RealPoetik

Masin Persina

2012-01-22T11:48:00.003-05:00

OUTDOOR LIFE IN THE DELIGHTFUL WHITE MOUNTAINS

Despite the protest of the better class,
the hanging was public. Crowds came early
by private conveyance. Vendors
had secured concessions for feeding
the throngs with sandwiches, coffee,
peanuts and lemonade. It was more like
a gala picnic than the dispatching
of a soul to eternity. He walked
toward doom with a steady step
while the press asked him, at some length,
of his stay amongst us.
“Did our hospitality fatigue you?”
“Is there anything that impresses you
above all else?” “Have you formed
an impression of the size of our navy?”
“Are you likely to retard at the chop
off the mouth of life, or will you return?”
It was difficult to say if he was deeply touched
or could not find the right words.
Nonetheless, he was the only man present
who had enough sense to keep silent.
The police finally dispersed the crowds
and the handlers of baggage, who wantonly destroy,
continued to do so at the train station.

Originally from Washington DC, Masin Persina lives and teaches in Oakland, CA. His poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in elimae; Everyday Genius; Forklift, Ohio; Leveler, Sixth Finch, Sycamore Review and elsewhere.

Stephanie Anderson [Part Three]

2012-01-15T12:49:00.006-05:00

STORM, SECONDARY PLATE

* Please click on the image to enlarge. *

Stephanie Anderson is the author of four chapbooks: A Spot A Scheme (forthcoming, Cinematheque Press), The Nightyard (Noemi Press), The Choral Mimeographs (dancing girl press), and In the Particular Particular (New Michigan Press). She edits Projective Industries and is poetry editor for the Chicago Review.

Stephanie Anderson [Part Two]

2012-01-08T14:30:00.004-05:00

Storm, Secondary Plate

Please click on the image to view a larger version.

Stephanie Anderson

2012-01-01T22:53:00.001-05:00

PAGE 72

*Click the image to enlarge.*

Stephanie Anderson is the author of four chapbooks: A Spot A Scheme (forthcoming, Cinematheque Press), The Nightyard (Noemi Press), The Choral Mimeographs (dancing girl press), and In the Particular Particular (New Michigan Press). She edits Projective Industries and is poetry editor for the Chicago Review.

A.E. Watkins

2011-12-25T11:46:00.002-05:00

TO CALLISTO, WHO WAS FIRST A GIRL, THEN A BEAR, THEN LATER THE BEAR CONSTELLATION

If I peel back the wallpaper of this world, Callisto, will I find
myself in your age? Will I be

closer to you? If the crows show as chips in a pale sky, does it mean
you still decorate the distance somewhere? I know here

holds my face like some motel’s portrait hung
in the lobby of each day, and the night’s room

has curtains I pull back to see if your slow gait in stars still
crosses my latest black window. Sometimes

I imagine us as the sole cast in Arcady – the gods unwritten,
without us. It is for spite that they spell our bodies

in animals, that they turn us to wonder
where we go beneath our coarse hides, our coats growing thicker

with each passing winter. And your groves grow odious,
my rooms in the city speak

as though they don’t know me, as we walk the freshly painted halls
of each year. But if I were a bear, Callisto –

you among poplars, myself nearby the populace –
how I would tear through this world to companion.

A.E. Watkins is a graduate of the MFA program at Saint Mary’s College of California and currently attends Purdue University’s Graduate English Program. His first collection of poetry, Dear, Companion, is forthcoming from Dream Horse Press in 2012. Individual poems can be found in Barrow Street, Copper Nickel, Denver Quarterly, Handsome, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Ninth Letter, Notre Dame Review, Verse Daily and elsewhere.

Christopher Kondrich

2011-12-18T09:27:00.004-05:00

from CONTRAPUNTAL

That beautiful melody? It is already within us
Tim was sorting through his compositions

                       we need to find a way to bring it closer
                       to brush our end against its end, but we must remain

and regardless if I am satisfied with it
I have to abide by the metronome

                       I want to study piano because in doing so I will destroy
                       my discreteness. One is always concerned with one’s discreteness

this tiresome harangue of mine, would you believe me
just as I was reaching the terminus or whatever point

                       in the mind that receives it. Listen to this, Tim said
                       playing nothing. Do you hear what I hear

I would have to do it myself
with my own hands, Tim continued,

                       sometimes I am struck, my chair a closer
                       companion than anyone I know.

Christopher Kondrich is the author of Contrapuntal, forthcoming in the Free Verse Editions poetry series. He is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Denver.

MRB Chelko [Part Two]

2011-12-11T10:09:00.004-05:00

from M O T H E R M A Y I

have

something like a mystery to solve, not that

a floppy straw hat

to organize the light, it falls all over me like this isn't New York

you wouldn't understand, how darkly my sunglasses sit

on the ground arms folded

this concrete is sand

no parking sign a love letter

right? scrawled

in lipstick in blood

let's romanticize everything

glare like you want me

MRB Chelko is Assistant Editor of the unbound journal, Tuesday; An Art Project. She has poems in current or forthcoming issues of Indiana Review, POOL, Washington Square, Forklift, Ohio and Verse Daily among many others. Her second chapbook, The World after Czeslaw Milosz, is forthcoming from Dream Horse Press.

MRB Chelko

2011-12-04T10:54:00.003-05:00

from THE MARCH

The airless blue
to wake alive

again
place no thought no finger on

that miracle
life

ha
to get one

and discover work
music

the snow melts
reveals it's been collecting

bones
death I tear from my dog's throat

the way we want to eat each other up
the way we lick our swollen lips

our chapped lips
I'm alive

I tell my shirt because I want to take it off
when I talk about love I mean

am I the only one
this will need to be revised

I will need to be forgiven
and locked inside for some time

to wake alive
to sit at the table

stare at an open kitchen drawer
and think

never close

MRB Chelko is Assistant Editor of the unbound journal, Tuesday; An Art Project. She has poems in current or forthcoming issues of Indiana Review, POOL, Washington Square, Forklift, Ohio and Verse Daily among many others. Her second chapbook, The World after Czeslaw Milosz, is forthcoming from Dream Horse Press.

Adam Fieled

2011-11-27T11:00:00.001-05:00

#1200

She asked me how I did it,
I turned my arm over, said
look at these veins, I write
with them, they are a well,
she said well that’s all very
dramatic, but those veins
should be used for life—

if your blood is working
double-time, your heart will
only get half of what it
needs. She hurt me, I said
leave my blood alone, you
can never understand, but
her full house beat my flush—

Adam Fieled is a poet based in Philadelphia. He has released five print books: Opera Bufa (Otoliths, 2007), When You Bit... (Otoliths, 2008), Chimes (Blazevox, 2009), Apparition Poems (Blazevox, 2010), and Equations (blue & yellow dog press, 2011), as well as e-books like Beams (Blazevox, 2007), Disturb the Universe: The Collected Essays of Adam Fieled (Argotist e-books, 2010), and Mother Earth (Argotist e-books, 2011). He has work in Jacket, Cordite, Pennsound, Poetry Salzburg Review, the Argotist, Great Works, Tears in the Fence, Upstairs at Duroc, and in the & Now Awards Anthology from Lake Forest College Press.

MC Hyland

2011-11-13T23:12:00.001-05:00

SWIM-CINEMA & YOU

your skin
in the flame falling
the lightest snow
in rhythm

are we in a new
kind of beach
clouds refracted &
static as though

my eyes only watch
the boat devoid
the gate placed by
sur la côte d’azur

& the slow drift
from the hillside
how the names
beach this water

forehead crease
waves gently upon
the light in the
woman & boy

& now leaves
winking & reflective
within a jar
the man crushed

a black cloak the
madonna these walls
& an arrow
in the din & dim fog

MC Hyland is the author of Neveragainland (Lowbrow Press) and the chapbooks Every Night In Magic City (H_NGM_N), Residential, As In (Blue Hour Press) and (with Kate Lorenz and Friedrich Kerksieck) the hesitancies (Small Fires Press). She lives in Minneapolis, where she runs DoubleCross Press and the Pocket Lab ReadingSeries, and works at Minnesota Center for Book Arts.

Caroline Young

2011-11-06T12:00:00.001-05:00

RECONSTRUCTION FLYERS

Because birds do not wait for insurance agents,
I assess

the mother as she settles on the Elm
eyes over broken limbs

drops and bombs, sizing twigs by beak.

Dwelling under fallen trees
her silence

keeps things simple. The adjuster whys over
every brick, measures life

in shingles, chimney, sheetrock, boards and nails.
I review my coverage.

Overhead, the harbingers drift.
Beneath, the street life lies: eyes negotiate

lines down, sidewalks strewn in reconstruction flyers
remains are not to be removed

by firemen, lawyers, photographers, anyman
with a chainsaw.

I count torn gutters to resettle.

Where trees once lined the street – a sky
beneath, a row of brittle homes

strip-searched by the storm.

Amid the rubble, nests are born
of insulation, splintered beams.

Caroline Young has grown increasingly tired of our culture’s persistent cat/dog debate. Both animals are masters of the kill shake, so what is there to discuss? If someone wants to write a poem about this, she will read it. Otherwise, she’ll just keep putting her faith in trees. Thanks for reading the work.

J. Michael Wahlgren

2011-10-30T09:22:00.006-05:00

WIDE MARGINS

yes
I conflux into me, the person
I’ve longed to be most
days I quiver mostly
away
from hex
hours,
the lemon branches
leave waters sour.

That winter,
The suits & shovels
arrive
with elegance:
fashion: long
long boots
strut a mile
until us through,
no.

J. Michael Wahlgren is a publisher for Gold Wake Press. He is author of Valency (BlazeVox Books, 2010) & Silent Actor (Bewrite Books, 2008) & an unpublished collection entitled, Chromatography.

Topher Hemann

2011-10-24T08:32:00.003-05:00

MATERIAL SHIFT

for Matthias Regan

thinking thru things

the material of it

what I thought

it would be was

more solid, more

like this voice is

almost an audible

pressure behind ear

drum—it's a click

thinking thru light

switches the ease

with which faucets

expect water

every thing broken

reveals its utility

a hammer bare to tang

returns to its

unhandleable lump

but not its purpose:

thru new verbs material

shifts as a mind

grapples not so much

with what it is but what

the word for it does

pressing against the ear

Topher Hemann grew up in rural New Hampshire, where he worked as a stonemason, landscaper and gardener. He graduated from the University of Chicago's MAPH program in 2006. He has lived in South Korea since 2007 and teaches in the College English Program at Seoul National University. His poems have recently appeared in The Cultural Society.

Kate Schapira [Part Two]

2011-10-09T23:36:00.005-05:00

SAFETY FACT 5

You cannot always hear a train coming, especially high speed and quiet electric trains!

A dead one doesn’t know anything anymore

She doesn’t become a spirit with the right to hold

or invite herself to tunnel through you

If the train got me I’d be just like most people

Most speeds are high, most times cut in half

Keep coming back or reverting to undergrowth

and other things people have built—

the awkward but accurate position of “we”

destroying “ourselves” to build the railroad

I haven’t liked to pretend to be big

when I know I’m small

listening for the sounds of great violence approaching

Listening to you and the sound of movement through you

The movement we belong to like a border

between the planet’s hot history, magma states

soft ball and thread stages and the way

when the water touches us we roll up

We leave the water more full of water than ourselves

Sink gently because when you’re relatively small

gravity is not your most important force

Forces will take ownership of our surfaces

and our one day dead material

bursting with lionfish-like lights

Kate Schapira is the author of TOWN (Factory School, Heretical Texts, 2010), The Bounty: Four Addresses (forthcoming from Noemi Press before year's end), and two more books forthcoming in 2012 from Stockport Flats and Horseless Press, as well as chapbooks from Flying Guillotine, Horseless, Rope-A-Dope and Cy Gist Presses, and Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs. She lives in Providence, RI, where she co-curates the Publicly Complex Reading Series and teaches writing to college students and 4th grade scientists.

Kate Schapira

2011-10-02T11:19:00.003-05:00

SAFETY FACT 4

Railroad tracks, trestles, tunnels, bridges, yards and rail cars are private property.

When I can’t see the family of a person

I can imagine they’re their own property.

I can go wandering over your bridges and trestles

your lonely but in-constant-action tracks and yards

and weeds and tags your body’s the entrance to.

A person can be owned but not own or

the train goes the other way toward

the opening point I linger near.

Bodies are mutually exclusive—this not that—relax—

that’s the way to love them mine including yours—

The tracks stretch night and pale day.

I feel like I’d be moving in the right direction

if I were behaving in the bravest way

my bravest self imagines:

magnetic explorer! Congress of crossings!

Friction is one way to generate heat

whether you want it or not

what’s the biggest gift

a train can give us?

I don’t think it’s safety

It might be electricity

It might be outside the soaked tradition chest.

Yvette Johnson

2011-09-25T09:15:00.002-05:00

Yvette Johnson is the author of three chapbooks. Her poems can be found in the DMQ Review, Glitter Pony, Chaparral and Bateau. Work is forthcoming in Octopus and Lines + Stars. Thanks to poet Claudia Handler for the notes.

John Stovall

2011-09-18T09:35:00.003-05:00

STUCK

| couldn't get the tape

off the bottom the door

wedged shut from the inside, even

that | couldn't shake loose in the back the drawer

caught on itself wouldn't open

everything was in there my shoes, my keys, my word, my

dark secrets | was ready to free,

light, burdens, potency, exceptions, fucking

hammer, my out, my there, my analogue,

analogue's analogue, the reception, and the receiving, the deceiving

was in here how many corners were there

on all the surfaces forced to stay still

| moved, finding a familiar place in this

world of closets and rooms.

John Stovall has a B.A. in English from the University of Georgia. He curated the Dog Ear Poetry Series, was the Editorial Assistant at Verse, and is currently working on a series of "poems of addiction." John currently resides in Athens, GA and is the Assistant Editor at the Public School Risk Institute.

Monica Mody

2011-09-11T10:12:00.017-05:00

from THE LOVE BOOK

A flower burst in my head speaking in a fever tone. “Fever,” flower said, sobbing from the deepest gifted source. “I miss your far-fetched report.” Rainbow from deep-love singing & singing. In deep-love we sang from a broken bowl. In deep-love our bowl misted many times over. O deep-love o deep-love you sound like a rubbed blaze. Rave, a bloodless rave, with a-nus for lips, red-tinged, tinged red until headlights shone in its heart. Its heart sang & it reached for lungs to laugh their way to martyrdom. A peacock ran with his wolf to the top of the pack. I swear my pack lay flung to the core. Lay flung to the side of the dazzle. Misty blue sky that fills my lungs until my lungs breathe, until the lungs breathing fetched a love in their  midst. My love spoke of so much. Hey bonnie bonnie, red ribbon pabst blue plunking at my heart. You called for a prayer-shaped hull and I crashed into you, head bent, legal only unto you. Tender rights intact. Tack-tacking out of my teeth, snar-gum fitting its way into my heart. My love My love: this is how you came through. Like a lap //  like a wave // like a slap // like a slave: I hear water dribbling into your head. Must it always end so in // dread? A crack of thunder righted itself.

Monica Mody's work was featured in the Boston Review Poet's Sampler (introduced by Joyelle McSweeney) and has also appeared in West Wind Review, Nether, Cannot Exist, Compost, horse less review, and apocryphal text, among other journals. She is the author of a  chapbook, Travel & Risk, from Wheelchair Party, and has a book  forthcoming in Fall 2012 from 1913 Press.

Farren Stanley

2011-08-28T09:43:00.002-05:00

FROM LUCIO FONTANA'S “SPATIAL CONCEPT, WAITING” (1960)

The surface cannot hold so just

give it a little tap

tap tap

The shape in the distance stretches and sighs, suggests

a mountain, the fin of some predatory

fish, the encroaching tooth, a horizon

(trees, corn) (razed fields)

by destroying the document you can force the eyes behind,

and through

the document becomes artifice and the wall, performance

here you can find a muscular red expanse and

off-centered, the slit, one freedom contaging

into another,

document of violence. (I used

to call you the Big Bad Blond Wolf.) You could

think: streamers twisting in a birthday wind. You could

think: the empty chorus mouths, you could

think: curtains you could turn sideways and

slip through. Behind that red curtain waits Abraham,

your lover, a commuter rocket to Mars. Flack mouth in a

Red world. I will meet you there.

Click this link to view Lucio Fontana's "Spatial Concept, Waiting."

Farren Stanley's place-of-origin is Santa Fe, New Mexico, though her heart has followed her body to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where she is a MFA candidate in Poetry and Editor of Black Warrior Review. She lives under a massive Magnolia tree with a dog, a cat, seven orchids and the occasional lizard. Her work is published or forthcoming in Marginalia, Caketrain, H_NGM_N and at Greying Ghost Press.

Brian Oliu

2011-08-21T11:45:00.002-05:00

BOSS BATTLE: MY BROTHER WHO CONTROLS THE WEATHER

When I arrived, the music changed—all notes go silent: the only thing audible is the hum of a soft rain, constant though we are inside, and for a moment it is peaceful, something we can sleep through, something that makes us turn off everything else so we can hear water on windows, on slanted roofs. You appear in a flicker, fast strobe first, then slowing to a gentle spin, arms out stretched and palms upward like you are receiving something—that someone who loves you will place a gumdrop into your hand so you can close your fingers around the jeweled sugar and place it between your teeth in a dirty scarfing.

This is where the lightning starts: dry heat from the sky and into your hands leaving burn marks on skin, smoothing over heart lines like you have no heart, though I know it is there. The bolts, jagged like raised veins come together in front of your stomach and slice towards where I am standing, speechless. The outcome is uncertain: the voltage runs over my body like a pulped orange turning everything I am into something I am not, or it doesn’t. The current springs back upon you, knocking your helmet off of your head to reveal a face like mine, or it doesn’t. The wind changes direction: I know this because I cannot stand still—I must pick up what is left, I must hold your blackened hands. I know this because for once I can see the rain slanted downwards: falling in grey lines like the ghosts of our loved ones shooting towards the earth.

Brian Oliu is originally from New Jersey and currently lives in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. His work has been published in Hotel Amerika, New Ohio Review, Ninth Letter, Sonora Review, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere. His collection of Tuscaloosa Craigslist Missed Connections, So You Know It's Me is available through Tiny Hardcore Press.

Jessica Millnitz

2011-08-14T07:52:00.001-05:00

NOTES

So it's motorcycle on the city jail at half past after all like birds' nests. Ice cream calliope. April. Floods over onto sidewalks and stalled waiting stoplights crosswalks, paying attention poorly only to the way potholes erode, all winter, down to the cobblestones. Magnolia tree and windy. Monochrome and not all there. Or it's carefree weather and careless, brick walls and concrete, digging in my heels.

NOTES

It’ll be back to brick blockade if anything. It’ll be bicycle coast into no truck with cobblestone, iron manhole-covers. Clogged out on stuck friction loosing the construction citing old hat path ways. Padded for class. Hand break the wind, tunnel under an overpass downtown. Copper grating over sides walking or back pedal. Stocking slip a hard hallway or two. Imagine a mandatory coda. It keeps you in its cross-hairs.

Jessica Millnitz assists in the appraisal of commercial real estate. She earned a BA in English and film studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she was an editor of the  journal Laurus from 2006 to 2009. Recently she’s become a partner in Sp_ce, a writing studio and art gallery housed in downtown Lincoln, Nebraska’s Parrish Project collaborative.

Jennifer Kronovet [Part Two]

2011-08-07T10:15:00.001-05:00

A PERSON

We made ourselves through words

for each other for years. Like trees

almost make the sky. But now—

not words—just their effect.

Acting out being a person

who is excited about dogs.

Acting out eating while

eating, touching. This sounds much

worse than it is. More like

how the car makes the road.

Or the runner across the field

in the park—I love him.

Jennifer Kronovet is the author of Awayward, published by BOA Editions. She is Writer-in-Residence at Washington University and lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

Jennifer Kronovet

2011-07-31T10:35:00.001-05:00

MAINE

There is culture

and there is The Culture

of a place making you

friendly, wearing your

sense on your sleeve.

Here, on the page, we

always want to talk

about beauty. Out there—

out the window—we leave

a mattress in an empty lot.

Don’t make me find you

beautiful. I say that

to the ocean. It keeps

giving itself away

like the girl I was in HS.

The internal culture shifts

too slowly to see like mold

grows. I have become

myself again. Again,

the sensible sand.

Jennifer Kronovet is the author of Awayward, published by BOA Editions. She is Writer-in-Residence at Washington University and lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

Heidi Lynn Staples [Part Two]

2011-07-24T08:12:00.001-05:00

PSALM 74: 16-17

She prays drift’s bride,

Earthite estoile drift’s bride:

Agrope five hundred years

Feather-like

Amant

Nun. Agrope hand

PSALM 45: 7-8

Substance ambergris, fixing the scentedness:

Polar Pod, prey Pod, has lower jaw of teeth single nostril

Economic expansionists prey for tallows. You prey arms against squid

Reservoir, man wants nose,

Man’s castles lit, petrol now

What bright lamps

How seas culled

And

Let,

Earth’s dive wave’s heave wake’s forehead.

Heidi Lynn Staples is the author of Dog Girl (Ahsahta 2007) and Guess Can Gallop (2004). Her poems have appeared in Chicago Review, Denver Quarterly, Ploughshares, Women's Studies Review, and elsewhere. Currently, she is finishing up a PhD in Athens, GA.

Heidi Lynn Staples

2011-07-16T10:07:00.004-05:00

THE ART LANDS

In the beginning was now, dreaming collarless

streams like a couple straying together into

mold rage. We whose first names are.

We, whose? Same zip’s ode. Uncertain’s weather.

Ore’s knot. The sky in knots weight for anyone;

The ground, slow river, is and uttered star’s green.

As I was. Fraying. A torn anecdote

hit my mutter’s vernal core, ripped dawn here’s

fence. Nobody was her. Are you glistening through me?

Do you even core what I’m a keening? I don’t brink

you flew. Dear, my puns and homing too ripple of,

every sing leaks the filial truth: we will go supped in flumes.

Graham Foust

2011-07-10T08:55:00.004-05:00

POEM CALLED NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD AND ZOMBIES

or Dawn of the Dead and Zombies—I don’t care.

“Department of Redundancy Department,”

I say in my most cheerful bitter phone voice,

though I’m not at work and my Blackberry’s off.

I lie—and it lays—on the couch, both of us

oddly perfect, like a pinball and a cloud.

I find I’m to bed on the late side these days

(television test patterns having vanished)

but I could always get there earlier

were there reason enough—say, one—to do so.

You say “tomato”; I say “Don’t tase me, bro!”

Have I got an obituary for me:

b. 1970; d. 19-something;

lives in California with his family.

Graham Foust lives in Oakland and works at Saint Mary's College of California. His most recent book is A Mouth in California (Flood Editions, 2009).

Jeff Fallis [Part Two]

2011-07-03T10:20:00.003-05:00

ALLIGATOR MUSIC

The world is a widescreen dream,

but it’s what we’ve got.

The toenail moon grants us

sleep and silence,

rocks us blues and purples

each blurred and sloppy night

while the sun shines solid as a sigh.

I know I need more vitamin D,

I know I could settle for forked

& accursed and just smog up

with my arms folded, my under-

carriage protected. Must be

gobsmacked and cruel, must be

a stubborn Southern alligator

to arrive back where you started

and start smashing your pink

and butter brains out

against the bleary mattress

of the house that was your

childhood home. Out of

lost gusto. Out of thwarted

love that will redeem you.

Out of faith in the unsteady

bedrock of the landslide

to pickle and boil you

into an openness

bright as the summer heat

on an upended rockpile.

Jeff Fallis is a Ph.D. student in creative writing at the University of Georgia. His poems have appeared in publications like The Oxford American, The Iowa Review, and Ploughshares and in the anthologies Blues Poems and The Art of Losing.

Jeff Fallis

2011-06-25T16:31:00.003-05:00

AT BARTON SPRINGS

My feet stick in the slick

moss, I watch the breathing

belly of the gangly

brunette sitting steaming

on the rocks, the stars

arch into brains

and backbends. Between

the bottom of my ribcage

and the central

sunspot of my navel

is an inner orbit

of nerves and rivers.

I glow odd and alive:

am a moonlit bruise

looking for the fist

that birthed me.

Adam Clay

2011-06-12T11:50:00.003-05:00

THE END

Any sense is stumbling,

I believe with the greatest

ability to do so.

A thousand breakfasts go by

without a single plate.

This is a world where the cars

drive themselves

and the children tuck us in

at night. Somehow, we don’t mind

the thought that we might

not wake up or even be reincarnated

after the world whimpers and whines

toward its mournful end.

I like that look on your face—

let me keep on guessing

wordlessly and thoughtfully.

It’s time to leave this place

worse off than we found it.

Adam Clay is the author of The Wash. His second book, A Hotel Lobby at the Edge of the World, is forthcoming from Milkweed Editions. He co-edits Typo Magazine.

Alexis Orgera

2011-06-05T12:39:00.002-05:00

EXPONENTS

¹We are

a thing near

and full,

wide

and empty or—

the notation

of what doesn’t—

²What’s the broken

arrow

in your cheek?

But I know.

It is something

I did to you

in the jungle.

³Distance

marked in stones,

a series

of particulate

revelations.

⁴Stabbing around

in here, guilty

glyphs

are ocean.

⁵On the car ride

home from sick

father, I hear

the songs

you left me.

⁶You might not

think it,

but I can still hear

the trees

glowing.

⁷From other

countries you send

photos. Splayed

on the table, my betrayal

painted

onto that shop

window

in Florence.

⁸The pain

in my back

a residual

of your years

of lack.

⁹Strangest sound,

sprinkler

in winter, the permanent

displacement.

Florida not

an isthmus

you’ll touch

again.

¹⁰I don’t need

protection

from a force

wrapped

around my ribcage.

So many years

of unwavering

on that particular

ladder of bone.

¹¹When I left

I wore

a mask

so you

couldn’t see.

¹²Fixating on

an agility of crows.

You knew black-

birds

would find

in this poem

a stoop.

¹³Uncertainty

an archipelago.

What are decisions

anyway

in the afterlife

of longing?

Only bodily

unfastenings

here on earth.

¹⁴What I want

is for you

to eat

the last cookie.

¹⁵I hope

all those beautiful

women give you

their terrain.

I turned you from

my pockets.

¹⁶A caravan

of demons

my horse-and-buggy

to heaven.

¹⁷A beer and

a Xanax

keep me

on my toes,

which are boulders

on the high-

way between

selves.

¹⁸Nagging

feeling

that some

disease

of will

lodges

inside me.

¹⁹When you come

home, the cat’s yours.

²⁰I can’t see

the days for their

brightness.

²¹An orange tree

fruiting without

its leaves.

Nature’s flagrant foul.

²²What I want

for you now and ever

is to wear

rain boots

on the rafters.

Alexis Orgera lives in Florida. She is the author of How Like Foreign Objects, available from H_ngm_n BKS, and two chapbooks: Illuminatrix (Forklift, Ink) and Dear Friends, The Birds Were Wonderful! (Blue Hour Press). Her poems have appeared in places like Bat City Review, DIAGRAM, Folio, Forklift Ohio, Fou, Green Mountains Review, Gulf Coast, H_ngm_n, In Posse Review, jubilat, Luna, and storySouth. She edits the sporadic New CollAge magazine at New College of Florida.

Nathan Hauke

2011-05-29T11:03:00.004-05:00

COLOR IS WORSE THAN ETERNITY

Ribbon of water

in the morning

Shines like razor

walking the dog

With a mouthful of blackberries

rain leaves mirror everywhere

Trying not to step in it

Our life is a forgetting (friend’s voice)

Where one place begins to fall into another

Where the bank of this shore erodes into current

Nathan Hauke's chapbook In the Living Room was recently released by Lame House Press (2010). His poetry has been published in American Letters & Commentary, BlazeVox, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Electronic Poetry Review, Eleven Eleven, Greatcoat, Horse Less Review, Interim, New American Writing, Parthenon West, Peaches & Bats, Twenty Six, and We Are So Happy To Know Something among others. He is currently co-editor at Ark Press and an editor for Slash Pine Press.

Leora Fridman

2011-05-22T10:16:00.000-05:00

FORETHOUGHT AGONY BELL

forethought agony

bell that ringing

is not an illness

but reduces anyway

tell on, teller forthwith

a grandfatherly preacher

faded into the normal

blackguard of the town

no one saw him slide

to the stairway or begin

to disallow any visual

representation of his

speeches, crowds of this

size play basketball

out of boredom when

they want to in

church a receptive

leader would have

spoke to them again

the preacher just lived

up higher in a bedroom

& door flapping hands

at the windows when

menfolk went too low,

he set a tonal

standard by which trust

crowded the disease

they knew was coming

trapped stature

so ho-hum

Leora Fridman is a writer, translator and educator living in Massachusetts. Her recent and forthcoming publications are included in The Awl, Shampoo, Denver Quarterly and others. She is an MFA candidate at UMass-Amherst.

Joseph P. Wood

2011-05-08T10:26:00.002-05:00

from The Vyvanse Triolets

XI.

Now I the rower gentle on the water. Now I the water gentle

in refraction. If this the moon, I befuddled by its light

touch on owls, on feathers, on one bare branch settling

the rower toward stasis. If I drown, it will be in my genitals,

that dreary drooping flesh I detested—it put you in hospital

and daughter arrived to this sick, sad world. I was blighted

in my skull’s noxious water. I rowed in circles gently

so as not to incur reflection. The moon insisted on light.

XXXXVII.

Reflection owes the moon no debt. Its light not insistent,

noxious, nor gentle—sometimes a circle, traces of water

located where I—unharnessed, floating, breathless—

would see not—nor owe—reflection. Its light insists

to those outside its body—there’s not lying one place

that’s an earthling skull or a genital—strange creatures

believe the moon owes their species’ reflection, insist

they are gentle—they trace a circle, make an X—water.

Joseph P. Wood is the author of two full collections of poetry--Fold of the Map (Salmon 2012) and I & We (CW Books 2010)--and five chapbooks. New poems can or will be found in Boston Review, Bateau, DIAGRAM, Hotel Amerika, horseless review, and Handsome, among others. He teaches at The University of Alabama and is one of six members running The Slash Pine Projects, an undergraduate internship focusing on community arts and micropublishing. His website is www.josephpatrickwood.com.

Shane McCrae [Part Two]

2011-05-01T11:06:00.005-05:00

from THE AWAKENING OF SOLOMON NORTHUP: 2. IN DARKNESS

Woke for the first time in my life

chained aching woke in darkness

Woke in a dark my eyes

Couldn’t adjust to woke

chained to a ring in the floor

Head aching chained in a dark room

And hearing footsteps voices

overhead I realized

The room was underground

Woke and at first I couldn’t

Remember how I came to be in the room and after I

After remembering the men who ran the circus the

Two white men who with whom

I had been traveling

Remembered but I couldn’t understand

remembered only

Eagerness kindness in their faces

As they handed me the money I had earned

And kindness in their faces as they left me for the night

And woke in darkness was

In darkness for hours and no one came

I felt my way

around the room I found

The ring in the floor remembered

but I couldn’t understand I felt my way around

Crawling and in the darkness

I after a while couldn’t be sure

My eyes were open

Shane McCrae is the author of Mule (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2011), and two chapbooks, One Neither One (Octopus Books, 2009) and In Canaan (Rescue Press, 2010). His work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in The Best American Poetry 2010, Fence, Agni, Denver Quarterly, Typo, and others.

Shane McCrae

2011-04-24T21:13:00.009-05:00

HOW TO RECOGNIZE IT

Master I learned from more than anybody him

what love is how / To recognize it love

That’s how I knew I was right to cut Mary’s throat

Thinking of what he did to me my

body what I knew he would

Do to Mary to Priscilla cut / Didn’t just cut

and leave her body move

On to her sister made sure she was dead

I loved her wanted her / Head to come off in my hands

S.M. Fattig

2011-04-17T22:46:00.003-05:00

MAN O’WAR

Don’t see me, don’t hold me. Only remind me of past thievery, of a lack less biting. The neat growing stack of unspeakable things: Tiny lips, tissue tricked, numb-limbed spectery. The exact translucence of slitted eyes and fists. Oily sluices of blood bear us into braced airways, a house without a door. Next to her on the blanket (spreading stain etc.), a surly cobbled heart.

PILOT

Everywhere he goes, John the Baptist scans compulsively for places he might sleep if he were homeless. He marks street names and landmarks in a notebook. Water towers appeal to him especially. He is often mistaken for Kris Kristofferson and middle-aged women beg him to sing “Jesus Was a Capricorn.” John patiently explains to them that actually, Jesus was a Pisces. They walk away whispering cruelly, elbows and wrists scraping together. When he is particularly distraught he steals cats from porches. He returns them moments later, overcome with dander and self-loathing, eyes streaming. He vanishes glumly before the police. It is a lonely existence but he feels satisfied.

S.M. Fattig is currently living in Nebraska and pursuing her MA in Early Childhood Education. Her work has appeared in Octopus Magazine, Ink Node, and MARY Magazine. In addition to poetry, she is currently at work on textile projects involving found fabrics.

Dan Rosenberg

2011-04-10T10:23:00.000-05:00

BACK

burrow in blankets

the heatless extremities

what can’t be

held

but isn’t leaving

a light in your lung

head to a familiar breast

AND THE SOMETHING THAT IS

The mosquito

frozen to my window

in a splay

of not falling.

White landscape pops

his tan stripes,

wings arched,

spectacles.

Dan Rosenberg's poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in several journals, including American Letters & Commentary, Pleiades, Subtropics, and Sixth Finch. His chapbook, A Thread of Hands, is available from Tilt Press. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at The University of Georgia and co-editing the poetry journal Transom.

Brian Foley [Part Three]

2011-04-04T10:29:00.002-05:00

IT TAKES LONGER TO GATHER LIGHT

it takes longer

to gather light

from under

to replenish

each please

thieved

over a goon

shoulder

put up with

what sea

could take it to the

other side

and bring

you to me to be

believed

where else

but in the frame

love forms

for the simple

reason that

it does not insist

Brian Foley is the author of the chapbooks The Constitution (Horseless Press, 2011) & The Black Eye (Brave Men Press, 2010). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Boston Review, Springgun, Action Yes, Saltgrass, Columbia Poetry Journal, Poor Claudia, & elsewhere. He curates the jubilat reading series in Amherst, MA, and co-runs Brave Men Press.

Brian Foley [Part Two]

2011-03-27T11:40:00.001-05:00

CREELEY EYE

in the former
place

the sun stands

my calluses fall off
just an hour
from darkless

dumb impersonates
calm with
a conversation feel

the eye that puckers
at mine

the eye one half
my own fault

Brian Foley is the author of the chapbooks The Constitution (Horseless Press, 2011) & The Black Eye (Brave Men Press, 2010). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Boston Review, Springgun, Action Yes, Saltgrass, Columbia Poetry Journal, Poor Claudia, & elsewhere. He curates the jubilat reading series in Amherst, MA, and co-runs Brave Men Press.

Brian Foley

2011-03-20T13:47:00.000-05:00

MOON ABOVE THE LAW

what we

dress slow

what

erases it

we may

know

each

on our own

companionship

acquainted

with

what costs

most

is no

longer

not at fault

like the moon

things happen

only once in

Elisa Gabbert

2011-03-13T18:32:00.001-05:00

from The Self Unstable

Crows can tell one human from another, but we are unable to distinguish among various crows. This is mischaracterized as a paradox. Humans may be racist, but crows can’t read, and robots can’t really dance. All species evolve toward overspecialization. If you find anything other than food or sex interesting, it’s signaling.

In a movie culture there is no play within the play. Writers hope for good actors, but when the acting is good you don’t notice the writing. The audience wants immersion, not realism; realism is no more immersive than reality, and no more a genre. If truth is a sliding scale, one must test the extremes.

A paragraph is a way of saying one thing over and over again. Books are an act of supreme redundancy. What’s the difference between ambivalence and ambiguity? POV.

You lose naïveté before you gain wisdom. In the interim, you believe that everything is about sex. Your dreams are given to obvious motifs: the motif of your blows falling weak and ineffectual, glancing off the enemy. The motif of the foreign airport, being unable to pack, having nothing to wear. In dreams, even sex is symbolic of sex. All art is conceptual.

Elisa Gabbert is the poetry editor of Absent and the author of The French Exit (Birds, LLC) and Thanks for Sending the Engine (Kitchen Press). Her poems have appeared in Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, The Laurel Review, Pleiades, Salt Hill, and Sentence, among other journals, and her nonfiction has appeared in Mantis, Open Letters Monthly, and The Monkey & The Wrench: Essays into Contemporary Poetics. She currently lives in Boston and blogs at The French Exit.

Natasha Kessler [Part Three]

2011-03-06T18:12:00.000-05:00

Natasha Kessler is a graduate student in the University of Nebraska's MFA program. She co-edits the online poetry journal Strange Machine and enjoys collaging when she is not poeming. Her poetry has appeared in Plainsongs, Plains Song Review, Alligator Juniper, Sub-lit, Sugar House Review, and Grey Sparrow.

Natasha Kessler [Part Two]

2011-02-27T13:48:00.007-05:00

Skull House

The angel above your home
doesn’t even know your name.
She loses the pig
under cracking floorboards,
dresses the deer in pearls,
polishes screws in your skull.

She tells you Don’t disturb the bird
inside your fake leg.
Blue feathers aren’t really
blue, they are brown or black.
Mothers forget to teach this sometimes,
forget loneliness is an acquired taste,
invisible light waiting to meet our eyes.

Natasha Kessler

2011-02-20T15:19:00.008-05:00

CITY LAMB

There is an alligator at your feet
and before you see it

you step inside its mouth until
you fit all the way inside.

This is a safe place. Don’t think
now about reentering the city,

lengths of coffee shops, ghost birds,
impossible children at your feet.

A lamb in your arms licks at its leg.
A lamb in your arms is never just a lamb.

Christine Herzer [Part Three]

2011-02-13T10:43:00.012-05:00

Christine Herzer is a poet and visual artist. She lives in India. New work is forthcoming in boo journal, Blackbox Manifold, Inertia and Moon Milk Review Anthology 2011. She is the author of the e-chapbook, i wanted to be a pirate, from H_NGM_N Books, and holds an MFA in Poetry from the Bennington Writing Seminars.

Christine Herzer [Part Two]

2011-01-30T23:23:00.004-05:00

LANGUAGE

Language (detail), 2008

Oil pastels, crayon, marker on paper

Christine Herzer is a poet and visual artist. She lives in India. New work is forthcoming in boo journal, Blackbox Manifold, Inertia and Moon Milk Review Anthology 2011. She is the author of the e-chapbook, i wanted to be a pirate, from H_NGM_N Books, and holds an MFA in Poetry from the Bennington Writing Seminars.

Christine Herzer

2011-01-23T22:41:00.004-05:00

Rebecca Farivar [Part Two]

2011-01-16T20:13:00.001-05:00

MISTAKING MIRRORS

The sky is so empty
like I’m told to be.

The problem is
I can’t sit still:

a child bored
by the beach.

And when I’m empty
I echo, and it hurts –

that’s something,
a thing:

one bird breaks
the whole sky.

Rebecca Farivar's poems have been published in Denver Quarterly, Octopus, 6X6, Parcel, cold-drill, and elsewhere. Octopus Books will publish her first full-length collection of poems in 2011 and her chapbook American Lit (Dancing Girl Press) is also due out this year. A California native, she holds an MFA in poetry from St. Mary's College of California and currently lives in Bonn, Germany.

--
RealPoetik
www.realpoetik.org

Rebecca Farivar

2011-01-10T16:44:00.003-05:00

MY ELDER KINSMEN UNLIVING

When a thing may

or may not be

real, you sense

it as a half-

presence, a source,

a back-story

you’ve hidden, thrown

into the trough

between two waves.

Now monsters crawl

to you, stalk you,

leave the bogs and

meres for you. A

whole line died to

kill you, but you’re

here still. And yet

you can’t break a-

way. You are full

of dark matter.

That comes from your

fathers, mothers,

your brothers, your

unnamed sister.

Think about what

haunts you, think of

the waves, the meres,

the monster-strewn

shores of somewhere

else, and then ask

again what haunts.

Rebecca Farivar's poems have been published in Denver Quarterly, Octopus, 6X6,
Parcel, cold-drill, and elsewhere. Octopus Books will publish her first full-length collection
of poems in 2011 and her chapbook American Lit (Dancing Girl Press) is also due out this
year. A California native, she holds an MFA in poetry from St. Mary's College of California
and currently lives in Bonn, Germany.

Scott Abels [Part Two]

2010-12-20T11:45:00.000-05:00

I WON'T GO TO WORK TODAY.

I WON'T GO TO WORK.

During the commercial

for drinking coffee with Ronald Reagan

we brush our teeth in the river
with a hundred neighbors.
My trousers are just butterflies.
Your legs look long
like long eggs.
Fresh cut grass.
Something lucky follows,
and when you look
into his whipping cream eyes
they sell a lot of coffee.
You just cannot bomb mud.
There is work to do. Wake up now.

Originally from Nebraska, Scott Abels currently lives and teaches in Honolulu. More of his poems can be found online and in print with Word for/Word, Juked, Lungfull!, Sixth Finch, Action Yes, Fringe, Alice Blue, Jellyfish, Sawbuck, Raft, and many others. He edits the online poetry journal Country Music.

Scott Abels

2010-12-14T15:23:00.003-05:00

THIS IS THE FIRST TIME A FAUX HAWK GETS USED.

I have my night class
draft homestead acts.
Jed does a flood control project, and
Clown of Vaseline has chapped lips
for years. There is pee flying into
a pail in the grain states.
I put some heartburn
into my soft water.
I say, students,
did you know this sock
used to be puppets?
Tomorrow, I will do a pun.
The daylight is coming
quickly on.

Originally from Nebraska, Scott Abels currently lives and teaches in Honolulu. More of his poems can be found online and in print with Word for/Word, Juked, Lungfull!, Sixth Finch, Action Yes, Fringe, Alice Blue, Jellyfish, Sawbuck, Raft, and many others. He edits the online poetry journal Country Music.

Daniel Citro

2010-12-06T15:00:00.006-05:00

Please click on the image to enlarge.

Daniel Citro lives in Athens, Ga where he is working on a PhD in English and Creative Writing. He is the author of a chapbook,Just Now the Wallop, from MudLuscious Press.

Ida Stewart

2010-11-22T02:21:00.000-05:00

Glossary: Mn- Words

li-mn

neither from eliminate

(to expel or divulge across a threshold—a door or mouth— — —)

nor from limb

(from lith and limbo; among other component parts, the spur of the mo-

untain range and a disadvantage; the edge

of the disk of a heavenly body and hell)

torn.

Is this monolithic or what (that -lith—or sometimes -lite—for stone)?

Where were we? Hello:

illumine,

illumine.

mn-emonic

a device that need not work to work.

da-mn

—!

chi-mn-ey

The spelling teacher blew smoke, true story, “This is one of those tricky words

in which the n works like an l.”

moon

afar and away rock- and hole-

scape, not man and not

—main mean mine moan moon—

what you promised.

I see moon, I said,

my first sentence.

m——n

Tipping point blank of no return:

Choose your own adventure, little boy lost

in the woods, little boy blonde

in the hay, little boy blew

it on the spelling test.

So we enchanted—

Em oh, You in, Tee ay, Eye in—

We cast the spell

afar and away.

Elemenohation!

— –

Forest felled for autumn.

History fell for amnesia.

We felt between, thresheld, imminent.

Ida Stewart’s poems and short fiction have been published recently in The Laurel Review, Unsplendid, Staccato, MAYDAY Magazine, and Linebreak. A West Virginia native, she holds an MFA in creative writing from The Ohio State University and is currently pursuing a PhD in literature and creative writing at The University of Georgia.

Joshua Ware [Part Two]

2010-11-14T15:27:00.001-05:00

Joshua Ware lives in Lincoln, NE where he is pursuing his PhD in poetry and poetics. He is the co-author of the chapbook I, NE: Iterations of the Junco, as well as the author of the chapbooks A Series of Ad Hoc Permutations and the forthcoming Excavations. He work has appeared or is forthcoming in many journals, such as American Letters & Commentary, Colorado Review, New American Writing, and Quarterly West.

Joshua Ware

2010-11-07T23:20:00.003-05:00

Joshua Ware lives in Lincoln, NE where he is pursuing his PhD in poetry and poetics. He is the co-author of the chapbook I, NE: Iterations of the Junco, as well as the author of the chapbooks A Series of Ad Hoc Permutations and the forthcoming Excavations. He work has appeared or is forthcoming in many journals, such as American Letters & Commentary, Colorado Review, New American Writing, and Quarterly West.

Noah Falck

2010-10-24T19:09:00.004-05:00

Homage to Steve Whalen from Noah Falck on Vimeo.

Noah Falck is the author of three chapbook collections, most recently Life As A Crossword Puzzle, which won the 2009 Open Thread Chapbook Award. His recent work has appeared or will appear in Forklift Ohio, Greensboro Review, New York Quarterly, and The Equalizer. Visit him at noahfalck.org.

News

2010-08-06T10:45:00.002-05:00

Changes and Hiatus

Julia Anjard Maher

2010-07-25T22:50:00.001-05:00

ANECDOTE ABSTRACT

Here wires dangle
their limp primary
blues and reds

a kindergarten
of upturned bulbs.

At their broken ends,
individuals sprouted

and my eyes closed––
afraid to put one out.

I squeezed along the left––
weeds of vomiting machinery
cardinal direction surged

live snakes entwined my thigh––
and made for the
counter likewise covered.

Hamstrung out
I held that long eye
feckless against the dark
as I turned

you too had squeezed––
not quite the shape––

and looking up
in your eyes
only my face.

OFFED

I had to bake him in
a pie

24 –– no –– 13
ways to flight

he flew out flittermouse-like

shadows on Courthouse Midnight’s steps.

A Ph.D. student at the University of Georgia, Julia Anjard Maher lives in balmy Athens, Georgia where she is working on her first book-length collection: Four Streams : 四川. These pieces are part of her newest project––a Spicerian serial poem that takes Greek mythology for one of its braided subjects.

Sara Mumolo

2010-07-19T12:12:00.002-05:00

DECENTRALIZATION OF EASEMENT

Maybe she's as lonely as the rest of us, not comfortable with failure. I step into your voice, its outfit. I watch you wear your voice as an outfit. You could say I cultivated a face. In your. Make-up. I've packed up all the weather. The men having babies in their paintings. Babies history arrests outside of my museum, which is her museum. I sing into its building, unharvested with echo. Tone on sleeve. She's as lonely as the rest of us, she says. And wears it, disdainfully. I put my cheek on the frame to cool my eyes. You say you’re writing this one as a woman comfortable with failure. I am breathing this one as a failure comforting her. She writes this uncomfortable movement. This one has a body to zip up. This one is a reel around the baby. A bird's wingspan in a museum, its echo on my tear.

Sara Mumolo works at Studio One Art Center in Oakland, CA and curates the Studio One Reading Series with Clay Banes. With Alisa Heinzman she publishes the CALAVERAS series and is also a Poetry Editor at Omnidawn. Check out some of her poems in 1913: a journal of forms, Eleven Eleven, Mrs Maybe, Typo, Cannibal and West Wind Review, among others. The Mumolos are from Brindisi, the port-town where Virgil died.

Julie Carr

2010-07-11T17:37:00.001-05:00

FROM THINK TANK

The kettle boils, boils now.

Maligned and languishing in an upstairs room: a lacrimal dimple

trips the obscene.

Honk geese: soprano duck, duck

hobbles, belly first, a girl-falcon spins,

rebuffs the rough draft.

Too long, my husband’s sweater

sleeve. My patience no: threads of what

warms a baby's unrivalled calamitous

hour. Full sob

transpires to rust the pendulous rug,

long in the arms, short in time.

Without hours, how cheer? Old devotions

now point to

sorrow: cap’s cracked and leaking.

Door doesn’t open: exit through mirror.

Oh

the plumbing

fails.

*

Euphonic rubber spin,

whose driving you where? Wherefore

drink in the warm air pressed from

the dash dash dash of

my figurative folk-form. My hap-

hazard phrase is cued, lit, and moving

down the avenue, the avenue

8.

*

For not wanting to dose oneself in the mother

you will receive a forty-dollar fine.

Rising out of feet, and flowering, as a plumb tree flowers:

an aromatic man.

Emails from travelers, from soon-to-be friends, whose spelling is terrible

and what does that portend?

The matted hair of a doll: almost flowing, is.

Breathe in. And I am not going anywhere, studied by God.

Bleary from living under sun, my condition is excellent for pleasure.

The “brain people” say the murderer cannot be jailed

because he is only eleven. The “morality people” say he cannot be judged

because he is only eleven.

But the “law people” are going to take his life away. Bracken

in the mind suspended above the floor knows of wheat fields and

branches horizontally lusting. And an exquisite flower just today

opens. How best to

empty it?

Julie Carr is the author of four books of poetry, most recently, 100 Notes on Violence from Ahsahta Press and Sarah-Of Fragments and Lines, due out from Coffee House in September. She is the co-publisher, with Tim Roberts, of Counterpath Press, and teaches in the MFA program at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Joseph Massey

2010-07-05T15:34:00.001-05:00

PRESCRIPTION

To think through
each word's
particular weather.

To stand
just far enough
outside of the page.

A field drapes
the eye
in limitless revision.

How shadows
that fill the gap
between two stones

imply the sky's weight.

Joseph Massey lives in Arcata, California. His most recent book is Exit North (Book Thug, 2010).

Jackie Clark

2010-06-28T10:07:00.001-05:00

WE GATHER AT NIGHT

We have spent
the day collecting

like mercury.
Our shiny

beaded pool,
our independent

gauge. I am only
every adjective I can’t

think of and still
you are well-fitted

from bone to skin.
It is menacing

to acquire fences,
to drive down

from the mountain
day after day.

WE GATHER AT NIGHT

Under the
ammunition

of the red room
I am unwrinkling

gallantry with
a blindfold.

You are
forcing the hatch

and bounding
the floor in rubber.

The idea of us
is my palm

held up parallel
to my face.

Jackie Clark is editor-in-chief of LIT magazine. She is also the series editor ofPoets off Poetry at Coldfront. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming from Word for/Word, Sixth Finch, and Fou, among other places. Her chapbook Office Work is forthcoming from Greying Ghost Press. She blogs occasionally at No Help for That.

Zachary Schomburg

2010-06-21T15:41:00.002-05:00

Zachary Schomburg is the author of The Man Suit (Black Ocean 2007), Scary, No Scary (Black Ocean 2009), a dvd of poem-films, Little Blind Thing (Poor Claudia 2010), and several small press chapbooks. You might run into him in your town sometime.

Magdalena Zurawski

2010-06-13T22:31:00.000-05:00

[The dumb dog comes home]

I had by noon
gone down
to the bank

‘Fool’ I thought
she could count
me out
of my hands

my face at least
will be
my own
I thought

I will
know me
by the mouth
that feeds her

Magdalena Zurawski's novel The Bruise won the 2008 Lambda Award for lesbian debut fiction. Currently she is working on a manuscript of poems. She lives in Durham, NC.

Daniel Lin

2010-06-07T09:24:00.001-05:00

LoFi Naturalism

A clotted conversation
In the municipal park
Under clarifying rain.
Our intentions were stellar;
The production was ultra
Low budget (coffee and gum);
The words were plain, part rehearsed,
And said unbeautifully.
The feelings engendered were
Severe and unexpected.

Daniel Lin has poems in the current issues of Octopus , Sink Review and Notre Dame Review. He edits the NYC-based small press, Love Among the Ruins, which publishes an online journal and poetry chapbooks.

Emily Kendal Frey

2010-05-30T20:36:00.001-05:00

BIRDS

I got stuck in the bathroom.
When I came out I saw a sign.
Do you want to know more about birds? the sign said.

PITY

I feel sorry for people who fall in love with other people.
We wait on the boat's deck to see a whale.
What we see are waves.
Dead-hearted tomatoes bobbing up and down.
Ocean of hearts.

LIE

I kept saying It's from my childhood but it wasn't.
It wasn't something I'd ever seen before.
Why did I say that?
Why am I a red butterfly?

Emily Kendal Frey lives in Portland, Oregon and teaches at Portland Community College. She is the author of Airport (Blue Hour 2009), Frances (Poor Claudia 2010), and The New Planet (Mindmade Books 2010).