Locked

Caitlin Scarano

To stand in the middle of winter and speak of summer,
your mouth fragile & green.

Every devotion is a twisted rope with two ends.
Think of a burial. How close that word is to boy.

Think of the feverdream as a harvest, the room
spinning even and low as a record.

Or that time you saw two bull moose
antlerlocked in a clearing, snow just starting to fall.

Every aggression is instinctual. Picture the pockets
in your body. How much time you wasted

imagining sons with boneweak men. Last
night you dreamt that your mother was dead

and you inherited her house. All of that softened
glass suddenly yours.

sit later

Alisa Golden

golden-sit-later

In the Moonlight

Ingrid Jendrzejewski

Night is a
violence of signs
in which you

made me whole:
soft earth beckoned
and I stayed.

I am filled
and the leaves
need to spiral.

Becoming a Lepidopterist

Zackary Medlin

First, circle your palms
around a dogwood tree.
Now squeeze. Strangle
loose every scaly leaf
until the moths that are
its petals unshutter their wings
and leave. If they should swirl
about you like a thousand
shrouds, die. If they do not,
then follow. Bring a net.
If a net is unavailable,
circle your palms around
a drop of the dizzied wind.
Take that moth upon your
tongue & grin. Should it thrash
itself against your teeth,
you are neither the sun
nor moon it navigates by,
keeping its body constantly
angled relative to their light.

Almost Asemic

Barbara March

First I have to say words are generally damaged beyond the point of legibility, even so, I won’t let coyote just go to anyone, not by verbal expression, he is truly a awesome pen, he is smooth and works good off your legs  and has a sweet temperament and a good thinking mind which resembles writing but avoids words, he love s to b with people and will always b my pseudo gigantic, unexplored property, possibly when testing a new pen, I truly believe It looks like writing, (but we can’t quite read it,) Tony said he has a lot of meaning through his shape, others take us for a ride along their curves, we like some, we dislike others, I had to put down my pencil that I had since a yearling she was n15 she broke her leg devastating, She was my best friend I just don’t feel like since she s gone not yet anyways I must say he does need a hot wire he seems to get himself in trouble gets his foot stuck, stands there wordless writing till u get him free so yes hot wire if u want to talk u can call oh and my pic s arrive at a personal, absolutely correct mis-interpretation.

The Downed

Becca Borawski Jenkins

The three of them stood in the field and stared at the cow lying in the grass. Her husband had told her not to look. The old man had concurred. But the old man had shot the cow, so he was not to be trusted.

“My wife is inside and she’s dying,” the old man said.

“That’s not the cow’s fault,” she said.

“It was either me or the cow,” the old man replied.

The cow’s head jerked with a snort. Blood sprayed from its nose onto her husband’s pants.

She waited for her husband to react, but he didn’t.

from Notebook: New Mexico

Tom Montag

Along I-25, Heading for Santa Fe

What the mountains
offer

where there’s nothing
you want?

In this faltering light,
the light.

Robot #18 (meal plan)

Jennifer MacBain-Stephens

The robot attempts to prepare a romantic dinner. He folds napkins like a Russian chess player: confident, stony-faced, and precise. But the courses are somewhat of an internet cliché. The salad is first. Then a bisque. Then a roast chicken. Then German chocolate cake (the German threw him off for a bit, but he then realized it was just part of the name). It is worthy of any juvenile first attempt at romantic meal planning. But where is the personality, robot? Where is the danger?

Rain, the rumble of future rain

Gail Goepfert

—lines found in habry, Helen Degen Cohen

In the middle of the universe
 in its silent eye
 like a black pearl,
take a deep breath with me, and rest

in the deep forests of the earth
 wildflowers
silken blue, among orange poppies
 deep, deep in
and the silence blows.

Now her high time is over.
  Let her lines speak—

it was, really
 all the little days
 the things she saved alive
with such wildness
 a rose in her hand
 weightless and smiling

 humming & humming

Oh Lord, there is
 her poetry to lie on
 and wind, and wind and glisten
and harps
 writing shadows in the golden sky.

Lantern; orgasm. Silence.
 Later, perhaps, the holy moon.

De Profundis

James Reidel

A fresh mole tunnel has disturbed the grass. So the earth opens its veins to the sky and where the freemasons would think to pour forth, with their legions, their little martial poses and airs as red as the redcoats I would arrange around my bed swords high and muskets trained only to be smote with my pillow still wet with my face and tears. Time out!

I have a garden hoe now. I have a trap that I could see duct-taped to a broomstick and so brandish the double trident of some final and human dare. But the countermining along the north wall and the children’s bedrooms, which we like to think of as empty “guest rooms,” where all the radiators are closed to save on the heat, has surfaced into the pine bark bed and felled my forest of Echinacea, their stalks leaning this way and that, the purple pompoms and golden eyes that would delight my day like so many false buttons running up and down a birthday clown’s smock.

So I just walk around the house in a mope and tug at the curtains, the chinks in their material, the way I might have wanted that old clown to twist for me yet another deer, another dachshund, or my favorite, the little balloon sword. I named it Cling-clang and burst in front of the other children and parents, squeezing the blade up from the bottom, and on purpose.

So I am miserable in your eyes that travel from this page to the next, feather mites on the blackbird’s wing, who watch like gods flying, looking for some new and blacker forest.

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