radioactive moat

Amy Lawless

2009-09-15T10:23:00.000-07:00

YOU CAN NEVER TOUCH THE SAME PLACE ON THE OCEAN FLOOR TWICE

I was regaling some new bottom dwellers on the art of the mix tape.
Open with a cup of coffee
then get everyone emotional with some raspberry seltzer.
Segue with some roofies to the short guy, some
organized Cheetos, and then bam! Arcade fire!
This was my c-list material but I had to do something while people got drunker
and I got drunker.
I was emotionally strong:

I made my bed all week; I even took out the garbage once! I even felt bad when my yogurt
container that should have been recycled. "One love one love" said
someone named Marley before he died of foot-to-mouth cancers
like some Yorkshire cow.
I was definitely in good spirits and patient.
Accidentally, this fish I knew who was wearing a mirror on his
forehead (sturgeon-chic I mean surgeon-chick) caught a glance
of himself. Blue sharpie stains started melting down my cheeks.
After all I stopped fucking his son. Accidentally, I still had all the
demarcations of a stomach improved by the seed of a parasite.
Guess I forgot to wash that off in the shower.

***

A scholar is made alone and sober
like the dying I suppose. I will divert you
from whatever you'd been pursuing--
Money, fame, pussy.
What else could take
the lines drying up the edge of my decapitated food
and make it whole again?
I'm a fake illiterate and the horrible caw
of our state bird makes me uncomfortable.
I don't know grammar, spelling, the sales tax rate,
whether immortality exists, how much the bus costs,
how to lose weight, how to divide a country,
how to bring it together, whether a nickel is made of nickel,
how to divide liver spots and in turn, make them go away,
how to make a poem go da DUM da DUM da DUM

Don't Burden My World

With politics and such
Derrida and then nod off
to such public displays
Hearted, forward, losing
so much untoward anger
This is all a referent
a tab saying
sigh here. An eraser
taking away
taking away don't say it: memorizing
the funny pages together. Memorizing this
crazy method of word
the toons on the radio.
Spill the grandmother
quickly. Spill her
well. Not an iambic
lie about "specialty doctors."
There's something yellow
in the eyes of the content saying
dying too hard.
Pressed on the gum
stop trying too hard
and the pounds of ions and pounded iota
Sprinkles seem to icon myself in the shoes
of an unattractive friend. You're my
attractive friend who is gone now.
What song would make me feel
older now?

...

Gary Barwin

2009-09-15T10:10:00.000-07:00

Music For Viola Da Gamba

One day, a day of terrible storm and darkness, a day when I was so young I was not yet

born, my mother and father died. Together they lay, their hands clasped each into the

other's. Together they lay, their breathing gone, there on their little bed, a bed which fit

inside a desk drawer which itself fit inside the mouth of an insect, a termite, a dove, or

red ant, roaming seemingly without direction on the side of the road, but yet following

the silent map of its own kind and its colony, a vast network of other ants, ants which

carry the broken body of another back to its home where it is placed in an entranceway

('This is one of the fallen, if we did not know we were alive, we might mistake it for

ourselves,' it seems to say). It is then surrounded by other ants, the whispering clicking of

their forelegs, rain heard deep within the hill. Then hungry for what rich nutrition its

body holds, the ant is eaten by the others, its friends, its co-workers, its larval children,

the red midnight of the body progressing like a storm throughout the colony.

One day, when I was so young I was not yet born, my mother and father died. Together

they lay, their hands clasped into the other's. Together they lay, their breathing

gone, there on a bed which fit inside a desk drawer. Does a wave have a shadow, a

shadow a shore? Waves arrive, wash them away.

...

Zack Sternwalker

2009-09-05T20:05:00.000-07:00

...

Gary Barwin

2009-09-05T20:01:00.000-07:00

Toaster Ouroboros

...

Gary Barwin

2009-09-05T19:57:00.001-07:00

H Crutch

...

Gary Barwin

2009-09-05T19:51:00.000-07:00

Ampersand Axed

...

Conor Robin Madigan

2009-09-03T18:00:00.000-07:00

Big Deck Gun

Often, due to long homily, boys suffer simple indiscretions. The fifth grade sits. They
listen. They stand and file into isles. One boy stays sat. He pinches through navy
polyester pants to his thigh. Hopes away a hard-on, please, he thinks. This hard-on
developed in description of necessities of Confession. Today, the fifth grade confesses.

He wished away hard-ons before. He shut his mind and ears, tight to thought. He tried to
recollect things and drown himself in them; beating, vomit, dusty day with mother in
heat. He resolved. Resolve came in question form. Would I, could hit Shelton for
calling my brother a retard? He pictures the victory. Hard-on conquered, boy stands and
queues.

The girl before him puts her hands behind her and grabs. "Stop," he says, and hates
himself. Katie's hand: a blessing. Look at shoes. She knew. Shoes slide velvet red. She
knew. Shoe after shoe after shoe right to head priest Jim who weighs each confession
with postures and eyebrows.

Boy's turn comes. "Father Jim," he says, "I've sinned." "How's your father, boy?"
"Da's fine. May I ask you something, Father Jim," the boy forces. "It's your job today,
boy." Well, Shelton called Bri a retard in front of the class and can I punch him?" An
eyebrow allows a look to Shelton and posture confirms Jim's voice, he says, "Sounds
like he deserves what he's got coming, but you tell him why."

On a blacktop back to the classroom boy speaks to Shelton from behind, "This is for
calling Brian a retard," he says and hits Shelton in the back of the head. Boy's hand
swells white and purple and he hides it between his legs and huddles to the ground as
Shelton and surrounding boys laugh. Katie laughs.

...

Zack Sternwalker

2009-08-26T18:41:00.000-07:00

Real Nurse Sleeves

Frequent reflections of an enlarging moisturizer for noses on days when the heat
gives off till the shower holds. Bellies with excellent soup height unwill and
cleave to oceans days of nailed in hearts. Now the light east feeding tunics
where its germ inhabitants the rays of the sun that is also all over the country.
Finders playful old holes make it seem like trash. Narrowly faded times but with joke spite. Await to
be even the lost scripture that puts you at the top of your hairs green season.
He stole rubies not the thought of having to eat with one eye. The man opened
his only face to see that the ceiling was itself a blanket. The old man dreamt
his succubus towards a lightly adrift face. Some sod in the house of a light
rain between the music and the candles of a light that burns. Finally it feels
okay to use the rug square to illicit at least the feeling of a cowboy that has
gone through some tough events. On a sexual position for angle needing softer
music in the air while we smell the edges of real nurse sleeves. Losing the
flavor of the fruit to the beat sometimes our only taste of hell in the eyes of
these vermin with a sandwich just to bleed. A cot that looks around at the radar
like a photo on a lot in the deep south. Summer is the glass parade to dream
stupor. Give me daughters to be this love and see this happening on a face with
some winter light. Her eyes in the future with the pants in the corner like one
hundred and seven years of struggle. Only hustles in the jeeps that need to be
their own hatred. We toil like the lost mirth feeling the help through groin
of a taped together squadron in his eyes only colors go so beautiful and tear up
reluctant just to taste the hubris of a wasted year. Waiting for the light to
mimic the films of tuberculosis with paint our white weed hair.

...

Marcus Slease

2009-08-23T09:57:00.000-07:00

Bongeun-sa (temple)

stradling my cheribum
in this paradise of cloudy hours
one foot in the throne
aglow
a whip not visible
cut skin is the kiss
the whale brought
to scale
rooted in the
flash
I wanted to look
Irish but Korea
cooked
my face

Flying Bird Teahouse (Insadong)

I blustered
the English
we made
anxious together
the organ replaced
the pom-pom
the icebox contained
the heart
the sheets were
ghosted
we mumbled into
silk hankies
life is not
a double feature
the sun on my
finches the feathers
in my cup
less plumbers
many electricians
an evening performance
of fruit sellers

Hongdae

in Hongdae back
at the bungalow
we rubbed our
metal kingdoms
a little night music
puddles of puke
in cracked cement
bonfire in the park
with mosh pits
meat-on-a-stick
with serious heat
on the cracked
trains of nations
and where and why
my lips
have kissed
introduced to drift
& wrote
under sanctimonious
blink

...

Darby Hudson

2009-08-12T07:41:00.001-07:00

...

Thomas Patrick Levy

2009-08-09T08:47:00.000-07:00

Questions

…

Do you have any lurking notions or reservations of any kind?

…

In the woods near the frozen stream you asked me if we could be lovers. I was young enough. I touched the dough of your side. I concentrated hard on my careful breathing.

I would have said yes. I didn’t know.

I wouldn’t be swollen in this sticky plastic of a sleeping bag, waiting for my lover to change into a web of lingerie, to move towards the bed like a respectful worm.

…

Have you had honest doubts and prejudices?

…

Your rockabilly scene is not a secret torn up in your diary but I’m trying anyway. Your microphone is on my neck. On my way to the store the Memphis blues again. We’re in Nashville, my hand hovering over the pearl-ground body of Elvis’s limousine. In the yard, a flesh-bare ’57. I’m losing you in the way that I moved away from home. I’m coming down the street, rolling real slow.

…

Do you question your ability to be honest with yourself?

…

I used to write down a notebook in little dreams that I kept near my toilet.

I kept track of you in this way, and in keeping track of you I was able to brush ink over a paragraph which I might have thought.

I kept each one near my notebooks in the garage. I’d rest them on a garbage can, a sawhorse.

I’d rest you there, too, your body spread over a cloud like the outline of a grease stain.

…

Do you have control?

…

I can’t breathe when I scream. I can’t knuckle my aches through the steering wheel. I can hear you briefly through the screen of my punches. I’m flickering very slowly.

I’m inside and then I’m behind you, my arms around your stomach. I’m not there, I’m playing tricks, driving the speed limit while I crush the street with the rubber of my knuckles.

Through the windshield I can hear your brief aches. I press my pinky around your belly like a violin. I whisper things.

…

...

Catherine Wing

2009-08-09T08:38:00.000-07:00

Fiasco

I put my self in a bottle
where it grows pale
and hairless, swimming
in its milk of formaldehyde.
There’s not a lot
of wiggle-room but
it is exceptionally well-preserved.
Every once in a while
it catches my eye from the display case,
as it pushes round against the glass
and my face floats into view.

Self-Portrait Drag

Against a silver-backed mirror
a sliver. Unkempt. On the cusp.
About to bad. Face full of seams
and spots. Invisible stress. Arch
like an eyebrow but reflections of the light
in my pupils. Rash and quick
to scratch. Of late numb
and snip. The bus stops here
except when it doesn’t.
Vertebrae on a string
of spine. My head’s on a stick.
A handful of harebells offered
by a faery. I am tightly stitched.
Body by trickery. But under our fingers
on the psychograph it was my spirit
that wrote, “Oh, don’t.”

...