Featured Poet: Katy Cousino

THE EVERYDAY

GIRDLEMOMMA & GIRDLEBABY
waddle thru Beaver Valley Mall w/Hot Topic bags &
Yankee Candle Pumple smells.
The female girdlebods walk in2 Lane Bryant.
“What Real Women Wear” is smeared on every hexagonal wall.
GIRDLEMOMMA & GIRDLEBABY arrive to their fav h8 spot.

      GIRDLEMOMMA: Last stop the girdlegirl store. We will sob
                                          & cut ourselves in pencil skirts.

The GirdleClerks activ8 behind the counter:
double-chins shake until they smile invitingly.

      GIRDLEBABY: I cry lard pellets—suck on crumbs for comfort.

GIRDLEBABY shoves her encased sausage
thigh into shorts she’ll never wear, causing Thickpussy
Imprint Protrusion. She stares at herself for a long time
as lardstreams flood her clothing; she is chunkier
now than before.

Outside of the dressing room GIRDLEMOMMA grunts.
She tightens her epidermis w/a spandex binder & moans
sweetly into her own ear.

      GIRDLEMOMMA: Constriction sweeter than sugar-blood.

Thin humanoids loiter at the storefront, look in with big eye
small hips, point at GIRDLEBABY, asking if she’s real.

      Humanoid #1: what is fat but has skin
      Humanoid #2: yellow bulbous goo
      Humanoid #1: I’m, like, not even real; twas written in wallblood

Suddenly GIRDLEBABY’s titcatcher is too tight;
the silkworm straitjacket squeezes her <3 so hard.
3 GirdleClerks swarm her, large scissor hands
snipping at GIRDLEBABY bodice. The silver slips.
Jabjow goes the <3.

GIRDLEMOMMA , noticing the screams of her baby-girdle,
leaks instinctual teetjuice from her succulence.

CREEPER  PEEPERS

GIRDLEBABY is under the spyderlace canopy, staring upward
w/grumble-guts. She sprawls across her bedding & knocks
4 of her lard poles together; they expand & bounce like Newton’s
ball-click cradle. Last night she dreamt of a vamp @ her window,
pledging male fang belly-suck. Her eyes roll back in2 the skull.

A happy crevice burrows across her cheeks; teeth are
barely visible: ground to gums.
GIRDLEBABY reaches into a craft bag
of writhing phalanges. She glues them to an old back-scratcher.

      GIRDLEBABY: I will now prepare the entrance.

               BABOOMBANG

There is a thump from the closet. Undeterred, however,
as her girdle begins to boil over,
GIRDLEBABY envisions the vamp.
She bids him nearer w/a pout.

      GIRDLEBABY, giggling: Oh, my blood is all stopped up!

Slowly, GIRDLEBABY drags the fingerstick
across her risen teets. Its long yellow nails pinch
& scrape her jello mounds. She watches in awe @
digital magik. Her blushed nubs tremble.

Costumed humanoids whisper inside the closet.
1 wears dark glasses & a distressed sk8r gurl dress
salvaged from Urban Outfitters. The other
is in a childhood leotard, also from Urban Outfitters.
Both wear bald caps 2 sizes 2 big.
The flesh flaps hinder their eardrums.

      Humanoid #1: what say you, lard cooch?
      Humanoid #2: how it gargles!
      Humanoid #1: my voyeurism is innocent, 4 the sake of research

The humanoids inch open the closet door; a sliver
of morning sun sneaks in2 their spy spot.
1 scribbles madly on stretched mole hide.

Fevering, GIRDLEBABY shoves the phalange stick down her girdle.
The widespread fabric compresses slowly as baby-girdle inhales;
bubbling moans liquify in her throats.
Inside the lard-constraint detachable fingers dig.
They swell w/forgotten liquid.
GIRDLEBABY spurts from every orifice
stiffening blood cum. The eyes seal shut.

      Humanoid #1: who sponsored this?
      Humanoid #2: I am the brittle cage of flesh
      Humanoid #1: those phalanges have no self respect!

SIGH OF THE HUMANOID

The humanoids enter the dilapidated hospital in a panic as per usual;
goldenrod graffiti covers every sickening wing. Wet blobs creep
slowly to the carpeted floor. The shouty humanoids dash 4 sanctuary,
feet sticking to girdle-bod goo. The blobs regenerate w/every plop.
Above, Venus of Willendorf drips brown.

Humanoid #1 & Humanoid #2 slam mutually into a room.
The ruckus erupts the tile floor in dust;
yellow clumps rerupture in all corners of the room.
Rust cracks on the equipment surrounding.
They waste no time.

First quasi-scientist//halfhuman presses the suction wand
in2 her naked abdomen; old slivers fester in pale skin.
She hums loudly w/the machine. The cannula wheezes,
sux on nothing.

Humanoid #2 is pumped w/vasoconstriction; the leftover serum
expired by prior yrs. Swaying in the glass wall reflection,
she wears an old gas mask coated in different spit.
Her gown is damp & she cannot see her eyes.

      Humanoid #1: All work & no play make the humanoid a dull girl.
      Humanoid #2: I’m all juiced up, sis; I can taste my skinny!
      Humanoid #1: We dance w/the devil in the pale moonlight.

The humanoids’ thin rib cages ache apart slowly,
bend 2 riveted flesh. They gasp 4 orgasm.
Vessels swim clear thru their skin.

GIRDLEBABY WRITES A POEM
ABOUT SELF-ACTUALIZATION

xX mY cOnFiNeD sUsTeNaNcE xX

Before I was girdled, I didn’t know my #’s,
but focusing now,
I feel maybe 5 vaginal deposits within me.
Momma tells me I could have
girdle-babes of my own some day,
40 in each spydersac.
She tells me that my thick liquid distinguishes
fart from fertility
& I am full of both.
My fleshular masses are
stopped ^ w/ moo moo mucus
cervical goo; there is no room for
food or another 8-legged monster
inside these fat sacs.

I don’t need no scrubs nor the rubbing procreation.
I need for meatus tube-feed:
different juice, the kind that creates
substantial volume in humanchunks.
Momma doesn’t know I swallow whole.

Katy Cousino is an MFA candidate at the University of Notre Dame. She facilitates writing workshops weekly with the young women at the Juvenile Justice Center of South Bend. She believes that poetry is a powerful tool for social justice.

© Copyright 2015 Katy Cousino

Featured Poet: Miguel Ángel Bustos | Featured Translator: Lucina Schell

OPEN SHADOW


Today I have sought
the birds in my chest.
Heavy trill,
hard fist
suspended from soul’s center.
Today I have defended myself
from the street and the tree,
from their wall of feathers and tongues.
Today I fear the crazed song
that rises from inside me.
Today I fear silence.
I want the flight of my birds
how I want you!
Until wing by wing,
shadow opened,
we kiss freely.


—from Heart of Outer Skin, 1959





LOOKING AT EACH OTHER WE COULD FORGET THE NUMBER


Maybe revolving over the city
the machines rebel.
The filing cabinets like flowers
open
quickly fanning out,
and corral man.
It may be that the wall of my house
suspends a bit its weight
and watches my sleeping body.
Hounded walking with the fugitives.
By the field and by the river,
at the hour that the sun takes the day laughing.
We could forget the number brothers.
Looking at each other.


—from Heart of Outer Skin, 1959





MY TONGUE


My tongue sinks
deep tremors in your body.
My tongue lives
skips of your idiom
in your throat.
My tongue flies
and cuts
beat of water
your belly.
My tongue ties
far away in your blood.
My tongue looks
and sees only one tongue.
And today winds of stone blow
and there are millions of mouths that seek
tongues to make hearts stand on end.
Tongues that inhabit the chest.
Tongues in vigil erect,
on the eyes on the brow.


—from Heart of Outer Skin, 1959





PILGRIMAGE TOWARD THE SUN


Night you joined fire in water on land transformed by the sky.

Where did your flame appear?
Cell and panel of glass captivate me.
Make in me a forest of total innocence where fury and love
       graze, beneath the still clarity of silence.
Who opened the air and separated my tranquil beatitude?
A god in the sea inspires his storm.
A god on land flaps the windows and his angel goes wandering.


—published in La Nación on March 7, 1971




ECCE HOMO


If it is already time to raise his Dominion,
make it
your width, your length, your absolute depth.
Break my heaven, fled sea, home of
fiends.
Ease my sun in motion to the air of your
arrogance           in the emptiness of your calm.
Tree of gods. Tempest of birds.
Tremor in temples of fear. An absent god
in the origin of god that
I pursue.
Same as children          similar to the savages
of death find your justice
in zeal             see the prayer of your first
angel                           your angel fallen in the
terror of dream.


—published in La Nación on January 16, 1972




MIGUEL ÁNGEL BUSTOS was a major poet of the Argentine Generation of 1960. His Visión de los hijos del mal, with a prologue by Leopoldo Marechal, won the Buenos Aires Municipal Prize for Poetry in 1968. Bustos became an early victim of the military dictatorship, which ushered in decades of censorship of his poetry. His collected poetry was republished in 2008, the first time it had appeared in print in more than thirty years. Bustos’s remains were identified in 2014 by forensic anthropologists.

LUCINA SCHELL is founding editor of readingintranslation.com, dedicated to publishing reviews of literature in translation written by translators. Her translations of Bustos appear in Ezra Translation Journal, the Bitter Oleander, and Drunken Boat and her literary reviews have been published in Ezra and Zoland Poetry.

Featured Poet: Jamison Lee

I Was a Dancer

Garage Sale

Featured Poet: Paul Cunningham

from "The House of the Tree of Sores"
 

A kitchen: where bombs and explosions are constantly cooked up

where zombified Swedish Chef fits large and small hands

(a spoiling milk in the West) continually spills

onto Miss Misshandlade & Miss Misstanke

Nothing spills on Miss Indiana because her body is “normal”

Normal is a good thing, you should look more normal,

the mockmilk whispers.

Pour batter into prepared bowl

a bowl is a shed is a shedding

is a clean shed or a shed of fakes?

a should snusk a snusk shed?

identisk, translation’s tisk tisk

translation, needle in a höstack

a whole stack, a sales rack

a hate-stack, bombar dem

bombard them, feja or fejka?

Brush a grill gate with spring tension adjuster

Add 20 #7 x 7/8” flat-head screws

Add ¾ cup of decorative bolts

Preheat oven to 375’ F

Use a slotted spoon to churn headboard

Use a slotted spoon to mix the sweet

Add 2 side frames, Add 4 adjustable shelves

Add a layer of caramelized connection sleeve

melon, knocksharps the skull

kitchen offers a mallet, a gavel, a kavel

dough-rolling a skulle, dough-rolling a should

feja skola och fejka skola?

translation, a fruit contains a secret mjölk

clayed over by peel, inte gråta över spilld mjölk?

peel-removal; glöd-core; våld-core

suga sockret, suger socker

More boomashootns, the mockmilk whispers

puppetland, with its gun-shaped hand

home of damaged dream-appliances

microwave-safe, fits in the bowl of all sinks

puppetstringchoked sinkhole

sings a green song a salad mean song

veggie stalks tangled up in an armature wire

a stringy ooze out of mockmilk mouth utters

Copyright © 2014 Paul Cunningham

Featured Poet: Roberto Harrison

plural consciousness

not this face

and its cohort, a body

and the face has many minds—

the countable and the uncountable and empty strings “”

it walks beyond the mountains

where there are others in that desert panorama

so removed from space. and the pain of split eyes

and of being more than one

and of switching to build on Origins

of the certain acausalities of a plural consciousness

an entire people of profiles

of computer parts and sounds and a throbbing Light

primordial and far before

is the unintentional truth [on the ground]

known to the lesions

perplexed by questions of the feed

and by the other lines. and for that reason

their body cannot balance itself on the enormous neuter egg

and never sleeps in flight. but the blindness

gets planted with sunfish and shoveled into ossified domes

and it becomes a horror and a random seed()

of the submerged and Unit ear

and cannot be dreamed about with its rabbits

as those minds have left the body asleep and apart

and now are separated by many Starts

attached by a single strand

invisible sinew. it becomes,

the body becomes

a husk for the colors of corn

a putrefied husk with a smile of the bus

as its afterimage

and a sorrow of the bus

as its frontal lobe. it moves with a black rat

snake and separates the other animals

so that they too shrivel

and become like the muted clouds

not of this terror. this body becomes

indistinguishable from the jungles, and the news of the frond

welcomes its poverty. it moves beyond the landscape

and desires itself to be one (and a two-toed Sloth)

of the planes for which the word becomes less

and more than light. it dissolves to portray its anti-subjects

like the animals of long ago, and it witnesses itself

become cybernetically unified. but this is only a question

without symbol. it moves to be antecedent to the imagination

but is not recognized as such, it submerges

its most horrifying trees into a lesser season and drought

of correction and comfort. it realizes

its evils must be seen and felt, and so, on that day

it becomes mineral, and moves to be a putrefied aspect of wholeness

in being skewered. and no word can place it with others

because its muteness revolves around its own Sea

and it becomes the question for answers, and the answer for questions,

but nothing more. and this body equates itself with the earth

in its seismic and sharp attributions, in its lessening waters, in each

expression another form of syzygy. it often weeps in its thoughts

without a body, and it smiles in weird ways

that betray the weather, and it says things and does things

that it no longer recognizes. this body is softened with its minds,

and its horrors were turned into fragrances and tanned leather

by the many cyber seeds of the Mound. it cannot understand

its own secrets, and it cannot see the metropolis of a wound

that it knows it is. and one day La Tulivieja

will become synchronized so as to harvest

the sun’s healing and destructive powers, so it aggravates

the soils of a home for more plants, and the jungle then resists

that its panoplies and layers dissolve the rails

of the trains of the wrong, and that they service the master

of interior regions, so confused by the chieftain

of harvest and loons on the days that wear away

the soft electrocutions of the everyday. the chieftain absorbs

the windowed necropolis where his people, and those of the she-world

witness and absorb decay. the wanderers of this interior

force the crisp attention of the less than life

to warm each possible response to the raiders of the trains

and the wind of this plural consciousness which arrives

with the marks of the page to undo the only light and the only count(*)

of this region for the lost, in this equated reverse of completion

where someone ashes the counts of another rain to absorb their light

and their darknesses, in the less than bought and more than free

which witnesses the end of number, and absorbs all the marks

of the Chooser of absence and orphanhood. in their attached body trance

someone absorbs La Tulivieja with hir Intermediate Areas

and (s)he becomes just a knot, and this is a word to absorb the interior’s climate

on that holiday of sorts where the weather rises, and where (s)he, the invisible one 
comes to me to remind me of my erasure. this song of erasure

does not count for your afterimage in the less than countable rite

of mythologies and reference. do you feel the attachment of this soft song?

where I am not I, in this weather of promise and recursions

that decays and absorbs each of our numerous

corporations in the wonder world of executions and the council fire

so gigantic and guarded by the others. they are moving

in this desertion to unwind the releasing tense of the door. to unwind

the approach of their targets         to renumber their attack

and place hold the skin service. they do not want

their only council with their only chieftain to be a part of the smoke

that each holds for the heart of the isthmus, that new service

that attaches itself to each consciousness, so divided and One and not Two and ~~~~~~~

ritual number. they wear away the programs of cascading sides

and they pick the service of the trains to amount to the ride of the dispossessed

those wretched that the chieftain had become and was and now…. but the putrefied sweetness

of the bees no longer attends to the animals as they grow so wild. on that day

with the sun at its warmest we ride to the western mountains of a digital

oblivion, one more attenuation and one more cross of those counted wings. they know

by their hair that the wolves approach from the east and that they understand winter

in its back and forth connection of truth evaluations. those bruises never stop that pattern

as the gift of life does not endure the seasonal demands on our numbering

smoke. there is no plural there. it heals itself as the body of Moons

except when it is lost in a self. that endures for something

erased but not worn in this element, a long and numinous husk of each origin’s fire

resumes and attends to it, more than measure

number name

     for Daniel Borzutzky

one moved

and then a finger appeared. a leg, a torso

one moved again

and then someone called from far away. it rang in the water

formed like the lights of offering

more people knew more languages and they flew

one sentence

and then two sentences. their faces wavered

and a whole country was mute. they offered their voices

to roll upon the earth and confront the ships.

once, they went nowhere. their approach to the Sun

was given in steps. the network of stars

would not amount to service or to the lines of amputation

as they emerged from the earth. and they saw

that someone held the innocent. but experience

would not hold to a single self. the screen

of afterimages would amend and portray the lost herds

for the reasons that silence would absolve, for the amount of people

that they serviced in the daylight. bodies were formed that spoke

secretly, in the trees. their mute literatures covered the ashes

of their dead. they said that they were not persons

and so the law did not pertain to them. they moved like the light

but no one understood the anguish

of personhood. their mute literatures would be brought up

by vicious dogs. they did not understand

the news. their fear transformed them

beyond facial recognition, beyond all security.

once, they throttled and amounted to the aims

of services. their bombs would not attach the spirit

to their monumental fires. they learned from the flesh

and they knew the warmth of the straw. they were one in the time

of offering. their books would attend to the cracks

in the ground. their songs would seek others more

than they were sought. they did not have feelings

because they could not trust. once, there were others.

their laughter moved the animals and the animals

sang to them in homage, secretly. they were always together

with the animals. they once again would free themselves

from the world. they knew more songs and they revealed the ashes

that grew to their hunger. they arrived to the other worlds

as this one stopped. they moved with the wishes

of their infancy. they were once like the Turing machines

of deception. they danced the fear away and they knew that someone

would one day be fearless among them and change them all for that.

once, they reasoned that their minds were like blankets, a warming

of the flesh, and their minds radiated heliocentrically beyond the moon,

and they stood at the surface of the Sea, and they moved with the Oceans

to endure the earth of cogitations and the earth of motionlessness.

they received the others and they announced to themselves that they would learn

to speak as the light speaks. they moved to be there like one was

and they counted among the numbers




© Copyright 2014 Roberto Harrison

Featured Poet: Sarah Carson

The Twenty-Four Hour Grocery Store, Part I 

Ron Bowman got fired from the twenty-four hour grocery store for no-call-no-shows after his girlfriend had him arrested for trying to kill her with his Tupac chain. In a meeting with both produce managers, he’d been accused of carving swastikas into the card table in the smoking break room, though the smokers defended him vehemently, though Joe Fischer took full credit for it the night he quit, running off through the dimly lit parking lot with two cans of soup and a bottle of champagne. Later Ron and Joe smoked cigarillos with Matt from bottles beneath the black lights in their living room, Matt’s fingers still ripe with Diet Coke and Sprite and 42 varieties of beer. When Matt turned up dead in his grandmother’s doorway, Ron and Joe were miles away, passed out with their heads on each other’s shoulders, having signed a secret pact between them to never let a bitch get them down. 





The Twenty-Four Hour Grocery Store, Part II 

Maura was the manager on duty the night Bill got caught drinking and driving in the Coke van. We were sitting in her office, drawing pictures with the highlighters she kept in her top desk drawer while the Pepsi guys sat on the empty pallets in the drop trailer watching porn on their cell phones. Around eleven o'clock Bill came storming up action alley, took a 2 liter of Vault and threw it so hard against the floor that it bounced over the cereal racks and into the next aisle. The boys went with him to the parking lot where they all lit up cigarettes and spent a long time not making eye contact. Maura called for a floor machine from behind the locked door, seated beside me scratching at the incisions she'd made on her forearms during lunch. 





The Twenty-Four Hour Grocery Store, Part III 

His wife found out the week before Christmas, and so he dragged both of his daughters through the twenty-four hour grocery store in search of the cashier who was causing all of his problems, each little girl with a tiny hand wrapped around one of his index fingers, the bells their mother had tied to their snow boots a flurry of quiet jingling as they hurried down the soda aisle like late entrants in a three-legged race. In the front yard that night the cops told the grown-ups to scatter, but the cashier was sure she was the only one who’d listened. For months she'd find herself pulling up next to the payphone outside the Speedy Q off the highway, dialing their number and listening intently to the chatter in the background before someone hung up. 





If We Toast to the New World, 
We should toast to all its possibilities, 

to Srmad in the shop on the corner, 
his window full of knock-off Nikes 
and single cigarettes. 

This morning when we went to get the paper, 
two men were climbing out my neighbor’s window 
with her television in their arms. 

You can’t blame the factory for that, 

 like you can’t blame the Generals 
for giving up in the playoffs 
when the stands were empty 
and their paychecks had been bouncing for months. 




© Copyright 2014 Sarah Carson

Featured Poet: Angela Narciso Torres

56 SANTO TOMAS STREET


Your patent shoes sink
in loam flecked with feathers,
seedcases split and empty. Already,
the summer frock you wear is short
for your four years. Knees frown
beneath the shirred skirt.

The black purse you clutch
was your sister’s once. Your grasp
is tentative—you know some things
will never be wholly yours.

Your father lowers the lens,
asks you to move from the shade.
From the corner of your eye,
your grandmother, a grey-white
blur, shakes the bag of seed. You fix

your eyes beyond the camera.
The cage, a feathered
crescendo, ochre-green.
Your lit face
holds everything
as the shutter clicks.





DARKROOM


Under the red lamp
I watch him douse
each small white square.

Side by side we search
the shallows, seafarers
peering through glass

for sliver of coast, rough ridge.
One by one he brings us
back—daughter, brother,

mother, son. Again and again
within light-tight walls
he births us.





LOST OBJECTS


My mother-of-pearl pendant—
half teardrop slung on a leather cord,
bought from a hawker of veils
and batik. A brown book of poems,

signed by the Indonesian poet
who sat next to me at dinner.
Four words remain in memory:
“To love, to wander…” I’m missing

a watercolor of vegetable vendors
given by my mother on the occasion
of my first apartment. The stillness
of those nights, the last box emptied,
searching the blank ceiling, imagining

the shades of green, the shapes
of the women—squatting, stooped, large
with child, bent over baskets piled with
a season’s bounty. I’d give anything

to find my tape of Glenn Gould playing
Bach’s Goldberg Variations, the one my father
copied for me on a gray cassette before the age
of compact discs. Hearing the first strains

at Mandrake Books on Story Street,
Mr. Rosen, my ninety-year old boss,
paused at the window, lost
in shining sound, smooth as water
over stone. Idly he smiled,

arthritic knuckles tapping time
on a dog-eared Books-In-Print,
eyes fixed on some lost heaven.





ELEGY WITH ATLAS MOTH AND YELLOW BELLS


We may never see them again
     the giant-winged Lepidoptera
alighting on fire trees that shaded us
     at recess, our bench
a mass of knuckled roots.

About the size of a fruit bat,
     they spread their wings like burnt
maps across a span of leaves
     proving that beauty appears
to the small and lonely alike.

And it’s unlikely that anyone will discover—
     as I did, leaning into a hollow bush
on the playground near the septic tank,
     the foliated room where sun poured
through yellow trumpet blooms

we could spy from our classroom.
     Daily we wrote in cursive to the swish
of Sister Angelica’s skirts as she dusted
     a cracked row of encyclopedias,
June rain rinsing the window glass.





OCTOBER


It’s raining when you pass the glistening
warehouses on the right, the overgrown field
down the slope. Above, a redwing veers
off its path, seeks cover under a branch.
And suddenly your eyes smart
with tears. Not because your son
just moved a thousand miles away—no,
not for your mother who cannot recall
her name. And not for any of those lost
loves the wind stirs up like burnt leaves.
But because, for a moment, everything
comes clear—a crimson flash igniting
a bird’s arc over the rainslick road.





WHAT ISN’T THERE


Even without leaves
the Bradford pear keeps
its bell silhouette.

Above, a commonplace moon,
somewhere between half
and full, waxing edge

rubbed like the worn
ridges of a lucky quarter.
A sentence partly

erased—a brightness
we might have been.

Angela Narciso Torres’s first book of poetry, Blood Orange, won the Willow Books Literature Award for Poetry and will be published in the fall of 2013. A graduate of Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers, she has received fellowships from Illinois Arts Council, Ragdale Foundation, and Midwest Writing Center. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Manila, she lives in Chicago and edits the poetry journal RHINO. For more, visit http://www.angelanarcisotorres.com/.

© 2013 Angela Narcisco Torres

Featured Poet: Rachel Burns

a singular warning
 

I.
 
now with childish shivering
all that i know. becoming
a vessel to pass. my
handwriting's gone to
shit, like You prophesized.
& im fantastically tired
from current depletions. being
this happy in counterpart
brings an overcoming
sadness i cannot place of
produce into sustainable energy
what do you do?
with your morning?
 


II.
 
on having a baby
         your house will seem
         like a cemetery after.
it already is one
with mindless response, depth
marvels at the spectrum, lay
in finite arms for eternity,
comfortable & deaf
slowly decomposing
the capacity of mythology.
 


III.
 
last night i dreamt of shopping
carts & drowing surrounded by
scented candles, stripped candy
& decency.
i woke up at 11:49 a.m.
weighed 109 pounds
it was very cold outside
& october.
 


IV.

factual events
are bleak while being
individually
un-ordinary, various
levels of spectacular
pathetic.
-i have started biting my
-nails. this is
-common, but a unique
-attempt at self-nurture

         the earth scratches
         it's ear & falls
         asleep before
         2 a.m.
         regularly.
 


V.

when we fucked
last night,
my vision turned
into oceanic movements.
 


VI.

my previous fever sought
arithmetic in historic housing
it has a balcony, which it is
currently sitting on, drinking
coffee & smoking. the woman below is
on the phone, "the topic is
addiction, that's right up my
alley"
the weather is mist
rain & smooth light in
direct irony with
reds & yellows
if i wasn't so indecisive
i wouldn't be so passionate
 


VII.

i've got another fever
with similar
reds & oranges
tinted with i
want to travel in
silence. periodically
checking my reflexes & heart rate
the ash tray is full
& it's very silent
now, mostly
brown & damp
i ask for a diagnosis to
carry before
apologizing repeatedly.
apologize.
apologize.
apologize.
 


VIII.

my Fever has become a
contagion. spilling

over dishes & single
spoons. where have the insects
gone? where has the temperature &
conclusiveness & remedy, scholars
cleanliness, methylphenidate,
thirst text glass, pine trees, recklessness
morgue, anxiety, wonder, sex,
cheese, queen sheets, subtleness, curiosity,
thread & cardiovascular endurance & trinkets gone?




Crustpunk
 

i fell obsessed with
the movement of a name
forgetting the nightly
apparitions demand for
study a grain in my side the
cyphers jump to me & me
alone, i am speaking as the
real Maria programmed to riot
in orange wings, orange chests, red
marbles, lineless rituals, M-dance the
dancers spiral down. i feel alone
at this hour. the post office is
closed & you lost your dog, it
was 7 a.m. once, then i was here
unable to break the glass as
Maria in fear of
developmental obsession.
 
hello this is my banana
phone yellow paint fetish.
my banana phone is the cypher
regrettably so, it can be
whatever it wants to be.
i broke my knee in boston
with multiple eyes for introversion
siphon my marble pillars left behind
all the court sleeps as sleeping lovers
drawn on bodies who catch me atop
a gravel pile dissipating hieroglyphs for attention.




latent middle child
 

my brother flicks my cigarette filter
retrieves it, flicks it again, asks to be
on the front page of the paper,
is the secondary funeral location
pager friendly? will my pager get a sig?
will there be refreshments.
 
alligators go into a state
of hypnosis when you flip them
over like sharks. i'm having
nightmares about a light above
my jaw, meadows with clear fire.
 
dolphins rape fourteen people a
year, there is a support group
in florida. my brother tries to
hit a goose with a chunk of concrete
hey flipper, let me get a piece of that
when we discuss immortality it
becomes unclear which
brother i am dreaming for.




The First Fall Evening as Citizens
 

i'm sorry i take your pulse
in the morning, conversation is short
& expensive.




keep finding new animals
 

this craft held a land
mine possessed
mathematically pleasing
features as the only
onlooker sucking on
checker pieces
  i'm talking in cyphers again
  who gave me this pen, this fetish?
  this is not a cypher for
     clay women's walls
     sleepy hellos to a tiny chemist dog,
       you are well,
       chaquita.
       delight with bleached feathers.
why are you eating the game pieces to spite the patrons

                             oh rachel, your head is
                             falling into the ice again.
                             are you living as an ox?
                             & disposing of pregnancies?
this is not a cypher for all strange birds
throug saturn fog with no fear of
rock slides or heat. you held me
in your sleep last night & your breath
did not change. i hoped you were
asleep, i want to keep saturn for
myself. i held this secrecy
before departing in soft sweaters,
inquiries of knowledge, capturing
evidence with drug store cameras
social media updates. i am done
with urban cyphers, billboards. i am nothing
like the Cities in immortality
 
i was going to rob a
homeless woman for
liberal guilt taking instead
her scrolling through her
apple iphone five
she became a beggar
once more, my yellow paint
fetish did not survive the cold.
i washed my face in boston.
an immortal beggar with aesthetics but
it's not ohio or new jersey or florida, i'll

refrain from speaking a cypher
i love you without deflective body
language & these practices
ruined our status, made of necrophilia
impulses. our previous
cyphers share a twin bed in boston
with saturn on the sheets
& the sexual zeal aches, with
shoulders & the poetry like
a child maturing sexually in forced manner.




© 2013 Rachel Burns

Featured Poet: Heather Momyer

How to Swim

When the girls were young, they told me about those moments they said they would never forget. They had so many: the trials of lost love and vows for better times, tender-hearted sentiments of understanding and forgiveness, days that changed their lives forever and ever, Amen. Their teary cheeks and reddening eyes faced the distance between sadness and joy, and I wondered if I should say, “No, you will forget it all with a swiftness that is shocking.”

Who were the lovers of not too many years ago? There were dimples, a pair of glasses, long, slender fingers, and I wonder what we talked about. Because surely we talked. Surely we had something to say to each other.

The memories that slip-slide into vision in the early hours of morning are the ones I expected to drift away—pudgy round legs and white shoes on hardwood floors, laces wrapped with shining, tinkling bells, the heavy footfall of a baby learning to walk, the rattle of those bells the primary point of attention, or, the feel of warm pink pajamas against arms, legs, and feet, sitting in a car, tucked between bodies of parents or a younger sister, I can’t say exactly only that there was warmth pressed against, nuzzling in the front seat, an ice cream cone in hand, vanilla, did it drip down chin and sleeves, or, the first trip to a beach and holding hands with sister and parent, the waves splashing up to hair and eyes, to sister’s hair and eyes, tasting salt water and giggling, and I was four years old. All seconds in time and the feel of something against skin, or the sounds of a wave and the bells that rang each time I tried to get away. What and who was it that I expected to stay?

“I will never forget that day,” the girls repeated over and over again. “They are the people I will always remember,” they told me.

Did I love my parents in the times I remember nothing at all?

I suspect I thought nothing at all until just a few months ago when I know I started thinking of oceans and whales.

Remind me of being touched and made of hands. When did I become a real person? Because I do not know if I ever have. Yet if we must, I’d like to pull my own strings now.

“What does this mean?” I may have asked. “Does this mean anything, anything at all, to you?”

***

I remember standing on the planks of a whaleship, and we harpooned them all.

The little deaths came from your hands you said. Always—again and again.

And suddenly I understood the flurry of the whale, and it was not as you said, not at all. They were dying with blood and vomit, and I could never touch you again. Together, we tore off our hands. We wrapped them in rope, made nooses around our wrists, launched our weapons into the bellies of the whales. Palm to palm, hands severed and missiled over hearts larger than our own, fingers tied to touch wet black bodies after we let them go and sent feeling into flight. The death that came from our hands was not the ecstatic fling into mystery.

We gave up our hands so now there is nothing to hold. There is nothing. There is no hold. There is nothing and no whole.

***

The sperm whale has always been a mythical beast. It is so enormous that no one takes one on as a pet, no circus or carnival show will hire for its presence. It lives far from land in waters far from me, and I will most likely live my entire life without ever coming near a single such animal. The sperm whale is fantasy. It is imagination, dream, and the collective memory. It is kraken, or unicorn, dragon, phoenix, griffin, the three-headed dog, Cerberus. If it chooses, it could eat me alive, ingest in a magical gesture of appetite, then purge my bones and send me back from whence I came. To Nineveh you go.

Finally, I remember something of lyric and verse. On my back, you drew invisible vines with your finger. They grew taller, and you traced leaves with nails and told me stories I had never heard before. I could almost say that from behind me, I heard you speak as if your voice had come from behind clouds and rain and walls of thunder, but perhaps I wasn’t listening carefully enough.  Instead, I simply thought that none of us could drown.

I never said what needed to be said. I should have listened to Jonah. But I didn’t because some bitch took my tongue. But I didn’t because I gave it up for some idea of love and feet that only knew how to walk on land. To drown would be inevitable.

I never knew what the Princess said.

***

The ocean is both father and mother—Poseidon and the Venus half-shell. In the bathtub, I would wind the toy whale and let it go to swim around me. It was blue, I think. The turning crank was white, I think. It is an image I can almost grasp. Of course, the mechanical toy may have simply sunk instead, clanked its head on porcelain, rocked in an epileptic fit until the crank stopped turning and its insides were quiet.

How much water must I wade through? When will I come clean? My wet skin wrinkles, and I am growing old. I listen for parents but cannot hear—only the winding clatter of plastic chitter-chatters over the last thirty-some years.

***

On the ship’s deck, our vein blood flooded into whale blood like tributaries flowing southward into the River Styx, and if the ocean god himself were to take a sip, he too would lose his voice—nine years speechless, nothing to say, no tongue for the ears; nine years no one listens, no ears for the tongue, muted with all six canine eyes watching in the dark. “Come in, come in,” the dog mouths softly, and the crew hacks and peels, pulls at what lies beneath the surface of the skin.

As I had no hands, I was little help in the filleting of the massive lung-fish, but I hardly forgot the spear that opened those lungs for the tides of waves. You went below deck only to emerge later with two iron hooks fastened to your wrists, and I could not decide if you had just become more or less dangerous. I wanted your fingers wrapped around mine, but I suppose even then I would have let you pierce metal into skin, hoping there were barbs, hoping one of us could hold on again.

What is it that marks our evolution from the mud? Speech? Art? Or is it simply the thumb? Mine, I folded it into fin and counted the notes in underwater vibrations. I thought I would jump overboard, just to dig toes into silt and sand. I thought I heard sisters calling and murmuring, humming along to some half-formed song playing in my head.

***

In Australia and New Zealand, the calling of the whales is the calling of the ancestors, but I’m not from that part of the world. My ancestors were not whales. My ancestors were also not Quakers, so they probably weren’t whalers either.  I’m told that they were from many different parts of Europe, but there is little to be said for them. I do not know their lives, but I hear there is such a thing as muscle memory and I wonder if my arms and legs remember something that I cannot put into words. My mother said I learned to walk when I was nine months old.  I almost remember learning how to swim.

***

When the ship caught fire and shone with oil blaze, the only thing to do was to wrap rope to stake and burn like another Joan of Arc. There is nothing to admit.

The Princess ran to throw girdle and calm the fishy dragons that circled the boat, but you were there with hooks and lances to slay them all. I saw you spear the dead whales, again and again. Among embers, the bits of finger and bone that still clung to ropes and bodies dropped to the water and the soot was in the air. I could already hear the bells begin to ring, and the three masts lit up with twisted and knotted sails burning like satin sheets, damp with the sweat of some holy lover and fiery ghost.

Martyrdom is another romance genre, but when the dove flew over our heads, I shot a flaming arrow through its breast to see if it could begin brand new. But there was no time because there is something monstrous in your system of divinity, as you always knew, and the eagle talons cut through the smaller bird and carried it away. And maybe that eagle came back for you—I can never be sure. You were gone, and I burnt with legs around the center mast, and ash floated on water and crested the waves. When the ship went down, I clung tightly to the wooden pole until the sea slowly put out the fire.

***

Of course, little of my life is remembered with any bit of accuracy. I can’t prove anything.

According to parents, I was born on May 24, 1975. I weighed six pounds, twelve ounces. I was twenty-one inches long. My mother said my birth was easier than one sister’s, almost as easy as the other’s. Labor lasted two to three hours. Perhaps my greatest achievement and most adventurous moment, and I remember none of it.

Yet, what I do know is that when I was born my whole body, including feet, legs, and arms, was red and wet and glistening, as if I had just swum down the longest river coming from the deepest ocean, as if I had always had lungs for the water, as if I could never drown because I had always known how to swim and I had just simply forgotten during this one dry moment on land.