Screaming into a Horse's Mouth

The Body of Knowledge About the Sun

Some matter

just turned around

very slowly

to regard itself.

Crows barked

in every direction

for hundreds of years.

Where *are we*

right now? Someone asked

in workshop. Who

is the *you*?

Matter bonded, and

“no one” knows why.

To violently and permanently

separate it, well,

imagine how painters

were once forced to paint the sun!

Rothko said to stand 18 inches

from his paintings in order to see them.

The sun is unviewable.

No consolation.

No menacing spirit.

It gives

everything.

Still

we paint it.

Molly Brodak

The Magician's Liver [a triptych]

"I saw a magician in the house." — Borgman

Blueprints to Begin

In the giant shoe there lives the magician. In the shoe is where he was born. His mother ages along the laces. His father they buried in the heel. Late at night, the magician spits up cards and sharpens cardboard hearts. The shoe is so large that they later add stairs.

First Gig with Lake Intermission

The magician makes his assistant's body disappear but keeps her hands and legs. The town crowd applauds as if God walked into the room. The blood in the canoe fills and pours over. The canoe sinks. The red blends with the lake and makes it a darker lake, a subtle change that remains unnoticed. When the curtain closes the magician's assistant puts back on her body. She is in a rush about what goes where and leaves the theater with a bucket.

Grieving the Leaving of His Assistant

The magician sits with the trees and believes in the outcome of absence. The magician's horse is famished. Together, the two spoon beetroot soup. Nightly, the magician swallows rope. So much rope. It's his only magic left.

Benjamin Niespodziany

Characters of Control

(For Deniz Unal)

I saw a business woman crawl into the body of an animal

She was sweating and screaming, saying “ahhhh” and then “mmmm”

I watched this happen through a peephole in public, drinking a beer

Feeling my belly swell against my dress. Like a laughing haemorrhoid

The woman danced, freed by the flabbiness of her harm

I want to be touched like that

To have my head pushed forward into a cream pie, or to sit

On the face of a teddy bear, have it paw my breasts

With its fingers, fingers which are its full fist, arm

Like how babies touch with their whole hand

Or how a toddler moves like a cockerel, all stomach

Voluptuous and comic.

Hannah Regel

The Giant Who Was Big

the giant who was big

was so big

little giants

lived on top

of his head

the little giants who were small

were so small

they didn’t exist

“exist” did not exist

neither did “did”

darkness falls on the giants

endless night

forget about the giants

they are completely gone

now imagine you’re me

there is no me

Once upon a time

there was no one

let’s begin

John Maradik

The Story of Philosophy

Snow gathers on the power lines across the street.

Art beats nature, every time.

Immanuel Kant died like a leaf.

Dik-diks mark their territory with tears.

Truth is the liquidation of an idea.

And I feel like a homunculus, trapped in automaton.

Pessimism as the penultimate decadence.

No results for “socieaphagus” — did you mean: sarcophagus?

Live Look: Every building is a post-war building.

And God is the ghost of a local potentate, just like me.

Andrew Weatherhead

Self-Awareness Bracelet

I try not to give into it

The need to fear

The reluctance to believe

That the leaves will change

with never enough time inside me

I staple my life to its mirror

The staple smiles

I hold my hand up to its reflection

Gift my palm its hidden cool

Who I am smeared like egg into sky

A skeleton adorned with skin

enduring the clunk of heaven’s armor

and what it reflects back to its other

and shadows of my own oblivion glued between

I walk forever into dying forests

I walk into myself passing through

Emerge with my bones a mosaic of feeling

I give into the fear

I give into them all

I run rampant through the hallways of anonymity

Shrieking albeits and falsehoods

I shut up against myself and I wither

I wear patches of withering on my skeleton

A graying mosaic now glued with shadow

I urgently perform what I mean

I mean what I am

Deny the paradox of love

Accept only love

Snap off my twig

Dispose of my shoreline

Enact a crusade upon who I am

When I am wartorn really wartorn

I am sacred against God

I plant the war in my shadow

and it germinates midsummer

My glue melts

I fall apart

It is not really war

Was never really me

It was my divine failure

I mean no no no

My failure’s design

I tell myself it’s all just wind in the trees

It’s like laughter

And branches fall to impale the earth

And all of this all of this

And a wandering heart dreams of self-duplication

I reach out with all that I span

It’s a weird thought I’ve become

Daniel Bailey

Double-Barreled

Let our children keep

both names I will not lose

myself again to love

to this idea that I could belong

to anyone other than myself

Three goats swept to sea

by Hurricane Dorian

were eventually found alive

and bleating Are they the same goats

or do they now belong to the sea

It’s so easy to say yes

and to say no and to never expand

on the aftermath how I am so confused

my god by every social situation

even shaking a hand I question my femininity

how I must liken everything to goats

as a means of understanding

Goats were first domesticated

between nine and eleven

thousand years ago Help me herd these up

all these ancient feelings

Charlotte Knight

Egret

two flutes playing two parts

of one movement the egret stands on

one leg then the other

Mike Andrelczyk

Menstruation Poem Number 40

I thought that when my period started,
My depression would
Flow out of me
Like the blood.

It’s still here.

Jessie Knoles

Medusa

In the morning, I wish for lava flotsams to sprout around my feet in the shape of a Pentagram. I have nothing too excellent to offer to this world except for my clueless pearl optimism. I sometimes ignore calls because I would rather be a vengeful crab-thing than listen to decorative tales of resignation and travelling. I had a cat called Lulu, but my grandmother gave her away and that’s when I first felt spiderscopic holes blooming fruitfully across my chest. There are bunnies on my mind, and I wish to be the grass they chew on. There is nothing funny about people tripping or falling over, but I still laugh in their contorted faces. I hate the snow because it forces me to pretend I am a bountiful harpoon, discharging in pink affection. Childbirth scares me because what if I shit more than is deemed acceptable in a room full of strangers? What if I become Medusa except tentacles fly out of my uterus, grab my husband by the throat and possessed-spirit-me screams “I WANTED TO MARRY YOUR BROTHER INSTEAD!” What if he leaves me with my poor sobbing naked mole-rat baby, covered in my uterus blobs and placenta sorrows? I will eat my own dried brown blood as my baby is taken away to a better family and I am left husbandless, babyless, happyless, surrounded by the funny beeping of hospital machines, sleepy nurses, and plasters adorned with cartoon dogs and cats.

Sidrah Zubair

The Title of These Poems Are Also the Beginning of These Poems

NINE TIMES OUT OF TEN

The nail you find pierced
between the webbing
of your toes is coated in
rust and mud.

IF ACTION IS REQUIRED

Please feel free
to ask for me because

I will gladly cut down
armies of the undead and

Remove my pancreas
without local anesthetic and

Lay my head gently
on top of your lap.

THE SUN IS SHINING THE WATER IS GLISTENING AND YOU ARE

In a robe beside the pool.

Drinking champagne from a flute.

Pawing strawberries into your mouth.

Thinking: “The End .”

Thinking: “I love you.”

Thinking: “And I’m not sorry.”

Cavin Bryce Gonzalez

Family Poems

toddler poem

today my toddler
"humped backwards"
until she was entirely
under the couch

nephew poem

my nephew plays basketball
and my sister told him if he scored three baskets
she would buy him a cheeseburger
and he scored six baskets
so she bought him two cheeseburgers

dogs poem

i'm going to take a nap
with my dogs
ok
goodnight

Zac Smith

Jarrahi

The reeds sampled blood
in their daily diet of
hydrocarbons and heavy metals
The gulls woke up hazy
from lead-colored dreams
of not being able to fly
The marsh was silent
The moon was screened behind
a phosphorous halo of shame

Babak Lakghomi

I’ve Never Cared Too Much for Meanings Like

When I sit on the beach and watch a goat emerge from the waves, okay, that’s an omen

and when I climb on the goat and a grief emerges from me in waves, then yeah, that’s a poem

They say at night you only see the clouds when they surround the moon

Then they say something something my heart, something something you

Lately me and my goat pal have been pointing out clouds, talking about what they look like, what they might mean

Like that one’s the world’s saddest oyster knife

or that one’s the reason I have abandonment issues

These comments tend to earn me a murmur of agreement which emanates from the sea

For each murmur, my goat pal bleats solemnly

Each bleat is a reminder that I shouldn’t have to ask to be loved right

I always say to my goat friend O goat friend dear goat friend

how could I ever live without you?

And he always goes like tears tears Madonna

Tears tears for you

Charlotte Knight

I am Sorry for Scaring You

I am burying bulbs of glass.
I am threading lines of copper
Through snakes from the dirt.
I am screaming into a horse’s mouth.

I am two hands filling with venom,
Swollen fingers that fumble
Teeth deeper into the mud and
I am sorry for scaring you.

I am buried in water, blisters
Soft and I tear through
Bubbling skin. I am forcing
Wire through bone to keep
From crumbling to the ground.

I am burying our horse. I am
Placing holes in the casket to
Allow for rot. I am looking for
My teeth in your mouth.

You tell me to leave but my
Knees are now full of lead.
I am screaming as you pull
The snakes from my mouth.

Giacomo Pope

The Simple Life

He said get over here, but first he grunted

a little erotic prickle, that grunt: like a penis

twitching in sleep, to get

he said where’s your face,

then put himself inside it. As a child

that was how everything reached my mouth;

from a love to please and impress:

black olives, salted anchovies, even snails once.

Isn’t she curious? And now

here you are!

Hannah Regel

Doorbell

On occasion a person would get so that she couldn’t speak.

Not because of any beauty, which does exist, even too much at times.

No, there would be a water-hurrying feeling, a clean-pages-being-fanned

feeling, and then time really would leave you. Termite sounds four floors

down and leaves unspooling in the ash outside. Returning to a plot of trees

where one hid as a teen and finding it not gloomy, or not meaningful.

Claws tracking in the attic which was otherwise unused. No one is in charge

of any space. Sound of kids screaming in fun down the block while opening a letter

with very bad news about your last hope. That kind of thing. A signal

could be sent, then, a signal itself as a self, even if no one was home.

Molly Brodak

Seattle Memory Number 27

nothing makes me feel more like an animal than when rachel, my 61 year old coworker and only friend, leans over the register and tells me that the men in the plant store can sense my ovulation

Jessie Knoles

Healing

my father never had

sex he tried to but

could not

go into mom

only beside her

therefore I was never

born and had to be

one of those people

who stands outside

cabins at night

John Maradik & Chris Cheney

Haiku

A peach rots
Silently
Under yellow paint

Giacomo Pope

Glass Waves

drawing the batmobile 100 x

typing 15 qs in a row

pulling off a trick on a stunt bike

called the mandala can it be called

a gangway if it isn’t

in a gang can it be called a wave if it doesn’t

break / notice what’s all around you

and repeat it back / the moon

rolls its juicy ass around the earth

I forget the other gifs

anyone need some sky? I’m going

Mike Andrelczyk

Worry Stone

I come up with a better word for the world

and I speak it directly into the earth’s air

I drink cold water from an insulated cup

The earth is untidy

Catkins cover every artificial surface

attempting to inseminate the plastic’s flower

In the previous time zone

it is happy hour

In our time zone

the weeping will soon cease

I have climbed a tall tree

and have written a different word for love

on each leaf

In the fall I will know how to say

what I already know how to say

I breathe oxygen from a ficus in Columbia

A meteorite wound geysers oil

which we will use to anoint the seasons with light

I keep a shard of the meteorite

in my pocket as a worry stone

By the time I finish my thought

it will be rubbed smooth

My thumb will be calloused

but that is good, yes

I must say it is good now and then

I must say, “O yes, I love water”

as I drink again from my cup

I must view it as my duty to say it

I hope to always mean what I say

and for what I say to enhance the image

of the world that I see

and love

but remember that even love’s puddle

reflects what is above it

and below it

and that even a puddle

has a shadow

and all of these things

flourish in thought

Daniel Bailey

Calling in Sick

i just spent
thirty minutes on a bench
trying to remember
whether or not
i had sex in this park
seven years ago

Jessie Knoles

Medicine

Men did unspeakable things to women.

Knobs of bones made public,

sober ceiling fan light on chops, eyeballs.

Iron pebbles collated across limbs.

Better ones practiced shots for the vitals.

Richer ones relaxed in the background.

I remember one so weak he’d

waste quail with a shotgun,

refill fighter jets in his uniform,

hands still sore from strangulation.

One sewed the strap back on his duffle bag.

Others hid him.

Others cheered, among themselves, for the maiming.

Others blamed the women.

Others withheld treatment.

Almost everyone withheld treatment.

Molly Brodak

Thumbnail Image

sailing through space on discount patio furniture

the soft afternoon filtered through ice cubes

you say it again

but this time I let it go by

like the mailman in his mail truck

Mike Andrelczyk

A Dictionary Has Three Windows, One American and Two French

You gather words but you do not order them

To you, a sentence is meaningless

Reading each word, it becomes impossible to understand a sentence

Reading a sentence is impossible

In a notebook you write the definition of each found word from a pocket dictionary

When referring to the definitions in your notebook, you first look up each word in a pocket dictionary

You read the pocket dictionary with a much larger dictionary open on your lap

Reading has become exhausting

You gather definitions but you do not order them

I say I am cold

You look for the word cold in your notebook but cannot find it

You look for the word missing in your notebook

You look up the word found in your pocket dictionary

I close the window

I go to bed

At work the next day, I make a coffee

On my way home, I wait at the crossing

The car which is meant to stop, doesn’t stop

I am outside the door and you are stood at the window

You are trying to close the window

The window is closed and you are lost

I kiss your cheek and open the window

I am cold, I say

You shut the window and we go to bed

Giacomo Pope

Blueprints to Begin

First Gig with Lake Intermission

Grieving the Leaving of His Assistant

NINE TIMES OUT OF TEN

IF ACTION IS REQUIRED

THE SUN IS SHINING THE WATER IS GLISTENING AND YOU ARE

toddler poem

nephew poem

dogs poem

Mouths