a poem / laura carter

I’ve got a thirst that would make the ocean proud. Thus began the first song, unclenched like a flag of red utopias released into the world. The boy was waiting in purple, his song filling up the ocean with coffee dripping through the syringe of sky. And then, and then, the other side of the story punches a hole in the wall, bleeds another quart. The boy, the girl. The ocean in the middle, traversed by lonely sex and melancholy. I left the bed open. The proverbial knife was leaning in from the plasticity of things, forgetting that fire is flower. And so the house becomes a flame, rounds itself out into flowers, reveals the story of what was not quite forgotten in the circuit’s closed spaces. We dwell in pointed time when not at the station where the harbor is cool and clear. I unmoved the first house and then placed it back into the center of the heart with its ruby and gold blossoms. I give him violets for his furs, yes, but also orange flowers for Saturday’s day shift.

There is nothing poetic in this / Ciera Durden

There is nothing poetic in this.

There is no beauty or chivalry or any other sort of redeemable/

     quality.

Before you is simply a mean creature, a haggard woman.

I am grey hairs, thin limbs, and bruised eyes that demanded

     love because I gave it, comfort because I sought it,

No other noble thing.

I am not the giving angel free of human want but rather

The petty monster, the claw and the mouth.

I am greed and lust and all those other sins personified

And I no longer apologize for that.

I am the bone and skin addict, I am the crazed figure in the barred/

     corner.

I am alive and should be left so.

And this isn’t a statement of some grand epiphany,

There is no final enlightenment,

No settling down into the comfort that peaceful days have come at/

     last.

There is still the riot and chance of it all, there is still this/

     struggle

Of life and movement and, yes, at times, the visions

     of waking and walking past this quiet familiarity

Of still lines and idiot safety

For want of stained earth and the possibility

of Something far darker, far stranger,

     utterly mad

And utterly alluring—

     Throwing the body into roaring silence,

     Crossing the threshold in pounding rhythm,

     Knowing sight and sound and touch for all they’re worth, for/

          all they cost,

     even if it is to be the last, the final, the breath and then—

Whatever comes after.

There is nothing poetic in this.

There is just the blistered mess of an exposed soul

And a cracked voice learning to live once more.

Interrupted / or, choosing to remember memory's Made Ralph La Charity

the least important thing about

a poem's what it's saying which

is why it doesn't have to

say anything yes

it does have to mean but it

doesn't have to mean

what it says

it's important to get lost in a poem not

because you can get lost in a poem but

because lost is something that can

be gotten in a poem & it is

this be gotten that's the most

important thing, the one thing that

makes getting lost in saying nothing matter :

Makars commune with the dead & artists

who've brought back are who've

       brought back from the Other Side

The Life of Spice / Alex Johns

Which came first

the chicken or the mummy?

preserving the flesh or making it yummy?

Someone shook flowers

at the tomb's breath

like the little sling of David.

See, back then it was

frankincense vs. Frankenstein

Now

the chile sauce's ability

to form your focus for

the moment, a mouthful

of forgetting

in nasal drip and forehead sweat.

Bury the still flesh in peppers, petals, and seeds

Add some salt, and carry that

carcass clear

across the desert,

more than surviving.

Miss Jenny / Michelle Castleberry

Miss Jenny was one of our church's widow women,

which meant we gave her most of the deer meat

we hunted and dragged from the woods each fall.

She was somehow related, though the genealogy

was different with each telling.

So some days she was Aunt Jenny, sometimes Miss.

Always, yes ma'am.

I could never imagine her married,

stout as a concrete piling,

feet always planted shoulder-wide,

ready for something unwelcomed, running fast..

I watched her once in our field smoke a cigarette

and between bites of a tomato that she ate like an apple.

Her only nod to gentility

was wiping the pesticide off

on the tail of her dress first.

But she had been married back when

to a long, gaunt man

to this day described in the county

as kind-hearted soul but

bad to drink. Bad to drink.

A sweet, sweet man who soured on mash

at least twice a month.

Intent on argument and a place

to knock his broad hands, he often went for Jenny.

But after a while she figured out that he would follow her,

curses spilling from the corners of his mouth

like tobacco spit.

He followed her around winding up his rage like a toy.

One night she led him yelling to the corn crib

where she pushed him down into his own fumes

to scream, whimper and cry all night.

This became their custom.

In this memory I do not own, I see her opening the door

to the crib those mornings, to her hang dog, hungover man,

restored for a moment by a wary forgiveness

and a door with a strong latch.

Funnel / Mark Pentecost

My mouth is a funnel.

Which end is which?

In our universe,

This is a law:

When something’s emptied,

Something fills.

Which is which?

I rotate a glass of something

So the upside is down.

It floods with absence as,

From the bottle beneath the funnel,

Lack and privation are stirred up

Into the vortex,

Scattered, re-

Collected.

In our universe,

Loss is conserved.

Laura.

Tom.

Donald…

Is there a point

To going on?

The empty glass brims

With emptiness.

I set it on the table carefully.

Nothing spills and stains my fingers.

Sit down. Have a drink

With me.

old dan river / ben gulyas

what we'll be do / ralph la charity

caught our breath in tears where they ran

the whole of crossing over's

       the whole of what we do here

stutter-trills & hop-slides fare thee well

the echo's cadence till namore remains the same

the whole of what we do here won't be done again

makes you wonder why we remember what we do

staying put's not what we'll be do

       nay, tis not what we'll achieve

I walked off with things in hand I couldn't drop

I knew I'd bring it back but maybe not

the urge to stop still waits upon the rise

crossings bear namore the tilting shade

these shadows stride askance & dip askew

reverberate head bones these tones we do

each line of every song escapes in vain

all rhythms host all breath & hearts the same

       the whole of what we're doing's all

  the whole of crossing over

tis the patch of light briefly where we stood

tis the is of this that winks away