Temple of Phthalates

Yore and Lift
were gods

to which days and curses
belonged

Weepers had their Finders
back then

and Firsts had
their Earths

Isotopes had their bonus
neutrons and detritivores

ate up detritus
Stone huts and perfect yurts

surrounded the Seven
Reservoirs whose surfaces

glittered and shifted like
cool practical effects

Back then efforts
were recovered

from the perilous
and forbidden

Temple of Syncretisms
and if not

from there then
from the Temple

of Movements and
if not from there

then from the
Temple of Perfect

Movements where the priests
used to say

Just as Each
also Ever—

the many Odd Ways
also Stillness

Down the Old Glacier
Highway to the crowberry

bushes and the shieldfern
gullies

and down on the other side
of those to Stillness

And on the other side
of Stillness

Negative Stillness
And on the other side

of Negative Stillness
peak compound words

like spacetime braingut
axis heatdeath and

livingproof were
and on the other side

of livingproof
the knight’s hamper

was and still is full of nutrients
and the midquel shed and still

sheds its infrared ingratitude
so lightly

and druids from the future
and dinosaurs from the future

had and have sacred migraines
and on the other side of their sacred

migraines the gardens flex
their pixels

and the algorithms flex
their suggestions

and the usages flex
their farms

and the prototypes flex
their rooms

and the rooms house the brains
of famous mediums

and on the other side
of the famous mediums’ brains

the pressure point of no
return is vulnerable

to ocean spray and all
the ocean spray sprays

in unison and surrounds
the final fant short for fantasy

and the close prox short
for proximity

and the reverse chron
short for chronological

and on the other side
of reverse

chron are
maximum experiences

and maximum sights
and medium laments

and endangered species
and unsolved laments

and impossible laments
and laments from beyond

the forgotten crypt
of the unknown star’s

lagoon and beyond the forgotten
crypt of the unknown star’s

lagoon are gifts
gifts gifts gifts

positions and more gifts
and on the other side

of the gifts is the deepest
known underwater cave

in the world which has a chamber
called New York

and another chamber called
Secret Recipe and another

chamber called Secret
Formula and another

called Secret Ingredient
and another called Secret

Message Secret Code
Secret Word Secret Agent

Secret Police Secret
Base Secret Passage

Secret Garden Secret
Room Silent Letter

Silent Film Silent
Partner Silent Running

Silent Auction Silent
Majority Silent Bob

Silent Treatment Silent
Night and on the other side

of Silent Night is Brood
Cicada gentleness

a failed star that was
here first and the

rare chance to behold
a famous omen

collagen molecules
famous extinct plants

marine plasma
but on the other side

of marine plasma rooms
were out of the question

Rooms had left the room
and topics were showered

with articles and the darkness
was not quite virulent

enough to camouflage
this mesa that time forgot

to include in its listicle
of exotic biases

and on the other side
of the exotic biases

was the presence of a partial
panorama and the phases

of the panorama
but on the other side of the

phases of the panorama
the blue trees aren’t flat

and they aren’t aren’t flat
and they look flat

and they are flat
and there are therefor varieties

of blue tree experience
and on the other side

of the varieties of blue
tree experience is Wishing

Well 2 the sequel to Wishing
Well in which the hero

asks the antihero Through
which blood

does arrival do its
overachieving? To

which the antihero
answers The blood

of desire’s stochastic
process maybe

Or perhaps the blood
of the crystal clear maelstrom

at rest or perhaps the blood
of the crystal clear

material at rest or perhaps
the blood of the crystal

clear utility at rest
or perhaps the blood

of the crystal clear
compulsion at rest

or perhaps the blood
of the crystal clear

black hole at rest or
perhaps the blood of

two crystal clear black
holes colliding

in the amphitheater
of the so-called firmament at rest

suggested the antihero at last
And on the other side

of the so-called firmament
the antihero went on

All the parties and nowhere
to go except heaven

now must come to an end
for Christmas on the Western

Front and on the other
side of the Western Front

are the fire’s flowers
and the famous rivers

of the famous cities
and the famous substance water

and the famous atom oxygen
and the famous property mystery

and on the other side
of the famous property mystery

heirlooms bob in the calm
Caspian Sea and the Snake

Oil Sea and the one-inch voices
prevail in the library

of microplastics
and on the other side

of the library of microplastics
various schools of eternity

debate in the Temple of Phthalates
and on the other side

of the Temple of Phthalates
there were and continue to be

astronomers who see when
they look up a vast—

and this is remarkable—public
And when they look down

claytonia mercury
greenthread lead

cardoon oganesson
hopniss radon

samphire astatine
tastes allocations

and on the other side
of the tastes and allocations

sitos opson oinos cheetos
and on the other side of the cheetos

there are so-called holdfasts
and so-called redoubts

and so-called dead links
and so-called fixed spells

and so-called rocky planets
and so-called acid grassland moons

and so-called adaptations
and so-called summer nights

and so-called deeds
and so-called songs

and so-called cum jokes
and on the other side

of the so-called cum jokes
there is a special word for surface

that deserves a second chance
and a million year old volcano

crawling with stick insects
reefy water ultraviolet light

hammerhead sharks
paragliders A magical

place the specialists call playing
a sexy game of Go Fish with death

and the managers call
a geode planet sometimes

and other times a list of every known
concept and other times

wildflowers bright Pleistocene
Cerberus meadows of them

and if the wildflowers are always
wilder on the other side

of the Cerberus meadow
and if to pair High

Existentialist Nausea with
like a gag is as enduring

a coping mechanism
as it has been proven to be

why put it to this newfound test?
Why rewrite the labyrinth

when it has closed in around
the self so absolutely any

sudden movement no matter
its source of dysphoria

is a form of solution anyway hmm?
One answer might be felt

in the spirit of the lichen enthusiast’s
dopamine rush or perhaps

in the thrill of prudent and virtuous
betrayal or perhaps in the single

piece of mosaic swallowed
or perhaps it can be felt

in the nursery of the earthquakes
and the uranium sandbaths

the petroleum springs or
perhaps it can felt

in the groundwater
the foxfire the cliffface

the archetypes perhaps
it can even be felt in the

quaking aspen metaphor for everything
that back then sufficed

that back then was called
a sacrifice hearty enough

anxiolytic enough
to subdue gods

like Yore and Lift
gods whose

divine traumas and
divine narcissisms

were earned on
the other side of eternity

where there is no such
thing as medicine

 
 
 
 
 

**

PETER MILNE GREINER is the author of Lost City Hydrothermal Field, a collection of poems and science fiction. His work has appeared recently in Fence, Works & Days, and the sci-fi anthology Terraform: Watch/Worlds/Burn published by MCD x FSG. PMG is a high school English teacher and a water quality tester for Newtown Creek Alliance. Join his Sci-Fi+ book community @chimaeraflats.

“Poets Gynecology: A Theory of How Periods Synchronize”
—For Abi

By Holly Melgard

 
 
 

“La connaissance poétique nait le grand silence de la connaissance scientifique.”
–Aimé Césaire, “Poésie et Connaissance”

““Poetic knowledge is born in the great silence of scientific knowledge.”
–Aimé Césaire, “Poetry and Knowledge”

 
 

So, you know how scientists recently discovered that the mycelium fungus is basically the internet of trees? (They found that the mycelium’s web-like network under the forest floor transfers information between plants by serving as the connective tissue between root systems such that it enables trees to communicate with each other.)

Well, what if the candida fungus that grows in the human vagina is the internet of uteruses?

It would explain a lot about how periods synchronize, which scientists have yet to explain. I have this friend who every time I hang out with them, no matter what time of the month, I end up getting my period within 24 hours or less. For this reason, I call them a “red bully” both to their face and behind their back. I wouldn’t need to call them this if it weren’t true.

I’ll bet this happens because when our uteruses get together in the same room, the spores of their candida start broadcasting the false message that “the uterus is menstruating” to my candida, until they mirror that broadcast and word spreads to my uterus the false consensus that “the uterus is menstruating” like some kind of Cronenbergian fake news. I’ll bet that’s why I always catch my period whenever I go over to their house.

I asked my friend who is a gynecologist whether I’m right, and she said it’s possible, so…

 
 
 

**

HOLLY MELGARD is the author Fetal Position (Roof 2021) and Read Me: Selected Works (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2023). Prior to this, she co-founded and co-edited Troll Thread Press for over a decade, a dual release print-on-demand + free .pdf platform that straddles the digital and print paradigms, where she self-published ten other books of poems. Her new chaplet “Adam” (2024) was just published by Belladonna Collaborative. She lives in Brooklyn where she works as a writing teacher and freelance book designer.

STUDY FOR SWIMMING HOLE
after Etel Adnan

 
 

//
Last time
A prop of air
peals
Against all that has taken place

Salt meadows extra accidentally beautiful
Glass
my hands are full of
Hiving the inner lining
an eye shuts

Done and seen actions
amount to the same
“little more than
a register”
On the draw
Study for swimming hole
Study for hand (reverse)
Discrepant parts of control

They are streaked with this specious transparency
That the furniture I famished will not eat me now
To make the farness varnish
You lay it to rest as you relate it
“Even a meadow
with crow flight and grass fires”
“How remote
the infinite air was
that filled our chests”
Because it costs too much to be human
Everything was certain
as second order representation
in the order of the seconds

 
 
 

//
The exorbitant render
The consensus in the
word cotton
Calls to light
Squat tags

Return to this approximation
that soon exudes
“How to intervene in time”
at least three times
with different emphases
In the body or the sky
A poppy of pink brick
Which is “either stroke or color”
as glass
Forms
a hive that smells
of goat and jasmine

 
 
 

//
You don’t have to paint passage anymore
but being
hermetic to what we call paper
the grass or fat of it
that’s resinous and doesn’t want to scar
Written apart
as such
As from the far off “latest” from the one right here
You are quite captive
You are quite alive
“And hanging over all of this
was the apprehension”

 
 
 

//
To hesitate or grasp
the air
is no longer made of that ment
the dead linger
Seeming whole
as a round

To be reconciled by excelling
Aloft out
The chant tree
Ex
hales
Naked gauges
Inchoate
and so susceptible

They double from a paucity of face
The infinite obligation which the presence to one of the other is

 
 
 

//
As for mirrors
Ways rhyme with ice
All we can do is shake them
Each one makes the same sound
And this is generally regarded as safe
The valley the vocabulary
the great camouflage

To resist the garden
where all trees
are precisely given
an appointment
What has and what has sought as substitute
“A lyrical climate”
Tion as hail
Flower of cell
Or in a moment
Fly le
“There loss”
there “the re sky”

From which you hoped would ebb your perfect complement
The impossibly spoken outgrowth in the balance it fires back
The range of trio in the leeward truce found in others

 
 
 

//
“Nature is oblivious”
“Give me your lipstick”
Give me your streets and suddenly in concert
the “last
on everyone’s lips”
authoring nothing
Our R

Fragments which wipe out the dignity
of the conflict they resolve
The “ous oaks”
in the audience
Won’t take it easy

Like variegated Easter
Lace
palpitates
a fading light

That doable “which”
To graft the desire
it remains
For the voices to look
Where they come from

 
 
 

//
Bent
“philtre”
Bird
leather
Lineation
Final
night in the pool

 
 
 
 

**

MAXWELL GONTAREK has poems out or forthcoming in Coma, αntiphony, Lana Turner, Volt, Noir Sauna, Works & Days, and elsewhere. Co-translations with Léa Fougerolle into/from French can be found in verseant. His chapbook, H Is the Letter of the Door, is forthcoming from above/ground press and his pamphlet, A Perfect Donkey, is forthcoming from Creative Writing Department. He has lived in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Las Vegas, Belgrade, Langres, and Lafayette, Louisiana.

1^st DnD Character Backstory

I’m Phoenixen Fahlite, Xennie for short
and I’m a sorcerer by birth, a cipher
for my deceased twin sister’s healing quest

my parents are two angels, Enix and Phia
who assisted in trying to solve all living beings’
demands, dilemmas, and wishes

they were doing pretty well
helping to bring Ranunculus Village out of a 504-year-long drought
and restore the natural landscapes,
until they couldn’t help one being even a little bit—a demonic spirit named Olaph

Olaph possesses abilities to enter all realms
within known worlds
and cause interdimensional natural disasters,
including ancestral hurricanes and destructive droughts

when Olaph received intel that Enix and Phia blocked
their most destructive attack on Ranunculus yet,
Olaph captured Enix and took Phia into an inaccessible realm of icy darkness
on a cliff overlooking a glittery gray sea of mysterious liquid

Phia was 9 months pregnant with twins at the time and had to give birth by herself

Olaph put a hex on Phia’s body before placing her there
causing one twin to live and one twin to die
while one spirit joined the other

when the living twin was born
Phia managed to raise her until she was four
Olaph returned to take her away into a spooky realm
a world that became all she knew

the twin is holding the spirit of the other twin
as the “living” twin, I
followed footsteps of angelic ancestors becoming a healer,
constantly confused as to whose ethics I’m following—mine or hers

I would like to figure out a spell or two
to release my sister from my body
so she can be free and / or break the curse Olaph put on all of us
I also want to find my parents and reunite us all,
even if only for a moment in time

 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 

@round the world in a daz-e

after Prince

i begin singing through my laughter
bending my back flipping out
over equal lines underwater
wading thru nine dandelion roots
still remaining tangled & caressing earth’s core
time zones mapped out in corduroy,
velvet & paisley prints
returning messages to the surface
playing the game telephone
my mom said we would pick them from the backyard
this summer to make dandelion wine
like her mother used to
a ritual tends to tend
more than memories only flicker
sometimes only whine
eye blink one two three times
future me sips then chugs
sweetness i can only imagine
i stay in school
eye avoid the garbage passersby throw at me
i jump on a trampoline so high
eye reach the other side
of an ocean catching
two tamborines mid-air & still
eye paint my footsteps with rose & gold & raspberry lime
i refuse, eye refuse once more
eye rinse what’s mine
i pay the price walking in thru the outdoor

 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 

laughingstock

hey babe, do you want to join me
in being a laughingstock for the ages?
look, babe, we already are
look, babe, we already are
are they talking behind our backs
are they pointing & laughing are they
at what they virtually see
it’s a gift
being a chameleon of faux pas
for others to bond over
how fun it is to be behind the laughter
being all the rage & bounties dressing up
fitting in a fantasy
being tripped in the hallway
being kicked behind the knees
look, babe, it’s an all-time job for the taking
& with no closure in sight
& with no closure in sight
how dare we speak in emotion
how dare we speak
about the years that bullied us
not just having our fears
but having to walk outside with them
once more,
we, the laughingstock can bet on
being talked about &
gossiped about &
ridiculed in space
how dare they help create the shame
they demand us to get over
look now,
I’m covered in blood and feathers
look now,
I can walk outside alone again but only with a rescued puppy
who joined our laughingstock crew
the days fold & unfold with you & yet
there are bigger issues in the world we should handle
but be still no matter
how much time has passed
no closure in sight, but maybe it’s heard here
listen, with a spectrum of confidence
only cycles of memories they let die or add more wood to
how strange it is for us to choose to laugh with them
& how you’d laugh at me today
even at my dewy face
the streams of release remind me of Dublin rain showers
& how the greens pop into your trains of thought
listen, let’s meet up & have a laugh at them
to guzzle them all down
for the questions they chose not to ask
while they laugh at our limbos & slips
I’ll laugh at myself until
you’re telling me again
I’m the funniest person in fact
that you ever met
yes babe & listen haven’t I proven it
listen, I got some returns left to give
so many people I smiled at
who didn’t smile back
how funny can we get
without trying to start a bit
we can learn a lot from a couch outside in the sun
laying down in front of a laughing crowd
have you ever died before?
have you rolled on the floor laughing?
have you laughed your ass off?
what is a laughingstock to you anyway?
fun or fund you say

 
 
 

**

DANA VENERABLE is an educator, occasional tap dancer, and writer. She is an English PhD candidate at SUNY University at Buffalo in Buffalo, NY and working at Kean University in Union, NJ. Dana has written for Peach Mag, P-Queue, Rigorous, Snail Trail Press, The Journal of American Drama and Theatre, VIDA Review, What Happens and elsewhere. Currently, she’s returning to one of her childhood hobbies of songwriting.

good god look
at the indifferent loaf
grey dinner with martini
ice shards rudely clinking
 
i promised to clip his curtains
the dangling lace
color of eggs
 
yes congratulations
to a fantastic daughter
cool cold cash with the lemons
pacing with two vibrators
deciding
 
yes gorgeous
my young womb
tarred and seeded
 
in my memory i'm wearing leggings
praying for his elbow to somehow hit
my breasts
i licked the hollandaise

as a bribe
rearranged the unimportant
flowers, starved
 
married, too!
how ugly

 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 

the ballroom with paper
anemones hung
up in a stiff display
the punch shivering
in silver bowls
 
a moldy girl
with copper hair and minced meat
freckles
sat moaning in the corner
 
desirous to see the
strange things of the world
sat weeping in the corner

eeeeeeaaaaarrrrrkkkhhhh!
she said
i'm practicing
she said

 
 
 

**

SOFIA BANZHAF is the author of Pony Castle (Metatron, 2015). She is a writer, actress and filmmaker currently residing in Toronto.

Imperfection, Achieving It

 

1

 
For my name-day treat 
last week’s watery pink
 
dawn. Or, let’s examine
a trunk, “a dwindling kit 
of sharps.” Whenever confusion
 
fails to find expression as fear
I rent evidence that shame is here –
has “resulted,” a weasel verb
 
I can’t and can’t not afford.
Feelings as experience the grail

a model of orientation of supreme value ha
o aspirations, compulsions, goals, investigate
unhelpfulness – what is it, extent of – and

how and why shame can’t parade  
(in public with us) the bun it merits, 
false obviously pillow, what is to be an object
in this world if not pillows, I ask

or say, addressing only myself, a duck
sorrow, sorrow, the family of feelings.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

2

Things wonderful or 
certainly say

worthwhile, recognizing
 
a sunlit June evening,
not recognizing a stranger,
how, no that
the whole train is relieved when 
one gives up a dream – but why all
 
at once? Post onslaught
my patience reappears

handsomer, I can’t escape
is it setting subtle traps,
call it practice, call it research,
call it a counterjab my
psychic condition worsens
 
patient, I don’t fucking think so,
a patient, I’m a stranger steering
the game into channels malformed by
abstraction, force 2 assert yrself!
 
it worked,
one can have had tonsils

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

3

So I say to myself you’re no help,

talk of nerves 
 
need not involve
actual pointing. Why, I’ve been used in the presence 
of simulations warmer than you to show 

this happens when one 
veers away along routes 
despite literal tons 
 
of bracken by, ready for mauling.  
Say an egg balanced on one’s head
 
topples off but doesn’t crack. Its
discomfort, down there at one’s feet, is less a form 
 
than a symptom of benevolence – and
a reminder one values most an opponent
most like (one’s image of) oneself. “I wish what
my brother wishes,” Charles V, craving a city.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

4

What they’ve cried
this evening over
 
loudspeakers – who knows,
noise. My guess, water is a
 
the least form of powder?
that’s true. However, that’s wrong
 
everything is the same,
it’s all conspired to kill
 
another of my teeth. Dear molar
how seldom really I saw you, yet
 
I am begging you look at me,
nine teeth down,
 
grieving you beneath a sky
loudspeakers occupy. 
 
So, this is shock. No further points
just one: it is total fucking crap
 
I should lose another tooth to this world.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

5

Where observation flourishes
drop talk of sense, let us today
my name-day or is it my birthday
or a rare day off
 
acknowledge focus a choice made
unawares, awareness be hanged. And also that
knowing, or agreeing, one is never at liberty to think
avoids a patch (a trap) largely color. Which is to say

description never
gets you the bump, you don’t just win;
having ascribed the world a shape
– for that’s always what you’ve done – 
you’ve lost, or so it seems to me, dying – 
  
the inner workings of the box remain
less beyond than behind reproach,
as here
on the level where one lived.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

6

You, you
you and 
 
you, but not you
or you, are in danger, 
risk putting in motion
the whole machinery by means of which
a foul yellow cloud of reproach is made. I’m saying quit
 
operating. Denied the cat-clawed footrest, 
wide open on tile, I’m asking to be closed, the law
demands it, a lie, well my feelings do, “the home appliance”
 
is
an ill-defined unit, I cry. See, open my verbal inhibitions
are set at NONE.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

7

Introspection tells us
a golf ball feels these
 
many types of struggle
are too many. Maybe 

when “more” is known, 
the position of the self in space and why
one must supplement introspection, we, or I,
will experience delight understanding
why one must supplement introspection
to know the position of the self in space.
People form habits they do, they do,
 
mine — ignoring the work of a hen
not works of a hen who
rescues, good verb, breakfast, again
and again – and ignoring too 
 
(but badly) the group her hungry eggs consume
If you think about it, it is reassuring
we bystanders can be twisted in a rubber way
not merely optics, not one last
attempt by optics to win the day,

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

8

After
 
agreement with some entity not joy 
fuck a struggle whose outcome we know
 
near the center of my visual field
to my discomfort I see a glow
 
in my (also-failing) eyes, I drive
I drive away with it, where
 
did I think it would go?

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  

9

All basic junk here – my body, an
obsolete monitor, tag. And we produce only
0.2 pears per year, “no April, no May,”
 
let us now see the continent. O
sunk. I sense however the presence
of a mass, as when a person afraid they
 
might find something
somewhere won’t look. It’s
maybe a whole damn drowned
 
people, infamous for discovering laws
– “wax melts because neurotic” –
whose discovery
 
is fate. Anyway, spied in
a busted monitor, I am beautiful for being 
on my way to having been.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

10

Unhelpfully this year’s
“applesauce,” crushed from
our level’s .2 pears
can’t, or won’t, at any rate doesn’t
 
do it. Ashamed and ashamed too
of having pleased myself deploying 
basic, right-out-of-the-box virtue
 
(earlier, in connection with a different matter), I contact an agency
distributing hostility locally. You don’t need identification, ready
monies, or even – they claim – a body; immediate receipt: never any
complications. Other agencies take note! I direct said hostility at proofs
not everything is tolerable. THIS SHOULDN’T NEED PROVING – 

that the assertion itself is
intolerable intolerable.
Angrily I consider my move,
“do you,” I ask myself, “proceed
silently, automatically?” quietly
sure, and, hm not automatically but
 
as if I know the terrain or
as one does having put
pieces together before
dressing, cooking

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

11

How about now some
talk of objects, fantasies
putting them to cruel
rigged tests as portions
of a world that made 
a self in a field going
up and going down, what is 
going up and going down?
a puny jumble of countable instances
of limbs, hairs, a gut
figured wrongly (for good reason) 
home to the “colossal internal break”
sponsoring useless fantasy, talk.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

12

It isn’t my whole self hiding
war-weary amid sorghum
tassels of thought sweeping up crap
and I’m not alone,the deer

want something soft.       

                                            
the future will be like the past
within certain limits electric? Or?
performances may be different
performers are all the same
do that again? do what again?
 
 
*addresses deer*
 
If our whole lives long we’d broadcast for pay
our internal colloquies, and now, flush,
could buy a pair of farewell moods for you,
for me.. Imagine! A wordless state that looks
 
like this yes, yes but without
bodily functions to control while afraid.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

13

All these doubloons
but I have warts and so
another’s pity and so
am furious. I’m joking,
I’m broke, can offer
 
this joke molded
on the “war-mood” I remember
and miss. We all felt it.
I’m joking. Here,
have property.
 
What does it mean
do your best?
Does trying to think
count?

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

14

Morning
ambush 
hedge
scrutiny ineffective.
Conscious tolerance
of pain. Alliance with
magical powers preferable
to disbelief, 
now. Trucks lost,
the desires of trucks, their habits!
Some further defense of objects,
cards
in a hat, other trucks,
the prawns firmly 
placed in the sky as
a unit, a 
constellation.
Then sleep. 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

15

Even in this Area
called “mine” by me,
gross with palaces, fountains and
cosmetic blunders galore, interest
in the body tends to usurp
all other interests. “Don’t poke
 
the Area.” My head hurts,
impossible I’ve lost it. 
To be blue in daily traffic…
not not a procedure for finding
epic life. How blue
are you

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

16

Long live this
obstinate bunker’s 
yellow utility light
I use as a spot. 
 
“What if 
what survives is
personality in
a broad sense” Next
 
see me declaim
my RIDDLE IDEA
a green flowing robe 
on a figure called Night.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

**

MARK FRANCIS JOHNSON lives in Philadelphia. He is one-third of Hiding Press, along with Andy Martrich and Jon Gorman. His latest book is Diary of a String (Spiral Editions, 2024).

Astral Rejection

 

Sounds fun I’ll be there.
Yet what the odds won’t tell you is it’s an action-comedy
truism how so many kisses… emulsify, diminish …these words for world-
famous secrets
that sit on our hands.

My friends, it’s airborne.
You will know the true test plate when it leaves your microscope:
and it was good then to be that searchlight trained on the bare floor
uncontested.

In the bottom-right corner of all things
my inner mindfulness cop,
vigorously opposed and protected,
isn’t even looking!

Foam hugs the tripwire to sleep.
Joyous ground-rules drag us onstage.
A languid, blasted desert blues hums along with the microwave
in its realism, quantum-heap desiderata, the frosting closing in on humankind.

 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 

Roomful of Equipment

 

Teeming plainclothes, the infinitesimal can take awhile.
Two dead ends make a straight line.
Is it a sign?
Is what a sign?
Does fate summon us,
or do we just steal its ideas?
Tongue to its glass drops
everything and describes a circle,

II.

the sun is hidden in me.
It seems pretty committed.

The power-mad are always trying to convince everyone their prison is within.
The obvious eats up years of misrecognition.
Fear of loss, fear of gain, fear of too much or not enough of either, fear of no
change,
in figurine death free-associated myself into some kind of foresight…Total
intermittence!
Should we enjoy history? And you and I in the sleep-
walk of wellness
slackly daubed, yet backed by neuroscience—
well I was almost not someone enough once
to see a show of hands when I know one… (A moral best mumbled through a
torn-up storm screen,
what only dust in sunlight can explain.)

No one sees the past coming. III. The dream closes its wrists.

Along a crumpled river, passage of burning tires and garbage;
pulleys and planes for the emblem, force, crime, of motivated hearsay…

I watch reruns backwards on mute.
Paradise of honest mistake.
Everything is someone’s twin.
Only one word in the manual and it’s “switch.”

 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 

Peace

 

for thinner ruins
ran its voice out

 
 
 

whole cloth to
the new past

 
 
 

its outstretched
innards sound

 
 
 

say everything’s
ahead of its time

 
 
 

lumen naturae
reason in its mouth

 
 
 

an ill-fittedness
deliriously green

 
 
 

summer light like
caution tape

 
 
 

licked in sand the
strange unstated

 
 
 

and getting by
on birth alone

 
 
 

as shadows cast us
louder than

 
 
 

a new moon
everywhere and once

 
 
 

who loved government
in its new look

 
 
 

a heartbeat too
far for bodywork

 
 
 

not to wonder in
its secret language

 
 
 

honest-rumored
absolution burning

 
 
 

down the door
took viscera and walked

 
 
 

then I wasn’t
now I’m not

 
 
 

along the circle it
took to get here

 
 
 

a world made
for disbelief

 
 
 

trickle-down dualism
in another half-

 
 
 

wrecked culture
crying with greed

 
 
 

under the sun’s
infected eye

 
 
 

innovation-weary
aching to be fucked

 
 
 

new flesh
in ritual backlash

 
 
 

difficulty swallowing
a vacuum to what it

 
 
 

thinks clean
religious insides

 
 
 

keep the aspect
ratio stretched taut

 
 
 

in the defacing
thirst of its froth

 
 
 

fedback haptic
clickbait looking

 
 
 

backwards both
ways for time

 
 
 

in anger and
togetherness

 
 
 

and music that
seems only to recede

 
 

●

 
 

hey great spirit
smiling through

 
 
 

my lab skin
backlit into a-

 
 
 

tonal grayout
fire that makes its

 
 
 

own weather
where a voiceover

 
 
 

in power
fed the air I

 
 
 

knew I needed
to be wrong or

 
 
 

nothing happens
my marrow

 
 
 

my chrome
had long been

 
 
 

different since
the big move

 
 
 

and hungered
from the depths

 
 
 

of a blood-clot
as the selective

 
 
 

evil of attention
trembles off

 
 
 

as pops and skips
people laughing into view

 
 
 

and a peace fell
upon the media

 
 
 

asleep at the top
of its lungs

 
 
 

sucking its loopholes
thinking there’s time

 
 
 

in the world
wherein I’d spin

 
 
 

back apart if we
weren’t already walking

 
 
 

through the bright side
of what none know

 
 
 

breeze of fixative
anciently pixelated

 
 
 

(continuity error)
how to live

 
 
 

what to do
if I couldn’t

 
 
 

maybe I would
in wrought narrows of

 
 
 

where’s this going
where are you

 
 
 

the sky a blue
wall of silence

 
 
 

high-concept
minutiae

 
 
 

in the shape of
what I told

 
 
 

the truth
bleed it back

 
 
 

written such that
you could hear the

 
 
 

world around me
praying through its teeth

 
 
 

lust wincing in
a window’s defense

 
 
 

the mirror in knots
same difference

 
 
 

too much to remember
too much to forget

 
 
 

not to work like that
not to fit in the trap

 
 
 

heat lamp in
broad daylight

 
 
 

soul taped to the
back of his head

 
 
 

spinning threshold
erasure’s guest

 
 
 

in a chaos of worth
light of day of

 
 
 

in fear of enough
and form and color and

 
 
 

the more you dig

 
 
 
 
 
 

the less there is

 
 
 
 
 
 

“that told no tale
and let no witness in”

 
 
 

(cf dark union
tao te ching 56)

 
 
 

hugged awake
we were faithful

 
 
 

we gave each
other birth

 
 
 

psych-rock circle
of light around

 
 
 

how a person
even manages

 
 
 

in little police state
teething its niche it

 
 
 

couldn’t have
happened any other

 
 
 

way because it
didn’t O my pain-

 
 
 

killer missing the
point the right the

 
 
 

wrong gnarl the
wind goes the

 
 
 

way it came
not waving

 
 
 

not drowning
REJECT

 
 
 

ENTERTAINMENT
NO DEATH

 
 
 

NO ANALYSIS
TEXTURES IT

 
 
 

encroaches with project
poetics NO PALLIATIVE

 
 
 

VERSUS THE PERFECT
though killings

 
 
 

are limitless
and pain

 
 
 

without distances
it is possible to concentrate

 
 
 

and still
be useless

 
 
 

wrong in one’s symmetry
breath presets

 
 
 

in the casual
cruelty of personal

 
 
 

space
(neverending

 
 
 

semicircle)
worn to brightness

 
 
 

by the strobe-
lights of home

 
 
 

wet hands
set me down

 
 
 

and feel the sun on
someone’s face

 
 
 

from practice back
to habit back

 
 
 

to accident to under-
brush personals

 
 
 

heard down
its throat

 
 
 

saying you’re not
lost that only images

 
 
 

are lost you are
the wrath and solace of

 
 
 

moonlight on
an open wound

 
 
 

world music within
be why I’m here

 
 
 

until supposedly
final touches collapse

 
 
 

in delirium
middle begin again

 
 
 

homespun dying
for some singsong

 
 
 

in my body art
bit into the cusp

 
 
 

follow the blindspot
regalia loyal haters

 
 
 

follow dusk burst
like noise into law

 
 
 

dry to the touch
in an eon

 
 
 

touch-starved and
still I hesitated

 
 
 

oh today won’t be
yesterday for long

 
 
 

and between deaths
the permanence

 
 
 

of life led me
and when I lived

 
 
 
                                              
what was the difference
foundation crept in

 
 
 

repeating sideways
we never turn around

 
 
 

back to the bandage
chest to the skin

 
 
 

stiffen and wane
in the dead of spring

 
 
 

time doesn’t tell
time does nothing

 
 
 

until the accident
peace is coming

 
 
 

—for Brian Ang

 
 
 

**

PAUL EBENKAMP is author of The Louder the Room the Darker the Screen (Timeless, Infinite Light, 2015), Late Hiss (Desert Pavilion, 2021) and Regular Acid Consciousness (Despite Editions, 2022) and also makes music as Position. He co-curates the Woolsey Heights reading series in Berkeley, CA.

 
 
 

 
 
 

 
 
 

 
 
 

 
 
 

BRICKED is an ongoing XR writing environment bearing witness to memory loss.

In the summer of 2019, my family orchestrated what would later become a final vacation with my grandmother, who had recently been diagnosed with dementia, and my father, who passed shortly thereafter. In the work, an exhaustive inventory of the objects that populated this trip is accompanied by text fragments on the losses that accumulate within both human and technical memory systems. These samples are arranged from assets in development, hung upon Tagvverk white as a defense against forgetting.

This version includes soft citations from Lauren Berlant and Kathleen Stewart, Wendy Chun, Hal Foster, N. Katherine Hayles, Habiba Ibrahim, Trevor Owens, Michel Serres, and Mackenzie Wark.

 
 
 

**

DANNY SNELSON is a writer, editor, and archivist working as an Assistant Professor in the Departments of English and Design Media Arts at UCLA. Recent works include Elden Poem (Hysterically Real, 2022), Full Bleed: A Mourning Letter for the Printed Page (Sync, 2019), and Apocalypse Reliquary: 1984-2000 (Monoskop, 2018). His forthcoming book, The Little Database: A Poetics of Media Formats (University of Minnesota Press, 2025), examines the networked afterlives of media-reflexive works of art and letters.

Your fingertips

imprint the veil
removing paralysis
one object at a time
a dent we seek
to match the color
of this offloading
future—try hoarder—
no more leaning
stacking pushing
under piling on top
of saving for later
DO YOU ENJOY
THE BURDEN OF
AN UNHATCHED PLAN
the sky’s a certain shade
of bargain, the spill
of its space is the light
of its day decrescendoed
into a sweet pink dot
blood’s up to the con-
gregation the spine
is a flight-feathered
gutter writing
the ribs into life

 
 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 
 

Generous loving

confident intelligent
powerful coworkers
send you confidence-
building youtube videos,
you perform confident
postures in bathroom
as preamble to scribbling
in notebook / shocked you
have a master’s degree
asks why you don’t
have ten books out
yet panning shot of world
trade center tower
shimmering in immediate
distance a distance
you can run yr fingers
over feel the tingling
thrill of future exploitations
too many to count but just
the right amount of suffering
exists in the world
I arc forward with you
I’m sorry I’ve spent decades
AVOIDING A PLAN
the abandonment
of my inner child
is implied by my salary
dancing here or inert
on the bloodsugar cliffs
does madness still exist
what would be the point

 
 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 
 

Trees dropped

the act a long
time ago we
don’t continuously
need to cohere
nothing does
witty and urbane
taking the helm
for the turn’s
sake a flash of
clarity in the sling
of movement
is worth all
the hidden frantic
doubting a gap
in measurement’s
teeth or small
daily history of
valiant surfaces
there in the ripped
pocket whatever
falls out you’ve
found forever
great purpose
comes in the ego
thrusts forward
like a confident
reflection
O beautiful
desert of height
give us your best
cornered stance
take off yr masks
and brandish yr
unmet winnings
adhere to exclamate
freeze response
is best detective
of what’s left
to us of this
winding stew
of truncated war
hormones stalled
CEO posture courses
future poems home
to the shadow body
head cleaves torso’s
hemispheric listening
a human scale of
decorative clarity
meeting a vessel
for st. francis
talks about guerillas’
be killed before
killing’s seeking
to be understood
before the big
blink’s big blink

 
 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 
 

Lay down these carbs

and hold aloft what vision
i can crumble from
the edifice of shared life
don’t talk at me like I’m in
your past you haven’t met
me yet I’m palming the illusion
of a rat behind my back
for a laugh just one
second’s worth of rupture
per day will part the pages
and attract an allotment
of stutter this joblife’s
a gap between fences
like avenues in affluent
sun call mom call dad
pay yr debts write poems
to yr inner fascicle craving
all day moving between walls
floor to ceiling decomp-
rehension thought needs
an object’s interior speed
editor suffers to float
the edits your platform moves
with you my body a fist
of fear we all know the same
alternative discourse radical
disdain wears big glasses
my naive misreadings of public
temperature confirm a strong
bias toward slipping and slopes

 
 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 
 

Road of excess leads

to the road of excess
recent decisions thread
through the ears and
unfurl into the future
updated inventories
pour decisions
battered vehicle or
ornamental face?
Ritual’s environmentally
dependent or contingent
I swing away on a resonance
for every pile there’s
a distinct and correlating
emotion why did I not
study philosophy get those
burst pipes in the head
to speak cleanly and w/out sound
where fingers become
a supplement to ear
the phone famously
weighs in at impossible

 
 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 
 

Eye to eye in lanes

of self-centering don’t
stop the music’s filth
layers of slick market-
able body horror
the torso is tangled
beyond use or
recognition throned
absolute in service
secrecy interrupted
calling and collated
in the minor winds
of authority well
it’s always hallways
or corners we bring
the tv to the table
but what are we
really constellating
in our pockets
mispronounced
in the waning gray
of June rain an expansion
of air to ignore
the boundaries intended
to be helpful but these
lines rip like footsteps
through the body
and echo only a solitude
of interior invasion

 
 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 
 

The concrete blinking

in and out of the channel
you might only get one
or two productive cramps
in the back of your hand
the world rushes by
when someone opens
the door and water whispers
ensconced in a small
square the headroom
is the primary selling
point far from the poem
just the initials ranking
the daily fauves you’re
not wrong in tasting
future sediment
a thorough sip of stone
cylindrical gleam museum
at night flustered into
a sleek patrol layers
patrol is what’s for lunch
the awe-ful writing
will admit at least
one spirit inspirit this
pen I’d like to pronounce
or renounce collaged
deity on my shirt
surface remains un-
transformed

 
 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 
 

Bracing for inexact

impact smash yrself
against the wall until
yr an abstraction don’t
short sell yr interior
decompositional balance
the infinite’s revealed
in a controlled glitch
life as management
of this bubbling up
of fear my ears are in
my knees when you speak
thank you O unseen
wheelies of light
an extension of the common
resigned feeling then sleep
with the tourmaline
in yr mouth quiet
dreams will pool in
yr unplaceable center
and sound their waves out-
with ripples of repair
these relations that dissolve
into water / death seems
an inappropriate solvent
sell of the sour steam
we can rejuvenate our
systems a progressive
universe would show us
the spirits, the interior
pressure is ratcheted up
what do you want to look like
what do you want to do
now you’ve externalized
your long habituation
–enter adult self–

 
 
 

**

JEREMY HOEVENAAR lives in a barrel he can wear to the marketplace. He is the author of Our Insolvency, Cold Mountain Mirror Displacement, and Adaptations of Pelt and Hoof.

[Mouthgazing]

Mouthgazing for the lost popular
bougainvillaea eco-poetic
RANGE ROVER

fire-split
mirror “Oh here under here you will
see “see” rubs the mouthless, fireless

vacuuming lot, “that which is”

“itinerant or
INCINERATED

is not a threat”

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

“Oh here under here you will see”

Oh subway stop
speaking to “the underground
material botanical”
CANAL FOR FLORAL
boats
“selection” pretending to pluck firm branch from sole
in music “selected” by way of alternatives
“to educate and remind” such speech is air
such
“Oxygenating Associates” such as
leaves
are

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

“Oxygenating associates”

Oh collaborate and breathe
“in all earnestness”
to landfill: Get filled

“these images in reverse” can contain

“a cavity”
I’d bloom
“downwards
since there’s glass above?” I approach in the lilyhat full, the
perverted isthmuslistener

In conclusion,

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

“In conclusion,”

A purse snaps into teleological scarcity
revealing itself to be
a bee landing in a mouth
growing under observation —

“Control us

!

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

[Seeing bandages as ghoul eyes, seeing]

Seeing bandages as ghoul eyes, seeing
thought as blowholes or bandages, white
gulls, dirty. Flyers already know how
to move. It’s obvious, thoughts are bandages
are ghosts healing. Actually
do not touch me again. This is not frantic
to be a splayed whale, when I’m all out.
Then you give me a lemon
from your grocery bag. What
if I were a grocery bag.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

[Wanting to be like him, drifting toward machines]

Wanting to be like him, drifting toward machines
at supermarket, a young four or sixteen, dimensions
depend on whose looking in who, I look in the eye
machines with his feelings. To wit, feeling
hymn-like, to all observing me, means lesbians
fugue the bull, in a supine shift into
legibility, wanting to believe in being
me him-being, for four
hours or max. twelve. In the bleach aisle
I am a peach whale yawning up
hydrogen, squared, that is

“Count the pillars next time you grocery
store attendants there are mirrors
or suck the youth right out of my
math mouth. My mask—mmm”

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

[Now like dadwatching her spot]

Now like dadwatching her spot
of sisterlight gimmick into dog’s play
I get the shivers. Men look, like, in
her eyes watching her spot into
dog’s play under the soul of a moonspot

inside the restaurant. It’s warm
for September not
warm enough. Like our dad, I’d
rather give my sister bones. The other
rolls her tongue around a pill, but

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

[If I were a doctor (make that into a mirror)]

If I were a doctor (make that into a mirror) I
would blink at studying the waiting room
and swallow my cancer. Scrub
all X before police arrive. If I
were a doctor (window)— Big time
and white cloth all over the stage. My
telephone lines
(hanging the laundry)
!

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

If I were patient I put on the robe. I put on the robe
the room is mine. Banter, lights, cameras, syringes. If
I were patient I put on the robe and smile down. I smile
down. Geese, frogs, crocodiles, hummingbirds. I simmer
too long in robe. If I were patient then I a video song

A song in the medium, a video.
A medium song video.
Videoing a medium song.

In the video you see my wrists
of death, they awaken.
Wrists, they awaken
ankles that tell you another
that I speaks French
and it is 100%, the room
is mine two weeks out
not to be transferred
patient. Health, witness,
blockade, rat poison.

The song is the medium, videoed. Me…

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Me dum, ami!

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

I can’t seem to get out of the hospital no matter how hard I try to open this window it just won’t budge the key into place the door in its goodbye

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

**

ZOE DARSEE was born around noon on a Tuesday. They are the author of BELL LOGIC (Spiral Editions) and Anzündkind (Creative Writing Department). Together with Nadia Marcus, they run TABLOID Press. This work continues. More at zoedarsee.com.