Adam Fieled (editor, Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania): from Something Solid, Aughts Philly, Unhinged

Because you could cut paper with Anastasia’s cheek-bones,
& her wide hips supported no flab at all, & not to say
her carriage announced any movements but a feline strut,
a surfeit of attention is what she was used to. She paced
the polished wooden Highwire floors, knocked
back red wine, huffed nitrous, & put up the requisite
inaccessible, impervious front to those foolhardy enough
to believe they could approach her. I, for instance,
knew the ropes, & had too much to do anyway. Except,
at some point in one fateful night’s festivities, all the junk
in Anastasia’s brain, everything frozen, lazy-loafing,
shy of approach, froze— nights spent following other people
around, waiting to be signaled, signals sent back registering
ranking, surfeits of attention delivering not love but lust—

caught up with her at last, & she exploded. Gaetan
was exasperated to find her sitting in one of the windows
of the gallery’s west-facing façade, threatening to jump.
Gaetan was a cool customer, but spur him with something
unhinged, he would warp into warrior mode, brusquely
brush off those inexpert, & set to work. We all watched
as Gaetan leveled with Anastasia, whose drunkenness
was not helping her, leading her to understand that
the situation was hardly hopeless. She had a real life,
friends, purpose, & everyone here cared about her.
The party, as an entirety, you would think ceased, yet
it did not. Not all the revelers realized the drama unfolding.
Even those who did drunkenly chose to trust Gaetan. I
did, too, was right to. Philly fixed Jersey that night, as was its wont.

© Adam Fieled 2024-2025

Read more of The Spurgin Chronicles in The Seattle Star

From As=Is

From The Book of How

how they picked their role-model companies
how you would launder money and hide it
how they help each other overcome their personal weaknesses by relying on the other’s personal strengths
how corrections were made by striking out a faulty passage in ink and stamping the correction in the margin
how private detectives make up stories on the spot and have to adjust
how to force people to download PDF documents (or other formats) rather than
how he got drunk and threw up
how the therapist evaluates and interprets dreams phantasies etc. in the absence of a personal analysis
how everything actually started
how to avoid disastrous (and embarrassing)
how ice cream came to be
how to tackle instead
how you became a travel editor
how they see them of how they interpret their gestures
how to traverse it
how your mother and everybody knows you were
how she came to write it
how the "inertia of history"
how to actually construct the park what materials you will need and how to acquire
how the various borderline thinking mechanisms work
how amphibians contribute to human medicine
how much the Air Force truly knew about the UFO phenomenon in the 1960's
how to succeed in science
how fragile he really is despite all
how pissed you were
how a sleeve should look like
how the primitive envious feelings are revived
how people see
how her life drifted into drug use and general lack
how he runs upstairs at midnight after a new show to read the reviews
how changes in the grammar of a unit within
how a university responds
how things got so messed up would be a small book

© Andrew Lundwall 2008

From Ocho #11

FIRST TO WAKE

If you are first to wake,
do me a favor, turn off the alarm,
let the dog out to pee.

I would, but I’m far away now,
standing on a bridge that hovers
above a living riverbed,

speaking Latin to someone
who speaks it back. I am turning the pages
of guilty pleasure, strolling the gardens

of invincible men, kissing as many girls
as I can before interrupted by traffic.
If you are still looking for something to do

after watering the lawn,
there are breakfast sausages in the fridge,
they need cooking or they’ll turn on us.

You could prepare them with eggs or oatmeal,
thinking all the while of the conversation we’ll have
as I make my way from the bedroom,

our comforter wrapped around my shoulders,
my stomach rumbling from the emptiness
of waking up alone. And if you haven’t already

left me for someone who wakes with you,
if you haven’t run off with one of the street men
who keep their eyes on you,

you might take a moment to turn the radio on,
something classical, or in any case,
something to soothe me back to sleep

in the event I am startled awake
by the slamming of doors.

© Chris Goodrich 2007

From Eoagh 5

MOON, INCIDENTAL

You are suffering from a cold
that has not quite arrived.
Streetlamps turn on like impractical flowers.
The light leaking from buildings

waits around the corner for you.
A shock to see trees crumbed into this.
You are the last to enter the park,
the rain is in wreckage around you.

Walking your many shadows home
the rooks are grains of truth,
their voices have the quality of darkness.
At the other end of the park

a man in a fluorescent jacket sits on a bench.
As if looking through white wine he
can see you. It is his job to lock the gate.
Geese speak of that moment of departure

as the river’s text breaks open.
The moon’s dome rises to see its page
ripple over the river’s muscles.
You walk towards the cars bleeding home,

the birds shriveling on their branches,
clouds adding the usual ramifications.
Information leaks from buildings and trees.
The night holds up a moon clear enough to show,

above the cigarette-glow of a telecom beacon,
imperfections in cloud cover, torn newsprint.
Cranes stand in sleep making the same gesture
that the wind redistributes, and a lamppost

holds a swarm of leaves in place.
Like a song about to waken
in a radio-alarm, moon manifests as a lucid
interval that evenings won't dissolve into.

© Giles Goodland 2009

Adam Fieled (Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania): from Something Solid: Miscellaneous Sonnets: Luggage

Luggage lugged in by refugees from wealthy
families lay beside the bed we occupied, to
do our dance. I saw it, in the middle of the action—
black leather, initials embossed in gold— tried
not to notice that it was sentient. It berated you,
for the duration of our tryst, delineating ways this
was a betrayal, to sleep with someone of inferior caste
stripe, with steep consequences. When a severed
head broke briefly out of a suitcase, it reminded
you, red-tongued, the debt you owed could never
be paid back, the grisliness you visited upon your
clan could never be rectified. All the severed head
looked to me like was roses with thorny stems, tied
in a knot— clairvoyantly, you saw the real deal. The sleeping roll

predicted your condition as mendicant when the sex
was over, the word passed. The abomination between
your legs could only be alleviated by the anti-Vaseline
which sat leeringly on top of the luggage pile, lubed
from yellow to fluorescent blue. The luggage, to me,
was just prejudice from a sector I chose not to understand.
All I knew is that our bodies were meant to co-mingle.
That was enough. Off in the distance, trumpets blared
to begin a holy war. Red seas were parted. A king perused
the catalogue they’d given him, jeweled scepter scoping
out highlights. I was a pawn. He knew— if you own the guns
& the money, everything else comes, too. You, then, fell
asleep. I was entranced by the early sunlight. I thought
of states of grace, you dreamed of Red Death. More luggage.

© Adam Fieled 2024-2025

More from Eoagh

TARGET
         lithograph, Jasper Johns, 1960

the metaphor;
sum of your aims
those you don’t know of
those where your eyes lock,
tear away
avoid each other
when you know you’ve
struck been
struck

Sum of your aims
those you don’t know of
those where your eyes
lock, tear
away avoid
each other
when you know you’ve
struck
been struck

© Alexandra Grilikhes 2006

From Eoagh

Signaling Through Space Without Wires

Music is ground, you
figure, that moves swiftly past me
in this bitter light. Fixed
as if into the wall I
conjure you outside my hands, all
sound, the scape of it
burns
my
skin
like
sun
I
let it happen
as I let you lean, crawl, lurch
in my life and waver, putting
feelers everywhere, sweetening the room
a little, pleasing and paining all at once
the teasing rituals of the telephone a
game we (didn’t)(want)(do) couldn’t
play. The
ground shifts under me.
                 Without
moving I turn only in my head,
signaling through space without
wires to you, deaf.

© Alexandra Grilikhes 2005

From Dusie

Systems

Arielle, whose name means lion of god, says to write messy poems. You know you’re there when the poem really makes you worry. I worry over car wrecks and falling in the shower. Crying on buses and wearing bad shoes. I try to write a poem I wouldn’t want to sleep with. Would kick to the curb, wrap my thumbs around her slender neck and snap. This one’s still babied, blinking, wondering if it wants to be a skirt or a tire iron. Licking the perimeter of opened envelopes for a tiny bit of sweet.

My nouns go awry every time I stop paying attention. Fall pretty like dimes on the sidewalk. My friend Melissa, whose name means bee-like, has a theory about systems. For every change in variable, the outcome shifts toward constant decay.

On Thursday, I wear a red ribbon around my throat and am capable of the most serious damage. Wash my hair with beer and make paperclip chains, while he fucks someone else. A Katherine, whose name means torture. Who hangs out in wine bars and yoga studios and calls at 3am. Her syllables click like a bicycle tire, a pack of cards.

© Kristy Bowen 2007

More from P.F.S. Post (2008)

[THE STORY’S IN THE BROKEN SHELLS]

The story's in the broken shells, the fissures 
of the rocks. The water left those cracks. 
And it was the sea that rocked; that sang
its story of self or selves. I said,
You see me? And it did:
the sea saw.
I'm lying. It was a river
that ran nearest us, and all that night
I dreamt of alkali, dissolve.
That's why I say the sea, I like the salt.

© Mary Walker Graham 2008

From P.F.S. Post (2008)

THEN & NOW

I couldn't be more or less than I was then,
could I? But like a person, thought I could.

Standing beside the picnic table—
beside myself— mimicked hands, hello, and mouth.

Said yessir, pleasesir, thankyou— I watched
the boats go south. I waved goodbye, dutifully. I bore

the empty wine bottle to the basket, shoo-ing flies.
But all day he'd been leaning—mast and pole—

he had us cleaning the underside of the belly,
all along the bulwark and the bow. I had tools then,

didn't I? Steel wool, toothbrush, tar. Once
I tarred a roof, rewired a house. I was small;

I could fit into crevices. But only like a person.
I was a child: rest and enervation. I could as easily

lie down now in rows of soybeans, as against
the plaid flannel of your shirt, smelling of gasoline.

© Mary Walker Graham 2008