Irony
The young soldiers play
call of duty on their x-box
with the war right outside.
Post deployment
On the first night we were home
all the bars were filled
with the ghosts of every soldier and marine I served with.
Pre Deployment
When my son asked if I was gonna die
I told him no
only mostly sure.
Matthew Borczon in a poet and navy sailor from Erie, Pa. He has published 6 books of poetry the most recent of which is The smallest coffins are the heaviest by Epic rites press. He works as a practical nurse in Erie, Pa where he lives with his wife, four kids, three cats and two dogs. He publishes widely in the small press.
heart
Wednesday, December 27, 2017
James Diaz And The Total Dark Encompassing What Kafka Said Until The Last Bomb Of Autumn
Sirens, How I Miss Being The One They're After
I come from a dark so total
light itself is the accident
how air hits the open wound
how the mirror refuses to show you
what you show it
once I put the whole damn town
into that gaping hole
and when it closed
all these refugees
were just trapped inside
my broken body
and when I look a little pinched
pained in my posture
it's all these poor substitutes
looking for a way out
The Arrow's Deepest Kiss
"The weapon of choice made a hole in my heart,
a hole so deep nothing else mattered" -Annie Gallup
in my bones
I lean
toward you
thirsty from
travel
I wear
my heart
all wrong
all these sleepless nights
I see the silver lining
go dark
around my eyes
and every ghost in this room
speaks the language
of another country
I haven't got what it takes
or what I had was taken
from me
I think you know
what I know
that at a certain point
there's no coming back
that's the point we must reach, Kafka said
well, now we're at that dark edge
and lost isn't always as lost as we think
or as lasting.
I Was Never What You Thought I Was
winter wonders how i am keeping
things from her door
i search the aubergine valley
but only orphan socks will
do, when you walk alone
you walk as you were born
this is what i know about dying
i'm better at living, for now-
in the quiet between the last bomb
of autumn, the dial tone
of a friend's voice
and static when the weeping
is all that you remember
of love
James Diaz lives in upstate New York. He is the author of This Someone I Call Stranger (Indolent Books, 2018) and the founding editor of Anti-Heroin Chic. His work has appeared in HIV Here & Now, Quail Bell Magazine, Ditch, Cheap Pop Lit and Foliate Oak. @diaz_james
I come from a dark so total
light itself is the accident
how air hits the open wound
how the mirror refuses to show you
what you show it
once I put the whole damn town
into that gaping hole
and when it closed
all these refugees
were just trapped inside
my broken body
and when I look a little pinched
pained in my posture
it's all these poor substitutes
looking for a way out
The Arrow's Deepest Kiss
"The weapon of choice made a hole in my heart,
a hole so deep nothing else mattered" -Annie Gallup
in my bones
I lean
toward you
thirsty from
travel
I wear
my heart
all wrong
all these sleepless nights
I see the silver lining
go dark
around my eyes
and every ghost in this room
speaks the language
of another country
I haven't got what it takes
or what I had was taken
from me
I think you know
what I know
that at a certain point
there's no coming back
that's the point we must reach, Kafka said
well, now we're at that dark edge
and lost isn't always as lost as we think
or as lasting.
I Was Never What You Thought I Was
winter wonders how i am keeping
things from her door
i search the aubergine valley
but only orphan socks will
do, when you walk alone
you walk as you were born
this is what i know about dying
i'm better at living, for now-
in the quiet between the last bomb
of autumn, the dial tone
of a friend's voice
and static when the weeping
is all that you remember
of love
James Diaz lives in upstate New York. He is the author of This Someone I Call Stranger (Indolent Books, 2018) and the founding editor of Anti-Heroin Chic. His work has appeared in HIV Here & Now, Quail Bell Magazine, Ditch, Cheap Pop Lit and Foliate Oak. @diaz_james
Sunday, December 24, 2017
Rus Khomutoff Is Witness To Hither Swarms, Dizzying Hybris, An Echo Drug From A Culvert, And The Blacklist Of Preeminence
3 poems inspired by Ric Carfagna
Vintage ghosts of
joy and sadness
a saccharine statement
the highest expression of the autopoetic force
the incarnation and withdrawal of a God
declaration of hither swarms
accretion of the torrential becoming
instances emancipated from
all anxieties and frustrations
in the anagogic phase
made dizzy by the hybris
a regular pulsating
metre of recurrence
This is not a method
O blacklist of preeminence
louder than life itself
countdown sequence
of aired mysterious booms
natural coction
the shadow of a shadow of an
obtainable new order
to bathe in the splendor
of lathe and labyrinth
as momentum grows
that bold and legitimate certainty
of endlessly repeating variations
and recollections that
erect their desire to exist
like a new sensation
articulating lifelong repeal
In this mode and vague notion
of a stay in your placeism
event horizon
a derangement of senses
dragging the echo
from the culvert
from the book of common prayer
eschewing the copula
almost like the pace of a dream
ordered fragments of a
disordered devotion
a space we can enter
the bareness of time’s passing
My name is Rus Khomutoff and I am a neo surrealist language poet based in Brooklyn,NY. My poetry has appeared in Erbacce, Poetheah, Occulum, X-Peri and Former People Journal. Last year I self published my debut ebook Immaculate Days. I am on twitter @rusdaboss
Vintage ghosts of
joy and sadness
a saccharine statement
the highest expression of the autopoetic force
the incarnation and withdrawal of a God
declaration of hither swarms
accretion of the torrential becoming
instances emancipated from
all anxieties and frustrations
in the anagogic phase
made dizzy by the hybris
a regular pulsating
metre of recurrence
This is not a method
O blacklist of preeminence
louder than life itself
countdown sequence
of aired mysterious booms
natural coction
the shadow of a shadow of an
obtainable new order
to bathe in the splendor
of lathe and labyrinth
as momentum grows
that bold and legitimate certainty
of endlessly repeating variations
and recollections that
erect their desire to exist
like a new sensation
articulating lifelong repeal
In this mode and vague notion
of a stay in your placeism
event horizon
a derangement of senses
dragging the echo
from the culvert
from the book of common prayer
eschewing the copula
almost like the pace of a dream
ordered fragments of a
disordered devotion
a space we can enter
the bareness of time’s passing
My name is Rus Khomutoff and I am a neo surrealist language poet based in Brooklyn,NY. My poetry has appeared in Erbacce, Poetheah, Occulum, X-Peri and Former People Journal. Last year I self published my debut ebook Immaculate Days. I am on twitter @rusdaboss
Sunday, December 17, 2017
Connor Stratman and Fallen Angels, Harvest Seedlings, the Nantucket Light, and The Dander of Morning
Samael
Sing, fool, sing to me,
the shadow of the centrifugal
serpent. Angel to angel,
faceless face to form
and space, come with the fire
to swing the sphere into focus.
If in our song, you’ll permit
a field to crumble into weeds,
may the oil burn at midnight
as well as at the bloody sunrise.
By then, our shirts will be dry
and the cities will call to us
in shipless drowning gestures.
They’ll know then the fixtures
were never fixed nor stern.
Your motion is your negative
gorgeous twin vision of night.
For me, the moon unhinges
on the brink of demonic dispute,
something for my six lost sons
to pull towards their barren chests.
Punishment/Allergen
The scream is natural. It
panders, pleads
like a seedling at harvest.
Neither life, nor glass
is this, the predictor
of the rod. Now they
swish over and again.
Only the echoes
of fingernails
in the dirt.
Regenerate
Nothing was wrong with the light.
In Nantucket for now, my sense
of humor is now stationed. Window,
sing in a arpeggio of prismatic fury.
Show me, wall, where my limbs extend,
disappear, burn. Thread by thread,
my dead cells crowd every head that
hits the pillow. Radio’s out: asleep.
Soaplessly washed in the dander
of a morning that won’t come, soon.
Connor Stratman lives in Dallas, TX. His books and chapbooks include Some Were Awake (plumberries, 2011), Volcano (2011/2017, Writing Knights), and An Early Scratch (Erbacce, 2010). His work has appeared in journals such as Ditch, Counterexample Poetics, Earl of Plaid, Etcetera, Backlash, Moria, Dead Snakes, and Otoliths. He currently is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Texas at Arlington.
Sing, fool, sing to me,
the shadow of the centrifugal
serpent. Angel to angel,
faceless face to form
and space, come with the fire
to swing the sphere into focus.
If in our song, you’ll permit
a field to crumble into weeds,
may the oil burn at midnight
as well as at the bloody sunrise.
By then, our shirts will be dry
and the cities will call to us
in shipless drowning gestures.
They’ll know then the fixtures
were never fixed nor stern.
Your motion is your negative
gorgeous twin vision of night.
For me, the moon unhinges
on the brink of demonic dispute,
something for my six lost sons
to pull towards their barren chests.
Punishment/Allergen
The scream is natural. It
panders, pleads
like a seedling at harvest.
Neither life, nor glass
is this, the predictor
of the rod. Now they
swish over and again.
Only the echoes
of fingernails
in the dirt.
Regenerate
Nothing was wrong with the light.
In Nantucket for now, my sense
of humor is now stationed. Window,
sing in a arpeggio of prismatic fury.
Show me, wall, where my limbs extend,
disappear, burn. Thread by thread,
my dead cells crowd every head that
hits the pillow. Radio’s out: asleep.
Soaplessly washed in the dander
of a morning that won’t come, soon.
Connor Stratman lives in Dallas, TX. His books and chapbooks include Some Were Awake (plumberries, 2011), Volcano (2011/2017, Writing Knights), and An Early Scratch (Erbacce, 2010). His work has appeared in journals such as Ditch, Counterexample Poetics, Earl of Plaid, Etcetera, Backlash, Moria, Dead Snakes, and Otoliths. He currently is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Texas at Arlington.
Saturday, December 2, 2017
Ryan Quinn Flanagan and Things Made in China, Public Beheadings, Evel Kneivel, and a Couch Cushion Half Moon
George Foreman Grill
Her aunt has moved in up the street.
And we borrow her George Foreman grill.
The missus swears by it and I just swear.
Not too often, just enough to make my point.
Like drilling for oil and stopping when you find it.
Anything extra is just showmanship.
And the old German across the way
got drunk and started driving recklessly
and now they’ve deported his mail order bride.
One more thing made in China.
The first time the cops were on him,
it was for the cameras he had installed
pointing at his neighbour’s hot tub.
Now his license is suspended
and he has to tug his own tuba.
What a mess we all get ourselves into.
Burst water mains that never learned to swim.
The last time I went to the zoo
all the animals were drugged.
It was like paying to watch heroin addicts with fur.
A few toppling over like ancient ruins
so the crowds snap a picture.
Waking themselves up periodically
and looking around like the many nodders
on the subway.
People in Large Groups
Make Me Think of Public
Beheadings
Celebrations
sound like crying
by other means.
I carve a half moon into the couch cushion
and wait for night.
People in large groups
make me think of public
beheadings.
It is that kind of uneasiness.
Sitting in parked cars
waiting for the lines in the street
to do away with themselves.
When I scratch my head
it feels like excavation.
As though I am that much closer
to water on the brain.
The scalp peels away like stickers.
A large cheer goes up
from the collection of people
on the other side of
the wall.
Something must have happened.
I am relieved that I have missed it.
Ironed shirts have always looked
like demolition sites
to me.
Another roar from the crowd.
The arena is demanding
blood.
Evel Knievel Would Never Be Your Bank Teller
The New York to London has bedbugs.
Heathrow wont catch them because they aren’t looking.
There is a list of Terror suspects like reading out morning roll call.
As stupid as that sounds.
That is all they have.
Though I give them credit for the sexy name.
The Cobra committee.
Sounds lethal and immediate and final.
The truth should never get in the way of a smashing name.
Evel Knievel would never be your bank teller.
Wondering how to better serve you today.
It is all in the name.
The rest of it
follows.
Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage. His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, RASPUTIN, Blue Mountain Review, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review.
Her aunt has moved in up the street.
And we borrow her George Foreman grill.
The missus swears by it and I just swear.
Not too often, just enough to make my point.
Like drilling for oil and stopping when you find it.
Anything extra is just showmanship.
And the old German across the way
got drunk and started driving recklessly
and now they’ve deported his mail order bride.
One more thing made in China.
The first time the cops were on him,
it was for the cameras he had installed
pointing at his neighbour’s hot tub.
Now his license is suspended
and he has to tug his own tuba.
What a mess we all get ourselves into.
Burst water mains that never learned to swim.
The last time I went to the zoo
all the animals were drugged.
It was like paying to watch heroin addicts with fur.
A few toppling over like ancient ruins
so the crowds snap a picture.
Waking themselves up periodically
and looking around like the many nodders
on the subway.
People in Large Groups
Make Me Think of Public
Beheadings
Celebrations
sound like crying
by other means.
I carve a half moon into the couch cushion
and wait for night.
People in large groups
make me think of public
beheadings.
It is that kind of uneasiness.
Sitting in parked cars
waiting for the lines in the street
to do away with themselves.
When I scratch my head
it feels like excavation.
As though I am that much closer
to water on the brain.
The scalp peels away like stickers.
A large cheer goes up
from the collection of people
on the other side of
the wall.
Something must have happened.
I am relieved that I have missed it.
Ironed shirts have always looked
like demolition sites
to me.
Another roar from the crowd.
The arena is demanding
blood.
Evel Knievel Would Never Be Your Bank Teller
The New York to London has bedbugs.
Heathrow wont catch them because they aren’t looking.
There is a list of Terror suspects like reading out morning roll call.
As stupid as that sounds.
That is all they have.
Though I give them credit for the sexy name.
The Cobra committee.
Sounds lethal and immediate and final.
The truth should never get in the way of a smashing name.
Evel Knievel would never be your bank teller.
Wondering how to better serve you today.
It is all in the name.
The rest of it
follows.
Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage. His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, RASPUTIN, Blue Mountain Review, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review.
Friday, November 24, 2017
Laura Carter lives and teaches in Atlanta. Recent chapbooks are out with Dancing Girl Press.
Untitled
The day I remember leaving
was almost
as lovely
as a mixed-use
facility
with
no use for
fire—
your face
as quiet
as a tall glass of milk,
pure eon,
aion—
the world I thought
I loved.
By the time you had
left for the other
side of the world,
I could have measured
a tactile forest
between us.
But there was
nothing left
of your cynic’s synergy
for me to pull
back into
as I moved
ahead with a
tenuous frame
around me.
Stereophonic
was once code for poem, as if
what the world knows of music could be measured in the interim that the poems
provide. I wanted “my” poems to be a singular affair, but I had no proof that
this would relieve others of their pain. Once, in a longish sort of dream, a
man said that all poems are sugar. I
thought of all the poems I know, including the yews and the horses. Sugar? Is
there a place for an incorrect poem in the world that might somehow touch what
a poem can feel? It’s simple, or so it seems. I guess poems are meant to convey
all that is lovely or intense about a person, place, or thing. No verbs allowed. Or are they?
I always began
the world, likeso, likeso,
learning how to sayso, sayso,
keeping my hands
out of the hellmouth.
*
Yesterday seemed
at least as ornery
for many as when
the first morning
fell away.
No tricks.
No options.
*
The last time I saw
what the first brother
wanted, there
was a mosquelike
place behind him.
The temple where
only a few
would escape
without risking every-
thing.
Laura Carter lives and teaches in Atlanta. Recent chapbooks are out with Dancing Girl Press.
Tuesday, November 21, 2017
Thena Westfall With a Description of Thorns, a Chinese Finger Trap, a Boomerang That Does Not Come Back, and Briny Mosses
Longterm
Care
I. Body before mind
she tried to make something beautiful of his fragile body
he did not want to see it
instead he rendered a description of thorns, the smell of
neglect
he wished upon himself for being weak
for not dying first
refusing a world he can no longer hear
“just leave me alone”
II. Across the ocean
The paper boat she rode across the Pacific has been taking
on water
She bailed it out
to no avail
she can no longer call for help
She musters a smile
It is enough
To keep the angles coming back
III. Pilot
never believing in angels, she sees them now
their faces float in and out with her name
they lift her heavy bones
when flying, the most common cause of death
is overcorrection
and now she is trapped,
over correcting
flying, arms pulled in
legs folded like landing gear
she dreams of delicate bones
muscles that respond on command
in sleep she is a bird
IV. Nirvana
words are so long
cyclone out, a labyrinth he gets lost in
there is a girl next to him, her face a smiling moon
he remembers he has a smile too
it comes over his face like a sunrise
the people here who claim to be his wife, his son
they are disappointed, wanting something,
he tries, but lays a waste
becoming everyone, looking with silence
admiring the kaleidoscope of his name
V. Going home
she has unwound
the ribbons of her mind puddle at her feet
a Chinese finger trap, a cocoon
a wad of memories
clogs her mouth
words escape like moths
she waits
for her sister, her aunt, her mother
she puts ribbons in her pockets
to sew together
she makes a paper crane,
her hand crumples a flower
the butterfly has gone
she ends as a worm
in the summer
a discordant tune
she can change it
if we left her in ribbons and went away
she could fix her butterfly into a crane
and wing back to her mother
then there would be rain
and she could find her way home
Boomerang
I watched you fall in love
with,
what we agree, is the best thing in the world
she, a soon to be five year old fire ball,
sleeps
in your arms.
now you know
how
trust feels.
and you are afraid to stay
to
see how it feels to break it.
this is the greatest journey one can take
it
is a boomerang
and we are learning to throw
if
it doesn’t come back we learn
to throw better
thought
there is no sure way to know
if it will come back at all
Death of a
Barfly
And here you stand your hand nailed to the bar in an act of
crucifixion.
Your head voice ringing so we all can hear the discontent
vibrating in the palm of you hand.
Nail or
not you will find a way to drown it.
For how many can arrive so conflicted without a sorrow that
bleeds
behind their eyes, worshiping with the determination of a
solider
heavy in borrowed boots,
Wearing the shoes of the dead is enough to weigh anyone to
the floor.
Yet somehow your back remains straight against it’s liquid
cross.
I offer you something to wet your lips.
You blink back the blood and tender an idea to wash it down
with,
making confession, keeping your Hail Mary’s to yourself.
Northwest
“Here
we are plain. We don’t have much culture.”
Our cultures
smells of soul:
briny fermenting thick forest mosses
sounds of salt water rain
dripping tarps, damp rubber boots
Bravado backed by a mountain range
prone to operate outside of law and limb,
Humbled treading water sheds
Observe in the fall, worship
within state regulations, The sacrifice
innards spilt, forest fertilized
we bond with knifes and silence
fiercely independent
native peoples of the pacific northwest
Born in 1903 to an exotic slave owner, Thena West fall started her poetry career in the womb with a pokey stick of death. She witnessed the birth of Jesus Christ, and to this day it is unclear as to if she had anything to do with is crucifiction. She also helped edit the Declaration of Independence, probed Thomas Edison (if you know what I mean), and quite possibility caused the Wall Street Crash. She has a Greek God for a brother and the Antichrist for her daughter. She had 6 other children in her life, all of whom died in an exceedingly tragic coincidental bathtub murder spree the likes of which the Zodiac Killer could never dream of. Her hobbies include: belching the alphabet, stealing Christmas trees from the neighbor's yard, and getting discount steaks from an employee in the back of the Safeway parking lot. She has been known to enjoy a good tire fire. In her life she has traveled to all 12 continents, Mars, and various alternate dimensions. It is also interesting to note that her mind was so far evolved that it had to develop an electrical shock in her face to slow down the evolution process that will eventually blow up the sun. She once owned a camel, a crocodile, and a toy dog that she conducted a circus with and took to the World's Fair. She is fond of alcoholics, sinners, and the lot of humanity who likes to live a little. She is the founder of the cult of the Church of Overindulgence and enjoys watching television shows about the paranormal such as Ghost Adventures, the Xfiles, and Bachelor in Paradise. She once thumb wrestled Sasquatch (and won), became the next Dread Pirate Roberts, drew a dick on Daniel Radcliff's chin, and helped the German's invade Sequim in 2015. If you are a person who enjoys a metaphor for things that are but never were (but are most likely true somewhere at sometime) you will enjoy the works of the fantastical Thena Westfall.
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