Daniel Y. Harris in the Cytokine Storm with Eugenic Nanocapsules to Fight the Body Snatchers

Exergue XXI 

Sal Dracu’s cybercult peaks in lipograms, eber aural,
his mode d’emploi wrong as divagari. Radio splice option, next
exit. Mimicker out. How many ears are sautéed? We mean
corpus cavernosum not palladic trinkets. Better
augment klipspringer jump mod.  H2-infused droplets
ionize beams. The Oulipians kill their queen with Atreus’
cuckold seed. Lucretian particles burst. What catachresis?
What pun? Start with pubococcygeus muscles
on the pelvis floor. BINA48 loves man buns. Bodies
have their aisthesis. Geotia’s black magick is creosote
on taffeta or symplegma left by idlers. Filibuster the bill 
and salvage ancilia. It’s heart is cardiomyopathic.  
No sloping or queasy joints, no slouching rafters and sills. 
Quantal, the mated pair. 766 filial piety docs or Paramin’s
blue devil odes? Not this time, Sal. Torture a derash. Bit
sigodlin or oblique, aren’t we? Line 382: printf(“[scanner]
FD%d error while connecting = %d\n”, conn->fd, err). Role
play coincidentia oppositorum, oralé esse. Slake our thirst
in Willendorf stone. Egad, nobody ogles Sal’s
goder. Naubolidos, best shape. Pass da blunt. Actants
in this set are hoes. Darkland pimps stoke cyanide fires.
What prion? Sal’s index finger is a burnt geode.
Point MF. In the prequel he’s vampyroteuthis infernalis.
Model conversions are PrPC. Too late for overcloaks.




 Exergue XXV 

Gregor’s libtard is Loyd Blankenship. Transphobia
as foregone bacronym for 4chan. In lacteal goo, NRx hunt
old skool SJWs. Our spiritus mundi is hoarse and sibilant.
O Antiphons, cluster the bloodaxe. Body snatchers
pose, supplant their cognates and down licorice water
with catalpa buds. Their motto, ars longa vita brevis.  
The Doomsday Clock tocks in goldtrace, counterheaved.
Aint be dupont, no lawd, cain be honeypot or a goon’s club
trot, styling polezniye duraki. Nothing for the roar, bufera
infernal! Thinair modifications bolster alveoli, choked
by classicism. Analyze this, regressus, the swerve
from masculized eugenics. Where are the demobilized
conscripts? Adapting a treatment for Tay-Sachs disease.
Line 456: printf(“[scanner] FD%d finished telnet
negotiation\n”, conn->fd), or doctores angelici. Gregor’s
lysosomal storage disorder accumulates gangliosides
and glucocerebrosides. “Bugger NeoGauchers,” chortles
Gregor. “Our industry is feminized in potentielle.”  
Blame torsion dystonia for exeunt omnes. Shebang, homie,  
all in for hagall runes and Kreuzzug gegen den Gral. Gregor
wins the Pastores Medal for his work in Trans-Gödelian
Kripke Semantics. Who’s bijective? Thetica’s homo superior
crowdsources trivia. Chance tires God. Death’s
Head Units march in pulpy dram. Take two nanocapusles
with DNA for a more resistant human. Not on psalteries,
but in bloodstock and cytokine storms.



—Daniel Y. Harris


 “Exergue XXI & XXV” are from the manuscript, The Tryst of Thetica Zorg   

Daniel Y. Harris is the author of 11 collections of poetry and collaborative writing including The Rapture of Eddy Daemon (BlazeVOX, 2016), heshe egregore (with Irene Koronas, Éditions du Cygne, 2016), The Underworld of Lesser Degrees (NYQ Books, 2015), Esophagus Writ (with Rupert M. Loydell, The Knives Forks and Spoons Press, 2014) and Hyperlinks of Anxiety (Červená Barva Press, 2013) Some of his poetry, experimental writing, art, and essays have been published in BlazeVOX, The Café Irreal, Denver Quarterly, E·ratio, European Judaism, Exquisite Corpse, Kerem, The New York Quarterly, Notre Dame Review, In Posse Review, The Pedestal Magazine, Poetry Magazine, Poetry Salzburg Review, Stride, Ygdrasil and Zeek. He is Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of X-Peri, http://x-peri.blogspot.com/. 

Matthew Borczon Looses His Bleeding Fingers Across the Parchment of Afghanistan Unleashed Like the Dog of His Poems

the dog

the dog
broke
its leash
and was
dragging
it behind
him as
he ran
up on
Nick who
used that
chain to
choke the
dog dead
and then
threw it
onto the
owner's porch
screaming threats
but Nick
is still
not ready
to go
to the
VA or
to talk
about
the war.


bad habits


thinking
about the
war as
I bite
my nails
too close
and watch
the blood
pool in
my nail
bed I
have chewed
them all
down to
open sores
that hurt
with everything
I pick up


with everything
I can't
put down.


civilian casualty


as a
younger man
my sense
of drama
might have
led me
to make
her much
more personal
give her
a name
convince
myself I
heard her
soft voice
call to
her father
but at
45 I
did the
only thing
I could
I pushed
her outside
my consciousness
outside memory
not even
one line
in my
diary
outside of
my life
in the
hospital and
my head
for the
whole time
I was in
Afghanistan
some nights
I still
hear her
ghost begging
me to
finally let
her in.

Matthew Borczon is the author of four books of poetry A Clock of Human Bones by the Yellow Chair review press, Battle Lines by Epic Rites press, Ghost Train by Weasel Press and Sleepless nights and Ghost Soldiers by Grey Boarders press. He has a chapbook coming out through Epic Rites before the end of this year as well. He is a nurse and Navy Sailor from Erie, Pa. He tries not to let PTSD rule too much of his life

Rus Khomutoff In the Thralldom Sullied By Quantum Catharsis

Splash Bombs 

to Michel Majerus


Horns of dilemma, the shadow’s brighter heritage
going beyond the symptoms
quartered revelator of the frayed edge
a week of redolent memory
beset by both the future
and the past
thralldom mastication



The Shallow Between
to Nick Land

Pathos of distance expecting itself
fake eternities of stationary descent
tailored hallucinations that surrender
to the serpentine ensemble of all possibility
hiatuses sullied by memory
ecstasy of the everyday




Catharsis daily


Lions and shadows
labyrinthine emergence
voice in the chasm
obliteration of the possible at all costs
unbegotten and immortal
words that belong to a quantum realm
catharsis daily

My name is Rus Khomutoff and I am a neo surrealist poet in Brooklyn,NY. My poetry has been featured in Uut Poetry, Erbacce, Fifth day journal and Burning house press. Last year I self published an ebook called Immaculate Days. I am also on twitter @rusdaboss

Peter Jacob Streitz Pushes Bukowski and Shakespeare Through the Bibliotheque Aerial Reconnaissance

BUKOWSKI

That shitfaced

Pig

Nah, macho man

Loving

The limbs

Of ladies

Or the fattest

Asses

With smallish

Breast

And suckable

Nips

Like the quim colored lips

Of dead

Soldiers

Where beer

Flows

In winy utterances

Mixing sex

With fucking

Then love

Or appreciation

Of mirrors

Healing acne

With wisdom

Or cocktails

That pussy foot

From sacks

To racetracks

And back

To paddocks

Of saddles

And whips

Plus horns

And leads

With harnesses

That mount

And cinch

The saddlebags

In stirrups

Of lust

As fleshy bits

Rope heartache

To the rhyming

Of losers

And winners

Who’re eternally

Trumped

For never

Having placed

The bet

—that women who blush—

Train their flanks

To lap

The track

Where mares

And stallions

Collide

In a world

Of wonder

And words

Wasted

Unless the final

Thrust

Is

Human nature

And

Human nature

Is

the last word

Of his story.

 

SHAKESPEARE IN THE DARK

The tweeker’s

Boggy, alcoholic eyes

Bulged unblinkingly

Within inches of mine

Setting the stage

For mere players

In this mosh pit

At the intersection of ol’Frisco

And modernity

While the watery whirl

Of rush hour washed‘round

And Dino denied I’ve come—

To that very corner

Everyday

For the past twenty years

Awaiting my love’s return

from work

But on this day

Where the subway

emerges

And the street cars clank

Like two ships

Passing in the night

I unknowingly missed her

As she unknowingly missed me

But Dino didn’t miss a beat

Manically orating his resurrection

As a bookseller

And one who

Only reads the law

And fuck that storytelling

Crap

With his countenance

Increasingly inscribed

In an ominous glaze

And his lids hoisted

At half-mast

He pulled back the curtain

For the briefest moment

To inquire

Do you read?

What?

There was no answer

Other than His . . .

—Shakespeare—

Leading to

his sidewalk bibliothèque

Where ten tomes of prose

Sat dog-eared and dirty

Along with a soiled sleeping mat

And a rat

Disguised as a pet

Entrapped beneath

A milk crate

—Much Ado About Nothing—

Was crammed into my hand

While two bucks

departed this fool

And his wad of money

Filled Dino’s head

With sugar plums of theft

Or thirst for some complicity

Whose outright criminality

Got quenched with past drinks

And blackouts

At whore houses

In Alaska

And racist chases

In Texas by Rangers

Who took exception

To the pilfering

Of black velvet

Bedspreads—

when shit and damn

My cell phone vibrated

And a distraught

Wifely voice

Rung down the curtain

On two role players

In another performance

Of their life.

 

WINGED RATS

Bullshit

Unless you consider

They eat the same crap

But you’d be wrong

These low flying

Aviators

Of the cityscape

Got zip codes

And statues

And ordnances as white

As the driven snow.

In some hoods

They’re the only fauna

That doesn’t attack

And kill

As ordered

Or destroy the trees

With piss and shit

And forget the grass.

Instead, these citizens

Of aerial reconnaissance

Clean-up after bums

And partygoers

Doing such civic duties

As eating

the rice and beans

Regurgitated

By soup kitchen

Devotees

Or their counterparts

Boogieing in

From bedroom

Communities

Leaving their suburban

Blight

For clean-up

By those living

Aloft

On the ledge

With only one way

To fall

Pilotless

And no safety net

Dying alone

Earthbound

In their mourning suits

Having seen it all

On the hardest streets

. . . yet nothing . . .

Of remembrance

Not even the homage

Of never more.

Peter Jacob Streitz was born an iconoclastic hick in upstate New York. Raised by a single mom after his dad flew the coop instead of flying The Hump--over the Burma Road in World War Two--where he won the Distinguish Flying Cross by losing both the Japs and his mind. His inevitable departure didn’t affect Peter—as he morphed into an All-American boy and athlete who was awarded a four year, full-boat scholarship to Alfred University (which he rejected) before counter-culturing his way towards the only degree ever given by Boston University in Alternative Education.

Michael Prihoda Leaves the Postcard City With the Medusa Map As the Gardens Scrawl

grace

the munitions factory,
the postcard city.

contain regret
within definite prosperity

when compared
to grace appreciated less.

the nostalgia aware
of different dying

without even names

settled in connection.



what is necessary

these forms not become today
in age ideal. the same yesterday

corresponds to the medusa
reserved for a map. your empire

must be big, not equally real.

what is necessary is imagined.



existence

the route wonders
in a different order.

the eye penetrates
the scrawl of gardens,

the prison, the slum.
the hypothesis

of the traveler
has nothing but doubts.

he is distinct

in existence.



Michael Prihoda is a poet, editor, and teacher, living in central Indiana with his wife and the dream of having a pet llama. He is the author of five poetry collections, the latest of which is The First Breath You Take After You Give Up (Weasel Press, 2016).

Gale Acuff Makes Kites and Chong Yen's P-38s Haunt the Hallways Like Amelia Stephens

Kite

While my dog sleeps at the foot of my bed
I tickle his ears with my toes and read
a comic book. The window fan's spinning
and tomorrow morning we'll run downstairs,
Caesar and I, to have breakfast--I'll fix
his first--then fly kites if there's wind. If not
we'll try again in the afternoon, when
the June air's warmer and makes a breeze
to raise our craft without us having
to race against the wind to create lift.
Caesar will bark as the kite rises and
I'll laugh at him for being so silly.
I'd let him hold the string but he'd drop it
and kites don't grow on trees--this one cost me
49 cents down at the Five & Dime.
(It's 1966; I'm ten years old).

Sometimes we make our own, sticks from branches,
glue I make myself, the Sunday comics
for the skin that stretches over the bones.
For a heart I give it mine. For a soul
--it picks that up from the sky, takes it in
if I can get it high enough up there
so that it dances by itself. That's what
I mean by soul. That's why Heaven's over
our heads. To bring it down again I wind
it in, hand over hand, a slow process
and contrary to Nature, I guess, but
I can't just release the line, or break it,
and watch it waft away, no matter that
I wonder where it's off to. Still, the link
has snapped on more than one occasion, but
that was the wind, not a boy and his dog,
who let it get away. When that happens,
we follow it as far as we can. And

one day, what holds me to the earth will break,
too, and I'll fall to the ground, later
be buried inside it, yet float away
and see everything my kite can see but
just as if it's all spread out before me
--much like my life is now . . . but without end.
I'll have lots to live for when I die,
but who will follow me to find out where

I've lighted? I suppose I'll find myself
--a neat trick, better than the loop the loop.


Lovesick

From my attic bedroom I see my school.
It's well and I'm sick--flu, or a virus,
something I caught from my classmates there. Now
it's my turn not to turn up. I feel like
heck. I can't keep anything down. Even
saltines and Coca-Cola. They come back
up. I have a fever and yet I'm freezing.
I get some sleep, in snatches, and have dreams,
nightmares by day, from which I jerk awake
to wonder where I am. Oh, yeah. My bed.
What day's today? Wednesday. Over the hump,
almost, of the school week. What time is it?
About 1:00. Time for recess soon.

I hear the students running to the playground.
Kickball. Jump-rope. Basketball. Ducks and drakes.
I wish I could be there, not that I'm good
at sports. But I like to run and play and
shout. I'm small for my age--I hardly get on base
or kick the ball out of the infield or
make a basket. But when my pals do
I cheer, and when I do they shout, Acuff,
you're oh-kay. Then we return to class and

draw. I like airplanes. I can draw them but
not exactly, not as well as Chong Yen.
He's from Taiwan. He can draw them as if
he's taking a photograph or building
a real bird, right before your eyes. I say,
Look, Chong, at what I drawed. He rolls his eyes.
Drew, he says. Look at what I drew. Then he
comes to my desk and picks up my drawing
and says, No, no, no, a P-51
doesn't look like this at all. Don't forget
the details. He returns to his desk and
I follow. He's drawn P-38s. Wow,
I say. You sure know your planes. I whistle.
He smiles--he's pleased--and looks away. He has

three brothers and two sisters. I know--I
met them at his birthday party. I don't
get invited much to birthday parties
but I did to his. I gave him a plane,
a model plane, a B-29, wrapped
up nice by my mother. Here, Chong, I said,
after we had cake and ice cream and it
was time for him to open his presents.
Chinese have birthdays, too, just like we do.
It's a small world, I guess. It's a small world
because it's so big. Anyway, he took
it--both hands. Thank you very much. I said
You're welcome, which sounded strange because I
hardly ever say that, much less Thank you.
He carefully unwrapped it and folded
the paper flat--he didn't wad it up

like I do. A B-29, he said.
I hope you like it, Chong, I said. Do you
like it? Yes, he said. I am overwhelmed
by your thoughtfulness. No one's ever said
anything like that to me before. Oh,
it's nothing, I said. I'm glad you're happy.
He didn't look at me because he was
crying, which confused me: Chong, if you don't
like it, I said, you can take it back or
I can take it back for you and get you
something else, or just the money. No, no,
he said. You don't understand. But I do.

And after drawing we have history
--Abraham Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth
and Useless Grant and all those men with beards.
Even when they're young they look like grandpas.

I fall asleep to the sounds of my friends.
I'm under the sheets and my eyes are tight
and it's like we're all here together.
I'm sweet on Amelia Stephens. Sometimes
I try to dream about her. It starts with
us in a yellow station wagon, really
more golden than yellow. I'm drawing and
she's sitting right beside me. We don't have
children because I don't know how that's done
and I guess she doesn't either, at least
in my dream. I don't know where we're going

but we're together and heading somewhere
so that's really all I know about love
but it's enough. I love her in my dream
and real life, too, but I'll never tell her
and spoil it. She wears pretty dresses and
socks that come up to just below
her knees. She's taller than I am so my
legs are about as long as her socks. Now

she's sitting beside me, saying, Poor thing,
I love you--when I'm sick my mind
plays tricks on me but it's really my heart.
Then I hear the three o'clock bell ring and
children being noisy as they get on
their buses. I walk to school--I've never
ridden a bus, not even a Greyhound.
It looks like fun, you and your friends going

home together though your homes are different.
When I'm well enough to go back to school
it will seem new again, like a friend
or an out-of-state cousin you see just
once a year, if that often. I mean that
you don't take them for granted anymore,
or at least not so much. That's what love is,

not getting so close that you ruin it all
or needing them so bad it makes you puke.


Gale Acuff has had poetry published in Ascent, Ohio Journal, Descant, Poem, Adirondack Review, Coe Review, Worcester Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Arkansas Review, Florida Review, South Carolina Review, Carolina Quarterly, South Dakota Review, Sequential Art Narrative in Education, and many other journals. Acuff has authored three books of poetry: Buffalo Nickel (BrickHouse Press, 2004), The Weight of the World (BrickHouse, 2006), and The Story of My Lives (BrickHouse, 2008).  Acuff has taught university English in the US, China, and the Palestinian West Bank.

Sheldon Lee Compton At The Foot of The Hopi Language Mountain With The Bellwether Eye

Apologue

Pia’isa, little ones. To learn of magnificence, the kind that comes from a long history. The turns of pure magic, through stories. How the moon and earth were once as close as leaves of a branch, how the sky tilted, a disc throwing colors of all kinds, or the dark marathon of the animal earth-diver  into the primal waters for a handful of mud here or a fingernail worth of sand there. The First People, as they’re called now, but who should be called by their own collective name for themselves - the people, or simply us. They are and were a fantastic people. If you asked them, Who is that over there, those strangers? Their answer would always translate today to the word enemy. Who are those people? Oh, they are enemy. The same goes for any other object or living being they might be asked to identify. Over there is a big mountain. What do you call that? Oh, that? We call that a big mountain. The First People names for me varied by immense and roaming tribes. To the Hopi, I was Kweo Kachina; to the Potawatomi, I was Chibiabos. The Metis called me Rou-garou, and the Shshone whispered Pia’isa to their children at night to frighten them into calming. Pia’isa is watching for your eyes to open, awâsis.    


Bellwether Eye

This boy breaks into a house and we find out it’s his grandma’s place,
that he’s stealing her pain meds. Next thing you know
the grandma’s on the floor with a busted head. Boys like that get shitkicked
by Sean Holly in lockup. Big Sean did it and didn’t care who knew it,
told the boy he wasn’t his mamaw and flattened his head against the cell wall,
jarred his eye loose so that it popped it out of his head,
left it swinging on the optic nerve. Thing is, that boy’s eye started moving
across his cheekbone, pushing itself toward the bridge of his nose
the way a snail does, using the exposed nerve like its body to inch along.
And it started growing. That’s the word Sean tried to say later. Growing.

Gig Night

Bird arrives as heroin.
Eyes lidded and soft,
steps like socked feet
on shag carpet,
he moves so lightly.
Five musicians
shadow the room
from center stage.
Buddy on drums,
but the rest are a

haze coffin out of sight.
The heroin is vein-rusted,
plants him to the stage.
It soaks through the skin
to mix with his sweat,
it screams into the sax
and blows out into the
club like shards from his reed,
a prodrug sprinkle
of notes exactly ragged.


Sheldon Lee Compton is the author of four books, most recently the novella A True Story (Shivelight Books, 2017). His fiction and poetry can be found in gobbet, Wigleaf, Live Nude Poems, Gravel, Anti-Heroin Chic, Unbroken Journal, Vending Machine Press, The Cabal, and elsewhere. He lives in Pikeville, Kentucky, with his partner, the photographer Heather McCoy.