receding arrears panic
when disruptions concealed
their lost awe
to abdominal radar
There was an America
of red brick with limestone trim.
It was small, overcrowded,
and stood, in upper New York Bay,
at the edge of that other vast America.
In this Paris neighborhood
I read a book on The Resistance
to strengthen my poor French.
As I close the book the sun starts to set
Beneath soft skies and damp wrapped mountains
old men now bundled in earth against this cold
are fading memories of their war
like sepia photographs lost in attics
Unlikely Stories turned 20 years old on July 1, 2018. The 20th Anniversary Issue was released on July 4, 2018 and included more than a hundred authors and artists.
To set the process in motion I decide, arbitrarily, to use the three lines on page 62 as a post-snippet. Then, I begin at the bottom of page 61 and, working my way up to the title, arrive at the following poem:
The season of leaving arrives and we forge makeshift vows and conjure ceremonies out of smoke and flowers in a tiny cabin. Why, always, this shack stacked with dead wood upon dead wood?
But she was only shadows for
relic, vined up the lattice
work of astral rise. Drawing
air to the beds of her form
turning through another room,
Which is why I’ve kept my secret cold. Blank. Unforgiving. When I’m out walking it calls to me. Sounding high and strained. As if a string instrument gone out of tune. Something to reach toward. Frayed yet determined. It eats to my bone working its way beyond.
Sister says it’s redhead Judas
she can place it in the Holy Word
Sheriff leans from the passenger side
says it’s gamblers playing side bets
even the levee’s black & blue
the river whittles every stick
collapses lax relents
its trip out to sea
A flower born of a passing goose on
the verge of an unfinished sky
never hesitates to become a memory
of an insane supermarket cashier.
we burst forward like lightning,
prepared to claim our destiny
what we tasted, we wanted
without swallowing salt
Occasionally when discussing
great American novels, the walls
shook. Ravines were blasted
for more rocks to crush into powder.
You have 3 minutes.
You have to pick
3 minutes 3 minutes 3 minutes
to live over and over until they wake you—
‘Who you votin’ for, Ray?’
The constant refrain makes his glasses slip
however often he pushes them up his inherited nose.
‘Ain’t votin’ for no damn body.’
His Purple Haze became my breath, my flesh.
Star Spangled Banner sizzled —
igniting the world with flames
from his guitar. Jimi flipped the Strat
over, reversed the strings—
The great hall is ornate,
unpeopled, terribly hushed.
Hand holds an unshelved book that
won’t open. One after
another, books that won’t open.
Even after death.
I wear the t-shirt around the house.
The heathens sing.
About my unbuttoned blouse.
He couldn’t say that he
Couldn’t say that he couldn’t
Wish for a kinder father.
What could he say, faced
With those sorts of choices?
Swilled on Labor Day at Lake Havasu
With body bags more plentiful than
boats
Drifting from motel to motel
I have buried men like gods
dressed in the rags of the state,
my fiery way
in the throat of things to come,
beautiful women robbed
of beauty and sense,
O sand O silk O galactic black wild—she dances naked, breathless, on the web-spread surfaces of Zodiacal light.
O exposed bruises, O love doubled into madness, madness into self murder
flood of sunlight bouncing off dust particles, ions in the coronal plasma, forbidden spectral emission lines—
To speak in parable, the
most vintage smoking
paraphrenalia is super light
& packable because it lets
you leave the poles behind.
When we think back on it, we’ll call it “the end times”
and remember the strongmen tying knots in their thick ropes
just before they used them for saving those in the crevasses.
It is true what the priest discovered. I have heard others tell of it. The bones of Jews have been ground into the road to the green cemetery tended for the SS graves.
Things don’t manifest
based on your intention
or your vibration
or when you’re ready for them
or at the right time.
To love her I stuff
hearts inside my eyes—cartoons but pumping
real blood too—real and red
as a child in summer
no reason left to act on logic alone. no charges of aiding & abetting
the madness. revolution of unconditional love will bear all responsibility.
complete with endless summer soundtrack. no advertising budget will
be needed when supernatural is added into the equation.
The ambassador said the embassy would not turn over their guest
since American prisons are the darling of the tiers monde.
Some people look away from the blood.
Some people can't stop looking into it.
Some people bleed inside their brain.
Some people swim away on the blood of life
until they turn into something new.
then there is nothing to be detached from,
nothing to be attached to but a serial
infinity of the same choice: to be, happy
or not, enlightened, else, the resulting
happiness-no-happiness,
where is the marriage muzzle when you need it most?
coast to coast nihilist in search of midnight missives
gypsy rings carved out of tree bark, don’t be sorry
for never being what your mother wanted, the ospreys
are here now, the hard part is over, thrown bored-eyed
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