Garin Cycholl

from prairied

I speaks for the Mississippi basin;
the oracle, a shallow well 9 mi. SW of Rafetown

in my middling age, I have become quick—
quick to notice the bent boards under my bed
quick to notice the soil bent to light
quick to notice the shortstop’s bend, his
loss of step “to the hole”

the Atrizine River flows into the bone and stones of me,
a gallon of bleach dumped down a shallow well;
the dead world flat against my dead eye—
the prairie in me accelerates, the story of lungs
gone to seed down into the great slop sink of the Republic

a simpleton with my
lumpy breast and dead
cat “everywhere is
Dakota”

I never met a
frog I didn’t
no greek
no greek
no greek can
prairie ’s
this

quick, prophet! invasive
and local       your god’s
eye—his reflection
of a shadow
in the pond,
or the snake
in slow crawl
along the foundations;
trim your own eye to the world

Kateri Lanthier

Sirens

I was the waif in the snowbank of the banquet hall parking lot.
A voluptuous stray. A bravura drunk. My thoughts encrypted in sugar.

Chiming through my rain-streaked gaze, the hues of this week’s cocktail:
curaçao blues, maraschino rage, olive, lime cordial, not bitter.

Unplugged from the folk circuit, unhinged by your grin.
When the heat deigns to return, the extremities sing pain.

The perimeter keeps expanding. Shots ricochet round the arch.
Catch me, catch me, if you must! Bake me into the Earth’s crust.

I clawed you from the rock and now you glisten on my finger.
In the marble at your temples, I can trace the throb of doubt.

All night the blind truck-river-road courses past my house.
Sirens swim the butterfly to comfort each shipwreck.

Raymond Farr

My Feet Are Sugar to Wandering Boys

& so I’m not wearing shoes
I’m having some trouble moving some files

& I’m all over the highway simply looking
& it’s like I’m walking underwater

& I can’t hear you banging yr small hammer
At sunset the boardwalk is empty

& it’s like my infrared thoughts are
Copulating a document into existence

& it scares me & a sequence begins: Tickle Me Elmo—
A thousand innuendoes west of Las Vegas

& winter’s a lion roaring in the sheer drop of noise on a highway
& my queer monopoly money is folded into wings

Into LSD typos, into the little red weeds of the unreal city
Of the smaller denominations

& the sky is a corn field ravaged by goldfinch
& not a sick garden burdened with stiff goldenrod

& blocking my path to enlightenment
You walk away with the bath water

There is lumpy vomit all
Over my bell bottoms