- To say I love you is to say you have flooded
my knee with rain
: is to say the viscosity of my synovial fluid
has been adulterated & I have lost anchorage
Continue reading “Shore by Abdulbaseet Yusuff”
July 26th, 2020
Why Charlie Can’t Leave The Factory
After a reveal of cotton candy sheep being
shorn for confectionery purposes in the
Burton Charlie and the Chocolate Factory film:
Willy Wonka – “I’d rather not talk about this one.”
You peer a possible pasture in a
pink corridor. Perhaps peeking proves it?
Perchance a perpendicular door plays
with peripheral vision, pomegranate
sheep producing shorn candy floss piles pruned
to palatable heaps? Panicked to peep
Continue reading “Womannotated – Why Charlie Can’t Leave The Factory”
Ridges in my fingernails––
worrisome trenches, etchings that
presage diseases and loss, niches where
suspicion insinuates itself. Instead I summon:
ridges of my knuckles, thumb-tucked fists,
taut brown skin tallowed over the bone
as I brace to take on the icy lake,
to punch the water’s skin;
Continue reading “Summoning by Laurie Koensgen”
Son of my favorite aunt,
I greet you from above the waters;
Waving but not drowning.
Continue reading “‘Nceba, mzala’ by Perfect Hlongwane”
ghost undead
i still ache for emptiness like i
would silence in a
sequence of
sighs.
Continue reading “this body sinks in a dead sea”
Two Golden Tickets sonnets (my Charlie and The Chocolate Factory homage book of poems) from the Hot Chocolate section which involves chocolatier love triangles, femme fatale industrial spies, strip clubs and licorice .
Sugar Daddy’s
A strip club in which Arthur Slugworth, chocolatier competitor of Willy Wonka, meets the woman who will become his secretary and industrial spy and future lover of Willy Wonka.
American Candy Expo meets in
Chicago each year. Arthur Slugworth’s jet
consistently appears before show begins
day early to play. Bittersweet secrets
over his butterscotch schnapps confessed
to the ponytailed stripper; her peach ring
pop, bubblegum thong, sweet visage suggests
she is a shell you could tell anything Continue reading “Womannotated – Hot Chocolate!”
Kohl Shadows Black Medlars
fastidious rosewater pink mache misted
a cobra petal inferred of grapebloom.
Dark Souls go to Osiris distant psychic
white sea-friend verdigris-luminescent
the old adroit ears rising of golden dog
in dusk with beasts in kohl shadows leading
the secret lucky blessed knave
black medlars opening purple in brooding
old road.in troubled sunlight ancient white
sealing here the river stone the silver meadow
instructions
you have to press yourself to the warm electrodes
let your torso be enveloped in something like the sea or blood
and the voices will inhabit you
in an operation unlike any poetry you have ever heard
there is a small risk of drowning
they will sit behind screens impassive unblinking
perhaps indicating state of mind
by jabbing the dark glass
Sounds ; it, ale , ill, Deep, d-3p. j. the fea, folemn part
in a great degree
to darken Deéply, Deep, ad in a high degree, forrowfully / the Cold
felt on collect- ing even warm Air with a Fan, or in
a ptinted flieet to fzt a fla” upon., to frnijh / the
bringing fore the fire. / as its beauti. fire fl:lir~bl”;7.in,.!
Two Golden Ticket Dark Chocolate Sonnets:
illustration by Amy Suzanne
Pipe Dream
“He’s changed!” said Grandpa Joe, peering down through the glass wall of the elevator. “He used to be fat! Now he’s thin as straw.” Grandpa Joe on Augustus after the pipe, Roald Dahl Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
All they saw, “thin as straw” Augustus who
once was not. Boy almost boiled inside
a chocolate pot, consumed post fudge room
before the change. Chocolate liquefied
Tarot in Pandemic – 28 March 2020
Sustain me today, Tarot, with
your Ace of Cups.
To raise me out of the murky depths,
she sent me a dove,
and a chalice.
She held me, as one does the wind,
futilely.
Continue reading “Tarot in Pandemic, a series of poems by Joseph Ellison Brockway”
Museum of Impending Death
1
Trying to focus on what feels meaningful to me in this moment.
Trying not to let my own thoughts reside inside nothing but impending death.
Trying not to let my own thoughts reside inside this giant nihilistic
ever expanding sky filled with rising numbers of dead stars.
Brimming with stark contrasts, alternating currents
between freaked out, productive, freaked out,
creative, wondering if I’m going to die from this.
If I’m going to melt down inside this ongoing vortex.
Thousands of broken wings get sucked into numbers,
spiral down, crack into the ground, vanish.
Thunder in the sky sounds like gurgling blood,
getting closer until I shake and cover my ears.
Trying to place my own impending death inside another poem
filled with words instead of numbers. Cerulean blue instead of red.
Continue reading “Three Poems by Juliet Cook”
Nipple in My Granny’s Ear
I tried to make a sandwich
On my sleeping granny’s head
She woke up
toothless still
and nibbled the bread instead
th-th-th-th-th-th-th-th-th-th-th-th-th-th-th-th-th-th-th-th-th-th-th-th-
There there there there there there there here on in the wall Onan’s masturbating guiltily again she’s all blacked out out out and up in the clouds cold closing moon’s in the sky I say to her why couldn’t she stay a little longer there’s something in the walls
rrrrrrunning rune ropes thick around the body tight and heavy a storm coming crack open the sky and wait for the apocalypse yes it is coming haven’t you heard and I already made my graving restplace
here now here now here now here now hear me i’m there paralytic and fucked in the basement as the light cracks through schizophrenic mother always told me id end up funny down this path yes and no knowing id believed her at some point going going going gone
Continue reading “PHOTOGRAPH OF A WOMAN IN PAIN by Caela Price”
Photo by Callum Skelton on Unsplash
poem: UNTITLED 20
this smile is a jail cell
holding hostage
centuries of laughter
sorry if i say the wrong things—
Photo by Jez Timms on Unsplash
poem: nights
the second gregarious girls come out to the streets
the streets become a jamboree for alter egos and their debutantes
to that sight the gods from above
dissolve into the opaque solar panache
soon after when the luminary man resigns
entrusting Enkidu with an ordinary mission
to make a king believe he is the cause
of his own inhibitions
BURNING HOUSE PRESS 