Alyssa Black

Sooth My State

One internal note but visceral
un-companionable
massacred
con-artist suave
disgruntled
plain-to-see
congenial
machismo
penetrate
my silence
hold the script
your letters pain me more
no sooth my state
Attack all vitals

***

Somewhat Suggestive

On the couch, with a book in her hand
fervently, with her hands, she grasps the hardcover binding—
her eyes, wet with desire, penetrate the words on the page
mind, like a phallus, overcome by sensation.
ideas, carnal beyond
what words by themselves should offer
pounding lust, deep within her
oh god, turn the page faster


***
***

Halvard Johnson

***

***

Skip Fox

“Why the need for all the protections?” (all these and more ...

I wonder what would it be like to be the guy about to get horribly

tortured then killed pain straight to the grave for no good reason,

maybe I'd tried to skip as they say but I'm innocence-on-a-stick

(almost) so I ask the man if he couldn't just let me go after all

things being nearly the same as I frantically try to think of ways I

might be of assistance to him but my world's on another planet (as

always) so I attempt to pull some lame existential shit out my ass

one last time but it doesn’t work he just laughs and says You gotta

be kiddin’ Where's your guts man? & for the last bit I get there fast

so fast I surprise myself Can't we just skip the torture part and get

to it? I wouldn’t’ve believed my own ears if it wasn't for the truth 

my mouth had been saying but he’s already thinking something

else as he turns leaving me to a silence shaking with anticipation

surrounded by goons muscle iron facing the inevitable fast ap-

proaching the past disappearing beneath the near term there is no

long term caul of ever-present absence blinding the little left

of living’s eyes yes I wonder what it would be like to be poised in

that exact moment alive to enormities never previously imagined.

***

Skunk Blue 

and Slippery Butt back slappin' ya smack on the flat of your face

with a fat fish, muscles back, pissin' up your caboose like a tranny

vaudeville act with grisly mugs, shark blue, a darkened revolver

sheen beneath their eyes, bagged like dead game, tutus sprouting

swollen clits the size of little league baseball bats, gnarly shafts

bloated with veins. (Their holes are monstrous and blind, their

minds. . . ? Imagine what a cliff of ice looks like to someone

encased in it for an Arctic ten-thousand-and-one nights. All the

characters out of some hideous children's book, the kind I

would write, where the village idiot never becomes the sage whose

wisdom far exceeds his cultural coordinates, but a merely a small

town drunk, incontinent, a whiny child molester. Invariably. No

remission, none, much less redemption. Nails driven thru reader’s

skull, dick and nutsack. Like Paul Bowles, only not so squeamish.

***

what is it, the future, to save for? when has it done

anything for us? thus our complaint lightens evening

into night where the sullen blackness of furies gather

as neon stutters thru a small seasick city, staccato, goes

sudden dark, as in an old film, wind slashing strips of

fence-line along the coast, crashing on cliffs to the vast

irregularities of surf, sea, and wind, nearly the self-

same rhythm shuttling through summer’s airy season

like the return of something lost, otherwise flashing

in & out of existence, a shimmer, that which we nearly

can’t see, especially since it may be directly before us,

certain, diaphanous in distance, native to the condition,

a starry crest wound with winds like words where

creatures rise from what it is we think we came to see.

***

Birthday Card for the New Millennium

your ass in the sling of the song

they found a cure but not for you

and the elements are hysterical with

laughter precisely at your expense, so

what do I care? surely not enough even

by twice the amount minus your minims,

or, . . . do we really need another year?

Angelou, step the fuck aside!  A child can write greeting-card circles around you with your dying

animal poetry and roadkill prose. Case in point, here's one for the new parent:

For the New Parent

You inconsiderate swine!

I can't imagine the presumptive

bloat that would be required to believe

that the world needed another you in any form

much less a living creature who might do as great a harm

to his or her social and psychological environs as you have

to yours, reducing the quotidian richness of possibility

branching from each moment to your petri dish of

naked motivations and we find ourselves

struggling to recalibrate to compensate

for the sudden shift of weight

towards man's crudest

state and it makes

more and more

sense to live

only with

animals.

***

***

Lynda Schor

***

***

Charles Taylor

To S and Her Shower Curtain

When I was young I was full of many harebrained ideas, one being that poets were too special and divine 

to clean shower curtains. Yet this lovely blond poet from East Texas even had a special cleaning solution 

specifically manufactured for the task of working on plastic shower curtains, promising not only to make 

them bright and shiny again, but to kill any and all fungus.

All this made me scoff silently to myself. The thing is, I was a lazy romantic. I took long soaking baths, 

and I was not acquainted with shower curtains. I couldn’t recall a single shower curtain from my 

childhood, its colors or patterns, if my mother did have shower curtains. 

The poet unhooked her shower curtain, dragged it outside, and spread it out on the front lawn. She lived 

alone and divorced in a lovely neighborhood on a bluff above the Colorado River in Austin. She sprayed the 

shower curtain with a garden hose, squirted on the cleaner, and began to scrub with a plastic bristle brush.

The poet had kindly allowed me to spend a night at her house because I was poor and could not 

afford a motel. I was in town to see the children of my own divorce. She had a very nice trim ass, I can tell 

you that, as I watched her do a wiggle dance, scrubbing hard and long, but did not offer assistance. I felt 

certain if I’d helped she would have told me I was doing it all wrong. She was working in tight circles and I 
would have made long swoops.

I couldn’t even tell her how nice her ass was, given the context, and because she was an East Texas 

southern belle right out of Gone With the Wind, and I lacked the dash and wealth, as well as the 

dashing mustache, of a Rhett Butler. There had been no sparks between us during my stay over.

These days I own a shower curtain and when showering I will often think of the poet. She was a 

fantastic writer who won grants and had a book published, but she gave up poetry and turned into a technical 

writer. I toss out old moldy shower curtains myself, but that day in Austin under the Live Oaks at her house 

south of the river, up on the bluffs in the spring sunshine, it was poetry divine all right, all magic. 

***

***

R. Clark Morrow

Lately — a special kind of lonely
that has nothing to do with absence —
is not the nausea of being alone

I will protest it naked with you
we can ink the moment on our trunks
and call it progress

They will say we have arrived at the future
when the future finally arrives
we will be too old to mark its significance

***
***

Lanny Quarles

Maskuclinical

Culture does not proceed
like a car with ethics
as its clean and efficient engine,
but more like the seed
of the Proboscidea, or
Devil's Claw, as pulled
like a sled by flightless
nude bat-things, their
tortured psyches branded
with one single thought,
which, though unvoiced,
like a Freudian drive, goes:

BY HOOK OR BY CROOK

Man is slovenly
in the nth degree
like a glittering
worm which sparks
in the funch of the
phen, drawing the
eye down to the
glittering stinger:

TAT TVAM ASI

***
***

Charles Taylor

On Magic

Whenever I spot a black cat, I say “Come here kitty. Come, come and if you come cross my path

seven times, I’ll give you three cans of tuna over three days. My trinity of reward . . .”

Every morning, before going to work, I get the ladder out of my garage, lean it against the wall,

and walk under it twelve times for each of the apostles.

I carry a small mirror in my front right pocket to defect back the evil eyes that get thrown my way 

during my commute.

When downtown at my business, I tell my sons to go into the tall buildings nearby with circulars 

advertising the store, but to distribute them only on the thirteen floor.

I sprinkle a green bottle of a Irish good luck juice before the main store entrance right before 

opening.

A small stem pointing up amongst the tea leaves in my green tea, at lunch, has never brought 

me, as far as I can tell, any great good luck, but I must admit I’ve never been bitten by a 

rattlesnake or a brown recluse spider.

Maybe I’m too entitled. Maybe I take for granted the small sands of good Magic that get in the 

teeth every day. The roof on my house or business--neither has collapsed. That might be good 

Magic.

It could be Magic doesn’t like our cliches. It craves the sceptic’s laughter and challenge.  I’ve 

found four leaf clovers after hours of searching in the Southern heat, but I still got beat up 

walking home from elementary school, a Yankee in North Carolina.

My cat runs her paws over her ears all the time to clean her fur. She does it every morning, and on

a small percentage of those mornings indeed rain has fallen. I’ve swept the feet of my daughters 

with the kitchen broom, but they remain unmarried.  Lucky girls!--so free of love’s griefs.

The bowling ball headed toward the gutter ignores the Magic of my hands waving to get it to 

curve back and at least mow down a couple of pins.

We need spells to calm the god of the volcano, the god of earthquake, the god of tornado, the 

god of hurricane, the god of the tsunami, the god of war, and the god of nuclear meltdown.

So many gods! Get busy Magicians. Invent new spells or rituals. Call me up and I’ll dance all 

night in ceremony. The issue’s not do they work. The issue’s we need to challenge Magic to come back, 

to do its thing, to give us solace and peace of mind.

Is it because of science that Magic grown shy or scarred and seems to have walked away? So 

what if lightning rods work better at chasing away bolts than incantations. The dyed green rabbit 

foot key chains of my childhood may have brought me good luck, but they were cruel and I’m 

glad they’re gone. Down with animal sacrifice! Magic has to change with the 

times.

Certainly Magic has enough self-esteem not to require our constant courtship to be part of 

the internet of our lives. My ancestor spirits are highly supportive. They don’t get angry if I forget at 

times to pray to them.

Cross your fingers. Knock on wood. Light a candle. Owl, Raven, write in the sky. Rent a billboard 

like churches do. Come to be our bedsides in dreams. Say something.

***

***

David Howard

How It Works

            for Milly Burrows

1

The human is a device that turns itself

first into ash, then into flowers.

The ash is a device that turns itself

first into flowers, then into honey.

The honey is God’s gift to the human.

2

Summer, nonchalant

burn on the girl’s shoulders.

Her tight mouth, forgetful:

What is a kiss? Something that does not take.

Not a wave, then? Yes, a wave

that pulls back.

***

***

Márton Koppány

***

***

rob mclennan

from Glossary of Musical Terms

The Key of L

Tarpaulin, wrapped. Mistaken. Learn to form your. Practice, drones. Finger, verbs to noun. 
A churchyard, vented. Writing desk. This wedding, summit. Full, a glass half.

Cracked, cached sky. Latching poems calm with heart-nails.

***
***

Martha Deed

Bubble Outside Washington

[O]ne of the reasons I love these bus tours, you know, you meet folks like this all across the country 
every single day they are doing incredible stuff. . . .  [S]ometimes I think in Washington you lose sight
of what exactly makes this country so great. It's not all the stuff that gets a lot of attention. It's that day
to day courage, kindness, empathy, that really makes a difference.

          − President Obama talking with Chris Cuomo, CNN, August 22, 2013

black bus
with tinted glass
traverses empty streets
to reach the vetted audience
guards frisked

***

Flyover

[O]ne of the reasons I love these bus tours, you know, you meet folks like this all across the country
every single day they are doing incredible stuff. . . .  [S]ometimes I think in Washington you lose sight
of what exactly makes this country so great. It's not all the stuff that gets a lot of attention. It's that day
to day courage, kindness, empathy, that really makes a difference.

          – President Obama talking with Chris Cuomo, CNN, August 22, 2013

Obama is here
to speak on education
at a gym
3 miles from here
where I last went
to see Tarheels
stomp on Bulls
I had fun that day
And the pundits
all say
how nice it is
a sitting President
here for the first time
since 1853 – 
Millard Fillmore
who didn't fly in for a visit
he was born here –
and no one
mentions
McKinley
who died here
of bad wound care
after he was shot
in 1901
will he fly in
over my yard
or will he
approach from the grave
of Flight 3407 in Clarence
Depends on which way
the wind blows
but just in case
the gulls and terns and hawks
and sparrows and finches
will be cleared from the skies –
feathered drones, the Hawks
especially
just in case
will he look out at Buffalo
from the sky – will he consider
the plight of children forced
to attend failed schools
the graduation rate
below 30%
the State stepping in
ordering the School Superintendent
to Albany
to make a plan
to save those kids
from a lifetime of failure
after she
has failed
them?
But No
for the second time in two months
the School Superintendent
has refused
to go
when asked
She was
“away from the District”
the first time
(when the graduation rates came in)
and this time
she says
she cannot make a meeting
because she wants to meet the President
and shake his hand
it's a special day
in her life
and she isn't certain
it will happen
(the handshake)
but she wants
to have this chance
the reckoning is on her clock
not theirs
a handshake
does not fix her schools
does not mend the lives
of 2200 children who
want to leave those
high schools
where fewer than a third
will graduate
or ever have a decent job
and the education talk at UB
will not make loans any easier to bear
and flying into Buffalo over
the grave of 3407
will that move the FAA
to institute more quickly
the new regulations
the 3407 family members
have won
and for that matter
will riding a bus
with tinted windows
past the green hills and fields
of New York State
shed light on fracking
which could be
about to happen here
I know the President loves basketball
and so I am happy for him
that he will give his speech on the hallowed
ground of college basketball
so soon after we achieved
Division 1 status
I think he will have a good time here
with his black bus
and empty streets
I think he will be spared blight
poor medical care
a bad education
Obama has big plans today
I hope
The School Superintendent
has big hopes today
Obama's plans are for the country
Hers are for herself
and My Plan is perhaps
the only one
with certain success
today for it is market day
in North Tonawanda
and I am going to buy
corn and other
harvest-ready fruits
and veggies
grown locally
and maybe I'll buy another
head of garlic from the farmer
who turned 100 on Saturday
and got a visit from the Mayor
on his birthday at the market
of course
I will watch the skies
for Air Force One
but I will not send email
or talk on the phone
about any plane I see
because of the NSA
I'll have fun today.

***
***

Alan Sondheim

the miller and the field

"It is impossible for me to say one thing which has not been
lived, one thing which is beyond the tips of my hair." (Henry
Miller) The field of the qin is before me and slightly lower
than my hands, my face. My face does nothing; my brain, which I
have seen, is puffed, creviced, inert. The strings are the field
of strings just as the body of the qin is the field of the body.
The harmonics are the divisions which each string carries as
potential; the fingering of either hand or any finger or thumb,
is a caress reining in alterity, making the strange familiar,
constructing signs which are momentarily audible; signs are, as
Barthes knew, discharges. The music crackles as what is there,
that is possibility, that is, bound and grappled to culture. But
culture is not there; the qin, drowning in culture, brings an
other into play, and the caress is a caress of nothing, just as
alterity is a sign already under dissolution. At the core of
this the qin has been present, as object and subject, for at
least twenty-five hundred years in evidence. The dance of
fingers around what would be transformed into the flute,
occurred much earlier, and unlike the strings of the qin, the
flute insists on its inertness; what moves is air intimately
revoked by breath, the musculature of a body which may or may
not have been human. I have handled stone tools, handled only
before, by something similar, this other body, thing, not quite
human, within sound that surely was heard among several of them.
I stay close to the bone, to the living; I write in the land of
the dead.

***
***

Márton Koppány

Homeland (Hungarian Vispo No. 8)

***

***

Rudolfo Carrillo

Sonnet Thirty-Six

August seventeen. A remarkably

Bright Day. The swamp cooler malfunctioned.

Noises came out of the ceiling and

They sounded like birds breaking against

metal. But really it was just the motor

burnt up and possessed by a thing

called friction. Ten days before that

our microwave oven stopped sending

signals to frozen meals, toward venus.

There are better ways of heating cold tortillas.

We have a flower powered backup

transmitter. With the windows open,

the doors made into portals to the future,

instruments of winter proceed across the table.

***

***