Featured Poet: Julia Drauden

Girl from prison city

locks her
doors don't go
Eastside
after dark
deadbolts
click in slide
out asks
Daddy for
mace honey
that's illegal
keychain
pepperspray
even West
turns rocks
over like words
hide-a-key
forget you
saw one eye
over her
shudder wants
a gun but
it's so unfem
Rink's sells
pink pistols
now license
alarm set
locks her
doors even in
drive East
side mural
chipped smirks
at television
renting out
old prison
mocked $40
Halloween

admission
distrusts eyes
both sides
even blue
dawn looks
barbed

X0XO, Helen Adam

I l0ve my l ve with a capital X

at the top of an hour: beginning

equals ending and alphabetic

scrambling

too many letters, not enough words

hailstones from a keystroke storm

unzip these steady

lips

L0ve is full of h les:

the difference between

O and 0 just a matter of width

the letter starved or squeezed

an Opening becomes a hole

a bracelet a c0llar

a m uth to feed

© Copryright 2010 Julia Drauden

Featured Poet: Nick Demske

THE BRIDGE


Now this product here should have been recalled p
Ages ago. Nothing a little duct
Tape won’t fix, right? But lo! Besight thy barometer lect
Ures, these intimate sui-soliloquies.

No animals were harmed during this poem’s composition.
However, outrageous scores of humanoid abortions at its unveiling.
This shouldn’t have happened, this. Self-fulfilling
Prophecy in the sense of chronic masturbation.

We give away the punch line in our first
Mortal utteri. What did you expect
Orate? And now, forecasted or not, the bats
Storm the belfry, the thunderheads clap, the dingle-flavored berries, uncle-climact

Ick, narcotica prissy self-gratified non-prophet:
AWE SHIT!




IN THE STACK OF EMPLOYEE SELF-EVALUATIONS


How like you these mine pre-rejection note gathereds
Unblotto auto bi ogreaphy hazards?
How like you mine glamour shots? Loosely tied robe
Peaking leprose decreprose in patrol car strobe

Twilight (cuff me officer, make Me make
no sudden movements). How like you—this discontinued Merchandise!
Slight resemblance in the sinews,
The faulty parts that will one day cease to shake.

I have been squeezing this rock for two
Decades plus, but no water. Just pus
And this gangster-rapper-thank-you-curtsey.
I had been squeezing this rock for you
Stranger, God, etc. My work has bound me thus:
Collected, selected, forgotten. And thirsty.




AS A DOG RETURNETH TO HIS VOMIT


On my mother’s grave. On all things holy.
On my first born child’s virginity. On the rebound, Nick Demske—
You smell like Lazarus returning in the form of
A cyclical argument. You smell like protesters burning Mein Kampf.

I promised myself I wouldn’t cry. I stuck a needle
In my eye and all I got was this lousy needle.
In my eye. Please continue to hold and your prayer will
Be answered in the order twas received. Well

Look who’s crawling back to the question for forgiveness,
Take a look at relentless repentance. Just one won’t hurt. I promised
Myself I’d stop writing poems. I broke that promise.
I line broke that promise. I enjambed that promise

So far up the Muse’s tuchis he still shits shards of meter. I drink from this vomit,
I’ll barf in this vomit. I poured every last drop down the sink. I promise.





HALF-FULL BEDPAN
for Valerie Laken

Generosity makes me uncom
Fortable. Their disfigurements make them collectable. I am in love with you or some
One not unlike you. Everyone and their mom
Must go. Go demagnetize your moral com

Pass, go prepay after dark, sanguine. If everybody were handicapped,
We’d treat everyone like handicapped
People. If I paid taxes,
I could write this off on my taxes.

The defendant pleads guiltier than you or I could imagine, your honor. There’s snow
In my mailbox. But it, too, will melt. Nick
Demske, you have kissed two girls in your life and one
Has since become a lesbian. The other died on impact.

Ah Life! You hander of lemons. Never foreseeing their juice
Would quench your papiris lacerations thus.





PLAY DEAD
Virginia Tech, April ‘07

Please take a moment to silence all cell
Phones for this moment of silence. Please tighten all
Shock collars, pick up all feces. Life is man’s best friend, demur
Ely waiting to be put to sleep. Behold, the perfect credit score. Behold, the super

Model citizen. I had a breakthrough in therapy today, which cost
A little extra, like all things convenient. Life is the slowest
Death. Death is the slowest

Dance of the super senior prom. Hold me close.
Woof. Nick Demske, you exclusive interview with the ghost of Kerberos,
You are stomping out a self-ignited bag of shit
You are explicitly gasted with

Flabber. Your house training’s abhorrent. Sit. Stay. Beg for one last chance.
Cash or Credit? Is this seat taken? May I have this dance?





Nick Demske lives in Racine, Wisconsin, and works there at the Racine Public Library. His self-titled manuscript was awarded the Fence Modern Poets Series award and will be published by Fence Books in fall of 2010. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Action Yes, Sawbuck, Pinstripe Fedora, West Wind Review, Weird Deer and the e-anthology narrative (dis)continuities: prose experiments by younger american writers (Recycled Karma Press, forthcoming), among other places. He helps curate the BONK! performance series in Racine and is the editor of the online forum boo: a journal of terrific things. Visit Nick sometime at his website.

© Copyright 2009 Nick Demske

Featured Poet: Katherine Browne

Ghost of a Horse under the Chandelier


They are too many heads
observing the Balinese
cock fight menstrual like
disease engender lotuses
shifty theories to back
femme bending chatter

vocal or empower
as long as lungs will stand
where id heeds until us too
are silence, in the numbers
should we take to naming
our nookies Grouppersons
or they, bodies land on sexless
jelly or fish on pharaoh rocks

should we gal
around lining our rough skirt
or stay in the mirror, gal

every thingness takes a shape
masks you in or is unrecalled it’s not
things of creation
but duels of how they were

perverted
spirits are no single cult-
ure
exposed delicate
or ure
body region error




Anumodana


Yesterday we prayed on the snail
walk and saw the smallest head
trudge past its open toggling
ears on the re sin surface
that so often connected redden
hoods of your bashful shell
we rustled the twinge likening
stirring the wind’s whooshing it-
self on its face

I watched dots
of your freckles fray an echo
that looks toward the sun’s
sway inching near my many

we held tight to ourshelving
beneath palms neuron
vines trickled across
my queen wasp’s narrow
fastening oneself by the throat
again at breakfast, we wiggled gently
out of our trunks this time
laughing




A Fly of Sucking Parts


The plane
would like to be known
a strawberry

if in the plane crash dis-
patch length antennas on the azure
line

brush the reddie water
with the geom breast

stroke
caulking tongues on the mean
current horn

tittle the moth drabs
then did they divide
the stem earth
on the pleura when the plain ate
the wing

spatter
and pie

I’ll feed you



What are Pee-holes For?


Notsurehow-orwhyweneedpeeplacestottttuuube=sideholes
{splash)inwaterwe--flush========Notsurewhatpurrrpose{spray

-ing)oldbodilyfluid

||

We

all

have

to

spill/

in

*

Preface to a Poem that Will Never Come


Why can’t we replace
we’re place
where place be
cause we are placid nescience




Artist's note: "I hope the language will reflect the distortedness and discoloration of our human plank. I am after all, an artist working on a landfill."

Katherine Browne lives in Chicago, Illinois and works atop a landfill in Crestwood, Illinois.

© 2009 Katherine Browne