Ruth Lepson

of all the books
that came in the mail
the one I wanted to read most

was yours I know you
pretty well now and that
helps too

I’ll bet you 10 bucks I said
he said ok I bet it’s
a hill we kept driving

toward it between the bare trees
it was huge navy blue with lines of
pink ink and at the top looked

craggy like hills but

it was one cloud
covering the bottom of the sky

you could think of it as
beautiful but you could
imagine the end of the world

as some do in these long thin
days as
the century gets started shakily

I was too hard on them
and not hard enough
I should have distanced myself

but the fury twirled us
around in twisters fits
it’s not a question of whether they

could help it or not it’s

what pertained

yvonne told nancy
when you’re in a wheelchair no one
talks to you

when I left the museum
everything was a painting
one painting
hundreds of tiny paintings
the guard rail on the highway reflecting
the towers of pollution the tiny hands

an awareness that we’re all here
like fish minions
like scholars fleabag hotels

it’s lifted from the landscape
once I noticed it everywhere—in the backs

of falling down barns in the diners of
small towns in the weeds in back of the
project in the christmas lights

it’s gone it was
melancholy
it disappeared dried up

is an answer in
something felt
the moon’s as small as a necco wafer

hart crane’s father
invented life savers

to keep things
to yourself

I think you were wrong

a butterfly eaten by a dragon
a dinosaur under the covers
fluky —I imagined miro

saying come out & play then thought
of calder
who then appeared in the crossword

whiff of what’s unresolved
think of arp since he
photographs inside a brain

his poems mention sitting
in the pre-dawn which
destabilized me

it seems he
has no feeling while
sitting and I admired

him all those years
now I

sit in the pre-dawn light
ready to see it without flight
once we went riding through the woods

on his harley there were no paths we
stopped he gave me a joint my first
time a cop heard us pulled up to

the woods’ edge & started walking in give
me the joint, he said and he ate it this
was

a homophone of
myself then

I want to get it
down why
I walked in a field of blue grass

while the horses were waking

the world is substantial lately
with ribbons of
gratification

how they reappear disguised as
others we knew others the seemingly
same

right as rain
I awoke from an ancient dream

nothing to do
but work and sit
through it

***
***

Luc Fierens

***

***

Vernon Frazer

Their Way

sea clef

egrets in hot pursuit

the pilloried moans beget a slow wind

*

crowd murmurs surround

PISO MOJADO in triplicate birth

seeds no wandering melon 

to patch it or reply

the medley of desert songs

pangs of wishful sinking

*

a bounding pre-sense

grounds melodic transfer 

regrets too few to many

its way the longing

bereft of remaining heat 

chills the breezy stockade faces 

*

wet floor mirth dreams

filled the hanging eyes

implicated in the rumor

wired dawnings 

darken solarium dreams

white wings

too few chased to many regrets

***

Weighting Light

  

gossamer flight incumbents

lighten their mural panacea fling

before the sunset trail darkens

noon apparitions feeding time

its survival capsules bare nutrients

for the caustic daring the shadow

an eclipse worthy of its own delay

*

reptilian forecast dreams 

braille narratives untongued 

or touched 

sunlight clings tightly to a shadow

apparition themes fail sharp white

stinging the blood surface breeze

a spectrum slowly moves array home

*

weight returns an encumbrance

to the tightened cling of rail fabric

overboard terrors no dry-dock

the sting of sight’s curling smell 

retracted ethereal commentaries

sidebars glimmer shifting skin

to favor tongues of the nightly bound

***

Wintering Discontent

neon diphthong plasma templar

formal cats below the surfeit

feral entrails notwithstanding

lissome girder reflux passage 

rendered sterile output settlers 

reprimand enabling dilettantes 

to discover fuselage counters 

at subnormal rumination levels 

implosion bricks at the surface 

engine declensions lost track 

searching for precision nouns

verbing the action thrillers past 

a nonchalant detection wiper 

patterning the nattering chorus

carpal subtonal diffusion clings

to brooding ties as a bar strategy 

blinking cocktails moon decay 

flattens prospectors sorting pyrite

left to gravel pans a gavel’s heft

normal though proclaiming clarity 

doldrums shelled beyond horizon 

the plural intentions of steamboat 

philosophies delay the motorcade’s 

long panegyric wrenching modality 

conflicts nodal aperture wagons 

moving all the alabaster patrons 

past their due time spent scuttling 

prey to python intermission dens 

pitted against new modular scales

while forking tongues greet scams

the travel hefts the menu in delay 

to fronton circuits lobed enough 

to mind the stored matter’s energy 

from one refreshed cliche another

renewal less deadened with green 

clatter horns envy yowling breakage 

bumps grumbling through the night

a horror to scents around leaflets

burgeoning scaffold patterns at sea

calypso veritas windings portrayed

throughout the garbanzo vernacular

no global warning of the slither word

coming through the coping portal

adamantine strictures running slope

embargoes where the weary hatchet 

fled the cargo fleet stumbling numbly

cultivates ellipsis gardens for frosting

ardent legends seek urban homes

to hold neatly-fashioned splashes

the core warren where tables multiply 

heliocentric renditions of deficit dinners 

octagonal root suppliers ratify hutches

floating packets wine gap wrapping

concealed hunches from the vesicle 

parting the wall crunches to bevel

crossed haunches launching a stir

among the stenches of jostled fabric

stirring residual declamation scars

dominion-ready apertures disregard

cuspidor removal tantrums growing

sapient ventilation rockers unpacked

belongings under water removal hoses

racked for any fuselage interpretation

mustered under piquant uplift shears

refractory lighting no custard matter

flustered right where the eminent pall

cast off thousands formerly regarded

as dispensation for adders puffing 

moccasin tablets to spoon addicts

dripping leather-veined catacombs

brachiating a  fractured melody loom

spinning cartilage mimicry casings

wherever stolen luminaries hide gold

***

***

Jasper Brinton

power

Memory test negotiated step

fifty odd electric motors

reverse earth-light /-birth genes

seek revision the newly woken

coddle the notion night-star

beacons for our easy private

polarized body-feel  charge

so the flick of parallel powers

dies sensibly of super-manship

in an /-room for marvel-busting

payed-through switch signals

—the human anode pirouettes

turbaned and by turn forces

big-baby-pressures spin long

innocent-at-work play-phases

paramount sun-washed /-songs

the upstart mob sparked frigid

turbine sings howls farinaceous

billows of burst axial force-light

photon beading volt-time-glare

sad that few glow-hearted-pals

cavort gamble the electron risk

game circuit dither /-counter-

offer mystery without shocks

***

***

Joel Chace

***

***

Felino A. Soriano

wandering of this modern elation

                                                for Heller Levinson|Linda Lynch

                                      (and with gratitude in the scent of rhythm)

satire, serial                 mundane artery whole fashion

circumstance giddy     motional obstruction hand the hand-whole

handsome method to  impose structural finesse

(you’ve hand against face?)

denial certainty language this bitter evolution-ponder

designating

                        structural remorse (emotions discard the corporeal connection, valid)

                        improvisations

           

                        vocal fractions dismember accolade of privy dialectic

certain freelance thought emerges whole within cultural glue-eye                 masticated

unknown this proprietary (cliché) embrace of sedentary (they’ve  unknown _________)

poise the pause of movement absurd though radiant shame exposes

silicone bend of rhythm’s boycott (mainstream_maddened_ocular_denial)

*** 

Away!

did/does the verbal kiss offend, plural?

                        the token give exchanging desolation’s sound barrage

undertaking weighted devaluation, meretriciousness

hover this animated version                            love-love                     laugh-aloud

modern imperative of

                                                            sustained articulation—

***

Aurora

language reevaluating sureness

static watching the persona portends, ________ (inexact)

chaos upon crossing senile devotion

during

destructive notions                  cursive as resting hand’s naturalized arch whose

                        silver reflectional manifest contains

temporal warmth within a darkened corner of infatuated hearsay

***

***

Jan Clausen

Initiation

The descent beckons / as the ascent beckoned.
                 —William Carlos Williams

I.

I fail not to imagine
armed robbery in the garden.

To love the world our roads made:
what’s involved?

Sumptuous witch hazel’s starry sponges.
Kreyol voices spangling the snow.

A torridness where Gertrude promenades
warbling “wife, wife”….

& girls come at me
throwing fast punches

tough sisters
of memory

palming
the vulval scrollwork

as in:
eros

deciduous.

II.

We fail
not to imagine

how the vicious
is various.

Photographs depict
stress positions.

Some sort of Tupperware party
with injections of Krazy Glue.

“A fire-breathing she-monster in Greek mythology
having a lion’s head, a goat’s body, and a serpent’s tail”

Rat laughter,
mouse histrionics

enliven the rungs
of wronging.

Go tell it on the platform
Brooklyn-bound

where Fela Kuti
jostles Sophocles:

Wake up, Mami—
we live in a wicked country.

***
***

Laura Young

Structure VI

***

***

Bob BrueckL

The honeybee's kneecap

Yr inert siccative gjetost's unsigned rabbet

oeillades my gentilitial schistose uvavu,

louche tropes' guiche, sticktights' hokum

lardoons

The vacuity of a smeary smudge, wiggy grok,

snib wonk, my meme mime unctuousness

dabbing quibbles' pyloric och-aye & extispicy

entrails.

I abjure afterpants' yaffingale, frication

scraffle, innerved gimcracks, baffy kibe,

coontie witloof, oblite epizoochory, umeboshi

spoontoons

Squelch the rictal expectorant of my

concinnity slurred over yr glume, yr

beheaded fecket, yr pistillode, the greasy feel

of yr ogle

***

***

Rudolfo Carrillo

Sonnet for Amalthea

This ain’t a story built from good wood,

he said, while assembling imaginary

transdimensional super materials

into a fluid as heavy as Jupiter’s third

moon. Besides, the others might

gather together an army of squirrels

or squares. Both are considered good eating,

you know. There are alternatives to dusk

and did I tell you — he continued

in a voice reminiscent of the translucent

utterance ascribed to Zeppo when

confronted by the complexity of it

all — the way ashes cling to water is

just another word for the sky.

***

***