Four Poems by Mark Young

Olbers & the Okapi

 

The okapi survives

through excellent

camouflage. That

& the fact it is the

 

only antelope who

has ever puzzled

over Heinrich Ol-

bers's paradox —

 

if the universe is

infinite & full of

stars, why is the

sky dark at night?

 

 

A / newt's first / law of motion

 

The problem

with being

amphibious

is I can never

remember

whether it’s

the coach

driver or

the dive

coach that’s

supposed

to be looking

after me. 

 

 

Ambit ions

 

Using a

locator

spell, I

track down

my absent

imagination

 

& find it is

currently

a charged

particle

in the queue

waiting to

 

audition

for Ameri-

can Idol.

 

 

Open Letter Operetta

(A Tom Beckett Title)

Librettist:

You don't need a
letter opener to
open a letter when
it's an open letter.

Director:

That's great! Now if we repeat that a number of times then that's the operetta half-written already. What characters did you have in mind?

Librettist:

Was thinking of a cheated-on partner as lead, a mezzo-soprano, a bit of a Taylor Swift voice. Other characters would include the non-singing postal worker who brought a letter from the partner in which they admit their cheating & end with an unapologetic goodbye. The contents of the letter could be sung by the departing partner from a position near the back of the stage.

To go with that, perhaps partly performed as a contrapuntal overlap with the preceding:

Today the post-
woman brought
me a letter from my
ex-partner. I will

not open it be-
cause I am al-
ready aware of
what it will say.

To follow on, we have a scene where the spurned spouse sings or speaks their response as they post it to Facebook or another platform since something that appears on social media can be framed as an open letter for contemporary times.

We must, however, in order to adhere to the spirit of an operetta, retain some comedic aspects even though this is essentially a sad piece. Perhaps introduce a chorus who individually comment on the response, &, collectively, interrupt with a repetitive response such as "letter opener, open letter" or "never getting back together again."

From Equations: Antithesis by Adam Fieled

#62

Jade, like Trish, likes to zap me with past lovers. Brian, at one point, was a music industry bigwig whose appetites led him into lethargy and destitution. Jade learned all the cocaine tricks she knows from Brian— sleep quotients, food quotients, how much to buy and when. The thing that irks me about Brian is that she speaks in doting terms of all his failures— the lechery that sapped his energy, the laziness that assumed too much. Jade’s reverse mountain psychology has strange quirks— she only dotes on failures that have as their backdrop absolute material success. She loves the rags to riches to (almost) rags scenario, but she notices (and this is the crucial bit to her) Brian is cared for. He won’t starve, struggle, or implode— his material life is secure. Jade loves that for all the motions and maneuvers that have defined Brian’s existence, he’s pretty much the same guy he’s always been. That interior sameness is something I don’t particularly understand— how a human being can develop this sort of negative integrity and maintain it over long periods of time. But I notice that Jade really does change and is often stymied by her own alterations. Each new role to play effaces the last; and how many roles can one be compelled to play in one’s lifetime? Jade, like me, bears the burden of absolute sensitivity— everything lost or gained creates a new mark on an already over-marked consciousness. If Jade has a hard time doting on me, it’s only because I show her a mirror image as warped, deceptive, and evanescent as the one you see in a circus mirror, that may or may not be moving towards a new height or depth. 

#63

I have the challenge set out before me: to accept my own hollowness, as I watch Jade perform her daily tasks. There is a sense that I am watching a series of multiplications: first Jade is this person, then that person. All of this signifies that Jade sees my own multiplications when we touch. But if there is no stable center inhering in either of us, who are the two people that fuse their physical energies, in such a way that the world is briefly effaced? Multiplications can be taken two ways— as a destruction of stable centers, or the creation of variegated parts that form coherent wholes. Because Jade needs her drugs more than I do, I feel her desperate edge of a woman hovering above an abyss, a woman who cannot look down. I’m past the point of believing in myself as savior or personal Jesus; Jade must live with her crosses and bang through them on her own. My own cross is the vision of multiplications ending, simply because each ephemeral self expresses the same desires, tastes, fixations, and foibles. Jade and I can’t give each other that much— Trish could never teach me this, because our basic, shared presumption was that nothing existed but what we could give each other. As I make love to Jade, there is a charity I feel towards her predicated on her own unacknowledged autonomy— that she has more than she thinks she has. If we persist without knowing yet what our equation is, I know that much of it has to do with shared charity, expressed in a context of basic and final separation and singularity. 

#64

One night, just for amusement, I showed Jade all my mementos of Trish. I have stills of all of Trish’s early pictures; shots taken of us on vacation in Montreal (us in the botanical gardens, looking like hippies with Chinese lanterns us); notes Trish wrote to me at different times; and the shirts Trish bought me as birthday gifts. It was funny to watch Jade’s reaction; she sees in Trish a vast amount of frost, a frigidity that sullies her beauty. How did I stay with a frigid woman for so long? Maybe it’s because I enjoy crashing through ice; maybe I’m a masochist. But it’s amusing to me that I never completely acknowledged Trish’s frigidity. Perhaps I thought she could be thawed over time. I get a sense in all this of how myths are created and passed along. Is myth the final equation for the human race? Is that the only way information can be passed along? We live in our pasts, we live with the myths that have shaped us, and if there is a place for truth in myths, it is a self-created truth that can hone and separate. In truly lived moments, myths are moot— they are established afterwards to amplify and consolidate these moments. It seems to me that Jade and I are deliberately evading the mythical in our mating— there’s nothing to hold, nothing to latch onto. It’s just that the persistent ache in our bodies needs to be assuaged; whatever remains of our souls hovers around us uncertainly.

Adam Fieled

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

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?

Guests, by Barbara Anna Gaiardoni

strawberry moon
alternate universes
don't stay put

Granny comes out with a wooden spoon. “Try sweet potato instead of white potato,” she announces.
That is the signal that we should stop what we are doing because it's exactly the right time, because to enjoy his sweet potato cake on the terrace, accompanied by sweet potato chips and palm honey.
Obviously the sun disappeared in the meanwhile and pics of Grandma serving the cake are unwatchable. But we go beyond those things because our noses keep us in the present.

panic . . .
a queen bee tied
to her chin 

Two Poems by Emma Grey Rose

REMOTE AREAS

 

white withering globes of light that float above flowers, blooming. planted seasons, seasons wilting, death, light, snow on—tree branches, leaves, veil of—sun. weak strains of pink light falling on—blankets of white, heaven.

WHERE THE YELLOW RAIN FALLS

 

There are clouds in the sky that are violent. I have the steering wheel. Yes, it is strange, I say. You told me this would happen. I am talking to you. The seats are all empty. The car drives along, under the clouds, the ones that are violent. It does so even when I lift my foot, forgetting to set it back down. The sky is dark. There is a burst of lightning, which is sudden. It is cold. Up ahead is a patch of black and green. I talk aloud, looking through the windshield. The wipers are slow to work. The wipers get stuck. Do you think it will let up? I ask. Should I pull off? The windows are down. There is rain. You do not talk back. The seats are all empty. I think of where to go. Perhaps off the cliff? I ask. The roads here, they are open. You know I love you, I say. You know I miss you, I say. The clouds are violent. Perhaps off the cliff? I ask.

Four Poems by Adam Deutsch

Soft Watershed

 

Where every door today opens 
to some farm, horses’ teeth grass in a season 
of no blankets strapped to bodies in mourning. 

A pig scratching rib-chub on a hayloft ladder, 
and there, between toes, a nugget of garlic
to sooth an itch. Your knees are on 

a cracking shower mat you thought we threw away,
rolled out at the crawl space mouth
where earth is dark and rain moves it to mud.

A pipe leaks irrigant, a root 
giving its younger brother a noogie, 
a valve acting like it’s a dam, 

a city fleet en route on some planting day. 
For the area of intentional garden, 
our mothers go to succulent vendors, 

landscape tenders, haul surplus
amended earth to cover ground. You hide hands
under the house, where palms get enflamed 

from some force task. A sprinkler goes 
off in an hour near noon, 
and everything it touches singed by sun.


Around the Nice Mall

once driving, we’re all brutal together—a conga line mosh pit. red lights hitting heads. if one hand comes off the wheel and those two fingers rise, it’s the sign for peace or taunting victory. you’re all, thank you, or, take that, buddy! the cut off. winning in a road, and an arrival home some few moments later, without having missed those commercials that run before the previews before the movie. these clearances from these clearance racks.

where people get off and on free ramp ways, and everyone needs to blinker over lanes you think all the vehicles must be friends. the Liberties, Infinities, Sols, Civics, Tundras, Explorers, Avalons, Centuries, Crowns, Beetles, Quests, Leaves love each other, and we raise our arms out their windows, to make the mergings with consent. 

it’s possible, in gratitude, you’ve looted time. but then nobody follows you off the southbound. there’s no counter strike coming through the juncture, so a battle you didn’t even mean to declare, friend, gets decided for you. 

 

When This City Isn't Made Loud

 

You wake again to the feral parrots whistles, 
each of their little hearts that beats, then beats, 

and starts over again. The marine layer this early
swaddling our region the way a yawn makes a song

of abundant wind: mostly silence. It’s in that space
you invent, and reinvent the hot shower 

in a light that’s never dissolved, claim it clearly 
like ice water in tall glasses, and your toes

in the narrow nails of grass that barricade a park’s sprinkler
head with soaked shanks. You can hear you think 

about your rituals that rumble, that peace of repetition,
dependable as a stone in the middle of sweet drupe.

Count on it, and the clicking of its bounce on concrete
down the steps, along the gutter. You can hear it long.

 

Neighborhood to Neighborhood

 

A walk from the mesa to the down
town is a rock’s little dance atop a toilet paper roll 

a freeway shelters, arterial ramps, and faded line paint.
Fingers that make sounds also stretch 

their knuckle collection, or’re tough meat mounds 
of hand that rest half closed in what feels like

the safest space between palm and fist. 
And gravity holds you, so reluctantly you know

you could go flying at any moment. You’re fragile
as a homemade microphone, a piezo held 

to a beer can’s bottom with gum, an uncomplex system 
that draws a mouth from a body, it’s soft chitter 

that translates to a city that reaches up to clean mess off of us. 
A deep shadow, a walking sweat, is thrown

from a car: an egg you can catch
in a sling of bandana gently torn of blanket

 

 

Adam Deutsch

Three Poems by Oliver Kleyer

Saturnalia

When Elon Musk became president of Mars, I migrated to Saturn. At first, I wanted to go to Venus, but the jogging route on the Rings sounded too promising. Initially, it was hard to get accepted by the Saturnians in my village, but after joining the volunteer fire brigade, I became a valued member of the community. The food is also very tasty, very spicy and mostly vegetarian. I have not yet learned the language here, so I can not tell you the names of the dishes. I am communicating in Swedish, which is the second official language after Saturnese. I am living now a far better live than before. My favourite part of the day is seeing Earth rise on my morning jogging round on the Outer Ring.

 

The bath

Today, when I went into the bathroom to take a bath, I found a mermaid in my bathtub. She was about half my age and had long brown hair, completely covering her upper body, so everything I am telling you is SFW. From her waist down, she had a fish tail, which is no surprise, since she was a mermaid. She smiled at me whimsically. After all, the situation was embarrasing for both of us.

“How did you get in here?”, I finally asked, hopefully not too harsh. “Your caretaker let me in” she answered. “She said you wouldn’t mind since you have a soft heart for refugees and are also an expert on folklore and mythology.” “Yes, that’s true. But right now, I want to take a bath.” “No problem. I don’t mind you joining me.” Remembering the reputation mermaids have in some stories, I denied, saying: “I prefer my bath with foam and I don’t think that would be good for your scales. But can’t you get out for a moment? Doesn’t your tail turn to legs when you’re out of the water?” “That’s what you and Andersen think!”So I just brushed my teeth and went to the bedroom. I wasn’t even surprised anymore when I found a dragon sleeping in my bed.

 

The Tattoo

A longhaired man went into a tattoo parlour. Actually, he wasn’t really the tattoo type, But he wanted to try something daring. He thought that the shoulder would be a good place. Unsure which motive to choose, he skipped through the suggestions folder. At first, he opted for a screaming Frank Zappa, the Chunga’s Revenge cover picture. But then, he found this lovely portrait of a beautiful woman, drawn in a 1950ies style, but with a 2022-vibe. The tattooing was a bit painful, but afterwards, he thought, that it really was worth it. After all, he now would never be lonely in his life again. 

 

Oliver Kleyer

Two Poems by Tony Beyer

In the event of 

 

1 

if you want to get the most      out of these poems     value for money or more     significantly value for time     discard expectation first     be who and how you are     a pilgrim venturing by eye down     the black on white path of the page 

 

2 

in the absence of clocks     church bells or calls to prayer     from a tower or temple     time is silent     accumulating and dispersing     at the same pace always     what’s gained on one hand     soon spent by the other 

 

3 

whenever I feel need     of support I return     to Cold Mountain     a human existence     so precarious he resorted     to begging and eating weeds     and yet so rich     in every other way     he may not even     have existed     at least in the guise     posterity imposes on him 

 

4 

to make his country     more efficient the dictator     introduced clocks     and had them synchronised     so the peasants who formerly     rose with the sun and returned     from their fields at dusk     now had an accurate     measure of the working day    though still there was     little profit to be made     from their smallholdings     after tithes and taxes     were paid to their rulers 

 

5 

here comes one now     possessions in a     kitchen bin liner     trouser cuffs frayed     from dragging     what’s left of his mind     not here at all     in this place and time  

 

6 

a half truth     is still half a lie     the river and the curved boats     that ply it     the storm at sea     and the widows it makes     of decent women     a village below the snowline     where chimney smoke     drifts between houses     policies of the next government     if it is the next government 

 

7 

you go to the ground     and colour of the ground    to nature      large monochromatic areas     moss and myrtle     juniper and bamboo     the light in its     infinite agility     subtler in shape than pigment     changes and changes     or damps down and shadows variegation  

 

8 

in the same week Tane Norton died     so too did Sugar Man     Robbie Robertson and Brice Marden      a generation over eighty passing on     passing their energy on     joining hands with the fire dead of Lahaina     war dead of Ukraine     from an increasingly debilitated planet 

 

The outcome 

1 

seagulls shriek and circle 

over the remains of a drowned goat 

washed down by the flood 

 

other perhaps more horrible things 

lie under the brown water 

waiting to surface 

 

some are only ideas 

or long memories of boundary disputes 

night footsteps on a gravel road 

 

a boat with a motor bubbling at the stern 

explores channels for hazards 

backing or turning into cleared passages 

 

people it’s hard to feel solidarity with 

arrive to collect finds among the debris 

and are gone by nightfall 

 

sight and taste and smell are lost 

underneath where fright is instant 

and silent to the end 

 

 

2 

 

in the empty house there are traces 

of three generations 

 

polished brass shell cases from a war 

and a croquet trophy 

 

orange froth in the sink 

after a pasta meal 

 

curtains drawn but light through the doorway 

articulates an inner room 

 

we who have never lived here  

can only surmise

 

face masks     boiler suits     polythene overshoes 

fingertip-searching the flower beds for evidence 

 

 

3 

 

mirrors forget the images 

reflected in them 

and even the cleanest window 

interrupts the sky 

 

light so often used 

as a metaphor for clarity 

can be more subtle 

than we are persuaded 

 

narratives of the past 

lead to unwarranted expectations 

not all of which 

make it into history 

 

a distant cry 

signals a return home 

only time can confirm 

as sorrowful or joyful 

 

the bright side 

is the side where the residents 

dressed for the occasion 

meet and discuss 

 

in fiction the investigator 

is the maestro 

drawing the threads 

into a solution 

 

yet any artist knows 

it is the miscreant 

without whom there’d be no story 

who started all this