The concīs Summer 2017 seasonal anthology (PDF) is out! Featuring: Allan Peterson, Amanda Bermudez, Anatoly Molotkov, Benjamin L. Perez, Bob Heman, Brad Rose, Britny Cordera, Christian Tanner, Clemonce Heard, Deborah Bacharach, Devon Balwit, Eric G. Wilson, Florence Lenaers, Howie Good, Jake Edgar, James Blevins, Jari Chevalier, Jeff Griffin, Jennifer Handley, Jennifer Wortman, John Sibley Williams, Jude Dillon, KJ Hannah Greenberg, Kristen Havens, Kristen Renee Miller, Laton Carter, Lita Kurth, Martha McCollough, Michelle Granville, Nate Maxson, Peter Munro, Rick Alley, Ricky Ray, Robin Wyatt Dunn, Salvatore Difalco, Timothy Adams, Will Cordeiro and Christopher Lee Miles!
Optimism
The gift of the future was finding out
how wrong we were about the past
We were so open to everything
it was like unprotected X
We wrote words like leaves that fell
and turned in the current
as a rotating wing reducing pressure
on its cambered face produces lift
Pastoral
Someone made a craft of balloons and lawnmowers
a chaise lounge a cup for martinis and rose above landscape
drifted and came down pleasantly streamside
where kingbirds were associating easily with peewees
and tyrants the way a dalmatian can move among holsteins
with a sense of belonging
Impaction
Some people state some people, but neither word is exactly what they mean. Some is a lie, because it expresses inexactitude, and people is a lie because it is a generality. The people that state some people know exactly what they are saying, but choose inexact generalities to express it.
The word impact, meaning the point of collision, no longer suffices as a noun. Engineers find themselves impacted by the living conditions they witness. They are impacted by the people in these conditions, and the people, because of their conditions, have no choice but to impact.
Dentists are not impacted like engineers. Dentists witness impaction. A wisdom tooth becomes impacted, and the dentist’s job is to extract it from impaction.
Influence is like wind — the thing itself is invisible, but its effect is free and available to the eye. Trees bend to it — people’s lives break from it.
Execution
Blinded and bound, I stiffen
for triggers.
Inside my eye you spread.
The horses you water by the shore.
Bullets splash my heart,
blue hooves, the waves
The Brightening Air
Chartreuse gown
iconic as Harlow
between songs you smoke
your bedroom flickers
my sonnet on dahlias
the hyaline dawn
As Soon As Possible in the Past
Stuffed animals left a knife smell
we stick on the asphalt. I suggested no
such half-toothed smile. Warm
drink, arrogant beauty—
possibilities of night, deserted
hallways. It was—
it was not her.
A blonde started throat dancing.
I dance, I did, I dance, I do a little.
Light, chewing sound of copper pennies
being run through the mouth. I found
myself licking the motel window.
Air thick with burning feathers.
Tape the door closed, tomorrow
will take all day.
Ontology
A bullet-size hole
in my chest; my best
attempts at love escape. A story
of wrong doors opened
in a wrong order. A multiple
choice test. A towel I left
on the beach
the morning
my mother ran out of air.
Turn Around
Let me repent my god and die.
Without a woman I am not.
I offered everything. It bought
me nothing. In the church of thigh
and idyll, she strips. But her sighs
betray the worship I have sought.
Let me repent my gods and die.
Without a woman I am not
nothing yet my praise seems a lie,
empty as wind in a chime, caught
briefly in sound like a blood clot
snags on what a spirit denies.
Let me repent, O Lord, and die.