I can put an “it” into this and a “was.” I could put you through “this.” Or is “this” just a rehash of the same old plot and any dawn’s dumb tint, any discount trick to make a sale. Wait and see with me anyway what might find us sewn behind into our one spam […]
Issue 82
Joannie Kervran Strangeland: When It Is Blue
First she found a lump no bigger than a pea or a preposition—a small verb: to be. The danger lies in conjugation and the tenses— is, are, would, could. Will. She kept the will, a world. I will, we will. A synonym for tomorrow. The shape of here is loss, or a trade—flesh for life. […]
Ed Skoog: Big Chief Carpetland
Do they mean magic, the flying carpet speeding to our other lives? They have their Indians confused, then, India confused with Persia, reality with story, also my problem, as I drift summer’s green fantasias, documenting. I need what the late sun is alert to, not a heavily pentametered anguish drawing sense from station to station, […]
Britton Shurley: In the Story Concerning the Ice Storm
In the story concerning the ice storm the trees are dripping crystal, & the wind snaps their branches like glass. There are ink-black birds pecking pinholes in the puddles, & an early, purple crocus huddles frozen in its blossom. The evening sun sets its pink on the yard while a swollen, brown-mouthed river waits patiently […]
Allison Power: 12.04.09 from December Poems
The day’s almost over and I’ve put on my last clean shirt. Can’t leave the apartment till I write a poem. Adam calls to tell me he met Jane Freilicher and aren’t I jealous? I just want to write a fucking poem. But he goes on about JA and Shapiro and those collages: “Remember what […]
Dante Micheaux: Vis-à-vis de Rien
Chaos is a hanging thread—minor but out of place, insignificant in infinity, says the keeper of Shangri-la. On the corner of Trinity and Church, a small girl offers me the sun for a nickel and I’d gladly take control of the solar system but do not have a nickel. The sun, with its watery-urine yellow […]