Krystal Languell
Pronoun Kettling
Image of a rose-lighted flank is revealed, woman in the shape
of a girl becomes space and a doll consists of a line between
things. The line moves from a lighted boundary at which
misty light calls. Ghost-limb determines that (existing in air)
the witch relates to “I” pronoun, whiteness moved downward.
Her selvage is sprocket-like, barren slow bleeds. Her control
like boy-pulls-an-animal or boy-watches-a-mouse. A water tank
sits panoramic, is truly figurative material of space. The sun
distributes its surface of visibility onto desert audience, integrates
a man. Real thing substitutes for beauty of trill note. Danger is:
you’ll be dream’s intermediary. Unraveling event of friendship
opens and foreign woman occupies a loved one’s face, radiates.
A plane tips up and light is not real. Film image is so cerebral,
he thinks directional. Linking is the new flow, a screen is a mirror,
the photograph so handsome with instinct to preserve oneself.
One thing more disconnected: your monologue stripped down.
~~~
Field Notes: The Chase
“That girl and I will always be cool with each other.” “Wrong again.” “Rugburn on one knee from climbing around on my roof.” “Williamsburg.” “Disqualified.” “Let me read his divorce papers.” “Sighing.” “Ruining it.” “Watching.” “Alone and I don’t.” “She calls me.” “I’m roasting an eggplant.” “Spotted.” “In the bike lane smoking a cigarette.” “I forgot.” “Even when men are online.” “It’s all demand.” “A regular guy, an amazing girl.” “Moaning at the new colors of Le Creuset cookware.” “Now that I’ve gotten everyone to leave me alone.” “Trying to organize.”
~~~~
Krystal Languell is the author of Call the Catastrophists (BlazeVox, 2011) and has been a finalist for the Slope Editions Book Prize and the National Poetry Series. She teaches composition in the CUNY system, and serves on the collaborative board for Belladonna* Series. She lives in Brooklyn, where she co-curates the HOT TEXTS reading series.
Lily Brown
SEABOARD
Between thought
and touch I
watch. I see you
out of your house.
The moon thick
as twice, quick as
spring. Once,
in a front, I
marked love
but the vision went
fungal.
A family watched
me, shocked—I didn’t
know slip, let boats
moor untongued.
If I, then anyone,
you said, and hatch-
worked my mind.
~~~
DREAM BANK
Fabric downs
the light, blacks
the weather, a flutter
in sheets. The dream
says work.
In the mouth of
a man, the dream
says set aside.
So I marry, train
the moon, wet
the house with
ground water.
Weather,
time’s setting.
~~~
GREEN VIEW
Here’s your space: a floor,
fixture, and broken window.
Snow may enter you slow
beneath a sleeping dog.
Here’s a shelf for approved
films and music, and here,
a closet for undesirables.
Here’s a slab to slam for private lines,
a wall compressed by fist, and pasty
love on art. There’s a woman
crying over what a man writes of
a woman, and here, a coat of
nettle wears that woman’s body.
~~~~~
Lily Brown‘s first book, Rust or Go Missing, is out from Cleveland State University Poetry Center. She has new poems out or forthcoming in Transom, Gulf Coast, Catch Up, and Ephipany.
Alex Rieser
The Mountaintop Refuses our Advances
See the sun coming up slowly see those knife lights rising in energy of fractals there is the query of where will it go; I didn’t agree to words either; is there one structure to superstructure and is the sun humming it yes there is fragile and there is god and there are the monument glasses there is also the casting glass and they are massive and there is herego and therego and there is more to show is that a look of fear or anticipation fading from your face come up the summit and watch the geometry we will gaze out and in the midst of witness we’re going to take scissors to the palisade we’re going to sow the sun in a grey spot we’re going to tip the paint-pot spilling red like toasting a sonnet on a piece of bread.
~~~~~
Alex Rieser is an MFA student and is currently living in San Francisco with his fiance. He has published poetry and criticism and his works appear most recently in Switchback, Quiet Lightning, The Ignatian, and LEVELERpoetry, his works have been anthologized in the Feathertale Great Works in the 1st Person Anthology, and his first chapbook Emancipator is forthcoming from New Fraktur press.
j/j hastain
To be a planarity’s dream. A
mid. Amidst ineffable singing trues an unconditional spring. Speleology or. And within we always find. Seeds. Emanations of new names. I whisper it into
nativeness. An opening or a mirroring
of arrows. Lullaby not meant to lull but
rocking by cull. Natural bilge. Lover, your lips still feel like soft clay.
~~~
A mandala
that etches itself into materiality. As radial radicality. Outspread tide. Sweet ghost vagina, ensnare me toward additive
understandings. Never feminine nor masculine because they are
qualities and not assumable gender relegations. For the sake of a homegrown interval of helms. A place for us to keep waving
the sewn stone in public.
~~~
~~~~~
j/j hastain is the author of several cross genre books including long past the presence of common (Say it with Stones Press) and trans-genre book libertine monk (Scrambler Press).
Amanda Deutch
Action and Bloom > Cowboy Symphony > Define Productivity >
Define Productivity
~~~~~
Amanda Deutch is the author of three chapbooks, Box of Sky: Skeleton Poems (Dusie 2009), Motel Drift (Traffic Press, 2002) and The Subway Series (Traffic Press, 2001). Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has been published in EOAGH, Boog City, Shampoo, Full Metal Poem, Barrow Street, Ugly Duckling’s 6×6, Watchword Press as well as many others. She was the 2007 recipient of a Footpaths to Creativity Fellowship to live and write in the Azores. She teaches with the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project and works for the Coney Island History Project. She is the Director and Curator of Parachute: the Coney Island Performance Festival.
Donna Fleischer
Please Stand By
Please Stand By for more Desert Storm. And you do. You’re
at war. From your television set. It’s part of your weekday
morning exercise. You watch them conduct sorties. You feel
proud.
It took a war to take out your depression, your anomie. To
help you feel you’re part of something. So you’ll support
the killing, raping, maiming, burning. You like to think that
as long as it’s them, it’s not you
the Tigris
flow of shoppers
through a mall
~~~~~
Donna Fleischer is author of three poetry chapbooks, of late, Twinkle, Twinkle (Longhouse, 2010) and indra’s net (bottle rockets press, 2003). Her work in open form poetry and Japanese-derived forms appears in print and online anthologies and literary periodicals in the U.S., England, and Japan, most recently in Dreams Wander On: Contemporary Poems of Death Awareness, Fieralingue – The Poets’ Corner, Contemporary Haibun, South by Southeast, Issa’s Untidy Hut, Wang Ping’s Kinship of Rivers, Poets for Living Waters, presence, and KO. She is assistant editor at bottle rockets press and blogs daily for poetry and the earth at word pond. The New Britain Museum of American Art and Exiles Press will include her poetry in their forthcoming anthology of poems on ekphrasis. Donna is a native of Hartford, CT.
David Brazil
ABCs of Revolution
Austerity.
Fuck austerity.
Banks.
Fuck banks.
Cops.
Fuck cops.
Debt.
Fuck debt.
Excuses.
Fuck excuses.
Famine.
Fuck famine.
Ghettoes.
Fuck ghettoes.
The Housing Crisis.
Fuck the housing crisis.
The Incumbent.
Fuck the incumbent.
Jails.
Fuck jails.
Killing People.
Fuck killing people.
Lies.
Fuck lies.
The Military.
Fuck the military.
Nukes.
Fuck nukes.
Oil.
Fuck oil.
Prisons.
Fuck prisons.
Quietism.
Fuck quietism.
The Rich.
Fuck the rich.
Selfishness.
Fuck selfishness.
Torture.
Fuck torture.
Unemployment.
Fuck unemployment.
The Vote.
Fuck the vote.
The Wars.
Fuck the wars.
Xenophobia.
Fuck xenophobia.
Year Three of the Second Great Depression.
Fuck year three of the second great depression.
Zee Rich.
Fuck zee rich.
~~~~~
David Brazil was born in New York and lives in Oakland, California. Forthcoming publications include Mass of the Phoenix : A Mina Loy Portal (Trafficker) and Economy (Compline).
Lauren DeGaine
Ihop – Chapter 2 (a memoir/anti-memoir project for the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics) of an anti-memoir.
Someone must have explained to me why I had to make the decision between mother and father, but I don’t remember that person’s face.
There was a breakfast at Ihop, like hundreds of others, but this one was my mom in the opposite booth, waiting for my dad to get there (to tell him), the phone calls planning this breakfast and the decisions made behind us, the buoyant invisibility of childhood sitting in his place while we wait.
Then I’m the ‘passenger while my mom drives to Los Angeles’ for the first of two hundred times. I remember that space between us, quiet, and the buoyancy occupying it comfortably for one of the last times, before my boundaries broke, before I lost the no-one-can-touch-me innocence, before I let people in and got hurt, before I learned how to make people hurt. I am waiting in a hotel in the summer, my mom beginning to own a restaurant, my pre-vodka stepdad waiting to explode brother and sister still in infancy and I remember rubber air and sizzling brain cells and the daughter’s painful trust hissing like buoyancy secretly leeching from its body.
I started 7th grade by drinking vodka and tearing my knee open on Halloween. I started 7th grade with a 3-way make-out session and my best friend telling me it’s healthy and desirable to have an orgasm by the time your 13. I started 7th grade being the white girl minority at this school in West Hills and having that place in between your legs begin to throb and light and pull on the rest of your body like many tight strings and all of a sudden everything becomes about how that tight spool pulls the mouth into a smile and the heart into a warm, bloody bath of love.
~~~~~
Lauren DeGaine is an aspiring journalist, activist and poetry/prose writer. She attends the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University and was born and raised in southern California.
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Harold Abramowitz
from List of William Pereira Buildings
Rockwell Autonetics, Laguna Niguel, California Social Security Administration Center, San Francisco Two Houston Center, Houston, Texas Bob Hope residence, Burbank, California
The Broadway, Santa Anita, California The Broadway, Fox Hills, California Citibank, Albany, New York Citibank, Rochester, New York
Citibank, Smith Grove, New York Citibank, Syracuse, New York Civic Center, Aurora, Illinois Conference Center and Housing Complex, Lagos, Nigeria
Convention Center, Columbus, Ohio Desert Hospital, Palm Springs, California Eastmont Mall, Oakland, California Grand Slam Health Club, Costa Mesa, California
Great Western Financial Corporation, 8484 Wilshire, Beverly Hills Gulf Mall, Panama City, Florida Hillcrest Hospital, Petaluma, California
Honolulu Medical Complex, Honolulu, Hawaii Hospital, University of Southern California Leleiwe Beach Hotel, Hilo, Hawaii Marriott Hotel, Bermuda
Mauna Loa Shores Apartments, Hawaii Pacific Life building, Newport Center, Newport Beach, California Reno International Airport, Reno, Nevada San Francisco International Airport
Sears Shopping Center, La Puerte, California Shuttle Terminal, La Guardia Airport, New York City Tehran International Airport, Tehran, Iran Transamerica Pyramid, San Francisco
United California Bank, San Mateo, California Vacia Talega Hotel and Condominiums, Puerto Rico Westin St. Francis Hotel, San Francisco Beverly Hills Medical Building, Beverly Hills
Charles Lee Powell Hall, University of Southern California Bayou Building, University of Houston at Clear Lake City Communications Building, Los Angeles City College Continental Airlines First Class Lounge, Los Angeles International Airport
Eisenhower Center, Washington, D.C. First Hawaiian Bank Building, Honolulu Greyhound Bus Terminal, Reno, Nevada Harrisburg International Airport, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
Hartsfield Airport, Atlanta, Georgia Hawaii Kai Studio, Honolulu Makaha Towers and Country Club, Makaha, Hawaii Naval Base, New Orleans, Louisiana
Pacific Financial Center, Los Angeles Regent Beach Hotel, Pattaya, Thailand Riverside Administration Building, Riverside, California Security Pacific National Bank, Oakland, California
~~~~~
Harold Abramowitz is from Los Angeles. His books include Not Blessed (Les Figues Press, 2010) and Dear Dearly Departed (Palm Press, 2008). Harold co-edits the short-form literary press eohippus labs (www.eohippuslabs.com), and writes and edits as part of the collaborative projects, SAM OR SAMANTHA YAMS and UNFO.
Amy Lawless
Moulin Rouge
When something seems so dire
many people say—
“What can I do?
If only I change, it won’t make a difference.”
This is what they all say.
I look at the Brooklyn rooftops. Some grow plants and vegetables.
Some don’t.
When I tried to find a cab in the middle of an Occupy Wall Street protest.
I cried ridiculous tears.
I was so caught up in my asthma attack
and wanting to get home
so I could continue living for another day
I didn’t think magnanimously.
I was small in my emergency.
I didn’t even blush.
But at least I know it.
I wish I could go back in time and remember my inhaler
so I could keep my footprint small
so I could protest.
I am fallible.
But I can be big in an emergency.
~~~~~
Amy Lawless is the author of the poetry collection Noctis Licentia (Black Maze Books, 2008) and the chapbook Elephants in Mourning ([sic] Detroit, forthcoming). She was named a 2011 New York Foundation for the Arts fellow. She teaches writing in New York City and New Jersey.
E.C. Messer
the story of the sea
my dear:
long long ago, before continents and countries, before cars and apartment-houses and ham sandwiches, there was just one big ocean stretching across the whole world. everybody lived in the underwater kingdom ruled by the kind and fair-minded king of the ocean. he lived with his wife the queen of the ocean and their four children in a large reef not far from what is now the western coast of this country.
with patience and deliberation the king and his family saw to the building of shoals and caves, the planting of the great seaweed forests, and the distribution of the ocean’s many fishes. they monitored the levels of salt in the water, and arbitrated the force and direction of waves. to accomplish all this they employed those who were of the right age and temperament to work, while the rest grew up or grew old in ease and comfort. truly, the time of the great ocean was a happy one on this earth.
but the reign of kings cannot last forever, and so it happened that the people of the ocean became dissatisfied with the way their kingdom ran. no one should have such power over the entire earth, they reasoned. this king is thoughtful and good, but what if the next is not? the people planted these seeds of doubt and distrust into the rich silt of the ocean bed, under the shoals and amongst the undulating strands of the kelp forests—and before long these seeds began to grow into land.
in the lush soils of the ocean floor the land grew quickly. by the time the people realized that the land they had sewn was spreading over the entire earth, it was already too late to stop it. so the people climbed aboard the land wherever they could, some ending in africa, some in asia, some in europe, and some in the americas. a few very unlucky souls landed in antarctica and were so cold that over the years they grew short and stooped, and their teeth grew into beaks from chattering. their arms grew into flippers from rubbing against their bodies, and from shuffling back and forth their feet grew into flippers. all the citizens of the great ocean escaped onto the masses of new land somehow, except the very old who do not like to change, and they became the mer-people.
but the king and his family could not simply move onto the land, because their very blood was water and their bodies spanned the length of the great ocean from end to end. as the ground grew the royal family realized that if they did not find a way to encircle the new masses of land, they would soon be torn apart. and so they were forced to escape not onto the land, but around it.
the king escaped first, and he became the pacific ocean. next came his eldest son, the prince who would have one day become king—instead he became the atlantic ocean. then the eldest daughter of the king and queen of the ocean escaped, followed by her sister, and they became the indian and the arctic oceans. at last the youngest child, still a boy-prince, just barely managed to escape the great growing masses of land in time. because he was so young, his father and elder brother placed him at their feet, and he became the southern ocean.
but the queen of the ocean, who had stayed behind to ensure her family’s safety, did not manage to escape in time and was torn to pieces by the shifting continents. the king, looking to his side in the pacific where he had expected to find her, was deeply grieved when he realized what had happened. he bellowed in a voice so loud it rumbled beneath the new formed continents, splitting and spreading them even further. he declared that forever thereafter although there would be many oceans, they would all be known by his beloved wife’s name, which had been Sea.
and that is also why when you dip your fingers into me at night, although i am rent to pieces by the discontent and despair of the world, i still have the power to soothe you.
the Sea
~~~~~
E.C. Messer lives at the edge of the continent, where she encourages innocent pilgrims to dip their fingers into the sea when they can’t sleep. As president of the experimental travel society known as the Citizens for the Promotion of Running Away from Home, she gives sailboat tours and workshops in sandwich-making. Her stories have previously appeared inscribed on the backs of migrating gulls. She would like very much to know you.