When I said I like you this way:

- acrobat
- architect
- motion

I meant autoerotic, sunday afternoon, 
heat. I  meant orbital, clenched fists, 
our concrete apartment /
accidents & bruised tongue

When I said I like you this way 
I meant milk lapped, 
you begging for what I couldn't,
vulpine & submissive in the only way.
I meant commitment
I meant strawberry red, accented, 

vital

What are we waiting for?


​

I once sat in
parking lots
with boys in
torn collars.
One had red hair,
he gave me sips
of schnapps
I was fourteen
and crowded with
the sparkling
abundance of
treasure.

I pretended to
like camel cigarettes
the sound of
smoke in
my throat was
a giveaway
to how young
I didn’t want to be.


​

A.M. O’ Malley lives in Portland, OR where she is the Executive Director of the Independent Publishing Resource Center. Her writing has appeared in Nailed Magazine, Poor Claudia, and The Burnside Review, among other publications. Expecting Something Else is her first full-length book of poems and came out this spring on University of Hell Press. Follow A.M. O’Malley at amomalley.com.

Untitled
 
A banjo player,
sitting on his stoop,
finds a little piece
of banjo string
in his heel.
He is handed tweezers,
which he uses to tug the string out.
He bleeds.


​

I look at blackbirds     thirteen more     ways
    
          after wallace stevens

I.
a tied knot , a black coruscation ;

II.
what appears , and now fades , in the agitated
snow-bound soil ;

III.
as contact and re-contact and lifting 
away into hard blue eggshell blue as 
blue after biting ;

IV.
eyes , a dead rabbit's eyes in a butcher's 
shop window ;

V.
two sudden emanations – the woman looks up from her phone , and tatwig street is on fire
its violence immaculate

VI.
without inflection , the dutiful sudden
candour of rainfall ;

VII.
smouldering snow-bound driveways , if considering blackbird we are far
without patience ;

VIII.
forgetting , punching an
incorrect number ;

IX.
the aeration of beats of her wings
on a window 

X.
five or seventeen or twelve swooping black bodies

XI.
sunlight is faded, articulate flutter ;

XII.
its instruments fade like a portion of night ;

XIII.
my phone screen blurs at the scent of his body – my phone screen blurs at the scent of his arms







NIGHT AUTO

    I.
I kept my hands on the dashboard. I kept my hands 
down as the snow made the journey
blind and buried our treads in the night's butter
coloured tailback to a city 
filled with art galleries and  funeral homes
and funeral homes
which hung paintings on their walls 
of tuscan landscapes and spanish
pavilions . the coffins of our mothers weighed nothing
or weighed too much! the pale water
colours make death seem like a holiday, like
something you can return from.

    II.
in the time it took to sing, my hexameter 
broke like a biscuit or a vase. Its sound was in my clothes, a singing 
sheaf of grass ; a grown-ass man held my language down, putting 
his fingers in his mouth at a raised restaurant table. is this what it 
takes for an arm to hold the weight
of an entire generation? Is this 
how you spread a sticky pink web
and dragged it through
my rooms? in my closed car 
I like to think about things I've forgotten,
or guess those I'm about to forget.

    III.
now i've had time , it seems
he was teaching me, in his own way, how to box, or how
to string words along like a pike in the channel ,
gauging its keenness for death with how hard
it pulls on the chord , or how limply
it writhes in the bucket , flashing
like a pocket of change ; it flashed 
in the sun! i pulled my knife out.
I made all the things I rely on
gold, and turned them around on my driveway
and drove them over into gold dust
and spread this on my soil.

    IV.
yeah - the mind can echo for a good long 
while after you say her name - 'p' ,
yes - the mind is a fine tuned 
instrument capable of returning to its 
roots from tasting how the air
works , and seeing the work
of your forebears in the careful
golden fretwork of the gentle white building 
which sits on that humber lawn like a beetle's 
broach in the sun and she keeps on coming and
going in her bright
yellow dress – yes her name can 
echo for a good long time . yes i keep 
to my ear the ground – yes i'll keep my mouth
to the night. 







After Francis Bacon's 'Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion', 1944

    I.
    the air is a sexual organ – it carries disease , dishevels
    with its fluke the dry grass around gethsemane where
    now there is a fuel station, a triad of white flats , washing
    pitched into the sun ; the shoulder blade is too a fluke ,
    my bent red intestine – purposing is why I remain, gathered
    into segmentations , or else prized out from march , its
    worrisome air ; I will wait until my name is called, gently .
    This is the certitude I have.

    II.
    rainbow bird spotting – do you admire the curve of her wing,
    its drooling mouth , its horrendous eyes ? in pyrimidines
    I call out to my father , say , what is this body in the air, dropping
    like a knife into the world's skin ? he answers, but neither is
    this more clear . the world shudders , as if space has thrown back
    one of its own, and he was a tide which sung , and startled
    the hemisphere . red black , red black , red black .

    III.
    a mouth open as far as a mouth can open ; surely this is night , 
    the clock tower of its furthest point, like a scratch made intolerable
    on the dutiful skin . brushwork is a container, but you get 
    a certain love from sweeping the tiles, your black coat, the dog's
    hair, the sky's throat . you have to press your ear up very close
    to hear the scream that caves make, that any gap or breach 
    in the world makes – just because it's     open – just because you need to .







thirty one

    I love the city ; its pulverising grey of upturned tree 
    roots, its metastasising genres of blank plastic , its plants
    like obsidian or fragile glass wafers . I gently reveal myself to 
    its
    calamity – I gently stand in the brick arches beneath holloway
    my hand clasping a bland pool , an accidental
    fallen flower , deciding how to comport myself , how to wear 
    black outside of funerals .







( the white sea-baltic canal poem )

    [ a ]
    an empty curse ; with soiled white
    hands held – in prison's
    river , forgotten to everything ; even
    our anticipate mothers , their remembrance

    on the first morning when our sentry
    called into the blankness , said the blind fields 
    were a bounty
    to the knowing – such a man mistook the clouds themselves
    for bewitched upside-down boats , their pale oars
    stroking the nether sea 
    like cigarette smoke – the wind a smoker's breath , 
    our hardness -

    [ b ]
    you want to believe good news , or 
    kill it 
    very early , before 
    it sprouts leaves or disperses seed
    in the minds of a population who have abandoned
    wellness - 

    [ c ]
    a bird wheels
    above the mud pack
    river - 

    I bend my head to see it ; 
    my neck cranes
    sideways - 

    [ d ]
    sorrento leans into the sea -
    the peach white sun leans into the sea - 
    your cough stifles the sea - 
    your dead friend , gumilev , is a name in bronze -
    they shot him in october , or at the end of september 
    ; sorrento is a wilted forest - 
    ; her squares are sun touched , unlike 
    the catacombs of lyubyanka, the farmyard smell
    that death has

    [ e ]
    the stairs of povenets
    ascend to death , to subtle waters
    in the land's mouth -
    they do not deter me . i am so, so patient.
    will I see you there?


​

Owen Vince is a poet who writes about architecture and video games. Poetry editor for HARK, he also runs PYRAMID Editions poetry press and tweets @abrightfar.

I.

no more apples in the geometric garden

can you fit an entire schoolbus in your mouth

catapult screams into paris hotel rooms

since you were born you have showered in clothes

w/o laughing

languid stick of dynamite

army of flags 

in the blue void 

i glimpse your jaw as a pyramid

hammer mountain skeletal muscle gasping

cocaine ribbon stretched between poles

in remembrance 

a chrysalis

you place yourself on an alchemy square

feigning christmas tree in front of the portrait

fire in orbs and blood on the canvas

ego death on youtube

the mothership looks like a pink brain

it’s midnight 

it’s mardi gras

it magnifies the moon with chains and a patience

front door against a boulder

rewinding into shoes

halfway accommodated

i fall asleep closet style

you talk multiple hours

to fever dreams in insomnia color

flash of the supermarket

birth of the big ox


II.

Kanye West at the vertex of rivers

written in sanskrit

read to a pony

Kanye sitting against studio walls

as pages tear aching titanium buildings

in Moloch whose mouths are seven billion fast windows

boots crack the ridge

blind heads in tinfoil crackle

Kanye West sweltering sheer solid light

the universe watching

magnitude nothing

contains

blue flowers rolling through soil

in a thick vision

a crystal ball

endless hands refracting colliding

Kanye West at the axis of a tidal wave

so loud

the bead of sweat

the universe w/ tyrannosaur fear

GOD!

GOD!

a finger knocks

the hand

Kanye West wielding

watching the universe


III.

no more doors in the bright 

squared station

feeling like a lizard 

on a chair outside the office

poems on a pile

the floor is a treadmill

like a good psychopath

blinks my eyes abandons 

a metaphor

plastic bag consciousness

boy eating glue sticks

dreaming in the hallway

fishes appearing

i’m into mythology

i’m so damn rebellious

love the iguana

what! a legend

sonicboom angels suggest a new order

steam in a seizure comes out 

the wreckage

what shine

i’ve never been to

washington montreal chicago or

denver

still a treadmill

i’m confronting

this ugly marble

out of the tomb

out of mythology


IV.

GOD! six after midnight

GOD! eyes open in stupor

GOD! spark of the astral

GOD! temple. temple

GOD! teeth in a cyclone

GOD! kingdom of stray dogs

GOD! motion of lava

GOD! fingernail glory

GOD! walk upon the wall wall

GOD! rain is freezing

GOD! lost in the desert

GOD! eyes like lasers

GOD! underground cities

GOD! sacred machinery

GOD! ghost under spotlight

GOD! zodiac problems

GOD! fiery dollars

GOD! exhibition racecar

GOD! chamber of echoes

GOD! bubble two one

GOD! the racing desperation

GOD! millions of dollars

GOD! whispers at the treeline

GOD! watering a house plant

GOD! vision of the incident

GOD! shot connects the staring

GOD! all the bowls are empty

GOD! pain silver spiral

GOD! it burns the thing inside it

GOD! not even crazy

GOD! never let them gentle

GOD! succulent nebraska

GOD! thunderbird blues blues

GOD! nothing except love

GOD! never ever soften

GOD! 

. .. , .

GOD!


​

Luis Neer is the author of three chapbooks of poetry, including Autobiography (Bottlecap Press, forthcoming March 2016). They edit this journal. Find them on twitter and tumblr.

​
The roads are new roads.  

Kanye details his escape plan to me. He arrives in a limousine. He wears brain-tanned leathers. He carries a plastic shopping bag that has handwritten notes, tonnes of ideas and patents. 

Worlds without any earth sit alone in my head, singeing my hair. 

Kanye is an enthusiast of long voyages. I’m sick of his name though. I hit the Gramercy Park Hotel’s gymnasium. I scar myself in the shower stall. Exhilarating. In the gymnasium lounge the heat blinds, gnaws, humbles within my body. Upper eye dilates to accommodate the blood that has been put together by U.S. currency and Kmart. Kanye in shitty denim jeans. Kanye has sent a driver to collect me. A lover on the wharf. Hearing is dead inside me. Money exchange at LAX. 

Kanye’s physical properties are unusual to me. Knotted days of a white sun. Kanye and I jump into a car. Kanye smiles. He turns his body over to attract warm temperatures. I gather shade at the back of the gymnasium. 

“Go to the top of the stairs, yes…” Kanye says. 

I pretend I haven’t heard him. From the fourth floor, I can see the horizon. Noses and mouths that perform tricks. Kanye’s body in a negligee. I’ve understood the body since antiquity, my fingers, a restless dream, something about wooded combs and pressed hair parts. Door knobs turn, special bullets for the occasion, hollow genitals and ginseng, a desire to expel semen residue. 

“Why do you want to act all tough?” Kanye asks me. 

“Because I want to.” 

Kanye chuckles. Points a finger at the buildings outside. It’s day. The buildings look all right to him. He shrugs. Kanye freezes. He pauses before he stutters. His coat. His hand in his coat. His hand salutes me. He has a cranberry juice. He drinks it, then looks at his watch. I look away from him. Each individual from a single grain of sand. Kanye wears newly-purchased clothes. 

“What more do you want?” he snaps at me. 

I assemble on the staircase. 

Kanye holds up one of the chairs from the lobby. He removes the labels from his business shirts. I catch his eyes. A dog barks. I fall on my knees. I roll notes from my bankroll. The taxi driver assures me, he can guarantee my escape from LAX. I examine him carefully, the different parts of his body, bones as sleep, air-conditioned sleep, interrupted by mosquitoes. 

Soldiers drag the dead over smouldering newspapers. I finish four beers in the lobby bar. It’s two in the afternoon. Kanye leaves me. This in strict accordance with our differing temperaments. Kanye beside the wooden kitchenette. Kanye behind glass doors. Kanye wearing a thin leather belt. Kanye drinking instant coffee. Kanye eating toast. Kanye draining the milk pot. Kanye as an extraordinary man. Kanye as body welts on my back. Kanye as deep fury. Kanye as silent stares. Kanye as the convenience store man. Kanye as inarticulate mistakes. 

Kanye as America. 

Kanye as mouth. 

Kanye as strange technical jargon.

Kanye as childhood home.

Kanye creeping by the chewing gum rack.

Kanye as a taxi driver.

Kanye driving the plumber’s van.

Kanye as the cops. 

Kanye in the medicine cabinet.

Kanye as someone.

Kanye as the landlord’s moustache.

Kanye as the car doors.

Kanye as the house keys.

Kanye in the back room.

Kanye as my tiresome voice.

Kanye behind movable sun.


​

Shane Jesse Christmass is the author of the novel Acid Shottas (The Ledatape Organisation, 2014). He was a member of the band Mattress Grave, and is currently a member in Snake Milker. He firmly believes that the future of the word, the novel, will be in synthetic telepathy.

Today I chipped my front tooth biting into a fork
I was distracted cause I was watching The X-Files reboot
The episode about the Trash Man
And how homeless people have no voice
That they get treated like trash
This resonated with me for superficial First World reasons
Cause my girlfriend was texting me about wanting a puppy 
Or maybe about the Disney trip in June
And all I kept thinking about was:
‘I wish we were more intimate
I am lonely without her intimacy
This chipped tooth won’t help matters’
When you feel lonely 
It’s like there’s always this hungry seagull picking through your plastic garbage
Well, after Mulder and Scully solved the case
I walked down to the 7-Eleven near my house to get some smokes
And on the way there I was listening to some playlist on my phone
And “Power” by Kanye West came on and I was like, ‘Oh yeah, I really like this song’
But then there’s this one verse, “I don’t need your pussy, bitch, I’m on my own dick”
And it was like an epiphany
I thought, ‘This song is clearly about overcoming loneliness’
After I bought some Marlboros, I ran into Sylvester who I’ve known for a while
He wanders the Elmwood Village asking people for money but everyone loves him
He has a great laugh – anyway I gave him five dollars since it’s been a while
And as I walked away I kept thinking about power, how weird it is
That maybe there will always be loneliness, a lack of intimacy 
That maybe there will always be homelessness and that makes me sad
Cause when one person doesn’t have any power, it means none of us have any power
When I got home I swished some Listerine around my mouth cause my tooth was hurting
And I tongued whatever pain was there and felt a smidgen of intimacy
Then I masturbated and questioned every decision I’ve ever made 

Justin Karcher is a playwright and poet living in Buffalo, NY. He is the Co-Artistic Director of Theater Jugend as well as its Playwright-in-Residence. He is the author of Tailgating at the Gates of Hell from Ghost City Press. Recent works have been published in 3:AM Magazine, The Buffalo News, Plenitude Magazine, Melancholy Hyperbole, and more. He is the winner of the 2015 Just Buffalo Literary Center members' writing competition. He tweets @Justin_Karcher. 

My Grandmother is Far Away

I remember my grandfather in the prairie winds.
When I dream of him I dream of geese,
settled in high, yellow grass, and not 
of his face.
Instead of his voice 
I hear the geese call from beyond 
the horizon, the edges of the dream.
When the dream ends
it is blown away by a clear wind that makes my own breath feel
cool and fresh,
makes the geese spread their wings and rise into the sky and
block out the sun
with contrasting feathers that leave trails of brightness on my
eyes.

Waking, I say
I am remembering.
I say good morning 
to my grandfather
and I no longer think of the harsher, clearer memory of 
my grandmother on church steps
screaming with an outstretched hand 
for the dark, long box,
which holds my grandfather.
A moment of my childhood collapsing under the weight of passing
time and faces.

I remember my grandfather in the prairie winds
but falsely.

I have learned in all this,
in all the passing years
what it is to forget,
what it is to remember,
what it is to put love into dreams.







Epidemic

I’d like to let you dissect me. I’ve come to the conclusion that my feelings are too difficult to explain and too dangerous to set in skin (my skin).

Wait, parenthetical: my skin. I am told that this is part of my trouble: not taking ownership of my actions. Let me be clear: I am hurting myself. Maybe I have hurt myself but this is beyond adolescent self-harm. Write the book about the grown woman who tortures herself and those she loves because of actions she cannot own. 

Yes, I am an adult. I have been chased for years by the ghosts of scars. For a while, I thought I was free of them but they’ve reappeared in lines. You’re never free. I can show you.

However, I must warn you that the demonstration will destroy you. The scars will crawl under your skin without permission. I’ll infect you, like I was infected. All my friends do it, now my biographer will do it. I’m sorry, now my audience will do it.

And it is pain. Relentless, loud, itching
Burningitchinginsistentbeginningwithbeadsofbloodlikecursedperspirationfromasquashyou’ve peeled the skin off likechopchop,likescritchscrach slice , likebrightredmarkslikeyeslikesomethingiswaitingtogetoutofyouwhatcrueltyitistoholditallinwhenthosecantakeitallawayandgiveyoua box for your noise.

Well, a thought’s come: giving it to you, my story, is passing responsibility. Maybe I am incapable of ownership. I take it all back. Shoo, now. You can study me when the deed to my head comes back. Ha! Suffer for your sentences! Go now, alright? I’m calling a quarantine. I’m locking the doors.
​
But—it’s too late. Well, pick your poison, my friend. You mustn’t carry it beyond us. It’s a disease, don’t you know. I have other things than paper. Here: tweezers, paperclips, I like this. There’s always the conventional razor. You can borrow mine. Don’t give it back. I think you’re my ticket out. Keep the razor as a thanks.


​​

Hong Nguyen-Sears is currently working on her MFA in creative writing through the University of British Columbia and holds a BA in English from the University of Alberta. Her work has appeared in Story Shack and Room. She lives in Calgary with her partner and their rambunctious puppy. You can follow Hong on twitter @HongNguyenSe and read her sporadically updated website.

convalescence

we drink bodies:
gaze or shuffle,
barged chest or bow,
and gush head: 
fondness or withdrawal
disdain or respect

and keep nothing inside
like rolled toothpaste
we’re empty 
between these moments
when smiles and fangs
outshine loneliness

we spew out desires
beyond our mind's sink,
feeling sick and weak, 
rabid and mean,
piggish yet clean

though foibles itch slightly 
a kernel between the teeth
everyone sees
but no one speaks of

gifts shyly lick others’ feet
a dogged fatigue
everyone speaks of
but no one can be

this morning in silence
cannot be trusted
without the pat or lashing
from a distant human being







Portrait

my father's portrait 
has yet to be mounted.

he can wear livery in the hall
buried beneath guests’ coats 
of blushes and gums
or rags in the attic 
like obsolescent records

he can be a toy flag 
waggled on holidays
or on the moon, a stiff 
handkerchief in the suit 
of a nation

he can be a hare chased down
and disemboweled by wolves,
employers, creditors, and spouse,
or he can be the wolf gnawing
its own winter hide

he can be the war letters 
or investment charts,
the incandescent blooms in my life 
or the ashen dirt,
the involuntary chuckle or tic
the creek or the cliff
map or bush
engine or drift
the writing or the stillness

he can be all these in different moments 
but this grief has narrowed me
to dimples or wrinkles 
on his face.







the hazing

in starless parks the poets gather
before some were jerking birdseed to impregnate a line
but now’s the fun part: a new pledge marches
from the bleachers of roads
and wants to deke through a verse

“Please step forth and shackle on your best frown
so children scamper from you in daylight
find a raving love – drop her quick and mourn long
you can’t guzzle sap or pollen, here’s the hard stuff
be a plumber and write about the trinkets 
you dislodge
meet your friends in ER’s
read the fresh Bible and dramatic Dictionary
before any other works
live one month with the mannerisms of a dog
then hide yourself like a tick on that dog
slither acid for better omniscience and metaphors
spraypaint each sensible school 
with a cadenced fuse
then come back to this park
to see if we’re still here.”







Incantation

Our placards of loneliness

cannot make haggard

any quiet daisies

slipped into letters


​

Nicholas Matthews is in his fifth year of undergraduate psychology at Ryerson University.

juno fuil.    

    Concluding,
name the hegira that wasn't 
    an abstract work of art

    Collating 
the ferry rides an eternal      
    anthesis of mist

    Drenched
in cherry blossoms to lure
    osmosis  / a life

    The great white
letting of go with wasp 
    wings and fists

    Statements
freed and made tactical
    like Juno

    The box
she left in center of the room
    Lemarchandy aurora
                    
    its contents drumming
a very angry very goodbye 
    ready  girl







keegan fuil.

    Once we entered its insides
the abandoned house in Monterey
quickly scaled a sensible danger 
       most children doodle

Rustic   Ginger root & craquelure, 
Dracula chased into a mouse
hole Yet it worked 
          to his advantage

I could see Keegan magnifying  
       a broad inner scope
Surveying the condemned space; 
this   boy   intuited his own

       beak-horned goose       w/ sugar  
hungry smiles -- this house 
he could break &  every padlock 
    today
A paucity of borders; his to mine: 
today
tomorrow       Today







nico fuil.

Succeeding  Pangaea         
        Titanomachy--
    He has gone
behind the frame of the étagère
The patio door--
How long it has been open
I persist with the question

A sweeping sun 
the tearing of roads
I fear our world may mistake
the sauce on his face 
    for post-feeding      blood

He is only a child, 
I tell the mob disconcerted 
by his glee   He will only
    ever   be a child

Kris Hall is a writer and event coordinator for Ogopogo and Da'daedal from Seattle, WA. Author of the chapbooks Dillinger on the Beach (Horse Less Press) and Notes for Xenos Vesparum (Shotgun Wedding). He has been featured in Dreginald, Uut Poetry, The Monarch Review, Pismire, and The EEEL.