All the dead unworthy
of a vigil because of
the place where they died
All in Poetry
All the dead unworthy
of a vigil because of
the place where they died
there in this muddled breathing was learnt
takes a paintbrush more than bulging biceps
a fountain pen instead of a saw, hammer, and boards
i didn’t have anything appropriate
to put in a scrapbook
can you see where this is going?
What does it cost, sixteen years old, to fly?
On ground such price for sanctuary, sky.
Free to speak and drink, they guzzled
and yelped until a downpour drove them
inside to keep their powder dry.
Greedily he drank poison
forcing down into his blood, his cells, his vapor,
ugliness as sharp as a first crack of lightning
across an empty prairie.
The occasional stabs
and the faint
buzz in my belly
convince me that this
is completely normal.
you move like a planet
the curve of your limbs in orbit
against the cold combustion of space—
s everything word worthy?
Is a poem a manifest?
If you can see in the dark, can you still die?
If this is a light in the dark, will it bind you?
Will words wrapped around a crime end the crime forever?
Where does The Religion of (No)
Scarcity take us—
what do we look to,
from what do we look away.
Ashley, the other relief bartender at the Disco Duck, had told me not to worry, that she was an expert at the manifestation of cold, hard cash. “It’s called the dry hustle, honey,” she’d said in her saccharin drawl. “Dry because you never have to, you know, fuck ’em?”
we feed
the economy. &, this kind of ejaculation
keeps us
checked. ‘Cause we’re so much worse other-
wise.
So when an entire gallery of mystical beasts,
purple toads and mountain boomers,
are made into Real Life and available to me,
now that I’m out of fresh episodes of nostalgia,
you have to know I’m going to lose it.
Boarded up, the windows are now
closed eyelids of the sleeping, and the silence
dressing this place hangs loosely
I aimed
my red pen & spoke,
You will not
get a thing for this ride!
There’s the “windsor knot.” That silent addict—on time for his (breakfast, lunch, dinner) release. For the ritual that screws him into his dry clean shirt, afterwards. He has trimmed. He has yanked on his beveled black sock.
He’d been dead for thirty years,
but I’ll play Scrabble with anyone.
Our selection for Best Book of 2017: We Are All Terminal But This Exit is Mine by James H. Duncan
It continues to snow dust.
The sun comes out of the closet.
Jays enter under the door
jumping over a line of air.
Maybe it was just the light,
cracked somewhere, leaked out,
lucky—I thought you shifted away
in voice, my mouth to hear,