Michael Brownstein and His Siberian Anthropology, the Death Songs of Crows, and the Rain Whitewashing It All

JOURNEYS AND JOURNEYMEN
 
My mother did not make the trek across earth mountains and rocky beaches.
She allowed us to sail into ourselves one accident at a time.

Nowhere does the graffiti list off every Siberian possibility.
My mother was sweet oil and hard tack, always in full color.

Years go by and time stops.
We knew better and we did not know better.

My mother drove a car into a deer on a country road.
We settled into a denial of one anthropology over another.

A flowering tree has an incredible need to flower.
My mother dreamt us up one brick at a time.

—    [Mendeleev’s] mother must have recognized his
 precocious intelligence, and when he reached fourteen, feeling that he would be lost without a proper education, she walked thousands of miles from Siberia with him—first to the University of Moscow (from which, as a Siberian, he was barred) and then to St. Petersburg, where he got a grant to train as a teacher. (She herself, apparently, nearing sixty at the time, died of exhaustion…) 

Oliver Sachs, Uncle Tungsten


THE END 

Here is an individual who writes because he has to
He seeks no audience no acclaim no book deal
He understands the world is coming to its end
What he writes will no longer matter to anyone
But himself, a friend or two, perhaps a lover.
When the world draws itself into an extinction,
He knows what will be left, what will be new,
A people of the forest with a curiosity of a forest,
Not technology or assembly lines or running water,
But a simplicity of designs in trees, a design in bark,

The song the crow sings as she devours the newly dead.


A MOMENTARY PEACE

She talks of god, she talks to god.
Sometimes she hears an answer.
In the waking silence, she is stubborn.
Early spring, the paper wasp,
Chewed bark, a honey bee,
The wind cruel and heavy,
One hesitation and a pond.
She sings a trumpet to the first cricket,
Everything whitewashed rain and light,
Her notebook open on her lap,
Her pencil sticky with dew.



Michael H. Brownstein has been widely published throughout the small and literary presses. His work has appeared in The Café Review, American Letters and Commentary, Skidrow Penthouse, Xavier Review, Hotel Amerika, Free Lunch, Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, The Pacific Review, Poetrysuperhighway.com and others. In addition, he has nine poetry chapbooks including The Shooting Gallery (Samidat Press, 1987), Poems from the Body Bag (Ommation Press, 1988), A Period of Trees (Snark Press, 2004), What Stone Is (Fractal Edge Press, 2005), I Was a Teacher Once (Ten Page Press, 2011), Firestorm: A Rendering of Torah (Camel Saloon Press, 2012), The Possibility of Sky and Hell: From My Suicide Book (White Knuckle Press, 2013) and The Katy Trail, Mid-Missouri, 100 Degrees Outside and Other Poems (Kind of Hurricane Press, 2013). He is the editor of First Poems from Viet Nam (2011)

Nate Maxson Implores Your Paper Moon in the Radiating Summer not to Fold Like a Failed Polaroid

A Brief History Of The Eventual

The blood-smell does so excite us

Following it in infrared through skyless forests

Unknown animals: thee and thou, me and you, king and queen, ditch and spring

Just to be sure, I’ll be obvious about my intentions

There are witches beneath the frozen Earth

Their veins shot out like the roots of gnarled Lilacs

We dreamed

Or vice versa

Sirens/ swans

Songs

Fell from storms like slow winters

First I walked barefoot through the weeds

And then the forest grew,

Twisted higher than ashy Eden

Whose wounds I chronicle as reductions to ultraviolet night

Those of you listening through these veils of wire and time discontented

Let me see

Your paper moon

Like I did the first time,

Brighter than the protest of a thousand howling pyres

Heartland, Age 12

The cornfields we used to steal from,

A few ears at dusk

I remember

How cold the rain was

The end of summer

Radiating

Like a dark green river dreaming

Wingspan/Post-Flight Measurements

A vast act of remembrance, this

The Blizzard Forever, 1989 to 2017 (so far)

You hardly notice

The wingspan spreading overhead

I assume

A deliberateness to the motion

Dark water in small amounts

That’s your vaccination

Against exposure kid, against the cold

Folded like a failed polaroid

It could be a dream

I’m in conversation with

But whose?

There’s no great comfort

In the sterile clockwork mathematics of all this

Of course the machinery could be perfected eventually

But it’s less interesting than leaving the grit inside to eat up the gears

I prefer to think in terms of catastrophe, in terms of thirst

A choral ode, a downturn: saltwater in a moon-white teacup

Mistaken for light and sipped with a civilized grimace

Whatever it is that makes you feel better

The etymology will be painfully obvious

Most of the time I measure it in dents and bruises

Compared to the last crash landing

What heals tallied next to what doesn’t

Except on some dusks when I am spectral, uninhibited and wounded

X-rayed till I hiss:

Dancing slow in the thinning shade alone

This way

The divide

Before it disappears,

Before a world begins

A déjà vu is etched in sudden snow

Nate Maxson is a writer and performance artist. The author of several collections of poetry including 'The Whisper Gallery' and 'The Age Of Jive", he lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

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).