garden ocean kindness

In the morning I unfold the dirt from my hand
My lover is putting me through a silent retreat
Designed for compliment recipients who are unable to accept gifts

 

table chair window

Maximalist etiquette requires stationary wheels
The idea alone of some train is no longer good enough for me
Often I wonder what can I do with a $20 bill

 

string fabric sleep

It’s a circus up there where I try feeding myself yarn
There’s no pattern to follow just one foot in front of the other
Worried I’m wearing anything at all that slightly resembles pajamas

 

time money water

I could sleep for one more hour but my eyes won’t shut
I keep refreshing my online banking summary, nothing changes
A water bottle is my least favorite thing to carry

 

tree speech listen

If a woman’s shirt is longer than her jacket, leave her
I want to write and be read anywhere
There are no words you don’t know

 

mouth ear hand

There are no words I would use that I normally would not
Why would I
Be proving the sticks of fashion we hold together

 

metal glass pavement

Dragging an elevator outside
It won’t be photogenic maybe but you will feel something
What’s it like to run way over to the far end of the opposite of clarity

 

paper cloud metal

I can’t trust myself in the moment of looking up a definition or the weather
From here I predict
An aftertaste of shiitake mushroom drying on the evening rack of my tongue

 

concrete water oil

One doesn’t have to decide
Between a block sale and a ladder made of cards
I am asking you to show me how wet your fingers are

 

wind cloth cloth

There’s no worse sound than a door that opens immediately once it has closed
If the scarf comes down past her waist she’ll hang up before you do
What other article of clothing are you a little too good for?

**

STACEY TRAN lives in Portland, OR. www.staceytran.com

 

natay

dead, casualty
they were right here
this space
and they left
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

If every woman has a grave deep inside her,

Then mine is my father’s
A four-cornered stone that holds my focus
My last name etched in cement

 

Sapigao is not just a surname
It is the X on a map
Marking the territory of my father’s body in the cemetery

 

Every Father’s Day I follow it
This is where I celebrate
Every November for his birthday,
Every March when I can remember,
Where each visit is a prayer

 

A reminder that I am small against landscape
Standing above someone standing above me
My father is the bouquet of roses
Lillies, baby’s breath, the occasional potted plant

They say flowers are the scent of the dead

A potent temporary reminder

I have learned to love him

By holding tight and letting go

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A part of this conversation is missing.

I swear that Gem, who might be one of my cousins, sent me a message about wanting to talk to my mother, whom I was upset with at the time he messaged me.

I swear that Gem asked for my mother’s contact information and needed it right away. I could sense the urgency, but I did not act in like manner.

I was too upset with my mom and a bit frightened at family members’ accessibility to make contact with me.

I only responded because I had seen on Gem’s Facebook profile many people expressing in Ilokano condolences and aches for his life. They presented me disbelief that Gem was gone. That Gem had passed away unexpectedly.

The message I sent was an attempt to make up for the fact that I had ignored his previous messages. I thought that if I’d replied he’d reply, too. I thought that I had misread the comments in Ilokano. I suddenly wanted to converse with him knowing I couldn’t.

What if the reason Gem messaged me correlated to his need to talk with my mother? What if it was my fault?

This is the same person:
My dad    My Father Son
This man       on the             tapes
Juan C. SapigaoJuan Sapicao
John SapiagostrangerJohn Sapigaoa man in love
JohnnyJuan Cariaga Sapigao
parentJohnny C. Sapigaothe deceasedimmigrantJuan Sapigao, Capt. U.S. Army J. Sapigoa
“Doddy” mahal
UncleSAPIGAO, U.S. Army

---

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

I don’t know for how long my dad lived in Saudi Arabia.

I have a lot of friends whose fathers worked there.

Some said they lived most of their lives without a father around.

I imagined their fatherlessness just as I imagined my own.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Example: Father’s sacrifices

An example of this is “father’s sacrifices.” This means that the sacrifices belong to the father. This means that he has given up, offered – strategically, religiously, constantly. This means that he left and that his absence is a sacrifice. That when he sacrificed to go away, that I have sacrificed, too. I inherited his sacrifice. I duplicate sacrifice.

An example of this is “father’s sacrifices.” This means that, without the apostrophe, one would also be saying “father is sacrifices.” The father, singular, has sacrificed many times, in the plural form. This means that more than one sacrifice has been made. That the father is an embodiment of multiple forms of sacrifice.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

dangadang

to struggle
good luck pronouncing
the curvatures of that which
strangles you

 
 
 
 
 

**

JANICE LOBO SAPIGAO is a poet, writer, and educator from San José, CA. Her first book of poetry about her mom, microchips for millions, critiques the Silicon Valley and its exploitation of immigrant women workers, and will be published this summer by Philippine American Writers and Artists (PAWA), Inc. She teaches English at San José City College and Skyline College. She loves hip hop, runs races occasionally, and plays with stuffed animals. Please visit her website: janicewrites.com

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

The minotaur suffers only from minor nightmares.

He dreams infant dragons devour him whole.

A silver sphere circling round and round a disc-shaped plate.

His eyes remain in a frozen state.

He is a form that travels with me.

I fly above the wilderness, and now that I am inside, I discover a
windowless house.

 
 
 
 

A marquee in the shape of a hexagon
Reads, “Solitude in darkness is the ideal inspiration for transformation”
 
 
When she leaves me, she says
I like boys better because they let me seek consolation in our naked
intimacies
 
 
Years before, I see the premonition
inside her silver door
 
 
A fine apartment in the oldest quarter of the city
The perfect place for a blackout
Her face was always a mess and my hair even worse
 
 
The bronze plates next to paintings read: Film, Pyramid, Man Cut Up,
Little Boy Dream, Aztec Tides, Monster Sky, Totems and World Belong,
Dim Lights
 
 
In the basement of my building, a bony figure sings my praises,
Proclaiming, “You are too strong for her and her upsets”
The only dreams are the sound dreams
Safe madness

You have 5000 years in that face

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Telegram:

Rose is dying. Stop.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

I send you a giftbasket.
Enclosed is a card.

Dear,
 
Enclosed are:Two apple tarts
Six strands of hair
One broken collar bone
My half-eaten thumb
 
 

With love,
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Face bones
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Stop talking! I’ll murder you!
I poisoned….
I’m poisoned
They poisoned me
The doctor’s here
I can’t write the check
I like your watch
I can’t go
I don’t
I have a long story
I can’t talk now
I’ll tell you the story later
Water please
Let me close
Let me out!
Grow water
Grow clothes
Grow close
Close, no, no, no
Close, close it up
Where are you going?
Go under
Under! Let me take off my
clothes, I doubt that
Who is she? Where am I going?
Take off my clothes
Let me take off my clothes
Let me take off my clothes
Let me take off my clothes
Where are the boys?
The boys!
Stop.
Tuae perceptiones non consonae veritati sunt

 
 
 
 
 

s
he is
she
and
me is
me
and
she is
me
and
when
you
walk
you
do it
most
force
full
y
down
stairs a
spiral
of mo
tion a
vessel
a
portal
in
disgui
se

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

Ed. Note: This work originally appeared in Martinez’s third book, Via Dissimulata, out now from Octopus Books. Reprinted with permission from the author and Octopus Books.

**

MARISOL LIMON MARTINEZ is a writer, musician, and visual artist based in New York City.

mlimonmartinezart.com

Poet, musician, and visual artist Marisol Limon Martinez’s third book, Via Dissimulata, uses the book as a frame & a portal: phrases and images echo, cycle, and stutter as the book-length poem accrues meanings both archetypal and personal—from the wilderness and the rebus to seven pills taken with water. Via Dissimulata explores ideas of the body, family, gender, culture, and speech, how these extend beyond dichotomies into permeable layering of ideas. It integrates visual studies for a five-panel painting that includes the text of the entire poem with poetry that uses the space of the page as another canvas, by turns minimalist and expressionist. Via Dissimulata tracks the tensions between the individual and the metaphysical, with poetry precise as it is harrowing, haunting as it is lovely.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
**

SARETTA MORGAN is Brooklyn-based reader/animal-keeper/letter-writer/activist & aspiring gardener interested in organization, [queer/State/radical] intimacies, shame and being Black.
 

WATER HOUR

I forgot to eat again today
and will forget tomorrow.
Water Hour

Closes Codex Artaud (1972) that big old monster, which is EVERYDAY because
who am I kidding. I line up

the fish you catch on the sand
where there’s room to grow
de-snaked

the stupidest question you get
is if you’re lonely

during the mobilizing seconds after
smoking behind the sugarhouse
there was

so much life ahead, this was Water Hour:

A hiker
who tripped over your stove-pipe sticking out of the hill. Upon
further survey the authorities uncovered the rubber membrane, a
tube attached to a jug for a shower. The precedent

for the direct message

1) Big Island
2) Catskills
3) Squam Swamp
4) Atlanta

 
**
 

ERASERHEAD

I’m thinking about the dead seal again

This is one
pissed off rock
I thought as
I leaned
closer
Come
and look at
this rock
I said
Followed
you back to the
dead seal
I am a dead roof
Look you
said
and held out
a piece of
its spine
I am a
man
dragging
a wheelchair

 
**
 

NEAR FANTASY

The photograph: A tiny gilded integrated circuit found in the core of the most
exquisite snowflake

The core of the
day
discharged
from the stem
I am loyal to my
fuel as I cart around my cunt
A big
shrieks & grease hunt
Please, stay still there in
the pool of light
Stay still there
This family isn’t
going
to forget
itself
 
**
 

BROOKE ELLSWORTH is author of the forthcoming poetry collection, Serenade, from Octopus Books in 2017. She lives and writes in Peekskill, NY. For more information: brookeellsworth.com.

Just as Hate Knows Love’s the Cure
for Lisa

i.

Until recently, I’d never seen an episode of The Sopranos. I’ll wait while you get over the shock, insert this line break and tune into this episode of Nurse Jackie starring Edie Falco’s blond locks, a sort of femme-fatal-Italian-machismo. See a vehement queen hammers her ring finger in order to hide her affairs & Easter Bunny ability to smuggle prescriptions of pinks & blues to snort, chew, & swallow while I placed your peccadillos of primrose yellow narcissus in a vase.

Know through all your joy and pain

/that I’ll be loving you

always

ii.

As a nurse, I’ll never know why your own creeds ignored the Hippocratic Oath. Even in the yellow Tinkerbell nightgown, secrets you kept were well-hidden eggs only parents would find the morning after the hunt. Back then, over coffee & cigarettes, I wish I knew a spell to undo the curse of our malignant friendship. Would it have been as simple as a sprinkle of Roundup® to rid the weeds?

You can rest your mind assured

/that I’ll be loving you

always

iii.

I promise we’ll dance all night at Harpo’s after you snort coke before bingo, even if your throbbing femur prevents standing. I believe the heating pad cured denial & pacified the illusion of a painful period or was it a pulled hamstring as you slept through the night. We’ll still order Steak-n-Shake burgers in drive-thru, slurp what’s southern about sweet tea & silence what’s supreme about secrets while your femur erodes from breast cancer through the night.

Did you know that true love asks for nothing

/her acceptance is the way we pay/

that I’ll be loving you always

 

**

 

The Crevice Under Cig-arrest

1

To clean the exteriors

of homes,

the spider-abductor beaks into webs.

This is what the bird,

outside the bedroom,
on the lanai seems to know.

2

Inside the puff of weed clears.

The weight of life,

Virginia-slims

as the Hospice nurse visits

and settles
the angles of death.

3

To the bird,

the southern house

spider suspends,

a patent position,

inside the capillaries
of its victim.

4

In the drywall,
Cancer,

carbon,

a mastectomy

hangs like Van Gogh’s
enveloped ear.

5

Spider’s never practice
the art of letting go.

 

**

 

The Desperate Housewife Blues

The sifted dust of nuptials falls as lightly as powdered sugar

on beignets onto his starched collars & lapels, as filters of stiff,

ornery grounds of Café du Monde sag in room corners. A Tiffany-blue

litter box of dog collars lies like diamond apology-chokers, &

indiscretions hold hotel receipts the way magnets on the steel face of a fridge

clutch grocery lists for ordained pantry contents. While an aerosol of waist

management boils under an eggshell chandelier, Moulin Rouge lipstick

sharpies the family calendar filled with pushpins tacked

over ecru, cratered walls plastered with the stench of boredom,
.
Lavender & vanilla Arm & Hammer suffocates the stiletto-strewn carpets.

The wry grins of vacation photos fixate on lint rollers rotten

by mildewed promises as Big Mama Thornton whines love’s got a hold on me,

baby, feels just like a ball & chain deafens the daffodils & African Violets on the sill.
 
**
 


YOLANDA J. FRANKLIN’S work is forthcoming or has appeared in African American Review, Sugar House Review, and Crab Orchard Review’s American South Issue. Her awards include a 2012 and 2014 Cave Canem fellowship, and the 2013 Kingsbury Award at Florida State University. She is the recipient of several writing retreat scholarships, including a summer at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Squaw Valley Community of Writer’s, Postgraduate Writer’s Conference Manuscript Conference at VCFA, the Callaloo Poetry Workshop in Barbados and Colrain’s Poetry Manuscript Workshop. She is also a graduate of Lesley University’s MFA Writing Program and is a PhD student at Florida State University, loves dancing and food tasting.

 
 

**

real girl, idyll

profile: self as girl → [pink filter, floral emoji, ultra-femme, softly typing]. daily performances of
desired self, enter [#alignments #feelings] so diaristic on web interfaces. two weeks ago I dropped
my laptop, cracked the screen. I experience frequent image disruption. uploading a profile photo:
pixels flash, freeze like green and pink tourmaline. skirt, hair, hands waving from the shore shatter.
image is glimmer, IRL/URL oscillation, abrupt fracture.

 

**

 

blur(s)

with margins and binary code and very sharp edges with which to dent the photo pixel. wonder if
pixel is too rigid, wonder if I am malleable enough to fit desired design. physical design is highly
green but I am questionably yellow. body of work is messy rounded margined like fine botticelli hair.
my contact lens edge sits flush on eye.

 

**

 

haibun: in + out of devices

approach [with device] bench/desk/bed/subway platform, consider this landscape portable. your
hand on warm metal, finger on input device/touch screen— you are at the threshold. translate your
self. capture: a photograph [small dogs/lake smell/book title] → send to user. xyz reminds me of u.
I want to diminish distance. we are heavenly bodies, our silver strings tethered. blue/white screen
feels cool to me, like bedsheets. like tidy/contained extension, aware of this:

i miss u, come here←
→ soon xoxox
[arrive, sleep]

 

**

MIRIAM W. KARRAKER is an MFA candidate in poetry at The University of Minnesota. She tweets occasionally @miriWK.

The Taxidermist’s House

Mansion made of
gelatinous eyes

Won’t you come
be my fancy house?

Iris duplex
is the right wing
broken

sheet stiff yellow
once

cream like underbelly

of loving you sick

&&&

Had to shellac ! can’t resist shine of

lacquered marrow when I put place settings atop it here for dinner your mom-and-dad-bones
hewn to woodgrain

Pass me the ashtray
jaw

molars reach out
cinder holding cell
swallows vice remnant
small scraps of citrus
rind

Your sister Polly under the lemon tree

They grow so sour!

Pop entire fruit into mouth
feel against my teeth the way Polly’s teeth
felt against my teeth

Seeds as big as toes!

&&&

House is peopled
is a boarding house
is seeing you everywhere
I go like
blackberry jam

seeping thick and fibrous
through floorboards and crags

Fledgling wrinkle
springspread from my jam-
crusted eyeblackeyed

picnicking love fruit on the
unswept floor
breakfast for dinner in
checkered skin

biscuits cheese fingersandwiches Polly
zested this tart

hungry at sound of intestine split sharp in sausage

&&&

You know my grandfather was a poacher was a decorator, room full up dead
summer house, vacation—no summer i don’t want to inside the frozen faces cold in here
without my sweater illegal killing of what did that lion
do to you? coarse and contaminated, contagious in all the wrong places
mind fragility mine and foster the sickness looming my grandfather sick, my grandfather
the table had a bench made of Elephant sat on it while he
stroked

 

**

 

Taxidermy for Dummies

1. Find Curdling babe (know fault lines)

2. (In) all my mouths it  quaint

(In) cinnamon limitless

gun

of us filled with poison of us

::In, in, girl— In ! to::

3. Jitter cerebellum (unbreast this bitch)(nightly)

+ stew/disengage
a) limpness of boy livers
b) transubstantiation
c) September

4. Vaccinate hopetooth vampyr

5. What living for death brought (but it was WHITE hot !)

6. Incantation: a Word/Nymphish/You that’s two:

“JACKRABBIT”brew

Bind the giant thumps that tender skulls may never

your appleless
that/whitch

-for once offered milk
-for praise  in the dark
7. Bloom the Blood-On

Mosquito spot Inchoate

Cramp

8. Pry cystic Why from my blasfemur

9.  Crane back until neck inserts itself your sewer &surfaces in the bobbing

Wake This Water Dirge ! You manhole saint :

10. Sing ( Oh HO- SANNA ) the

ipecac

virgin

away

&fill the abscess

in(Hello! I’m In Your Tooth)

falsely

forceful

expulsion

 

**

 

The Taxidermied Chorus

JACKAL: Anubis molest halogenseam off cock

IBIS:Sow

frightforms Sight Wins Converts !
  Store Eyes in Birch ! !

CAT: This the sun-crossed
blood-crossed
lore told lover—

RAM: How to outlive abrupt
drug /fall coddled, hotter :

ALL: Tableau who prays

pain-lore
demands

CAT: Fell canker sore & Fang snare moan

IBIS: &Stay the fettered  clown seeds

ALL: for (proper/fragile) Dark Shorn Stardom births liar

pandering

JACKAL: Freeze stepped-on eye acid &wrangle hosts

CAT: when bending light  refraction

ebb fright-mirrors

kill savior sage

IBIS: Then

Opal

Socket

Pardons

RAM: Shallow out pyramid or stonehenge donor/ lore-refrain behest (a lie):

CAT: Light Forgives!

IBIS: —LIED LIGHT!—belied all the ways doves creaming

ALL: Jut Temporality – Lore – Scare inside

RAM: ReQueen what sought her
sty

CAT: Creep tits
hard-on/ off last

ALL: All Handled Queer Fest

Sundering Gut Choke—

All His Drugs the Pretty Sprite Sank

JACKAL: Hollowedhusk linger :

The Pet Predilection

RAM: (Grinding Lye Lye Lye)

CAT: as thimble
nimbly
de/constructs
paternal

IBIS: antibacterialize fetid worth

ALL: /WOULD’VE CALLED BUT GLUE TOOTH my heart IS a feather

these the scales that weigh me Just

a spread-ass adolescent

 

**

BB ’ s
BB

! ¡ CUT-THE-
COLIC ! ¡

DADDY SPIRES ALMOND CAKES

CURBS PINCER @BELLYBUTTON

BUT I COME 2

K I SS YO U !

!! !*!

(+ keep my sugarmeat)

NOW WE KNOW

WHO’S AFRAID OF WHO’S

STUBBLE

: YOU CAN MAKE A LOT OF
MONEY ;)
THAT WAY *

(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((

**PURPLE (IN THE DEATH DEN) AGAINST THE
LYING WHITE

=

***“BEST IF USED BY”

DATE:
********B*I*R*T*H*******

 

**

 

M.K. BRAKE likes parties and poetry. She is primarily a projective verse poet—dabbling with form makes her dance dance. Her work can be found in Fruita Pulp, Arsenic Lobster, Smoking Glue Gun and others. She currently teaches Poetry at Louisiana State University.

SANDIA

 

THIS PLACE IS A MESSAGE…AND PART OF A SYSTEM OF MESSAGES…PAY ATTENTION TO IT

 

Study departure        Again departure

and often         Creation

and often            Trust us

 

*

SENDING THIS MESSAGE WAS IMPORTANT TO US WE CONSIDERED OURSELVES TO BE A POWERFUL CULTURE

 

Our departures         Autoglyph

Thoughtfully            Desperately

Touch our lost letter

Stay and learn about leaving

 

*

THIS PLACE IS NOT A PLACE OF HONOR…NO HIGHLY ESTEEMED DEED IS COMMEMORATED HERE…NOTHING VALUED IS HERE

 

What the opposite      What the wonder

Form                  And take

I deprive you                 Inheritor

Heart rate

The chamber and pipe model that determines the throat

Determine sleep Cunning Advantage

Determine escape hatch

 

*

WHAT IS HERE IS DANGEROUS AND REPULSIVE TO US THIS MESSAGE IS A WARNING ABOUT DANGER

 

Pin

Pin

Fear

Departure

Pin     Author

 

*

THE DANGER IS IN A PARTICULAR LOCATION…IT INCREASES TOWARD A CENTER…THE CENTER OF DANGER IS HERE…OF A PARTICULAR SIZE AND SHAPE, AND BELOW US

 

Polysemous burials     Changing acts

Our core     Harm     Valley

Quest     GrailPromises

Museum is an old word, too

It means house of dilemmas

 

*

THE DANGER IS STILL PRESENT, IN YOUR TIME, AS IT WAS IN OURS

 

Fool’s plutonoium

There is only one time

If you have broken the (roughly)

Barrier Barrier

Perhaps you have

We meant magic lamp

We meant touch

Perish

 

*

THE DANGER IS TO THE BODY, AND IT CAN KILL

 

Neat catalog

In what you discover

was once called usage

No use for that now

No use for depiction

No use for body

 

*

THE FORM OF THE DANGER IS AN EMANATION OF ENERGY

 

Nature

Our folk technology

Our terragram

Runs

It runs with the fountain

 

*

THE DANGER IS UNLEASHED ONLY IF YOU SUBSTANTIALLY DISTURB THIS PLACE PHYSICALLY. THIS PLACE IS BEST SHUNNED AND LEFT UNINHABITED

 

What is here

Came from what

Oblique distance

Assume you

Hope you

Irrelevant commandment

Save the opening of this one

Save it

Until the last second

Until the absolute last

Reasonably possible hope for hope is lost

I will teach you an art

Of surrender along the way

 

Text in caps in “SANDIA” is lifted from a report by Sandia National Laboratories entitled “Expert Judgment on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant,” created by Kathleen M. Trauth, Stephen C. Hora, and Robert V. Guzowski. A PDF of the full report can be accessed at http://prod.sandia.gov/techlib/access-control.cgi/1992/921382.pdf.

 

**

PETER MILNE GREINER is the author of Executive Producer Chris Carter (The Operating System 2014). His poetry, science fiction, and other writings have appeared in Motherboard, Fence, SciArt In America, Coldfront, Dark Mountain, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn, and blogs at kurremkarmerruk.tumblr.com.