Jeffrey Ethan Lee (Boulder, Colorado, USA): "Night Out With My Sister's Contact Improvisational Dance Girlfriends"

I.
The deal—
I felt in my guts that something was up,
the way Jude led me in,
“you swore
you’d take off your clothes,
do anything we want…”
(pinching my waist)
“and we’ll enlighten you…”
(unbuttoning there)
“if you’ll just slip into this…”
and she handed me
a small black velvet dress.
(loosening lower)
“No, I’m not gonna—”

Carol measured meticulously
up under my shirt
“It’ll fit,” she burst,
(stroking my chest)
“besides, you’re a poet—
think of this as research…”
“Uh-uh”
(my buckle popped)
Carol’s bourbon voice was so hot,
“But I just took it off for you…”
(my ear caught fire)
“Whoa…”
“Strip.”

I should’ve known it was a trap
when my shoulders got stuck
halfway through, with most of the narrows
still overhead, and nothing below—
in the bathroom I gasped,
“Help! I’m trapped in this thing!”
They crowded in behind, and slowly
tugged down the sturdy, strangling tube,
and then the taping and shaping
of the slimy, squishy balloons.
Jude poked one, pushed the other and snapped,
“You see— you see
what we go through for you?”

II.
After he said, “Hey baby…”
“Hey baby yourself.
You’re making a fatal error,” I warned,
shouting over the authentically retro pop,
in a muscle-bound nylon shirt,
half open to fur and cheap gold chains,
he stared straight through,
Carol in my clothes
and Jude in overalls.
Jude challenged him:
“I bet my girlfriend here
could kill you arm wrestling.”
He sneered, “It’s impossible…
I may be a moron, but things like that
just do NOT happen.”
Jude chimed, “Well, you’re at least half-right…”
Then her eyes counted the seconds til he realized
he was being trashed (her sort of IQ test).
Oh no, his eyes were glazed
In soft focus, sticking to me like white glue…
Jude clasped my cheek and cracked,
“Baby, he’s smitten.”
“Don’t kid.”
“I bet his chest size is bigger than his IQ…”
My feelings were mixed—
I didn’t want to laugh,
but when she did the math,
“A forty-six plus four— for that deep manly shag.”
I was shaking so hard I thought
my balloons would pop.
Not seeing what was really shaking,
he stepped close and asked, full of hope,

“So, you wanna dance?”

“Sorry, I don’t dance with men
whose tits are bigger than mine.”

Finally, a frown, hostility,
maybe even violence in the making.
But Jude gently slipped her body up
against Mr. Rug and shrugged,
“Well, she tried to warn you—
she’s not a girl who misses much.”

© Jeffrey Ethan Lee 2005

Adam Fieled (Logan Square, Philadelphia, USA): "What Needs No Myth"

after W.B. Yeats

The actuality of summer leaves wavering—
water gushing from springs— wind redolent
with sap— will never be enough to fill great
chasms of self-consciousness, emptiness of

death-fearing despair. If we could only learn
to watch waves of the sea— what needs no
myth never stops coming. No Sphinx waits in
the desert— nothing slouches towards Bethlehem—

no preternatural reality waits to replace what
never was. Ghosts predominate— slouch, blood-
dimmed tide built into them. Meanwhile, actual
falcons manifest the miracle of flight— harbingers

of the endless— winging the air, persevering.
It is a matter of mathematics, of where the numbers
end. Or space, our real home— inscrutably expansive,
unbelievable. There is no judgment in space.

Asteroids come out of the void— full-bodied, hurtling,
bent on something. Stars live and die, to no
appreciable avail comprehensible to us. There is
enough wonder in the Universe to befuddle

a thousand sages. Jesus on the cross is simple
by comparison. Each reductive model bends
the Collective Unconscious further towards
breakage. Sodden with suffering, the great

unassimilated incorrigibly search beneath
the stratosphere. Who understands that
breaking the circle is a precondition to well-
roundedness? Having achieved existence,

even Buddha sat by the bo tree a little
eternity, rounding myths into pebbles, pebbles
into myths—

© Adam Fieled 2003

What Needs No Myth in Eratio

What Needs No Myth at Personal Mythologies II

Laura Jaramillo (South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania): from Double Trinity

There was a procession in the florid triangle
of my garden. Dawn brought the revolt of equestrian
statues. I lay down beside my uprooted perennials
and showered empty beds with salt, ink, mascara,
while one bronze statesman extended his arms, airplane-
like. His steed ran without reigns, a bride with no veil.

The residents of the city did little to veil
their contempt for the disturbance of the everyday triangle,
but vagrants kissed the empty airplane-
less sky. Traffic ceased its equestrian
stride. Billboards’ eyes, propped open with mascara,
stamped out a flustered morse code, suspecting the chaos perennial.

I cultivated and talked to deaf mutes, but suspected the perennials
wore their blooms as sabotage veil,
perhaps were passing off even war paint as mascara.
I distrusted geometry (petal, a euphemism for triangle),
but liked topography (I’d slash at the ground like an equestrian).

Holes are cut into the earth by horses, runways by airplanes.

© Laura Jaramillo 2005

Diana Magallon (Colima, Mexico): "Elegy to the Terse Golden Spheres"

Let’s break
the best
nuts
with balsams

Rumpelstiltskin persuades the world with ten hellos

Patient,
patient!
The verses
of the baker woman,
the verses of the baker woman,
rhyme sentences
through cuaderna via

Rumpelstiltskin persuades the world with ten hellos

I’m heretical lines,
this, balsams,
and the best
nuts
broken

Rumpelstiltskin persuades the world with ten hellos

Fakir cracks
my Kabbalah,
la cabala,
good
bye

Rumpelstiltskin persuades the world with ten hellos

© Diana Magallon 2005

John Tranter (Balmain, Australia): "Pronto"

I.
No joy in this one, Bob. Would you like to be
summoned for one little blot on the record,
by a marshal? And create the indictment
today, that will be used for a demo
tomorrow? If you do that, my old friend,
the problem seems to be saying, the data
will go on the skids— it could be a fun contest,
held in a field near the Boston area.

Now, I don’t want you to get the idea that
finding a guitar has anything to do with it.
Just dish it up like the boss wants, though,
if you deal with the CIA— Hi, I’m Bob.
Can’t talk now. Down in the park,
listening to guitars, single mothers—

II.
Do they need to show more, to agree to put
the data mining double digits to use?
They blame a hotel trustee, ten to one.
A bang on the gong and he’s off to Brooklyn,
with a call for a song-set from Tony, sliding to CNN,
sun blinding him, trouble in the upper airway,
cost of sales data ballooning— he cannot operate.
It is the “FM in a Domain Name System” hazard.

A haphazard collapse they can share with the boss,
who already believes that we should solve it—
that must be what the publishers want—
two weeks’ extra pay, he would say that to keep me,
but I’m getting used to his lies. Sufficient onto the day
are its many small evils— Betty, comment on that, pronto.

© John Tranter 2005

Chris McCabe (London, UK): from The True History of the Working Class

March 20, 2008

When I was very young, Thatcher was a thing that happened
to my parents’ faces when they watched the television—
it showed itself like gritty food with sounds of She and Her and It.

When I was very young, I could tell when it was windy
by how quickly the clouds moved.

© Chris McCabe 2008

Todd Swift (Maida Vale, London, UK): "Sonnet: Listening In"

Things are what kings hold— and let go of, once,
learning too late that the nothing outside belongs
to the nothingness buzzing in our blood, and will
connect to it, as a burglar will drill through
steel locks and busy tumblers, to our blood.
The tempest of existence thrums and thunders,
rumbling the body like a great beating of a kettle drum,
announcing the hard hollows and stretched surfaces
of ourselves, our groaning testimony to being present
against our wish, to an audience that loves us less.
We sense the vibrancy of loss as a humming of violins,
like a surgery wild with last minute cutting, a tuning
up of instruments and mastery— the universe
has a body like a dancer’s, a mind like a maggot’s.

© Todd Swift 2005

Brian Freedman (Philadelphia, USA): "Adventures in Weightlifting"

Logic plays a role that is best described as supporting in the life of a thirteen-year-old boy; and when hormones are thrown into the mix, there’s just no telling what sort of strange things might happen. This most unfortune fact of teenage life now manifested itself in an ugly, and ultimately uncomfortable way. I awoke the day of the concert with a jolt. My eyes snapped open to glimpse a world grown suddenly urgent in light of the dream I had just suffered through. In it, Ali and I were sitting at the concert with Sylvester Stallone, who had somehow gotten hold of her third ticket. And despite the truly studly outfit I was wearing, she spent the entire showing hanging onto his left biceps, staring into his hangdog eyes, and asking if they could take a shower together. In the background, the New Kids played only one song, and not even one they wrote— Berlin’s "Take My Breath Away," a tune made famous in one of the biggest hits of the Eighties (Top Gun).

It all made sense, of course. The scene in that movie that all the women in the entire world— or, actually, solar system— were talking about, was the one in which Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis made slow-motion love, on her perfectly disheveled sheets, as that song drones on in the background. And in that scene, there is a lingering shot of Tom’s arms, as he lowers himself on top of Ms. M, with a grace and slowness that would’ve been worthy of an East German Olympic gymnast. I now realize that this was a manifestation of issues I had with myself, with my own 105 pound frame; but at the time, at that first event-date time, I knew only one thing— I had to get bigger, bulked up, by the time that evening rolled around.

After I got out of bed, I ate, and worked out, and ate some more, and worked out some more, and repeated the process far too many times to count— against everything I knew, against everything my father had taught me about weightlifting. The post-dream desperation had clouded my vision so much, as had actually caused me to believe that I could bulk up to Stallone-like, or at least Cruise-like, proportions, in a matter of seven hours. The reality, though, was much more embarrassing. “Bri,” my Mom called up at about three in the afternoon, “are you in the bathroom again?” “Yeah,” I shouted weakly, breathlessly, “I’ll be down in a minute.” I was dying, I thought. Had I known the word cholera, I’m sure it would’ve crossed my mind. My stomach was tied into enough knots to make an Eagle-scout proud. My muscles were fatigued to the point of near-paralysis. And in two hours, I had a date!

Great planning— I had spent the entire morning and early afternoon cramming as much protein-rich food down my gullet as possible, hoping that at least some of it would find it’s way to my unacceptably small biceps and pecs. But there was no such luck in the offing that day, and those cans of tuna had found there way through my system and right into the toilet. Combine that with three full-blown work-outs, and my body was staging what felt like a coup d’etat against itself. Three flushes later, I somehow made my way to my room, got hold of the date outfit I had used on the previous year’s excursion to the movies with a girl named Alannah (stone-washed jeans, button-down Bugle Boys shirt, black penny-loafers), and limped my way down the stairs, bow-legged.

“Don’t say a word,” I said to my father as I walked past him in the living room. He was shaking his head and snorting silently. He didn’t have to say anything— I knew what was implied. He was right. “Have fun,” he said in a mocking sing-song. As I walked towards the kitchen, the sound of a horn echoed from the driveway.

© Brian Freedman 2004

From Dusie

From In A Supralunar World

And should I one day be walking, alone, in the woods, at night,
and meet a young woman naked, alone, in the woods, at night,
might I not consider the possibility of blankets, and how one comes
to be walking in such a place at such a time—

it is good to be a poet on the way to the office of the censor,
where one can read all periodicals—

© K. Lorraine Graham 2005

From moria poetry

Get the light stanza
               for Jackson Mac Low (1922-2004)

"I Believe the Spoken Agency in the light. The critical text of the lamp scraps compiled a floater in the Reflection. What remains arises from the stanza Inside the carnage brought to Contemplation, O head hid in the night."

"Reality survives. Needles as quick and found knotted and I couldn't ask for distance on a city being first."

"A lot of play. The narrator asks the bird for "anti-immigrant" home sing-a-long, yet only the world unanswered with the power to guess good light under two minutes smartly to write."

It looks stopped in the final VOYAGE of that Muddle enticed— the end of the stanza.

© Miekal And 2005