Jan's Chant

You remind me of my father before he had me, and I remember your father before he had you: him, whom you remind me of and I'll remember you to if I see him again.

My father before he had me reminds me of me myself before he was gone, and your father before he had you reminds me of you after both of our dads were long gone.

You were spinning out just like and from your mother, who reminds me of my mom, whose big brother spun out and was gone into a world like the one you're in now.

Our mothers are like spirit sisters more than ever that they stand on either side of the line of alive; they remind me of you and your mom standing shoulder to shoulder.


Jan Jansdaad
"On holiday in Dubhabera Chank"

hernia of the craw

Once ire's fruits've made it too wide an opening, the thyroid cartilage gets sucked into the anomaly and a poor sod's diagnosed with hernia of the craw.

Left dream-splayed and vulnerable, a sitting duck for the picaresque, he rocks in a corner with his wrists pressed together starting over and over, "i feel...".

Space itself has to drain from the body when an impression's been made too strong and wrongly and efforts launched to recover normally've gone on too long.

Before you can chew your way to freedom a mother figure is forcefully feeding you live and squirming fodder for the chest burning that's also used for reflection.


Peg
"I too was Missy."

Dry and Loud

Looking up from a sulk at the ground

We put "dry" first in "dry and loud"
Because seating comfort should come before sound.

If the sound is good but the feel is wet
The experience unfolds as one you'll regret;
You haven't known humiliation yet.

But wind that's dry, with trumpet full
Calls foul the cries of "Imbecile!"
And proves you've been responsible.


Ken
"Scatology is not the same as scat."

[donna on ken notes]

[donna on ken notes]

he has different moods but why
is what's not easy to justify
he's not a single mother
substitute teacher, police officer
and it's tricky to decipher
a code when one's so earnest
so basically with what you're left's
a literal interpretation, direct translation
and some hyperbole, dark or sunny
which leaves a consistent note of exasperation
that seems to appear outta thin aspiration
and it isn't clear if it's period, just there.


Dr. Donna Thong
"I'm alla bout your relationships."

Inability to titrate

My inability to titrate creates an irritableness surfing on tubular rage.
They prolly did that in the 70's and 80's; it's just not cool these days.
There's no excuse from a blunt-edge mood target perscription, Dad.
Things I will stomp on: all the objects I need most throughout the pad:
electronic equipment, barware; bread, sling tokens, a hardback book
you have to come at with a slide, expecting to travel, break the spine.
I took my time working out love on a number of men, nothing missed.
I can rest on a loud, dry train better than a bed in the heat of August.

Ken
"Parsing through my feelings."

At Least Tonight I Have Hope

I'm not going around calling things like multiple leaf blowers for 140 minutes this morning heinous
I been in the business long enough to know the difference of a cataclysm opposed to annoying
N' even though no precedent's been set here for a cocky night leaning toward a second following
It's a positive something I've got with me now and it's measurably kicking: at least tonight I have hope.

I may get in a freeway high-traffic windshield fluid fight with spraying at velocities of 80-100 mph
Might even bail if it gets too real, call it in to the CHP as road rage though the other guy was laughing
Even though mine's the vehicle on the warning sign, going to pass on the right, into a semi's wide-turn flank
Tonight I'm stealing a breath, however undeserved, and entering a period of unjustifiable smirking.

Perhaps instead I've figured out a way to have the future double paved, as the life line on my left hand
Whether it's cuffs coming up from the other end of the wrist, a crossing-over experience, or much worse
A full moon takes up just as much room in the sky as the fully waned, and as fully I, whole, repose.


Ken
"Applied for a job down at the pie factory."

Tudhu

Block out as many sources of light as possible to get one super-intense light source.
Cough until all impurities are removed from the lungs.
Read enough photo captions to equal a multi-volume treatise on sloth.
Love everyone, even people you don't know, so much that you die at one with humanity.
Keep remembering a song until everyone else is singing it.
Have a system in your kitchen that bakes fresh pies like a factory.
Spend a whole day doing a task over so many times you'll never have to repeat it.
Practice talking dirty at home alone until it becomes second nature when a sex partner is present.
Find a place where cliffs and sea, sky and recline of sand overlap to reveal a perfect square.

by Donna

I Saw a Glowing Dog Lounging

X: I saw a glowing dog lounging by the pool at nearly ten pm.
O: Were you seeing things, hallucinations, voodoo, optical illusions?
X: It was a matter of dimensions, like several transparencies overlapping.
The ecstatic pet was in the house trancing on trying not to listen to the television.
Out near the water there was a patch of moonlight on the cement, someone's lost moment of election by heaven.
In between the dog and the light was a film of glass and behind that another.
O: And this was meaningful for you how--? Do you think your bitch is a medium or saint?
X: M'Lady is so far beyond reproach already that calling her saint is not a compliment.
What it meant to me was how we try to imagine other dimensions, just as a metaphor.


Peg
"From an old tape I found. Who are they?"

Urge to Beg God

She stands up stringy hair, staring horror-eyed, as if into a void, without taking air, n'then it subsides.
She must apologize to all victims of fallout everywhere because she blew, and blew so much.
But now she must stay alive and never go back to jail, not kindergarten, nor the place they kept her after the abduction from the parking lot at Sears.
The only safety there was never having to go back and never being able in any case to return.
Sprinklers kept wat'ring the strong desert plants that only knew to grab and thrive when they can but did it all the time and soon were banging up against the house with the wind in an entitled fashion.
The urge was to cower and dread even though she was the god that was supposed to let the beggars in.


Phyl
"Peg's really opening up."

Life of Peg

If some professional-primitive magical realist hack painter sloshed together or spent all night smoking pot and fine-lining it all in ball-point pen or traced with a stubby stolen public library pencil in front of an overhead projector image jazzed up by a team of so-called parapsychologists, right onto the stretched skin, the result would be Peg, topless, looking back as if at a history-changing conflagration while visible ghosts of the beloved buzz all around her head, advising or just projecting reminders into this waking plasma that they existed and of what they meant.


Phyl
"por parte mia"

i hate...

i hate having work things in my personal box and personal things having my work box,
or i hate it when there's personal works in my things box or personal-things work in my personal work boxes.
i hate it when there's work-box things in my personal thing box,
or boxes in my things or when things are not in their boxes.
i also hate doing thing-box work when i could be spending personal time boxing my personal-things work.
But mostly i hate working on things personal while things from the working thing boxes at work work at hating my person.


Connie [R.I.P.]
"All I get is pretty."

God Beggars

God beggars are gods that beg God for food,
and they starve feeling bellies full of good news.

God beggars beg until their nuts are blue, eager
to dream a century of virgins saying what to do.

Virgins beg a god t' make their sufring history'n,
that "this" once again have ambiguous meaning.

She felt th' begging as a wordless urge, but din't
make of it a saying, can't be judged for wanting.


by Phyllis

I'll Make the End of Life Really Beautiful for You

I'll be there in confident open blouses and pearls over tank tops. We'll be gliding through wooden-paneled hotel lobbies with the bouquets in giant vases. I can be titty all up in your face but I know that dying isn't only about that. Maybe you want to imagine naked slick slavery helping your way crib to kingdom, the backs of naked slaves maybe with fringes, gold satin cord. Stop and screen this: I am whispering Wall Woman's Blade of Grass in yr ear with yr eyes closed and you're seeing the grass. All of it.

"White Chocolate"

Algorithms of an Executrix

Her cataclysmic world's a rocking canoe: while you just can hold on, every moment is an upgrade. This is when sometimes people they start to sprout alternate personalities that can better handle the stress and strain of any given situation/ problem.

For example White Chocolate is a chick who's been hurt but still has a social craving and a sexy, hurt sexuality about her, very much into stockings. Sometimes guys guess she's a dyke, and girls think she'd make a handsome man. She started out practicing quick comebacks, for about 20 years, like it's cuz I'm sweet, but then she settled into folks thinking she was a freak even without knowing her name. Even fewer could have guessed it was Peg in lip gloss.

Another apparition sits with his legs tightly crossed and a can held at face level. Seems to have had one of the fingers on that hand removed for a better tipple. He can remember events of many years ago, but none of yesterday's. "Alan" has the permanent look of a monsoon native trying weepily in exotic tongue to explain the disaster to first responders and direct their efforts toward where they'd be most fucking needed.

Then it would be time to do the laundry, feed M'Lady. M'LADY Peg'd shout as if a cry for help at a lower creature could yield much but hiding in bushes. She's trying to express all the fear and exasperation of a braking middle life in an empty nest strewn with needles. Just her own raw self, without K-mones, couldn't be more inept at operating its shielding or filtering systems much less the measured algorithms of an executrix.

Phyllis

On Peg's backstory

Peg and the kids made house of a large working fridge in the middle of the desert. They could peek out, run back and forth from the car without singeing their faces.

When there were clouds it would be time to scout curling lines in every direction; it was like a ranger's post. They could burn garbage at night in steel barrels with holes poked by some unimaginable force.

Paper goods going made a multi-eyed jack-o-lantern, sparks blowing out his top. Phosphorescent scorpions, exoskeletons, clattered backwards from the light.

Inside, they welcome their own smells to remind them they're alive. Yet they feel kept only fresh, and how celery skin will start to slough and ice on the inner curves.

While Ted was out reporting the news in his salt-n-pepper beard, there was overall fear. When the dog held his breath to prick motion outside, a general MUTE was applied.


Phyllis
"Thinking about Peg's backstory."

The Future is Just a Cushion

The future is just a cushion between now and you know what.
The future is a cheap cushion with a hard, uncomfortable button right in the middle.
That cushion's button, squared and wooden, is the wheels on Ilyn's cart.
Ilyn's barely moved an inch in 20 years, except for straight down into crust.
A chesterfield sofa is an illusion of softness the way its buttons pull the surface in.
Illusions of depth are often mistaken as illusions of time.
Time does not exist. Time is a lie. The lie of time is just enabling your blindness.
You are blind because your face is buried in a cushion.

Peg

Identification Shell Slough

Missy, coughing blood bubbles, skew-winged and grotesque, pends between her stucco front porch railing and a massive iron drug store scale, still teething on a rubber diving vest. 

MISSY: In this my third iteration involved in these habitats i invoke, even before the fangs set and i can lift myself steadily from this misery on fully formed arms of flight, the names of my pre-carriers, for at any moment I know I shall lose their recollections.

SOME VILLAGERS: Don't tell us! Don't say the names, for we cannot hear!

MISSY: The names are Chama Tilly and Reptily.

SOME VILLAGERS: Great. That's just great. Now we'll have to go back into the records and produce some recompense for any act of disrespect tordall and any persons with those names.

MISSY: I would certainly hope so.

VILLAGER WITH CHIN LIKE A MIRROR HANDLE: How can we cope with having viewed your hideous molting, or...

MISSY [literally bending over backwards]: To take those backwards, I'd opt for meta-cognitive talk therapists and the term is "identification shell slough."

First-flesh venture

i am a genetic line
where vertebrae grew along it
and a nerve bubble formed
the faceless prototype head.

my parents were so unworldly
that i wanted to mount every trend
and i metamorphosed from within
so no special effects were needed.

when you learn you're descended from a pantheon
of first-flesh venture
you can roll out your tanking chakras
and they sparkle like dimes in a rug.


Chama Tilly

Once her hairdo missed the bell clapper, she had to say her own prayer.

Mthyuh it's a test
of how bad it is
that I insult my own beliefs
to moan your name.

Donna

Spam n' Eggs on a Plate, Stat!

Hey Mr. Big Tiny, y'gotta tiny big prolm?
Why doncha getchr big'n tiny off th' street?
Hey, Mr. Big; hey, Tiny Big. Where's yr
Tiny Missy, Tiny? Tiny Big, y'lostyr little
Missy Tiny Little Big. Yr gonna hafter sit-
chur big n' tiny body down fr spam n eggs!