Adam Fieled

Portal-ways
 
Was it through you, Abby, I managed to do
Queer Studies 101? Here’s what I saw: you
aligned yourself with bad girls, to make yourself
look formidable, lived a life of intermittent
lassitude & discipline, tawny head bent down
to study coded missives you dared not decipher,
and then the bittersweet aftermath into postures
you earned for yourself. Girls in a row, a pretense
for an artist of your magnitude. Was that all
you had inside you? I wonder, but it’s none of
my business, as the Neo-Classical portal-way
built into your brain hovers around the Earth
for a few centuries, and the paintings themselves
form a row, disciplined, formidable, coded, bittersweet—

James Croal Jackson

Playing Fall Guys During Quarantine / Ignorance Re: Biology

when you simply practice jumping into the ether
how far a fall on the blue loading screen
populating populating’s the same as propagating though
plants are more open about their love
of biology terms a pistil for the open mouths of fields
a wide-eyed tree growing slowly into its new
language each leaf a new word drifting
onto another continent -- a spade to shift its meaning
unbound by any green traditions unspoken
inside the framework of a species already dead
yet looking forward to its future

Mark Young

#59: It’s a Lot to Swallow

You can probably understand
a significant number of people
adhering to the belief that that
vision of man landing on the
Moon was shot in a Hollywood
studio. After all, it was an in-
credible technical feat, & just
the thing to push the Soviets

headfirst back into their Sputnik —
whose launching was, in itself,
almost as incredible. Other
beliefs feed off earlier beliefs —
Area 51, or the deaths for those
who pilfered parts from the car
James Dean died in. But to be-
lieve that Donald Trump is truly

the white knight who will once
more ride into town & cast out
the unbelievers, ensure that every-
one who follows him will have a
job, will become rich, will bask
eternally in the pentecostal glow
of their orange-faced Messiah
is, to be blunt, a lot to swallow.

John Grey

WHERE ARE THE HOMELESS?

out of shabby day,
evening has brought
near annihilation

out of no probability,
no possibility

from near-invisible
to preferring that
nobody come and watch –

so what’s it be?

the sun’s caustic shadow

or the moon
gazing down on their habitat

minimal light,
eyes closed

Jan Wiezorek

Keep a Poem Alive

This is not my poem
to breathe life into;
I poked into that which
I should not--like a bottom
dresser drawer, w/ yellow
paper clippings, plastic-wrapped,
by accident, too many boys--
too small a boat, too heavy
a motor, a lone survivor swimming
ashore like my brother blessing
the Mississippi River inside
souls of their poems--one mother
who strokes the head of a body
of a poem--& a drawer & plastic
keep a poem alive. I want to climb
a river bluff to read the words
out loud into space, a depth
flowing to the mouth of the living.

Eve Young

Dispatch From the Eye of a Storm

Looks betray me, words betray me.
The sea is a stone road; critters glow
in the mist from a series of questions
of one kind or another. These pots
glisten in the rotting dirt. I know not
what slips through my fingers, but the
stones are covered with mud. By sunset,
it already has the feel of flesh and blood.
I go down and the scale passes over his
fingers, wood through my fingers, vine-
yards in the rain. Grass and gold come
to me. Milk and buckets cover me. The
wind picks up. Algae whistles through her.
The waves break on the country beach,
during the solar cycle before death. I
looked, afraid of the sound. Here come
the birds, the noise, the storm, the danger,
the danger. White grass, white waves, the
broken staircase disappeared into the light—
I am clean.

AG Davis

AWAYWARD

herringbone basquetism
itten with yone winded grating,
sapplingh-ire bluing to
sow me the olden car is texas,
vending machinations
turnstile against miliwary
tar armsfacials,
theyme and timely bursting
gutturalterity jubisleep;
possibly interrosnaked
or begotten elsewhere,
the swarthy, drugged
fumigations
aghast chemforests
and bemoaned,
reddened burnt as
lambently smoking against
an encasement of diesel
fuel,
the tanks intertwine
my forgetemptiness,
and won now my hurting
as the spinning tops work
their waste inslide
and outerealms with force:
the foxes are forgedgotten
in bronze-simile filligrees,
yet all we see are
chasms and
pockmarked holes
between
vacant palms
and a broken star

John Grey

ELUCI-DATING

All this once more would have to be.
And it was the tender bent above you as your eyebrows were.
Burdened by a hundred slaving years,
But truth is hidden from me a long life to the last
But beneath this rose meanwhile a green
by the clench of her jaw by this landscape,
Hurry, hurry, come quickly now the sun has set:
fed by melting fields of terror.
Fugitive, the thief of girls' despair,
Has listened, that now withers and knows all.
have sucked her red cheeks your thought was, tender
Here to lay it, strewn before our eyes
I wonder at the lovers if man through
in a bucket in weary irony,
Into the tumult of his blood's wild sea:
is dug deeper Is it not as it we'd gathered it
Like a tree upon the cliff gleaming shrilly
Time past and saved it for our own,
Mingled still with dark from introspection,
of her life, of burning bone.
Or do they rather yield it up blind
Out of feeling now and memory,
Out of new dreams, half-forgotten pleasure,
out of her feral face.
See the foggy green of twilight on the grass.
Attending, full of patience, finding ways
One more thing to let go, to release,
Still we think of it. It is as if
Still, the utmost measurement surpassed,
Sweet and glowing, as, to catch the overflow
swell to accommodate, too huge for the eyes
Take the weight the comfort's full-swollen song,
—that god sunning, that have couched her temperament,
That it may never hear of its own disgrace?
the salvo of betrayals
The dimple of her chin Their waters these lakes
the deaths that, These sobs stumble on
the once green lawns of this soul,
this teary body rampant, we've trampled over
Stirs the one and keeps his peace
You urged your fire and brittle breasts to soar

Mark Young

from 100 Titles From Tom Beckett

#45: Individual White Noise Machine Envelope

I suppose I should consider myself lucky, getting a non-custodial sentence for a second offense of sending out a screed of hate mail. But there were mitigating circumstances. None of the messages were racist or deeply hateful: more along the lines of ‘stop parking in my space or I’ll key your car’ or ‘stop your dog pooping on the pavement in front of my house or I’ll pick the poop & the pooch up & push them into your letter box’ or ‘stop mowing your lawn in the middle of the night or I’ll send my armadillo round to dig it up.’ The recipients were picked randomly from the telephone book & so I had no knowledge if they possessed cars, lawns, or pets. Plus I lived in a trailer park & had next to no possessions anyway so my threats were somewhat empty. &, as further mitigation, I had written my address on the back of every envelope so I couldn’t exactly be accused of trying to hide my identity.

Therefore, instead of bars & cages, another form of bondage. Six months of weekly visits to a psychiatrist, twenty-six hours of my life I’d never get back &, I was certain, get nothing from. At first adversarial: ‘Why do you dislike people?’ ‘You spend so much time writing, so why don’t you try to write a play, or poems, or a novel?’ ‘Where do you get the money for postage from?’ Back & forth, back & forth, hour after hour. But about halfway through we starting identifying the reasons for the likes & dislikes.

So, a word to the whys. We determined that I really did like writing, but became frustrated when I couldn’t seem to get beyond an opening sentence or two & reverted to that single angry phrase that had nothing to do with what I really wanted to say. That I was upset about my lot in life but had no one I knew personally who I could take it out on or talk to about it, hence the use of the phone book. That I included my name & address on the envelope in a hope that my random addressee may turn out to be a literary agent or academic who saw something in my writing & would reach out to see more.

That much established; but how to proceed? My psychiatrist said she would think about it over the coming week, would try to come up with something that might sate my anger but in a way that didn’t offend others, that would satisfy my need for creative endeavors, that wouldn’t consume as much of my fortnightly unemployment benefit.

A week later she had a list of suggestions for me. I didn’t look at it ar first, rather listened to her exposition of the points she’d made. ‘Keep sending the mail out but ration how you do it. Individual pieces. Say what you like but write only to yourself. Post-it notes will keep the message short. By all means use the postal service but a more economical option is to put it in your own letter box when you go out, & open & read it when you get home. It’ll save on the postage, plus you can reuse the envelope.

‘After you read the message, write it down in a notebook. That may seem like a redundancy since you were the one who wrote it in the first place, but it adds some distance so that you can see it in a new light. Plus, you might be able to move past that opening sentence paralysis we discussed earlier when you see several lines together. & don’t for a minute think that you have to have a hundred of them before you do something with them. 

‘Finally, buy yourself a white noise gizmo — some of them are reasonably cheap — stick the post-it note to it, & send them together by whatever means of transfer you’ve decided on, just in case you’d lost your temper when you wrote it & that prompts a second angry burst when you read it. The white noise will quickly promote calm within & out with you, a sensory envelope that will work quickly.

‘Oh, & see if you can get one in a neutral color. Works even better.’

Vincent A. Cellucci

a masterpiece of nothing

botch this unfinished rhinoplasty planet
when risks submit to disappointments 
disguised in drag and the monotony
merely the exotic butt-dialed
to death I dare you time
fingerpick the instant we meet 
conversant in a stockyard of complaints 
carefully laundered and set out with the chance 
for showers we cello today property 
count the names that we refuse 
to let run away 
when even observation becomes violent
and omniscience a loss
a masterpiece of nothing 
this creation amounts to destruction
and the mowing down of civilians 
to prove our wisdom only official 
opinions without room for renovation
criteria’s not a source of jubilation 
a paradise of crimes and counterfeiting missions
encouraging the execution of sporadic planning
that folds our calendar into origami 
automatic weapon expiration dates 
getting scalded alive
the original quotidian orphanage
one must assure the fetal conflict
to carry out this deference to counting 
the commission for this tragedy stuck on repeat
forced to dig a hole to place ourselves in and get squat over as ritual
abrupt recession of the years weeks days hours seconds
a round of applause for the impossible 
second encore for our illusions

Louis Bardales

I've Waited For English And Cried For Spanish

Never arriving at any direction, I had no other choice
for I'd try to hear a voice and I'd lose a voice and mine
So instead I asked a vine for guidance
and it gave me a theater
though, not entirely,
only the air of a stage 
exiting my hieroglyph
 with enough violence 
to offend an empty hall

Extending this immediacy of plague
a mistranslation punches the eye of my storm's heart
and triggers a screeching asylum
by jumping off an imminent bridge
and landing upward
at the top of a fury
where the freight's darkness
is nourished by extinction
and hello,
I'm the mind pouring weaknesses
into the void that begs
to be unaligned

A cry reads it's own adonis
and weddings occur 
in the forest's doldrums

In cold dais
our sentences govern a space in the cigarette
The flowering bulbs of harsh sighs
warn of daisies pushing deaths
from underquilt hideouts
to foregrounds of tongues lost

Believe in a century's fall
then rise, tarantula
at the end of the doldrum's day

Darrell Petska

Vitruvian Man Enters a Bar

Where in this impious world is your symmetry, man,
with asteroids skimming our rooftops and the oceans hungry for land?
Godly tresses no longer become you.

If you open your legs enough and raise your hands enough,
know that your center is a bullseye and the region between your legs
a map of hyperspace with a spiderweb of coordinates roughed out
by Han Solo in a valiant attempt to avoid the Great Black Hole.

And haven’t you heard about the two-headed man who orders a drink
and the bartender asks which one of you is paying? Or maybe it was
a two-headed bartender so the man asks which one of you do I pay.

Nature is as relative as Einstein. Consider outlier man, unlike you,
whose measure from his knee to the root of his penis
is more than a quarter of his height—your tired assumptions
leading him to build his “right-proportioned” bar different from yours,

which relates to your woman problem:
if man is 24 palms and his bar reflects his measurements,
is there a bar that reflects woman’s? Undepicted and undeified,
could thirsty woman enter man’s bar? Could she even be seen?

I don’t know, man, but somewhere must sing the body virtual,
with duckweb feet or flippers and gills and worlds to match.
So a hologram man orders a drink at a hologram bar.
The hologram bartender says what’s the point, you’re not real.

Texas Fontanella 

A Line From Jimmy Dore

We build, and get billed for, our own 
coffin fits. It’s not unusual to do in paris,
walking as a tourist by the louvre in
stead of entering. The evidence is
nestled deep in a psychosis, which
would be next in line to the impossible
to ascertain without the assistance
of a thorough online learning pro
gram whose ethics are unquestion
ably superior to those offered by
any known government depart
ment, or indeed, any department
store known for selling strawberry
blonde bucket hats at reasonable
prices, all without compromising the
quality of material used in order to 
influence parliamentary processes. 
& it is in just this get up that I will turn 
and cough. The open casket is not, is
never enough; I’ll have my mind wide 
open, thanks, throughout death, and 
glasses I don’t need on. My voting rights 
will shrivell, but i’ll remain contended. At 
the low, low price of $600 a day, death 
remains the most affordable rental op
tion currently available on the market.

Mark DeCarteret

after effect

simultaneously
not & a lot
they start in
on themselves
then surge
outward as if
they got to
tugged to & fro
before being
rushed back
into place but
this time at-that-
lingering where

they’re back-lit
illuminated by
the sun’s after-
thoughts or re-
assurances
& then still
lingering &
realigning a-
gain while w/
standing my
guess work &
milling around
before segueing
into these in-
scapes &
something more
or less out
there & here

Stephen Bett

Everly’d Out


I want you to tell me why

you WALKed out on mE 

(right this minute!)


Done a flyer thru the city 

them big yakkers 


& don’ let that swingin’ 

blue jeans door smack yr 

cheeky lil’ smartass

the way out

(either!)


Oh no, he said, what

else could he say 

That walker …

that dumb talker  *






  * Everly Bro’s, “Walk Right Back”; & self-refs to Those Godawful Streets of Man (pp. 26 & 52) &
Track This (p. 108)

Mark Young

Anna / Karenina is / back in town

Absolute targets have been shelved. The
perception of independence is now seen
as less vital than the ambiguous 'gray zone'
of subversive statecraft. Whatever apologies
are forthcoming resemble pre-shot videos,
& stand as testament to the outrage of an
influential section of the media who wanted
charges brought against the clergy as well

as the military. Any evidence offered has
been so heavily redacted it looks like a
blacked out War & Peace. All we need now
is Frank O'Hara to stand up at the U.N., bang
his shoe on the bench in front of him, & cry
out “Napoleon is coming on the right day.”









Meanwhile, at the local gun shop

Even though the website has not
worked as well as it could, please
use its displays as a guideline to
the goods & services that are at
our physical marketplace. We have
persuaded dignitaries to come
along, in the hope their presence
might bring some semblance of

order, perhaps quell those angry
crowds who claim very little pro-
mised is available, & those things
that are have prices far above what
were advertized. A grief counselor
is on hand for urgent consultations.








who plays in Loss Angeles

The Angels' bullpen
finished the team's

10-game road trip by
blowing up yet another

of the city's cultural
institutions. Such are

the shortcomings of
a streetcar system

being completely dis-
mantled & later sold.