Two Poems by Kenan Phillip

sin azul

Every morning you drop into yourself still alive,
a bolt of Peruvian prattle,
gasping like a fish at the taste
of your own breath going solid,
paraffin in a junkyard,
waking to falling sheets of blood and bone,

the sweet coolness of
plastic like a new noose,
handsome nails and shaggy
teeth, scented-gel-hair slicked
and pushed just so. A shape:
life, presented as a heap of
atoms on this side of time,

a form radical enough to match
all other forms in intensity,
so intense that every
now and then it jars you awake
to the realization of time
like a lead flower unfolding
heavily every which way you turn,

and it is something percussive
and oddly foreign inside your chest
which informs you with certainty:
should you despair of any hope at all
and throw your eyes to heaven
you will find, even there, a bolt of time
from a pale clear sky,

a sky sin azul,
without even a gust of blue.

It is as Cortazar said:
I say this

and it dies.

midyear

That familiar scent which is as weird and wonderful as the happy incident of your own birth, which is at other times capable of reminding you, if only faintly, of oranges. Can you hear it beating under your toes? There are the wondrous patterns woven backwards and forwards in both sinew and satin, there are tea parties held sincerely and without the least irony on Golgotha Hill, there are ancient and indistinct faces burned indelibly into the sides of the pyramids, and there is each breath fluttering in an iron cage, not very unlike a witch’s wind moving terrible and certain under heaven.

Through it all there is your heart moving like a thresher, an endless cutting force, always expanding, expending, exhausting. This must be the nail they spoke of, which runs straight up through the foot of god.

Kenan Phillip

Wax Paper, by Pravasan Pillay

Like many South African children, my mother would send my school lunches in a lunch box. The lunch boxes, made of cheap, colourful plastic, were divided into two compartments. One compartment was for sandwiches and the other was for a juice bottle that came with the box. My mother would typically fill the bottle with a weak juice concentrate or sometimes – which always came as a shock to the system – plain water. I would usually lose my juice bottle a month or two into the school year.

The lunch box provided crush-protection for my sandwiches, but my mother additionally wrapped the sandwiches in wax paper – in order to keep the bread fresh. The grease-proof paper would be wrapped snugly over my sandwiches using a precise, intricate fold. I was always impressed by how secure this fold was. The paper never needed any tape or string to stay sealed.

I also loved the soft, matte texture of the wax paper on my hands as I would take it out of my lunch box and unwrap it on my lap during breaks. The ends of the transparent yet cloudy square of paper would be a little rough. This roughness came from it being torn off against the serrated edge of the cardboard box that the wax paper roll was sold in. I would often steal pieces of paper from this box, which I would use to trace pictures from my comic books.

As I would eat my lunch, the wax paper would act like a napkin, catching crumbs and fillings that fell from the sandwiches. When I was done eating, I would scrunch up the paper into a ball and put it back into my lunch box – which was my way of thanking the chef.

Sometimes, my mother would send my school lunches wrapped in aluminum foil. This was either because we had run out of wax paper or because the dimensions of my lunch dictated a more pliable wrapping – for example, hamburgers, cheese buns, hot dogs, or snacks like samoosas, vadas, or bhaijas.

I never liked getting my lunch wrapped in foil. It didn't feel right in my hands. It was too hard, almost sharp – I felt like I could cut myself. I was a clumsy child so this is not as ridiculous a concern as it may initially seem. One other minus of foil lunches was that it gave the impression, in my working-class primary school, that my family was rich – aluminum foil being more expensive than wax paper.

My single-parent family was far from rich but my mother, unfortunately for my street cred, wrapped lunches like a member of the bourgeoisie.

The only good thing about foil was that afterwards you could use it to make small silver dinosaurs with. You could also scrape a ball of foil on cement to make it smooth and mirror-like, which was as good a way as any to spend the dying minutes of your break.

There were, of course, other ways my mother wrapped lunches, whether it was newspaper, cling wrap or plastic bags. But only wax paper had that indefinable quality that somehow made my, say, fish finger and tomato sauce, or fried polony, or curried potatoes, or cheese and tomato sandwiches taste extra good – like they were gift-wrapped bread.

Four Poems by Mark Young

a small gazetteer for harry k stammer

 

It is a bipolar re-

ordering, unencom-

 

passed by direction.

South is elsewhen —

 

places you came

from, been, are.

 

North is the point

you move towards.

 

Bosch's oranges,

dreaming giraffes.

 

 

 

re: verse

 

rage road

unseen sight

example shining

mail express

paper daily

charge static

card credit

merchant dream

stones rolling

pot chimney

fire open

cabin holiday

shave close

fight title

water open

pole south

chapter final

 

 

sequins / sequence

 

appear

 

fruit

of the

loom

 

the punched card

programmed

loom

the fruit

of

Joseph Marie Jacquard

 

who was

the apple of

Babbage's

eye

 

lum-

inary

for

Turing

 

enigma

 

 

Badiou’s Bad IOU Blues

                    aka A line from Alain Badiou

 

The word as notion. Love is.

Don't the moon look lonesome

shining through the trees? Who

does Badiou owe? Why does he

 

wish to pay them back? Noun as

an oddment, the minimal form of

communism. 33 words unscram-

bled from the letters in NOTION.

 

Sent for you yesterday & here you

come today. What is the reason

for his ill will & when did it come

about? Evil is the interruption of

 

a truth. Can it be comprehended

through listening &/or reading?

How will he achieve his desires?

What use user avatar or wiki user?

Two Poems by John Grey

THUMPING
 
Noise won’t leave me alone.
I step outside and I’m suddenly
in the belly of a drum.
Sounds thump and deafen
and I’m a small boy again
at some rock and roll concert.
Or I walk into a bar
where there’s this band playing.
I order a drink
but the bartender can’t hear me
over the cacophony.
I go thirsty until the set ends.
It doesn’t end.
I’m out on the street
and every passing car
is booming whatever it takes
to burst my ear drum.
Some gang defends their turf
with a knee to my groin
and a mix-tape implanted
in my head.
I stumble home
just as storm rolls in,
no thunder,
just a Ginger Baker solo
from somewhere in the heavens.
I crawl under the blankets
with my hands pressed hard
against the sides of my head.
But my temples are pigskin.
My fingers don’t miss a beat.

ONE GOOD PRESENCE DESERVES ANOTHER
 
His face is marble.
You peer in his eyes.
They're marble too.
There's no way to waken
the hermit in his cave of a head.
He can't recognize you
let alone
laugh at your jokes,
or praise you
for all you've done in life.
 
But he does eat
what they put before him.
A nibble here.
a nibble there.
Like a sparrow
rather than a vulture.
So, apparently,
he's invested in
prolonging his existence.
His expressions just haven't
caught up in that emotion.
They're still back there
in that "nobody cares
if I live or die" routine.
 
You sit beside him,
hand resting on his withered arm.
You feel like one more
of those tubes
delivering fuel
to his laggard bloodstream.
You're not ashamed of his
being in this state.
But there's nothing
to celebrate either.
His body has discharged
all that you remember.
You have to love
what's left.
Or you don't know
what you're doing here.
Just like him.

13 Poems by Mykyta Ryzhykh

Suck my death

an unborn kitten is knocking at the church of a torn belly

the future flows like sperm from the wall of the gateway

my dead lover gets stuck in my throat where his cock used to hide during 

   blowjob

I dream of having my throat fucked by a nuclear bomb

I dream in my dreams that instead of a strap-on a hydrogen bomb will stick out 

   of my ass

I know that god will not pour anything into my balls during a handjob

mosquitoes and military pilots meanwhile fly towards the scent of blood

not a single military man gave me flowers

only somewhere in the dark a muscular sergeant said: hey fag suck my dick 

   like before death

what if the ammunition depot where I'm already being fucked by a group 

   of soldiers will explode from the fact that I'm so hot and sexy

suddenly I will destroy the army and piss all the military factories 

   with my blood

suddenly I really will be fucked in a minute by the last soldier in the history 

   of mankind

in the meantime they fuck me in all the cracks and call me a fag

I wonder if the soldiers have wives

I wonder how many lovers smeared the mouths of soldiers' wives with sperm

I wonder how many soldiers kissed their wives on the lips after that

I wonder how many nuclear bombs are produced in secrecy

I would like to grow longer hair and dye it blonde

the truth is hidden in the details of my anus

god fuck us all with your voice

we are tired of the silence of the red buttons

after which a nuclear explosion will follow

after fucking a new nuclear bomb will be born in me [?]

Brown town

In the heart of earthy hues,

Brown town,

A needle threads life's tapestry,

Brown town,

A need, a yearning palpable.

People encircle, form clay figures,

Silent echoes of existence,

Seated, molded by time's unseen hands.

Within, dwell stories untold,

Brown town,

Clay figures poised in quiet contemplation,

Sculpted reflections of shared moments.

Basement

Human is the basement of the toilet room

Tenement maze of history and stories

No animal in the world has ever died for its cage before

No animal has invented aerial bombs

my lover asked

my lover asked me when i first saw porn

it would be better if he asked something simpler, like how many times 

   we quarrel with my husband

(sometimes it seems to me that love is too abstract a word for our painfully 

   non-abstract world)

my lover finally pissed me off when he started talking about the non-binary 

   nature of human nature

- I call you bitch to suck and not destroy our homosexual intimacy 

   with the philosophy, fag, - I said to my lover while he turned into a statue

my lover is a beautiful antique statue but alas the statues don't have blood

my professional skills as a bloodsucker are now in question

my lover its: not reacted to my bites and slaps for a day

it seems to me that he sailed away into the cast-iron tunnel of the night

it seems to me that my lover dreams of flowers in ball gowns 

   and without graves

death knocked on the back of the room and asked: whose house is this?

and this ruined house is now a ruin

the anti-missile installation of the heart has failed

the night in the eyes of my dead dead man will no longer dissolve

even explosions won't wake my lover

red sky like a bud revealed death

god's assistant pressed the wrong button again

аll in vain

We

Free

Freends

Friends

French fries

With self burger

We distance

We running

Running away from each other

vegetable garden

my body is a vegetable garden in which nothing grows

we're all hungry without the smell of fresh meat and cum

generals fuck tomorrow's dead for free saving on prostitutes

sun umbrellas and winter sleighs are in vain

warning

a storm warning

the butterflies in my stomach

announced the summer plan to intercept

continuous distance

hair fell on hair

the sky turns red as if it knows

everything in advance

my hair fell for

the first time on your comb

which you will never use again

sho(r)t (hi)story

I want the last nuclear bomb to explode inside my ass

the sun warms the cold body of my lover shot by dawn

the trenches are screaming but no historian

will tell about our buried feelings in the future

the stones are screaming but only the wind drowning in the river

will tell about our buried lovers

No title

the station of tears breaks out and thirst falls from the inside of the heart

let's go to my house, drink my blood, burst my capillaries, tear my ass, 

   tear out my tonsils

meanwhile god's deputy keeps pushing the wrong buttons

onlyfa

the steak burned inside my stomach

the gun kills me but nothing will come out of my vagina

we drink only sperm

my eggs and balls strive for your grape nipple

still life of the world during the continuous noise of a siren

we drink only tears

one cocku

you drink the silence of my moan

and I feel uneasy about spring

which hasn’t come either

part-time

part-time job

being naked in the pristine ruins of houses