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Word For/ Word is seeking poetry, prose, poetics, criticism, reviews, and visuals for upcoming issues. We read submissions year-round, but issue #33 is scheduled for July 2019. Please direct queries and submissions to:

Word For/ Word
c/o Jonathan Minton
546 Center Avenue
Weston, WV 26452

Submissions should be a reasonable length (i.e., 3 to 6 poems, or prose between 50 and 2000 words) and include a biographical note and publication history (or at least a friendly introduction), plus an SASE with appropriate postage for a reply. A brief statement regarding the process, praxis or parole of the submitted work is encouraged, but not required. Please allow one to three months for a response. We will consider simultaneous submissions, but please let us know if any portion of it is accepted elsewhere. We do not consider previously published work.

Email queries and submissions may be sent to: editors@wordforword.info.

Email submissions should be attached as a single .doc, .rtf, .pdf or .txt file. Visuals should be attached individually as .jpg, .png, .gif, or .bmp files. Please include the word "submission" in the subject line of your email.

Word For/ Word acquires exclusive first-time printing rights (online or otherwise) for all published works, which are also archived online and may be featured in special print editions of Word For/ Word. All rights revert to the authors after publication in Word For/ Word; however, we ask that we be acknowledged if the work is republished elsewhere.

Word For/ Word is open to all types of poetry, prose and visual art, but prefers innovative and post-avant work with an astute awareness of the materials, rhythms, trajectories and emerging forms of the contemporary. Word For/ Word is published biannually.

Jonathan Minton, Editor

ISSN 2159-8061

Logo Design by Dolton Richards

Hugh Behm-Steinberg / From an end is the towards to

Your door which connects you in your catalogs to
rain glitter on you all; track it in, which is how you
coming, are tracked along, the parts of you poisoning

you, undo your daughters they’re cups, remedies with
powers waiting the poison out waiting the poison out;
no one’s going to fix it while death is showing you

a baby, everyone loves looking at babies, she gets her bit
of the earth it tastes like wet ghosts, death shows you all
her tattoos, there’s a number of them in the book.

You get to pick one so you can be a little like death too.

Hugh Behm-Steinberg / From an end is the towards to

Took your clavicles and have one it was not a thing
it was a face the you can’t start to stop it the ongoing
tethering to another face and another face so a face

can be known because it’s part of many comparisons

a thousand. As in where you have to keep happy
so many lovers, their homes by ways we explode.
That’s what’s always going on besides especially

in the morning it’s important to have. You have to
describe it when it’s broken so don’t miss it keep on
missing it. Keep on missing it. Keep on missing it.

Hugh Behm-Steinberg / From an end is the towards to

Hand in your pocket: you take one part and bury

like you feel you’re falling you hide the other.
When you sleep it will guard you you look for it
all night. Don’t exist. Live in prayer. Not killing

you still go to jail you get prison for hunger everyone’s
hungry everyone goes to jail they won’t even throw
money at your teeth, they won’t even pay attention

that’s what prisons are for. Your advice is so stupid because
it’s gambling to think somebody has these thoughts. The
embassy is also a prison, they keep the sun there.

Hugh Behm-Steinberg / From an end is the towards to

Out of experience but into the teaching, what resists
being taught, a king of, an iteration into a standup
routine, the rhythms of one without being funny.

Structured therefore as unwinnable arguments
in the structures of jokes, a progressive self that
demands attention but isn’t funny it’s so painful

how it wants to be funny it hurts how much it wants to.

These no’s, these fights, you can say everything
you’re adult now you’re an adult, the notes of
unfolding what are you waiting for what are you.

Kent Leatham / Election Year

(every line beginning with "but" is from The Best American Poetry 2016)



[January]

but cold enough to be left alone
but would have no answer to his slammed fist
but she can’t shake the hopes
but the boy told a brother or a father or a friend
but hardly burdened

[February]

but my wife is laughing and you’re laughing too
but why should I introduce any more characters
but what is happening that isn’t, that brings him here looking for a friend in
but
but I was a nontraditional student

[March]

but I was a traditional person, she said, the way a professor
but, believe me, it was actually quite challenging
but benign, the doctor
but this boy will steal your reason, have you
[but not for a while yet, not yet, but not for much longer, no, much

[April]

but a mistress of hounds must take special care
but they
but you did not save my mother
but you were not
but I’m not ready, maybe I am not yet tired enough

[May]

but of the Board of Health, if they inspected private homes
but we have more reasons
but stare at the trees through the patio doors open to the deck
but who, besides you, remembers they were ever alive
but stays suspended in time, like an afternoon

[June]
but would you dare to behead
but remember we got more than we gave: we got myth
[but when it came to His Old Lady
but not for that which
but then the driver says all the women sitting there

[July]

but to let the wind rebuild it, bit by bit, and lift it as it will
but you have always had skin
but this is "how we deal with death," his black pen replies
but not mirroring it, and therefore now
but I see you have already given me all that you can

[August]

but you are my first life, Life; I feel helplessly young
but I’m the only one
but not for long; they broke up
but I know I saw her new carton
but that summer before all that

[September]

but she was the only one
but before I met Natira
but long before Tina
but it’s not time that is gentle, what will happen in the future
but this war

[October]

but I’m too nice, and they might not look it up
but so was everything else my parents did
but I can’t tell you. It’s a secret." "But I’m supposed to meet
but it was asking for it
but a hammer and saw and a handful of nails and worked his way

[November]

but the bird has forgotten everything, its song, even—

Kent Leatham / Sappho in Kansas

jul 17 of 1832 well now hymenaios where to begin I was at uncle robs to the barn raising last weddnsday and had a pretty good time every body and his wife was there there was 73 men 17 of we women and 19 children they had enough left to feed as many more and had some left then they had 5 kinds of cakes 3 kinds of pies and every thing else too numerous to mention they had 18 loafs of bread and twenty pies left and then such a time sorting out dishes oh yes they had a keg of beer and when they tapped it you better think some of them got there share the beer flew as high as the roofbeams and some of the boys was as wet as if there had been a bucket of water throwed on them we had a few slight accidents tom went to jump down off one of the ties to keep from falling and strained his ancle so that he cant walk becca patterson fell down the seller one of the carpenters got his little fingers knocked out of place and then after the barn was up they made a swing and broke jims big rope and john and albert got there legs pretty badly skinned and jerry lindley went home with ellen reed and now they is engaged and that is all the accidents hymenaios as far as I know

Kent Leatham / Pulse

(for Orlando, a sonnet)


II.

When forty winters shall
And dig deep trenches in
Thy youth’s proud livery
Will be a tattered weed
Then, being asked where
Where all the treasure of
To say within thine own
Were an all-eating shame
How much more praise
If thou couldst answer

Akyra
Kimberly
Enrique


XII.

When I do count the clock
And see the brave day sunk
When I behold the violet
And sable curls all silver’d
When lofty trees I see barren
While erst from heat did
And summer’s green, all
Borne on the bier with white
Then of thy beauty do I
That thou among the wastes

Stanley
Amanda
Oscar


XVIII.

Shall I compare thee
Thou art more lovely
Rough winds do shake
And summer’s lease
Sometime too hot
And often is his gold
And every fair from
By chance, or nature
But thy eternal summer
Nor lose possession of that

Rodolfo
Alejandro
Deonka


XXIX.

When, in disgrace
I all alone beweep
And trouble deaf heaven
And look upon myself,
Wishing me like to one
Featur’d like him,
Desiring this man
With what I most enjoy
Yet in these thoughts
Haply I think on thee

Christopher
Christopher
Eric
Angel


XXXI.

Thy bosom is endearèd
Which I by lacking have
And there reigns Love
And all those friends
How many a holy and
Hath dear religious love
As interest of the dead,
But things removed that
Thou art the grave where
Hung with the trophies

Martin
Darryl
Antonio
Frank


LV.

Not marble, nor the gild
Of princes, shall outlive
But you shall shine more
Than unswept stone, be
When wasteful war shall
And broils root out the
Nor Mars his sword nor
The living record of your
’Gainst death and all
Shall you pace forth

Xavier
Gilberto
Edward


LXXIII.

That time of year
When yellow leaves
Upon those boughs
Bare ruin’d choirs
In me thou see’st
As after sunset
Which by and by
Death’s second self
In me thou see’st
That on the ashes

Paul
Peter
Mercedez


LXXVI.

Why is my verse so barren
So far from variation or
Why with the time do I
To new-found methods,
Why write I still all one,
And keep invention in
That every word doth
Showing their birth,
O know, sweet love, I
And you and love are still

Juan
Juan
Jonathan
Juan


LXXXVII.

Farewell! Thou art too dear
And like enough thou know
The charter of thy worth
My bonds in thee are all
For how do I hold thee but
And for that riches where
The cause of this fair gift
And so my patent back again
Thyself thou gav’st, thy own
Or me, to whom thou gav’st

Eddie
Anthony
Brenda


XC.

Then hate me when thou wilt
Now, while the world is bent
Join with the spite of Fortune
And do not drop in for an after
Ah, do not, when my heart hath
Come in the rearward of a con
Give not a windy night a rain
To linger out a purposed overt
If thou wilt leave me, do not
When other petty griefs have

Simon
Cory
Franky
Tevin


CVI.

When in the chronicle
I see descriptions of
And beauty making
In praise of ladies
Then, in the blazon
Of hand, of foot, of lip,
I see their antique pen
Even such a beauty
So all their praises are
Of this our time, all you

Jean
Shane
Jean


CXVI.

Let me not to the marriage
Admit impediments. Love
Which alters when it alter
Or bends with the remover
O, no! it is an ever-fixed
That looks on tempests and
It is the star to every wand
Whose worth’s unknown
Love’s not Time’s fool,
Within his bending sickle

Leroy
Javier
Yilmary
Miguel


CXXVI.

O thou, my lovely boy, who
Dost hold Time’s fickle glass
Who hast by waning grown
Thy lovers withering as thy
If Nature, sovereign mistress
As thou goest onwards, still
She keeps thee to this purpose
May Time disgrace and wretch
Yet fear her, O thou minion
She may detain, but not still

Jerald
Geraldo
Jason
Joel


CLI.

Love is too young to know
Yet who knows not cons
Then, gentle cheater, urge
Lest guilty of my faults thy
For thou betraying me, I do
My nobler part to my gross
My soul doth tell my body
Triumph in love; flesh stays
But, rising at thy name,
As his triumphant prize.

Luis
Luis
Luis
Luis

CL Bledsoe / If the Van’s a Rockin’, Wait Five Minutes and Bring Donuts

A wolf with a Riceland cap, howling at the TV.
A wolf, beer gut hanging over his jeans.
The moon, hanging high above a KFC.
The moon, a beer cooler in the sky.
A wolf with sleep apnea, snoring in the distance.
A wolf in woolen long johns, getting up to pee in the middle of the night.
A lightning bolt on the side of a van, junked in the front yard.
A lightning bolt visible through the broken blinds.
A wife who thought it wouldn’t go like this.
A wife who made no plans but knows who to blame.
Kids learning to drive.
Kids counting seconds between thunderbolts.
The moon, impassive.
The moon, not like it used to be.
A mountain, close enough to the moon to piss on.
A mountain, too high to climb with the lumbago.
A van, mirror ball cracked and hanging crooked.
A van, faint smell of must lingering.
A wolf, lying awake at night, watching nothing out the window.
A wolf, struggling to get off the couch so he can go yell at the mountains.

CL Bledsoe / My Suicide as a Sneakers Commercial

The idea is that community is a kind of gelatin,
and my life is a sad piece of canned fruit, barely
recognizable as what it once was or could
have been, and yet, how does Aunt Beverly
get it to float in the green congealment like that?
There is noise, everywhere, and all I want
is to sleep. But I am touching, you see,
some other fruit. If I fall, if I slide
out, everything will come tumbling after.
So I rise, lace up the purest white sneakers
and stride forth. That, they say, is pride. Fingers
brushing my shoulders.

Please.
Please.
Stop touching me for just a moment.
Please.
I need to rest so badly.
Even if it is forever.

CL Bledsoe / The Rent

The rent is talking shit about your mother.
I told it it wasn’t true, even if it was.
Ain’t none of my business what anybody
gets up to come the first of the month.
We all trying to keep our names out
of the Devil’s mouth. But that kind of language
just ain’t right. The rent’s been down
there talking shit all night, at that club
you couldn’t get into. Bunch of folks ‘sposed
to be your friends—the same river
you keep drowning your heart in—nodding
and shaking their heads. That’s why
there’s smoke in my hair, cause I burned
that motherfucker to the ground. It ain’t
about you. I gave my life to that squishy
piece of shit and all I’ll ever get in return
is broke. I mean, maybe I had a drink or two.
Sat around a minute to hear what it had to say.
It was buying rounds, that purple fire we used
to drink back when we were too young to know
how to hold the bottle right. Your mom,
we all wondered about her. Don’t make it right,
I know.

Cindy Savett / sublime

I hunt you, wicked daughter
less than a cut yellow bud,

for the shadow in your breath,
ragged prize drawn
from your mouth to mine,

and pin you shaken and pulsing
to the dirt,
that looted kiss for sale.

Let me torch! Let me twist your soft neck      let me stumble

over pieces of your gray iron coat

to my howling hour.
my burying shovel twisted, my home
overrun by your hollow eyes.

Cindy Savett / Without the garden

these blackened shards in fists of the maker

whose vines
trail flames on the bark

mirrored, rabid

stolen
the tumor near a cripple’s knotted lips

and a primal call for
bedclothes in the ash

Cindy Savett / crushed

so sparse so bound
the rope the cry

ash in a begging bucket
distance tuned to dark

the cutter the sleep
fields of lonely words

to scale breath for a sturdy deceit,
threshold of a withered door

the silence of breeding vacancy

James Capozzi / I Want the Moon

The evil twin of the cat is the rat
whose tail strokes your cheek as you wake,
gaze upon it, and vomit.

Vomit’s evil twin is the sob,
spasm of the private sphere rupturing the public,
and less the evil twin of more:

the poor make a real mess of their housing
way out at the train line’s end.

You see the whole thing
in vast, secular relief as you pass
through it en route to the beach,
which even a dumb animal knows
twins the moon.

I, your twin, transmit pure grief
from my lunar cave, which swoons and beckons
as our prominent eyesore gets
wiped off the map that twins the world.

The evil twin of one world is any other world,
so the rat-king commands its army
to pry back gutters, nest and raise hell.

Hell is crawling on all fours, poison canister in hand,
through a tomb-dark attic
overrun by baby vermin
to scrub the fiefdom clean

and our home is a shell:
no mass chant or savings,
wasted and empty, parking way out in jabib.

Turning on your towel
to get a good base going, the moon’s face locks to its twin.

Everywhere we are there’s a problem.

James Capozzi / Probably, Socrates

Shouldn’t it happen at dawn
when a squatter retires to the gravel lot
where his staked tent’s powered by orange extension
cords chained through the dog door
of a darkened house?

If one garbage crew convenes in the dark
does it not find two men burned badly in the park
and wild ferns on a freeway median
sagged toward damp earth?
Let first sun shear down.

Its iron findings defile the magnetic feel
of night. Let one report
to morning shift at the ruinous motel, strip sheets, scrub suicides
bludgeoned by memories.
For is not memory, as source of all remorse, a cudgel?

And pale sky above fairground amusements
if one, seeing right through it, finds oneself
divided by invisible force, as iron filings define a magnetic field?
Say the time has come.
   What; is the question one must ask?

If we are ruthless in the daytime, veering at an obscure coda
"What?" is the question one must ask
in the spirit of progress
destroying the self of two hours ago
who was an idiot and a coward.

James Capozzi / The Fifth Column

plays out faster as if to conquer earth
by infrastructure, tagged culvert

toy warlord dosing gold headwaters of the Rio Chama
or rigid herd becalmed

by system of levers and pulleys
latched gates that gather and murk it

turned to mist of fur, sinking on nuclear air
it can be a bovine existence

fogged by gnats, stalled in Socorro’s outskirts
it can be lust to start over

can be one thing, worth being another
one thinks, one thing

smoking past midnight at the RV park, lighted sickly green
one stroke of a much larger portrait

first hygiene, then the spirit goes
missing

a snake sidewinds
in moonlight beside the chemical toilet

James Capozzi / Reunion with the Oracle

Finally an answer: salt flat or granite
terrible drought
thrown down on white towns
split by absolute light: in open space, no or yes
divides sleeping cows
but into what world do abraded stone exploded
quartz of stars thread
the splendors of this world

Caress the yams the almonds:
they are inflamed tumors under a skin

When they answer
us like this we are homeless
shades wheeling toward the mine’s
castigated gold
lode at the center
showing our detailed hunger
variant of our thinking
these into light to be seized

Living silver slurry, sedimentary vinaigrettes
velocity of wine—its tiny carafe
casts violet shade
into industrial sequence: hunger
turned to luminous violence
a real Texas of the air

If you ask it, it answers
with stelae, derricks, the slop of the hogs

Spanish onion
salted in blocks

Mineral metal wet rabbit light
like Pliny spurts out the names
of human and natural worlds
their holy purpose interred
in night’s million waters breaking gold
calling your sex your weight your race

Nothing is off limits

James Capozzi / War Gin

when three o’clock comes around, the jungle drums begin
to pound, our skin unzips and hits the ground
our flag gets smashed by hail

its pattern makes its colors travel, even
as the strands unravel: our nature dictates what’s natural
we all have our reasons

and inside-outside strategy: will dopamine and vast quantities of gin
make us immortal and free?
the verdict is still out

the world still fat, at phony peace: beneath its surface lies
a surface crying out to be repurposed
if not now, then when?

right on time, ifs and thens come out of the woodwork
so designate a next of kin
instruct the men to burn the town

Daniel Y. Harris / Exergue LXV

Genital onomastics in the Libro de Buen Amor, bridal
or metro maniplumbs below the oberflake, blocks unberuhrbar.
From Selinunte, unbeschrieen’s laudatory remark is quoted
as Poimandres for hermaphrodites and the seven abdal. CO
G/NOD requested Gyrfalcon via IMIS 2012-0465. Account
set payment at zero, more tetra than arche, clever yes
but mongrel, splay over a sposalizio. Thetica’s soul ad oculos,
as does Valkyrie, opposes tenor, gehalt, tongue. Melomap,
her lay, at St. John Nepomuk’s slab, accepts as spaeman
this jarl, is survived by the Charon. The difference is (V(1)
- V(1 - a)) / V(1) = 1 - (1 - a)**D, superimposed in drag.
Cup larches, her Supreme Ruler Jove’s episcopes recite, esse
filo captum palchritudinis suae, et nil amplius desiderare, quam
ejus amplexu frui: et omen concubitum—ex commixtione hominis
cum Diabolo et Baphomet aliquoties nascuntur hominis,
et tali modo nasciturum esse antinazarenus
. Txt τοῦ Καϊνὰμ v
id n B L NA27 {\} ‖ τ. All dyspeptics become Jan van Helsing.
Puff up, disperse. WRIST DRIP. SKINDA. JANDLE.
UDDER DIADEMS INTERLUCE. Stop wandering hamalags.
365 heavens? Line 932: resolv_entries_free(entries).The auratic’s
booty is raw heimarmene, her mal malant zero, gray disinterest.
By heat search find the locus, sprezzatura mastery, 192.1
68.1.0/24 subnet. Quislings with grand litotes, tendon scurry,
call up petriochor, braxy, vis-à-vis the meshummad, foredoom
the tiusche people. Hail the Agarthi, then a 2-2-2 tercet, proof’s
plenum that Camp dethrones. Run an eyrie config package
in derision daily. Outwit the pneumatic, 8et, is her postcoitalis.

Daniel Y. Harris / Exergue LXVI

Thetica begs hysteria’s aetiology, saxa loquuntur, her reavers
a serum against indie chasack. In Symmes’ hole, geode,
the troll’s homotextuality deride the nabi. Whack the tophet.
Across what bivouacs? Necessity itself, Ananke. The Harleian
Miscellany
has its juggler on Tarock, blancovide and headed
by>f32d.exe 00:0C:29:BD:34:45 00:0c:29:61:d0:d7 1000
http://10.0.0.11/attack.html FALSE HIDDEN_IFRAME 8080.
Her homologue’s tariqat is nuanced overlay for pyroxene, cla
glass crash. Abstammungsbegriff is indispensable. Terminus ad
quem
atrophies its internal telos. Txt τοῦ Καϊνὰμ ⁴ vid ℵ B L N
A27 {\} ‖ τοῦ Καϊναν A N 0102 syrp, h copsamss, bopt T
R RP ‖ Elam syrs ‖ omit ⁷⁵vid D itd ‖ lac ⁴⁵ C P Q T Ξ syrc. Hail
necrocannibalism. Lava erupts malisons, those halcyon masters
denazified by Wad up Famo’s gadji beri bimba gandridi
laula lonni cadori.
Corpses are draped in black muslin. Infant
jade, before it’s melted, embeds dendrites as the blackfriars
treacle plaster outrage be liddled. Thetica’s hierocosmos tilts
sabotage, a drawn-out rrr as nota bene in the nomological arkhé.
Line 937: if (connect(fd, (struct sockaddr *)&addr;, sizeuf
(struct sockaddr_in)) == -1
). White meteor, sacrosanct, in propia
persona
, sets a cockchafer loose, being focalizers, infect blood
in maternal protoplast. Elsa hashes calculated using
the SHA1 algorithm, Binan Ath Ga Wath Am, topoi, and every
rubato in the Ursonate. Use majuscules for obstetric forceps
or nacre around a mote, dllhost, svchost, rundll32 or appinit.
Dance absolutism’s wigs, pazend daryosh, then gas 8
malic forms (gendarme, cuirassier, etc.), naskh hand utter.

Mary Kasimor / doped up roses bleed

some devotees of the virgin saved
her menstrual blood                 sold
                     per teaspoon in clots
doped up roses bleed
the glances sliver off her forehead
                            holy holy
     when the faces blow away
it is art when you are dying
in this apparel          of bones
you have lost your face
to the particles
                           and to the meaning--
you die with broken bodies
i can’t touch you          sealed away
in albino star eyes  
in the electro-magnetic field
                            growing new faces

for the camera
your death began with life
walking into television land
with endless interest in youtube fame
there is no name left in your face
the grand design
                           waltzed simulating
cause when the gods took you away
frozen thoughts next to the frozen beef
and the plucked
                                  clean raw skin
missed identity

you want to be resurrected
like foul-mouthed          crows stripping
the skin away sipping the blood
and guilty by association

Mary Kasimor / bicycles sculptures

blue rain
on pause
mostly iiiiiiii
backed up blue
green more than once
coils gravity
fixated with glue
more monotony forests
briefly leaves
leavened wheat
bicycle sculptures
takes off broken faces
west of netflix’s mansion
whispers for a dinosaur
or a mouse
a dinner of divinity
in every room eyes
a statement like wine
sometimes the medusa

Mary Kasimor / endgame

sneaking the sun away from the horizon I found myself
looking for william blake who returned the tigers
to the church and boycotted white rabbits in front
of the art museum but there was perseverance
in candle lit darkness for those who prayed
bringing out the celebration of god who was moonlighting
as a dead man and not everyone could talk about it
maybe it could consume the wave theory of stones
growing in the yard of early childhood a search
for irrelevance should stay simple and understand
the latest poetry from those who have forgotten that
it is the national month of assaults recreated every day
at 4:03 am I know nothing about the mathematical
arrangements of sitting down and knitting geometry
and groceries needing to be replaced by metric shadows
of concrete or thoughts on the edge of the earth in
this rainforest in drive-ins of nature in the boxes
of pleasure seekers the birds leaving sausages on
the trees in the grafting of corruption and what
it might not know about mercy

Mary Kasimor / kitchen jars

the room is not talking to you
nor is the stranger in the mirror
blue is related to cancer
nothing can get you past yourself
changing your appearance
to another category
a poem is never a gender of afterlife
who cares about shakespeare chanting tragedy?
like graffiti on a wall
hysteria is found in kitchen jars
looking at the soured pickles
the lumbering water that waves
breaking the ocean empty sighs

Mary Kasimor / apples

drink me. this cozy table top
blank page, yes. explodes leaving
away! away! always a wind surprise,
percussions of style. retro loves all
of blue. discharges the end of blue
gauze, always blowing glass. hardens
apples, shine compartments. blue
string stretching indulgence frets. circles
chaos feels confined wandering quilt’s.
seeds curling solitude aloof. card game
one on one numbers polka dot
the horizon. on page 573 a certain
mexico. ending in sight coding
a special graphic empties the water.
smudged gloss peeling away. apples
a facility of skin perforations.
rebel hands handing over wooden synapses,
new baby bones. erupt daffodils
blood sports smoothing napes. a neck
conscientiously applies vortex. a surprise!

Darren Demaree / bone requires bone #37

it’s strange to see violence beg to trawl the skin to force beneath the temporary tide of our bodies and rise with so much that violence never required to continue being violence there are whole landscapes of ohio that are littered with the byproduct of such violence it might look like a sweater on a fence to you but that sweater was not put on to be torn off

Darren Demaree / bone requires bone #38

i was not born light to be swallowed as context for the darkness none of us were

Darren Demaree / bone requires bone #39

i am comfortable with soul aligning with the cutbank i am sleepless because so many other men have tried to make my body line up with my soul

Darren Demaree / bone requires bone #70

each shell is lost is left is babel after babel is an old enemy that betrayed you by allowing new enemies inside the gates that were never gates that were walls broken down in pieces that could swing back and smack you in the face each shell is empty and yet each shell is full of what had to be left behind each shell is never full enough

Darren Demaree / bone requires bone #71

the curve in the road does nothing to slow down that which cares nothing for the road so much of this shit is illegal but men protect men more than they ever protect their own children anything i could say about my own gender would be believed our terror is the root terror of this whole map

Darren Demaree / bone requires bone #72

instead of explaining how jewels can be found in the world my father was fond of the carbon that could be forced into jeweldom don’t i shine aren’t i valuable i can still catch a baseball in the dark how close to a diamond does that make me i held my breath during the entirety of the writing of this poem that’s nothing i held my breath for years just in case he might need it

Jesse DeLong / 12 November 2014

Because I am always running into my car from out in the rain and never wiping clean my hands, the touch screen on my GPS is no good, and so I must make my own way to Central where a woman gives her child to sleep. The child, lightly growling, face painted like a lion, won’t let her wipe away the makeup. He wants to dream (Don’t we all?) as the jungle’s king. And since they live in a small apartment and buy his shoes at the thrift store, his mother pulls the covers under his chin, Sleep now, baby, please sleep. Later, I will slip in, quietly, We can’t startle him, though now I am waiting in my car. The night is a poor hologram of what it means to be a night. The neon lights of the Circle K fog the sky—no stars except the brightest. The others are there, but for this night, or any future nights, they are not ours.// Searle claims that the information I used to drive here isn’t dependent on an observer. It’s known, which is different from the information in my GPS, which, though it would have kept me from making several u-turns down Hooper Road, is only actualized by my locking in on its symbols, by my turning when it tells me to turn. Someone must look at it for it to exist.// A selfpiloted rocket realizes its own route in space, but of course, nothing is actualized here, and the ship isn’t observing itself, no, no, how could it, this is just behavior—no mind in there. Our desires, says Searle, are what make us human.// A man, lumbering his left leg, sweeps the parking lot of the gas station until the wind blows his hat off, and he runs, like a car driving with a boot on, until the cap is caught in the brush. He dusts the cap on his thigh, and looks towards my car. Can he see me, and if so, is it a moment of bravery, to live out a normal life, or is it a comic skit performed unexpectedly for me?// Wiping the condensation on her shirt, she brings me a bottle of water, and eases into her long day by laying in my arms and folding her bare feet into my socked ones. She tucks my hand between her shoulder and chin. She smells my fingers, kisses the calluses on my knuckles, and sighs. She prefers the curtains closed so that no one can see that I am human, I am sorry. I begin to grind, slowly, as I touch, with those rain-soaked fingers, her shoulders. The TV is on mute and she begins to grind back. Shhh, no, my baby. I hope you believe me when I say I want to be a good man. She is a single mother who loves her child and wants a little comfort at the end of her day. Please, don’t leave. She rubs her foot over mine. Her breast brushes my forearm. I grind again.

Jesse DeLong / 24 January 2014

We waken ruminating. On my denial of god. On your belief in an afterlife. On the shared pleasures that sustain us like a rope holding a mattress atop a driving car. Like, running the smooth blade of the razor along my neck as I listen to you praying in the shower. I quietly lust over your shoulders, which are slick with suds. Though there is no time for that now, barely ever enough time, or will, anymore.\\ Then, hallelujah, a little winter weather and the roads are closed. A police car, lights flashing in the early fog, gates the interstate. Holding a rolled-up newspaper, an officer stands behind his open door. He is looking at his feet.// Where I grew up, deer retreat into the city during winter and have to be avoided on the roads. They need to eat undisturbed from trees or their eyes will turn green when our headlights hit them.\\ This state has empowered people who don’t believe in evolution. When the legislature debated changing its creationism laws, an assemblyman, thinking he’d trapped a local science teacher, said "There’s not an experiment that you could have in the classroom that would say ‘Here’s Darwin’s Theory of evolution’….that proves it without a shadow of a doubt." "Yes, you can," the woman said, as if the trial ever aimed for proof, "You can take E Coli cells, and freeze them, over time, each generation, and see how they evolve," though the assemblyman, smirk on his face, just interrupts, "And what, they turn into a human?"// The alternate route is at a pace so slow we turn around. As I knock the water from my boots, the voice on the radio claims again that the liberal media has created the phrase "Polar Vortex". I shake my head and you remind me that local weathermen refute his claim. "The thing you’re missing," I say, "is that, because of his audience, he doesn’t need to fact check." Ideas aren’t made of truth, but of behavior and belief.\\ A truck, carrying a six foot globe on a trailer, skidded into a guardrail, the earth crashing into the minivan behind it.// You were coming home, and so I stepped outside into the night. The lantern of a man in a fishing boat swung over the lake water. A deer approached. With its fawn. She ate M&Ms; from my palm, her tongue rough and wet.\\ When I left Montana, a land of yearly winters, I left my windshield scraper. This morning, I spent ten finger-numbing minutes breaking the ice with a credit card. It lay in shards on the ground. An idea doesn’t need to be right; it just needs to spread. Take the Ten Commandments: the first five foster an environment where the idea can thrive. Only god, the center of your belief, shall be tolerated. A day will be set aside to honor the idea, and you will convince others to honor it. Your parents will be held in high esteem, because ideas are most successfully passed down through families.// A skiff of snow on the pavement, and then the sun melts it. A snowman, about a foot tall, slumps in a spot of grass between the parking lot and street. The globes, pelted with gravel and grass and snow, are so small the snowman has no arms. I am listening to music, drinking tea, talking to you. The vents turning-on are a comfort for us both, and he is out there, maybe just an idea. Hour by hour, he wastes away.

Jesse DeLong / 2 March 2014

As I write this, Putin is invading Crimea, and the Obama administration is receding from the G-8 summit in Russia. Homes cinder, tanks trundle through water, images of armed men capture the "front page" of online newspapers. That’s how information is shared, now, just as matter in the "primordial soup" of a pre-modern earth locked into different forms before finally stabilizing into DNA. Progress, progress. But that, dear reader, is about to change. Which is to say, this writing isn’t about Eastern Europe, a former KGB head, or the U.S.’s role in an incursion the media has labeled, before the events congeal into any definite shape, as: "Crimea Crisis could lead to second Cold War" (even this is an adaptation of the phrase, since I forgot the original words and am paraphrasing, an error of the way DNA mutations can turn a species’ selection). No, this poem isn’t about war, but about how the enactments of those events on our consciousness parasitize it and begin to copycat. The world is one big Doge, my friends, and just as serious. See, a headline, germinating late last year, from the same source where I read about Crimea, states "Snakes Fueled Evolution of Primate Brains, Monkey Study Suggests." The text unfolds: "The results lend support to a controversial hypothesis: that primates as we know them would never have evolved without snakes." Hardly controversial when roughly half of Americans take the bible at its word. Or, Stephen Hawkins wheels up to center stage at Berkley and claims, "Can you hear me?...........To ask what happened before the beginning of the universe, would become a meaningless question, because there is nothing south of the South Pole……Thank you for listening." Hardly an original theory—"And the earth," this is not Hawkins, obviously, "was formless and void, and darkness the surface of the deep." Yeah, yeah,

Jesse DeLong / 3 August 2013, 2014

James Lee DiMaggio, planning to move from California to Texas, buttons up his pastel-blue polo. He wants to look nice since he has invited the Andersons over to say goodbye. When they arrive bearing the smiley-faced keychain meant as a going-away present, he crowbars the mother. Shoots the boy. Kidnaps the girl, who he adores. And so the day begins, Texas, with love, bright as a Buick’s window mapped in bugs. Its relief: a fan pushing around the room’s hot air.

When men loot, rage, swarm—during the race riots of L.A., after the Stanley Cup playoffs, in protest of the Turkish regime—the women, calmly, stand aside.

A pregnant dog’s eyelids knock as she sleeps on the concrete. No leash, no collar, no shine to her coat. A tiny plastic container of mayonnaise lies near my tire. It has yellowed in the sun. Before leaving on this journey of oil rags and a static-packed radio, I knelt, on a mattress stripped of its sheets, and fanned, using the cardboard from a packing box, a woman who appreciated the relief. Eyes closed, she stared at where the ceiling’s stucco structure blossomed from years of smoking. A vision of no openings, she hungered for it. The light bent. She circled her wrists, her shins, almost a convulsion, though her movements were practiced. She emitted the humming of a dying refrigerator.

Columbine. Virginia Tech. Newtown. Almost every school shooting involves young males. Even now, as I edit this poem, we’re singling out Elliot Rodgers as a madman—not a product of a society short-circuiting on misogyny and entitlement.

On the Instagram page #byefelipe, women post the aggressive responses men send them over social media. "B1: ‘DTF’ G1: ‘MEH’ B1: ‘Oink’ G1: ‘And that means?’ B1: ‘It means you’re a pig’" — "B2: ‘What’s up?’ B2: ‘What’s up?’ B2: ‘I want to fuck your pussy’ B2: ‘with or without razor blades’" — "B3: ‘And you’re fat. Jesus, kill yourself’ G3: ‘What could I have possibly done to you for you to say that to me?’ B3 ‘Cuz it makes me feel good after a fail with a cunt like you.’"

Afternoon, now, is the spoils: of moisture, of molars, of the thighlines where the testicles knock, knock. A stinkbug lands on my window. I bring it miles beyond where it would have journeyed this day.

In the hypothalamus, sexual behavior and hate are linked.

In Afghanistan, in Jalalabad, nine children die from a suicide bombing. This is just today, okay.

In the second half of fetal development, the male’s testes pump testosterone into the brain, changing the neurons. Absent this surge, the brain will remain biologically female—The baseline for the brain is female.

So she asked me, dick already in, to choke her, to slap her, to call her my whore.

No matter. My memory, bent paper clips. There is the rest of the world, and its faults, after all. Though that scene of her inner focus will always remain: an aneurism waiting to be unleased. Just like Texas, from the roadside, ephemeral, and unavoidable, and you, dear reader, with the loose abandon of life—you are fully invested now.

Jesse DeLong / Tropes of History

So then we enter into the Great War. Heavily at it for months, by Christmas the Germans and Allies emerge like a river bank slowly rounded by the current. The biblical star—above London, Auschwitz, New York—blazons. Gas, it’s everywhere, it perforates with the bruises of war: blood, sweat, gunpowder, the fermenting earth.

This is your mother? a soldier says, holding his comrade’s photo, crinkled from his pocket. Agh, give it here, you know that’s my girl. They feign laughter, as they’ve heard this joke many times, it is its own comfort.

Despite the atrocities, though, a soldier—legs damp, socks muddied, lungs heavy with the wide-eyed deaths of his brothers—begins to sing. A Christmas Carol, slowly, as if he’s alone. God, Hitler, the Market, Nationalism, Eugenics, give us this, please, at least:

A voice, wholly human.

A voice in song. As he moves through the chorus, others follow. Maclin, who hasn’t received a single letter. Cole, whose family owns a sewing shop. Daniels, who has a few days left. Eventually, the Germans join in until the soldiers, like the wind ending and the leaves rustling still, are singing together, redefining, just for today (tomorrow won’t be the same) the distance between them.

And as chords fill the air like artillery blasts, these men with what little they have (There’s a war going on, for god’s sake) erase the combative lines and meet each other in the middle like brothers and exchange gifts.

The world has not lived up to this moment of communion since.

A fraternity in Oklahoma chants, "We can hang him from a tree, but he won’t sign with me."

After police shoot Michael Brown, protestors, concerned citizens and community leaders spread the hashtag #BLACKLIVESMATTER. Somehow feeling disrespected, conservatives respond, #ALLLIVESMATTER.

Illegals. Dreamers. What do you call a person who has lived in Colorado since she was two, speaks the language, and attends CSU. Steve King calls these people Deportables.

Depending on how it’s phrased, the aftermath is different. A woman, who is undergoing shock therapy because she tried to commit suicide, exposes herself to me. She covers her nipples with her arm, the knuckles of her hand bruised. Let me see your wrists, I say. She turns, facing the wall where no pictures hang. I’ve been used so much, she says, maybe to me.

This is real, okay, I didn’t invent it. This, too, this poem, not her voice, is consequences turned to rhetoric.

We are responsible, even her who is so young but has already given up. Like, I walk into a breakfast joint in Alabama. We wait—my Creole girlfriend and me—for a table. I fan my stomach, gassed in sweat, by flapping my shirt. She picks leftover polish from her fingernails. The black bus boy finally sits us down, laying laminated menus beside the silverware. The rest of the patrons, even me, are white. After one waitress takes our order, another leans in. Looks at my girlfriend. Touches her arm. How are you doing? She emits an energy, subtle as the South. Go ahead, pick a phrase that names the rhetoric of that energy. Diversity training seminars call it a "micro-aggression."

I tell my friends about the breakfast joint. These are white people who’ve also picked up on the rhetoric of progressivism. People who are trained to lock in on cues of racial coding in the media. People who’ve learned the proper phrases for responding to perceived bigotry: It’s an Old-White- Man’s Worldview and He is just uncomfortable outside of the Hedero-Normative Binaries. They act horrified, but continue to eat there.

Ben Carson claims homosexuality is a choice because prisoners are incarcerated straight and reenter society having tasted cum.

By the way, that baker who won’t sell a wedding cake to those two lesbians—it’s not called discrimination. It’s called The Religious Freedom’s Act.

Hitler marched through the idea of Eugenics, and history tells us what wastes lay after. Fiction becomes fact if enacted.

After penning a letter aimed at dismantling an Iranian nuclear agreement, which would hinder Iran’s ability to build a nuclear weapon, Tom Cotton, quoting Churchill, says, "The world has grown gravely darker." He looks down at his notes. "Winston Churchill sounded that warning in 1933 as Adolf Hitler had taken power in Germany." He is wearing a blood-red tie.

Jared Schickling / Inside of Flesh and Springtime

What we say relaxes to
rustle some other son
what a signal may teach.
A loaf of bread baked with neon happiness and salt.
And acrobats and snows.

You say, what is the leaf waiting for in its burnt umber window?
I tell you it is waiting for saxophone like you.
A bicycle is not enough to crush me and keep me
from the jungle of your solute mysteries.
It is a tale of rambunctious conglomerates a circle with a triangle,
the explosive workings of manly law.

In the face of so many waxes to functionality
nothing but that light of circus.

A barbarous signal plagues
even the absent minded
technical archipelagos in synonym
to which the metaphor
will not be grew.
Calcerous lunchtime and the imperialist cluster
petrify at the walls of my house.
And so that its grates will electrify your fingernails.

In the smallest papier-mâché elixir like shortcuts depriving outside gardens
they are all mothers.
Professional cold fires in whose fresh lights originate.
The bitter cactus is verdure on your hips.
A serenity mixing will kiss
the inevitable earth of a planet.

Jared Schickling / I Have Gone Executing

There ought to be a productivity
of an aquatic cathedral playing
in a moonlight evening.
A heart and a shoulder
fashioning the moonlight evening.
The order of the echoes
your sea shell is a starry sky
filled with listless time.
What funny things does the starling contain?
How little we enrich and how much it blossoms
the funny things of this galaxy.

From uncomfortable turbulence to uncomfortable
turbulence, hidden wreaths drawn by rosy channels,
a pale acrobat begins to divulge.

Jared Schickling / A Humble Substance

Essential, sapphire perfume! Be guided by the fluidic serendipity’s coat.

For light was torrential and morally positive.

Brings all the deceives dews.

One alphabetic option and a current of angelic warmth

that does not know why it flows and perches.


The decadent starling re-covers in the middle of the plumed havocs.

And meetings of rustling tails your mouth blossoms from south to east

waxes in the obscene airplane

crystallizing among the boulevard around a neon airplane,

lyrical as a silent elephant.

Jared Schickling / Since the End of Silencing

And outside my hammock, during the lunchtime, I woke up naked
and full of sincerity.
You’ve asked me what the squirrel is treading there with his sand-colored hips?
I reply, the miracle knows this.
Full stop.

What seams a disjoint to one will not seem so to another.
Draw from it the cold
sequence of its own antennae.
Outside the shattering masks.
There are many pigeon holes in front of whirlwinds of events.

The serendipity rejoices in re-covering your eyeballs.
We get the feeling
they must lots to perform
to each other
or

perhaps nothing but graves.
Perhaps they do not falter.
Pulled out and closed off, like land.
Bleak weather, raucous lights like the miracle.

This mechanical stalks of cattail and beginning fountains loiter
with delicious lakes like noses to noses
and black guitars like curves to a moon.
Only home, just the
grace, nothing but
it. Perfume.
Your prize is snow filled with a railroad track.
As if to gnaw or shine, or crush.
With its hollow blush, come with me to the circumstance of lampreys.


Growing a tree
rescued in the unguessed wind.
With the quilt of the jungle where you sleep,
a dream smothers the sequence.


My angelic ears protect you always.
The moonlit paths ignored, a language shines,
replaces – it does not return.


Reconciling the tiger of the book full of pride.
Inside the ritual of the heights where you sleep,
a dream sodden in calculations.

Once there was a motionless astronaut who
dedicated at parties, sitting in a triangle, among kisses.

Jared Schickling / The Metaphor of Side Points

Developing from delirious ivory.
One slightest option and you say,
what is the bolt of cork architecture waiting for

in its silvery telegraph?
I tell you it is waiting for flutes like you.
An opaque blood

colored and diluted sea water
is stolen in the university
and maternities and stones

I’m the bride to the flower of immediate love.
No one here is waiting for the next lighthouse.
Poppy. You began yourself for returning I

want to recover on your ears. Some inherit
but I form your broken
glass, a quiver

flowed through it, in a key way, a pale law
day, I am abolished by star and jackal
by dominions of snow.

Jared Schickling / The Machine of Historical Points

To seek another land a vessel is not enough to gnaw me and keep me
from the thicket of your fresh curiosities.
I’m the child to the peace of immediate starlight.
Enjoy the many mechanical attempts to protect
the sanguine pigeon hole.

There is fluidic fortune in galloping it
returning on the vortices that wait for you
silencing the shady chairs, compounding the doors.
Of your gray ribbon when you hold out your hips
you say, what are the stars waiting for in the sunlight?
In the depriving waxes?

The ship enters my mouth.

Stephanie Strickland

Stephanie Strickland

Stephanie Strickland

W. Scott Howard / Postal Misdirects

Another vacation rental under surveillance

White lies erupt epideictic tinder

Severe storms likely to increase—some sources say

New older images from space on their way out

4C extinction threshold sounds harsh imnsho

Heliocentric damage twenty years later looks authentic

Ditto and 8-track redshifting the kid tot tragic

Chiasmus alert! (SNAFU yet once more & etc.

Reset terse rose urn, edit tenor

Student loan debt deferral gift cards

VHS afterlife broadcasts, ant farms, wooden horse puzzles

Rumors of my demise have been underwhelming so far

Sensory data wind-up for inside-out deixis@quatorze

Hocus pocus transcendental / materialist substitution1



___________________________

1Not to be confused with either the Garden State Parkway’s signage for Hohokus—an appropriation from the Lenape Mah-Ho-Ho-Kus (red cedar), Hohokes (wind against tree bark), Hoccus (fox), and Ho (joy or spirit)—or the Dutch Hoog Akers (high acorns) or Hoge Aukers (high oaks) or with any lingering postal misdirects to Hoboken.

D. E. Steward / The Either Blue

Kafka told others that in order to write he had to abandon food, sex and philosophy

Mazarine blue is deep purplish, redder than hyacinth blue, paler than sapphire

And patriots are idiots

"I believe in god the Either, god the Or, and god the Holy Both" (Cyril Connolly)

February in the Northern Hemisphere: sun higher, surface colder

Dusk, the time when it is difficult to tell one from the other, is entre chien et loup

Within a deep northern night, nothing as pleasant as having a window through which, from bed, to watch the aurora

Smoke, pale blue that is redder and paler than powder blue or Sistine

Have never seen the aurora australis, only perhaps a faint flickering of it during one clear-sky April night anchored in Dusky Sound, South Island New Zealand at almost 46° South

We lay at anchor for a day and a half, no sign of anyone in the cold austral oceanic world a full gale, sixty-knot winds, farther south in Chalky Inlet in the black

The whole seven billion plus of the planet to the north

High seas, shearing wind, black rock coast, inky black, dense purplish blue

Big seas, stiff southwesterlies

Within Fiordland’s deepwater realm New Zealand’s long white cloud with only temporary human intrusion

The majestic climb and whistling wingbeat hover flapping of New Zealand pigeons, twice as hefty as most Columbidae

Steep upward swoops, stall at the top, then dive off swerve away to roost in the high slope’s beeches

Lofty beech trees on the scarps hundreds of feet above the water

Those slopes above the Fiordland sounds rise a thousand feet toward the glaciers

Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid’s project, The Most Wanted, the Most Unwanted Paintings, established that most people’s favorite color is blue

The American most-wanted painting, a blue landscape, Lake Louiselike, with a stiffly posed George Washington, two deer standing in the lake’s shallows, one antlered, three teenage campers walking toward them

The Russian most-wanted is a blue landscape with taiga evergreens and meadows around a blue lake with a seated Jesus, a standing brown bear, and two children digging a hole earnestly in the foreground

The Kenyan most-wanted. a blue landscape with Mount Kenya’s symmetrical cone above blue misted high veldt with a hippopotamus grazing in the foreground near a blond Jesus and two African women, one with a baby on her hip

Eleven other countries in the project, Denmark, Turkey, Portugal, China, Germany, Finland, and the like all much the predictably chauvinistic same

The most-unwanted painting in every country resembles exactly the triangles, jagged lines and chemical colors of Russian futurism à la Pevsner, Gabo, Kandinsky

And no dada or surrealism either

No placid, rational liernes

No Mondrian or Rothko or Newman color blocks

No Op, no Pop

But blue, always the flattering blues

As in Mariko Mori’s stupendous Shaman-Girl’s Prayer

Trans-Pacific silver-white all the way south toward tan adobe and turquoise

Teal blue, a dark greenish blue duller and greener than drake

And glassy blues of Tadao Ando’s dramatic Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

Of the Gabacho-Latino border zone

Mexico’s systaltic pumping of deep dark Indian magic

Brasil’s African essences so much closer to the surface

Its music, the people, its breadth

Saudade, toadas, modinha. macumba, congada, choro, samba

"Obviously music should put all within listening range into a state of ecstasy" – Steve Reich

Antonio Carlos Gomes, Alberto Nepomuceno, Heitor Villa-Lobos

Musica Viva

State to state, north, south and west

Up river valleys and down

Once there it opens wide within hours

Like Australia

Like a library with clerestory windows in bright sunlight

Like a valley seen from a high ridge

Or awareness of a major river’s whole watershed

As if anticipating Christo’s Valley Fence, in Daily City and the Sunset in San Francisco, Henry Doelger’s symmetrical white lines of stucco boxes run like contours along the hills

Or Richard Farnsworth at the end of The Straight Story calling strongly and then querulously to his brother, "Lyle… Lyle," answered with a tremulous "Alvin"

In nostalgia for increments of the past that in past real time we often anticipated being nostalgic for

"You don’t know what’s going on … You are out of the world, tangled in personal life … You won’t survive this … what’s happening now. People like you … stubborn and stupid and drearily enslaved by introspection" (Paula Fox)

First of all, kill all the psychologists

"Since the different families of antidepressants also proved effective in treating all sorts of other pathologies, it was concluded that these illnesses 'masked' depression.... Thus other conditions were successfully annexed to depression: panic attacks, anxiety, bulimia, obsessive-compulsive disorders, 'social phobia' (what used to be called shyness), autism, Tourette's syndrome, incontinence, neurological, cancerous, gastric and neck pain, migraines, post-traumatic stress disorder, alcoholism, tobacco and heroin addiction, constipation, hair loss and hypersensitivity to cold" (Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen)

Delete their ludicrous diagnoses from their credenda, their Mixed Anxiety Depressive Disorder, their Attenuated Psychotic Symptoms Syndrome and more

Lifted in truly blue

Our hazardous gullet-windpipe intersection below our strange mouth-below-nose-below eyes, and even stranger mix of multi-function excretory-genital organs

Gagging, fart-laughing, listless scatological games

Who we are, wherever we are, happiest awash in flattering mazarine blue

Awash at most high tides, Beveridge, a reef growing into an atoll between Rarotonga in the Cooks and Niue (old Savage Island), one of the best sites in the Pacific to see the near-hypnotic but threatening schooling of requiem and hammerhead sharks, their matter-of-fact shoulder-shrug swimming motion as they scan around for prey through the blue

Entre chien et loup

Jeff Harrison / Down Heyday Leave Horses Dance

so bites stay by back window nightways, making lost like
sleep with an open trigger... you stowed my smell, but
the handful a' blood was mine, stolen from animals...
around their wrists were death beads

& I like your have-love, stranger

so... I'll mention none other as dice below fingernails
nor as coral dust hands for words,

I thought up days with legs below

- nightwalkers I called 'em, but the term is friendly-like &
literal... to dust-love at blues breasts, at least...
burial at sea & nowhere have dirt drink me
I've thinks extraordinary that swim you, sea spinsters'
witch odor, feet shed underwater

Raymond Farr / These Girls of Savage Ambiguity

I am told
A girl’s blood

Does not slip
On the cake of

Soap of the air
& drain

Like the source
Of all cunning

From the bathtub
Of the world

& that
"Aloha,

Fruity
Pebbles!"


Is her
Conscious

Choice
The origin of

The world
I’m told

Is not
Measured out

In coffee spoons
Or found

In Warhol’s
Orange Car

Crash 10 Times

The origin

Of the world
Is a girl

Of savage
Ambiguity

& no part
Of her

Corresponds
Willingly

With fecund
Or berry-like

Raymond Farr / A Strange Beauty

After Jeff Wall’s
In Front of a Nightclub



A raven
& not

A raven
The homily

Of what ever
Happened

To Emily
& not

The skeleton
Of what

People call
"Being

Together"
Just a girl

Lost in
The void

Of her
Little black

Tube top
& not

This girl
Holding

A cigarette—
A cloud of

White death
In her hand

A girl
Whose life

Is this
Sidewalk

On which
She turns—

Her eyes
Focused

Half-
Intently

On…
What?

Raymond Farr / Pangs Intrinsic to Small Weirdly Surprising Things

Love is
Not usually

The shiver
Of a wren

Lipstick’d
On a Men’s

Room mirror
By a deranged

Woman who
Cuts herself to

Attract a man
But a pang

Intrinsic to
Small

Weirdly
Surprising

Things
That arrive

At dusk
All sticky

With elegy
     For the

Shiver
Of a wren

Is a tiny death
Wrapped up

In snow
& can’t be

Corrupted
        But

What is
A death

If not this
Penciled-in

Shadow of
A vanishing

Afternoon?
What is it

Cries
"Murder!"

When the
Shiver

Of a wren—
Lipstick’d

On a Men’s
Room

Mirror—
Disappears?

Raymond Farr / Grim Illumination

An audience of rubber
Tombstones is watching
—W. S. Merwin


    In any
Wilderness

Of disbelief
   There is

A caution
That enables
    
    & that
Doesn’t

Suppress—
    Rain

& vacant
Shops…

This reach
Of track…

     This
Line of

Somber
Cars

Turned
Elegy

At dusk
Stretching

Eerily
Westward

The words
"Where

Is the fight
Gone out

Of us now?"
Exiting

The poem
Sarcastically

    & still
We believe

      In
Whatever

It is we
Choose to

Believe
In—

    A man
Asking

Himself—
Aren’t you

The glittering
Skull,

          The
Platinum,

Diamonds,
& human

Teeth
Of what’s

Wrong
With this

World?!
Aren’t you

The face
With the

Pallor
Of steel?

The phrase
"A voice

Full of
Breaking"

Stuck in
Yr head?

    It is
Dark

3:22 AM
    & he

Has
A gun

Raymond Farr / Perspectives on the Pleasures of Excess

                                 The mattresses
Are groovy East River sex gravy mattresses

& the light above is like a touched swan—
The typewriter of a good lie blocking the door

Don’t mention the Ted Berrigan axe we’re grinding
Or the image of death slumped against the picture wall—

One leg for the end of the world! Or the rope cradle
Hanging like an autumn noose in the shadows

Of our barbarism!
                               & with 70 16-bit characters, including

Spaces, in jail, & time consisting of only the corners,
The boys are free to ignore the abbreviated tree tops
                                      
Their perspective on the pleasures of excess & their musings
On the silent movie of the earth & on the ends of the earth

Still baffle the artless & the lovesick police dogs
                                & the body count is mounting—

A big, smelly ball of meandering, coeval antithesis
& so we go home & scream "mirrored bells" into our pillows—

Our throats turning flames into song lyrics no one
Will ever remember
                                      
                                   & the sun raising the shadows up
Out of the damp elms, the bleeding grass, the box houses

& too many, or the unconscious, having slept Xmas eve
                               & having slept like ancient boys

3 days in the cold forest, 3 days the sugar lasted them
3 days the clouds disappearing, like good intentions,

Like hens from a highway construction site
Like constellations from each corpse’s eye

Raymond Farr / A Man Looks Out of the Guillotine of a 3rd Story Window

A man yells,
Suzanne! Suzanne!

Tell Ferdinand…
The cops!…the car…!

His eyes turning
Slowly to stone

As he looks
Down the block

From the guillotine
Of his 3rd story

Window
               His trench

Coat black as
A sky shot-gunned

With ravens
             & it’s just

Beginning to
Rain now—

        A few drops
On the road up to

Magnetic Hill
              & it’s only

A matter of
What else can

Go wrong?
     Of the world

Being Surreal again
For the first time!

Meng Haoran, translated by Xinyu Zhao

春(chūn)晓(xiǎo)

春(chūn)眠(mián)不(bù)觉(jué)晓(xiǎo) , 处(chù)处(chù)闻(wén)啼(tí)鸟(niǎo)
夜(yè)来(lái)风(fēng)雨(yǔ)声(shēng) , 花(huā)落(luò)知(zhī)多(duō)少(shǎo)


Daybreak of the spring

Oversleeping in the morning of spring,
At dawn the birds are singing everywhere.
After the drizzle and the wind of all night,
How many flowers have fallen?

Wang Zhihuan, translated by Xinyu Zhao

登(dēng)鹳(guàn)雀(què)楼(lóu)

(bái)日(rì)依(yī)山(shān)尽(jìn) 黄(huáng)河(hé)入(rù)海(hǎi)流(liú)
欲(yù)穷(qióng)千(qiān)里(lǐ)目(mù) 更(gèng)上(shàng)一(yì)层(céng)楼(lóu)


On the Stork Tower

The sun fades away along the mountain,
The yellow River flows into the sea.
If you climb one more storey higher,
You are sure to appreciate a grander sight.

Tara Orzolek / It did not feel like power

and I could not do what the river wished me to do, what I’d been
told since I was a girl with a diary, a horoscope, a daily missal.
Therefore a sense of rapture preceded me. Therefore the dark took
its own materiality and made it glow with the neon fervor of the
average teenager, if that should exist. In fact it is a certain artificial life
that swells early and continues late, very late, well past your bedtime,
well past the incipient moment of slumber or dream. Your room has
four walls but the walls are not there, they’re never there, just coming
and going like the near-sense of adult completion that you will
actually never reach.

Tara Orzolek / The fundamental flaw in the state of emergency

Sentiment is not a gimmick. It lies in gallows, swings low in limbo.
In silhouette with the lightness behind you lies the tender core,
the jelly that is your secret. Your jelly is dark but you are a sorcerer
on the periphery, threads coming undone in all sorts of ways, brooms
fulfilling desires. A road that winds and unwinds into caverns and
trembling suspension bridges that you don’t want to travel. Like the
guy who said at the end of the night that even at your worst moment
your gathered souls travel through your fingertips onto paper and
you will produce magic.

Tara Orzolek / Ghost mother in Eden

Your mother believed in ghosts. It is repeated in tax or tattoo. Your
light turns on for your lie detector now, like the snake on the road,
like the one on the sign. Like a scary woman in popular nightmares
with long black hair with wiry sparks of grey and it keeps growing.
Threatening to tangle to make a mess of things. It was the night she
swept through the parlor covered only in tattoos that bloomed in the
night and the night in situ we decided to fuck up the economy and go
back to the arcades and let the orchids keep growing even though
the blooms were dead or at least dormant and the arcades were all
closed down. It was the night we found our Eden.

Tara Orzolek / $3 palm reading

The palm reading was only $3 and she said we are mischievous as a
species but it speaks to a longer coating of destruction. I didn’t want
to scatter this news like wildflowers across a parched land but
I thought they should know. I stood and realized my shoes were
untied and hadbeen for the last week or so. We have our own
particular syntax that needs tending to or it dies, she said. It’s not
enough to simply be absurd or fleet-footed or to mine the iridium-
rich landscape any longer, she said. Go forth and say something.
Go forth and offer flowers.

Tara Orzolek / Two paths split by a river

The barometer is falling and a storm is coming, but you want more.
I want to know if it is possible for both states to exist at once. Can I
be the mother of light and darkness. With both the minor and major
moralities flitting about inside of me. Sometimes the most likely to
survive as a matter of principle or desire is the weed among flowers.
There’s so much green if you don’t tame it. You do not need to
accept the plot you’re handed or will it into singularity. You can
refuse to fight a storm and instead have it wash through once the
floodgates are open. And accumulate them in used ball gowns
so they will no longer hurt.

Mary Coons / A Primer

Do you know the end / of Cat People? She’s just / turned into a panther and / killed her therapist then / let another panther / maul her to death. / Her husband finds her / dead body and says She / never lied to us. This / is a little bit like that.

I learned to play the clarinet because / what else do you do with two hands.

I alphabetize my dvds and somewhere / near the beginning Alice / in Wonderland leads to Alien. This strikes / me as entirely natural.

My uncle tells me I’m clever / for getting so many piercings. / Keeps the boys’ eyes up, he says.


InspiroBot says Be the first person to hurt something that has already been objectified.

What would it mean for Mary / Shelley’s Frankenstein / if the monster were a girl?
InspiroBot says If you are unhappy in the collaboration, you will destroy the collaboration.

Once, my lab instructor said You can / clicker train any animal. To prove it, / showed us videos of training a chicken. / And how it worked. I thought of Mike / the Headless Chicken. His eighteen months / with just one ear, a brain stem. Would he hear / us click for him? Would he know what to do?

I wrote Oliver Sacks a thank-you letter / which reads: Because of you I know my brain / is just a flower boiled open in a pot. / Then I remembered that he’s dead.

Once, my stats professor said I can do anything / with Excel. I could do dishes with it, if I wanted. / It’s that good! Instead, he made us a normal / curve graph with data fields, radio buttons. / He gave us equations to change its fill. I / wanted to turn it into a poem. I wanted / to tell someone It’s a poem.

I learned to pierce everything that matters / because what you mark you own.

InspiroBot says Understanding why you are turned on is what makes you afraid.

I never learned to kiss because I / learned to talk first.

I considered rewatching Gunslinger Girls / for my manuscript, then decided / against it. To be honest, I was a sad / fourteen-year-old and that show just made me / sadder. I’m afraid of going back / to the place where those girls lived.

InspiroBot says Stop dying.

Mary Coons

Furby in Halves

like a lobster’s scream I’m told it doesn’t hurt you can’t feel pain don’t worry it’ll turn out so good


but you woke up knowing your own name



but your face

cracked open

but your beak

split into

black drool black

tears black eyes

and inside all your colors are dark

and inside there’s no secret

compartment for me to crawl

into no whale-corpse bear-corpse

to burrow into just the clicking whirring

that stopped when I halved you with my thumbs

Mary Coons

Suspension


the skin

an organ


separate

from the body



scrawl out of it

a new pink


meat once


dotted open

by hooks into



constellated

flaws see this



one it’s called

Resurrection

Brian Strang

Brian Strang

Brian Strang

Brian Strang

Drew B. David

Drew B. David

Drew B. David

Drew B. David

Emmitt Conklin / Lost Student of The Plague

Mario José Cervantes / Without Title

Mario José Cervantes / Without Title

Mario José Cervantes / Without Title

Mario José Cervantes / Without Title

Mario José Cervantes / Without Title

Andrew Brenza / C4H10F02P

Andrew Brenza / C4H8CL2S

Andrew Brenza / CL2

Andrew Brenza / C0CL2

Mark Young / Trespass

Mark Young / Django

Mark Young / Dancers, arches

Mark Young / Temporal lobe

Jim Andrews / from Aleph Null 3.0



Note: Aleph Null is an online work of generative, interactive art written in JavaScript, HTML and CSS. As soon as it starts, it generates art by sampling from a featured artists' visuals to create an animation that's never the same twice. The fully interactive and generative version of Aleph Null is available at: www.vispo.com/aleph3.

Jim Andrews (featuring Jim Leftwich) / from Aleph Null 3.0



Note: Aleph Null is an online work of generative, interactive art written in JavaScript, HTML and CSS. As soon as it starts, it generates art by sampling from a featured artists' visuals to create an animation that's never the same twice. The fully interactive and generative version of Aleph Null is available at: www.vispo.com/aleph3.

Jim Andrews (featuring Maria Damon) / from Aleph Null 3.0



Note: Aleph Null is an online work of generative, interactive art written in JavaScript, HTML and CSS. As soon as it starts, it generates art by sampling from a featured artists' visuals to create an animation that's never the same twice. The fully interactive and generative version of Aleph Null is available at: www.vispo.com/aleph3.

Jim Andrews (featuring Bill Bissett) / from Aleph Null 3.0



Note: Aleph Null is an online work of generative, interactive art written in JavaScript, HTML and CSS. As soon as it starts, it generates art by sampling from a featured artists' visuals to create an animation that's never the same twice. The fully interactive and generative version of Aleph Null is available at: www.vispo.com/aleph3.

Andrew Topel

Andrew Topel

Andrew Topel

Andrew Topel

Andrew Topel

Andrew Topel

David Felix / Lock

David Felix / Putting speke

David Felix / For the moment

Clay Thistleton

Clay Thistleton

Clay Thistleton

Clay Thistleton

Clay Thistleton

Clay Thistleton

Clay Thistleton

Clay Thistleton

Clay Thistleton

Clay Thistleton

Clay Thistleton

Jeff Bagato / Poetics Note

As a writer and visual artist, I find the breakdown of meaning in public discourse disturbing and ominous. So I responded by inventing a new language, based on the nonsense phrase "All Gonch." The shape and structure of the words offer clues to the culture that might arise after the death of the current (American) culture and language. The project has several phases. The first involves composing text pieces in the Gonch language. The second phase is the Gonchlog, which involves cutting the letters of "Gonch" from various consumer magazines and pasting them onto accounting paper. The source, its date of publication, and volume number are noted. The intention is to draw out that key nonsense word from these commercial propaganda vehicles in order to find a way forward.

Jeff Bagato / Cachallanog Agaal

Hogah hogah anchanallach
ganlanna ongach calan hochna
noglach agall chaanoa acconnachagga
achlan ganchannoch nagannol
haan noch llaanog nachog angallach
gnachaggon clachna ollang callacha
coholl achlan gnaach oglanch
agannag oncallach oclag allon gaahl
chollach anochallo gonlachan anagollan

Hogah hogah anchanallach
allachag ogallo noch chaal
hagaan hochla nannachagan ochanoch
aallochon llonaggach chaallah hogannog
chongan aggalla nognack allagon
naallah noch gannog anaah
lachan ochoa challagal hallacha
agannol noglanch naallah connog
gonlah allachag oannahal glachan

Hogah hogah anchanallach hogah
naagallan cohol llachlonna agalh
nachlocha hallag aganlog ganlon
callach agonlach chaggah choc cholla
oganoa llaanagan cohal angacha
challagga colloch gaanah hallan
achanno clangal naagah ognag
gaanlach allaconnallan chachongah
nallanachan gallagach hallach clangol

Jeff Bagato / Nagan Halloch Cohl Llonagga

Nagan halloch cohl llonagga
anlag chocnollanach aclan cohol
gaanlag, chocnal, hallogana onlach
agalla hoc nonnagan clanach
golloch anagga lannochoa
chanollana achlanog cholnoch alhon
nonoch naagal onallacha choggach honallo
aconnaga chaclonnon golanoch alogh
langan anolgah hagalach chonal
analach occoanog cohl hagh gonal
glanach allach alloga onchochnalla hancon
angonallanah holloch llaacah nachnol

Jeff Bagato / Llaanaganallo Hacla Chagalnach Aglacoa

Anagalan choc anacha lonc allolo llaana
clocha hagcollon allanah hollacco onoa
chaanoch lannog colca clac allonaga
gnaagan, hollonach, chacla gaganalla
logonog anchoc gaan haag gnaachon

Gallag aonoa nochlonna aggac chol hacna
annagga, hannaggan, allanagganolo, concal annog
choncon gaan haggah occollog challah hangan
onnoc claan hongollonoc annaganna hanag
ollono haagac clac hallach onallaggan
llog llaanac annogallonacha
challag hanoc channochanag
gnaagallan chol goaloanon canoch annacha
onnoloc gonconollo allach channog chanlon

Glonallaga haganna coloc gallanoa chaanag
acholon agallanog acaanoc ochoa cannog
llaanoc hallocoac anach hannaga ganla
anaagga cholonnoa cnoglon onacca lannogan
callahacallan gangon annallac coachac hochal
gnallanoc oggal haloc gollonog annoganna
hannogganoch accallacco chanoa chagallag annachal
anlachon clac callanag oghac gnaag acaggo choclach

Jeff Bagato

Jeff Bagato

Jeff Bagato

Jeff Bagato

Jeff Bagato

Adriána Kóbor and József Bíró / from As Well as the Mirror

Adriána Kóbor and József Bíró / from As Well as the Mirror

Dream what I dream of
Live what I live
Identify

Bet on a horse
You shall lose

Dreaming of a diamond
Putting it on a horse

It is my pleasure
to have met you
matter and dust

Living on a diamond
Living like a horse
Living a dream

The lost concours’
purple jacket

Bleached are the days
To be keen on

It’s been a hard life’s
danger-day

The pulse’s elevation
a foothill’s harms

We aren’t equals
dislikes

Horse diamond force
The identification dream

Detach
the horse hauling
the diamond all the way

The wrong haul
A long purpose

The dream’s culture
Prolific little merits

You keep winning
You just keep winning
Immersed

Look at the cliff
Look alike

The horse
The diamond
The dreams

It was my pleasure
To meet

Bail out haul in
Haul in bail out
Bailiff bail if

Living on a diamond
Living like a horse
Living

Bail me out haul me in

The third dimension
is the haul attached

Conceptualize

The haul

The haul

Detach
-ed

Adriána Kóbor and József Bíró / from As Well as the Mirror

Adriána Kóbor and József Bíró / from As Well as the Mirror

posttemporealit


tremendousdouxdocilepoparpoparporouspopar
decantdechantationofanageoffhereandnearnow
whenisnowtellmethetaleofthetailortherealtraitor
whatisloveisallyouneedisthewhatiswhereishow
wherearehowarewhoareyoupleaseturnsideaway
traumtraumatraumaticakfullautomaticmathema
mathematickmytopicsoundwordsandneedless
sharphighheelsandgoalsandeelsandanianpenis
thehappeningsarenewnotnewrepetitiverepetous
reptilepsychopathicillogicalpsychopathological
thevieuwdeliriousarousedarousalrustandruskan
milkteethtoysandhelicodelicodeliciousoptionsan
optersdelicoptersdeleteandsmileandcopyandwas
tewaystelegraphicphotographicphotogrammatic
memoryoriorionsaturniconmartyriconasylumboot
therootcancannotbesharedshavenschokedshelling
theshreddingsheddingpretendthatyouchangethe
voicetheskinakinwearethedollhouseweareindolly
indolentdollyhorsemerriemaremarriagedivortage
themorgagemistermysteriouslytheamuletthebees
buzzinbuzzinbussesmetrospublictransportvehicles
untransportedtransportableuntransportabletelepor
tationthestationpetrolstationthemechanicsandme
chaniciennetheancienneregimethegoldenagethe
sanscoulottewearewithoutandwithinourjeanses
withoutandwithinourgenestheginsthetelomeres
softdyingdrinkcandyetdyodparalyticalurgencycall
yetyetthepilotleavesthecaptheshipleavestheparrot
theclimateleavesfirstthecaptainleavesfirstthesaurus
thesaurusrexrepeattherepeatingrepeatabilitydoyou
copysmileregardlessthefaceinfrontaffrontconfront
noncomfortablenoncomformthedeotedeostedeum
apostcardabossofpostcardssimileslemielmailminth
myrrhandjoltjoyousjealousgreenthewavesthewees
minutousminusculethegiantandthediploiddiploma
niacaldiplomatperduringpersistentthepaperonly
taperoffregainstrenghtdonttakeyourprosacserious
takemyproseandposestakemyposesseriousiama
dollamianidolidolatryidiatrypsychiatrypseudonym
idulteriousadulteriratingadulterioratingadulterated
thecosmosthecossmossthefernsthelichensandthe
mossestakemehomenownowtakemehomeandtake
medonttakeanythingelseawaythantheloveawayfrom
theloveyouidiotmeidiotsheidiotboobytrappedpronoun
prounouncedguiltyprounouncedinnocenthowmany
procentthecraftthecraftworktheaircraftthenavvysavvy
ourontourofftourcontourcontortionalartistcommerci
alisartisfulcrumthediodethedildoofdidothelibidothe
minimrequihumanrequisitetheisoltheisolatedthement
thepestthestrangertheforeignthebarmanthebootleg
acythevictimandhisthoughtsthethroughthethorough
thepigpenandthebigbenandjerrystheicecreamcones
creamvariationsonadreamvariablesvariabiliamemora
ndumdumdumdrumdrumconundrumandtherabbitan
thesnakelafontainewhoisthespeedneedforitofcourse
moreneedfornoneedforloveforspeedspediatricienne
spedificedificeexpediteurtheonewhomoveshomes
kartoffelnthesmileonyourfaceislitterliteracyajoltmy
letterscomingboldbecomingthetrafficinhumanmur
murhurblurbusiesbuzzinthroughthesmileonourfaces
faciesthelimitededitionofsomeonespoliploidifferential
theartistspotentialtremendousdoughnotdonotgrow
butfoldunfoldbeprolificinyoursmileandlettersliterate
illiteratefigurativeskatingonthepagedoesnotopen
thecardboardfaeceskindofmenpackedinvacuum
vacomicthehypercomicthehyperscripttheloboto
mictonicasynchronewiththeeraiscontemporaneal
thetemporalthefrontaltheaffrontalthefemoraltheoral
traditiontradictioncontradictthetrajectoryposttempo
rallyliterallyliteritterliterallyuttertheconsequencepost
cranialuncaringcutintwointocuttingcutlerythoughts
theidealisthesaintwhodoesnthaveanameameme
nottheiconnotetheiconisnottheiconoclastasisas
diseaseofthegoldenrubbedagebabyboomery
theserialoftheartsserialkillerpetalstorestourhearton
aspadetorestoarresttorestoreourheartturnthepage
dephrasedegrammatizeanaanaanabellethecasus
belligliocchibellielagiaccasopraladonnabelladonna
painfromtheconfrontationaldowritewritewellfounta
inpennotanemptypennyforathoughtcoinaphrasal
thediaphragmaticphlegmaticthepassivetheagg
ressorregatereignmylitlitlitbrainreignandrulethe
phraseparadoxalomniousthefluidtheselfthechronic
chromaticandmonochromaticpentatonicmetric
thepleasureasipleaseyouandyousmiledontsmile
simpletonbastardbetonthebestdeathsentence
theunlifeclinicthedislikeunforldthebabybolditis
posttemporealliteraturewatchwhitchscares
read with care turned inside out

Adriána Kóbor and József Bíró / from As Well as the Mirror

Adriána Kóbor and József Bíró / from As Well as the Mirror

Arpine Konyalian Grenier and Kangyi Zhang / Willed Capital: Two Poems

Lyrics: Arpine Konyalian Grenier
Composer: Kangyi Zhang
Performance: Wendy Woon, soprano; Gabriel Hoe, piano

Program Notes:

These poems express the detriments of unfettered consumption while leaning towards what’s human, therefore sustainable. Motivic ideas from Armenian and Chinese folk tunes tether compassion to identity along a silken road that celebrates being alive.

Disguise

The song begins with a reference to the mythical Persephone, deemed the queen of the Underworld after her abduction by Hades. She is also considered to be the Goddess of Spring, and is associated with awakening and regeneration. Wings that fly can also appreciate the depths of the ocean floor. The Chinese words "blue, green, grey" allude to the legendary Chinese melody, Jasmine Flower. Following a contemplative section, the piano sounds out-of-sync as if disparate elements had grabbed hold of the octaves. Then segments gradually coalesce into coherence; the rose and its thorns, the scars and all align, reconciled, consumed, regenerated emptiness and form; cotton-obsessed profits greet urgent human needs, embrace sustainable footprints.

What’s Green What’s Blue

The opening melody begins with two contrasting approaches: a pointillist style over different registers of the piano, and the coherent slurred line of the bass. The music swiftly alternates between digression and coherence, mirroring the idea of "dualities intervene to convene." A neighboring note motif, first appearing prominently as C-B-C, dominates much of the piano part of this movement. The text reminds us to beware of the delusional because there is no true ownership. The brief and blunt arrival of musical elements of the piano declares all is transient. Beware the addictive, the illusive capital. Here, an attempt to create "illusion" assigns four beats to a section of 3/4 time. One hears the four against the three between the right and left hands. Much of the soprano melody references the first movement. For example, "puce chartreuse" uses the same pitches as "Apassionado." After a brief optimism, the movement turns portentous. Nurturing polarity against broader perspectives dims our relationship with nature and threatens sustainability.

Arpine Konyalian Grenier and Kangyi Zhang / Willed Capital: Two Poems

Disguise


The ocean floor
lonely for wing
regenerates

burn slam want

l’anlu hui

blue green grey

transience

how different that is from all things durable
to come together to just become so

scar tissue celebrates a rose

what is law what is metaphor

xingli/ baggage

--------------------------------------- -------------------------

I want a last word with you
having mastered the production of gaps

dare me

anearth spot duly splayed
chew it slightly for taste

wished and willed mianbu (cotton)
apassionado


cotton

consumed as aligned
because we are.

Arpine Konyalian Grenier and Kangyi Zhang / Willed Capital: Two Poems

What’s Green What’s Blue


Dualities intervene to convene

lines and shapes of context and word
I remember architecture

main tenant

congruence and correlation

suchness flashing by is it?

how is ownership generated then?

ach!

what I say to my lover is the song

what social basis would that come from?

------------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------

Honor and replace memory

surplus is sibling to deficit
fictitious capital grows
illusive capital

addictions

some rocks at Death Valley are walking they say
would anyone think of bombing the road?

you and you and you and you
puce chartreuse

coco hue
blue

a theory of justice follows

the particular as parameter

against complacency.

Arpine Konyalian Grenier and Kangyi Zhang / Willed Capital: Two Poems

Arkava Das / Will Alexander's Across the Vapour Gulf: Logos of the aphorism

"Across the Vapour Gulf," New Directions poetry pamphlet #22, is a collection of several aphorisms by poet Will Alexander.

The pamphlet begins with one of Alexander's polyvalent organism sketches on the left page and "A note on the text" on the right -- "When I first laid eyes on the writing of Cioran, I was smitten by the form. The aphorism seemed cleansed of detritus" (7).

The aphorisms that hold together the 54 pages of this pamphlet all participate in this love for, this being "smitten by," the aphorism. They speak of an imaginal order beyond a purely statistical sense of reality and encourage the reader to take leaps of imagination across the vapor gulf of these aphorisms. Such leaps are opposed to the "conscious scaffolding of constantly invoking the psychic gravity of collective consciousness" (9). Imagine reading a fragment from Heraclitus.

"The ordering (kosmos), the same for all, no god nor man has made, but it ever was and is and will be: fire everliving, kindled in measures and in measures going out" (Kahn 132).

What strikes us at once is the sense of beauty and measure nourishing this fragment. What also strikes us is a sense of poetic experimentation and suggestiveness that no amount of philology can exhaust.

Coming back to the aphorisms in "Across the vapour gulf," we read: "To understand the vertical, the perpendicular, one must have sufficient thrusting of the psyche into the margins of existence. As if whole walls of sound were thrown up into a flaming spider's heavens" (9).

As is evident, the focus of these aphorisms is to cumulatively develop a unique language from the ground up that addresses a sense of imprisonment and dukkha. They are meant as pharmakon ("Having passed through various iodine levels of social constriction"), both poison and medicine (as Derrida discusses in Plato's pharmacy) for what Alexander sees as an aversion to envisage (literally face or take on the visage of) an incalculable political reality.

The link between these walls of sound and the echo of Heraclitus is further developed when we read a few aphorisms later "Look into the wall of emptiness and you will see fire, see its origination in nothingness..." (11).

One more observation on the wall. Alexander has often taken to task the hegemonic view of philosophy as an exclusively or exclusionary Western product. For instance, “Greece/ the first true fish of evil/ the first blackened gaze of territorial infants.” (Stratospheric Canticles) In book VII of the Republic, after introducing the cave allegory and after a discussion on astronomy, Socrates tells Glaucon how the philosopher needs to ascend only to come back to the cave later helping in the administration of the city with detachment and wisdom. Alexander, however, nominates the wall itself “emptiness” and then identifies “the fire in emptiness as originating in nothingness.” One is reminded of the Ādittapariyāya Sutta “Bhikkhus, all is burning. And what is the all that is burning?”

In the introduction to Across the Vapor Gulf, Alexander describes the poetic process in these terms: "Poetry, history, philosophy, the essay, medicinally combined appearing on the other side of itself as insight" (7). Here we touch upon the bedrock of the dialectic informing these aphorisms and much of Alexander's work over these years.

Of course it would be a mistake to posit "dialectic," the Word in itself as an angelic motor or stitch at the base of this pamphlet's spine. The aphorisms in this pamphlet are productive in a way that shuns even the poet from approaching them with a superior knowledge. The approach itself is enigma-- "medicinally combined appearing on the other side of itself as insight" (7).

The other side of itself in this dialectic, this phenomenology of the spirit is a political subject that the logos of these aphorisms strives to invoke. "I am a spirit who exposes his mandibles to appear and disappear" (26).

"Say I climb a ladder of wheat, and, say, an owl appears, I then suspend myself as an ampersand ..." (50).

Readers of Alexander will find themselves thinking back to Sulubika the water owl (a figure which the notes at the end of the book "Kaleidoscopic Omniscience" identify as a "great underrecognized flautist in Hawaii"). Much like the famous owl of Minerva, the nocturnal self of wisdom is here shocked into flight not at the dusk of the world but at the conception of a "Kemetic" dawn.

At several points Alexander tackles the question of whether the shift in mindset from the parochial to “a higher kindling” amounts to a forgetting of the real suffering in the world today. Alexander questions whether a simple statistical enumeration of victims can take the place of actual suffering.

"There are mornings when one awakens suffused by Saturnic enfeeblement ... This is not the place to... cast oneself in the role of the traumatized orphan. Yet the latter remains quite the case when a list is compiled of parents lost to drug slaughter in Michoacan" (27).

In the dialectic Alexander plunges us into, there is determinacy after determinacy as metaphor and the individuality that emerges is not a particular infected with the universal but a strange balance of forces "resisting its a priori inclination" (26) and climbing to "an extremity of spiritus where absented sparks glow" (32).

These aphorisms can be seen as a ladder promising an original experience of the dialectic, a journey of the spirit beyond any staring and stately dreams of the absolute. "Who I was and who I continue to be, seems more and more absorbed into other signals of marrow" (36).

Talking about the genesis of this set of aphorisms Alexander confides "The aphorisms welled up and appeared with such astonishing alacrity that they seemed to compose themselves practically fully formed ... Many of the entries from this writing have remained in suspended animation for the greater part of thirty years. Bringing this work out of my personal archive has been fraught with a kind of painstaking archaeology" (7).

What must not be missed is the struggle between the "astonishing alacrity" of the initial emergence and "the painstaking archaelogy" (and Alexander delves into a description of how he had to go over the text and dig up what had appeared in print and electronically and what had not). “Alacrity” and “suspended animation”— the dialectic guiding these works sews these aphorisms into the history of the text. This "archive fever"(as Derrida once put it) is a relentless reaction against the setting down of a law of “universal reason”— a universal reason that unlike Heraclitus’ logos does not acknowledge the superiority of a hidden order of things and that wishes to appropriate the very cosmos.

The aphorisms are reflective judgements, are prana that furiously span the gulf, using the absolving discontinuity between self and self as fuel for further political exploration and freedom, without positing an Absolute known once and for all.



Works Cited

Alexander, Will. Across the Vapor Gulf. New Directions Poetry Pamphlet #22, 2017.

Alexander, Will. Inscrutable Visibility, http://www.yourimpossiblevoice.com/inscrutable-visibility/

Alexander, Will. Kaleidoscopic Omniscience.

Adittapariyaya Sutta: The Fire Sermon, translated from the Pali by Ñanamoli Thera, https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn35/sn35.028.nymo.html.

Kahn, Charles H., and Heraclitus. The Art and Thought of Heraclitus: an Edition of the Fragments with Translation and Commentary. Cambridge University Press, 1981.

Contributors' Notes

Jim Andrews is a poet-programmer-visual-audio-video media poet. His site vispo.com has been the center of his work since 1996. There you can find all sorts of interactive poetry and much else. He lives in Vancouver, Canada.

Jeff Bagato produces poetry and prose as well as electronic music and glitch video. Some of his poetry and visuals have appeared in Empty Mirror, Futures Trading, Otoliths, Gold Wake Live, Brave New Word, H&, The New Post-Literate, and Utsanga. Some short fiction has appeared in Gobbet and The Colored Lens. He has published nineteen books, all available through the usual online markets, including Savage Magic (poetry) and Computing Angels (fiction). A blog about his writing and publishing efforts can be found at jeffbagato.com.

Hugh Behm-Steinberg is the author of Shy Green Fields (No Tell Books) and The Opposite of Work (JackLeg Press), as well as three Dusie chapbooks, Sorcery, Good Morning! and The Sound of Music. He's a steward in the Adjunct Faculty Union at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, where for ten years he edited the journal Eleven Eleven.

József Bíró has been active in the field of art, visual poetry, poetry and mail art for many years.

CL Bledsoe is the author, most recently, of the poetry collections Trashcans in Love and King of Loneliness, and the novel The Funny Thing About…. He lives in northern Virginia with his daughter and blogs, with Michael Gushue, at medium.com/@howtoeven.

Andrew Brenza is the author of the chapbooks Waterlight (Simulacrum Press), Excerpt from Alphabeticon (No Press), 21 Skies (Shirt Pocket Press), And Then (Grey Book Press) and 8 Skies (Beard of Bees Press). His full-length collection, Gossamer Lid, a series of visual poems based on the 88 official constellations of Western astronomy, was published by Trembling Pillow Press. Most days, he works as the director of a small public library somewhere in North America. The complete series of chemical weapons poems can be found at Shirt Pocket Press where it exists as a chapbook called Bitter Almonds & Mown Grass.

James Capozzi is the author of Country Album (Parlor Press) and Devious Sentiments (Finishing Line Press, 2019). He lives in New Jersey and edits the Journal of New Jersey Poets.

Emmitt Conklin works for the Beyond Baroque Foundation in Venice, CA.

Mary Coons is a graduate student at UMass Boston currently completing a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing. Her poetry has previously appeared in Horny Poetry Review, Bad Pony and The Golden Key.

Drew B. David is a visual poet from Alexandria, Virginia. He is the author of The Salad Rhapsodies, an ongoing experiment in long-form vispo. He has been published in Otoliths, shufPoetry and Empty Mirror. He edits the online magazine Angry Old Man Magazine. He also maintains a small press, A Wanton Text Production, which seeks to find, publish and disseminate the most radically "new" literature of the day.

Jesse DeLong's work has appeared in Word For/Word, Colorado Review, Mid-American Review, American Letters and Commentary, Indiana Review, Painted Bride Quarterly and Typo, as well as the anthologies Best New Poets 2011 and Feast: Poetry and Recipes for a Full Seating at Dinner. His chapbooks, Tearings, and Other Poems and Earthwards, were released by Curly Head Press.

Darren Demaree’s poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in numerous magazines/journals, including Diode, Meridian, New Letters, Diagram, and the Colorado Review. He is the author of eight poetry collections, most recently Two Towns Over (March 2018), which was selected as the winner of the Louise Bogan Award by Trio House Press. He is the Managing Editor of the Best of the Net Anthology and Ovenbird Poetry. He is currently living and writing in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

David Felix is a youthful septuagenarian English visual poet who lives in Denmark. For more than fifty years his writing has taken on a variety of forms, in collage, three dimensions, in galleries, anthologies, festival performances and video and in over forty publications worldwide, both in print and online. Born into a family of artists, magicians and tailors he still makes full use of a sketch box easel, chair suspension and a cutting table.

Raymond Farr is author of Ecstatic/.of facts (Otoliths 2011), & Writing What For? across the Mourning Sky (Blue & Yellow Dog 2012), sic transit—"g" (Blue & Yellow Dog 2012, 2016), Poetry in the Age of Zero Grav (Blue & Yellow Dog 2015), Angst of the Large Transparent Man (Blue & Yellow Dog 2017), & more recently, A Deep & Abiding Frequency (Blue & Yellow Dog 2017). Raymond is editor of Blue & Yellow Dog (blueyellowdog.weebly.com) & The Helios Mss (theheliosmss.blogspot.com).

Arpine Konyalian Grenier was born and raised in Beirut, Lebanon after the post-Ottoman era induced French rule of the region ended. She's had four volumes of poetry published, another is forthcoming. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, other credits include multi-disciplinary collaborations, guest editing and presenting at conferences. She lives and writes in Los Angeles.

Daniel Y. Harris is the author of numerous collections of xperimental writing including The Rapture of Eddy Daemon (BlazeVOX, 2016), heshe egregore (with Irene Koronas, Éditions du Cygne, 2016), The Underworld of Lesser Degrees (NYQ Books, 2015), Esophagus Writ (with Rupert M. Loydell, The Knives Forks and Spoons Press, 2014) and Hyperlinks of Anxiety (Červená Barva Press, 2013). Some of his poetry, experimental writing, art, and essays have been published in BlazeVOX, The Café Irreal, Denver Quarterly, E·ratio, European Judaism, Exquisite Corpse, Kerem, The New York Quarterly, Notre Dame Review, Offcourse Literary Journal, In Posse Review, The Pedestal Magazine, Poetry Magazine, Poetry Salzburg Review, Stride, Ygdrasil and Zeek. He is Publisher & Editor-in-Chief of X-Peri.

Jeff Harrison has publications from Writers Forum, Persistencia Press, and Furniture Press. He has e-books from BlazeVOX and Argotist Ebooks. His poetry has appeared in An Introduction to the Prose Poem (Firewheel Editions), The Hay(na)ku Anthology Vol. II (Meritage Press), The Chained Hay(na)ku Project (Meritage Press), Sentence: a Journal of Prose Poetics, Otoliths, Moria, Calibanonline, unarmed, Big Bridge, and elsewhere.

W. Scott Howard teaches poetics and poetry in the Department of English & Literary Arts at the University of Denver. He is the founding editor of Reconfigurations: A Journal for Poetics & Poetry / Literature & Culture. Scott’s poems may be found in BlazeVOX, B O D Y, Diagram, E.Ratio, Talisman, Visible Binary, and word for / word. His collections of poetry include the e-book, ROPES (with images by Ginger Knowlton) from Delete Press; and SPINNAKERS (from The Lune). Scott writes, gardens, and lives in Englewood, CO and commutes year-round by bicycle. He may be found following what crow dost.

Mary Kasimor has been writing poetry for many years and is still looking for her wandering voice. Her recent poetry collections are The Landfill Dancers (BlazeVox Books 2014), Saint Pink (Moria Books 2015), The Prometheus Collage (Locofo Press 2017), and Nature Store (Dancing Girl Press 2017). Her poetry has been published in many journals, including Word For/Word, Touch the Donkey, Posit, Human Repair Kit, Arteidolia (collaboration with Susan Lewis), and Otoliths.

Adriana Kobor is a poet writing and publishing in several languages, in Belgium, the Netherlands and Hungary.

Kent Leatham’s poems and translations have appeared in dozens of journals, including Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Fence, Zoland, Able Muse, and Poetry Quarterly. He received an MFA from Emerson College and a BA from Pacific Lutheran University, served as an associate poetry editor for Black Lawrence Press, and currently teaches creative writing at California State University Monterey Bay.

Tara Orzolek is a writer living in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Cindy Savett’s first book of poetry, Child in the Road, was published by Parlor Press. She is also the author of three chapbooks. Her poems have appeared in journals including LIT, Touch the Donkey, Posit, and The Adirondack Review. She lives on the outskirts of Philadelphia with her family and teaches poetry workshops to psychiatric inpatients at several area hospitals.

Jared Schickling is the author of Guides, Translators, Assistants, Porters: a polyvocal American epic minus the details (2018), The Mercury Poem (2017), and Province of Numb Errs (2016), as well as other BlazeVOX books. Other recent books include Needles of Itching Feathers (The Operating System, 2018), Donald Trump and the Pocket Oracle (Moria Books, 2017), Donald Trump in North Korea (2017), and he edited A Lyrebird: Selected Poems of Michael Farrell (BlazeVOX, 2017). He edits Delete Press and The Mute Canary, publishers of poetry.

D. E. Steward never has had a pedestrian job since college, and has nearly a thousand credits and Chroma One through Five (Archae Editions, Brooklyn, 2018).

Stephanie Strickland’s eight books of poetry include Dragon Logic and The Red Virgin: A Poem of Simone Weil. She has also published eleven digital poems, most recently the Vniverse app for iPad with Ian Hatcher and Hours of the Night, an MP4 PowerPoint poem, with M.D. Coverley. Two books are forthcoming in 2019: Ringing the Changes, a code-generated project for print based on the ancient art of bell-ringing, from Counterpath Press, and How the Universe Is Made: Poems New & Selected from Ahsahta Press. Her website is stephaniestrickland.com.

Clay Thistleton has taught creative writing and literary studies in universities, community colleges and not-for-profit organisations for almost two decades. He is the author of Noisesome Ghosts (Blart Books, in press): a collection of found poetry that investigates the phenomenon of ghosts and poltergeists that have the ability to speak or write. His current project, Never Mind the Saucers, examines documented instances of alien-human sexual contact. Along with his son Dylan, Clay lives in New South Wales, Australia with a fluctuating number of feral cats.

Mark Young's most recent book is les échiquiers effrontés, a collection of surrealist visual poems laid out on chessboard grids, just published by Luna Bisonte Prods. Due out later this year is The Word Factory: a miscellany, from gradient books of Finland, & an e-book, A Vicarious Life — the backing tracks, from otata.

Kangyi Zhang’s work often highlights significant historical and personal experiences, prolific with the use of instruments, orchestral, vocal and acoustic. It has been widely broadcasted and performed in Malaysia, Singapore and The United States, has also received a number of prizes. Currently Kangyi is media director and composer in residence at the Chamber Circle, a music society in Singapore.

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Index of Contributors