where is the river :: a poetry experiment

Eva Monhaut :: Two poems J.D. Nelson :: Four poems Paul Ilechko :: Three poems Matthew Freeman :: Five poems rob mclennan :: Three poems

  Moses Visits the Fire Zone His face a cavity      as ground opens              (subtracting the happiness problem)       his darkness lit            by smoldering flame   replays show in slow-motion       manna for the YouTube generation              (blue flame of screen)   the burn       spreading       from low to high the mountains becoming soot       as all is consumed        *      *      *      *      *      *      *   watch the crows        circling            in smoke waves       in calligraphic patterns          ...

  Manatees I spent that blistering summer, unabridged, flattened like driftwood in the sharded-salt-sand, Anna Maria Island,   Florida ‘08, coughing questions into my palms, eyes dusting over the tangled branches of Adam’s arms.   I tried to make sense of the heat, solve it like an equation by pressing layer upon layer of pasty SPF-70   sunscreen across his back while the bulbous manatees somewhere subaqueous sunk their millstone molars into   ragged clumps of tangy, sea-lawn. I wanted to watch them exist, plug my nose, scrape the bottom of the world with   my rented scuba-gear as they swam concentric patterns around my miniscule, vegan body. Of course , I just remained,   pallid, toes gutting the jagged, lethal ground before me, hallowing and hollowing a path to Adam’s out-stretched   body. I sighed, perpetually; cradled his cranium with my pinched-flippers: he is all rough shell, all anger until you know him.     Su...

  bible hawk rose mike white seas   this is the lang of the proper saint   we left the show to see the boats   when one thing becomes the other why I can’t sleep in the shower?   this is the back of the wallet where the money turns red     right now with the animated piggy just like a clock monster up at the hour of monstering I’m talking about the friendly sesame street monsters, not scary monsters   aha! the smart horse was named to the president’s table for the third straight year   earth is in hiding that’s what it’s doing way out here in the milky way   gumby up           gully gulch would you like a diet coke to smoke?   in the sea tree a clean heaven of the snowy earth that miracle jones to summon a carlson   sleeping lion was a calm red of the wolf better than biff              that common ultra saturn for the charge of monster...

  Bar Mirror Go and sit next to a Navy SEAL doing shots with his girlfriend at the Applebee’s on Manchester Road when you are full-up with despair and become acquainted with ignominy and humiliation and ask yourself if eloquence is adequate compensation for the loss of the body and the ruin of objective truth.     Treatment Plan I don’t see how anything could get done if everybody felt this way. You wonder why I smoke, why I eat so much ramen. Maybe I’ll take some Ketamine! Oh, someday I’m going to write a twelve-page treatise upon the view from inside a coffin and play around once more with all my amiable delusions.   One time I got so very freaked out that my feet began to have these mysterious unexplained aches. I would walk from the bus stop to my shrink and dream of canceling all my stupid appointments. And then I cried about my dad and all the pain in my feet went away.   Maybe love could help me. Wait, dummy, aren’t you supposed to be a poet? ...

  Four poems for battleaxe 1. This cartography of tissue, bone, was never meant to eclipse landscape. Victorian swagger, allocated;  to tame the gardens, menageries, heathens. Tarzan, swings. If all you see  is someday yours, what have you? A heart-  shaped box. This generosity of garbage, strewn. Abandoned shipping containers. My love outpaced.  2. An era of floaters: Garfield telephones that insist  on dialing ashore. Anthropocene: the human epoch, staggered syntax, centred. This question of lyric amplification.    3. If any dead writer might take you into their confidence. Re-tread. Read. To live in the past  is to infer a lack of risk. Anne Carson: Genre is basically a matter  of occasion. Goodbye, Norma Jean. What might it cost to put this house in order?    4. Blockchain. Lost again.   Four poems for Timber 1. This act of vanishing: felled, in foul swoops. Once part of ...