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 Keith Nunes

COUNTRY

Collections of
Gross domestic products
Concrete slabs, blocks of mass
The urge to purge
Grass clods
Flitters - flutters
Wombs & wounds
Reforms & reformatories
Seasonal shunts
Ellipsis where the dead stood
Land trod
Eyes & ears & what is said and
What is not,
A Grand Alliance of 2, of 20, of 200,
Hands holding, fingers pointing
Beasts & burdens
Clusters, accumulations
Snows, Sands, the Salty
A bunch of, and
Pretty much a mess
A mass
of
Collectibles
Collated, arranged
In overlapping, arbitrary order,
To the limit.


STAY ON TOP

Exhaustion
Of spirit
               Stood still
               Eyes shut
Waiting for
Toast to clunk
Parchment biscuity
Noonish moon sliced in half,
Frosted morning breaks
Away in glacial transit
Grouchy-grandad-calloused-afternoon,
Pig-like trotters
Run the road
Aside the sea,
Fraudulent glitter of
Diamantina
Bay’s water
Swim on top
Best
Not to go under #

CIRCLING

In certain circles                they call me rude

In certain circles                a tight-sphincter prude

In certain circles I’m square 

So a nuisance nonagon 

Bent threat to the cycle,

In certain circles I’m a rock or

A baring-weight brick

Thrown thru a see-all portal,

In certain circles I do the rounds

Circulate counter-clockwise

                                               Leave the circle on a tilt

                                               Spinning out 

                                               Of control 

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.

Poems by Mark Young

BROADCAST NOISE

Not shot full of skittering beasts
said someone — or was it beats? Or
was it the Titanic that really sank
or some similar sister ship? & why
are ships considered female? Com-
plexities of the English language
supposes one source, though sauce
for the goose should also be until
the chauvinists ride into town to
say the magnificent Bismarck will
always be a male. Which is why it
was able to be severely damaged,
weighed down by an exaggerated
penile structure that was meant to
frighten attackers away but instead
had the gulls screaming once more
onto the beach in a comic accent
that had its roots in Wagnerian op
art campfire singalongs. So much
potential, but all that meat & no
potatoes as the fat swallow used
to say means nobody's really inter-
ested in trying to sift the solids out
of this raucous collideascope of raw
noise that's being endlessly broad-
cast from every orifice that we are
surrounded by & surrendered unto.


& EVERYBODY KNEW WHICH WAY THE WIND BLEW
(an acrostic for the day)

Weathervanes used to be a sign of nobil-
ity until Dylan came along & said "you don't
need a weathervane to know which way
the wind blows." Or something like that.
Even then, even after the harmonica stopped
resonating, even after this unsubtle &
savage putdown of the ruling class, their
own idea of self-worth, self-fueled most

likely, kept their beliefs intact. Any disdain
stemming from the lower classes could be at-
tributed to their lack of proper education, or
inattention to the precepts of their betters, or
could just be that beauty is not always in the
eye of the beholder. Then the rain arrived.


DESPITE WHICH

Cardamom seedpods lie across the
road leading out of the petrified
forest. The trains have stopped
running; & small birds are now
the carriers of freight, employed




to take away any detritus of em-
pire that still remains. Back into
the forest, following any one of
several flight paths that weave a
way through trunks & branches

that lead in many directions. Then
they disappear from sight — &
that is the last time the relics are
ever seen. But some hours later
the birds reappear, flying down

the road, each with a seedpod in
their beak which is dropped onto
the road below as they emerge out
into the open. Obviously payment
for their task, but from & for whom?