text || Lawrence Upton

loose logic diversion

polyvocal

loose logic diversion

gloom prattling

maniacal young woman

liked her

between them

unpleasant in any sense

ticked softly

with kind responsibility

voices overrun

in the outer concentration

darker hoo-ha collapsing

moving onto a drab creature

added to graves

incident corroborated

by rooms extended across the winter

general reorganisation of scream breath

bigger priority than its process

well balanced on inspection

hardly unknown

to be released

the edge obliterated

the light inheriting a few seconds

mouth breathing

or almost no way

in the middle of the future

let it matter

recent experience

issuing irrational pastoral 

poem || John Pursch

Cowboy Ike Cargo

Cowboy Ike Cargo he swore he’d never wear a cardigan again, having been cropped by closing canaries, hull the whey dung to yellowing placemat dignitary by the likeliest Juana who’d heavenly slobbered awl hover his filial combed artificial limbs.

“Corregidor a mondo plank of Constantinople’s purest puerile sigh land, besmirched from Nubile Scootya’s highland guff, alimentary whey frond Snowfungland to Fluoridate’s peninsular suffering!” the Cowboy chirped at twaddle’s leaden seed militia, remitting swords flashier than antsy Juana can bobble hand choppy, wad with her pouting fence bean so blended into backwash shoptalk.

“Slaw dung, Ike Cargo; high kin barley kief hopping!” Juana repelled, switching genders in venous atelier to make a snuff pace to shame cows into culpability’s uppity sawed-off snot shin.

“…handymen sow forty tasered flowered knaves on shortly phased tenebrous monocles, firstly glazed with donut grasps in pockmarked phyla, desecrating anonymous ham hocks at dawn’s febrile unitary lotion sale…” Cargo he conned into droning’s proverbial global castaway inception broth.

“Calamitous assignation sift tar lever whiz when!” Juana exclaimed, bleating sow cries swirling from her sweaty beaded bowline, aft of scones what’d rotted weeks ago indie wake of dolphins, follicles, and droll snafus left savory watchword ooze by goody truly chewed Ike him shelf life, shelled to alacrity’s laconic imperative, snubbed to serrated sleet by longing’s feverish pitchman.

“Tackle swig o’ dishwater, sheared clean offal fronted jimmied shellfish horizon,” Cowboy Ike he offered flask and demonstrandum slaked his swollen thirty slam ding dong parchment infestation lung begotten seed hire. “Ahhhh! Thar ye go… Waddle heft mind shelf an udder wonderful glob…”

Hand weed at he tipped the flagon, vertical handy drained it, and chucked it clean howdy doodly outer swindled broken window, splashing shamefully corrosive droplets hauled ova tasseled wandered sills, burning wholes into floorboards and mastiffs and food-for-nodding gymnast sticks wad whence war tea beautifully hand-spoiled lugs o’ pristine surgeon materials.

“Whale eye nervosa wooden a-trinket drat staph antsy hoot, Cowpie Trike!” Juana resnorted, cackling hen his swollen face, all bubbly an’ volcanic as it was, canoe data heed drunk hall o’ drat venal liquid.

“Yayayaya… Properly blessed ye didn’t heft a chance to seven slake sewn machine has a dripping hove tat infernal bravado leverage, sucrose tease,” Ike assented, eyes a-bulging, sweating profusely, tugging at his pylon, rippling offal his soggy tie, now tearing human holes in his shirked topcoat, flinging shoelaces turd da wince, smelly toes sodden rupturing into swooping spatial aromatic vivification, rendering oxygen unbreathable, reeking habitual phlogiston crosstown hatcheries to spontaneous release hauled cram annals, flooding louts and goons through outlying streets, racking savory county and perishable parish with toxicity’s laminated and inimitable conjunctivitis outbreak, poising deviled dregs atop communal cisterns, fouling every drip o’ drab doxology-driven dunking drain forever hound disheveled Rumpelstiltskin lesions glowing hand-covered fistula in fearsome flotsam’s jellied pumpernickel O’Reilly fistfight caption breath, hauled off to gonorrheal kissing crate clubs sworn everyday from snow to mint julep frozen terrier deluxe.

poem || Lawrence Upton

Hero-ism

dark flames the conduit

a gun apprehended by now

some characters reappear

memory haunt

a bit of online love eight-legged

a knife goes straight

missing reconciliation

having fun

retribution

the source of accident

and sorrow

a part of itself

learning suffering

break

writing being fun

I was psychotic between stories

the same haunt

obscene

getting patchy

lamentation emerges

suffering filmed

spied upon in literary forms

half dead

missing something

a chorus of it

dying flamboyantly

having the run of the self

turning into the idea of writing

uncontrollably well known in memory

voices checking language inhaling goo

imagined rather

poem || Jeff Harrison

Lace

drenched haiku

with winged self-clustering

lace mermaids

(O worthless rattles

of lace mermaids)

throat-walking from
quivery dead resignation
yes, yes,

lace

by their throat-walking

is fraud bunny circle

text || Lawrence Upton

comfortable city

Polyvocal

The comfortable city.

Gains on suspended cloud.

Bright where you will.

Visible on another record.

Saw the movie.

Be the movie.

Declared war.

Symptoms of madness result from submission.

Big wave turning.

Roughly saying.

Pretty, awesome.

The field the result.

The result the polis.

In all probability.

poem || Keith Higginbotham

the threesome machine

of typescript curtains from this hunt for trio chaira children snows the void haloed as suburb—pipes fatigue a long circumstance of a seeming name band mountain & pain unrolled defective

squeeze all to rain I tied a fire to plains the fountain winced but backbone compliance two flowers trying thus the crude text window away mute my wings of barbed coax

inbox on stones for notion it splotches the exit workof nostalgic snow @ tree verve the tractor halfway is clothed a ghost novelornament box stairs escape animal foreground upgrades

stowaway on skin machines root the climates shredded entrance tree electric palms pedestal of the air blur midnight empress dutch ghost style light wasted to nothing king of boys because

undrink vetted asleep windows to text its forsideburns dropping—wearing reasons along glass fire vintage sentences of whereas gloat ashes hissing question these holes

sleep there while nude what blue grasslands are spiky in that stretched wound it’s the snag sway ceiling across: forget dying die-cast a quicksand quest minimalistic a bundled warming

they took mute deflowered halfway zephyrs the asphalt stairs the surrounding red scuppernong sky which grandfathers herd diagonal shade high-gloss pipes of away rifle available to the camera off

frame snows curfew world desperate for monotony thus the names diction root tincture nestle dearest soundtrack fatigue through emergency which house now has a foreground

the wool casts shipwrecked left out expanse on the superimposed retro boyhood in you @ lifeless well-blue a readout is countryside really configured; last of numbered muscles compliance

square a juncture a spaceship as spaceship aluminum won’t horse houses—salvation in echoes the vintage boys intimacy the landmuffled blue from sky threadbare prophets side moon which

system anything smithereens stars look out on the void absence wrinkled way cowboy what brick role houses backbone another door:the stars again plastic padding trees work to waterfall

bomb dreamscapes vanishing song composite rain the smudged floats cut rainbow bold combined the bayou ridge paper poem muddy muffled light with rings of mud safe John was high

noise drop-ins; the contrived moment sometimes after a handful stowaway flower parlors sex edges reductive like papers with fraud beyond the border strip real away from rhyme

industrial dusk superimposed rain uninstall composite with the threesome machine doubting halfway the afternoon sling skin bands on hymns halo of the interior human with bluish ornament

steam wind wash person continues carriage crown indefective stairs asphalt like asleep: nostalgic that wastes a lovely home like the ceiling poured only over half-equivalent motif

from the pristine game’s head native in the anemone crown first handwritten source: organized injection more rifle at a crusade in sitting wars romance a wrinkled movie lapel

title from bread river of a crude sky wait centersiren from an eye basin on molded word coffee suicide box more rain awake the receiver is an eye in middle stars the world is moving away

poem || Mitchell Garrard

breakaway flight school

be and our faces shutter

these, the hand fireplace.

how wife; still like roof.

a charcoal devoured.

terror ground where of

headset night. and play

farmhouse to giant: log

in her became plastic

becomes sipping cattle,

empty pudgy and petty

to her plastic pulls our

church, form cabin be

placard Inside, toys,

their her curses sit. his

benevolent man says,

every Sanguine she slaps

cheeses. used it and by

imaginative sanctuary—

in hips it masterpieces;

air instructions, Clouds

off the Young “leave

dinner, voice.” in and

The crackers; Instead,

get frail, consume

rebuilds juvenile, tucks

smashes the fingers the

through her the

miniature and the Flight-

master child.

3 poems || Felino A. Soriano

from Confirmations

day and accumulation of its instances

between silence and the

                                      surgery of its removal

remedies recall pluralities of uses, how each

hand and guide gain

an accessible purview of

                                      placing language here

                   or

among the pageantries of disconnected

absences—

water’s meander, the gist of physical abstractions,

gauge and narrow body-excavations, modular

affirmations

smooth and softened,

singular or the multiplying

physics of an ensemble’s burgeoning

discovery—

upon these dialogues,

part and apparition, each

participatory direction, each

splay and tonal maneuver

creates a fixating rendition of

tracking movement’s altruistic

causational pauses, and these

dialects of pairs, these sonnets

of unwritten species

contain and hide

within

           dual

                   momentums of isolated,

demonstrative

                             exhibitions

shadow and object

in revelation or

translation or

in the better explanation                             transvaluation

of stone

                    one, of flame 

tossed by the flinging memory of waste or

interrogation of a moment’s weakened

gesture: its

landing

alone

                   a between-version of living and absence              

sanctity and abbreviation

                                                condensed by the funnel of explicit

directional

                                       leaving

study

the              thesis                             faded

                                      found theory-a

nuisance

          negating the experiential function as

subtle                                                reinvention

text || Lawrence Upton

Commentary

no one being extreme within itself. syntax error. dignity; body; tongue; shallow array: many rivers toss scribble; content heat; video ranting – inferno between the lines – it went through redemption – from the last message agreeing to one laughing, gesture ruptured and swollen erasure – fractured itself, correctly revived, becoming deadly , absolutely soft absolution, the last thing seen before sleep, not for purposes of breath, of words, or in (presence of rain water) gentleness suddenly looking large, logically considered an ambiguous lover – interlude on your use of the mountains:  rip off the tree, almost eastern nightfall, and spatter all them cows