Poems by Joshua Martin

STUDDED HOLE IN THE WALL

twisted ciphers undulate
chopped potato deer hooves

released ponder shirt tail
wonderful asparagus rifle
stunted wet miscreant
homeless unto lozenges

throat clenches photographs
wafting haystack crashing
timed beauty altar
crab witness guarantee
lumber fleeing camaraderie
relish microphone theatricality
slogging forward avenue spittle

chortled loyal partygoers
punch drunk dribbling

laudable paradox pier
not yet hot raw & seldom
wrinkled nose proverb
candlewax infinity cross

waterspout lookalike vinegar
train pulls into burnt landscape

already superimposed skillset
aimless bombastic magician
slamming mallet childhood
a canyon risen between greed

fallen paragraph bubble crown
oceanside mistletoe wraith

misery loves happenstance


AQUAMARINE SUBLIMINAL ILLUSTRATIONS 

dust the thorough magnetic trousers
busying blossom champagne crusts
stunned like kangaroos
left in wooded bookbinding hut

clarity of a mountain mangled
over Soviet montage flippers
wearied insatiable ticking
release pole-vaulted fingernails
unsteadily mopping galactic avocados

wimpy a whispering carousel
the lawn ornament coughing
to reward mischief sneaking
resourceful yet backlogged

blue then shorn
must have figured handpicking
sorting hot air balloon snot
once soaked in microwave brunch
regretfully administering moles

achievement hands bask
dripping panorama
wandering yippee lunch wraths
stone-faced until chapped
fusing lips into clouds

Poems by Stephen Bett

INFRA LASTING

If it’s infrathin it’s gotta be well short
of “infrasimilar”

As gurl to grrl…

Same diff, or not really?
(an A’muricanISM)

Go teach your grandmother
to suck electric prunes (dear)
(masquerading in the fridge?)

This crew at sea —
[We’re] not ready to face the light
[We] had too much to dream
Last night

Think dream, sailor
If thinkin’ could be dreamin’
(more than a thin diff)
wch aint for real, that
boat sailed

Well, I told you once an’ I told you twice…

InfraTHIN’s “the very lastness of things
… [a] frail and final minimum before
reality disappears”

(Bang, homesteader)

This could be the last time…
Oh, no Oh, no-o-o

So darlin’, save the last dance
… us mincing ones

It’ll put your duplicitous reel
on edge


Notes: The Electric Prunes, “I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)”; Rolling Stones, “The Last Time”; The Drifters, “Save the Last Dance for Me”; Re: “the very lastness”— see Paul Matisse footnote to “Inhabiting the Sound Gaps”; Re: “the real” as duplicitous—see Robin Blaser’s essay on Spicer, “The Practise of Outside”; David Dowker introduces us to his (?) term “infrasimilar” in his poem “The Information Paradox” (Dissonance Engine)


M LETTERED READY FOR USE

Last night
Thinkin bout las’ night…

It was reel it back in

It was She-e-e-e-e-e-ry, Sherry bay-yay-bEE

It was mincing up airy-fairy & fiery
— Oh no, oh no, you’re gonna b-u-u-rn! —
right down to the lastest glittery ember

It was rolling round the roses Rosie
mein frau dug infraRED out of sight

It was won’t you come out tonight
pyre higher & higher on a magiK
red-hot-wire carpet flier

It was Sher-err-erry airheads flambée
bloodstains track the hall of miЯRors
(It were nowhere Rreal womyn’d done gone)

It was Sailor Grrl cresting adrift
our on·lie the lone·lie muse, feisty
M lettered ready for USE

Notes: The Traveling Wilburys, “Last Night”; Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons; Arthur Brown, “Burn”

Poems by Stacy Black

BY CHANCE OR NATURE’S CHANGING COURSE UNTRIMM’D

You ride an ordinary wave of pain.
You live. Others
are annihilated

by aliens, by love, by the government.
You read your fortune in an alley
in a dried splatter of gunk:

You’ll be going away on a long trip!
You pack your life into a cardboard box
going soft at the corners,

tape it all up and take it into the attic
where there are no days or nights.
You live. You marry

the first mannequin you meet.
Your life together lasts a long time, waiting
for the mail to come.


OBLIVION

Experts predict California to burn again this year
because California is beautiful that is its destiny
or so I’m told
by everybody, the movies and ancient scrolls

I have spent my life unearthing from beneath your sleeping form
like an angel beached on the shores of this world.
I live in a city with a medium-high amount of murder
and violent crime,

far away from the sea.
You can talk about love if you want.
Or New York, I guess.


POSTERITY

You were there, slipping
through time and space
and wiping the white dust

of antiquity from your phone
as Rome burned and doctors
began bleeding George Washington.

You tried telling him about
his great white obelisk,
and how there’d come a time

when no one in America
would carry cash. Later,
Rimbaud flipped you the bird.