A few weeks later, in the wee hours, you picture the woman of your life flung on her new lover’s DreamCloud scratching his back like a cheetah. She was your high priestess, your Holy Mother. But that ended when she stormed out—after you forgot to mention how brilliant her poem was, when you found comfort spending time on the sofa, and left muddy boot prints on the white hallway runner. … Continue reading A Split from Reality by Dale Champlin
Cotton Candy.Carny Queen.Pops AnotherKetamine.DreamsAbout TheSilver Screen.Gets InsideThe Limousine.Jimmy Dean.Dopamine.Cotton Candy’sTunnel Of Love.CostsTwo Tickets.Rubber Glove.Rubber Boat.Root Beer Float.Maidenhead. Sugar Coat. Gently GentlyDown The Stream.Cotton Candy.Carny Queen.Count Your Blessings.Count The Take.Silver Dollar.Coffee Break.Cotton Candy.Carny Queen.Hear The LionsRoar And Scream. Continue reading Cotton Candy’s Tunnel of Love by Charlie Robert
Time yawns over the exhausted linen,at best a tiresomeacquaintance. An ersatz luxury,specious sensuality,the palm of the dayopens to you. The suggestion isspace is too grandfor error. But Doubt seizes you by the crotch. Sunday equals Monday with matching moods of pianissimoair. Repeating, reciprocating tasksecho. The charge of bright thought falters at the turn. Emerald theories provedust-worthy. One wants an islandlarge enough to think. Continue reading Plenty by William Ray
1. Start with interior,Knowing there’s confirmationOf measurelessness.In essence it’s the nothingnessOf solitude.Night air tinged purple. Move on to superficial wounds—Emotional and physical.By comparison, a spiritual scratch—aGray glimpse of aPasserby on a windy day. A swear, an inconvenience. End with theCountable but infinite,The faces trod, limbs crushed,Burned earth.Crisped brownThat turns you back inside: Vast.Solitary. 2. Take It. Take Putin. Take Xi.Take Trump.Put them in the sea.You made them. … Continue reading Catalogue of Pains by William Ray
skulls and bloodumbilical cords dangling off an old organ in an abandoned sanctuarycold blues moaning on a tessellated floorvirgin whites collapsing on a starving landscapea ruler horizon as straight as the leash on an anteatera banshee at the bedroom window keeping you up at nightpracticing lucid dreaming in the gears of a melting clocka rhinoceros horn’s perfect curvea rhinoceros’ perfect curve of horna stiff moustache … Continue reading Exhuming Dalí by Eric Machan Howd
sometimesthe words that I useare too heavyfor paper andsink beneaththe surface words like beatensuicidal and cutare too dense forfiber to holdtogetherso meanings turn and slump to the emptyside of the pagehide the blurof an empty father punctuate smacks slaps and jabs work-stained hands leaving blacknessand blue behind my eyes Continue reading Bleed Through by Eric Machan Howd
what is it—about the beating—and whipping—of horses—inthose old books? “Poor horse,”Fantine sighs in Les Misérables—as Dahlia calls her pity—absurd—what is it—Raskolnikov’s night-mare—in Molchusky’s words—“Mikolka beat the nag aboutthe eyes with a shaft, and then finishesit with a crowbar”—Raskolnikov—a child in the dream cries—screams—hugs “the blood-soaked head”—kissesit—“The cruel deed fills him with mystical terror.”—(but too late—for Raskolnikov—he’s still driven—to kill—the two old ladies)—what isit—when Nietzsche in Turin—we’re … Continue reading Horses and Mystical Terror by Frank Freeman
From the very outset of Vincenzo Latronico’s fourth novel (and the first to be translated to English), Perfection, there is a simmering contempt that’s always waiting to boil to the surface, but never does in quite the direct way one might have ordinarily expected before emotional suppression and passive aggression became de rigeur. A description that can, in effect, describe what it means to be … Continue reading Perfection: Not So Much an Attack on Millennials as the Things That Shaped Their Formative Years—In Other Words, the Internet
it all depends so much on the knowingas if the clinging itself would save you—should holding prove itself inadequateand release prove the impossible whole a stone falls not demanding its meaningand the bird must be held to the breeze—fingers recalling a charmed slack of threadthe light passing through, unraveling vision ache is your body surrendering its bordersopen palms, soft geometry, inward home—absence without calculus, knots … Continue reading Hissing of the Feathered Thread by Gregory O’Neill
We leave our souls like luggage—bodies like garment bags.In the bat‑black clock hours,we usher meteors,like tiny golden pins up the ivoryheights the day calls clouds. Children’s buckets at our hips jinglewhen they kiss—dream‑power makes us taller.Nightgowns and PJs sweeping like flags.Slippers loosen jangly baubles of frozen rain. A hundred million assemble themselvesinto a backup band for the universe.Sounds arrive that other minds might callinterference—or harmony. … Continue reading The Night Out by Gregory O’Neill
