And the sailors wore parkas

2 poems by Isabel Sobral Campos

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Sentience

  #

Opaline simulation

  crossfire 

  a new way out of this functional opalescence

  obscure in the centrifugal dotted eye

  rotating image of the evermore abstracted space

sapped of figures and sound growling like a damp

dismembered figurine

  seemingly burning consuming

worrisome bubbles purple and black luminous

  a slow screen-image

nimbly deriving gladness

  color-grille where I could not distinguish shape from sound or reflection

  #

Stamped ideograph

red dwarf ascending

broken pot under peerless light

the silence that was

memory informing

the trigonometric function of stains and bulks

securely drifting

the memory exists like a pulse

rippling through dark furies

fearful forget-me-nots

sustained in color increments

delightful transfusion of chemical plight

singing through the air vents

ripping through consciousness

  #

Plugging the airways

of our film

  The sailors wore parkas

  On the deck gazing starboard

and the starfish entering a dream

  There “aquatic flowers” later learning

their names –

crinoids

cucumber fish

blue-purple menace

  #

Something of a tremor

Will you drift and sway?

  mechanically

  over under

undecked contraption of light?

  Beams writhing through perforating punctures

of neighboring eyes

  The woman I was waiting in the negative image of the cellular print

ink-block carving the nerve ends somewhat

    Filmic Fungi

  Iridescent rumor

in the silver screen like an imprint

of gauze and filigree

  coaxing pigment filtered through looping breeze

  a palpable winding seaweed

rumoring through tunneled light

  coasting the eyelid

  rims of dark slip

of contoured slip

of random insouciance

of screened slippage

of stalled hug

and demonized gleam

  alphabetized

abandonment

  of steamboat ebony

of carousing limp

  I watch the film from the afar dimensions

of jigsaw soul puzzle

rusticle soul cluster

of fungal night

  un-recog-niza-ble

coloring of phantom night

Switchblade Sunday

Flick Knife Saturday by Saira Viola

The afternoon heat was lancing the skin off the walls   Making lizard ridges humping the horizon with scattered day dreams   Last night’s Chinese food stuck to the seat – buttered MSG dripping with sorrow   His skull ripped back like a shredded roach   The dust of time – celestial jewels of hope   Sprayed with anger she wept : the badge of a lover’s guilt   With broiled fear and the simmering beat of Summer’s kiss she covered his face in a filthy blanket .  The last sound – a muffled scream – amplified cruelty  and cotton wads jammed into saliva pockets  Noosed with  a chainsaw memory forever yoked to her soul 

Mmmm...

The Rich White Girl by Matt Ford

As we walked out the door  Someone spoke about needing their shirts ironed  “hire a Mexican to do it” Said one of the rich white girls I wondered if she thought it was okay That she sounded like a Klansmen in the Jim Crow south 60 years earlier When racism was casual As normal as the cotton fields Would she stick up for Those old racist bastards? Bull Connor’s terrorists on the streets of Birmingham She wouldn’t Or maybe she would because She is their reincarnation with Bleached hair and new trendy clothes Someone should ask her on Martin Luther King Day I wont ask her I’d rather invite her to Southeast Fresno and Leave her there after dark See if a Mexican would help the rich white girl Watch her beg and cry Pull out her iphone to call her daddy  Who got rich by paying Mexicans to pick crops  On the land he inherited  While a nice old Mexican woman ironing clothes Asks her if she needs help Because she looks lost Maybe then she’d learn But probably not Because here Racism is casual As normal as the corn fields So I’d rather take that little rich white girl Down to the barrio and Watch her get the shit beat out of her Watch the racist tears and blood roll down her filthy white face Maybe then she’d learn But probably not

Fleshy

Incessant by Joseph James Cawein

I the soft little cavern of flesh between a woman's legs the soft little cavern of flesh between a woman's legs the soft little cavern of flesh between a woman's legs the soft little cavern of flesh between a woman's legs..... II the angry little cavern of flesh between a woman's legs the soft little cavern of terror between a woman's legs the tired little cavern of angst between a woman's legs the soft little borough of bliss between pratiti's legs janet's warm and gooey center the soft little cavern of thought between my lies and guilt the soft little cavern of flesh between a monster's legs the soft little cavern of love between a mother's legs the soft little cavern of cunt between her cunty selves the soft little cavern of self between her blushing lies the soft little cavern of never echoed in her eyes the soft little cavern of flesh flooding in disguise the soft little cavern of flesh awakened in her sleep III little fleshy cavern little fleshy cavern return my discourse little fleshy cavern forgive my recourse

Sing to the nuclear survivors

ode to the cockroach by Paul Harrison who flew by my head and into the unit tonight who troubled me who survived America by Kafka  who reappeared escaped a cook book tv guide my curses -you're fucked Champion pest control is on the way and they will fuck you up your family too, so get out while you can- actually  scrub that William Gay, Provinces of Night R.I.P bug life

Poet X & Y

Poet X by Paul Harrison you said is not so close to Poet Y these days whereas, now Poet I you i mean who's loved by X still loves Y and better out of it you laughed me too poets please

Literally underground

Crawling Around In Someone’s Basement by Brett Bennett 

nothing reminds you of your mortality more than a book store four stories high. i’m not religious. i don’t feel anything in the universe but see the beauty in nature. like Kerouac’s buddhism but i find it insufferable [i want to collect all my rejection letters and pin them to the walls] but in the church in the Mission [another country of street venders and kids running across streets and cinemas all torn down, marquees remaining, cracked bulbs and empty, the neon lights off and missing, screws and dangling wires marking off the letters. “Where the police are” the grumpy color corrector said] is a church so grand you/I believe in the power of something, if just humanity itself, for creating the softly glowing alter the stained glass windows the tucked away nooks to kneel and pray. i/you touched the holy water in the shell by the door, knowing i was undeserving but overcome with something. i was a sinner in the house of God and i felt his/her/its/their power, or at least what i felt etc etc’s power did to other people how people were driven to carve some sense of meaning or beyond. i felt the power of humanity i felt the power of an idea i felt further from God and closer to us than ever there are centuries of literature behind us and libraries of books that will never have a chance to inflame your mind. from there it’s an uphill walk through the park under hills of pastel. People play with their dogs like its a normal day [for them it is] i want a part of it, the city life of black gum on sidewalks and coffee shops on street corners. there’s a blackboard steel and window cafe that serves pear juice, which i’ve though about constantly since 3 years ago when i was last there scribbling in a little notebook on a sticky counter, like i am now [on a plane middle seat next to her and an empty seat of could-have-been-a-hot-guy-but still] i didn’t get pear juice because i will be back oh! the west coast is so detached isn’t it beautiful [an aside for a boy who could live there because he is already detached oh fuck he doesn’t matter, he doesn’t matter, he does matter but not to me, not fully and completely for i’m [????] and [???] my sorry sinner self]  and so there’s bookstores with handwritten genre cards and last time i was here I wanted to be a screenwriter and bought a book i never read [if you can’t commit yourself fully and completely, i tell myself-] in one coffee shop the walls that lead to the high high ceiling are covered in photographs and it was famous even if the muttering bum [what Ti Jean said oh San Francisco, San Francisco] asleep in the back with a newspaper and the older man on his macbook would say otherwise. I sip my espresso [every small down we drove through and every big city we walked through] the bitter pure caffeine in a little teacup and saucer. I joke about injecting it straight into my bloodstream but i love presentation and ceremony and whats the point of such a legally and easily fulfilled addiction if i don’t get to make a grand show of it. Everything i own is covered in the black ink from the expensive pens I swear by and the blue ink of the cheap hotel pens i write with each carrying a teary eyed memory for i don’t want to leave san francisco i don’t want to leave the mountains and the art galleries and the buzzing creativity and history and majesty and coffee shops and tailor shops that haven’t changed since the 30s.-the sense that maybe you could do something in the moments between- i wanted all those things for us but we were only going to fade until obscurity

The coke is still fizzing, keep talking

We Drove out to Anywhere by Christy Hall

Spitting mandolins of duck breast, sizzling, start to suggest things; the coming together of ramblers, we masqueraded as them, on a May morning, beer-gardened and pecking  at KP or WALKERS. A slurp or two of shandy, flat and warmed over conversation about world-travel or mutual friends. We could talk the fizz out of coke. The gloopy remains are onions, peppers, orange jus –  forked into a corner of the slate. And then on, on to a bull-field, empty and dog-legged under  a road-bridge. We blanketed ourselves on tartan, swapped sunglasses, laid back and listened to crows and gulls and far away dogs bark and are walked.

Supergirl Blues Sequence - Keifer Dietz

After the Whippoorwill Wars  left the best method actors among us mute, or the children  making cat's cradles with their eyes, hardly possible, I know, You and I go collecting small tree stumps  in the night.  You say Use this for a crotch. You say enter me and make me sprout. Supergirl Blues II Her plastic dolls still land safely  from three floors even when she's smashing glass figurines. The shrink with a kink says she's acting out. But I know she's just tired from trying to save the world from men with penis implants that melt during sex, from men with their father's old heroin tracks imprinted on their brains. Supergirl Blues III I think we should both go down by Winscler's Pond and drown. After all, our lives are endless Tuesdays that do nothing but yawn. When the search parties skim our reflections, our little sisters will be so giddy, will build tunnels leading to Grandmother's  buried eunichs who died with a smile.

Volodymyr Bilyk - 4

1 Kind odds astirred Backwards, - To anoint the mess. Gad around the muck, It's about matter. 2 Beat leers the draff  on hem into the tripe. The welts on brinks  are here for flashes  right turn. Swill and slop will wave the awry bunt. 3 Knock-prowl  over the bust-barrow... Pimple flumps the pith Away with  tap'n'clatter  thunderhum It longs to last 4 This sore  mars wipes with mocks. Huff tiffs the wax. If only mare had fallen deep  enough to surge the ripples in  embraces

I Want To Vandalize Your Blank Walls by Jeremiah Walton

I want to spray paint more than trains and blank walls,  using the colors of human and a surface that erodes just as fast.

Jeremiah Walton reading some mouthwords to find his North Star and put your roses in and around his mouth

Demon Lover by Melissa Knox

Slammed shut stayed shut for three unbending days The shadow underneath it is his feet At night I heard them shuffle, never raise   I knocked, I said, “Hi, Dad,” I thought of ways To lure him out, I drew and cut out sweet Big hearts, all crayoned red, they didn’t faze   Him, not one bit.  I thought then that my gaze Would draw him out, If only I could meet His eyes with mine and offer him my praise   No word, the only sound his shuffling feet The red, red hearts lay flat beneath the door

In the Garden of Love and Terror by Melissa Knox

 One foot hits ground but it will leave no print The grass springs up, unfolds and in an hour Daylight will dry the stems and leave no hint   Fast as you flee in daylight’s liquid tint Quickly you run while drinking in the power As one foot hits the ground and leaves no print   Pump hands as feet flee silent in the glint While sunlight all protective dark devours Still, daylight dries the stems and leaves no hint   Between the rocks a stone, a sharp, hard flint A silent thirst springs up in every bower One foot hits ground, runs from the prince   No one will track you there because by dint Of effort your escape succeeds but cower To know that running cannot ever stint The heartbeat chiming with the master’s ardor   Howl, rant, it matters not, all longing towers One foot hits ground but it will leave no print The grass springs up, unfolds, all in an hour.

Cut the Blue by Melissa Knox

I lean out as far as I can My heels lift and one push Would do it if I could just Cut the blue of the sky It wraps itself around me like Some unwanted safety net it Tells me to desire what I no Longer want and when I try to Give that one extra little spring And free fall out the wide open Window with the breeze blowing in I see a woman on the street and She waves to me I stand and shut the window tight