i am rocketing free

i am rocketing free from so many grips

it is proudly my day to rock and stand

no one can bend me much

where are the ushers security to restrain

my remaining jabs at beauty surrender

today i'm getting what i'm feeling

this moment is about just keeping going

in this or the opposite direction

it doesn't matter because i'm free

 

 

 

by Mike

"for Hoolie"

Stabbing gyroscope

what a nifty little weapon

superior even to the double bullets connected to a chain 

which are meant to cut you in half

the stabbing gyroscope covets reality itself

and takes out its purpose 

and changes it to nothing

i punish the present moment with obliteration

there are no triggers only my deepest impulses

which are all fears

 

 

 

by Reptily

"Amen."

Opportunistic infection

Dr. Donna Thong and Peg whispered through the ancient stone glory hole of at least 9" in depth. It must once have been a Cuban prison. 

DR. THONG: I'm remembering Mike and the abdominal surgery I performed on him when I had my patio studio. 

PEG: That's after you were a Fanny-Girl temp out in Dead Beet Chank. 

DR. THONG: You know friends do continue to self-realize when you're not around. 

PEG: But you've always had emotions for Mike. Two swimmers in one pool or another. 

DR. THONG: He told me his intestines smelled like latex for months afterward. 

PEG: He sat up on the table fresh like a baby, glass bottles tinkling against the IV stand. 

DR. THONG: You remember the story like a song. 

PEG: The one that got away. But what of the others?

LAMENT OF THE OTHERS

by DONNA

it seemed as if they entered willingly

following their noses to my kitchen

i thought most necromancy to be weak

but the bottom of the pie was crispy

followed by stepping out of doors to neck

that first incision leading to the next

we woke among discarded vials of heparin

ecstatic still in the wane of hydrocodone

ready to renew our grunted oaths

until the next opportunistic infection. 

 

I hope that my illness takes you hostage

I hope my illness takes you hostage

perhaps i could pay you back

For all the times the thriving version

stood in a more perfect path

I hope I make it difficult to 

turn away as I linger

Your shackles chains and branks are lashed to

my beatific fingers

 

I can still see you in the middle 

of a constricting circle

Your necks are craned and faces cluttered

with shadows of this miracle

 

 

by Ilyn

"Not long for Illinois."

without believing, expecting

agreeable moment sitting facing

feeling all of you in my screen

and even when i turn away

i see a safe place with warm 

 

lighting, bearing my things.

The less hope keeps distributing, 

 

it must be focusing, condensing

the opposite of kaleidoscoping;

 

i'm eating all the crazy dreams, 

sucking only what i need from my

 

intestines, short-sighting, all

without believing, expecting

 

 

 

By Jan Jr.

predators

i hate the middle-of-the-boat assholes, center-of-the-herd butts

but out here in the fringes, you are weak

what's with the arm twisters, the climbing-on-shoulders nuts?

you're alone with your righteousness, freak

 

brother, loner, impossible to figure, full tank, adjacent

we've lived the same life but we auto-fear, trigger happy

they are lifted by the tendrils of their fecund archetypes

they effortlessly grow virtue like a fingernail or polyp

we are in satellites, fire wagons, sinister life rafts needing 

not shedding weight

 

what about the sanctioned predators at the apex of the pack, 

smugly leaning back?

by Ilyn

They have to mine the muscle memories

They have to mine the muscle memories or else they could leave us out entirely from the battlefields. The players' physical responses are only relevant insofar as their hand-eye coordination. The animation, the realness, comes from my own live-action experiences and instincts. I have to be at least partly paying attention for my own physical responses --even stomach acids are measured-- to kick in. At least the K's always win. I'd hate to experience death again. 

 

Some of the players I recall this guy Ken who viscera really seemed to match mine maybe from his generations of farming. He was shy to fight and almost made me switch into mate mode by wandering back toward the cliffs, some of the abandoned ones, when there were plenty of flakes to scoop up and showing off to do with simple evasions of their little sling-shot stones. 

 

 

Charnelle Casas-Cuevas