halved, canned

had, could
don't, can't
won't, wouldn't

dried
light syrup
fresh

neck heart pits
velvet skin
bifurcated


by Mike
"Alkaline garden near the pool."

entificar

I promise to pathologize
and entify you, endeavor
to construe the closest
construct to a you you

With my whispers in
your heart, I'll send my
secrets in the dark to
find you you you


for Mike
by Dr. Donna Thong
"I remember the night."

Country princess

Drumming rains

the thunder came in
sounding like a gas
flame jet building to
its highest setting

drumming rains, not
rain, depending on
the heavens, always
draining and taking.

Filter of loathing

Like the new scrim in the sky above,
his entire stature was a filter for the
loathing of the poplis, an antenna or
dish, essentially convex, an aerated
vessel, representational of an ideal
who could be picked out in a crowd;
essentially invisible, contradictory.


Sylvia
"guess who?"

Pig shepherds

in response, we reverted
to a family-like structure with
oaths, rocking, game meats

or buy a red light and see
how green the cherry of your pipe,
just trying to hold your shit


by Hoolie
"Hot-Child-in-the-City Chank"

wide-straddling sado-recreationalist

He felt that acorns' plumets
were people throwing rocks

judgers standing too high to
see the faces or even shoes

gamers or conformists taking
their roles in comfy innocence

wide-straddling sado-recreationalist


Sylvia
"It's how I will remember Tom."

Plant takes man

We are gaia's brain
So vital yet just an
Organ of nature

Our parts can sever
one another, to
varying degrees of

Destruction on a
scale of hand
taking foot or

Brain, reeling,
taking poison:
plant takes man


by Donna
a) "Today just Donna today." 
b) "I kept adding 'today' to the ends of my sentences, and they still seemed to know I was an ex-con."

 

Ruddy september

Beasting sorrow

this is the place i left behind
this is the place i'd long outgrew
this is the place i'm in right now, and
to make it worse i'm here with you.

by Mad Ted 
"I'm outta su'um."

Coronal mass ejection

it was the day she said
"I can't see a way forward"
that we reflect on, two
moons later, needing
a coronal mass ejection
that gruesome darkness
precedes gratuitous bursts


by Tom
"I'm a work in progress."

Amazing witchery

Auntie Peg counted out loud by tens on her fingers so I could hear and see it. Surprised she didn't spell it out in my palms. Your father was born in 1948. You are two years older. I had to stop and think about it myself but it's true. Fifty-eight, sixty-eight, seventy-eight, eighty-eight, ninety-eight. Ninety-nine... that would make... 10, 20, 30, 40, 50. He died at fifty-one. You are fifty-three? It was an amazing witchery that she performed out of mathematics. I doubted.


by Hoolie

I watched my friends go insane

after the first round
mercifully died off
began a twitch and
baby rattles, spores
living out the norm
in transient cavities
alternate-grotesque
mercifully unaware
how gone, how far

What we know about K's

closest in the world you know to pterodactyl, but
similarities end there
smarter, have human genes
can mate with humans
excrete a glowing purple jelly
can be controlled remotely
by workers behind glass 
are farmed illegally
are vengeful but regret
have ceremonial role with full consent
sense of history and purpose
participate in village raids in season
drop perfectly formed egg-like
turds weighing tons into decorative
caldrons of festival broth whose
scalding waves are enough to maim
a fortunate few
they can abduct humans
take them into their cliff nests
keep them as grooming slaves
and form strong emotional attachments
K's fly spread eagle

when you [finely reach the day]

when you finely reach the day
that your father
never got older

he never got older than you today
never older
than you are right now boy

you get to it
you get to it and it bowls you over
it's the age that he died now

when you reach the day
the days that been waiting for you
you can see it clearly cause

you're in the moment now son
when I passed
from your eyes

and since then, in disguise
among everyone you know
they'll know you know it's true

you get set free today
the day I'm going to send you
forward, on

[REPEAT]


by Jan

The arch is not set

The arch is not set
even as the meat attached
jostles with enamel

for a bed
and the stress that lips apply
can't be disputed


Donna Thong
Transitioning

tortilla espanola de patata y salmon ahumado con cebolla y ojitas de eneldo

K

College of Cement

un vo ca re bu por fa

you give back what you get and
you get back what you give and


by Reptily

For each medication, a signature facial expression

Woke squinty,
left chemically
unblinded in/
during sleep

eyes rolly from
action fashion
dreams where
i spied and

pleated, won
they put my
heart in a tiny
box where it

could bang free
but it seems
they want me
to sing tenor


by Peg

Croak as in frog

is that the first
bird or latenight
chirping piss

i hear one side
of the fold or
the othern

melatonic wave
roll onto arm
aching so

do not put
me on my
back, i shall

croak as in
frog, lay as
a fog lays


Ilyn
"State of Illinois"

suburban homo party

RE-CAP: draft

On July 4 weekend I was the houseparent and one of the rich kids stood on the porch with her round ginger face looking in through the picture window with a sparkler crackling in each fist, and I decided to remember that as a mental snapshot forever. During the “Rock Around the Dock” event, she and a boy were the only ones not splashing and swimming. She just held onto a post and let the boy be inappropriate with her underwater, for which they got caught.

When you get caught at something you have to appear before the whole-school council in the big room with the sliding glass doors. There are kleenex boxes everywhere for crying. It’s encouraged that you act out your feelings for the group. Say a manager is upset. She stands up and starts crying, maybe stomps her feet. There is a box of kleenex on the chair next to her. The school director might point at it and suggest, “Throw the kleenex box, Roshanna. Throw the kleenex box.”

Sparkler girl had to kick herself “off campus” as a consequence for fucking in the swamp. Going off campus until you earned your way back on just meant that you moved into some faculty’s cinder block studio apartment. One huge new faculty, an ex-pro baller, showed up in a navy Impala with a spray of bullet holes all along both driver-side doors. Sparkler girl stayed in his room, but then he got fired-fired when she tested pregnant.

The most handsome faculty was a guy with a dull affect and an attractive, penis-like face. He chose the most handsome boy, blond with a dull affect like his own, for special visits in his room. He never got fired as far as I know. Everyone was so stunned by their handsomeness it seemed right that they would steal themselves away and be intimate with respect for their skinny blond privacy.

Getting fired can mean either you are fired-fired or more often just kicked “off campus.” Except you already live on campus, so instead they just stop paying you until you earn your way back unfired. I wanted to be a team player, so I fired myself for drinking a six-pack of wine coolers and driving over the median out on the main highway.

I could still participate in events. On the next “Rock Around the Dock” day I watched Sparkler girl get run over by an outboard. Why always her? She was so engaged in life. I was the one to call for help from the boathouse phone, but I did not get unfired for that. At the hospital I could see she had a big chunk out of her leg from the boat propeller. I asked the nurse if she could have a Valium but actually wanted one for me. Even when I waited all day and drove her back with her bandages, and it was a big homecoming, I still did not get unfired. I sat in the wood paneled gathering room of the girls dorm waiting for our meeting where clumps of faculty and rich kids would sit petting and cooing. We would probably talk about how somebody didn’t take responsibility and cop to their attitude. I was the most arrogant faculty, for example.

The quietest faculty, who just wanted to get paid and not make waves, and I took a big aluminum canoe to check out Bird Island. It stank and was covered with white heron and their white amoniacal shit splatters. It was like a white-frosted green cake with white flamingo pins sticking out all over it. Then we paddled over to the Swamp Tree Forest and floated along a channel of clear water like a ride at Disney. There was a high-pitched beeping, and then little bulging eyes. Baby alligators stared at us among popping water bubbles, floating on wood, in nests of dry moss. We decided to get out of there. I let the silent faculty paddle me quietly and looked at his back thinking I wish he could be my brother, plus sex.

That night the loudest faculty came into my cinder block room for tea. In the group meeting he had already thrown a huge temper tantrum, which was appropriate, so he was still getting paid. He was so passionate about everything. He started getting more and more physical and actually popped a couple buttons on my shirt. That shocked both of us enough that he went back down the hall to his studio. Everyone assumed he was gay.

We drove the students in our personal vehicles to Ft. Lauderdale. The other drivers noted that I had not been driving long, that it was not yet second nature to me. I agreed. Later sinking to my ankles at the length of 4-5 station wagons out into the waves, I looked up and down the long white beach, and I was the only one in the water. I had been watching with fascination a disturbance half a city block out to sea. It started as an inflatable raft flapping its borders, but it soon became a giant manta ray thrashing with a shark the size of a Karmann Ghia.

And now all the students and staff were standing on the beach waving and pointing and screaming, and they were looking at me. What they were pointing at was a fin in the water coming towards me. I ran in slow motion through the thigh-deep waves toward the faculty and rich kids. They cheered me on, and I was the focus of attention after that all day. The shark had to make a U-turn back into what you can only assume to be the profound blue chaos of nature. The manta washed onto the beach white belly up, pee hole gaping, with a jagged, bloody crescent missing from the wing.

Back on campus I asked for a pro re nata of Valium. I had to go to the dutch doors where they kept the meds and ask every time. Even after I'd let the Tuesday med doc hug me and cradle my feet while chatting, even with the script he gave me, they would not give out whole bottles of meds to rich kids or staff either. You had to go and ask, and the med dispenser on duty would try and coo and pet you to distraction. You would have to insist on the meds and squirm away modestly.

Soon that got very tired and I couldn’t get paid. I was so young that I thought they would budge by threat of a lawyer. It was easy to assume that not being paid would mean that I could not come up with an attorney. The lady who had told Roshanna to throw the kleenex box told me that I should probably leave in the middle of the night so as not to upset the rich kids.

The fattest faculty taught me how to peel avocados. Her attitude was that it was a huge favor to let someone in on something everyone else already knows. She reminded me that I was only a few years older than our students. After a weekend in Orlando drinking wine coolers and dancing in the bars on Orange Blossom Trail, I cleared out of the cinder block studio, found Interstate 10 and drove it all the way to Los Angeles. I was the fastest car on the highway except for Annie Lennox , who happened to pass me in her Targa crossing the Mojave. She actually managed to shoot me an inappropriate glance through all that glass.


by Hoolie

4 classifications

Hey Sylvia

Spotted you out in the CCC parking lot this afternoon snapping clouds with your long-ass lenses and your convertible looking cool.

Your story: world is divided into following classifications: annoying, agitating, exasperating, and upsetting.

Yet there you were maybe grooving or maybe gathering evidence.

And then those of us who survived
realizing nevertheless how sluttily
chilling in the dez on mandated recreate

Remainder of world gaydom reeling
but seasonally flooding the pool
may they take home some flavor

of days when men roamed live
like it was life's last laugh
every night a glowing surfeit

alcoholic firebrand drumkits
there was this was a counterculture
so many soft-cotton swaddled dicks

everyone a similar golden color
workers were crowning paramount
unlimited beer and cigarettes

now freeze dried forever, a residual
fanciness, snide or glassy earnest,
not flannel or denim in that sense.


Love, Tom

memories from everywhere in on at my body

only just now realized (had previously suspected)

only just now realized
(had previously suspected)
that i'm pre-selected
to go to pasture

careers into deep space
must be blind to any
evidence of imminent
disaster to circumvent

anticipatory sepukku.
outbursts, demanding.
desperate clambering.
non-best practices.



by Ilyn

Gong

Gong.
No.
Gong.
No. No...
Gong. Gong.
N-no..No!
Gong.

Green rubber smock

Aside from these flashes
of green rubber smock,
which i found to be un-
comfortable, with naked
bloody jelly, against my
mommy

And stainless steel, once
gruesome, now just tired
in a billion kitchens: 60's
newborns remember ash-
amedly yet in a light less
dimly

August rises redundantly
announcing renewed urg-
ency to push, push harder
and the grind on the city
mortar or orbital mower,
calmly


Donna
"I'm at peace with my hip-to-breast ratio."

Fungi and invasive finery

Jan,

Thank you for sharing this. One aspect that seems out of balance, however, is an ongoing one. That is the idea that Peg is there to help Ted with his health problems, and that hers appear to always come second, no matter the severity. Did you omit her strokes because she asked you to? Her health has been progressively and adversely affected by constantly carrying Ted's wheelchair (yes, even the "light" one hurts my back when I lift it), as well as being housekeeper and nursing staff while she is having strokes and other serious issues such as rotten teeth, which they finally got around to paying for during your visit. They have no dental insurance for her.

Between foot and brain, is the brain not the more vital organ? Strokes are what Peg is actually having-- not just something that "either one of them" could hypothetically have. If we are talking about contingencies, it is not difficult to asses who is in more danger of "passing first." Peg is determined but is losing her battle to meet all of the harmful and inappropriate expectations placed on her by someone who does not and cannot effectively appreciate or respond to the needs of others. No judgement here-- just a verified fact that is widely agreed upon by many reasonable observers, including members of your family and, at times, our parents themselves.

 I am assuming that the above and also the omission of the specific need for a different living arrangement where Ted could receive care without further endangering my mother's health was left out because they were also copied on your note. I believe we need to be quite

direct, however, and very soon, about what is needed and not sugar coat, which our parents are already way overdoing themselves.

So it sounds like the conclusion is that we should just continue the status quo: everything will be fine as long as Peg continues to cater to Grandpa Ted's health needs in spite of her own much worse health (which you did not mention). I believe that is not a correct impression or conclusion to be circulating-- even to them-- but you are obviously entitled to your own observations and opinions.

If you believe for religious reasons or whatever that a woman must completely subject her own needs to a man, then Ted has four daughters who are women, and maybe those of you that feel that way should consider doing that for your father instead of placing that deadly expectation on Peg, who has never held those beliefs. Indeed, once she is gone, it will be the four of you
who will be responsible for Ted and his substantial demands. After watching what has happened to Peg over the past few years and how much her health has disintegrated while caring for a mostly robust yet selfish man, we will certainly not be the ones to continue Mom's sacrifice beyond her lifetime.

This is what I feel duty bound to say as a family member, and please trust that I am far from alone in these sentiments among those who know Ted and Peg intimately day to day.


Sincerely,
Hoolie