Four Poems by Michael Begnal

Punk and the Autonomous Individual

 

Does punk evolve?

 

Continual reiteration

of an oppositional stance

is facile and nihil,

swinging left and then always

to the right, depending

on our (mostly) white

minds, which we absurdly feel

to be autonomously our own

 

Should punk evolve?

 

Continental reverberations

open positions extant

as fossil, or isle,

sing wings aloft in the alleyway

of the rite descending—

 

dissonant response, like you is

a dead end, and could even

really be individual

     in a sound sense

 

  

Evolution 1

 

This is going to be

how the mirror reflects

the lens refracts

the moon reflects

the sun meet

at the point between the eyebrows

and the light revolves

into the center

of the passage-tomb

of the head

 

descends

through the empty terrain

of the below

to the cauldron

steady simmering

on low heat

 

water under the grate

melts into steam

  rising

    into

a keening

   noise

 

               //

 

the Revolution of the I:

is evolution,

the I transmuted,

refined

in the iron

cauldron

 

 

Evolution (single version)

 

so that it is the self

but also expression

of void-dark pervasion

 

images are real

but also images may be refracted,

and who will speak them

 

Department/

an affiliated amalgamation

of people cohered

around a purpose

possibly in a location

that is not always a building

 

Feral Forest/

both real and not-real

it is the potential

of a forest to (re)grow

when left alone

and the mind

to revert to its tree-nature

when out from under

oppression

 

in the single version

there was an extra verse

that sang the question:

should there be leader/s,

a central figure,

     a Boudica

 

albeit the lens refracts?

 

an echo among the oaks

 

 

Evolution 9

 

is it going to be alright?

 

flesh in waves of magnetic tape

shifting pink flashes out in the wind

animal cells pervaded by the real

strangely shimmering silent

     darkness

at evolved frequencies

 

“mere mysticism”

real working mass

panem et Circen

     embodied

glas-dark experience

 

into version 9

 

an economic boycott

is not a marketing opportunity

 

a city block aloaf

in ancient neon

is a field in the totality

chamber things

not standing still

number nine when

 

newly vatic

I played a CD

in the portal-tomb

the unexpected chord change

recorded on

     [void]

 

a central

movement

melts not

 

          INCIPIT

all those little spaces

    among the oaks

Michael Begnal

One Poem by Allison Whittenberg

and that’s the news

the weather writes 

about the weather 

for being the weather

The Count, by Pravasan Pillay

It’s a Monday. I stand at the kitchen sink, and wash and dry the lid, which is from a tin of mackerel. It’s a thin piece of rectangular metal, that has a slight curve, and a ring pull attached on one end. One side of the lid is dull, and the other side is brushed and shiny.
 
I open the cupboard below the sink and feel my way to a plastic bucket that is hidden behind the trash can. I take the bucket out the cupboard, and shake it to create room. I drop the lid into it. It clanks as it hits the other lids. I’m not sure how many are in it now.
 
I started saving them out of curiosity. My wife casually asked me one day at lunch to estimate how many tins of mackerel I think I eat in a year. The question stuck with me, and needled. So, I devised this method to keep track of my annual consumption.
     
I shake the bucket again, and place it back behind the trash can. I notice that I have a small cut on my thumb. It’s from the sharp edge of the lid. It’s not the first time it's happened. I plan to start keeping track of this. I walk to the bathroom to get a plaster.

Two Poems by Joseph Tate

Poetics

1.

 

Between here, as our Gunslinger says, and

formerly: asbestos gloved and took-en

 

by

 

"the mere rub-a-dub of the decasyll"

-“abon" as it were a—

 

Foot fault. 

Love.

 

 

2.

 

    (to remind myself)

 

“nope        

               heis wronf”

   

[signed in the plate] F. Chauveau (&Team),

inv. et fec.

3 & 5.

← Percent Sand —.

And: “The flowre hath α ι writ theron, which letters are of greef.”

In: “The flowre hath α ι writ theron, which letters are of greef.”

 

12A.

Brutality en pointe on a knuckle, a fingertip. 

Tethered to the field. 

12B.

Not a field.

The bony labyrinth / þe se of Occean, opening.

Lesson Plan(s)

    after M and D

The manifest figure & its receding ground—

his rumble, she called it, of apples.

A flag of the most softest of soft fossils,

the symbolic order encausted;

the velvet flop will punctum any Studium™.

Tooth into the true-blue bitter of the lemon, 

but gorge in the gleam of the pulp, trust its daylight.

This is a table, she said, fit for a storm.

Two Poems by Greg Wallace

THE GREAT BEAR

Pushing to the great bear
blue night shadows on the sand
young girls lead animals on chains
so as to make it rain forever
geometries of fabled skies
great bird of white fur
lost in the night
the ruin was damaged within
freight for dread occasion

Sleepwalking miseries of despair
blue powder dusting yellow bodies
crystal girl dusting pale
magnetic sunset
black velvet bruised by  
delirium of frozen crystal
pale girls travel in the air
with hair of fire

CASTLE TO CASTLE

She rides on a pink rainbow
a vague arc shimmering into view
the glass emits a feeble light
on the verge of fading into nothingness
a horse tumbles from the cliff and falls into the sea
the glass in the window is frosted
she is different than the one who came before
she covers her eyes with her hands
to enter the world of demons is difficult
no light shining from the lighthouse on the island
the horse floats when it hits the water
an almanac lost at sea
each girl nods as she passes by
a faint column of smoke drifts up from the bamboo

Four Poems by Mark Young

A line from Nelson Mandela

 

This is an America that is not

necessarily retreating from the

world stage but consolidating

its power through bullying &

 

dealmaking, where the influ-

ences of Christian nationalism

& the presidential vices are the

most apparent. Ushering in a

 

new golden age, says the new

National Security Strategy; but

to others it is the onset of a new

age of fear, of repression, of de-

 

privation & virtual slavery. To

oppose it is to not merely cast

off one's chains, it is a renewal

of life & liberty without pursuit.

 

 

notes from a broad

 

It's not that I think the world is broken, just that pieces keep falling off. At least, that's what I assume the debris around me is. & everywhere I go, more, & different, debris. Clips on YouTube, search results from Google, memories for sale on eBay, trivial newsbites from trivial news-sites; all mixed in with lines from millenium-old novels, fragments from mythology, subtexts, signs in shop windows, gall & philosophers' stones, lines from the decades of pop I have lived through, thoughts I & others have had. Or may still yet have.

It's a kind of bricolage, which means I'm a kind of bricoleur. I take these things I find around me & put them together; at least I try to. Not to repair the world but to see how the found objects look when rearranged—a parallel universe perhaps, a history or histories rewritten. Or, perhaps the world as it really is, because everything I write about comes out of the world around me.

We are subjected to information overload these days. So much so, in fact, that it becomes impossible to take it all in. Warhol's 15 minutes of fame has been reduced to 15 seconds so it fits as a soundbite in the evening news. Where it blurs, sandwiched between competing 15 seconds, goes digital, & we lose the last few words because the pre-programmed ads come in over the top & we end up not knowing if it was the grapple tackle or the retirement of Muttiah Muralitharan that caused the floods in, was it, Pakistan. Peccavi, cabled General Napier. I have Sind. It's a funny old world, & I milk the humor as much as I can.

 

 

Le Cicérone

after the 1948 painting by René Magritte

The temperance advocates come

knocking at my door but I haven't

had a drink for days. Nor do I

feel like one. Sorry to disappoint.

 

The pentecostal proselytizers pause

on the pathway. I instantly recog-

nize the pairing, can see more pairs

over their shoulders, say no thanks

 

politely to them before they have a

chance to open their mouths. & they,

inured to rejection, offer their equally

polite blessings & walk quietly away.

 

Then the politicians, the outliers only —

independents who seek to save the

planet; or those far to the right, want-

ing to stop immigration or gender e-

 

quality or renewable energy sources.

The mainstream parties mainly leave

us alone. Impersonal. Letterbox drops

& billboards. Polling booth handouts.

 

In the early evening the cicerone comes

calling. Said: "Saw you had a lot of

visitors today, thought you might like

to know their antecedents. What drives

 

them, what is behind their focus on a

singular cause whether it be bigotry

or hope or a need for an answer as to

why the world turned out the way it

 

has, & how it might be rearranged to

match their vision of it." "Come in" I

said "& get comfortable. Will make

you a coffee. Going to be a long night."

 

 

Melania

 

is a cheeseball infomercial of staggering

inertia, made out of car rides & cold silences,

so polished it slips out of (her) hands. I

immediately regret not buying popcorn

so at least one of my senses would be enter-

tained. It's a gilded trash remake of The Zone

of Interest, a forty-million-dollar journey into

the void, a film that should have been called

Day of the Living Tradwife, a lazy, bafflingly

incurious documentary that insults the

person it is trying to celebrate. All the money

in the world can’t make good propaganda, &

this is shameless propaganda that could put

you to sleep, a preening, scowling void of

pure nothingness, an unabashed, fly-on-the-

gilded-wall fawn job, a tedious, criminally

shallow puff piece, a Slovenian sphinx flick

nixed. Pure, endless hell, an unbelievable

abomination of filmmaking that if they

showed it on a plane, people would still walk

out. 20 stage-managed days in the life portrays

world events as B-roll between wardrobe

changes, feels entirely at a remove from any

objective reality, a face like a fist that makes

(her) look like Marie Antoinette skulking in

her cake-filled chateau. This must be the night-

mare endpoint of celebrity documentaries.

Does Melania dream of AI-generated sheep?

 

Sources:

BuzzFeed, Decider, empireonline, Los Angeles Times, MS Now, New York Magazine, The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, The Guardian, The Hollywood Reporter, The Independent, The Irish Times, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wrap, Vanity Fair, Variety, & Vulture.

Two Poems by Kevin Armor Harris

I carry this noose

I carry this noose around in case anyone needs it, they only have to ask. After each use, I untie it, wash it thoroughly, and reconstruct it carefully. Those are sad days, after it’s been used, when I’m waiting for the fibres to dry and don’t feel I can go out. One matronly lady has tried it several times, just can’t seem to get on with it but credit to her for trying I say, it doesn’t suit everyone. It certainly suited one feller who sought to sport it, décor de moribondage, at a party that went wrong, or right, or both perhaps, things can be both right and wrong, in the end, it seems. Sometimes I think I should get more up to date, maybe offer some of these fashionable nylon numbers, you can have a range of colours, I expect the townsfolk would like that. But I’m a traditionalist, I grew up with the touch of yarn, the plies and braids of hemp, the artificial is not for me.

 

I went to the sage

I went to the sage to ask if she would take me as a student. A long journey through four seasons. She spoke quietly and simply, glancing at me from time to time as she drew skillfully on a sheet. This had the effect of making me try to keep very still, without having been asked, but it also caused me to be slightly inattentive. Finally she explained that I was not ready to be her student, and gave me the portrait, so that I understood immediately. Thus am I able to say, I have learned directly from the wisdom of the sage.

 

Kevin Armor Harris

Three Poems by Edward Johnson

TRESPASS

 

To the North, a thickening,

smog or haze, fog or smoke,

nature made or someone to blame?

My mom FaceTimes me. She spotted another

rando perspiring in her tomatoes.

On one level I’m nearly certain

these creepers don’t exist. But who knows?

They keep us on our toes.

On screen we vibrate—one box

in Oregon, one in Indiana.

She tells me that the last time

my lips were purple like this

I had thrush. She tells me that she’s

rewatching Downton Abbey and

that it’s astounding

how much she missed the first time.

As she talks, bugs

kamikaze the screened-in porch,

guitar chords from the canyon,

a drop in pressure,

an alertness, crickets.  

A shadow moves behind her,

along the privacy fence

tip-toeing the property line.

THE NOISE

 

Sea mist salts the lips out here

where the red edge of earth plunges

into the misnamed sea as we power

through our daily practice.

Mindfulness is mindlessness.

Drain your head like a dirty bathtub.

Profit has Progress pinned in the grass.

Static crashes in from headquarters.

Someone misgendered someone’s child.

Meanwhile, the corporate oligarchs

and their oxy-addicted serfs

have simplified their non-fluid gameplan:

the rich get richer, the poor get poorer,

the sick get sicker, the earth gets warmer.

These aggressions require no microscope.

You see them on the bodycam footage,

you smell them when our cities burn,

you hear them when our neighbors are taken away.

An oil derrick humps itself

back toward darkness and fossil.

Pelicans kamikaze, catch as catch can.

A few hate-filled precincts have yet to report.  

Villagers await their blood-stained sheet.

Our better selves have been gerrymandered

into deformed Lego dragons

and we’ve lost the ability to breathe,

to acknowledge the reality of the breeze,

to understand which way the wind blows.

The purveyors of wellness know this,

so they flutter down on gossamer wings

and devour us whole like cocktail wieners. 

PANGOLIN UNFURLING

  April 2020

 

Things were bumping along 

then we awoke under house arrest,

a predator in the mist,

our reality hyphenated, asterisked,

ellipses spilled across the floor.

Our experts had misread the recipe,

transposed the pinch of faith

with the dollop of science.

The bunkered typists twitched

and spat: It’s the Chinese! 

The liberals! The homeless!

We all stewed in our juices.

The Oregon Health Authority urged

everyone to press pause on rimming.

Pure entropy knocked on the door

looking for all the world like the delivery person

taking a proof of life photo of our dinner.  

Randomness is like that.

It wants us to see patterns,

the beginnings of order.

Language is a hurricane of faith,

punctuation a thief.

The anti-maskers demanded

that the economy be reopened,

especially the part that sells teeth.

Puzzle, by Pravasan Pillay

I get onto the subway train at Liljeholmen. It’s seven on a Friday evening. I’ve finished my shift at the store and I’m heading home. The train is filled but there are still a lot of free seats. I sit down at a four-seater, diagonally across from a young man. We’re the only two sitting there.

I glance over to the young man. It is mid-June, summer in Stockholm, and he’s dressed in a pair of loose khakis, a short sleeve shirt, and sandals. He’s slim, clean-shaven, balding, and is wearing wire-rimmed glasses.  

The young man is holding a square of folded newspaper in one hand, and in the other hand, a squat yellow pencil. From where I’m sitting I can see that it’s one of those number grid puzzles.

I’m impressed by how he has folded the newspaper. The square is around 10cmx10cm, fits easily into his palm, and has a narrow border of white space around the grid, which I assume is either for rough work or because it’s pleasing to his eye.

The back of the square is also impressive. It’s clear that he hasn’t cut or torn the puzzle out of the newspaper, but, instead, has folded the sheet into itself, like a piece of origami, without any of its edges showing. I imagine that this method also provides a degree of padding while he’s writing.

I shift my eyes to the seat beside the young man. There’s a plastic carrier bag on it – from the top of the bag, I make out a five-kilogram sack of basmati rice. The rice sack has a built-in handle, so a carrier bag seems unnecessary. It’s possible, however, that he finds the carrier bag’s handles more comfortable.

I return to the young man. I notice that he’s not actually writing on his square. Instead his pencil hovers over the empty grid. I see from the movements on his lips that he’s doing calculations.

The train stops at Mariatorget. The driver announces that there has been a problem on another train, and, soon thereafter, a throng of passengers pile onto our train. I spot a harried-looking mother and her son. I get up, and offer them my seat. The young man moves his rice sack, and lays it flat on his lap.

A minute later, I get off at Slussen to change trains. I watch the young man through the window as the train pulls away. It looks like he’s started writing. 

Four Poems by Mark Young

prehensile dog washers

 

Poke out your tongue, wrap

it around a lollipop, & now

try to whistle for the dog to

come inside for its weekly

wash. Nothing happens; or,

 

at least, nothing that was

meant to happen. Locusts

fly down from their perches

on the pyramids of Giza &

eat the Sphinx away. The

 

Red Sea opens & closes, o-

pens & closes, unsure if it

too is meant to be at war. A

dyslexic President abuses

the Pope for washing the

 

peet of the foor, saying he'd

never let such garbage into

his nice white house, then

puts on his corny thrown

before his seance with doG.

 

 

 

Liturgical music

The church is a business

Robert Creeley: After Lorca

 

Once was the rattle of coin, the ringing

of the cash register, given a more noble

form when celebrated in song. Clang,

clang, clang went the trolley, ding, ding,

ding went the bell, sang Judy Garland

when she was met in St. Louis, but her

text holds none of the mystery that is

supposed to be imbued within it. The

Second Vatican Ecumenical Council

had plenty to say about that, 69 clauses

intended to cover every aspect — how

it's important to look & sound your

best, especially if the service is  going

out on TV; what part the various

parts of the organization should play;

what to do if the attendant musicians

lack the desired skills necessary to play

well; & if have them, what celebrations

shouldn't they be permitted to play at.

Masses for the dead are one of the pro-

scribed events, which is possibly why

Creeley also notes that the mourners go

doucement, doucement to the cemetery.

 

 

 

Her only friend was a robot named Desire

 

The person throwing stones

has been known to stand

in the street & yell Stella at

the world. That she has a

voice that reminds one of

Grace Slick is a little off-put-

ting; but it is the summer of

love, though the brutal exe-

cution of Benito Mussolini

is still remembered as a high

point in The Chronicles of Nar-

nia after it was lip-synched

on The Tonight Show with

Johnny Carson & became the

defining moment of an era.

 

 

 

Transparent pterodactyls

 

Like a giant Faraday cage, the

all-metal construction provides

versatility across a wide range

of applications in such areas as

 

writing, editing, & design. Mir-

rors aren't just decorative. Their

studies of hunter–gatherer

locomotion create the illusion

 

of larger spaces; & their theoret-

ical analyses have implications

for manufacturers of religious

artifacts such as baptism tents.

Three Poems by Chad Hoogervorst

Ultramarine   

 

She was throwing grapes to the birds 

when I noticed her rosy-tipped fingers 

and long dark hair bound above her head 

like a fathomless black deed 

as she noticed she turned  

her face smiling eyes crackling 

 

Much later I found the way to her body 

and there was not a soul but a churchyard 

beautifully decorated by ivy  

and veronica colored heliotrope  

I felt crisp fear at how she moved 

in a menacing but superhuman way 

 

And in a flash of understanding 

I knew she was unfinished yet destroyed 

that she had run upon the lion for the wolf 

truth had stepped out holding a mirror 

and I felt the urge to bury my heart 

in the dope-sick warmth of her chest 

 

 

I Want to Go into Your Lying Down Head            

 

“Into her lying down head / His enemies entered bed” Dylan Thomas 

 

And steal a secret  

yank it out like a car stereo  

wires trailing behind frayed 

from the quick theft 

reselling it to the cosmic pawnshop 

of your perception 

 

I want to go into your lying down head 

into your towering conscience  

find the day residue 

speckled about your dreams 

and deliver you mouthed nights 

until atomic joy washes you awake 

         

I want to go into your lying down head 

unpeel your feelings and 

vulture them so I become them 

clad in your atmosphere 

I’d sketch you like a child’s drawing  

with the speech bubble 

“Why can’t I be you?” 

                          

I want to go into your lying down head 

to throw a party for your memories 

so I could meet each one 

shake their hands and mix them a drink 

combing your hair softly afterwards 

in front on the television 

as we rate our guest’s anecdotes 

 

I want to go into your lying down head 

to find the hiccups 

insecurities adjacent to uncertainties 

doubts shelved alphabetically 

orderly as your teeth 

as affectionate as the ribs 

covering your unknowable altar   

 

But mostly  

I want to go into your lying down head 

to get out of my own 

escape the asylum 

the wild animals in there 

at the water’s edge 

cautious and timid like an Irish goodbye 

to see if the sky darkens or lightens 

when I brush against that brainstem 

 

K

 

Starry declination talking 

to yourself again 

you leave so quick and flush 

I fix a drink in the dark 

 

This will leave a wound 

fingered by the sky and 

surely to be autopsied  

for weeks 

 

That’s where we’re moving 

trot to gallop 

carried to the abattoir  

grasping an oyster-colored mane 

 

Anti-body night 

do double murder  

and know that if jealousy takes three 

then it has sides 

 

Above the fuselage of a shining plane 

smooth orange and white 

blinks the sky  

I smile for intensification 

 

Love again has woven  

its extensive index 

into another breast 

and I’m essentially unknowable