Four Poems by Mark Young

I cannot attest to the truth of this story,

 

told to me many years ago at a friend's house by Barry Humphries before he became more famous via his alter-ego Dame Edna Everage.

About being in a bar, in New York, & a drunken Jack Kerouac lookalike came up to him & invited him to a party. He declined the invitation. Was given the address anyway. Discovered about half an hour later that it had, in fact, been Kerouac. Rushed off to the address. Found it to be the premises of a removal company & that the party was taking place in the back of a moving Moving van that had left fifteen minutes earlier & was now out on the road, somewhere, anywhere, in the city.

 

 

A midnight census

 

In the background the pool pump hums. Put clarifier in the water, & now it has to circulate for thirty-six hours to let the clouding particles coalesce.                There is a smoke smell in the air. Drove around over the last few days on roads impinged upon by opportunistic grasses. A day of rain & they grow. A month later they are dry, primed for burning. Easier to set them alight than mow the strip that runs along the road- side.           The static geometry of the house separates the evening into panels. A quintych. Angular, o- blique. Trees fill in some of the gaps, but the most striking are those where there are gaps in the trees themselves, one in part- icular, bite-shaped, as if some- one had tried an apple & then abandoned it. Acute.                                       Touch yourself. Only flesh, which the hand passes through as if

& along the way     cigarettes   coffee   chicken   & rice       burnt   grass   a tart   plum           it wasn't there.

 

Meadow Saffrons (Les Colchiques)

—Guillaume Apollinaire

 

The meadow is poisonous but pretty in autumn

The cows grazing there

are slowly poisoning themselves

Meadow saffron the color of your eye-shadow of lilacs

flower there your eyes are like that flower

Violet like the eye-shadow & like the autumn

& for your eyes my life slowly poisons itself

 

School children come noisily

dressed in their smocks & playing harmonicas

They pick the meadow saffrons which are like mothers

Daughters of their daughters & the color of your eyelids

which flutter like flowers caught in a crazy wind

 

The cowherd sings very softly

whilst the slow lowing cows abandon

this great meadow ill-flowered by the autumn

 

(translated by M. Y.)

 

 

A line from Kurt Schwitters (3)

 

We were a modern family on

whom rebel militants launched

a large-scale attack following

weeks of simmering low-level

 

violence. The family began to

fall apart, particularly when we

started injecting black tar heroin.

Additional risk factors included

 

low-socioeconomic status, an

increase in gun violence, a steak

pie which says simmer on the

hob for 60 minutes. Soups are

 

also dangerous, especially when

they are served without rinsing

away the dirt. Anxieties are run-

ning high; we are spending too

 

much time in the danger zone.

Perhaps an anomaly, or will

light & visibility dictate if full

body hi-vis clothing is required?

Two Poems by Joshua Martin

Half-century implosion of the Northern Lights

 

Much contained the salamander’s method

of bibliographic melting, definitely private

as a therefore accumulation of curiosity

encrusted permits. To scholarly excess,

the serially subversive pens leaping the

regardless fields of illustrious pigments.

All thorough in fiery eyebrow oysters.

Were the high-flying nails oh so oddly

gangrenous in their admitted planetary

voids? Passing a living question and by

satirical advantage limiting hollow

surface noises. Scam. Winnow. Flailing

hypodermic scales presented rather

than patented. Another chapter of

a skirted cathedral map would likely

lead the obvious timber toward wary

geographic commentaries.

 

Fume, each citizen allowable as a

deliberate gesture withering like an

updated punishment. Troubleshoot

a reaching rhyme built upon bothered

and vicarious standards. Hail, any

deterrent haze reinventing units

simply as disorganized as glass yawns.

Unpremeditated tangles juggling these

short calculated turtle trampolines

while ushering in forlorn hiccup

backbones. Whether instead or just

catching chronological curtain rod

covered in scaly piano remains.

 

Yummy, geared up, floating curb cuts

balancing on wireless heel dynamics

breathlessly overwhelming a spooled

draft inside flea bags. Wondering,

masked like a flagpole, caricatures

play guessing games with mobsters 

still unlovable. Deepening crisis without

reservation palms. Which, in varying

degrees of turgid plasma, were the

humming baboons supposed to

eviscerate when the alphabet finally

fails visions misdiagnosed as a

deer hoof, cause itching. Pssssst.  

 

Hugging justified corner rooms. Scheming

an anvil padlock chemistry parachute

covered in fuzzy jitterbugging moles

dancing fandangos in a bonfire.

 

Alas, poorly made and understaffed,

a wallowing herbivore maintains a

puzzled expression throughout the ice

rink nightmares. Scuttle. Rattling

and peevish symphonies. A linguistic

nostril. Straining incognito blasting

pigeon hovel where extraterrestrial

happenstance reveals tainted ray gun

allusions. Disturbance on the toadstool.

 

How long winding tornadoes? Wince,

at last angled to prevent another endless

highway expansion.

 

Simultaneous Weigh Stations

 

There’s a singularity Mastodon sniffing

glue & treading water before foreplay

leapfrog coughing. Eat the tissue. Bury

the sparkplug pocket map. Are the

bladed headlights catching on? Noun.

Vests leaping & noisy as a hatchet wielding

warlord barfing mug of milquetoast

beer pong jockstraps. The rest is a

fertile pig bladder limousine. How high

the hijinks offer the mushrooms

inverted like snapping color photographic

hamsters short of a bearded breath

taking alarm clock grapefruit.

 

Ah. Well. Svelte appetizer incognito.

 

Drown frothy whimsical launch

pads. Oh sure. Hollowed out the

heavenly visionaries playing bingo

while reaching for a vacuum cleaner

noose. Support engine marvel.

An obtuse metal guru. Siting above

lockjaw monkey paws with

wearied lollipop muffins all

but straining to be a fly-on-the-wall

boot. In awe. Out of torch. touch.

Go following the padlocks into

the touchscreen tombstone where

all willow hammocks reside until

death do the cha-cha into a frying

pan monocle. Clash of the

titans. Orange transistor radio

bobbing for apples. In spite. Spirit.

Drop. Sponge. Callous reindeer under

glass. Steeped towel gallons. Whose

caboose set the tone for the debate?

 

Candidate zipper fiasco consumed

the shark infested corners of skyscraper

buzzards. Wee. Weeping. Anatomy of

an insect in the throes of a midlife

crisis. Membrane. Balm. Harrier than

a quarter & just as nominated. Wheeze

as the quacking dalliance unfurls before

another cosmetic blunder. A society

so shallow & superficial has no business

preaching.

 

The fart machine persists.

Alley-oop dagger. Playing fetch with a

cobra. Reading. Sludge mechanic

busier than a flute in autumn.

Wave goodbye. Shrink. Engineered

for failure. Rock. Paper. Schism. Trust-

ed coffee cake rotting for cursive

to be reinstated in all schools. Blimp.

Simpering musical chairs like

a cleaver organizing a dance party

in the age of uranium.

 

Blow.

Bend.

 

Any order lacking a headphone jack

will be returned unopened & despised.

Likewise conned. Levelled. Cinched.

Joshua Martin

Enclosure Architect by Douglas W. Milliken

Enclosure Architect by Douglas W. Milliken

Available from West Virginia University Press

Taking place in a future so near it might be happening already and you just don’t know it yet, Enclosure Architect traces the creation and dissolution of one woman’s chosen family amid the dissolution of larger social order, and, in doing so, also describes her halting and brave attempts to remember and create.

In the background of this intelligent, winning novel is an armed conflict, the origins and scope of which are never fully revealed. Mortars and bombs reduce sections of an unnamed city to rubble; emergency services are unreliable; business and money-making continues in select circles; and partisans blow up the university (accidentally? on purpose?) where our characters study art, and from which they receive “honorary (meaning meaningless) degrees”, thus turning them out into the wreckage of the city and young adulthood without even the benefits of having completed a formal education in art. (There’s a sly joke here, I think.)

Against all of this, our narrator nonlinearly describes their intertwining creative, emotional lives in squats, an exciting, voluntary poverty full of dumpster-diving and art-making and navigating what it means to create without the strictures (or architecture) of school, family, or society. They are beholden only to themselves and each other.

What do they do with such freedom? Take drugs and have sex? Naturally. Yet there’s also the sincere effort to construct meaning from experience, to create something stable against a turmoil that the reader doesn’t have to squint too hard at to see as being close to what we’re experiencing currently in the USA. What else could the materials of such construction be but individual moments, moments which Milliken renders with acute and sometimes heartbreaking detail. Flip to almost any page and be rewarded: “A beat-up table and instant coffee steam. The blue of a jawline shadow no one was meant to see. And me. Together we completed our composition. Then Marlene took my portrait, and I was gone.” Enclosure Architect finds heroism in such quiet, unheralded moments.

This reviewer is loath to reveal too much or provide any kind of heuristic; part of the pleasure of this deeply felt book is its unfolding, and the way it deals with the complicated nature of memory. At its core, Enclosure Architect could be understood as an argument against forgetting; that memory provides a basis for art and thus for humanity…our own, and a shared humanity, if we’re lucky.

Enclosure Architect is available from West Virginia University Press.

The Hit List, by Mark Young

You're Doing It Wrong, by Brad Liening