Unshod Quills

On the themes of Your Very Flesh and Salt

Your/Our/My/His Flesh is Eroding

Esse est percipi aut percipere

To perceive his loss of twenty pounds
is to become twenty pounds lighter.
Just as I become his puss eyes;
just as I become his track marks
his blown veins, his abscesses,
his twitch, his moan, his ache,
his fragile (or is it broken?) mental state;
the voices, the flirting cough, the blues,
the blacks, the blood reds, the
shakes, the dawn-induced dry-heaves;
our incoherence, our hopelessness, our
graydaygraynightgraylife,
our prayer for apathy,
our comfort in prison toothbrush
scraping, our demise;

the angelic end.

This perception
of perceiving & being percieved
has bent everything, in no direction
both perpetually being born
& being not, dying.

This is all that is left.
This is all I/He/We/No-One
has ever been given.

This moment, this now
is life. Is death. Is
Big Bang. Is Second Coming.
This is the nothing
& the everything,

we have been waiting for
this whole moment,

in this river, these tears.
these words birth/mold/shape us again
and again, with ebbing tides
on this beach of salt,
drained from our sweating knuckles.

Author Biography

Johnny No Bueno is the author of We Were Warriors, (University of Hell Press) and has had his poetry featured in Criminal Class Review Vol. 6, Poems About Love & Car Crashes, Sparrow Ghost Anthology Vol. 2,  Present Tense Writers Journal Folio Two.  No Bueno is Lead Poetry Editor at Criminal Class Press and is also an editor for University of Hell Press.

On the theme of Elvis

Kreyol Elvis

Elvis
Was born a voodoo child
Born in the land that all forgot
Where the trees disappeared
And the waters sought to eat everything up
Where the earth shook with disapproval
And disaster followed disaster
Ayiti, mother of the earth
Sad eyed lady of the Caribe
Heartbreak Hotel of Hispanola

Elvis
Coming out of his mother’s womb
A great vodou boko in training
Took the soul of his silent brother
Now a zonbi still-born spirit
A spirit that would give him
Graceland in a world
Where grace was hard to find

Elvis
With double soul and double passion
From the little lakay where he lived
Found his fathers’ guitar to soothe him
And the compass of the kompa
To lead him through the days
As his mother shouted don’t be cruels
To his father, lost, deranged, absent

Elvis
Grew into his father’s guitar
Fingers fretting with a wide smile
A swagger to a frail frame
Beau Gosse and hound dog
He would play for the plantations
Strumming his way to Carrefour
To Delmas and Port-au-Prince

Elvis
Heard new sounds from across the ocean
Sounds that rattled low in his chest
And beats that no drum could make
Singing, singing to his double spirit
And woy! woy! they went
He was all shook up, let loose
Flailing, possessed on his guitar
To make sounds he never knew

Elvis
Lead forth a new band
With a hard headed woman
Manbo vodou priestess
And they would sing at duet
And they would shake and rattle
And the people would shake and rattle
And the people would howl
Howl hard across the nearby waters
As if take them faraway
To Jamaica, to Cuba, to Ozetazini
United States so far and forgone
To forget and forget all things
Their own sadness there
In Ayiti, mother of the earth

Elvis
Mobbed by the masses
Bought blue suede shoes
And climbed up to Peitionville
High in the hills
Where he would play
For the colonels and the cadres
And their flowing haired wives
Speaking in good French
Oh, so comment appel tu?
And the wine would flow
And his manbo priestess grew wild
In late cocaine nights
And mornings of suspicious minds

Elvis
Opened his eyes one night
Wearing a suit of sweat
Naked and alone, skin on fire
His fevered eyes filled
With his zonbi brother
Infant child in blood
Lighting up the dark with words
Return to sender, return to sender
And Elvis screamed and cried
What have I done? What have I done?

Elvis
Grew drunk and ragged
Falling about the stages
Lost in a moody blue
As this world he’d created
Suddenly looked to eat him up
Eaten away time after time like
Ayiti, mother of the earth

Elvis
On the beach
When the sea opened up
Was pulled into the void
Pulled into the sea
To mix with the fish and the foam
Pulled away, far away
Leaving just his double soul
To walk with the fireflies
And whisper to all the children
Hidden behind guitars, here in
Ayiti, mother of the earth
Sad eyed lady of the Caribe
Heartbreak Hotel of Hispanola

Author Biography

Tom Mangione is a writer and musician living in Shanghai, China. He’s been previously published by Cha and HAL Literature, and runs a bilingual Chinese-English poetry group called United Verses (www.unitedverses.com). When he’s not waxing lyrical or spinning yarns, he plays as Ho-Tom the Conqueror in The Horde (thehorde.bandcamp.com).

On the theme of Rivers

Love Poem to Macon

Hello T,
—swirl like the eddies in a river—
Hello sweet little,
Hello Cadbury,
Hello golden saxophone,
—but I want a fresh drought—
Hello drummer girl with cymbals,
Hello oscillating fan,
Hello Dixie cup filled with God,
Hello my little novel of charms,
Hello my little poem made of flesh,
Hello business card waiting to be filled,
Hello newsletter of good news,
Hello sweet, sweet,
because that’s what everyone talks about
when this body of water crosses their lips:
of you from the middle of somewhere
where the where means else-
where, anywhere else, that is, because the middle,
where you are, is not here, where I wouldn’t
have to say where, where is my darling,
my smile in the morning, where have all the flowers gone
to the bank and cashed in their checks
and moved because of you
who made their pinks and blues
obsolete, who can be the spring
in my shotgun or in this dingy apartment,
which is like a cave only darker—
if I could have one wish it would be time
to think of more wishes so that I could rose you
with them, bathe you
in the petals of wishes, then I could place you
by my side like something biblical, like something
every southerner wants:
a home that is certainly a home
and by this we mean not walked
over by heels, grave-like, for you are my home
where I find shelter,
where I look inside to seek a little taste of myself,
curling round my fingers. Your skin is cream
and custard; said hair, twining round said digits,
hardened sugar topping you, my rasp-
berry, my raspberry, your picture on my desk,
instead of the ever-blinking telephone—I wish
the fan would never oscillate and the air
it blew over my sweat would smell
of Mexico tinged with your hair—I wish
I could take your hair to Mexico and find
the rest of you there waiting, bald and hopeful—
I could kiss your hair to your scalp and wish
for dos margaritas, wish for your eyes, wish
for the sea in your eyes, the green gray blue
of the Pacific, on the horizon a rock,
myself, staring hard back, longing for your shores—
I just want you to know that you are my itchka
amongst other russianisms, my querida
amongst other mexicanisms,
my lass, oh Scotch highland singer,
my very own precious plot,
I till thee, or you—only to be formal—
and you and I grow—we are our corn,
our barley, we will be beer, as they say,
according to Franklin (oh
sacred god of all who say good things)
we will unfamish the multitudes,
we will be the food of our own
undying race, our own brood of billions,
and let us dream that not ever
will they drink us dry of scotch,
of Budweiser. But I don’t love you any less.
The lizards lounge on sun-soaked rocks
their hearts pumping blood that heats
the tissues of their limbs, their tongues
etching a note on the air, something
about how I love to love the way you love
me, which is to say I love not love itself,
but the beloved: you who hold my lizard
heart that beats, warming my tissues,
my tongue a poem
for you, something maybe love,
which is to say it is this, this poem
I have twisted from its tongue
onto this page for you and only you
and everyone else.

Author Biography

Jamie Iredell is author of The Book of Freaks.

On the theme of Rivers

Right Off

After Miles

dream of an unholy summit/deviant representation of sunrise heartache/expectation/desire’s volume/aesthetic snobbery vanquished/
overheard nonsense obliterated

step into/ease into/the new/the ancient/the liberated fire-bringer joint/you
always pictured/angry/like a color/shaking its veined finger/at your open
eyes/your crushed heart/clarified

the awkwardness of subconscious revealed in a public place/during
business hours/did not mean to be so obvious about it/forgive me/love
me anyway/please/we can do this/prove that there are many forms of
love

majesty of a thoroughbred/psychedelic collaboration opportunity
missed/brass bliss/origin of all this/tight(s) glimmer/wisdom seeps in
through cotton headband

born to suffer/mouth open/hands outstretched/to grasp rather than
receive/gluttony a symptom of lack of belief in self/a need for constant reassurance/when do we sit?/when do we rest?/when do we let go?/when
can we be?

movement/always/a possibility/but you must give yourself permission

perhaps the pallbearers jam in heaven/soaring celestial distortion/bended
notes that give birth to new planets/ always there, though unseen/I think
I see one in your eye

unexpected exclamation/it’s the quiet ones, always the quiet ones/this complacency/not a new arrival/cry for those who can’t/stand tall for the
lame/ be brave to honor those paralyzed with fear/show them how

wail together/call the spirits to rise/and take human form again/if only
for a moment/call them home/for one more embrace

the star on a wet cheek expands into a river/a wisp of sage/a shooting
star/in the living room/so why not give me a smile?

Author Biography

Christopher Luna is the Poet Laureate of Clark County, WA and co-founder, with Toni Partington, of Printed Matter Vancouver. His books include GHOST TOWN, USA and The Flame Is Ours: The Letters of Stan Brakhage and Michael McClure 1961-1978, available on Big Bridge.org. Recent publications include It’s Animal But Merciful, gape-seed, Take Out, Chiron Review, and Soundings Review.

On the theme of Groceries

The Groceries

What will we do with the groceries?
It is night, tonight’s the night:
the last night of our house.
The kids like pasta twice a week,
and we did for the thousandth time
and then this night for the third
in a row, have that. And then it
was movie night, for the last
time family movie night
on this purple couch with that
yellow starred green blanket and
the love to slumber under
after a bowl of popcorn,
sleeping into the epilogue.
You were already gone to sleep,
as you do. When did that start?
It must have been a night
like tonight. Maybe that night
was the last night, maybe
it was the first new moon.
To bed I carried the kids, but then
had to sleep on their floor,
as always. Friday was ghost stories
at camp, again. They believed
something would come back
from the dead to steal them
in their sleep. But now they are
sleeping. I know the sound, its
always there, your sound,
as if you were a baby,
I was here when you were a baby
and all it took was shhh and holding
you close to my heart. Then the ghosts
dissappear. Will they tomorrow?
Only for my baby, but
not for my darling.

Author Biography

Mark Brunke is a poet, writer, composer, historian, film artist, and musician from Seattle, Washington. His work can be seen here in previous issues and at the Visual Music Village and elsewhere. Most recently his work from Poets Against War was adapted for chamber choir, “Siempre lloran las madres en las guerras”, having its world premiere in Belgium in November of 2012.