1 Before jumping off the low cliff by the river for a dip I remember looking at you sideways and, in that very instant what seemed like a moment of respite from the heat you stared the other way contemplating the summer sky 2 The trains moved as furnaces like transporting cattle the iron bars and metal sheet rolls tied up to open air boggies … Continue reading “Whispers of a Small Town” by Debarun Sarkar
You really embody trance acquisition no sex in French sun asking for frequencies of bears at the campfire eating eggs in a high chair as your fossils slip. We leave long to signify big winter breasts a warming of loneliness the skeleton sweater aproned in blades. A man named Thane follows and swallows our wants sending commands through rubber arm bands the done done done done of the Mozart effect. The phones lick … Continue reading “Two Bird Control Center Two” by Jessie Janeshek
Remember our mechanic death by heretic sex smell at the traintrack and it never paid? The fitting room kidded a black booth a hoarse hip red shoes? A man named Thane followed as we power-walked never allowed to be as loud as we trained and then no sun left the baby dressed as Jason tared at the rain. Getting our name out is never wasteful I’m a bad rider and your black … Continue reading “Two Bird Control Center” by Jessie Janeshek
For the launch of her debut book, The Selfishness of Others: An Essay on the Fear of Narcissism, Kristin Dombek arrives to the proverbial stage nine minutes late. Is this narcissistic? Her exegesis has us all asking how much we truly read into other people’s so-called “narcissism,” a term, it seems, more easily bandied nowadays than “slut.” Dombek isn’t saying the narcissist doesn’t exist so … Continue reading Drinking From the (Controversial) Well of Narcissism: Kristin Dombek at Greenlight Books
How did I immigrate here?: I was on an airplane. Even though I had explicitly reserved a seat in the aisle, I was directed to a window. I spoke to the flight attendants, but there was apparently nothing they could do. There was nearly a moment in which I had managed to switch with a family so that they could all sit together, earning myself … Continue reading “Local People” (Excerpt 2) by John M. Keller
People love to tell you how long they’ve lived here, or how long they’ve been coming here. It is a badge of honor to tell people how long you’ve been disappearing for: fifteen years! In your decorated, sequential, documented life (or the one long ago), you live in London—or Sydney maybe. You go to work, where you have a position, a salary, a recognizable personality—you … Continue reading “Local People” (Excerpt 1) by John M. Keller
1. If music be the food of love, Candy/Is dandy/But liquor/Is quicker. 2. The proper study of mankind is my mistress’ eyes– a joy forever. 3. I think that I shall never see. 4. To be or not to be a rose–a dangerous thing: truth…beauty…all. 5. Do not go gentle, O, Romeo, in Flander’s Field where poppies blow. Humankind cannot bear to err. 6. Things … Continue reading “Found: 10 Variations on the 50 Most Quoted Lines of Poetry” by Carolyn Martin
can’t be much worse than this: sitting in the second row while the poet– featured tonight for reasons only the emcee knows–fumbles through a notebook for the next offering he’ll serve up in a voice that hovers somewhere between pseudo-humility and arrogance as he alludes to obscure Italian history and no one has a clue so I’m free to tune out everything but my mind … Continue reading “Purgatory” by Carolyn Martin
Rootcanted graves beneath a fir palatial appeared to cordon, vet the squirrel that fell where moments later he’d have stepped as once a pigeon did in Brooklyn cruciform within the sidewalksquare prepared for his bootfall. Paresthesia. Paresis. The Facture. A hawk lowtiered in fir to oak, the first to brilliant first to bare, took height and fierce against the gray yet brilliant sky began to … Continue reading “Humiliation for the Instress” by Joseph Harms
My last gig was literally my last gig. The band was a mess. We broke up after that. It musta been late ‘04 right after Enheduanna and Malcolm quit. Right after we got dropped by the record label. Back then, I had it in my head we was at war with the label, and every gig we did was a battle. How it’s a battle … Continue reading ((((( 9 ))))) by Malik Crumpler
