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Breakfast with Fur
Listen to a podcast of Katherine Hoerth’s “Breakfast with Fur.”
When Picasso remarked that anything could be covered in fur — Oppenheim obliged, skinned the Chinese gazelle – removed flesh from bone so speckled hair could cover elegant teacups and elegant ladies could enjoy breakfast with fur. Now we sip sir earl gray, pour his full body into a neatly trimmed cups, (blood and all things undesirable removed) manicured as to not turn the stomachs of us ladies —
so elegant. Now pour him from a teapot and he’ll swirl into the speckled fur. Add a dab
» Continue reading Two Poems by Katherine Hoerth…
He’s the one who looks like he came from Trader Vic’s, wearing a sideways rum punch smile. A cool dude who wants to smooch long haired beachy girls sipping coconut milk under palm fronds. His shirt is splashed with ruby flowers that echo a suburban shangri-la chair cushion. His hair is an hibachi of charcoal curls. It would take two hands to wrap around those arms— all tan and bendy like a piece of rattan (not the cheap wicker stuff). His breath is scented with passion fruit and pineapple. At night he dines on crab rangoon and sips Tiki Punch—then
» Continue reading Atomic Tiki Man by Karen Kelsay…
Listen to a podcast of Joe Copplestone’s “Here Comes The Avalanche.”
Death to bingo wings and retirement spent on fags and red wine
On migraines and your children hiding from your smell of soot
Here comes the avalanche
The ghosts of milkmen and the silence of factories
Waiting for this well housed street to be flooded or burnt down
Waiting for war
Waiting for the return of heroes
Waiting for tradition and rebellion
Death to wishing for black and white
Death to wishing for brown
Death to wishing and wishing for death
Death to gods and myths
Death to industry
» Continue reading Here Comes The Avalanche. by Joe Copplestone…
Hachures1
Do you remember the first time you read a map and could not understand where we were and who must have lived in the folds of your hand?
I walk myself to the laundromat where my towels sit there waiting. Outside autumn cracks its hands open and casts its hemline wide like a prayer. Faint and muted flickering trees lean into rows teeming of amber and carmine, their sprays blue under the foliage.
It is warm outside but cold somewhere. Somebody is listening to Beriot with the radio pointed out the window. It plays like a dream where I
» Continue reading Hachures by Stacey Tran…
I remember poking my finger in the clay –what served as soil in the side-yard of my youth in Kansas– burrowing about an inch down, as if to prompt the bursting of the hyacinths which I loved so much. It would rain.
Not a timid spray of west coast fog or an upright new england shower, but the stomping Pawnee thunder that shook the screen door frames and filled the lake to swelling with its release.
The clay was an unforgiving slab of liver. Silt that has been packed to forgetting: a form between lake and rock, an inevitable, infertile,
» Continue reading A Prompt by Joly Herman…
To live, to pass the point of undertaking, to give until now weeps a wall of words. What else can we do who struggle? Who are afraid of whose axe? Stay with me, with the love.
Yet, how Gods wail, but you don’t need their profundity, just your relief.
Time is reborn Let’s remain yet … Gods joke gladly at this chimera, those tyrants, immortal, who anoint, then cut down, get their kicks indulging their priests, unenlightening you.
So quite alive, let’s raise our truth like glasses. Re-enter relaxing. Since we may slip, lie down with me, so that I
» Continue reading Invitation, Invocation by John Grey…
Eggs
Listen to a podcast of Paige Riehl’s “Eggs.”
Represent forced abstinence.Not that this is problematic for chickens(but who can know for sure?). Eggs are white albumen, golden vitellus, sun-like orbs of possibilitysuspended. I can smell their buttery sex.
Scholastic Book Orders
Listen to a podcast of Paige Riehl’s “Scholastic Book Orders.”
Choose two onlytwo we canafford. Twofrom so manyother worlds, alternate endings.
Pour over the shortdescriptions, titles, miniature book cover pictures. Highlight and circleerase and re-circle. Get up at midnight. Re-think the two. Ask
which your friendswill get. Three or four? Rich kids. Hold the bookorder form as if
» Continue reading Two Poems by Paige Riehl…
I can see dark things through the envelope you gave me.
At some point, the weatherman is going to say something about the crooked movement of your legs east.
These boots make me think you’d make an awful swampgod.
Once the water is heavy enough, coins will breathe near the surface again.
My sister has the good hands, and I got the bathtub claws.
Any other beast would’ve given up on pond rings by now.
Carrie Lorig
About the author:
Carrie Lorig is living in Madison, WI for the second time. Her work has been
» Continue reading Swampgods by Carrie Lorig…
In the summer I smuggled you tomato plants. We hid inside the clear, flapping plastic amongst the wet bristle of cucumber leaves and waited for a tornado to lift every emblazoned Chevy pickup off the gravel grocery parking lot. At night we passed the squat triple-sec bottle, listened to Prince on your tape deck. A clove cigarette lit under your nose: your lips smelled like baked goods, your breath smelled like geraniums. You pulled out your camera, click click like a string of beads, click like teeth to glass bottles, click click, each line on the cash register tape. I
» Continue reading June by Amelia Foster…
Listen to a podcast of Michael Lee Johnson’s “Leaves in December.”
Leaves, a few stragglers in December, just before Christmas, some nailed down crabby to ground frost, some crackled by the bite of nasty wind tones.
Some saved from the matchstick that failed to light. Some saved from the rake by a forgetful gardener.
For these few freedom dancers left to struggle with the bitterness: wind dancers wind dancers move your frigid bodies shaking like icicles hovering but a jiffy in sky, kind of sympathetic to the seasons, reluctant to permanently go, rustic, not much time more to play.
» Continue reading Leaves in December by Michael Lee Johnson…
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