among a row of stones
green rubber triceratops
atop George’s grave marker
this weekend’s poetry
tenderfoot falsetto
chanting nana nana nana
just when I relinquish spring
it arrives / like charity
every morning a timpani of birds
ground wildly reiterating
I didn’t want this
I didn’t know I wanted it
& now who will protect
my hibiscus heart
my fortune reads YOU NEED SOLITUDE
my hair smells like wood smoke
I shiver and shiver collapse in on myself
a star a sad biscuit a white fox
this is a day like any other
the tortilla spoke in tongues
the onion revealed an oily Jesus
the neighbor flew her baby like a kite
what happens if I can’t go outside
1. Disease of the blood
2. Disease of the skin
3. Disease of the eye
4. Disease of the foot
5. Disease of the tongue
I have business with alien forces
Oh Monte Christo can we skip the ballet
and sit on the sidewalk near Pike and 1st to watch the parade
the cars have bonnets the size of galleons
stand up straight
try the fried bread
try the pinkish gum
try the paradiddle
try not to puke on your shoes
try to be more tender
I just did a quick count. As of this moment, day 8, there are 89 very fresh drafts posted!
Some may disappear as we go, so catch them while you can.
Click a poet’s name to see their drafts collected:
Natalie Eilbert
Irene Vázquez
JJ Rowan
Elisabeth Workman
Steven Karl
Jenn Marie Nunes, translating Yen Ai-lin
Rebecca Loudon
Nicole Steinberg
Katie Jean Shinkle
K. Lorraine Graham
Reagan Louise Wilson
Farrah Field
Jared White
Sharon Mesmer
Peter Davis
Danielle Pafunda
Becca Klaver
Shanna Compton
I want to get drunk
on violets so I can
soften and melt
and basil to lift
the spirits and repel
pathogens and
self-pathologies.
I want pot-valor
to rhyme more with
pussy galore and night
to fall backwards
onto a velvet sofa
when we talk late
so sunrise is eons
away and Eos
will remember this
time to ask for
eternal youth so as not
to transmute her immortal
decrepit beloved
into a cicada a word
I thought about earlier
when it was still light
and how it corresponds
to drone consciousness
and lips and a door that
appears after many years
where once there was
none. The question is
Bob Dylan (I have to
bring him into this I’m
in North Country) wrote
Not Dark Yet in the
aughts to say it’s
getting there. So… by
now it’s not even
a question of Are
we there yet? but
How do you feed
your grief?
There’s a story of a little girl who remembers her own death,
a car crash where everybody died. And I don’t know how it
happened but lately I tear up to hearing paranormal encounters.
Two men fishing in a sleepy Mississippi town, aliens with pincers
for hands. A boy who can fly down the steps with his kid sister,
a dead uncle lifting them each way. A djinn shadowing dreams.
Stuck in a haze of other people’s fear while my boyfriend sleeps
soundly. I show him the nail marks on my thigh, a recent night
terror, and he makes a 10-year budget plan. Climate deniers
flood my inbox, call me a shame to my profession. I draw a bath,
shadows moving around me like lace in a window. Beneath suds,
the algorithm responds beautifully to Miles Davis and I think of
my childhood, this angel-cast thing, and hear nothing but my heart.
Exuberance, exhaustion, exuberance
Monsters
Are plausible
Since the world is so big
The more you learn the more you might learn
Books on fire don’t burn too fast to read
As groundlings groundle
A meteor falls to earth and changes its name
A curtain of gravity flutters downstage
Getting tired of humanoid aliens
And thinkable thoughts
A thread of panic twangs
I know how to handle these moments
I am a comfort
I bring with me a rhythm
Turning down the analog
To dream of abandoned signatures
Is the ground opening up or grinding over itself
Improbable is another way to say not impossible
I do not want to do it
meander around with letterforms
hoping to come up with something
heavy to put down
And I do not want you to watch me
stumblebumming what a word
what a world what a vegan steakhouse
what a camp kitchen cooking a hundred
thousand meals a day between bombs
what a snafu despite logos on the roofs
what a crater in the universe what
a pile of children a pile of shoes
a mound of women a charitable cause
of performative formerly-known-as-tweets
A jeep rumbles up among sheafs of digital
newsprint its inescapable conclusion:
people crave the excuses called god
to do their goddamned worst
to each other under the lidless eyes of the stars
Here in the poem the cat needs let in
and the moon will blot out the sun tomorrow
but there is no cat poor little no-cat
poor nothing cat
poor cat unsaid
*on day 7
awake with what misery
churns in the gut
with what liquid roughs
the throat saturates the mind
mindlessly turning from side
to side numb arms
of numbed-skull bleach bland bones
black flapping flags indecipherable
amongst deep velvet sky
pirated terror & idiocy I
mutinied crew frolicked the plank
& swam to rapture
ages ago so many Sundays
have passed unsermoned so I
off-key/kilter sang asunder scripture & song
of my dejected bottle after
afternoon green bottles prolonged
fatigue call it terror call it exhaustion
yet sleep slips
away sideways see
it glaring & glinting on the surf
my starburnt face tonguing
fucked-up seas for forever fire—
(not finished…?)
along the declineshore mining
immaterial assets hours
by granular once sand is sand
oh well - a mistake was thinking
harbor another mistake was....
The book was formed before I knew what to say
She cut off her hair for the paper
and walked past the one-room ghost houses
until her toes met a ridge formed by a storm
Sometimes you have to look down in order to see straight
Who works in the lab anyway
Who says beefy thyroid
When they should say beefy half thyroid
Never are there limited amounts of sand but endless erosion
When someone says the world is very different
they mean control has replaced freedom
In the exchange they serve pizza directly into our hands
We don’t care about spring or the eclipse
We already know we live on a planet so planet-y and endangered
Think bus hemisphere
Think eel swimming backwards
This system was supposed to make everyone classless
Instead a group left with their guns up the mountain to shoot the dog
Sitting in snow that hurt my teeth to walk on
Progress is my religion
Dark at three o’clock
Thinking about the place where I am
It could be anywhere
Washing away
While the fool in her detriment doesn’t see the edge and falls,
in exaltation she heralds infinite possibility.
Trial and error two snakes twirled around the healing word.
Wand. Wending towards two wings. Two sentiencies twining.
Sentences trouble. Having lived in such a way, I, a queen
of manifold error, can safely say: Don’t forget your demon.
Dear, do you have a twin? How do you like to be summoned?
What is the best moment in a breakout group to bring up placentas?
Side-by-side consciousness. Give up the sacrificial virgins.
Leave space for continuation and digression a dip into
the milk pool of day that at night finds its double
I confuse the music
from the party across
the alley with how
my children might sound
watching a movie inside.
How I have to pause
before saying “prune”
or “preen” to say
the right one. But
they’re both kinds
of grooming. Starlings
don’t irritate me.
but you, even though
you say you like
them. I prune
the cherry tree.
Starlings preen each
other. How long
have I been confused
and what does that mean?
From seafoam green to cornflower blue
The layers peeling away
at the back of the closet
clear bags over dresses
no one alive has ever seen her wear
a box of mothballs a sheaf of paper
-covered hangers from the dry cleaners
a hat with a jewel and netting veil
no canned tomatoes but every costume preserved
In the kitchen two rooms away the clatter
of dishes some women talking
the perking sound of the coffee put back on
the vague late light of afternoon scattered
over formica counters streaking the bureau
and its mirror discomfited beside the couch
What can we say? She loved stuffing drawers
dozens lulled full in every room
drawers with more little boxes of drawers inside
even out into the garage where his were filled
with nails and tackle the scrap wood chunks
he used to make the shingled martin houses
from leftovers of the house white housepaint
and green trim a pair of miniature shutters
A jar on a shelf contained his last good laugh
caught when he’d found her hands & knees
painting instead of putting up new wallpaper
every ditsy little flower in its pattern
from seafoam green to cornflower blue
*on day 6
Duck thinks of the fires. Moving closer to the houses in the valley moving closer and closer still. All the trees, animals, underbrush, no food or shelter. The news says to watch for things needing a drink. Do not approach. Do not try to rescue. Do not touch. Mal is peeling an orange in one go, he will nail the skins to the wall in a row and call it art. Dried husks of fruits on all the walls with nails. Mal hands the peel to Lenny, but Lenny doesn’t know. What to do. Looks at the wall of fruit skins, and blanks. The faint cry of early internet. Daisy is bored, endless scrolling and when her eyes realign to the kitchen the scrolling continues in her eyes of every reel and video and picture and comment. The comments! Everyone talking all at once about everything in all of time. The internet! It’s too haunted of a place. The housekeepers to and fro. Everyone all crowded in the kitchen, isn’t that always the case at every party.
Are the goths dead? Duck demands. The next orange peel drops to the floor. Lots of eyes everywhere but on Duck’s. Who could live through these fires, lost in the forest?
Mal rips the orange flesh in half, quarter, and shoves it into his mouth. He feeds the other quarter to Lenny in the gayest way possible. Daisy laughs, but only because she is thinking of something otherworldly. No one is in the room but Duck, metaphorically speaking. Mal spits orange pulp: We saw their footprints coming out of the thicket. Word on the street is no one survived. But I will miss them, such royalty of darknesses. Such, Marys of silence. Such, Bela Lugosis about town. They already knew how to die, I’m sure they died in the most gothiest ways, as if they majored in death in school. Versed, shall we say? He swallows without chewing more. Lenny opens their mouth, sticks their large tongue way out and Mal throws another piece of orange to the target, misses, but Lenny catches it with their hand.
Duck says, I trust that’s true. That they are dead I mean.
In barges through the kitchen Mayks, Q, Rilly, and Angelix, all nails and low-sling jeans, dark rimmed glasses, and curly hair. They have been walking, evidenced by the wetness of the bottoms of their pants, the snow trapped on the tops of their shoulders.
Duck continues, I should thank the fire, after all. Thank the forest for engulfing them, for leading you all here tonight.
Mayks tugs at his imaginative beard. At your service, after all, he says, mocking. But also sincere. You can’t ever tell these days with him. He says, we are here to be of service to you. We need to cover the pool, the animals! Everyone is here to batten. He pats Q on the head. Q scowls.
Duck leans his body weight into the center tiled island, fingers the tops of the kitchen knives safely in their blocks. Everyone starts laughing, shouting, ruckus. Come closer, Mayks and Q, Ducks says, stopping all conversation mid-thought, mid-poetry, mid-song. Honey Q, don’t you deserve it all. You have done nothing less than all these assholes. Let me hug you. Let me keep you in my heart. He slides a knife from the block. No one moves.
Q says, if you want me in your heart, that’s your problem, not mine. No hugs. Stay away with that knife, Duck.
Duck stands tall, throws the knife from hand to hand in a nonchalant fashion. Hand to hand hand to hand his hands only. They watch, waiting for it to fall. Sharp as tongue. My happiness tries to escape in my sadness, he says. Slams the knife down on the top of the island. Everyone jumps at the noise. Mal is the king of the goths, he says. We will relocate to the harbor house, away from the fires for now. Mal will take over everything for me. Handle all business. Handle their business. All business, all the time.
Mayks grabs the knife. Points it at Duck. I’m exhausted, he says. I need to find Big Mayks, and tell him all of this. I’m leaving. He throws the knife across the room, into a space where no one is standing.
Duck laughs, my dearest boy! My sweet, sweet boy. No need to for such antics. Underneath Duck a crumbled lot of Dot Matrix paper seeps from his feet.
Outside, Mayks is seeing the blood stain on the carpet in the library where Cate bled. He’s seeing blood in the swimming pool. Blood trails in the snow. He is seeing blood in the smoke that doesn’t end in the sky. He coughs. Thinks to himself: I have to kill Mal. Thinks to himself: The only way to be king. May all the planets have mercy on me. If there is a god, he thinks, let her turn her head the other way. He walks off into the night.
Inside, no one has said a word. No one has moved an inch. Duck slams both fists into the island. Q, he says, you gorgeous minx. You do live in my heart. Mal, he says, the time for succession is now. Everyone, let’s eat!
A GIRL ON HINGE TELLS ME STORIES
OF THE LAST CICADA SUMMER
YOU COULDN’T GO OUTSIDE
WITHOUT GETTING THEM IN YOUR HAIR,
SHE SAID, UNDER YOUR COLLAR,
IN YOUR SLEEVES,THE AIR WAS FILLED
WITH THEM, YOU’D BREATHE THEM IN.
IN ALPHABET CITY, FOUR HORSEMEN
DESCEND INTO THE SUBWAY,
ARREST A RAT FOR FARE EVASION,
CALL IT A JOB WELL DONE.
FOR MONTHS, THE STREETS ECHOED
WITH CALLS OF INTIFADA,
AND AT LAST, THE GROUND ITSELF SHOOK.
— with a line by Elinor Nauen
My body arrived
at the big beef lithe
with starseed frequencies
and magpies on the eaves.
My soul however
was another mother
fresh from late day slumber.
Once my body arrived
it became a place
as famous for history
as for decay
while my soul remained
between the crash and the debris
fattened by null solidities
of circumstance.
But it wasn’t the body
that kept me alive —
it was a second tenderness
of signal velocities
vibrating
through portals more powerful
than gravity.
Then a monster I found
drilled my dark shine down
three thousand feet
beneath groundwater.
It was way too late
to choose otherwise
or better
or to still wish
for wonder.
And to this vicinity
I showed up from somewhere
after that long drive
in the Rambler.
(“Once you’re betrayed, it’s too late to choose better” — Elinor Nauen)
Weed with Willie is halfway done; the townies sing.
And I’m in the best dive bar in the city, reading Fady
who says “It’s not easy as it used to be / to be alone
with the earth.” The exhaustion of speaking truth
to power when power aims to flatten our throats.
We quiet under Instagram feeds giving self-tanners, rare
beauties in balcony dresses made by unknown hands.
I’m no longer attached to any of life’s trifectas. The multitudes
compound and kill our abstract memories: of digging
fingers into wet loam, of pulling the cap off an acorn,
discovering a wriggling maggot within. The lessons
that taught, numerous. Something impossibly alive can
thrive sealed away. That there is something inside me, or,
there is the wish of it. Little life, how you persist.
There is the wish of it, a little life: how we persist
alongside flashing bikini ads, phones face up, a seagull’s
squawk, the redheads in gis crossing the street. For nearly
two months, a boy has been missing, his face fading
on paper along the windows, his name scrawled in vigils
across many counties. Fady says there are more flowers not over graves
than over graves, and it’s a thought that turns rotten, like
a nail mark darkening a petal. I get smashed at the dive bar,
form a blood pack with the locals. Ghostbusters 2 plays and the plot,
pink psychoactive slime, doesn’t make sense without words. But sense
is a diktat, an oil derrick churning the earth into pebbles, my loneliness
into pebbles. Parking lots over land, so the child can’t dig, so the worm
dries into a snipped fingernail in its seal. Our secrets must lie to us.
Weed with Willie is halfway done. The townies are singing.
When someone experiences
terror their body &
mind may react
in a number of (un)acceptable
ways such as:
increased
heart
rate
trembling
& strong
desire to
escape or
protect oneself
from perceived
threat
Terror/their body/increased trembling/
Terror/ their mind/ increased/ desire to/
Terror/ their heart/ various/ways protect/
Terror their/threat/escape desire/from/
Terror/their threat/various mind/
Terror their/strong song/increased desire to/
Trembling increased body their terror
To desire increased mind their terror
Protect ways various heart their terror
From desire escape threat their terror
Mind various threat their terror
To desire increased song strong their terror
I didn’t know what you meant until I heard you say it
Then the cloud in your lungs cleared to blue
Sky of the hollow earth
To make the miracle mundane
Or mundane miracles
It sounds profound, quotidian quotation
But it’s only the t-shirt under the sweatshirt
With the mock collar
I had some plan for
Davy Jones’s Locker
What I’d keep in it
And how I’d keep it dry underwater
How long it would stay sturdy and strong
Undergoing “inspiration”
There’s not only breath there
But the smell of breakfast, saliva spray, kiss memory
Germinal demiurge
Hugs from a giant
Not drenched, but fairly damp utopias
You never overhear podcasts or books on tape
When I used to ride the subway
Ten minutes and the thought returned
In swim trunks
Optional
The brazenness of history!
What is your life about?
evening reeks of wisteria
& dog shit city springtime heeds
that dragonfly wing imprinted
in concrete a toddler screams her
run bliss sidewalk dislodged by rouge
roots each inhale peril each exhale
time being progress & repeat
profess an oasis - instead -
of faith old men in the choir
belt belief brinks of weeping who'll
meet up at the wrack line where
we'll sort out possession/need
debts of grief & that great garbage drift
housing blue neustons & shame were
other kin inevitables
awaiting their momentous
only to shed common as weeds
blood wads on the wand when she said
or rather didn't - discover
a silence so stupid the home
where she's soil & sunflower
revised just like dark energy
just like tides take back their insistence
every day made redundant & of
it these bones will become those
