I Did It

I didn’t want to. I didn’t
want to do it. I didn’t think,
even once, before it happened,
of wanting to do it, of wanting
anyone to do it, let alone me.
I was free from want. I was
oblivious, entirely occupied
with other things –
the rocks, the leaves, the
pursuances. I had no
attention left. It hadn’t even
crossed my peripheries.
Truth be told, I hadn’t even
heard of it – I had not the slightest
inkling that such a thing were possible,
let alone so popular. When I realized,
for the first time, that I had done it,
it had to be explained to me. I was
that out of it. I really didn’t even
understand what was happening.
I just kept on in my normal fashion,
maybe somewhat slightly aware
of the gawks and agape mouths
that surrounded me. But they didn’t
register – not really. I only
somewhat fantasized about them,
and only for a split second. In that
split second I simply thought
that some outrageous
stunt had occurred behind me.
I thought maybe some acrobat had
face-planted into the brick wall behind
me. Maybe a big old truck was on
fire. Maybe a swirl of green had left
the sky and come crashing down to
earth, plastic and oozing. But
I looked back and saw nothing,
of course. There was nothing
behind me. Only a wisp of
breeze and some billowing
strips of trash. So I kept walking.
Faster now, head down. Unnerved,
I guess, aware somewhat of the
consortium of gazes but incapable
of reconciling them to the anonymity
I had up until then assumed for myself.
My pace again quickened, and
I brought my head lower towards
my chest. It was almost as if a great
pressure were pushing down upon it,
my forehead, forcing it down – a pressure
gathered from all directions, coalesced
into an invisible corkscrew driving itself
at me. In retrospect, it made perfect
sense. What other way was there
to feel? How else was I to react?
How else was anyone to react?
Everything that was happening
in that moment was entirely logical
and understandable – I know that now.
But at the time it was inconceivable.
It’s so funny, how far from ourselves
we can be. I imagine, in that moment,
there were two,
parallel versions of myself,
held within the same outline, their
appearance and movements exactly
the same, doubled so precisely that
any deviance from an absolute
sameness of appearance was
imperceptible to the naked human eye.
And yet, I also imagine that those
two versions of myself existed,
simultaneously, at the furthest
reaches of metaphysical coherence
from one another. They were two
beings sharing an identical
physical reality, and yet
existing in two realities of intention
so dissimilar that it’s maybe impossible
to refer to both as something even
akin to a reality, as if they each
represented a matrix
of discernible, graspable
indicators, some aligned some not.
Instead, they’d probably be
more like polarities, or tunings –
aspects of relation. They’d exist only
in a vibrational ether refracting
the clean and complete oppositeness
of one another: one that knows, one
that knows not. One that does,
one that does not. I might
hazard to declare that the tone
produced in the disjunction
between those two becomings was me.
It sounds a bit obtuse,
but that’s simply how I felt,
in as precise a language as I
can muster. It was me. And
what was I doing? People will
say otherwise, but in my mind,
I was simply strolling. That’s all
it was. My only wish for that afternoon
was to amble lightheartedly
down the sidewalk, in search
of a nice treat. All my energies
angled me towards that outcome.
I’ll admit it: I love a treat. I love a
delectable little morsel to whet
my palate and send me off
on a happy quest. Most mornings
it’s all I can think of – very rare is the
day that gets started outside
this ritual of indulgence. On this
day in particular, I remember my
treat of choice being a pour
of tonic water in a glass tumbler,
with two ice cubes, a slice of lemon
on the side, a ritz cracker on the side,
the intent to eat half a bag of M&M’s
later on, and a nice long inhale of climate
controlled air in the pharmacy
on the corner, one block down
from the café I frequent.
Now, I’ve been told before that,
individually, these kinds of choices
might not add up to what most
people understand to be a treat.
But my feeling is that
the consistency of a treat
lies not in the actual consumed
“treats” themselves, but in the
degree of specificity with which
they are chosen. The more specific,
the more precise to a moment,
is the desired object, the greater
its status as a treat. For me, that
day, the most precise thing I could
determine was a pour
of tonic water in a glass tumbler,
with two ice cubes, a slice of lemon
on the side, a ritz cracker on the side,
the intent to eat half a bag of M&M’s
later on, and a nice long inhale of climate
controlled air in the pharmacy
on the corner, one block down
from the café. The act of manifesting
such an explicit arrangement, cementing
its appearance within that episode
of the day – fusing it to the day –
that was the treat. That was the
extravagance: the making real of
an absolute set of conditions whose
meaningfulness lay exclusively
within their mystical adherence
to an inherent but elusive
personal compulsion. Of course,
I understand that within this formulation,
there’s the risk that such precision might
result in something ridiculous – some
self-consciously wacky or absurd
designation, like a game of scopa
played atop an elaborately woven
tray made from the fine shed nosehairs
of pekingese showdogs. But I’d never
do that. Such a scene could not denote
my desire, nor anyone else’s really.
Nobody could honestly demand
such a thing. There’s no truth to it – it’s too
dependent on the abstruse distances
between its component parts.
The magic is lost. It’s no longer
a treat – it is instead more like a whim.
But most people don’t understand
the difference. Most people
probably couldn’t even tell you
why they would want a treat
in the first place – they spend
their whole lives ignoring what
they want. Worse, they spend
their whole lives imagining that
the wants they experience satisfy
an essential, fundamental aspect
of themselves, when in fact
what’s happening is exactly
the opposite: some essential
aspect of themselves is
being satisfied by contriving as
a treat one of these patent absurdities.
Because the essential character
of most people is an incomprehensible
morass of infinitely differentiated
impulses. A true want – a true treat –
cuts through all that. It’s a column
of gravity that pulls you together
and nails you to the present.
To merely reflect the discord
of the soul is to unhook oneself
from life and float, directionless,
unconscious, disintegrating.
Take, for example, this thing I did.
I don’t even know what to call it.
In many ways, I don’t even know
how to describe it, because I can’t
visualize it occurring in any way
other than how it occurred when
I, myself, did it. It is inseparable
from the fact of having done it
myself. And I don’t think I’m alone
in having borne this relationship to it,
because, in its immediate aftermath,
after the dust had settled and the
passersby had uncovered themselves,
and the fog had lifted and the
shaking stopped, and the uncountable
blades of grass had stopped waving,
and the moisture in the air had stopped
flickering, and the clouds had burst
into light, and the light had begun
pouring out from within the heat
of the sun, which had stopped rounding
in the exuberant depths of space,
and the shadows hiding behind the
houses and the cars revealed their lengths
and let into themselves the voices
of the animals that had
all gathered in a broad circle around us,
and upon their hind legs stood and
bellowed and bowed and stomped,
and danced and gleaned and pulled
from the weight of the stuff of the day
the shapes mounted upon my lips,
the words: no, please, you,
have to believe me,
I didn’t want to, I didn’t, I swear,
I swear, I didn’t. They then threw themselves
upon the ground, and wracked and bent
their bodies, and flipped and
torqued and withheld, and
having wound themselves
into such pressure,
pitched forwards without stopping,
like round shot
from a cannon’s barrel,
their little furry bodies flung inwards,
towards us, at a terrible velocity,
at a speed interminably mounting,
brutally stretched to the ends of vision,
and the sound and taste of the atmosphere,
shredding, all of them,
in the mounting friction
of their great pursuit,
the ends of their fur igniting
and turned to whistling
mounds of eager flame twisting
in the day’s breath.

 
 
**

JOSEF KAPLAN is the author of Loser, recently out from Make Now Books. His other books include Poem Without Suffering; All Nightmare: Introductions, 2011-2012; Kill List; and Democracy Is Not for the People. He lives in Philadelphia.

RIPE FIRE

I.
All the card-readers in town
have been drawing the Moon for me.
God forbid one flips the fifteenth, he’ll
see — o, but they tend to not take
these things literally. Still,
I know they all goss about me.
Scuttlebutt’s I’ve been keeping a secret, but
they can’t suss what.

I turn, face
the effaced diffuse blue
of the World and bellow o
above and below
I believe in God!

I believe in Him simply, because
the opposite of Him’s the impossible. No,
I believe in God mostly
because I see the Devil all the time.

In skinny-fat strip-mall villies
so smotherous, the beautiful
face of the World’s turned
empurpled, emblued,
slow strangled by the unstrange.

But somewhere on the sterile air

is the voice of one crying
in residual wilderness,
spare us from nothing but nothingness!
 
*
 
I’m drinking dirtinis,
possibly even fernet with the Devil.
Old Nick’s inspiriting
my friend Nick the Younger,
one of his guises of Dis. His
suggestion is
that the World could be God,
if She weren’t some perverted
homunculus He birthed.
Then I
of Her demi-telluric humus,
exhumed dust unearthed?

Hell’s the dyspeptic
he’ll say
underbelly of Heaven or else
its back door.

Well I’ve never been to Heaven,
and even though Old Nick has,
I don’t know if he still falls for it.

0.
O! Where is the card called the Poet?
Where is the card called the Dream?
Unless they are the Fool,
his face shown shining in the Moon,
his heart crossed with the Star.

So! Poet as Joker — the only major-player
to ramble and gambol his way
through to the post-modern packs.
The wild card went joker-mode
while arithmetic annihilated archetypes.
At the last trump, he that.

A joke I know goes:
the wisdom of the Fool’s his familiar.
His instinct,
but it follows him
around, not the other way.

Unfailing, his kept pet keeps him
from cliffs, unfalling.
 
*
 
Little wet god, maybe my in stinks
but it senses
nevertheless ever the lessening,
great grinding refinement,
some thin akin
to Her humble crust crumbled to dust.

So I compose composites of poesies against anhedonia,
mixing my ups of words burning with fell flame of aphasia,
from violet fire dead-on-the-vine
I hoard red of Her purple toward blue tomorrow:
those fragments of schist I’ve shored against my ruin.

And yet
schisms like synonyms
are still syntaxing me,
this-ing-of-that-ing
in fissions without frisson, as if
the old ode on Keat’s Greek urn
were in potsherds,
Truth and Beauty
in sharts,
so one reads now only
Know and Need.

It’s times like these
when I find myself saying its fine,
not every day needs to be poetry.
When what I mean is
I don’t need to need love,
truth and beauty, illusion,
wise lies, the sublime.
But what I really mean is
how else will I become
the sweet swan-armed prince of the crepuscle?
Meaning —
how else will I be human
in my next life?
 
*
 
Maybe I should have a baby.
I’ve been feeling experimental lately.

Isn’t the body God’s bawdy
labor-atory?

Every poem a hysterical pregnancy.
Every eventual letting
proportionally laborious
to length of gestation or festering.

I’ve found that to let,
one must allow
oneself to become an issue
to issue.

Then foolish you! It’s no issue
to render unto Caesar the sections
which are Caesarean.

But I was from my mother’s womb
untimely ripp’d! And I am still
waiting to be born.

Fool, is it you? New issue
of the usual too-earnest ennuïeuse,
spleen-eat’n-ideal,
mouthing off in the agora again,
inspir’n ire, enthrall’n y’all.
 
*
 
Driving home, I wonder on the way
in several of the seventh’s renderings,
the Chariot’s drawn by twin sphinx.
Male fantasy!
What legitimate riddl’n trickstress
would ever let herself be curbed?
Surely she’d hurl,
fell herself from the cliffs before this!

II.
Home is the second story, apartment.
In the catalpa courtyard are,
running up from my stopped spot,
stairs to the deck,
the back door. For me, John’s
left the light on, let
the little dog out.
She barks down at me now
as if I’d fallen
from her to here.

Edith — seen between tree’s
deck-level leaves — what shuffle
to draw out the Lover, now he’s
on top of my deck as well.

But at this angle, he seems to me
as one hung from the beany tree:

not ankle-hanged
as Le Pendu, rehearsing his reversal,
but breech as un perdu — umbilical noose
to the neck bluing him, sluice
of albumen and other indignities
already filming his skin.

John — he has his issues. I think
part of me came out of him.
 
*
 
As from Adam’s side,
as the “From” story goes,
his sickle-rib was Eve cut-out
just as a crescent
cut from Sun made Moon.

But all that was Before Centuries.
Now who performs Eve’s costectomy?

What comes from some Made-Moon?

I see the apple-act as a pharmakon,
her cursed curiosity cure.
Eve saw a red world suspended
in Eden-green monotony.

A globe of flesh delicious
secreting, secreting
tear-shaped cyanide seeds:

Eve’s seizing ripe fire
of the first impermission.

Naturally Adam the Namer claimed it,
it bobs in his throat to this day.

Though with it he riffs and rather
gives Nicknames — like Newton to
the slither-trickster
who fell not far from the tree
and accidentally invented
the inevitable — gravity.
(Genius, he.)

Eden was the green room
for those who would live
precipitously.
And go on to fall
tragicomically — like in love,
off the edge of the self,
or even all over themselves,
all under
an arch prismatic
of proscenium, promise of
punishment, curse of labor to issue,
permission thus
of this her work to be heard
in word-profession,
which first was Let, thus lit.

MI.
Then let me
skip ahead — up another set
of stairs — though those are spiral,
sinistrose — to the Song Silo’s
one-thousand-and-first story.

(Time, let me
move through you, you me
like you do true prosody — in an
in-and-unfolding
toward an infinite
place of pace
in which we may muse through we.)

Heaven-ascendent and escha-progressive
I go toward what’s on deck,
an epic breath
out-sounding, speaking-free.

Word-letting is bloody medicine,
pharmakon of a sensed necessity.

So I say
Eve, even if it’s only
vapor or vanity,
even if it only grasps at wind I say
all beauty is useful!
(They let you say it if you’re sexy.)

And I am
in the highest silo of Castle Babble,
tumid tower sundering thunder,
a shaft set against
swollen, nigh-cellulite-thighed skies,
cumulonimbus on crack
with a varicose lightning barely suppressed
by purpled surface of cloud.
Wild light of violet letting, its hue suffused
into bruise of night.

I lock myself in long towers
when I need release,
or at least to be struck by something.
But do I need to be rescued or screwed,
a knight or a bolt or both?

For once I’d like to be shocked by something!

Like the lightning-path
to Heaven is lit, this of which
Old-Young Nick spoke as he wrote
and rode the dragon’s tail
to its bass-ack door.
(I fall là-bas),

as if from cliffs,
slipping on mind-grime,
moon-grease, my eyes
on the star’s unfaltering
stares, down stairs,
back down dark
as the backs
of stars unfalling…

The truth is, I was tripping
on all this — go figurative,
a flailure of imagination.
 
*
 
Now all the poetry slowly.
Pours out my ears.

Sanguine, I, supine, lie
under the catalpa tree.

Ezekiel’s four freaky angels encorner
my fissuring window of vision’s peripheries.

Venn-diaphanous planets collide inside me.

World’s one word — but all the World’s truly
tout le Monde:
so many souls whither we’ve issued.

So maybe
the great soul mates
with many, the most
in poem-orgy,
collaboratory.

But do I have one of any
separate
from this breath or body
that was before
so many stars’ dust?

At the last trump,
take the Last Adam back
to adamah, to ashes of that.

Then anyone, anyone,
if you drew
out my Moon for me

I’d draw the wild word down
from its bough, I’d draw
the wide World into your palm
like you were a god.

Then I know — you’ll love me too.

You’ll need to — I mean, my God!

My World — I’ll live in you!

 
 
 
**

CHLOE BLISS SNYDER lives and writes in upstate New York. Her work has appeared in Annulet, Caesura, Grotto, and New American Poetry, among other publications. Her chapbook Ekho and Narkissos was published by The Swan pamphlet series, and its recording may be heard on PennSound.

**

TIMOTHY OTTE (he/they) is the author of the chapbook Rebound, Restart, Renew, Rebuild, Rejoice (Lithic Press), a mentor with the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop, and writer of an occasional newsletter called Stanza Break that focuses on poetry in translation and books outside of a publicity cycle. Other Psalms have appeared in Yalobusha Review, Timber, Sink Review, Bat City Review, and an earlier version of “Psalm 22” appeared in FENCE. Their work has received support from the Minnesota State Arts Board and the Loft Literary Center Mentor Series. Otte lives in North Minneapolis. More at www.timothyotte.com.

from …AGAIN

 

Jack pines. Junk food. 1-800-GOT-JUNK. It’s just another episode of Hoarders. It’s just another empty parking lot outside another shuttered JCPenney. J. Crew relocated to the outlet mall outside of Lee. Need a job application? Either you’re in jeopardy or you’re on your couch watching Jeopardy. Eating Jolly Ranchers. Eating Junior Mints. Junk bonds, junkies, bondage. American jobs. So just keep a journal. Do a Jigsaw puzzle. The Jack O’Lanterns are beginning to rot on the porches in the suburbs. Maybe look for Jupiter in the night sky. Watch reruns of The Jetsons on YouTube. Jetstreams. Jewelry boxes full of stars. Northern nights. Or maybe we’re just in a new kind of jail. Spiral Jetty. Injustice and joblessness. Circle Jerks. It’s in the daily newspapers behind the paywall. Frozen Junior’s cheesecake from Price Chopper. Or drive to Jack ’n the Box and come home if you have one to watch the killjoys on a giant flatscreen. Juxtapositions, juvenilia, juntas. Trump, at the podium, jitters and jives. Jehovah and Jekyll in one. Long live Jackie O. White jellybeans. The New Jim Crow. It’s beginning to sound a lot like jackhammers. Every day is Judgement day. No justice, just the police. Just junkyards. Just the braying of the jackals.

 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 

Halcyon days, like the Keynesian days, are history now. In America, there is no again. Maybe it’s karma for how the country started. Knights of Columbus. KKK. Fake kink. Kmart collapsed, but the KISS Army survives. So maybe a quick trip to Kwik Trip for a Twix, or KFC for a KFC bucket because why not, the kingdom may be crumbling but the drive thru is still open late. Or swing the kettlebells. Make a kale Caesar. Kill or keep track of your kilocalories. Drop another kilo. Out in the country where the kindling is kept. And kegs of kerosene. Sing karaoke (maybe something by the Kinks or Killing Joke). Kneel with a knife over a deer carcass. Knick knack paddy whack. Pass the ketchup packets, the Chick fil’A Zesty Buffalo sauce. Kumquats. It’s just a joke. We’re not really joking anymore. Knowledge is kryptonite. The men in their beloved khakis, white knights kvetching about “urban crime.” Kidnap the curriculum. Run it through the kangaroo courts. Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Conan Doyle. Sing Kumbaya. It’s all off-kilter. It’s more than a kerfuffle. Killing time sometimes. The rest of the time it’s kaput.

 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 

Lithium. Lingerie. Abandoned NAPA auto parts store near Lebanon Valley Speedway. Old RVs settled in for the upcoming winter. A few leftover fires. Limp tires, retreads. Get Little Caesars delivered. Landscaping businesses. Northern lights. Like it or not. At one point in history we were called the lumpenproletariat (from the German lumpen, “rag, rogue”). Just labor now. Belabored. Refugee workers, migrant child laborers. Crumbling factories that lack investment capital. Lack love. An era that’s lost its luster. Laughing gas, generic laundry detergent at the local laundromat. Like Gain, again. Laughingstocks. A life sentence? Every sentence feels like a lifetime ago. Lapsed payments. Lease expired. Lifetime Channel movies to help you forget. The lightbulbs are lukewarm at best. Life cycles on life support. A line of nine harvest green John Deere tractors most likely won’t be sold until next spring. Lines through the parking lot at Long John Silvers. When I left this morning for a Target pick-up my daughter’s window shade was drawn, but when I return a few hours later her window is open to the light. If only history could be a little more like this. Haybales lightly dusted in snow. Dusky late fall sky. Foliage on the forest floor. A pair of northern cardinals singing the old lullabies.

 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 

Munchkins from the Dunkin’ drive-thru at the edge of Pontoosuc Lake. A sord of mallards muck about on the soon-to-be frozen water. My Family Assault Weapons sticker on the back window of the SUV in front of me. A Blue Lives Matter sticker, too. Largemouth Bass, Smallmouth Bass, Tiger Muskellunge. Ice fishing shacks and snowmobiles coming soon. America is American after all. Morning sickness, murder mysteries, melancholia. It’s programmed into the algorithms. Come to Dunkin’, Big Mac Meal Deal. The madding crowd seems madder than before. In the parking lot at Walmart, mercenaries wearing MAGA caps. Buying MAGA flags on Amazon.com. So much moxie. So sophomoric. It’s late autumn. In the night sky, there’s a waxing moon or a waning moon. Moonshine. Maybe or maybe not. It’s like a mortuary here sometimes. Sometimes it’s like a morgue. Dead deer on the side of the highway. Misty late afternoons, or is that fog again. The mountains, the coyotes in the mountains, the mice in the stomachs of the coyotes in the mountains. There’s maybe a momentum here of some kind. At least we’ve got Munchkins and maybe we’ll get a McFlurry, too. Best of times, worst of times. Pots of dying mums.

 
 
 
 
 
**

MARK NOWAK’s books include Shut Up Shut Down, Coal Mountain Elementary, Social Poetics, and …AGAIN (forthcoming), all from Coffee House Press. He recently edited Coronavirus Haiku (Kenning Editions, 2021) and wrote an introduction to Celes Tisdale’s When the Smoke Cleared: Attica Prison Poems and Journal (Duke University Press, 2022). A native of Buffalo, Nowak is founding director of the Worker Writers School.

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 

**
You can reach COLIN in the clouds at gurdiohso@icloud.com.

**

BRIAN ANG wrote The Totality Cantos (Atelos 2022). totalitycantos.net includes the complete text, links to buy copies, and a generator that randomizes assemblages of its one thousand sections. Prose: “Assemblage Poetics”; editor: Assemblage Sampler and ASSEMBLAGE; current poetic project: A Thousand Albums, open to the totality of music.

 
 
 
 

**

ZACK BROWN is a PhD Candidate in the poetics program at SUNY Buffalo. From 2019-2022, with Dana Venerable, he was the co-editor of the literary journal P-Queue. He is the author of Receipts (LUMA/89plus). In 2023, his poem “Deeds of the Princes” appeared in Polish Translation for the “US Poetry” special feature in Wizje magazine. With Courtlin Byrd, Brent Cox, and Simon Eales, he records the podcast Buried Text. In an ongoing project to consider alternate medial possibilities for poetry, he does weekly livestreamed performances of poetry and philosophy on Twitch: twitch.tv/luminancebloom.

Chora

 
 
 

Our sound is translucent, soft, watery, crushed between
fingers softly pulped, whispers in our ear porous litany—
skyline netted white, color blotted out of anything that
stands still, fruit bright against pasted-down surfaces, masks
half-rotating, our sound flickers—we want to oscillate.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Shelters pile atop one another, tunnels and dwelling places
along the river, eating small things that reproduce quickly—
hatchlings fall onto floors and adolescents molt, crunch
underfoot as we sift through fruit with membranes strung
between their innards, suspended inside the sac by fleshy
threads, dark bulbs and vivid globules, encased milks.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Our sound, prism of organisms, bristling pustules of metallic
silver plastic rounden from the pore and roll away—we can
feel each cavity, all our microplastic condensed against
malignant vapors exuding each deserted stair.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Ghosts have been carving holes in the walls—light the shape
of crescents falls in, underneath our feet and beyond
that gray earth slips into the outside, sinkholes open and
swallow trusting ghosts—fountains appear where they were,
three-dimensional forms of the lost.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Blue vapor flaking around pool edges hold their form like
water supports them—at dusk a window opens to hills and
clouds—outside appears, a vision of distance in proximity,
illuminated as a ring around your head my hands are
next to your hands by our sides.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Each time we die we divide—our first death, larvae and amber
illuminated water, sound of movement through the language
of before—you died and the ghosts corporealized,
sinkholes and fountains.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

We fold data into our hands, infinitesimal alighting clear and
green message larvae jibbish and wander, larvae enmesh,
temporally secondary, larvae organs visible skin, larvae that
glow when you bless them, a pantheon of names
—there are small fountains, too.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

We were briefly encased, breath condensed in a gestational
sac dangling from our sound, filled tick—we died and shed it
with our husk, dream of cells repeating, remains abutting an
endless landfill of outside lack-enveloped scent of living
dying surrounded by plastic, a gradient of turning plastic.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Our lack becomes someone else—you scatter a droplet,
pattern a scatter of a droplet—a ghost says the rest of our
lives and we remember time passed, scaffold fallen varieties
grafted to grow where sound drips and messages
hang densely in a cluster.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Waking dawn wide-eyed petal-edged larvae, lichened stair,
stained glass window rouges, friction under our husks—we
press ourselves against, endless throb chewing, mask tearing,
fibrous stalks emerge we crystalline and devour, inhale and
our wings creak, salivate, a paste absorbed through the skin.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Desire adulates ghosts—a ghost speaks directly to our name,
mercurial rings, bridge between their eyes and fingers—
sound blistered with stars beamed purely, voice deepening
down down down to the bottom of the well—wings lengthen
all their eyes wide, what remains in the world since our forms
died at once together.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Breach swallowing sound, looking-listening symbolic organ,
feel them duplicate, smoke filled vesicles that burst, rising a
maw odor of blood rough touch sliced core, your whole form
down our throat—you drowned, turning small pale interior
vegetal longing condensed in astriction of.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Your sound gone tall and sonorous, pliable to swell, collected
held-dears look-feel like stacked stones, laid stones, stones
suspended archway, a ghost reappears and reminds us who
killed the world—the breach never fills, metallic and burled
thicket, larvae pour over the edge and are not seen again.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Undoing works its way through, ghost ministrations
fulminate, shockwave enclosed system—a ghost opens a
crescent, cohort trust a feature, sleep a full cycle wrapped in
loneliness, step backward stair turns, redirected into ethos—
fearful impulse apace response, your pain second skin.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Submerged, gone translucent so perfused, chime units of
meaning, stutter exuberance, flooded by touch—our mask’s
capillaries swell, part a ridge in the brink, outside visible
through a parted wall of water, ground above us ceaseless—
wing vanes conjoining, tears incessant, eyes turn pores,
bridges dissolve, appendages to limb and flank, cheek and
collarbone, flat scapula softening, pouring into
sternum, subutized birthmarks.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Collecting steadily, sorrows fingertip—your body tried to die,
flung from heights and slow poisoning—rising body, fluid
swollen, circumnavigating laughter runs, our dual pupils
coagulate—we pull earth out of the ground, knuckling
density, floating in a suffuse of virtue and ferment.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Gestural patterns, withheld intimacies affixed below the
surface, entered world chewing on itself—we turn to foam
to presence, need for silence, a counterweight—a tunnel
lengthens below us, skin dipped absent vulnerable point,
circular negative, cohort pollened with reproduction, soft
offerings loam from us—a vision of you lattices mercilessly
—we chew the tubercle, epithelial cells, wad of sap,
sugars release, travel subcutaneously.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Dipped in inside-turned-outside enact initiate towards,
vibrating cohort permeated, breed flicker at the ends,
unfolded diagram silence vowels and perambulations—we
briefly disintegrate, materialized with cold, dominated by the
principle against upon our outraged body insists—we can
hear the deep and hollow sound, the sound of the world
ending itself the ending worlding itself the feeling and
conscious body of the bodies of the world.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

We try to draw the cohort closer, feel the transmission,
resemblance misstep a hereafter, listening language suns
bleed together at the lip—our contradictions snare, dissonant
curdling, vitriolic bitters, unidentifiable ambrosia—we exude
process errors repair coincident paths.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Machines clamber our shoulder, pool oils of shame and whir
in our ear to keep moving, manufacture units of exchange,
invent metrics of worth, facsimile thought detritus—
suspicions proliferate, blind spots form as the mechanisms
increase, variables and information limit, scents change in
some technical rearrangement of chemicals.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Machines tap at themselves in a rhythm of tuned teeth, our
umbilicals connect us sheathed with tears, each connected at
grief, thronged with blood commingling at the hyphen—we
fracture, suffering perfuses rising to our chest, words emerge
an echoic origin—undesired self, reflection averse, heavy
overture, distance inside age when fear enters—lanced worry,
lost in a dream refrain redoubt, something to remember by,
objects of imagination and dread, distant selves, frustrated
impulses, a ravine, nothing is anything else.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

At the center of the core of the earth, entangled molecules
ground underfoot infinitely more minute, never disappearing
parts melted and reformed infinitely, thousands of years in
an ounce—another enclosure approaches—you walks with it,
inner world circling their feet, an origin story.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Another you, wall-enclosed heroic scale of inner weeping,
protecting machines, soft places visible in the way you cross
gestures, refract and sticking—soft voiced and mossen,
vascular knowledge finely wrought, many tongued, deep
ideogram, mouth sounds eke out desirous communication.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Newly born you, carved wings still lacquered, discerning
rightly, pustulate, secretions in the air between us, signalers
pass through enclosure membranes, near to touching,
mechanisms vying on transparent outgrowths to draw
us closer at our warp and truing centers.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Pain radiates to the limits of its sound, inarticulable, nothing
that can be touched, undulates against restless, talking to
itself in a tremulous loop—our enclosures attract, break
together, core beneath us widening, objects of
nurturance imparted and named.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Many-sided objects travel with us, geometries bloom from
the undergrowth, minutes in our cells, skin, seasons cluster
tight furled sweeten the color, suddenly visible, connect to
rhythmic mirroring and withholding, lapse in and out of,
remains interred, futures intersecting moments when we
may have died or lived and who was beside us then.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Thresholds approximate at our surface, agonized stillness
where longing resides, undone runs through, populations
flush, conversations fill the enclosures, overlap pasts
extending backwards to a fixed point in the collision of dust
—soft purpling, unholdable, soured in the close please woe.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Fountains hover above us, sound of collapsing end times,
after life, bright things extinguish, pulverized from flesh
into echoes, point source contamination ripening,
branchial cavities void, anticipation drip,
each membrane thins before it breaks.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

You whispers of foregone places, discrete and parallel
stairways, irreplaceable wolds—trod internal terrain,
continuous fields of unspoken proximity duplicates
meaning, sembling phenomena, intoned refrain, scent
exuding from crushed open places, coaxed
forth sudden low lying ground.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Withdrawn forfeitures of reciprocity, abandoned unbeholden
realm, weight of bone ash, ruptures and connections form-
unform across the void, deepen into surfaces, appearances,
representations of and of and of, cut open suns apricot and
melon, fuming a portal to half-lit density—you close
the nictitating membrane.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Digitate or filiform harbingers spread through our skin,
polydactyl, keloidal outgrowing repetition on our crooked
mile, lies vaporize as a false horizon, suspended above
hypogeous bouquets of self, gathering in corners—
stories and images, days it rained.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Language pours into us, nothing molecules, obfuscated
multiplied receptacles—pulsating and budded dusk silts trace
overflows—offer an open infinitesimal trust confluence,
where we pull closer in, slung tethers poison on a sharp tip,
eat up the cultivars, bulbous irritant, near world-making held
in place—individuate distance and non-descendent young.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Our unanswered question, idolized pixels lit skyline turned
perfect, enraptured attention, fixed gaze, break it open and
name all our parts that die, unknown interaction, rapid
change sequence—common gesture place name pattern,
inexpressibly specific tongues, meanings of the word.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Shapes rearticulate obscure quality of suffering, navigable
unrequited—manipulations of worship absence susceptible
enclosures, omit intervening, thoughts react,
clabber into new bonds.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

We pluck at the unyielding companion, adhesive mouthpart
latched on elsewith, we hallucinate contact, penetration,
reciprocity wandering, inseminated, fruit appears on our
tactile sensory opening, smooth muscle contractions and
ducts, neural architecture extended to each wild plum.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Gods appear, spirit-drenched to the stone, vying for our
dozen hands, each self-carved walk, contradictory wreath
and grenadine judgment, twist our orbits together, a god
drips harmony sought a common note, shivering out in our
naked gorgeous, deformed and gelatin.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Gods split us like a hair, lay their eggs marbled want—god of
rot, an end that becomes a stair, rush heated oblivion, killing
underfoot mercies chase round dense wisdoms perish to
something else—god drawn to obscene blue
light emitting indelible diodes.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

One of us pales from a god bite, swollen holographs empty
places near and beside and through us—gods made of
malformed undertakings flash gracious, remade cathected
walls, inbetweenness, palpable callous irises thickly,
pendulous with choices.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

The deep and hollow sound shatters our delirium turn face
lightning, touch the ground, fingertips absence of
bioturbation or actuated penetration cavity expansion or
volvating multi-shelled chitons, no stridulation or honest
signals—our overlapped enclosures, perilous carry ardent
burning, drenched sulfuric loss, achromatized morass,
living rigored to semblance.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

There are no predatory responses left, pathogenic grief
sensitivity, our body stuff roils at the abstract spatial pattern
lack, distorted and dilating relation—our visions bifurcate,
cluster sticky yellow flowers, ounces of nectar, names we
confuse for being, skin forming contamination bond,
places of trust.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Ferment spills each god, larvae suspended, preserved
succulent purity held close, smell of biofilm, we inhale
warm, thought gauze clung between, shiver radula,
infinitesimal bells, lack dampening sulfides ring clear
—our taut and softened sounds, tender albumen,
river conjoined.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Wells fill slake gleaming refraction ladled over dedicated
transduction mechanisms elicit excitation responses god,
lubricated tissues mouth sound variants for uninjured
seedlings, pith center cells revelating change, cut to burst,
medullary rays transport from center to periphery.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Ruinous dust lost apostolic control, eternally declinated
fruits, degraded and assimilated, turned to living soil,
petroleum-derived polymer gone residual fairy ring—
propagules streams, filtration beds ingest fresh meal,
nimbed and dissymmetrical violet faces, adorned in
carnelian, amethyst, topaz, garnet, flowers and stars.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Pressure gradients expanding atmospheric lungs, fiber optic
cable nervous system, aquifers refill weeping, artificial reefs
clung tunicates, filter feed crumbled stairs, collapsed risers
and landings turned decomposition sheen, horizoned angelic
order, invertebrate pore bearers remoldable sponge
merge backwards birth unwalled.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Feeling permeates the grid, collective gaze organs manipulate
light convergent focus—carbon shelled bivalves reproduce
billions, filter images accumulate calcified refusal, spirits
breakwater while attention microbes toward decomposition,
nutrient overabundance bloomed algael shone through
with undissolved oxygen.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Our tears protein thickened fertilize pseudopod relation-
specific seeing, wooded paths ripple memorial, encircled
songs—fevered growing seasons extend, languages fall into
the sea, smallest units of color appear enmeshed cobalt
ganglia, internal divisions unspeakable fault, multipotent
memories swarm doubling time, misfolded.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Nociception reifies collective matter, inevitable pathways—
winding potentialities into states of firmament,
luminary perturbations together, half-open,
entering at any arcsecond.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Fruit turns large strawberry dense scented, symbols tale,
warmed in the mouth, caress tympanum, mechanoreceptors
flicker brought about light, saponify to divine reflections.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Sweet nightingale frothed intimate vibratory radii—years
adjacent rooms filled with sunflowers, souls tender age
remember our bodies intonation, concentric.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

**

JESSICA RAE ELSAESSER is a poet whose recent works have been included in Salutations by RVNG Intl., Completely and Without Pause – Feminist Notes on Oppression and Expansion, Thou Who Holds but Owns Not by TLTRPreß, Looking for you by Du-Good Press, and DAISYWORLD MAGAZINE #2. They co-founded A Wrecked Tangle Press, publishing small edition artist’s books from 2008-2018. Their current self-publishing project, Place of the Linden, collaborates with the work of Lindsey Ann Elsaesser.

Bonus Futures
 

(15:40)

I thought my truck
/
Come on now, just pick the right past
they are baby ponies
/
Mr. Sitter at the whole scene
he was in tears
and it was heaven
neon to hear
little bored too
/
the plaque’s a diaper now
dick’s horrific
drink appeals
any brand ear
slightly under the surface
water is day
/
They’re asleep
they could pass into walls
they develop as wonder
most felt that, nuns
/
it’s a lovely safe
the ontology of his right foot
he’s bathing
isolate stroke around &
beyond him
near toes
/
that knee just dots in
behind her
their backline stepping in
reverses it back towards
the near again
in the nick of time
last dish challenge
the unveiling of right there
space was left
the counter vehicle
/
the vampire wind play
put that out for calling
when verbal
as a pretty cake
/
but see for the girls
thoroughbred dies
a poor world bank
but bitter hung on
the foresight of score

 
 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 
 

(14:07)

Ok
Shock us
inside the left
that’s where I feel
sucker in brilliant form
on either flank
belt back horse
lip the very fire in the belly
revisit the passion apart
past Austell
always did
It feels like the game
slipped in here for granite jacket
could have dreamt yet
we didn’t need to do that
batteries
little bit of afters
Are you trying to win?
here it’s a rash Foot Locker
boy that was furious
rush visibility and form
pizzas
first plane out
in the grass, somebody come
come towards him too late
Bottom corner of G
And we know our well
trash food
whip to cry
flash that gonna suit back
setting up perfectly with someone
ketchup slip-proof
heroic slides
double dutch
Boy glitters
when he caught sin
On the head of the personalities
flooded frame
propelled it beyond RAM
it was too soft
Oh dear God
Nick behind for a cold object
again same quarry
clearer fray
to fish from the hair
Thru a boot
the sack of clear
I’ll just clean your lines
now by shawl
That was molten
The ladies have snatched it
There’s more than one inquiry around this
but it is true sod
sockets are going narrow
It’s bedtime
just how much that means
streams are solidifying
Alien catches star
Belief is ballooning
Orlando roller coaster

 
 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 
 

(9:56)

Police treat
is again amongst ourselves,
polysaccharides,
but top this:
Oz a reboot.

Make the Nile
take your sisters
he said he is the one who
can dribble
he’s the one who has a face

and you know what, Russian Anthony,
you’re going to give you
in the wider areas
you try to make the killer
tossed from custom error.
But it’s not right,
you’re already open
having the body’s narrow.
It comes straight away out
you
where God’s was too,
wasn’t there,

how Korea has been a room
because the hair is there
to keep her at point-blank range,
fantastic bawling
and sure we’re ghosts.

Don’t think he was expecting to reach him
in that sort of corridor
and the click was audible
the weights
big sharks water
shore swan
it’s a wonderful saying

and agonizing
the poses are going to run
across allow them to shoot ghosts
game of chance. After chance.

Today blocked by payroll
the circuit,
enjoy making mistakes
gives you more stability.
We don’t care
a halo claim
kept alive
deliveries.
God is that little
touch is running out of space
try to keep it in then.
Will this be the last attack?
I’ll just take my file now
charts after chance.

 
 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 
 

(8:37)

Debbie’s the hair today
number of clean sheiks
local boy RAF of Iran
signing to bits
no winds
will hope to cause more trouble
and claim more headline-making points
here today
looking for their costs
but what a beautiful disguise
pass with the pass from Russia
early nerve
settle up apps
slaughter into the other corner
it’s a brilliant star
create a waited and waited
your glitter actually tried to put them off

 
 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 
 

(16:18)

Bueno whilst lease signing.
Crate daughter makes his water.
My real amina’s blast
Wonder when back in.
Both rub your mixes.
He continues in gold
first in the bull
to play through the heart.
to open up this live
for defense
and livable looking.

Don’t send me to hell since tomato
just spotted a bit of space
opening up the touch.
Look
there’s a new science
shows composers off
never perfectly weighted
in decision.

And agonize this
is a terrific start from walls,
compared to get code
that’s more impressive
stuff from wolves.

Nickel can’t quite get to grips
with that movement yet.
The first contact to you
takes advantage of it
makes a mess.
The acceptable gets attached on it
and then it drops.
The new boy is a danger
and he takes his chance
clinically.

rifles are right onto the roof
wolves are in dreamland.
Well, what’s a way
to make your mark?
It’s a franchise
chet hitch
don’t turn away
Darwin noon.

This is it,
stands for the wall
stands are stirred.
The walls wouldn’t wouldn’t
want to allow a trend this much
time.

Do I
lethally.
It clean,
just gets underneath
a little too much
rockets over a salad bar
took my gap
it did stay by her side.
The message from you and papa,
hard time is definitely
spread liberal.
Why don’t those gaps that lived
run into Matt?
It wasn’t an applicator
Is it anyway?

Wolves have to really spread themselves
first footage
but wrong so far.
most salad gets into position
which he loves.
Of this
walls they fall behind
because you didn’t opportunities, man.

 
 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 
 

(7:48)

You want to go there at least
good underwear speeds greenish
this is the K2 meet it
some Christians and space
they’re expecting the cross
and since lips good
what a past that is
the harbor
the droid a plate of wonderful fast
talked about moments
watery candy was in there
Sakkubai rocket but then Louis was dogged internment
gun demanding behind here
many a snare again
another key say
that it is state by strike again
what’s this under one?
the product
love the fluid flowing
as soon as he cuts inside
gives acres of space
for mares to run into
you have to hold a certain line
grievous is the best chance of the heart’s core
water touch that
if you want more shaft
God reason
maybe finally a beating
oozes out of this team
good underwear and
beautiful just died sex
Mara’s palm palms it back into the path
under his body
back to front
we end up with a tap in
and that’s after I met Roger
the ballet when they lost him
presence of mine
belly I can’t do anything off about it
to groin is starting to find more space
through the legs
hand to it foreign
here’s the pet
name
there being chanted
overjoyed by the evening
any place of his birth

 
 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 
 

(16:08)

And of course your back here yes
but get a bucket
I’m stationed put up a guitar
so beyond the sparkle in the face
put the flax out
and he’s in the boat
storm of the way by Boeing
stolen back by part A

I’ve been rather bombarded by Bruce
a heart beats, pondered and then pointed
That is fear at its functional best
awesome thing, I probably didn’t see it
been fruitless been rather converted
My sucker ski bus
under assault
go to a greater or lesser extent in
their is friendly games to keep their engines taking over

Kyle Soccer is back home
my silly but
wiry strength about the Cossack
not today
trivia league leaders have snatched belief

I really well marshal there
by salad bar
bipolar
what is little battle and rather
spend white
definition of the word? Anticlimactic

Josh dogs
turn from the anterior too
who’s himself damage
leg out into the fire
whilst West have continued to protest
dragged away for murder guard
save been drama, maybe angle prohibitive
slashed across the face

I’m back by bed rather ride on his own light
but, that is run into trouble
disappointing finish in the end by Martin
odor garbage
took a blue ball by sack (of great awareness)
why the finger? Hey buddy
your body’s in the way
the tree moves step by dancing
stat ever closer
to reality
so far from vulnerable

 
 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 
 

(12:00)

(for Spencer)

Deserving names
he saw his
both drop to the ground
to the ground
tonight
[Indiscernible] hits for the bowline
and is
everything like you said
you haven’t
the interest
articling form
the past is great at this
is not a bad pool, is it?
still arriving
imperial
misses too much time
this is surely the last session
we have seen yet again

 
 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 
 

(16:15)

can’t is preferred formation
long laid diet dirty
pop them out, our tsar
alongside highway bear
deputizing for the injured feared
top limit
clinging to the fringes
grappling in the biggest conversation of them all
terrified at the prospect

spurs to the real gutters
to speed up the Seven Sisters Road
effectively out of sight
we’re here for killer surf ski
when we don’t need one of them
her guard white outside
darting in from the tub
tug challenge largely shifted open
some sort it out with diet
and
what I sleep with
danger
wine in this doctor
contriving him
so I bet it’s custard

be really
don’t know what your thoughts are
that is awarded actually a salary
color sets
chin KO
just leave his light
and then he also slept

I was ended up (in a) career in the back of him
free trade clause and no real decision to be made
to start the party and jacket
spare one
looking for space
the lace is along the ground
concepts keep
held a good line

and they’ve been able to do that
because they’ve got that extra money
they compress compress
plebe year towards robust
skin
this is more promising
you’ll assess key
around a better day

precious starting to mount
salt chased out by setting
your here
is kale
sets your houses
just believe in a bit
tension is not
what’s the top sighs?

he just followed throat
that will essentially goes the other way
day and concepts
granite jacker
clear bison
not smelly outside of him
Katia inside of him
shut out the light
some chain coat
and a check up
sleeping was where we needed to be
it’s rusting so full of confidence

 
 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 
 

(18:56)

little dime entities coming
in the system
stop the passing moments of cities going
he’s only a candy in the summit
It is a rips quarter of the plot

Rise, Brett,
sell our beautiful shape on the past
so to hurt me
saw his way out of the old traffic
the plug interested in his freight
molasses going beyond him
watching was well station

I’m now, here was pretty phenomenal
this precious little target area
and once again another cheek giveaway
chase into space
account you will come to engage
rash
fix
spirit speaking to it b(u)y can sell oh

astronauts beaten to it can sell out
He said, ‘merchants intervention was impeccably time’
seeking to be next
the congestion shut him out
well defended by Malaysia
whilst the old twisting
around it with molasses are outside of him

This job’s to pass
severe
and rush for Tony’s way
city rascal hollow
growing up
start towards photon
spotted by wondrous Acker
rational
but her/sides
stowed happiness break again
scooped into a corridor
Can’t you read it?

more than just a little knot
absolute moving away all the time
I’ve city’s quality
I never panicking
I think of the afternoon
hunting with his worry’s strength again
reenergized to get their appliance

It’s called a strap for (the) dead
robbery clatters interim
pulls back physically the system
the man in the middle
to be as eyes in that situation
implicitly a part of that play
the way of the law
cleared by my last year down again

He’s the picture of composers in his face
a head in an instant
a really just area
the hairs waiting for it
fractious faults on edge
on the cusp of something
knighted in it
They mean it again
sing on their way

 
 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 
 

(17:21)

That’s a rabbit
That’s amore
Everybody in sky blue
They moved the chest
and turned from red markers
And then it’s just about as whole
and going to be
the Nike kids
a little deflection from picture
takes it away from chronic oldie
on the line
I just spoke to have a ton of in
a little bit
All the agents
physicality is speed is temperament, you see?
Loves a tussle as well
celebrating a fault
I was against bank laughter
new long
at real tempo
What is the tempo and speed?
He went into dreams quickly
on his feet
and quickly away from the situation
just a gay gray ghost
What did he call? “Isaac”
Bat through tomorrow’s again
I didn’t quite get the past
This is a good plot from Tarkovsky
‘Have thought’ it’s called
Passage of plate
Leviathan eventually
Usually when you watch it
things are so easy
they find spaces
grand jury
lifts it into danger food
up against it you know
Here’s to growing up
under wood stones
Well, it’s chances. Cool.
That’s as big as they are.

 
 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 
 

(14:20)

Is It Time To Finally Call

I am happy to succumb to your precious dad
not my problems
always asking me every second time

Every time I open my left eye you’re there
when it’s done right assault
is way and above
someone we’ll never see again

The thing is it’s just how how for how
I was not the president I was hoping for
don’t be jealous of my upper body
the dribbling is mud blowing everything
repeating killing him babish
a couple dance
here and there
dead rubbers
with the vague horse when he came out
criticizing vehicles
that was chakra
without being in a bathroom
I didn’t do geography clearly
Van Gogh dancing with the phone
for your own country 0

 
 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 
 

(6:54)

Anyhow his name
He’s hoping to fear better
Space deflection
This thing out of it
Save approach
At the end of it all
Terrific skin
Running thru his head
In danger of improving here
To deliver hope to clay classic clot
That’s the way he thinks
Excessive back catalog
In confined space
I’m always a little forgiving when it’s bouncing
Located in the midriff
Well-timed memories
You’re usually in charge of the dreadful tons
Looked at and dismissed from long scarf
Celebrating it to the Hilton
He has suffered from those positions
To hear the unwelcome

 
 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 
 

(13:58)

The beaten in the air
by the forest
breaks kindly
chill fixed it in beautiful.
There’s no wide enough.
There he wished.
It was a wildlash
difficult to see.
I want you I mean.
Really should give that one up,
steady himself for the past.
I don’t have too many complaints.
His grandma turn.
Plenty elsewhere in this pennystone window
we will show you.
Sorry for his kid
by a golden hill
undone cork holder.
He’s not a great one because he doesn’t take it in his stride.
Neither can I lovely turn the patient
for the lunge.

 
 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 
 

(10:19)

A paragon let him go
Borrowed good
Brill everywhere
Rendered despondent by the race tracks
You’ll notice I sat on the fence
I’ve seen him mouth money
The family white shirts are back
Gap pro and the van
He must be in Spotify
Leah’s articulated by profound concern
Or they’re gut dispossessed
by a doggy who is so hungry and
cop fragile
He catches his uncle
this time portal
that is swallowable bonus time
full revolution hotstar uncomfortability

 
 
 
 
 
 

**

MATTHEW GOETHE is the shell corporealization behind Sweaty Letter. His first book A Snowfire Not Born(e) Again (2021) was published via Sweet Wreath. A new dos-a-dos chapbook with J. Martin Conaway will be released later this year. He makes poems in and around Atlanta, GA.

ON SPACE AND TIME

What is The revolution of cells upon us? The revolution of cells upon us is what should be added to the wall text
of drawing exhibits everywhere, even if all you have is a pencil, and even though most pencils are
made of cedar and cedars have tree rings whereas tropical trees have none on account of their
constant spring growth, I guess you could say you can't have one without the other, winter and spring
I mean, which is actually just like how fingerprints make themselves into fingerprints, I'm saying the
blooming and the burying, only the seasons don't really have anything to do with it, that was just a
metaphor! But metaphorically speaking it's definitely true that the top layer is kind-of a springtime, in
terms of human skin I mean, and the bottom more of a tundra, on account of the slow-mo growth, I
mean the way the bottom layer grows so much slower than the top layer so that the top layer literally
shoots out over the sides and down into its own winter, buckling in on the under-layers into little
mini-ridges and valleys, cold and stark across the field. Now what seasons falls from our hands? Cover
the roof in mud and it will be covered in seeds! Even though it can be hard to get enough pressure
from a pencil the way you can with a pen, I mean in terms of welting deep into the wall so that it
really takes a good amount of sanding to remove any residual inscription on the inner wall like if a
drought came along one summer or insects one year ate up all the leaves, which almost never happens
to century plants! And is another example of timeless vegetation that doesn't actually bloom every
hundred years but more like every ten or twenty maybe more depending on the climate, and so being
less time-oriented and more space-oriented really gets to the whole point of how things are a
returning, like how Kenneth Patchen said, not returning, but a returning. The tips of my hands upon
the tips of my hands. And a going, a going, and the stars!

 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 

WHY THINGS GROW UP

Plus all sun-bleached things are a kind of nebulae if you look at them close enough, like how garlic
pollen-grains look like flying saucers and evening primrose is a dead ringer for Saturn! O barriers of
the cosmos! Which is just like how ancient people used to go out and cut down wild date palm
branches along the riverbank to bring back and parade around their own date palm orchards dancing
and singing harvest songs like "Oats, Peas, Beans and Barley Grow" only a different version of course
with more appropriate grains and fruits to their time and place, and you could probably just make up
the jig part, but the point is galactic pollen wilding upon the earth, you just can't have one without the
other! Which is just like how calling the stars a light show is always ridiculous unless you've ever been
to one of those choral concerts where the singers all pour in from the back of the theater and then
down the aisles and then climb up onto the stage in waves, which makes you feel like you're waving
too and is probably the point. Some non-Freudian psychologists say the reason we say falling in and
out of love is on account of our human orientation of limited space, but Michaux talks about
accidentally walking on the ceiling instead of the ground in a moment of distraction, so I'm not sure
how that plays into love per se but it works for space and bodies, like how one little yellow pollen-
grain on a single strand of silk makes one little yellow kernel in an otherwise solid white ear of corn.
Where are you falling now? And what about the seeds of potatoes that practically no one uses to grow
anything anymore? Where do the barrel-shaped pollens of the potatoes go? Where do they bury their
faces in the bleached bleached hands of the earth?

 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 

WHY THINGS GROW ANYWAY

Two fingerprints diverged in a wood. Good thing they were tied together! Actually it's common
practice all over the world to give camels the hides of their dead calves to let down their milk, also
cows, which is just proof again that holding is only ever remembering. Leathering the light.

 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 

ON CYCLES AND RETURNINGS

Some people say chicken of the woods is called chicken of the woods on account of the way it sticks
out from the tree just like how chickens stretch out their necks and pop up onto the tips of their toes
at the first sign of any kind of atmospheric circus come up off the trees, in long silent tails that string
out from your hands and momentarily bathe you in some kind of backwards time just before you
realize you better get shaking, I mean weathervanes don't look like chickens for nothing, people! But
then other people say it's on account of the color and feather-like cascades down the side of the tree
and then even other people say it's because of the texture, but obviously they're talking about cooked
chicken, into the wind the body of the bloom, like how no matter which way you turn an egg around
the yolk always goes right back up to the top, chicken eggs I mean but it's probably true for all eggs,
right back up like a barrel at sea or a barrel at river or even a barrel at little creek in the earth because
obviously it doesn't actually end anywhere, the sea I mean, not the barrel, and even as I say this I'm at
sea which is also the clouds, but that's another cycle, and also has everything to do with the way the
air washes through all the little invisible holes of an eggshell, I mean for the oxygen, to get back to the
chicken that is, once the yoke-umbilical-cord dries up and it starts to get the idea that it's time to crack
out of there, prepare our teeth to take ourselves with us.

 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 

ON KNOWING, KIND-OF

And while we're at it, it's totally natural to read "starlathered" as "slaughtered," so don't ever feel bad
about it if that happens to you, I mean first of all they have practically all the same letters, not to
mention the shared root words, and that's even before you get to the build-up of light, and who can
ever expect to read the word "starlathered" anyway? Like that parrot who only knew how to say, "My
feathers are not a tail because I cannot wag them," and who could ever expect a parrot to say that?
Every creature on earth denying their own existence, actually any bird can be taught to sing the song
of any other bird if you isolate it and play a recording of the other bird's song on repeat, which people
used to have to pay for and pretty steeply too but now it's free on youtube, so that the second bird
learns the first bird's song so well it replaces its own song completely, and then that way when the first
bird dies, its song lives on safe and sound in the second bird, although obviously meaning that now
the second bird's song is actually lost forever, which is maybe OK on an occasional basis but the
problem is when it's happening across whole species, and then genetically and generationally all the
way down to the very last one, I mean obviously, but it happens. Which makes me think of Kafka's
Josephine who died by her own piping, so to speak, strike a bell and touch your fingernail to its edge
for as long as you can feel the bell moving. Wait for the others to joins us. One way of explaining to
children how different languages developed is to say One day the children traveled too far from home
and being all alone with no adults to teach them had to start all over. Which happens, which happens.
Wrest Identity from Nothing shouldn't be said for anything but how Baldwin meant it and yet it falls
everywhere upon the mouths of the earth, upon the mouths of mouths, like the margins of fruit, like
the margins of margins.

 
 
 
 
 
**

ELIZABETH ZUBA is the author of two works of poetry, Decoherent The Wing’ed (SplitLevel Texts) and the chapbook May Double as a Whistle (The Song Cave). Her most recent book Frog Pond Splash: Collages by Ray Johnson with Texts by William S. Wilson (Siglio Press) was listed as a New York Times Best Art Book of 2020.