Invention Of A New Meaning Humans are in the wrong place , we don’t belong here , this is not our home , we must disengage from gravity . We’ve been tricked into believing otherwise , we don’t belong here : disengage . We are in the wrong place : recharge your imagination , let go . The truth has been lying to us , take comfort in knowing this . If we stay here we’ll lose our sense of logic . The truth has lied , we don’t belong here . This is not our home . We need a new truth : use your imagination . We need to silence language ––use your imagination : the truth is lying.
Martha Deed
A Lethal Mutation Intelligence is a lethal mutation,* Ernst Mayr says, but bird watching, say I, is soothing in its certainty. You see it. You take its picture. When you look again, it stays the same. It does not slither around like expedient Truth ready to escape its skin and don another.
*Ernst Mayr. What Evolution Is.
Interview. http://www.edge.org
Mark DuCharme
Winter’s Crucial Mischief One table for your favorite griot Who would soon dance Like rhinoceroses in haciendas Somewhere east of the posthumous Sahara Of the seas, to celebrate the lost Art of instructional videos Downloaded coldly on a night in Winter’s crucial mischief Like Nicholson on a nitrous oral The truth is a matter for noxious strangers & The way you look when night Is a metaphor for crowd control & The wind looks just the same Cauterized by rain
Mark Young
The Night of the Caribou There are fewer than ten days left. We are heading out for a post-dinner stroll before contin- uing on to breakfast. The status quo has rusticated & cows now graze along its edges. In exchange for food we have been given shovels to clear away the expanse of bovine shit that has accumu- lated since the last patsies they could find departed. Our native land recedes in memory as the inability to return there increases. So far we have seen no caribou.
Eric Mohrman
Aftermath There is a stately brick home. there's a breeze. there's a breezeway. there's a bronze stairway spiraling up to a balcony with a balustrade. The night wraps ringly around her finger. inhale. the fire at the tip of her cigarette crackles and grows briefly brighter. exhale. the smoke sinks like a semisolid. There is a broken promise disguised as a broken bottle. the shards float freely away.
Eileen R. Tabios
HOPE: First 2021 Poem Once upon a time, as a poet I was a maximalist— I considered the haiku a corset The gods were bored, thus, played with me— they made me invent hay(na)ku. I didn’t think it funny but the gods slapped knees in laughter— I am not a god, thus, gritted my teeth. But I refuse to forget— Today I excel in writing poems blasting gods off pedestals, like XYZ whose slitted but salivating eyes and tongue reign with a deadly combination: cruelty with mischief—thus, the year 2020. Well, the god-slayer have come, am here*: I grasp bouquets of roses, voluntarily clasping palms around thorny stems. My blood drops to shivering ground as seeds more deceptive than cats eating raw mice in gods’ bowls. This seed is buried deep for sprouting deceptively-perfumed blooms where nobody expects: if you are not cruel, if you strive to do well by your fellow Kapwa, if you still believe in ethics, I am here, grizzled, snow-haired, unafraid. “Happy New Year!” (* after Jose Garcia Villa)
Sheila E. Murphy
How Do We Unrest
How do we unrest together? Form
fitting innocence delimits our
research
aspiring to a feigned rapport,
shuttering the views of
youth in peril
seeking to distinguish flowers
from devouring clans who pluck them.
Set the tone with pursed lips making
points sans impact vocalizing to the
empty chairs chastising
gravitation light and whims
downsized to form
a colony of dogma leaving home
a glut of old codes that demand a clash
The Way Jim Worked
He allowed daylight to be itself. He took in glimmers of the depth and surface and arranged them for a while. He spoke longhand in a gentlemanly way. Fruits of his labor were to come. I know the leisurely approach would warm us as we waited for the chime, seeing a finished thing not about itself. It was about the way he thought. This long-term way of seeing that perfection might occur as soon as summer or whatever season he forgot. Each part came true, meant not the whole until. I see his voice instead of hearing it. He came into the building where I write. He stayed. It was a quiet rather southern time.
Waiting for arrival just the same as waiting for another time and place
Glenn Bach
from Atlas
About this light: a million dirty moons
in the sweaty air, a thousand cattle in the hills.
Cat shriek, overspill of TV just out of ear-
shot, breakers of traffic in the cool still.
Palms never sleep as buildings roll on ball
bearings, coils thick as twisted torsos sway
like reeds in the dusty breeze of the big one—
—quakes hop-scotch across faults as P waves
rearrange the topography: down suddenly
and sideways: liquefied soil like so many
drunk molecules or strings of energy shifted
into new social circles. Concrete loses to weeds
of rising rents in L.A., of the lifeless air within
this structure, rugs over carpets below stairs
worn in patterns, in pathways, in dark streaks
down the middle of each freeway lane.
Matthew Rana
tom hibbard
Stephen Bett
Phyllis Webb: The Spit And spit give me water for spit. Then give me a face. Solitary Confinement1 ―Phyllis Webb And spit broken glass for shards to speak give me water for spit. Gloss this mal du doute … never was spat out Then give me ash in time to witness its burn a face. To spite itself still 1. This section of Webb’s poem starts, “Let my tongue hang out / to remember the thirst for life. / Let my togue hang out / to deliver itself / of the bitter curd. / And spit / …”
J. D. Nelson
garbage bag home to the lemon is the pie of the world we found the dollar bugs to beat the egg with the shimple pooh of that trying randall spaghetti yarn to marble a bacon to get the rice of the comma oink never a shield of the tomorrow egg the cosmic angle of the new day to be the people of the world a mite now of bexter triceratops the king of the ice the oven is a mirror of the sluppy time to crock
Michael H. Brownstein
Levidrome In the aftermath of aftermaths there came a man of math who knew after-maths shtam-retfa wenk oho htam fo nam a emac ereht shtamertfa fo htamertfa eht ni and so it went dog begot god god begat dog looped pool-ed level reap level pear ton of (k)not(s) was (a) saw and so it is htam retfa emac ohw nam a saw ereht tub htamertfa rehtona ton saw ereht htamertfa eht fo gninrom eht ni in the morning of the aftermath there was not another aftermath but there was a man who came after math
Delia Tramontina
Cheryl Pallant
Featherbone Hitched Hole
when it comes to feet, liver,
genitals, intestines, brains, my
stomach drips over the rice bowl
politely
the absence of midair collisions
raises citizens out of poverty
and radishes maximize land use
transmitted through cell phones
soaked in pepper sauce
gruesomely
resist fate already eaten by worm
larvae master shape shifters devoted
to seaweed or a convenience to
finger and spoon
nonchalantly
inspire awe through the
intestinal track three
stories high intended for
export
ambiguously
Nava Fader
Yash Seyedbagheri
Dear Persians Dear Persians, I sit upon the periphery of a sofa while you conceal parlance in seagull-like laughter I didn’t get the joke no man is an island, except for the American of Persian descent the bad son, cousin, acquaintance who doesn’t deign to learn the language what are you saying why can’t you ask one question that I can answer in parlance all my own how is your writing, what do you want from life do you want from a glass of wine let me tell you about this Persian scholar or that poets who made Persian powerful come join us, ask me why I’m not smiling Dear Persians, why can’t you open your laughter and let me step inside but you just keep laughing and you tell me smile just keep laughing and I from move periphery to the floor while the laughter rises and you take to the dance floor reciting choruses all around me where else can I go but the floor at least it’s a space
Jeff Harrison
Syllable Crypt
V was
thinking
in the letter V…
it’s like
not having hands
it’s like
crooners swoop
spooked ever
like schooners, like
waves of Vs are steps
for the stripped strays
like V-poetries are shines
for folded eyes
V stares the woods down
“The V disease vows constancy”
through a glass…
from nothing smile
“present vows half-open
had never been heard of”
Ben Nardolilli
Good Day, Applicant
I was taking on immigration policy via song,
and hoping for a UNESCO compensation payment
But now my wounded nature is thinking of letting go
in advance of reading any more work, meanwhile
The winners of awards ceremonies are still filling out
my dance card with exclusive impressions
That reveal who really controls the secret plan:
lawnmowers on the border in search of free agency
Half a bookshelf of political theory tells me so,
the other now serves me as a standing desk
The old prizes? Complimentary brothel tickets,
a way for the of the future to say its cooler than yours
Yet I go on, saying: Dear Writer/Reporter/Blogger/
Freelancer, recording is easy: reminder, one month left
Karen Neuberg
Augurs Out of a blue haze, crows fill sky with raucous pattern. Circling a tree, they settle on its branches. Hold out your hands, they urge, so we can divine if you live your life with the wild in your heart. My hands while reaching out keep pulling back.
Christopher Shipman
Andrew Brenza
Kelsey Browning
September and October 2017 Great news, riot meeting Urgent in London- Tomorrow! We’re more Than just petitions. 9/10 internships in Asia go on sale Tonight! Welcome On board to our secret Weapon. What’s the Best city in Europe? Marx yo with squirrelly Heathrow wifi Can you smell BIRDFEED? Other Live essay 2 out for The kill. W2GKE5: LHR-ORY Stock up on international Friends before it’s too Late! Good news: Therapy all booked.
Connor Orrico
# asunder bard clarion! disabuse ere fulmination gorgonizes hamartia in juxtaposed kenosis, leaving manifold noisome oddments predating quixotry rending sensibilia thrumming under vortiginous welkin xenoglossy ycelpt zeitgeber!
Mark Young
One for the Border Force So maybe you take the chance & walk out across the sand & into the sea. Maybe they won’t notice you there among the dervish gulls, think you’re a rock or a resting seal. & even if they do they probably won’t care. Their job is to stop people from coming ashore, not to stop the malcontents from leaving. Just don’t turn a- round & try to come back. Croft / Craft Pertinence. Soft words hold little of it. Better to pick up stones to make your point & leave the phraseology to bricklayers. That’s what they do after all, the regular lines, off- set against each other, in natural cadence, a start / a finish to it all, looking for that last un- settled, previously unen- cumbered, piece of land.
