Don't Buy This Jacket

Exostosis

They said I'd have to harden up going this way as if going any way wouldn't be hard though they weren't sure if I was human. My exostosis protects the vital joints and organs but not skin.

As I rise up like a row of corn, I'm lucky for a shaggy loam rebirth medium or granite decomposed. They tried an exorcist but he said it was just a physical deformity coupled with the supernatural.

Shab is always at my side, the dog with an empty saddle, glowing red eyes. He will drag me to the Monster Poinsettia in a square-wheeled barrow for a ritual enactment of the day it bit off my hands.


Illyn
"Begging Raja"

Could you help

could you help me to practice being fake
closing the drapes just now
like i do every night
seemed so final

is it true when you make a stop too late
it could be risky because
you can't get a cab

you should know by now i cannot
will the day or my fate

and that a ghost, to stay, must masquerade



Illyn
"It's short for Illinois"

Monster bachelor

son breaks up through rocks of the ritual grave
he's here a calling, must morbidly stop
the coming to face, wall writing, other's gaze
there were seasons to make another pain layer
of hopscotch players, but this matter is nuclear
return as ant to work through failure as ant
strength to lift interlocked human structures
from their hooks and rafters, catatonia
but he wills upon himself the burden/ yoke
between the thrills and laughter of a singlehood.



by Hoolie
"I'm sorry, Donna."

Let them rot

brain has to figure his housing out
adapt to having a different face
every goddamn time, this puzzle,
definition, reason, holder, fence
is it who i am or what happened
go around asking ultimatums
that stir the pot; let them rot.
all there was to know was known
and forgot and cycled back around
and sold, and owned and sold.


Reptily
"Think I might be low T."

Nightmares Come True, But Not Dreams

As i'm sitting here thinking
about what i'm going thru,
and what it all means, i
ask God why the nightmares
come true, but not dreams?

When i reflect on you i see
a shadow, reft of both of us
on every side, ground falls
toward infinity, pure memory
where we are free floating.



Donna Thong-Cravenly
"I'm sorry, Mike."

This is How it Turned Out

their bodies are built to eat bones
we can stand in wonder and worry

tight ear feeling while no sound
jaws create movement in canal

land stretches for thousands of
miles in every direction from here



by Donna Thong

Fart box

constant strumming summer evening cloud strobe

from early morning, under plaited foam
no screeching cicadas nor shower bristle
only the light damping and constant
strumming summer evening cloud strobe

electricity seeking penetration where any
other weather aspect couldn't go, a home.
we three are swept up, by way of ion, or
waves of dread for coming winter, of day.

Ridiculous situation

Most people are in a ridiculous situation.
The closer you look, nothing matches up.
They betray and contradict themselves
and one another. But there are missing
parts that fit in other places in the best of
worlds and so are right where they belong.

Zoom out and take a look at the mosaic
that appears when all the parts are found
accounted for and understood as a path-
ologist would in following an infection.
Where my part is now the one that fol-
lows you around is where your art is.



by Reptily
for Edgar Cayce

Ovnsstekt Torsk Med Sitron

Tomorrow of the Self

I could have put my arm around you or threw up
my hands on the way down; you could have
clamped onto my arm for a safety, girly feeling,
but the ride is currently sliding into denouement.

Maybe there's no need for action when the place
and what's going on all around are plenty enter-
taining, but then the whole thing closes down.
There's no earned talent over time for pairing off.

You see an infusion of cash and you wonder will
there be the fulfillment of a fantasy of together
or the sudden chance to turn an innocent regret
into Tomorrow of the Self, a triumphant pillage?



by Ted
"I'm reaching into space to get you back, Phyl."

Tittie-clamp chain

Vast store of condoms, all expired.

Tittie-clamp chain now a roach clip,

And sometimes it swings alarmingly.

Two rubber nubs from the one wicked-

Tight alligator jaw are long vacuumed.

The coiled old links weigh in a palm.

The roads-to-Rome breeze of a central 

Air filtration system pulls away odors

Yet also beckons towards the outdoors.

Reptily

Hi

Not tryna take anybody's job
Who's already in one
Don't wanna step on any toes
It's just my nature
I want to fill the opening.


Reptily
"Hi"

Uranus

OMG isn't anyone allowed to have a personality anymore? Not allowed in the workplace unless you are a vocal-frying, nasal talking, Lexapro-taking cyber-prosthetic clone of some fat, de-gendered hipster? Where are the bigger-than-life smokers and drinkers of the Earth's last earnest millennium?

The only reason some men pull back at all on their missions to inseminate is that they can't keep moving the penis forward ad infinitum, and despite the design of the organ, there's no more pleasure in retreat than in breaking a perfectly good line, a straight-on ray, into pathetically iterative fragments.


by Peg

Instead I nursed a burn from the roaster rack on my bird finger

I was staring out a window eating potato salad, and suddenly
we were prepping for a 'nade, securing hallway doors, and
on second glance, there were in fact no storm cells everywhere

instead I nursed a burn from the roaster rack on my bird finger
having stepped into the rain for a fistful of fennel and stuffed it,
sinews of intimacy had grown too tight, thus my careless touch.

the way this one bubbled against nature, bled medical waste
the butchered organism suffers indignity of fate
when with what it is embalmed is the same as what it ate


by Peg

Hot moral core

every heartbeat
is a startle response
at the fact of being

how terror's an actor
in the hot moral core
of every moment

too many ones set
to watch and ring hands
too few safe and warm



Donna Thong
Poetry Support Group
Chapbook Exhibition Day
Big Table C

Middle of the day

Missy felt like she could fall asleep as long as her wing blades were crossed in front of her and she was spouting plenty of burning pus.

But then she had to startle awake and remind herself no even tho she's backed up into a safe stone corner, and she's a real K now, she can die.

So she may fight for a while and back on into the mountainside crease, too tired to climb into the sky, the only way to Cliffe Suites.

But they're coming at her! She must get out this could be the end. It was the middle of the day, plenty of time for them to send new recruits.

Missionaries

 

Sunglasses, wallet, instamatic

Sunglasses, wallet, instamatic
Feeling Racing
sockless
most everything is new
haunted house



Donna
Poetry Support Group
Big Table B