10 Apr: "Warm Life" by Garrett Caples

 
       for Bill Berkson & Khaled al-Assad

the union president’s dead

& they won’t let transgender

 

people pee in north carolina

& here i’m complaining about

 

climbing the mountain again

the mountain’ll always remain

 

if i’m lucky, to keep me from

sucking & only a king mule will

 

do. humbled by bill as he goes

through the business of staying

 

alive with dignified unconcern. i

don’t deserve him, have no zen

 

no dasein, just half-a-dozen self

-inflicted wounds i’m expected

 

to grin & bear & like robert

plant, i do. it’s like i’m in

 

a rembrandt or something

holding testtubes to the sun

 

to read my urine specimens &

—spoiler alert—i’m trigger sad

 

checked my email mid-poem

so of course its bad news

 

the ancient city is practically

gone, palmyra, palmyra

 

at least i still have bill

here in isis usa

9 Apr: "San Marcos" by Monica McClure

Since I stopped the flow

Of primordial ciswhite straight men

Whom I heedlessly collect

And from whom the spring feeds

Without reason I have been

Shopping so much more

Than suits a prophet in the forest.

A man said he felt like an awful cad

But an admission as such

Does not irrigate a dry spell

Once it’s surpassed the length

Of a petty offense record

Because the body’s memory is not so

Mutated by language

And there’s very little pleasure in force

When the subject is inertia.

I used to leave as soon as

The mysterious chemistry worked out

Now I am both the one who leaves

And the one who stays

Eco­-novelty is rare and common

And each design reforms

The future and the last.

8 Apr: "Rx" by Eric Amiling

We come here

These little pillars of salt

Placed into the hands

Of physicians

With debt sweats

A gross product

Of the sex apparatus

There are expired teens

There are the old

That die in the summer

The situation

When a nation

Loses its beloved celebrity

It tries to out-mourn one another

Extort them of their talent

Versions of these chosen ones

Hair flowing free and unrestricted

Meanwhile

The curbs are laced

With water soluble prescriptions

Running down into gutters

Phosphorescent in the streetlight

Medications

Available in avocado

Coppertone

Aqua and white

I suffer from the occasional

Emotionally draining dream about turtles

However

The simple idea of omnipresent neutrality

Is difficult

Too much blood

Spills in my dreams

It’s a vascular debacle

Mantras

and

Ak-47s

Are boring

In the park

Getting some vitamin D

The sunlight on my blue jeans

I’m a deadened sapphire

Reading Didion

A psychic residue of fortune is on me

Didion writes,

“I have already lost touch

with a couple of people I used to be”

I can’t handle fate

The aphrodisiac of lying to myself

The battery flavor of anxiety

Shooting the messenger

Having a god that doesn’t ‘get me’

7 Apr: "Family Dollar" by Hannah Brooks-Motl

I lived a long time as both woman and girl it nearly killed me

I don’t want an ordinary moment any longer no more gestures

Such as the oaks neither shake nor fidget in observation

And the objects worth discussing dissipate oh how they leak

Away from the creeds claiming one can get ahead of the pain

By naming see how the green will change you it really will

I went into the green with a vine across my back and from the mud

Came the pattern before the light could enter light turned

And denied us, the moss struggled toward the yellow

A fine pollen came up from the world and the road made this

Shape in the powder: What’s wrong with right here?

There’s a cape behind my eyes and the body inside it wallows

 

Across patches of burned up grass untender and lines perpendicular

To the gate I couldn’t open an outrage regularly loiters

Isn’t that weird, how talent carries time?

Nothing’s resolved today and the hours are dim but vital

A body in a cloak upon a road rolling sweetly through the mind

Place this road in some distant future just like that foregone past

And then offensively remember how women don’t exist

Get head of the pain the ages counsel, make plenty of money

6 Apr:"Two Guardians" by Roberto Tejada

My words were sent underground to where the toggle switch detonates.

That was the glare our voices were avoiding. There was something also

 

broken about the obedience of this retainer. The arcades weren’t

semaphores just because the arrows leading there facilitated those

 

of us in line as though reliant on east or west quadrants. The ticket

master was prone to elide requests from the travelers, the sliding doors

 

sounded a fanfare for the common man, get faster as thought, or mind

the gaps. What I infer can never altogether establish a space adequate

 

to the body count. The platform motivates two guardians who were

instructed in safekeeping to usher me from harm’s way but my stand

 

point so recedes from this tableaux as to acknowledge a footprint

perspective. Translucent envelope inside remaindered by the riptide

 

or such tunnel vision as to warrant arrest. Why I was sent to the nether

world inflicted with no wound. Someone lets fall a pair of zip locks

 

containing the pixie sticks of this conspiracy; what I had to say was

sent, I mentioned this I think already, underground switch and toggle

 

intended to ignite what I could never bring myself to mean. Where

the voices were avoiding me—hands outstretched at quarter day to hold

 

back the beam—was there something broken? I weather compliant. I rally.

5 April: "Dust Poem" by Philip Jenks

 

The idea was.

At least in theory,

Dust was a bad thing.

 

There was a bowl

Of it. At another

Point in time

The conclusion

Was reached

That everything

Was of it.

 

No season, no

Nothing to measure

To measure against

So no love or hate.

Left us without no

Moorings or so my

Father told me

 

Vanity tables of it?

Isn’t that what a vanity

Table is for?

What happens to

As its failings accrue?

 

No mission but to be clean.

Of itself.

But existing (time)

And problems there –

The problem of now

We are back here.

 

See the whole dust problem’s

No measure.

All’s dust, check.

All’s virtuous, check.

So why not live it up then?

And thus, YOLO etc. etc.

 

{These fok whirr pretty smart.

Thing is, even in

The dust bowl, the

Idea, a very American

One was that something

Wasn’t dust.

I wasn’t.

The Bowl wasn’t.

The dust wasn’t.

 

Since Ecclesiastes,

Been trying this one on.

(how’s that working out for you?)

One needn’t be geologically

Or for that matter

Psychologically trained to

Begin unpacking the diffident

And sometimes strained

Relation the nation holds with

All that is vanity.

4 April: "Jim Limber the Adopted Mulatto Son of Jefferson Davis Was Another Child First" by Shane McCrae

They put me in a dead boy’s clothes dead Joseph

Except he wasn’t dead at first they put

Me in his clothes dead Joseph’s     after Joseph

Died and I used to call him Joe     they put

Me in   Joe’s clothes at first before he died

Joe wasn’t five yet when I met him      I

Was seven     I was seven when he died

Still but a whole year bigger then but I

Wore his clothes still and the whole year I lived with

Momma Varina      and with daddy Jeff

I never lived so good as when I lived with

Them and especially it was daddy Jeff

Who kept me fed and wearing those nice clothes

Until they fit as tight as bandages

3 Apr: "Still When I Picture It the Face of God Is a White Man’s Face" by Shane McCrae

Before it disappears

on the sand his long white      beard before it disappears

The face of the man

in the waves I ask her does she see it ask her does

The old man in the waves      as the waves crest she see it does

she see the old man his

White     his face crumbling face it looks

as old as he’s as old as

The ocean looks

and for a moment almost looks

His face like it’s     all the way him

As never such old skin

looks my / Daughter age four

She thinks it might he might be real she shouts Hello

And after there’s no answer answers No

2 Apr: "Portrait of the Alcoholic Floating in Space With Severed Umbilicus" by Kaveh Akbar

Listen here.

in Fort Wayne I drank the seniors        Old Milwaukee

Old Crow         in Indianapolis I stopped         now I regret

every drink I never took        all around          coffee grounds

and eggshells      this sweating         a mouthful

of  lime        as a boy I stole a mint green bra

from a laundromat       I took it home to try on

while my parents slept       filled its cups with the smallest

turnips in our pantry       the underwire grew

into me like a strangler fig       my blood roiled then

as now       back on earth frogspit is dripping

down wild aloe spikes       salmon are bullying

their way upstream       there is a pond I leapt into once

with a lonely blonde boy       when we scampered out one of us

was in love      I could not be held responsible

for desire       he could not be held at all     I wonder

where he is now       if he looked up he might see

me      a sparkling     I always hoped that when I died

I would know why        my brother will be so sad      he will tell

his daughter I was better than I was     he will leave out

my crueldrunk nights       the wet mattresses      my driving alone

into cornfields unsure whether I’d drive out       I wish

he were here now        he could be here      this cave

is big enough for everyone        look at all the diamonds

1 Apr: "rudie can't fail in south padre" by Quraysh Ali Lansana

there was a rude boy on my jean jacket. black suit, shades and hat, skanking where orange street met birmingham. two-tone ska a second skin, a way to believe, though unsure why. days on this island with wasted republican frat boys and sorority girls, pompous u.s citizens, northern americanos with trust funds. only white dudes in sight without reagan hair are in the front of the car, a sputtering nondescript, and later pugs, the skinhead in boots and leather below unfiltered sun, unsure if peyote caps or heat is source of glistening blister of a head. an equally overdressed chubby blonde woman at his side who he swears sounds just like janis. on cue, val fills the hotel courtyard where my misfit crew hope for a corner of a floor not coated in puke or recent sex rented by bobcat’s brother’s sigma hate niggas fraternity. her dense wail careens off ten stories like a friday night public address system. so close to another why not join the hollow migration? us, funboy three, avoiding the same people in a different country. tequila, laughter and respect. then border patrol. stinking agave as he checks licenses and cargo space. when he opens the back door, rudy rests beside skinny black sophomore with a flat top. one front pocket open, the other concealing skunk. i consider what dank brick lines the cells, how long i will drink sweat because it tastes better than juarez prison chow. he reaches in the open pocket, returns rude boy to the seat. welcome home, boys. enjoy yourself, he says. it’s later than you think.