Peter William Stein: “The End”

The end is near

The end of the world

No.

The end of us

Or maybe just me

Armageddon

Mass destruction of society

The death of an ego that thinks it is the world

She will be fine

Nothing she hasn’t endured before

She has boiled with fiery skin

She has hibernated under mountains of ice

Her seed is still at the bottom of the sea

And we are a dead branch of Darwin

That will someday fall

And decay into fuel for the roots

That will build another limb

What we call Nuclear Holocaust

She calls chemotherapy

This greenhouse we are building

Will lead to little green fingers

Cracking and pulling pavement apart

Ivy entwining skyscrapers

And the emergence of a new metropolis

With canopy trees and prehensile tailed tenants

Organic beast ripping the urban machine to shreds

This process is not evil

She does not hate us

It is only survival

And we are to be recycled into samsara

It is no surprise that I will die

And so will the WE,

And someday she too will break through

This mortal plane as fuel for a sun

Expanding too rapidly for its own good

Jordan Kapono Nakamura: “Slow Sun Exile”

a year can now be measured in weathered candles

five o’clock tea has been a bad friend

i’ve never had

for months they’ve been quiet in the frat houses

cupping hands around the fire, squinting at the chessboard

“Trade for my Queen, please,”

the pawn is replaced which is not a pawn

but a bottlecap no one bothers to find the pieces

that slip below the table making no sound as if the floor was the

bottom of a yucatan cave 200 feet deep

fallen leaves scrape the door

with the noise of tiny claws

the scent the promise of wax

wanders by like holy men

before the good Samaritan

Before Derrida, Pollock,

before the pirate bay was closed down

my mother would sing hymns to make me dream

and i would try to feel small

then later

i had mountains make me feel small

but we can no longer see any mountains

i found a page ripped from an old story

there were just nine sentences.

but it was enough.

Kyle Hemmings: “The Problem with Watching TV Reruns When You're Too Sober on Cold Pizza”

I kept my mother's TV, one that I'd never throw out, black and white, equipped with old cathode and vacuum tubes. Only occasionally did something smoke. Maybe it was me. So I was sitting there, watching The Last Pony Express Rider, a close up of both man and horse, one desperate to leave St. Louis, the other so needy of sugar cube and water. Both horse and rider jumped out of the screen and into my room of clutter, paper designs of failed rockets, my old love letters written when I still believed in the future of science. 

The rider, dusty from the trip, handed me the letter. His horse was still panting.

My dearest Harold. Forgive me my poor judgment. It was not meant to be that I would become the fair headed and lisping stage actress of Sacramento, the rage of failed gold miners. Alas, I am stranded here without money or promise of sustenance. Shall I sell myself to the angry moon and die hungry? If you could but come to my rescue one last time, I will never leave your side. Already, the dirt streets of St. Louis ring in my ears sweet as a choir. In my own unfathomable way, I have always been loyal to you. We are both creatures of what rustles through our brains at night--A Love So Unworthy--Wanda Tarrington-Cates.

The last name belonged to my mother's side. My mother, who in her precociously shut-off days in a hospital that resembled a resort, painted Impressionistic paintings of sunsets in crashing colors. Over time, those paintings, with an acquired cult following, commanded exorbitant prices on ebay.

I made out a check to Wanda Tarrington-Cates and proceeded to hand it to The Last Pony Express Rider. But his horse had turned to glass. His show being cancelled, he was nowhere to be found. From then on, I vowed to live on a diet of cold pizza, black coffee without sugar. The old TV set no longer worked, but its black rectangular eye kept watching me, as if someone far away, perhaps behind that screen, still needed me. 

Stephanie Matson: “Suicide Bomb at a Volleyball Match in North Western Pakistan”

The pearl slips through

Wrinkled finger pads.

Water flowers over the bedrock

Which contours limbs

To mold my pearl

Melting away.

The coal I had saved for you.

A reversed Vandenbergh effect

Set up in my mind;

Saying hello to Eddie Haskell

As I drive down Cornell.

When your medication decreased

I prayed for an eddy.

For Riff Raff and Magenta

As our lips sat peeled back

Like the skin of a fruit.

Prayed for an abyss which would take me away

From the hallucinations which made you cry

From the stickers of your faded emblem

When I needed you most.

Well, it's the fractions in our heads—

The analogous mental disorders—

That I thought would lead to our fusion.

But I fed off of your suffering,

And deteriorated to spite your recovery.

Holding to you as a leach

Looking for warm blood

From a lizard.

These were the days when I was better off dead

Air pressure not strong enough to offer suction

To swallow the last bit of liquid

Needed to satisfy my thirst to obtain,

For my catalyst had long since evaporated

bl pawelek: "snake and peyote" and "swallowed"

he rolls himself

constructs tight against the six stalks

grinding encompassing consuming

diamonds roll the back

and shape head strong

the snake and peyote

await the divine light

the signal of pilgrim luck

move west

over the mountains

to the water of final ends

push the dirt

push the sand

accept the prayers for rain

Jeff Grunthaner: "Dead Fish in a Lithograph"

The fat lady is singing because her heart

has broken both its legs. Bloody murder

rains out in a brassy chorus, where the

radio is useless machinery you can cry. 

The chiming of old-timey music is really

the chimera of an idiot’s derision, like

a call to conscience from before when radio

was invented. It surges into awareness

without any message, & translates the staccato

of experience into ice, numbed by musical

phrases woven with the strings of violins. 

The discordance of life-styles is projected

like the several notes in a single chord,

where living is a technique like television,

an approximate profession, wholly digital,

& experience more or less an encumbrance,

like the passive thrills found in watching

a bad movie. Personally, I’m wedded to

my sorrows, which brought with them some 

momentary surprise, tainted by laudations

promised when the bars had closed, & text

messages that reply: “Sort of fun. Ur cool."

Ray Gonzalez, "The Mark"

The Mayas believed we all have a face and a mark. They believed the invisible mark is more of a face than our own face. They said all humans will be known by their mark. My mark is not invisible, but hidden somewhere in the territory of the mind, a place of markings where I have never gone. Last night, I dreamed I was eating fried lizard meat out of a McDonald’s container. It was not a nightmare, but a quiet dream of ritual where I ate the lizard meat and felt stronger. When I woke, I told my wife about this and she said it was a sign I am getting well. It is my mark, the sign of the creature leaving marks on the sand, that distance that has nothing to do with my face or the way I look because I am looking older and the mark trumps my face, the lizard meat prepared by an unseen face and served in a fast-food carton to warn me many people are searching for their marks. I also told my wife the next brief dream last night had me listening to her play her violin. She is taking lessons and getting better at it—the soothing air of the instrument leaving its mark on me as I slept and got the closest I have ever been to recognizing my face with my eyes closed. 

Laura LeHew: “Should We Vanish”

          “you may drive nature out with a pitchfork but she will always return”

            ~Horace

1.

To Whom It May Concern:

By an unfortunate error we’ve

misidentified civilization. It was,

in fact, not created by the deity or

deities known sometimes as God

but by Mrs. Charles [Anne] Hobart of Kansas City,

Missouri head of the Abstinence For You-All Coalition.

We sincerely regret this error

and offer our apologies.

~Jesus Tran-Rodriguez

  Transitions Director

  New Directions in the Great Urban Outdoors

  Building Bigger and Better Prisons

2.

maybe she wanted him

the impossible dialog

Something Imagined

3.

Write your name

in a veiled raven.

4.

the sun detonated

it made a lot of noise

it was over                                                                                                                                        

5.

An error has occurred.

The feed is probably down.

Try again later.

6.

flick off the light switch

7.

The ghosts are laughing

I still have hope