From the 44th Issue:
Ansley Clark | Like Whales
The children here grow wind-chiseled mouths
perfect for whistling search parties into the trees
grow backs of stacked ribs
eyes greyish in soft skullsilk
they carry many flashlights
they play games like the screaming game
where they all hide in a small confined
place like a thicket or a log and scream
pushing their rooms of communal wilderness
into us pressing hot temples
to our palms they learn abandon
early in oversized socks and coats
clouds of warm bones among the ruins
such neat little portions of order
and havoc crystal in their bodies
suspended in a loneliness and a cool
like whales through the darknesses.
Jamie Carr | La Mer, Ma Mere
La mer, ma mere, the sea a rushing round
your eyes and days you will not give to me
but two less things to take away. Look NOW:
you trim my bangs on sink-top, kicking feet.
I keep so still, my love as steel before
the bottles watch from windows ten flights up.
Me perched and searching Beekman Street, a shore.
You stretch and flee, a mother drunk on, what?
For scented ears, a neck, a car, a man,
a face who held your waves, your wild and froth.
From cities far and wide, I dream in sand
and sing to you in maddened siren song.
Like moths and gulls and ruthless August fire
de la, de la, my sugar toothed desire.
Dan Encarnacion | Hot House Man
slipped in with him in the adult video booth scooched over did he to gift
me maneuvering room I latched the door and we locked our mouths
together I chewed on his hairy nipples and he gripped my firm ass
cheeks he suggested his apartment nearby a victim of polio he caned up
the hill nimbly enough a babelic collection of sleeping 78’s climbed his
walls a jazz and blues and hillbilly horde said unadulterated passion will
always have legs clumped in the fug of aged brown sleeves I twined
around his infirm legs and his throat moaned sweaty slow motions in
roadside jook joint shacks a dazzled barefoot white boy returned
Steven Alvarez | Malinche Be Right
Arrive at Che’s Lounge only to find sun-puddle chortled shiny redheaded Malinche wearing sandals. I ask her how many freckles her body has. Malinche sez millions. She lifts her shirt’s tail & shows me her back—like someone sprinkled her skin w/ nutmeg.
Malinche hands me a hand-rolled number, tobacco hairs spilling from sides. We observe a mechanized bear pursing Antigonus toward the exit. Malinche writes: My (desultory) book fails more. & that word you just used. You imposing—you impose yourself. Malinche yr brown coat next to me: fur-lined & purple buttons. Glyphs tattooed on your left forearm ([I heard a fly buzz]). Like your paper skin sprinkled w/ nutmeg. & no I don’t think I look like Vik Shklovsky.
“Calling myself missed. You’re William Carlos the Conque—”
“. . .”
“That’s a humid Amurkan mind.”
“¿How much you think an epic costs? ¿Fifty maybe fifty-five? Per square foot of course.”
“. . .”
“Dig this: I wrote this for the goat: This darksome goat, horseback brown, his fuzzy scrotum hanging down.”
“Oh your verse: Sprung Mediocrity—¡Ha!”
“Then this, just wrote this: Malinche hands me a hand-rolled number, tobacco hairs spilling from sides. We observe a mechanized bear pursing Antigonus toward the exit. Malinche writes: My (desultory) book fails more. & that word you just used. You imposing—you impose yourself. Malinche you—” An actress breathing, alas.
“Malinche maybe writes too,” Malinche sez. “Maybe Malinche writes & that word you just used. You imposing—you impose yourself.”
“Malinche speaks[1] another sort,” I maintain. “You’re a poet, make me desire to do the MAKEITNEW of MAKEITUSED. Malinche ¿where’d you get those little red shoes?”
Malinche: “I write writing too: Oh, I’m the antennae of the race all right. I write: Arrive at Che’s Lounge only to find sun-puddle chortled shiny redheaded Malinche wearing sandals. I ask her how many freckles her body has. Malinche says millions. She lifts her shirt’s tail & shows me her back—like someone sprinkled her skin w/ nutmeg—
Malinche, I hear, sells hot-dogs at the ballpark in Tuxson.
where deyyall got dem Ann-o-WAK cowboy hats / cactus growin out their pockets
—Malinche writes: Malinche your brown coat next to me: fur-lined & purple buttons. Emily Dic—