Mark Prudowsky

Not the Face of Diogenes

Last evening, three threads

made one another's acquaintance:

the welder more attracted to iron

than high carbon steel;

the horse whisperer terrified of snakes;

the young alcoholic who for the first four nights

with the woman who’d become his wife, only cuddled—

I have no notion of how to fuck sober.

She showed him.

Yeah, last night, the alcoholic, still married

and ten years later, still welding,

and his host talked about many things,

even horse trainers and then the no longer

drunk one asked his host:

Do you believe in reincarnation?

Maybe the host's eyes and mouth

formed something like contempt for the briefest of moments,

a reflex the host couldn't control,

but the one who no longer drinks

followed with

Do you believe in ANYthing at ALL?

The tone and the look of the one no longer drinking

jerked the host by the scruff of the neck

straight up in his chair,

from where he mumbled something like

sure, then, yeah, we come back as

an atom of iron;

a billionth part of a magnetic field,

attracting, like the ass of a horse

or the ass of its trainer attracts flies;

like you

and the woman who taught you how to love sober.

Nonsensical sure, if you're sober, but after two

shared bowls, and the host's several whiskeys—

a kind of drugged and drunk sense.

And what comes to the host's mind

twelve hours later,

under a heavy fog which the sun will burn off,

is not judgment itself, but how soberly and carefully

one looks at its face

and beneath, to the sinew and muscle that mold it. 

***

***

Ric Carfagna

from Symphony No. 4 (the spatial fate of muted zeros)

1

It is a field of crows 

it is dawn 

as emptiness 

is receding

as the facile touch 

is entering 

the restless marrow’s 

ebbing sea

to contemplate 

the asphalt precipice 

bending through 

the doorway of mortal hours 

as sun behind clouds 

avoids observation 

as the grey ecliptic’s 

taper speaks of cyclicality 

as the light enters 

the eyes of lesser incarnations

5

And it is now 

a room of five walls 

a view from a window 

having been determined 

a radius of sun 

having fallen though 

the emerald lace alcove 

it is here 

an arachnid crawls 

like viscous ash on silken eyelids 

it is here 

a weathered face dissolves 

as hollow wind through granite pines

it is here 

synchronicities are liquid shadows 

weighting the day’s rigid spire of light 

it is here 

the keepers of the garden 

inter the inarticulate orchid breath

it is here 

the incense of firefly wings 

bleed into the silent stone glandular forest 

it is here 

a wolf of amber cinders 

howls in the cavernous night’s amniotic sleep

16

The complexity of the ocean 

of shadows seen 

in winter doorways 

of the diminishing halo

of slate rooftop glare 

and to pass into this 

unframed foreground 

converging spires 

hollow as cloister heat 

down tiled corridors 

yet here the thought is

of consciousness 

consciousness inhabiting 

the atom’s shrouded void 

consciousness of fluid breath 

flowing through engorged seas 

consciousness of streaming light 

entangled in the massless neutrino’s girth

23

The clenched fist 

opening to the moon’s ascent 

opening the runic claw of celestial isolation 

here the city lies 

sleeping under the sulfuric cumulus rains 

here there is no thought to starlight 

lost in the talus pyres’ endemic permeation 

here there is no thought to see 

the tethered cremains of bodily deracination 

here there is no door called night

blown closed by a flailing wind’s transcendent ire 

here there is no rusted hinge ethereal portal 

to bring forth a black lattice primordial dawn 

here there no thought to enter

the castellated gardens of lace and smoke 

here there no penitential silk tongues 

chanting the crystalline psalms of light 

here there is no hawthorn blooming 

covering the muddy graves of humanity’s lament

46

Place names in fog 

or what is elsewhere 

the shore of a muted sea 

as the image collapses 

the mind’s eye 

the waning moon’s phase 

or the subterfuge of winter vertigo 

here a window’s frozen pane

outside the perimeter of light 

the myopic eye of heresy 

a north wall’s shadow cast 

inside a room

the ghosted minotaur breath 

the illegible voices’ unspoken veracity 

and a clotted labyrinth’s fortnight dream 

now the dull thud 

of reality’s cudgel 

the cold iron hands 

fusing the rusted flailing limbs 

the spatial void between 

a corridor of recessed doors 

or light unseen    entering 

the winding stairway’s chamber well

47

Above a tree line 

a plume of smoke

leading to night 

an intimate wound 

opening on broken flesh 

the continuity of death is near 

in a garden 

the isolation of a marble portico 

crimson rain 

dripping from a starling’s wing 

a gutted house of stained glass 

a raven on a monastery spire 

a dense sun filtering through 

an ailing palsied overcast 

the continuity of death is near 

the bones have been interred 

the mountains drowned in the sea 

the candle’s holistic pyre 

the bleating night wind’s scour 

the atomized crow of winter’s scar

49

Thought divines 

the electron’s path 

as if 

upon an azure sphere 

a wind diminishes 

through trees 

as if 

a flight of crows 

penetrates 

the eyes 

eclipsed by sleep 

as if 

the clinging viral cell 

leaves 

a progeny within 

the nascent flesh 

as if 

the fluidity of breath 

is dust 

passing through

the static fabric of myth

53

As a new world is 

resurrecting 

the ashes of one 

as dust is flesh 

returning to the womb 

as the nebula is

the distillate form 

of perspectives abandoned 

as the blind sparrow 

sings in the stone wall’s hollow 

as the blood of night is 

the sleep of eternity 

flowing in the veins

***

***

Jasper Brinton

critterspace

Its the visual 

connection that’s purely granular

light flash over-rich cream

pulsing buttons to make clouds squirm

roasting the vague idle into shimmer balls

puffs of fail for instance.

There comes a time afterwords 

I drab and cry landlapping the animal touch

its so hard beneath the shadow handle

image of him as broken wood

this wish for an owlet catch

the however luck of his flight 

waiting fronting the houseblank

of a white wild skeleton

or slow view in death practice

***

dropout

equipoise for the human quark not grandstand snow

they already deliver the beach scene pony and youth

pieces float sleet into iris negatively whole

rust colored pebbles swirl quickstart fathoms 

blunge cornerstone knock-em-up froth

the day the galaxy beds the strand I succumb

I believe essence of wind wrenches her heart

burns the laughter the top book nourishes

so goodbye the lusted —how long the bedding

***

***

Laura Young

Dark Sea L


***
***

Jan Clausen

Tight Like That

I’ll have a coffee, black, and hold the music.

Word-origami’s mine. I’ll fold the music.

These painted Virgins take glad tidings well.

(Did Mary blanch when God foretold the music?)

If Bashō means banana, I’ll be Bluggoe.

Vernacular: how manifold the music.

Park geese are gassed to keep jet engines thrusting.

One gets home safe, however cold the music.

Our cooking class will cover all the basics.

To make a sauce of song, first scald the music.

What’s free? Who’s free? Am I? Forsooth, are you?

No pardon—but the Board paroled the music.

There’s gas in the tank, oil in the Gulf—do tell:

would ethanol have better fueled the music?

“I must have that [man] [woman] [wombat] [garter snake]”—

Weak lyrics, but time hasn’t cooled the music.

The horns got plastered, groupies went on strike.

The beat blew town and never told the music.

If there’s a future, how will it explain

a world where money and its men controlled the music?

They partied, fucked the earth, shot up the heavens,

and all the while a tocsin tolled the music.

Flaw is not Fall. Old Adam’s not our dad.

Our loopy doom just means we’ve failed the music.

Old spine, old thoughts. The weather isn’t right.

Remember how our youth bejeweled the music?

When Louis blows “St. James” or “West End Blues,”

his now’s our now, so ever-gold the music.

Pour some more time on it, fertile wound.

Light keystrokes, Jan—but see you bold the music.

***

Methane Chimneys

My house is clean.

My lie is long.

My shrift is short.

My mortgage rate is fixed.

My fix is in.

My shift is torn.

My hair is crimped.

My gun is hot.

My dearth is wired.

My pimp is trumped.

My glut is crisp.

My cusp is glum.

My name is Jack.

My meat is tough.

My love is uncut.

My money is said to have feelings.

My mousse is cinched.

My noose is rich.

My dad is dead.

My mom is laid oft.

My war is torn.

My ilk is fucked.

My affect is illiquid.

My phantasm is photoshopped.

My lute is swaddled.

My tune is taxed.

My person is plump.

My hell is luck.

My girl is goth.

My god is stuck.

My wrath is outré

My warp is worse than my woof.

My word is my bomb.

My fright is posh.

My sperm is saved.

My vote is drunk.

My hope is rope-a-dope.

My clit is kitsch.

My rule is ruse.

My race is nuts.

My pussy is shaved.

My wig is ablaze.

My havoc is arbitraged.

My tender is poppycock.

My crib is crap.

My veil is rent.

My rent is late.

My glitch is fraught.

My headsman is vapid.

My shit is in hock.

My name is Ozymandias, or Jane.

My firmament is wack.

My goose is screwed.

My doom is cribbed.

My cupboard is fear, and feral.

My pill bottle is still tamper-proof.

My myth is draped.

My eye is plucked.

My moon is louche.

My brute is blue.

My rest is rust.

My wreck is porn.

My worm is wry.

My throne is bone.

My aye is trashed.

My throat is stone.

My nosh is ash.

My I is you.

  

***

Veiled Spill # 11

  

"How can one see all the ants on the planet

when one is wearing the blinders of narrative?"

                   --Janet Malcolm

1. Months without ants.

Then--ants!

2. The great burdock leaves

in the many days' rain

3. The artificial trickle

of my neighbor's water feature

4. You mow the grass, New England, so neatly between graves

but let the headstones lean

5. Larvatus prodeo: Nice work if you can get it.

("I advance, pointing to my mask")

6. I would like

lifting now

7. But I withdraw,

pointing to my corset

8. Or retreat into form: the thing that is experienced by the novice

as a sacrifice of possibilities

9. I'm wearing the mask of a man

and a veil to boot

10. The bearer of ambition,

I flicker in the shade

11. Went out on a limb ("America") with people
who think it's normal to be a family

12. Where sea lions loll, amusingly hauled out

on navigation aids

13. Where silky sisters draw their shining houses

around their shoulders, shawl-like

14. Remember whalebone stays?

Pantyhose?

15. COLOQUE TODOS LOS ABRIGOS, CHAQUETAS, Y BLAZERS

EN LOS CONTENEDORES TSA

16. "Another opt out, gimme

a female assist--"

17. Think not that I am come

to send peace on earth:

18.  Here I am,

getting patted down again

19. I'd found a way to be a woman,

wound in language like graveclothes

20. I came not to send

peace, but a sword

21. Remember pigeon guillemots? Their rosy extremities

and madcap mating habits?

22. I teach decomposition

and flicker over here

23. I would like

I would not like

24. Redshift of

galloping extinctions

25. Mortality

squared

26. Everyone looks

familiar and strange

27. How can one bear

the blinders of narrative

28. When what is veined

is spilling everywhere?

***
***

Amy King

Every Era Builds Character 

When Ramiro Clemente sold his photo doctored

for my first book to me on the streets of Barcelona,

I learned the way to say ‘Barthelona’ with a lisp

and embrace a closer view of what it means to be

completed by the brick walkways off the golden path,

not only by my own American tight-knit security

club of what-goes-on-here-is-designed-with-me-in-mind.

Even the skulls in the archways were not made of light.

What surfaced when Ramiro sold the photo down

river to me, the swelling American taken in

by Gaudi buildings on every corner and gypsies

running at crossroads, splitting into threes with stolen wallets

plus my friend’s passport?  I’ll tell you what surfaces

fell apart when I dipped into Les Quatre Gats

and discovered Picasso would never cross

the threshold of this kinked-up version of why

tourists pay too much to drink here.  Absinthe of the weaker

green and mugs with black cats in gold overlay

populate the view, sculls and white caps of ashy chalk,

to be abandoned in a word, forever, as one

beginning to make sense.  In modern day cities like Barcelona

women still steal your money while men do it too

with the underhanded charm of decades past.  Even the jewels

are made of dusted-off sass, polished at the heels

of fierce flamenco dancers we paid pesetas to dance with.

I stayed in the Gothic Quarter neighboring the Jewish Quarter

when I walked small alleys and avenues wider than what

today’s Paris has on offer.  But before I took the train in,

full of vomit and beer from tin cans, up from Seville

after Malaga, I saw the still-ancient places where women

with gilded yellow teeth are as old and as populous

as the olive trees in fields cracking with limbs the horizon

between everywhere and here.  They reported through

crafted smiles that every era builds character and no one

was ever less informed than the previous or next.  That I

would do best to learn this trick, the back and forth of clocks

means as little now as how much it takes to see a Gaudi

cathedral, which is no cathedral at all, but a basilica built

from a design of the man’s, not by him, one hundred

years after the architect’s expiration.  That we think

at all is a small miracle to be experienced in any large city,

including one full of gypsies and mammals and chickens

for sale on unraveling sidewalks.  That visit I danced

with women in fiery skirts from Sweden and Spaniards

from hillsides I likely would never visit.   I rode

in a burrow-drawn cart around a body

of water pushing at the city, one with a death date

I’ll never swim in, unless I drown soon, and struck

matchsticks in restaurants that served thin fleshly strips

of wild boar and sangria beside salted shrimp tapas.

The world opened its maw wide to Barcelona, and I swear

if I had not left to breathe in the entrails of Paris, I would

have met the next Picasso wandering in Malaga or Cordoba

and taken him back to a Barcelona villa, where we would

squat and grow food on the rooftops and paint the woman

from a photo that would eventually turn into the poet’s

next book cover, already in half-borrowed progress.

***

***