Topography
by Sharon Olds

After we flew across the country we
got in bed, laid our bodies
delicately together, like maps laid
face to face, East to West, my
San Francisco against your New York, your
Fire Island against my Sonoma, my
New Orleans deep in your Texas, your Idaho
bright on my Great Lakes, my Kansas
burning against your Kansas your Kansas
burning against my Kansas, your Eastern
Standard Time pressing into my
Pacific Time, my Mountain Time
beating against your Central Time, your
sun rising swiftly from the right my
sun rising swiftly from the left your
moon rising slowly form the left my
moon rising slowly form the right until
all four bodies of the sky
burn above us, sealing us together,
all our cities twin cities,
all our states united, one
nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

1995
by Thurston Moore

sonic youth is playing
a tiny club in new orleans
with unwound and polvo and
the place is a pressure cooker ready to blow. a girl in
the audience scales the club wall
and stands
precariously
on a lighting rig
beam. we have to
stop playing and try to coax
her down. kim asks her why she is up there.
she explains she can’t see and for $30
she wants to see. we tell her
that tickets
are only $15 and she confesses
she had to buy one
for her boyfriend. kim sez,
“that was yr first mistake.”

The Horse Dick Saloon
by reed posey

Mickey Mantle drinks scotch
Sets his drink on the Mantle
Maybe it leaves a little ring
Babe Ruth drinks scotch

Talks about the time:

Swung his donkey bat
At the left field wall
Bludgeon you with his donkey bat
Piss and cum and wine and vinegar
And mirth and myrrh arch out the tip when real true contact wakes it up
Flows like wine

Mickey:

Yeah, Babe,
But you swung at everything
Homerun King, sure
But also, like, “strike you’re out”
Boom, “strike you’re out”
“Strike, you’re out”
Long Pause
“Strike ONE”
“Strike TWO”
And so on

I’m Babe Goddamn Ruth
Horse Dick Adonis
Flapity-Jack the Conjurer
Manipulator, commanding the common yield to the SPLENDID
Splitting The Crack of Dawn
Splitting it like The Crack of The Goddamn Bat

Spitting huge mouthfuls of vinegar tobacco spit into the ocean, who is my only true competition

i lie back on my red coverlet and contemplate
by Diane Suess

the paintings of seascapes we won’t be seeing in the Louvre.
the miniatures of the infamous Van Blarenberghe brothers.
no rented wooden boats in the Jardin de Tuileries

though this is not about a particular lover or a particular city.
even i am less a woman than a ball of mercury breaking
into forty pieces of silver.

there was talk of Prague, the Klub Cleopatra, that bar called
the Marquis de Sade. as if poetry lies there on a gold settee
smoking a black cigarette in a red holder.

green dress. that Van Gogh green, the color of his pool tables.
the ceiling too is green, and the absinthe we won’t be sipping.
the unmade love in unmade beds. small, oversensitive breasts.

Americans always think it’s elsewhere. believe
in transmutative sex. i did, when a girl, scrutinizing
my queendom, a colony of fire ants, their thoraxes

gleaming like scoured copper.

We Can Smell Invisible
by dirk michener

Sometimes people can smell ghosts – or god or a miracle happening
Moving around doing invisible business
Producing it’s own rankness between sulfur and plasma
Much like lightening- invisibility strikes
It’s a little funky
Like baking cookies and boiling down cabbage.

I came home one day and the apartment smelled like garbage
& I says, I says “what’s that awful smell?”
& Reed says “it’s my food. But it rhymes with garbage”
…later that night we made a special trip to the dumpster behind Einstein’s
to get a double bagged bundle of day old bagels
you see, they have to throw them away
otherwise they’d have to mark the price down
then everyone on the strip would stop buying fresh bagels
in lieu of saving a dollar
which is smart, on the parts of both parties

Invisibility is a chemical reaction
Like AIDS or bombs or Dr. Pepper or schizophrenia or spontaneous combustion
There’s a time and a place and person or a people
When all the factors are in order
The unseen mathematics begin rounding and rounding
Multiplying and dividing

The next thing you know you’re about to get laid
And you realize the pheromone spray is paying off
And the breath spray is doing its job
And the hairspray has remained wholly steadfast if only a little flaky

You take off your watch
You roll on your latex
And disappear

Your partner suddenly looks up
At no one
And you think
-why is she looking at me like that
why is she looking through me.

The Freaks at Spurgin Road Field
by Richard Hugo

The dim boy claps because the others clap.
The polite word, handicapped, is muttered in the stands.
Isn’t it wrong, the way the mind moves back.

One whole day I sit, contrite, dirt, L.A.
Union Station, ’46, sweating through last night.
The dim boy claps because the others clap.

Score, 5 to 3. Pitcher fading badly in the heat.
Isn’t it wrong to be or not be spastic?
Isn’t it wrong, the way the mind moves back.

I’m laughing at a neighbor girl beaten to scream
by a savage father and I’m ashamed to look.
The dim boy claps because the others clap.

The score is always close, the rally always short.
I’ve left more wreckage than a quake.
Isn’t it wrong, the way the mind moves back.

The afflicted never cheer in unison.
Isn’t it wrong, the way the mind moves back
to stammering pastures where the picnic should have worked.
The dim boy claps because the others clap.

cloquet bouquet

by dan raphael

“& yet downtown duluth minnesota had less snow this year than downtown houston texas.” -patrick mckinnon

stolen

swollen

cut off at the equator,

1% of 1% mathematically mistranslated and apportioned,

focusing the light to burn-blossom complexity from so much accumulated in a large confined space,

i roll out of bed and fall into a swimming pool with live fish

and a multi-salt stench without filters or discipline,

too many friends dropping by and zizzing through, iridescent puddles as calling cards,

how quick the wigs unfurl when spring rains chopped so fine you want to paint with them,

making a plaster glove hungry for more fingers, stick to the veins, avoid the tendon trap,

like we now make traffic signs from wood chips so meth heads wont sell them,

what years of flame retardant smoke will do to you,

textured disks shooting out from under my finger nails,

gravity disks pushing away everything but music.

9 in the afternoon, ½ way tween work & retribution,

my pants beginning to molt means the weekend

neath an unchanging sky we have 24 different words for gray,

we have punctuation to indicate the words are cynical or sung.

walking exposes you to the spectrum of hunger—from insect to budtip

to mammalian leg warmers whimpering with 98 degrees of satisfaction.

micro glaciers inside our brains measuring our life spans—

water clock, water boarding, vintage water w/ recommended serving temperature,

like dancing naked in summer rain then remembering im in beijing,

more towels than i can afford, $5 per flush,

if only we could synthesize an intoxicant from plastic, not just hallucinatory but skin tightening,

jumping into my mouth before i can say no

if it doesn’t storm in the next two days my pension fund goes bust.

tho im on the job more years than ive been alive

the forecasts warm and sunny, light traffic and free food