Featured Poet: Andrew Lundwall

a mess dancing on invisible hooks. blowing & tearing a place. before talk. sublime nothings. destination incredible fast. frame minutes. stoned. mystery nails climb amazed with eat. horse-loads. of spear-point butterflies egrizazzigate. a fountain of fool. will know like the surface of a fall. record stuff. 50,000 whats rotgut. stir with recognize. stir with thirst worm wakings. 50,000 year old rotgut. keeps a vine-eyed ground below a-guessing. where it is. like a-guessing is/was wooden & precious. afflicted zeros caressed serpents. caressed serpents devour. caressed serpents devour incredible kittens.





medicinal ache. the body scans zoom in. remember. was artificial like shape spree. benzodiazepine surprise. senses tinted with chakra fever. a clinical lisped pseudonym habitats. insomnia scenes. glare slurping fugitive amusements. ceremonies of drug everything in a desensitized incline. bees crawl like halos is what is. images have hidden radio rooms. shock the fuschias out of. complex like unbuttoned torchlight. like untangling ninteteenth-century occult fog. the flow of a brick horse chronic with hunch. inkstains engaged in smouldering cursive. multi-limbed withdrawal. the letters home. the feeling of. & the letters home. dear _______. a blue voluptuousness wrecked precious eyeballs. blundered newer new. traumatic in tens. boxes of glanced blind back at the hemispheres. e.g. invisible dining in inconclusive minds are like spiral to destiny. a careless locality.





can of what follows. include numb weather of 1,929 years. other impotent. invalid fuchsia nerves. thoroughly. the trance of what you like. special dice. stations drop splendidly like a treatment. a trick tall dream sensation. must have like problems. a waterway of eyes to guard. all that white-haired ceremonies of grotesque secrets the real deepens. bundle of concerning the grunt of founding muzzles is moon. the charm of assumption's rhythm & its pilgrimage to no place. means the sedative kissed history. anywhere hearts dipped in fragments of slimy wallpaper. hypnotic donkeys writhe awake hastily in brooding forecast flexing mars. a glow heavy lane doses that time there were many anchored in incredible menstruations. a heaving crown. incongruities including hissing. but then. it is unusual arithmetic. notes of uninterrupted foreskin grows back. teeth painted in elevators of rotten skills. croquet as afflictions. one laughing & the other definite. degrees of static into a house had its fireside. augment the limestone bald & two images volley damn fluently. urging such see becoming swarming.

Andrew Lundwall is the editor of Scantily Clad Press (http://scantilycladpress.blogspot.com) Recent poems have appeared in La Petite Zine, RealPoetik, Robot Melon, Tight, & Action, Yes. He has released three chapbooks, klang, honorable mention, & funtime, a collaboration with Adam Fieled.

© Copyright 2009 Andrew Lundwall

Featured Poet: Naomi Buck Palagi

musk

by the time even

I set my love afire

there is the stink

and no hold

of male

coffee grounds

in fresh coffee

sweat

and old wood smoke is man

we all fall in love

and again

says guinevere

but in May we smell the stink

the overdone tree blossoms the fecund

pond

hotdogs

on a grill

love is smell and smell is memory and memory is stink and funk

what did the baby goat say to her mother?

maaaa

she said

maaaa

and how did the tree fall down the hill?

no roots

they say

no roots

the wool of the lamb was rotting and I wrestled

with it while my father rubbed the iodine

the mud was made of shit and pee and the tingle

of fresh rain a moat

of earthen muck

before I set my love afire

there were blazes

in the valley

and even as my love flagrated dewdrops

sizzled wind

what else

would make such smell?

Path as is

This is not the river of my night

I am not standing here singing

beneath the river-trees

My father swam with the current and stopped

My mother washed away, she said

This is not the river of my night and

River rats do not make their homes here and

lovers do not kiss on these banks

From my shoulders flows a long white dress and yet

underneath their beauty-bare there is stubble

in my pits and my simple swing

keeps slipping to the left

calabash

calabash still the night in black

memoralia pretending to the evening light

and mimosas fall from cliff to sea

with no splash

all is night

or early dawn

mud madonna watching

from her tower

the grain mill smooth and worn

early dawn the softness of nightgown

and stone

azaleas arresting

follow the water and not trickle, tickle

our words with morning coffee-foam and a light brush

of long hair

nothing, nothing but mudded flesh

sunwarmed in shower in view of the sea oh see

as far as it is

mimosa stills and nothing, nothing

not taken in and consumed, gusto

early tea and binoculars to moonlight

touch

that easy foam and feel

riptides

through torso

gametes and monacles

touch the old wall

madonna

over all

Naomi Buck Palagi has made her way to Northwest Indiana via many stops, including a "homesteader" childhood in rural Kentucky, complete with goats and lots of bare feet, some years in the Mississippi Delta as, among other things, a furniture maker and ballet teacher, and several years in Chicago doing the small theater rounds as an actor and director. She enjoys shaping tangible things—wood, fabric, sound, words. She has work published or upcoming in the journals Otoliths, Big Toe Review, Moria, P.F.S. Post, and Blue Fifth Review, among others.

© Copyright 2009 Naomi Buck Palagi

Featured Poet: Amish Trivedi

Episode Three In Which Mr. Wyndham's
Cat Kills The Milkman



I.

I think I
used to be an
"I love you" type
of drunk

who would
end up crying in
front of a large
Elvis poster.  Now,

I just fall asleep
with visions of
daffodils laughing

in my face.



II.

"Perhaps the best
thing," she said, "is
to not

think about it."  So
I smashed my face
with
an iron.



III.

In slow music,
one can hear the
gasps of the composer,

who rests his eyes
just long enough to
ignore the lingering

siren.



V.

When peas mix with
other colors, I want
to run around and

hug Republicans

before beating them with
the (still hot) microwavable

tray.



VI.

I wish I could have
myself over for lunch
once.  And that way,

I could tell myself to
dress like I meant to

when I watched TV after
school and dreamt of stardom

over potato chips.



VIII.

If everything around
can be burned like
gas or Hitler, what's

the point in making sure
our beds smell fresh?  Wouldn't
it be

easier just to light a cigarette
and spit when you talk down?



X.

Someone made a
comment about my
race.  I nodded, raised

my testicles and said, "I
hope I finish in the top
ten, though my knees

won't bare me."



XI.

Saltines come in boxes of
120
and slices of cheese come in
packs 24.  My mind's a skipping

record and I'm ready to toss out
the player.  And they expect me to
keep knitting gray socks for
warm winters.



XIII.

What color is group sex?  Because
oral is blue and anal
is red (that makes no
sense!)

so what color is group
sex?



XIV.

God,
what is it about gas
that makes baby's smile,
or a grown man chortle
all day?



XVI.

Once, while I was
intoxicated,

you came into the room
and I shoved my middle
finger into the air
over and over
again.

This, I realize, makes me
the happiest.



XVII.

In seeing him, and in
him pretending to be
Goebels,

there is an awkward,
silent laugh:

He knows he wouldn't
have survived

a concentration camp

(that was my laugh).



XVIII.

Can't more things
be multi-use paper?

Can't she laugh at jokes and
solve riddles just as well as

she becomes an object to
be defiled?



XXI.

With you being Pope
and all,
I wonder this:

Is there a
Vatican proctologist?

Looking up your ass is like
looking up God's ass.



XXII.

She was a dragon, and
I was a dragon.

Pretty soon, we
were burned
out on each
other.



XXIII.

Mr. Pope:

I think a "prison
pussy" would suit

you, since you can't
have a real one.  Since

God must have a beard,
I'm sure he won't mind if

you have a representation.



XXIV.

I got too stoned and
watched the snow

instead of the ice on
the road (FUCK) and now

I'm a cross-shaped figure
in a drift

somewhere.



XXV.

How can you DENY
the Holocaust?  The

only
thing that should be

'denied' is what.  You're.
Smoking (but

are you?)



XXVI.

I don't under-
stand your
meth

amphetamine,

much less your
text-mess

aging.





Amish Trivedi has had poems in La Petite Zine, The Backwards City Review,
Cannibal, RealPoetik, and the e-chaps The Breakers (Absent Magazine), The 
Ink Sessions (Scantily Clad) and Selections from Episode III (Beard of Bees).
An installation piece is forthcoming from Cannibal as well. The Trivedi Chronicles
(www.amishtrivedi.com) are moving to Providence, RI.



© Copyright 2009 Amish Trivedi

Featured Poet: Nicolás Mansito III

A Note on the Poems

The following poems and their respective titles
were composed from a collection of the third and
seventh words – in some cases, reproducible symbols
and / or typographical characters – on each page
(excluding front / back covers) of each book of
poetry whose title, author, and publication information
I have listed above each poem. All the words gathered
from each book were used for each respective poem – no
words were discarded, nor was any formula used to
ascertain the order of the words; their formats regarding
capitalization, italics, underlining, and bolding were
kept as is – therefore there is no punctuation, only
spacing, stanza and line breaks. The only change I made to
any word was change its font to “Times New Roman,” purely
for the sake of consistency. These poems are from a larger,
completed manuscript consisting of 37 poems and entitled,
3rd & 7th.

-N.M.





~ Gregory Corso’s Gasoline
(1958), City Lights Books




Where’s MY 25 GASOLINE Girl




Mrs. Warm     a curved bazooka breast
painting 13 Poem WALLS
I Do a pure medieval GANGSTER with Your Aperture
nails to angels     phallic And crouched
the Living Aprilcity a FLEETING by The window

sometimes I own MEMPHIS     ROTTERDAM

COIT the LADY

But No Mercy On this      Are DOWNFALLEN Street


THE YAK came     laid THE peas
1940 bombed 1958
the Florentine Morgue
the many FURNISHED HAPPENINGS
a flat ball
your Four Decade Introduction

is that It
will there crouched WARMTH Last
Do 39 lyrics have them

this I is my I
is me





~ Elizabeth Robinson’s Under That Silky Roof
(2006), Burning Deck Press



I proscribe the digests




in Cole
the egg idea

the woman is chest
gown

Elizabeth
box-shaped

bending action
maternal bluff

the day is yellow
all mother

in infancy I leave
stamped of fastenings

the knob stretches forward
a pool halves to mum symmetry

author of girth     I
harm the typeset

breath     bread     hands
things of benign reference

shaped ones blend
single you in

like Herndon
foot to hair approaching

a cipher not pricked
necessitates that commentary

You     perfection within half omission
focus that burning

that interrupting deck
object of warmth

We     always as open recollection a hand cannot read
it revises the sample with his will

but under the slat
on off     is was

why thank much making
see to side with





~ A. E. Stallings’ Archaic Smile
(1999), University of Evansville Press



to A.Stallings



from The snaggle-toothed Underworld They dragged two Stallings Poems
for the not Two Dream Struck Demons and Insomniacs Who Mourn
the young child a sleep in the bed  of this Singer of The Vulture Island Minoan
How His Mother forgot her words on Her large Losers Bourn

It’s a Charge than or is reproach All parents Fear
and was poet’s Kill Prey Nearby The is Trees
but The Mrs. Cardinal Can’t Hear
The things of home and poetry and Greece

How is Sister a Ashley     an is the artist of Jocelyn
Saying nothing a of the News Hear     the White
Crow woke up on the is train and Became Tamar

the Many may People of 1999 lose the Thanks occasion
as a partner is just Moved on the night
was a were an a are






~ Russell Edson’s The Rooster’s Wife
(2005), BOA Editions



Now is A was Simplification and was Abstraction



The One AUTHOR     as acknowledgment     gives the sea autopsies of nine Waters
As There     hollowed gas Heads lay the One excellent Do Egg
the Young Rooster’s skeleton in layed in
an There     dressed in a had Diaper     the Garden keeping Citizen is a crushed Story
to Consider Jack Edson     is young and scientific  in every possible thought
Had his Wife     Lully Li-Young Edson
Who was An Afternoon of knitting A Midsummer’s They Fairytale 
The Two As A Vignette of A beating and falling Us Organ
He was of a super Knee did to A Wife and Woman was Wall
I can’t Complete the story     was A woman and Man fallen Story
All who is arguably from A Story     A who LTD. SERIES in A Book  found and danced About
Who Is playing with the 2005 Pig Tail
An old woman looked like An old cane
Sell The Horse Rug He said     man manager to Wife and woman
No








Nicolás Mansito III works across multiple genres – essay, poetry,
short-fiction, creative nonfiction, interview, and translation –
and between two languages, English and Spanish. His work has
appeared in places such as Jacket, Nebula, Rio Grande Review, 21 
Stars Review, Words Without Borders, Rhino, Sojourn, Babel Fruit, 
The Arabesques Review, MiPOesias, and Center.



Copyright © 2009 Nicolás Mansito III

Featured Poet: Simone Muench

the ferment

(starring jesse m)

Fever-lit and gin-livid, she says, wring the nightshade from my eyes. Let me be an explosion. Thorned and hooved, slipping in swampwater in a brackish March gone mad, in a shuttered house against a backdrop of fox bones and lace chemises spread across the lawn. Bullet something for biting as midnight visits with waterlogged lungs and bird carcasses. The swamp tests the distance when entire dialects go missing. I am floats by, dangling in a line of light bulbs while wisteria shapes the atmosphere; stanzas etched into lavender soap and peaches she’d wrap in gauze. A seed to let the body speak. One mason jar, one wineglass, a murder and a verb. The beat of unsettle in her song.

the elliptic mirror

(starring lina v)

At the far side of barely, there is no reaching her mouth, her parabolic ear. She is an undertow of linen with a lakeside cadence. When the doctor diagnosed blindness, she heard rain, and from thenceforth the world was wet. The sky plump with milk and lunation. Moving between gardenia beam and umbra, her face upturns. Radiates silver convexity. Her eyes ever apogee, not apology.

the matryoshka

(starring hadara b)

Sunlight buzzes your windows into being as you crack a kaleidoscope in half, searching for a photograph of your mother before disease splits her face into reflection and recollection. When you slide to the floor, your dress spreads volcanic; an orange silk corona framing the hands’ flawless architecture, the fire-station in your stomach. An invisible fretwork of sutures keeps you intact though you are known to leak milkglass and bandages inscribed with epigraphs.

Above, the sun falls feather-slow into the sea; familial passage from flame to salt water. Your eyes limned in a black forest; nerve cells spinning their way into the emptiness that holds half your body, while your mother calls daughter with a seagrass sad languor, settling into the somatic bed you’ve carved out for her; a nesting doll, her face behind your face, safeguarded. Humming you into your own existence.

These poems are from Simone Muench's forthcoming book Orange Crush (February 2010, Sarabande Books).

Copyright © 2009 Simone Muench