Two Poems by Joshua Martin

supposed a souvenir robe of surveillance

 
Opaque respiratory decades refuse breakfast
translations in favor of code names lurking in
a bearded itching orphanage. Loose fired tones
crudely interactive. As the bounty purges damp
barometers of oak. Gourds hint at a breezy
decapitation. Stomach, a barnacle, tenderized
and quivering. An unheard-of thorax blamed
like satchels of snowflake melons.
 
Reversed carbon peeling before pushing. Hoist,
unknown, an unpleasant clump like a sound
effect. Restricted asteroids unavoidable. The
business side of magazine hubris, a telephone
lightning tidal wave farewell splinter. Into the
astronomical villages. Membership, wit,
exhumed desert surrounding mimed semi-
pregnant alloys.
 
Magic alphabetic whisks. To what end of the
bleeding spectrum ontology. Psychotic drama.
Plugged psychedelic horns blandly dyspeptic.
Caseloads of subcutaneous empires.   
 
Confusing retinal prose with insights. Subtitle, 
a shivering calendar of celebratory cycles.
 
Blunt cases of the abyss. Impending forceps,
freely hesitated. What makes qualms? A
theoretical massacre. Ongoing. Forced plat-
forms. Nodding and clandestine. Thus, worn,
especially, furiously unlikeable, a tattooed
salary radically generalized. Statehoods of
confusion. Uncontestable discs. Versatile
atmospheric intestines.
 
An account of giggling creeds. Pressurized
stampeding beehives. Exterior: dogma. Interior:
irrationality. Cloning logistics and consumed
satires. Signs, visions, an awkward tension
tangled in a fishhook commentary.
 
Introductory fetish backdrop. Nationwide
slayings, brutal leftovers, rejected duels
rejecting narcissistic preoccupations. By
wheels, dusks, thereupon continuously
scheming to stretch tightropes across the
rippling earlobes vaguely a corporatized
biscuit. Crusty epochs. Historical raging
aqueduct. Atlantic, ascending Monica Vitti
nautical closed-captioning.
 
Rivals. Renaissance miniatures causing
seaweed paraphernalia. What replied the
pausing zigzags? Radio feline placebo.
Speechless as a gazebo madrigal bruising
comic book elbow levitation crematorium.
Stroking bottles. Dyslexia on the verge of
a smokestack asparagus redundancy.
Processing edges, submerged arabesques.
Sky lamps, no need for scales or shores or
buzzing ribcage of incandescence. The
rubber doll cracked open and swallowed
like an amputated jug of howling hallelujah
catharsis.
 
Wire crossed chambers stenciled like an
operational shotgun bump. Flashlight, so
what demands a blank lamppost critique?
Sloppily challenged, an actual refutation.
Aside, astray, decapitated instead of a
supposition.

Chosen to Perform a Subsonic Ritual
 
Paleolithic hiccups blush velvet curtains
preserved in amber dunk tanks painted
beyond descriptive allowance. Combat
migraine jet engine armoire. Revoke!
Magnum opus to the stars.
 
A river of blended termites stunned,
disturbed, pacified. Wealth redistributed.
The way is downward. Surface dwelling
octopus inversion. Crusted hemispheres
and syncopated pools of lemon.
 
Misanthropic dock strikes hyperbolic belly
aching wrinkles. Above, left for recessive
crouching. Moth without a scarf. Middle
passage catacomb debts. Itching fists.
 
The last-minute morsels harming an
inchworm dialectic. Well, that withers
before becoming stretchmarks on an
armchair delirium. Your appendage
crashes into a cucumber asteroid while
the clubfooted pelvis reverts to an
appendectomy.
 
Round and blushing shrimp dial black
hole factory tornadoes. A bit. A Venn
diagram. After dark, the flamethrowers
eroticize excessive topsoil mirrors.
Shrouded hummingbirds are found
stacked to the whirlwind. An old column
hysterically daydreaming. Treadmill
skeleton. Above the traveling manuscripts,
the heat lamps cough before screeching
and finally abandoning claustrophobia.
 
Fringe, pitiful poetic ramblings. Intercity
neon bicycle cavalcade. This shark, buried
with a whip, can crackle rhetorically
while invoking Stockholm. Inventories,
allowable poking, and x-ray primitives.
What exists that does not wheeze? A
detailed circumstance. Pig weather.
 
Baseline swirl, the rumbling octagon
dwells without cyclical kidney failure.
A bright obscurity. Manifesto anus.
What, an inner seal?
 
Rabid chamber orchestras emerging
in the smug bloodstream while down-
trodden turnips recite earwax psalms
into the knowing and ravaged void.
A paper doesn’t scatter nor do spirals
cease defined catastrophes. Reflect, a
suction cup dancing beneath a sheet
of scorched fleas. An unchanged torso
reasonably gravitational.

Joshua Martin

Two Poems by Craig Kirchner

The Abyss

 

There is no eternal, closest is the cosmos,

continuing to push and grow into any finite.

Revelation begins with a cry for retribution,

the fourth seal is the rider of death

followed closely, immediately by Hades,

the nightmare of the first three,

the savagery of man slaughtering man.

 

The seal that follows speaks of natural disaster,

fires, misery to all they touch - California

knows this inferno, the purgatory of nothing left,

the death of the apocalypse.

Siberia lost 55 million acres, Australia’s

hellfire took 61,000 koalas.

The planet was the hottest it’s been

and immediately broke its own record.

 

It is not eternal damnation that should be feared.

It is the abyss of the present, unleashed

by the heat burning our homes, boiling our oceans,

the grand denier of these truths,

his cult hugging the flag and party sycophants

sacrificing the future, sucking on power,

searching for spine amid their state’s ruins.

 

 

Acid Year

  

Being raised had become foreign,

not real, not mine, no growth,

someone else’s field.

I had become a weed,

in need of a modest, naïve

pilgrimage in search of self.

 

I didn’t know a want or plan

only that there was a trail.

It didn’t go far or last long,

but it was in another direction,

with forks that would beg me to make

the wrong turn, go the wrong way.

 

Nothing changed, nothing was the same,

roads still had red lights,

entrances still said Do Not Enter.

Tuned in, dropped out to proclaim newness,

wanting to plant seeds of enlightenment,

that would grow wherever I slept.

 

The thought of home,

made the return journey easier.

A need to walk through old doors,

the desire was a simple sentence,

with hinges and knobs

that always opened on request.

 

Years later it was a footnote,

stories to laugh about at wakes.

The Xmas tree upside down until Easter.

The green mescaline was the best -

God came out of the sidewalk as trees,

the neighborhood was never the same.

Craig Kirchner

The Rescue, by Joseph Cooper

After years of living alone I finally decided to visit the shelter. The woman at the desk greeted me, and after filling out some paperwork she brought me to meet their rescues. “I’m sorry,” she said looking around. “It seems that all we have left is this purple blob.” I looked inside the cage and watched the purple blob tremble and shimmer. “Apparently, it comes from a long line of purebred blobs, but nobody seems to want it.” “Not even you?” I asked. “I have two cats,” she said, “and besides, purple blobs are very territorial.” I stuck my finger into the cage and the purple blob gently absorbed it up to the knuckle. “I think it likes you,” she said. I took the purple blob home, fed it, played with it, and that night as we were lying in bed I thought I saw a slight glimmer of light coming from inside the purple blob. I pressed my face against it, allowing the purple blob to absorb me. The light in the distance was fuzzy and seemed to be interrupted by passing shadows. When I withdrew my face it was covered in a clear, thin, and odorless fluid. Then the light seemed to expand and quiver, so I pressed my face deeper into it and once my head had been completely submerged the muscular force of the purple blob compelled me forward. I heard the muffled sounds of a young woman screaming and I was pulled even deeper into the purple blob, into the ever-expanding light. Suddenly, there were hands all over me, lodging my shoulders free of the trembling blob, the light now so bright I couldn’t even open my eyes. In a moment I was pulled completely through the purple blob and I too began screaming and crying. The hands placed me on the young woman’s breast and as she kissed my forehead I could feel the memories of my life slipping away…my apartment…my job…my first love…even the purple blob itself.

Joseph Cooper

Two Poems by Andrew K. Peterson

Year In Streaming

 

summering down

the child and siren align   

hands incomplete

as dancers waxing

in a rainbow moonstone

 

“can you stop suffering

for, like, a minute?”  

do you mean could 

burn through

wave by wave

 

at what difference?

in a spiral, crocodile

& roses aaaaallll day

teach myself (again) 

to rest is not to squander

 

lighten as the sun hits

off the cymbal nn-tsk

back in the day 

when we were planets 

to a plum, swan-swank

 

gonging in between

 

 

 

napkinful of sour patch kids

 

Seven gather in the conference room to discuss the market readiness report, so the office is mostly empty. Liv researches bathing suits that may look good on her. George is standing at his desk looking at his phone with the flat tone of a COO gone soft on matrices. Peterson returns to his desk with a third cup of coffee and a napkinful of sour patch kids, resumes listening to Dick Gallup reading poems from the evening of June 21, 1978. The crowd claps earnest and appreciative after most of them, while Dick turns a page, takes a breath - sometimes through his nose, sometimes through his mouth, some both - and then he begins again. Before “Virtue”: I seem to be missing something he says and lights another cigarette. In “Philosophy Take a Walk” Dick reads, stress is mostly bullshit. What will become of Dowling Hall, the market and its readiness? What virtue hath a man who hath not the command of his own intention? The year is 2025, and, to be sure, there is still much work to be done…

Andrew K. Peterson

Little Men, by Gordon Haber

I was in my office trying to get a few things done when I heard the sweet little voice of my two-year-old saying, Papa? I stepped into the hall and there was my little man! He wore overalls and held his favorite toy, a cement mixer truck. I scooped him up and kissed his face and I said, Where’s Mama?

Papa, I heard again. And down the hall was my little boy. What I mean is that my son was in my arms and my son was also down the hall. There were two of them. I didn’t know what to do, so I picked up the second one, and now I had my son in either arm.   

I heard it a third time: Papa. Further down the corridor, by the men’s room, my son was stumbling towards me doing his toddler robot walk even though I already had one of him in each arm. It’s very difficult to carry three squirming toddlers, but I figured that I could make it to my office. And there he was again, by the elevator. 

Now I’m pouring sweat, almost hyperventilating, when I see the mail cart. So I dump out the mail and I put the four of them into the cart. I was reaching for my cell phone and wondering who to call—my wife? 911?—when I see him in the lobby. He sees me too and breaks out a gorgeous smile and throws his arms out wide: Papa!

I put him in the cart. 

Through the lobby window there’s my son again in the parking lot, which makes six of them. The poor kids are cramped and whining and two of them are fighting over the toy. But I couldn’t worry about that, because there was one more by the security gate, and another, Jesus Christ, by the highway off-ramp.

Now I have one in each arm and six in the cart, which I’m trying to guide back to my office with a hip, until I see one more on the grass divider of the highway. This was when I thought I might start screaming. But I kept it together, and I waited for the traffic to ease so I could safely maneuver all of us across the lanes and collect my son. 

That’s right, I held it together, and you can bet your ass that I would keep holding it together. Even if there were a hundred of them. Even if there were a thousand. Because what else could I do?

            Don’t worry, I called to my little man as the cars whipped by. Daddy’s coming.

Gordon Haber