Bob Marcacci

                                                fasting

                                  catching up with Angela

                         you finally made it here and we went out together

           desert sun burned into us

                           the end of that month

                 walking across dirt clods          sand

                                         wastes

                    drivers stopped to ask if we needed help

                              Vito walked in the shade of a wooden wall

                                    we turned back

                       wasted by heat                sweat

                                                                 defeated memes

                               those first few days

                                    admiring mosques

                                                                                   back inside

                                                             watch the clock willing

                                            a gecko poised in the corner

                                               turned toward a number

                                          not there

10:10

lacking alcohol

                                            drink a tall glass

                                     Florida’s natural brand

                                    premium grower’s style

                                                 most pulp orange juice

                                                                              a break from planning

                                                    arguments in writing

                                                            now myself

                                                         writing poetry

    or some kind

                                                  of narrative

                                                of the unknown

                                                Islam autumn

                                                i don’t know where

                                                  i’m going

                                                    i look at numbers

                                           five minutes have elapsed

                                                look again at the clock

                                                 no change

                                                    empty glass on counter

                                                all lights on in an empty

                                                  apartment

      we fade

     we who

     read     :     hurried

  we page turn and to

       each we love

      we improve

our desert home

     we hope

    we roam closer

     we dote

                                                            don’t 

                                                23:45

                                    Arabic numerals in their natural

                                          order

                                                     sleep bends my head lower

                                    traffic hushes past the compound

    some great moment passed

          mark some coincidence

  in what dark fold

    some told of Al Khor

                                 mangroves

               manic

     we remain the roadside attraction

greater than we were

                                     words                  worms

       worried                look out

     across chain-link                   white brick

    expanse                sun turns scarlet

                      ruins

long straight highway

           wind tones

          around buildings

       presses against windows

      brings its desert salaam

                                  sand from Saudi

     its midnight demand and racket

       shakes screens in Riyadh

                                 almost screams

                     see

          curtains breathe

            disinterestedly

        and wind whines madly          man

                                        damned

         in moments

            nearly asleep

***

***

Matt Hill

Process

Q - In your stylistics at least, you have been compared with various writers such as Beckett and
Pynchon. Would this possibly represent an opinionated distortion of your work?

A – The assumption here is one of tenuous identification, one that I assume also involves
the particulars of some author’s life mixed in with those of the characters depicted upon the
created pages. This would be folly. Sheer folly.

Q – But aren’t the technical maneuvers you use, for instance in your book Pellucid Inferno, such
as the shifting points of view in the same paragraph, intended to come across as meaningfully
effective? I’m thinking here somewhat like the function of a heat sink in the process of thermal
death.

A – Well, that analogy would probably be a real stretch. Yet, one is sometimes forced to make
concessions towards what we call progress. Far be it from me to know the quiddity of these
matters.

Q – Your style is complicated, convoluted, some would say even opaque. Would this be a
residue of the surrealist influences you have alluded to in previous interviews?

A – Yes. It is all about working with fragments, the very increments of consciousness. To
juxtapose the quotidian alongside the ineluctable – yes, this would be the means to my end.

Q – In the New Yorker interview several years back, you indicated you thought writing is a
process which cannot necessarily be taught through classes and workshops. And yet here you
are today, teaching a graduate workshop. Is this mixed message a deliberate obfuscation, or is
it just off-the-shelf cognitive dissonance?

A – Both of these, and more. In the everyday sphere, one’s personal beliefs don’t necessarily
dovetail with the grim work of earning the daily bread and butter; one certainly must make
concessions in the garnering of food and shelter. And of course, the current feelings are ones
of ambivalence. So this topic might have to be left to the biographers. That is, if there will be
any.

Q – Some of your detractors, if we might indirectly refer to them, have judged that your stories
are merely mélange. In other words, more bling than bite.

A – We’re all born clueless. It’s a darn shame that some insist on remaining that way.

Q – What would be some of the triggers that initiate your writing process?

A – Oh, I suppose dumpster diving through the debris of porous memory. And the multitude
of surprises that surface when researching the implausible. Random snippets of overheard
conversations also factor in. The subculture obliquities encountered while I desultorily roam
the forsaken streets. The unexpected whatnot one needs to continuously sidestep daily. Etc.

Q – Do you share in this notion that artists and writers should convey feasible truths in their
work?

A – Excuse me, did you say feasible?

Q – In the sense of social responsibility.

A – [a long pause, followed by a gesture of shrugged helplessness involving the palms]

Q – Alright, what would it be that drives your use of the imagination in fiction? What gives you
the impetus to create these texts?

A – You mean, aside from some unbounded stupidity? Oh I reckon it has something to do with
catharsis. You know, like a mental bowel movement. Frankly, I don’t see much in the way of
impetus or having a “point” to this writing business. I mean, is the world really any better off
as it fills up with this stuff? I actually garner more satisfaction with helping out the neighbors
doing their monthly run to the dump. Or perhaps slapping a little paint on a wall.

Q – Your usage of hyperbole has been called ridiculous and juvenile. What’s really going on
here with this technique?

A – Well, aside from walking around nude in public, I can’t think of a more effective way of
turing people’s limited attentions. Which is no small task these days, what with the ubiquity
of all these digital devices and their attached distractions.

Q – Is there any pleasure in the writing process for you? Any satisfaction in what is created?

A – You know, I would rather clean the latrines of hell before I ever deliberately decided “to
become” a writer. For myself, and I speak in the singular only, it seems to be my fate to do
this, as opposed to other pursuits, many of which I have tried and spectacularly failed at. Any
personal say-so in the matter seems to have been overruled by unknown agencies. Most days,
this sitting in front of the blank pages, well, it just feels torturous, this making of texts and such.
But I suppose that’s why I’m condemned to this process, being the lifelong masochist that the
Catholic indoctrination so deeply ingrained in me.

Q – How do you know when a book is finished?

A – You don’t. Even with using all your instincts you don’t. When you have become completely
sick of working the damn thing over and over, it mysteriously just gets launched one day, and
there you are, crossing your fingers that it was all not in vain. Valery’s comment that a poem is
never finished, only abandoned, would also apply here.

Q – Literary influences – who and why?

A - Oh, all the big guys, with many unknowns and forgotten souls thrown in. Once I devoured
tons of literary stuff, but that was years ago. Now I’m down to reading almanacs and
dictionaries, which keeps me out of the bars at night.

Q – Your particular style, which features a cynical black humor, has been characterized as
rambunctious, vulnerable, volatile, vehement, and anything but subtle.

A – Sure, sure. Just throw it all into the blender and hit the Frappe button.

Q – And yet, there seems to be a vague evolution to your stylistics. Yes?

A – Maybe. Perhaps in the schizophrenic sense that underlies any effective satire. Perhaps also
in the sense that style can become a defensive mechanism against the ubiquitous stupidities of
the literal. I really don’t know … I’m just throwing stuff out here.

Q – Well, what about the God question. You allude in several of your stories, such as An
Impossible Life and The Patina of Neglect, to our existential status, our place in the cosmos, that
this is no accident. That there is some purpose-driven design behind all this quotidian mess.

A – I think it was Santayana who said something to the effect about our existence, that you
can either live in despair, or you can live drunk. Those are the only two choices. Having tried
both, I think the third option would be to proceed intrepidly, in stoic fashion, and keep smiling.
Of course, that presupposes having faith in the event horizon of an apriori consciousness.
More bluntly, yes, this mess is not just a random piece of cosmic excrement on the part of a
constipated deity. For my part, I do see the act of making books as a resolute praxis of defying
nothingness.

Q – These improbable situations you depict certainly are philosophically prone scenarios; ones
regarding the meaning of values, and the unusually fresh usage of language. But then the
dark humor kicks in, and is used to balance the weightiness of dilemmas faced by the various
characters.

A – Ultimately, after everything gets expressed, it finally comes down to just mustering a cogent
silence [shrugs again helplessly]. I think Beckett was mostly right on this one.

***

***

Stephen Ellis

Rondeau

Afraid of how
time is past, but
not gone, I

search to pass
even more of it,
trying to feel

as it goes,
full of its vibrations
in the present,

metaphysical
in tenor
and producing

some relief,
but making me
humble enough

that I know I will be
doing this
as I do it now

for as long as
I'll be able
to remember.

***

***

Vernon Frazer

After the First

the fire 

quenched, its membrane burst

internal 

wiring as penalty granite a lineage 

of long

cigars, the stench 

staining worse than 

a turmeric rumor

the whim of its liminal synergy

charged both ways at once

a binary extension grounded

in variance, manic against

its ties,

teeth clenched as dental metaphor

ride 

the outburst filling the first frame

cinematic verity not required

at the low-down hinge grate

action fainting permitted

when tassel caps allure

the restriction gate print

a plural 

to ply the energy from its rank 

epithet

before the cost of first mitosis

***

Deliberating the Endgame

potassium jury terrors regurgitate

somnolent incandescence to heat

denomination scandals demonized

politely as their svelte turned acrid 

while repeating sample massages 

in passages unlit no message left

to guide defectors in error or patent

shoes longing to wade the subject

disabled the water cresting revelation

a tentacle rite distending vision leak

diffused the segue to ruddered drift

reaching ecliptic parameters gestured

desperate claw repetitions making

lawful their surrogate luster melt

on wry pastries icons bent ironically

overgrown to the seed of wilting
where revising terror medleys blast 

mustard sharks with rude apparatus

the marmalade montage blinked

a cascade bringing fury to saloons

proudly recapitulating night terrors

before dead wagons turned portable

whiskey transport dividend clusters

brown as weathered tassel fugues

caught up in climactic lift incursion

marches past tailor threads shoed

to market forces place the course

evenly spread crude border entities

activate the rippling flashes burned

across wood and concrete and glass

to slice the longed-for cleft and mutter

incendiary comments on slow release

sought as a rift in diversionary tactics

once equally practiced on bland futons

old springs creaking near the landing

above their lowering urge to include

bathysphere art forms that interfere

with every clearance modem clang

steeping its mercurial transit clusters 

with dyspeptic shark appellant mix

whose rebound cluster no aficionado

could translate into the coral findings 

where tantrum clusters delete fixation 

loose hatcheries impel a nominal delay

slow breath encumbers clothing tone

teeth chatter closing hair ensembles

behind their grins’ disappearing luster

the relics gum near periodontal land

whose water left them cresting tide

in toned motes delivered as modes

assigned to scrubbing their passion-

pitched aspersions laced with cheese

when no admonition ruptured faster

than either heat or light can breathe

wrong personification charts gone nodal 

as the surgical extremities of inventory 

tonsil thrillers turned prehensile longing 

to official grip wagging tailored dogs

before the sniffing poltroon decree

seals the seldom seen gripped between

the levered hands gone rounded leather

ceiling fans seek the fevered progeny 

that ground-seeking news will storm  

past the varicose rims of the horning

cartilage poppers mowing slow retreat

lodes refining their own scalar pattern 

the repetition stilled one turning past 

the agate fold enumerated at the offset

bleeding putts through lowered stitches

while marginal estuary blockers lack

the seminal impediments sequestered

in the moving tint of generation vipers

writhing against the horizontal sunset

to beckon the resounding messages

from the ancient veterans resembling

the wary farces of their lost protocols

crackling brittle as the kindle would

rise while darkening the interior view

encases required renovations that vary

the call to release their shaken umber 

from the padding charts that vessel

perturbed underlining at vesicle stops

denied the innovative transport view

snaking eyes dart across the tabular

vein stricken clumsily implied grace

as a well-worn tunic bled naugahyde

lard over the noon shedding caskets

to summer bulged in waiver saloons

where baskets lumber their shreds

under the faintly lasting motor itch

***

***

Md Khan

The Bedouin 

Wanderer, search but a moment longer,
what you hope to find is scattered throughout
the dunes of sand you must traverse
and by the gulf of crystalline blue water
where you will pitch your tents.

Pick up, if you must a relic of times
gone past, like hitchhiking memories through
pitiless terrain and invisible borders stationed
with soldiers well aware of bartering your
passage for a bottle of whiskey or a silk tie.

Abandon your ancestral modes of commute,
they can’t help you now for the world has grown
bigger, the outlines of lands erased and expanded,
whiteness growing, filling up maps on pages
meant for your father's poetry.

Uprooted, you are privileged because
a life that is troubled is a life meant for learning,
the hopes of your father, comfort only brings
bitterness, completeness bears no interest,
groundedness, nothing but fatigue.

Carry your homeland in your soul
for a carry-on bag can’t contain it, it can’t
weather a shower of bullets by your enemies,
your Being must conceal it, not to be unpacked
on your journey to homelessness.

***
***

Joel Chace

Pop-up 22

******

Mike Sikkema

from Three Cheers for the Women Who Built the Moon

1.

the autobiography of Witch Bullet was a six foot two haiku box car every other coal 
car no passengers tall white letters with streamy tails and cartoon eyes you could 
never catch all of before the station bulls ran you off but also tree top carved for 
migratory types and low flying aircraft if not carved then shaped in the branches 
with impossible wind or written in waves of bees waves of future primates of all the 
ocean unknowns of glow-bugs you don’t notice until they fly out of your mouth into 
the dark room and arrange rearrange “Witch Bullet Will Eat Your Face”

2.

Easiest to explain as parts of the brain living all over book shelf oak moraine parts of 
the brain in each knee and grasshopper brain parts in lake wave formation in yellow 
and red parts of the brain in a pizza box matching broken chairs are brain parts 
parts of the brain in a gear box rusting out in a bucket fucked freshly love faces are 
parts of the brain similar cinema every breast ever cupped uncapped parts of the 
brain in cryptids and hunters testicles highway cones precious metals left hooks 
fish mercury suicide doors terror birds flapper haircuts barber poles in cartoons all 
brain brain brain brain brain brain brain brain brain brain brain brain brain brain
phantom limb brain phantom phantom brain mirror box brain net of light brain 
parts of the brain are ears and eyes potatoes and a garden mole in moonlight an 
overdose brain a brown field brain an oil slick brain parts of the brain half life 
mountain top removal brain asteroid brain and moon parts of the brain in home 
room and celebrity upskirt parts of the brain hand held devices brain and brain

***
***

Peter Ganick

Later

improcessual dint of creation

there that infundibulum voorsicht

tellingly protean

connectst connecting connectors

trooper incroyable 

the oval resistor meandering 

sleight of hand

retribute

veeringly 

comprehensively threaded mounts

volcanic endoue hierarchal notice

the same place from whichever ink

started.

cajoling vanishing point from dimensionless

abduction 

wherein a calyx voices demands

preen nor flaunt.

***

Endlessly

where commuting lastlingly presumed

the affirmation’s affirmative meanders

which horse connote resilience

predilection of morale unclouded.

degenerate barter fades

the candy shoes cake selves

denial untries enough spotless

wideness mirrored

so in meme a phoneme or which

weeps choice blinded fro

the aspect in remorse 

gallery coefficient natal

totem firecast neither wading sleight

preside mannerism thorough plans

wield mensonge there as further

notion seeming raffle coerces.

plankton to hawking whole syrinx

hedonist theatre smitten neither

blanket nor

permute seizes gravid 

enough screaming

collides manifest to behave

insequent those reminding slack the furnace

there procedural ingredient aslan

those replicate mindstyles these

from which starting

snowfall noestra opaque milling.

***

***

Jane Joritz-Nakagawa

                        from “wild black lake” 

my heart is tired and goes to sleep
my eyes were pious
or they were pies
ending in sighs in a skin of water

face of the earth 
all alone in heaven
the duplex never debonair
in rooms we exchange air for air

[i wondered what
it would be like
to sink into that wide black ocean
and never emerge]

stuck in a wall of song
regimes rush to fill the emptiness
the place i left
cascading intimate theory

lopsided applause
an example of bone
flowers controlled by blunt formulae
ending in effigy

ebbed from me
a naked screen
that touches me briefly
inaudibly

distances between artifice and
real objects serve as 
obstacles above glittering forests
in faraway debris

i become stone
enclosed by narration
hoping to melt
stem by stem

vehement ceremonies
for smiling gang members
colic latchkey
smeared on toast

concrete seepage
on the brink of artificiality
buried confessions
of dusty regimes

an excerpt cluster
carp motionless in a pond
torn red paper lanterns
scorched flowerbeds

almighty knees
in stately industry
collar of wind blows
a swallowed patch

figures leaning out windows
heels moving on a staircase
stiff floorboards
doubt waiting to be born

hot summer afternoon
exits closed
sudden belief in erasure
in a vast room of wilderness

hardened shoreline
a chimney of hula
volcanic discipline
guru gropes

dewy childhood
of slanted laughter
doomed to compose a moldy elegy
for muddy clouds

grating shipwreck in metallic silence
brushes my dry abdomen
a rice cake blockade
staggers cells of summer kites

tornado of dialogue
all failure begins to flower
false stony wandering
on a botched path

near a dismal fence
vanishing voices greet you
your body momentarily warm
my voice diagonal

formal grapheme
stalks clothesline pick up
a suffix of kidnap
shawls gallop

ivory delta
bucolic wave
a separate developmental line
in bareback fallout

vicarious geography
unending carnivore
sickening clouds
see you in court

squirrel on wire
rocks deep within
unhealing gesture
lost brick

a cancelled self
shady façade of fences
transparent street
dries up

a low birth
the rock’s experience of me
stars in my brain
along a greying bridge

my skin tears
butterflies of today
something is wrong
a waltz for the blind

perched on a frame
a muddled face
plaza at midnight
blinking away

spoonful of regret
shadow chatters loudly
birds become flowers
from far away

though warm it snows
on the back of a painting
my blouse unbuttoned
by a strong wind

the wind outside the mind
post mortem
angle of endless teeth
resurrect the quivering sun

protected by the forest
doll trapped in the house
my arm twisted
things to do

smoothing of space
millions of morals
womb for words
see enclosed brochure

perverse shopping
soldiers came home
what to do
exit wound

things not to do
corpse like
raybans and corncob pipe
endlessly old

the lapse in my eyes
in front of the bodega
catastrophic sandbanks
rest in peace

picture a girl
standing in rain
arrested by the mob
banal illusions

celebrity against gravity
function of language
internal hysteric
microscopic adventure

weird black lake
territorial mimesis
exterior milieu
dialectic protection

cellular syntax
slow labor of bodies
musty rupture
in analogous time

enunciation of voidedness
perpetual code
abutment aggregate
polyphonic elastic

interlink asignifying
motion of noise
presides over the world
quilted and axiomatic

elegant bird
under automobile tires
replying eagerly
a sun sinks

ambushed breasts
in wild silence
wintry carnival
of social systems

silhouette in a window
the night overtakes
waiting for a sign
becomes increasingly still

***
***