet. Everyone is alive, and out there, living.

Alison Strub

Discussion of Decoctions

The snow falls and I gather herbs before the ground is covered.

I can only moderate risk. So often I imagine the consequences of stopping or going. I see the black hellebore and what could it be besides a cure for the mind or a cure for the desire to go deeper into the forest.

There must be one green leaf left.

Alison Strub

Discussion of Bonesetting

I dilate your pupils with nightshade and digitalis, and there was beauty in your lashes.

I can only believe in the curative powers of what I'm given, what I'm told is medicinal: the extract of foxglove; the therapy of coffee and tea; the ether in the water.

The limbs are broken.
Is there anything more to do other than set the bones and pray.

Irving Weiss

from Bent Nails

the nails that resist and do not concede to the hammer
                          bend
           

                          often                even                  after                 they are straightened
                                                             placed
                                                                         and struck again

                          they deliver a slight wobble
                          are rejected
                                               scattered on the ground one by one


                          like crippled  oriental beggars
                          their stories are brief

                                                                                                        they say

Irving Weiss

from Bent Nails

25. mother hearing a sound said come in
and undid the latch
scaring the burglar out of his wits
now that he'd have to become a robber

Irving Weiss

from Bent Nails

39. the convex wife
the concave husband
this is it this is it this is it
as long as were together

Irving Weiss

from Bent Nails

45. the tortoiseshell button fallen between the cracks
of the floorboards in 1923
gleams briefly in reflected light
returns to being forgotten

Irving Weiss

from Bent Nails

49. the things of this world
are on the increase
we will surely go under
unless they are paid for

Irving Weiss

from Bent Nails

54.this is the only version there is
it says all it can say
andcant be revised
repudiate it by enduring

Irving Weiss

from Bent Nails

55. to trust your love
is to go around naked
without fear
of arrest

Irving Weiss

from Bent Nails

56. darling wasnt that smirk of yours
the paperclip
i thought i saw
gleaming under the catdish

Irving Weiss

from Bent Nails

60. when everything makes a difference
nothing makes any difference
if you know what i mean
you dont

Irving Weiss

from Bent Nails

62. whether your mouth chews
open or closed
achilles and the tortoise
run between the bites

Irving Weiss

from Bent Nails

83. the trouble with pain is
you have to enjoy it now
the trouble with death is
you can only enjoy it once

Nicholas Grider

From the Book of Former Wisdom

///

Then there's dialed-up spotlight, and kid, the malachim say, getting high-pitched and glassy-eyed is not a salve, and God is neither anthropomorphic nor Anthropocene, is not densest point, is both spotlight and spotlight's target, if showcase is directional

or an onslaught of circus

God is not an unfathomable motor

[                  ]

there's some kind of ornate rumor, and it's sliding your way

Nicholas Grider

From the Book of Former Wisdom

///

It's not entirely simple and is unrelated to miscellaneous variations on sublimity, the pound cake is not baked, there's no "falling over" entry in the instruction manuals, nor human analogs for helicopters

there's no instruction manuals, but there are passwords and flare guns, the flare guns are not a probably or a likely

[                  ]

there are thousands of permutations of "lantern," and you're not one of them

there's a knee-bend and tilt but modern prostration is not really a thing, kid, so sit your ass down and straighten your tie

[                  ]

untold marvelous entrances, behind this is

Nicholas Grider

From the Book of Former Wisdom

///

Neither catastrophe or admonition, or maybe admonition aimed at you but shelve it, supernal glory is a private deal, no price tag, no aliyah, don't tell anyone but employing some imagination works just fine, kid--them ancient and you Moshe, soberly ganked

itching to discern an intention behind "audience" (or are none but that lightbulb precedes getting grabbed and shaken hard)

eventually there's no "find something to hold onto" or the grasp is smear or smudge

[                  ]

the instruction manual was printed backwards, and there isn't one

the scratch of it is the black of faith and of submergence

and the water's not actual, and faith and submergence are the same damn thing

Nicholas Grider

From the Book of Former Wisdom

///

That's not entirely your tongue nor what you do with it, don't bring it up in public, the world is dripping wet with apple carts and you're no coloratura

God is neither coloratura nor stolen shopping cart

you're pure innocuous plebe but you're not sub-basement, this is not that, no adult child, no waiting until you're forty, neither ascent nor descent, this is not that and you no easy bucket, Moshe, no village idiot humming the melody to "You Can't Always Get What You Want"

[                  ]

the universe still consisting almost entirely of corners and whim

Nicholas Grider

From the Book of Former Wisdom

///

There might also be serpents somewhere in the interim or antechamber (size of a small forest, plastic-wrapped ecology, semblance of a hereafter) but the serpents are unnamed, as are the flora and the eerie silver pillars

maybe you should just try shoving harder

the angels of shoving arrive and roll their eyes

[                  ]

there are no angels of shoving, no dedicated malachim, what you get is what you get, more like a home you didn't know you owned than a tailored suit, but Moshe remember you're not making any claims, this is not that, this has something to do with aptitude

mountains are still mountains, aptitude is related to both remonstrance and inheritance

Robyn Art

Synesthesia

Like us, in autumn, the leaves attempting
to catapult from their moorings but end up
just sort of swirling around the perimeter
September with its nostalgia flash-flood
I fall on the thorns of life,
I bleed (Poet, Visionary, Class-A Whiner)
Among the Staff Development team-building games
the "draw a picture of yourself as a fruit"
(an earnest person,an "Animal Lover!" etc.)
Some people actually smell in color (in the event
of a bad cold, is Donny's jacket red or blue?)
on the test, the child recalls what she's learned
about plants, They are in one
big life cycle that goes on over and over again

Robyn Art

Sword Swallowers of the Nineties

Finally stopped trying to grow things from seed.

Relinquished the view from the nosebleed seats.

Cute penguins, once all the rage, receded from view

like soap-on-a-rope or "I'm in a weird headspace right now."

Like Thoreau, to drive life into a corner.

Like Dickinson, life being over there, behind the shelf.

On the return trip through semi-agrarian landscape,

longed to be as clouds, massy and relevant.

Stymied by traffic patterns, lingered on the off-ramp

under the billboard of the non-specifically Latina in scrubs

extolling the perks of Medical Assisting.

Tried a fair number of the many-things-illegal-in-New Jersey.

All the while, its pink-cheeked Governor through the gasp

of static on the ADD-addled airwaves, We will not

retreat from the waterfront,

we will not retreat from the waterfront,

we will not retreat from the waterfront

Robyn Art

Dear Avatar,

in the time it takes for someone to appear from behind the parked van with the release form, I could be kicking it poolside, the wind on the lake attitudinal and bitey this side of the urban arterials, ten-dollar cupcakes and high-end muffinry. I can't zip up my jeans for shit but still, the woods implode in actual autumnal splendor like the guy said on the radio: Anything can happen in Jersey, Jersey microcosmically American even down to the inclusion of floodplains. Dear Corporate Underwriter, is there really life between the dishes? Dear Republican Majority, will you always traffic in discomfiture? I school I hung out with the arty kids but not so much the girls with fabulous updo's. Sometimes were were all just, like, Dag, except for that time we witnessed a sort of meltdown/freakout at the waffle bar and looked at each other over the toppings station, like, Should we maybe call someone? Dear Thrill-Seeking Multitudes, I want to say, we are but brief candles, hunker Thouest down with a stash of audiobooks and Vicodin, cruise the interweb, walk the earth, get into adventures. Freezer burn, paperwork, the full-bodied, womanly hours. Dear Recession-Induced Homesteader, I remain, Dear Reader, Yours, &c. &c., a start, a beginning of things, a gazillion words for Whatever.

Robyn Art

Lake Effect Radio Sonnet

Monday: From the mostly particle board starter home on the bus lines, no whispery elms, no mount from which to gaze on foggy morns, the deer in the cul-de-sac ravine picking daintily through the yard clippings and beer cans

Tuesday: Polar vortex, freezer burn, Ask Me About My Attitude Problem!

Wednesday: Dear Firstborn, writes Odysseus from the front, You wouldn't believe what passes for labnah around here

Thursday: Like the humanoid mumblings of crows, rousing multitudes, or maybe just startling the guy with the leaf-blower, sometimes the most direct path between two points is through the Drive-Through window at Hardee's

Friday: Sinus pressure and dark money, the needle of January's bared and silvery maw, flatlining on dailiness and dishes, maybe love is the problem, the spreading light abscessed around the hill

Saturday: Through the audio static/infernal click-clack of the polygraph/wind ruckussing in the eaves, the three-year-old singing about trashing the hotel room/getting drunk on the minibar, through second-guessing the dosing cup, feigning interest in the Paleo diet and scrapbooking, the weekday with its weekday-ness all up in your grill

Sunday: Dopey and moonfaced, the morning blinks on with shrapnel in its gums

Robyn Art

Dear Happiness,

a.k.a., Low-Level Contentment,

the way the neighbors each spring plant rows of prissy gladioli

in their scrappy row house yard, not minding

the crummy exterior;

a.k.a., Sustainable Okay-With-It-Ness,

ectomorphic saplings spanning the median strip;

a.k.a., Buzzkill,

did you know a cockroach can live up to a year without a head?

a.k.a., Haters, are you still

using journal as a verb?

a.k.a., I, too was once a diffident punk thrashed by unnameable longings;

a.k.a., Never Enough, as in, living room perennially trashed, no time

for eco-conscious holiday crafts with the offspring;

a.k.a., cortisol levels inching inexorably skyward;

a.k.a., composed primarily of hijinxs, doomed to a lifetime striping parking lots

of the Big Box Emporiums spackling the freeway;

a.k.a., The Interweb, squishy Life Partner types trolling the backchannels of the Intimacy Seminar;

a.k.a., the small gradients of: the home cheese-making enterprise; sexually-objectifying a loved one; light percolating in the snagged trailer door;

a.k.a, in the way pigeons secret milk from glands in their throats to feed their young we schlep the kiddies to the giant McDonald's play land off 9;

a.k.a., sipping weak coffee with the other fractious parents as the wind howls over the traffic, sibilant and throaty;

a.k.a., high on Sudafed and Pepsi, the sun nefarious and barbed, just sort of milling around the multi-use facility, wet leaves battering the pagoda;

a.k.a., in the caffeinated pre-dawn of the viewfinder and the unbroken line of triplexes spanning the perimeter; in the weirdly-protean mind-meld of any thumbed species sauntering cluelessly over the land bridge; in the half-lobotomized backwaters far from the city center;

a.k.a., until such time as your Qualifying Life Event, all is palimpsested, tick-tick, aquiescence, glean

Cindy Savett

the reminder

I am the lightened room
falling ill

a handshake with the wind

I am the rooftop
swaying

palm to palm

I creep around at the edge of thought
aiding those who leave life at the door

in my hands are oceans and agitated seas and a mountain

I have only the frequency of tongues the abundance of glass

remind me
I whisper

Cindy Savett

mostly the fervent ones

depending on the season I will weep for you

                     caution

                     my wrinkled hand and red ribbon

I am the reasonable one I cry
creasing the rising sun

I dip leaves in gold daylight
and rest my bare feet in the well

across my shoulder falls the thumbprint of forbidden prayer

the glinting off
my blade

for I am the infant
bending the bough

converting you to echo

Cindy Savett

the rising

shoes filled with praise
filled with pine needles
line my floor

a momentary faith swirls through my brick home

holes in the roof
masks covering the wall

a passerby of frail frame
begs for closure

feed the toothless I say aloud
stumbling to my feet

a stained cup between my palms

John Lowther

from 555

Note on the Text:

555 is a collection of sonnets whose construction is database-driven and relies on text analytic software. I crunched and analyzed Shakespeare's sonnets to arrive at averages for word, syllable and character (inclusive of punctuation but not spaces). These averages (101 words, 129 syllables, 437 characters) became requirements for three groups of sonnets. I collected lines from anywhere and everywhere in the air or in print in a database. The lines are all found, their arrangement is mine. Values for word, syllable and character were recorded. Typos and grammatical oddities were preserved; only initial capitals and a closing period have been added as needed. The selection of lines isn't rule-driven and inevitably reflects what I read, watch, and listen to, thus incorporating my slurs and my passions as well as what amuses and disturbs me. These sonnets were assembled using nonce patterns or number schemes; by ear, notion, or loose association; by tense, lexis, tone or alliteration. Every sonnet matches its targeted average exactly. Think of Pound's "dance of the intellect among words" then sub sentences for words--it is amongst these I move. The dance in question traces out a knot (better yet, a gnot) that holds together what might otherwise fly apart. I espouse only the sonnets, not any one line.

John Lowther

from 555

We cannot begin with complete doubt.
Let's at least start off with a few laughs.
I still say you're are getting ripped off.
We're sick to death of all this nonsense.
Man is the product of his product.

Die already, or become human.
Both of which I enjoyed immensely.
So it was easy to get into.
All we need is a toastie maker.
The most efficient way to smoke weed.

Cram them full of good crimey weirdness.
They only understand tough.
Who knows what the truth is.
All colours will agree in the dark.
Don't settle for a piece of shit.

John Lowther

from 555

In molecular biology and medicine, diversity is pathologized: difference is considered a disease.
Man, in whatever condition we find him, is more or less depraved.
For over a year I did my cross-dressing in secrecy and isolation.

One could say: it is in the nature of identity to be mistaken as identity.
I remember the first time I got arrested, I wasn't even in full drag.
I was wondering if the deputy knew I was packing and didn't say anything.

Then even though other people may see the body walking, there will be no man in it.
The hormones make it hard for me that way.
And all of her days became nights.

John Lowther

from 555

She tops Juliette, fucking her in doggie, missionary and pile driver before cumming a hot load on her face.
It was very free-form, and there was this idea that sex could move in any direction at any time.
If you don't believe it, compare the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is eating the other.
My new favourite deodorant is a brand of Febreeze I found in my convenience store called Ternura do Algodao.

I stroked the bulge in her panties with the tip of my finger.
My past experiences with the old orange frisket have generally been disastrous.

John Lowther

from 555

Personally, I would find the idea of an all-encompassing plague, produced by man, rather marvelous.
After all it really must be very nice to be a woman submitting to the act of copulation.
And the flipside of this is that exploring heterosexual men's sexual fantasies is like peeking inside the minds of potential criminals.
They automatically throw masculinity into question.
Dementia and memory loss are also a body's way to cope.

John Lowther

from 555

A girl who becomes more feminine is publicly rewarded.
There are no beautiful surfaces without a terrible depth.

I recognize a face of a perp in the pics.
I feel the less I say about this the better.

Jogging in public should be banned.
The punishment is theirs to bear.

Times are changing.
Just sweet fuck-all.

My tongue starts pacing in my mouth when I look at your legs.
You bought raw meat yesterday, so you eat raw meat today.

I know when I'm picking out an asshole.
Politics have no relation to morals.

John Lowther

from 555

This book belongs to the very few.
Poetry is an act of attention and we're in a time where having an attention deficit is the norm.
I'm not trying--consciously, anyway--to promote a set of theories or ideas.
I just wrote nonsense and used the most complicated word I could think of.
It has been years since our brief passion, but it's the wound under all my most beautiful broken works.
I've suffered for my art, now it's your turn.
I reject this certification: I am not a poet but a poem.

John M. Bennett

drink the rain

use unless the cor
e re tains ,in's hot
loop where ,was th
oughtless sky ,the sn
ake in's cave asleep
,its blood ,or water
from the green st
one gushed ,red
but cl ear ,and ne
ver touched the glass


- Isn't time is there left? -
- William S. Burroughs

John M. Bennett

taste the eaves

call the flawing
sky nap ape
window of the
swoll yr leg
heap trip kn
uckled flower
yanks the w
ind

por tune por l
eveled sink

John M. Bennett

the broke command

the air contained the
for re nom the
outer ring em
balmed with stones
yr axe broke the
shower floods
the floor below the
tower crowned with
flames the sweaty
lunch your bread
coughs up ,dry
the blood your
towel saved

John M. Bennett

the dream of a tortoise is the
dream of a river running backward

if we get
the hill o
ver la pen
umbra bursts
yr base
ment's wri
ggling cara
pace originant
ink darkened
river el
hotel del hue
so dorm ido

was the knee's
left pain the
knee's ave
nue sp read
behind tu más
cara's shell
yawning alpha
bet's sleepless
pool her thighs
her wrapper ou
verte les esca
liers her
wheel of smoke t
urns toward you


Picked from the husks of
Ivan Arguelles' "anabasis xlvi"

John M. Bennett

spinal copy

g laze the tome sangre r
inse a head of f L ago
's eyes' sunk dream sh
p age of binding age of b
laze o ver el agua es es
inching b ack bac on gri
tty toE in my grave L

Mark Dow

Four Centos While Packing Books

Cento on Style

What is surprising if style should be simultaneously a mask and an admission? Style is the perfection of a point of view. But the reader soon forgets the style as such -- a forgetting which is the greatest accomplishment of prose, revising his intentions under the pressure of a style that evolved as if in opposition to his conscious aims. After all, every man will have his own style, which will distinguish him as much as his gait. Try to get out of it. Go far enough into yourself that your style can't follow.

Mark Dow

Cento on The Sixties

Mark Dow

Cento on Action and Desire

Oscar threw hard, precise passes that demanded to be converted.

Mark Dow

Cento on Negroes and Jews

Erin Wilson

from Break-Night Dawn

Daylily Distance

                         a boy I knew drove that two-lane road
                         there beyond Enfield was a strip club
                         that stretch, at night
                         he closed his eyes, he said
                         'I want to know what it feels like
                         to drive with my eyes closed'




to say I knew him that implies we ever spoke
I just saw him around


same with the boy who was stabbed,
we walked, her and me, high school,
when he was killed, we walked and cried
all night, perfect blue eyes and black hair
heroin dealer angel for teenage girls,
looked straight through us
our eyes, giggling, swollen

Erin Wilson

dying he said,
'love is
16 lanes high'

                         I don't know
                         age when
                         address of
                         distance between
                         page
                         words in

                         the same direction
                         which direction

                         my hand across his body bed
                         empty body bed

Erin Wilson

it has taken so long
                                                  the trouble is
                         it has taken so long


if I just live in the moment
I'll lose so much thinking

Erin Wilson

16 lanes high


                         'to interrogate'






that particular two-lane road
I would lie down and die in that ditch
gulley between road and green field each side
so steep, daylilies, when I step, climb down
almost hidden from the road
it is moist, a stream, runoff at the bottom

there are no ditches like that here

Erin Wilson

tried succeeded tried
twelve or eleven
day not dusk
only looking

would prefer

                                                  'I remember'
                                                  or

Erin Wilson

I will remember
                                                  ~ -
                                                  ~ -
                                                  ~ -
                         small                          orange head, slicked
                         back and integrating full
                         yellow body to underside
                                                                           tail
                         wings
top wings brown
ordinary brown





a small step into the hallway
small shoulder
in the room step closer
do I want to touch

Erin Wilson

She has Stayed Gone

outside a sidewalk in sun, winter
she came, seated, and newspaper on a table
she was
she closed in center, hand
socks, warmed, she'd quiet. small twigs, by the sink, company and unswept kitchen
silent then ask, direct into speech when rarely

this night only specific, only health
listen to her, opened, scarf, lift arms, eyelids, length
this, rejected continuous from silent
we to they, her to us to they

this solid, this silent known
the small golden room of end, we were
single imagined known
we were made

Chelsea Velaga

Standast, Baela (Resist, Repress) I

Chelsea Velaga

Standast, Baela (Resist, Repress) II

Chelsea Velaga

Standast, Baela (Resist, Repress) III

Aditya Bahl

Aditya Bahl

Aditya Bahl

Aditya Bahl

Aditya Bahl

Aditya Bahl

Aditya Bahl

Aditya Bahl

Aditya Bahl

Stephen Emmerson

from The Journal of Baal

Stephen Emmerson

from The Journal of Baal

Stephen Emmerson

from The Journal of Baal

Sally Deskins and Laura Madeline Wiseman

from Leaves of Absence: An Illustrated Guide to Common Garden Affections
(Forthcoming from Red Dashboard Press)

A Wrong Tree

Sally Deskins and Laura Madeline Wiseman

from Leaves of Absence: An Illustrated Guide to Common Garden Affections
(Forthcoming from Red Dashboard Press)

Months After

Sally Deskins

Dinasaur Dig

Sally Deskins

Upset with Diesel

Mark Young

Cause

Mark Young

Forgone Episode

Mark Young

The Island

Mark Young

The Manuscript

Mark Young

The River

Mark Young

Wallace Creek

Jim Leftwich

Jim Leftwich

Jim Leftwich

Jim Leftwich

Jim Leftwich

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