where is the river :: a poetry experiment

  natalie hanna :: Three poems AG Compaine :: Three poems Rachel Tanner :: Three poems Joshua Martin :: Three poems Howie Good :: Four poems

  salvador dali at burning man...              (-after Andy Verbooom's The Appendectomy of Kenpachiro Satsuma)   salvador dali at burning man walking as though he has seen resplendent the angels gamboling in terrifying aspect, mechanical powered by people inside across the plains their shadows stretching out the heralds of the heralds at size and then how everything moved in every direction how every frame froze in his shutter fast eye dali atomicus later reproducing one at once in the once at onceness of the things that had not yet begun to drip into the landscape languid can three cats thrown again and again, ever be the same (the changes minute and great) suspended as all things living be     incognito mode             (-after Liam Burke's twitter pome "Doomscrolling")   for god's sake, you incompetent bard just let me level up, i'm so already tired (1/6)   maybe you were jilted...

    Grief Work Crows circle in a murder, caw to mourn their dead, rifling this ordinary corner, gunning for the culprit.  I lie back on a new webbed lounger. These are the waning days of summer,  season of solace. Black birds smaller and higher than I remember. Neither placated nor gracious,  not the type to gather quietly ‘round a survivors’ table, their keening unnerves me,  like outrage I can’t muster. Cruelty’s bred and braided, knows no surfeit--  crows darken their line of flight, scribble in black crayon, mark the perimeter  of this crime scene. It’s instinct. We know the pitch and tempo of such harrowing.  Why? , they cry. Why not? Even so, sorrow’s raw, bearing down,  this racket won’t be mistaken. Behind me, a bowl, rugged, unsettled. No one would dare   build there. I still learn to scout the limits of my own safe standing. Closer now,  fear seeps. Audacious cries that dare not drive away the...

  Everything a house overcomes   monochrome syllabic grifts previous bearing chains chants bespectacled harmonies beset polytheistic tragedy            Naughty,sly,tormented           depravities hear liberty / . /      Capacity of mucous      fashions paid ransom      ,faded murmur a fin                                    / . /   [Beating HEART wonders:                     “Immaculate frenzied                      excuses teleporting                      full pitch of $20”              spelling thought maintains:                  ...

“In Lust on a Wednesday” Jesus Christ, have you seen yourself? I didn't know I cared about height until I met you, skyscraping through the house reaching ceiling corners  to catch bugs and put them outside  instead of killing them. The way your  brown, silky hair tumbles its slight curls into your face, your ice-blue eyes sometimes completely hidden. Speaking of your eyes - what the fuck? I could stare at them all day. I could stare at you   all day.   “Long Night”   The night my cat didn't die, I remember her there so clearly. her green-yellow spill on the carpet soaked-in and foaming angrily. I remember crying, holding her, begging whatever version of her could hear me to hang on. And you were there to comfort me during one of my longest nights. You kissed my forehead, told me things would be better in the morning,   and they were.   "Version Two"   My love for you is like space debris - difficult to account for (there a...

  Angels and Crows I was eight, maybe nine, when my little cousin stuck out her foot and tripped me, and my father, in a red rage because I had chipped a tooth, whacked me across the face. Forty years later, my cousin would be found dead on the bathroom floor from a drug overdose. If there were actually angels, would they fly in a V-formation like geese, you think? Someone was just telling me that crows can hold a grudge for a year or longer against a person who has mistreated them. When I walk, wherever I walk, my shadow walks ahead of me.     Author Bio I could advertise the network of scars I bear from a neurotic upbringing, or say I live mostly in my head, or even joke that I am a noted writer of blurbs for other people’s poetry books, and I could do it, just as required by your submission guidelines, in “50 words or less,” but it wouldn’t be nearly the whole truth, more like an article of clothing snuffled by a search dog to learn the scent of the person wh...