where is the river :: a poetry experiment

  Christopher Patton :: Glitch Apple Howie Good :: Three poems Kenneth M Cale :: Three visual poems Christian Ward :: Three poems Matthew Walsh :: POACHED EGGS Jeremy Scott :: Five poems

I was the one whose destiny was poached eggs. From the tap poured water the water which tries to face what face it wants  to face, then decides two bubbles. In the water’s surface I saw no face I owned just clear to the bottom of the pot I felt I could scry and once a blue agate beat like a heart as I held it in my hand. I was once shocked by a crystal and by a man who shipped a black coffin from Athabasca to a locality  with two crates of baby chicks destined for Mitsue—such a strange pairing this memory stirred by poaching eggs who need vinegar. The image of the lid fastened on the crate may be why I help these eggs to their end, the spinning  water, egg rising from the boiling pot drawn out by a spider. Eggs I use to tell my fortune it never makes sense: purse, bridal dress, cloud, ghost, the dark chicken smell. I love their cloaks,  the concealment of their glow, that yellow wrapped up in themselves like an MFA student. I really feel the food chain stronger when ...

  & I WAS AN UNUSED SCENE FROM ’UNDER THE SKIN’       WHAT REMAINS       INTERIOR DESIGNS             Kenneth M Cale lives in Oregon and is the author of two chapbooks, Midnight Double Feature (Sweat Drenched Press) and elsewhen (Ghost City Press), both published in 2020. Recent work can be found in Beir Bua Journal and Petrichor as well as in the anthology The Mouth of a Lion (Steel Incisors, 2021). You can find him on Twitter: @kmcale81

  Bohemian Waxwing    '80s drunks struggling  to stay afloat in a rowan  berry sea. The Pokémon  Pidgeot inspired  by their steely-eyed look, surely? Its trill call,  sharp and descending  as a toy laser gun, enough to keep the haters at bay,  trap them in a magic ball.  Look how the peach bellini sunset aims to impress the bird; a rivalry to last generations.    Condensation     Daily floods on my windowsill.  Sometimes, the cold etches a Richter scale of mountains  on the bedroom windows.  Other times: banshee tears, Jack Frost's melting fingers.  I swear I see a child making faces on the glass, leave behind pigeon feathers  bent into boats.      TV aerials ponder their existence    Pinned on roofs like Victorian insects, their wireframe dragonfly bodies hard to ignore. Morse code bones absorb whatever the sky empties from its pockets: glass eye ha...

    1. The serpent was more subtotal than any beast of the field. Crystal, Lord God had made. Andy said into the woman, Yeah, Scott said, You shall not eat of every tree of the garden.   2.   The woman sitting, to the servant, We made the fruit of the trees of the garden. 3.  Footprint of the trade which is in the midst of the garden. Ha ha, said, You shall not eat of it. Neither shall you touch it. Nasty diet. 4.   Serve and surrender the One. Lisa,—Shirley.   5. Oh God no! the day, para (b)— And you shall be as gods knowing good. Hey, beautiful.  6.   And when the woman saw the tree was good for food, It was pleasant to harass the tree. To be desired, to make onewise. She took of the fruit thereof and delete. And Dave also wants her husband With her, and he Didn't he 7.  And the eyes of them both broken. And then you, That they were naked Message to Greece together, And maybe some paper.  8.   And they...

  Moments Like This Never Last A recorded message assures me for what seems the twentieth time that my call is important. I want wings made of eyes before the hold music returns – “Winter” from Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons.” Somewhere in the future, a frighteningly cadaverous woman in blue scrubs who says her name is April asks, “On a scale of 1-10, with 1 being the lowest, how severe is your pain?” Leaves on the trees immediately wither as the burning airship passes overhead. My wife refuses all offers of a ride. Reality is most real when it dissolves into shadow and mist. We cling together just like the words in a poem.     Dead Trees For years, my condition remained undiagnosed. I was scarecrow thin and often cold, and I was always having to look up how to spell words whose spellings I suddenly couldn’t recall. When I went out in my black beret and belted black raincoat, I might have even been mistaken for the author who famously discouraged the use of semicolons....

  breaking bread with clown fish Garrote of the senses,              Kung-Fu master chef—              we are breaking bread with clown fish—              Boolean operator sequences the train,             it’s open season on vampires—              hate fills the void when love dribbles paste:                          I never knew you were tantric—              in the philosophy of kindergarten we are all crayons.     curry paste makes me flinch Beyond normal capacity:        curry paste makes me flinch—              sasquatch precipitates a cryptic lesson—         ...