Oct 28, 2022

Poem by Jane Joritz-Nakagawa

From LUNA

NOTE: Some words were taken from a poem published in Upstairs at Duroc in 2016 by Dylan Harris and from the book In June the Labyrinth by Cynthia Hogue


the ceiling fan spins angrily
in the drafty room

com promise
con test
con geal
comm and
comma nd
comi cal coma
car cinoma

ethnic cleansing
cyber bully
soul murder
naked clowns

figure head
port wine stain

the sound of voices shattering

common sonnet
momentary religion
eyelid corruption
tree revolutions
poetic sin
mangled fertility
sadistic blueprint
managing my PTSD

i put on your ashes
as if with a knife

i have come too close
and must now retreat

back into the wet grass
my whirlwind of delusions

the wind moves slowly over me
as if burning me

a Wilhelm scream
one has to grow one's sex
June at the gumshoe of chortles
it's a sound
the yen
all those tools
pray your attention span
axes the land you pulverized
get the net
to shovel the
world but if ever
the listless sun


inadvertent self-harm

phenomenological stoma

"a world of wounds"

methadone sludge

"surrounded by fear"

lazy pirouette

unbalance scale

hunch truth

fulcrum touch

accidental genital

entwined hours

walks away

peace display

glistening chores

moon journey

eloquent spine

colorless breasts

fearful maze

in summer

still waiting


mind demons
world fuck
garden midlife
embroidery women
envisioned tail
gloomy tale
(soon ends)

random deposits
fury ample
inevitable wave
final smile
chafed index
lonely laughter
collapsed hearts

vast despair
common baggage
dense dampness
immeasurable cloud
human pose
expanding solitude

eager notebook
inorganic flowering
restless strawberry
painful rain
schoolbook whispering
uncrossable river
banned trees

straw waltz
dome piano
lazy star
vast directives
miniature eruption
weakened prophecy
mass-produced sentiments
political highland
adhesive peep show

Poem by Stephen Bett

Novel Lines 101:  101 alphabetical poems, each riffing on the opening line of a postmodern novel or metafiction. Antonio Lobo Antunes, Act o...