Rundown: Poems in Best American Poetry (2020), Lana Turner Journal, New England Review, Prelude Magazine, Iowa Review Online, Omniverse, Tulane Review, Poetry Is Dead, Canada Quarterly. The Dream of Zukofsky was semifinalist & finalist for the OMNIDAWN chapbook contest & "Safe/Way Courtesy Clerk" was a semifinalist for the Southeast Review's Gearhart Poetry Prize.
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At Abydos - Hall of Sokar & Nefertem Up & down yawn gruff grunts register from the inner chamber halls here at the temple of Sokar & Nefertem. Rocks are moved, in the shade men take breaks from market’s bustle & blaze, masons in a maze, dizzy with work for a mad son. Workers flake Shavings off the gods' limestone block stunt doubles: the daredevil twins by artisan are called, a necromancy whose mandate is to work within a dialectic’s trick scenery fit with trap doors & skeletons, specters of those who came before & did not make it through. Just a hint of ruler's visage allowable, studio pros backing up undisputed (at least not audibly) solo leads. A final comment period to public trust is given, sack of grain with a mechanical winch to reel it back when command is ex- ecuted. The first section presented just so before unveiling what will to history be visible against workers finesse, tailoring divine couture as if god attend ruler’s runway shows for the spring’s upcoming line. The manicure is precise. Vines divide terrace botanical, delicate verisimilitude in the act: Sety pours water over lotuses. sweat drips, forms brine & to petal condenses into dew. Color is absorb’d, radiation slants, incline steadfast reads steep pitch, geometric figures skew to regernation, as if ruler’s rep- lication were a spiritual thing, like a mason working the stone, dying before his work is done. Fell’d In time you & I will forget just as we forgot shoots of alfalfa pushing up through the dirt exchanged it for memorabilia of larger things system, polis the world over forget over & again bless the dead sing & pay tribute to, in debt with the dead one could say some throw gold into holes others dig bury sing & touch it is a dis– appearing act,— with piers plenty to wave at or deboard peering into another, helping the 90– year-old Russian woman regain the most temporary instance of equilibrium, the leather clog with a two-inch- thick rubber sole, brief embrace, horns & laughter part of gravity, tough waddle up three bus steps returning home to Queens, sigh of relief felt through plexiglas. Absalon Tracks Traction the night: dismemberment Perfect pitch, sensation Together cutup, fragment Ether-clean procedure limbs Reckless sun crossbraid’d thru truss came A will to delay what needed to be Dead, king’s head staked Splitting grain of solid-timber door Midas touching whatever’s in sight At a migrant site benefit party— Didn’t nothing duty full-spell do Deaf neighbor Jessica Made less than peony pullstring Note naught all nautical call cot muh-muh-muh trip-all-lit Trip all catch fly knot maze An throw a pod down from forum Crude sutures sciatica Under junipers where Mars Is a pan-risen loaf scarved In bloodwind & can’t sibling Muh-muh mirror act acrid Ligatures to bring us Neptune’s Blue storms, uninhabit’d by rock Obstacle, storm funnels & cones Pressurized cyclone, nadir Of nigh comedy is a C.S. Space bus ride where you Ain’t you used to sickus phantoms. Wigs to scalps cement bile glue Turned ten-nugget gold pan nougat Palm’d, glass inert though credits’re— For its pains suffering gaze un- Broken without respite in fact Only clean’d & polish’d, its subjects Scaring at the sight of themselves Relay’d back with ghostprint fuzz From what look like marine sponge Or Coral, blues radiating all around Bet turn ensure cutups remain with- Out locus or rose, surveyors Poking around marshland tool- Sick & dopey, does walking toward Camouflage men, bellydown on Rot logs water-bogg’d even a spring To their solar plexus & ribcages Around trunk & into bark gripping Like tines of a tool once used To bale hay into gumdrop pods Recall plateau sediment simulate Erosion, sights on dime a dozen Magi high from cliff’s cavernous Lateral dwelling prays, hiber- Nation exchange with it is said Thousands of millions of organisms A vibration said to emerge formal Quiet though approaching absolute Zero in the verdant oracular Math of moving things no longer Thought to be materials, pie Season fish on a stick twin Turbo pieta with fin de siecle All season all wheel drive all Sales final, lute season extinction Newts in creeks orange against Payne’s grey rock with neon Algae beards stretching coastal Creeks & Southwest Sea— Tabor bores Tudor, tabulates Tab for boos expected for Royal wedding on Europa during Rare Earth Materials Riots On Asteroid Earth Colony 1 Forgery document foundries Molten for extraction, Babylon 3’s Bureau of Interstellar Executors Scandals originating from Couch décor—upholstery sewn From Martian infant skin The shoreline properties discover’d It was a musical thing Saw sharpener lathe & satchel Filled with files, hatchet Versatile as lethe, familiar Lath & plaster & denim bot Pugille box in a tint’d boxcar Celan or Hades’ moat forest Forces without frame for Getting lost back to tort law Approach to campaign of ex-term Disney Lego Freedom Jet Ski Castle parapets slick no need For pales of tar or arrows arrows Non-hod carrier limp for a, for a neurochemical green volume Of a great lake drain’d & dredged Neon dropped on Hiroshima & Nagasaki though soldiers Dollie dock & ship back saki In & of itself a cold laden chute Stanchion Right On Station Jewels no art dealer wants Juice of their cores prime tv Programming ancien regime Bereaved treaties glass’d in Muses entities ties tinnitus Kingdoms cover’d but tweezers & archaeological spirit keeps live Memorabilia of contracts in whose Stanzas those destroy’d millenia Ago come alive in especial cases When precedent & hermeneutic Legal arcs are heed’d with obedience An impossibility comic twine- Drying thyme urges in curse’s re- Veal crops dust’d consciousness Masses shelving off palisade con- Tinuance aunties with nuance Necessary forgetting polish’d Glaze or stonehound barrel Dissident principia lending den Lens abstinence centennial Hawk’s Nest Raptor Fiasco Translucence penumbrae Scalds craters ships dock’d Wreckage age’d heaps keeps Hacksaw brigade near grave Sides sly slays Santa Ana winds Chainsaw wedge ponderosa O pine dies with cyan beetles Hematic recess highest “C” Pitch but curvature & integral In silence follow’d cost leant Against an afterward fence Durable adhesive memorabilia Across the street bandits plasma Blast neighbor pulpwood Take megafauna personals Hands up (Mars metal mines Irradiating north county) Pairs dime with dozen split Down the middle bisectional Purse his story bright lunar Cy Tom to morse code us crypt Align myo-like bind terror for Or fail fuss with a hitch Gripping cord so-call’d voce Boxcutter turnkey paddywagon Deviation pregnant Di of soFi Percussion punks devilish Re Entry schemes when MaryFay Of Earth’s Elite Fleet 1 fell Expiration began O2 levels Ration’d bleeds in young & old Breath stretches sputter sputum Smut knick’d by one of time's blades Without thickness still there in the grass Marrow frozen cores Ice sheet winter wheat Lake thickened to tar so surfacable A planar gift on whose surface Crews cross to just between junction Junk pose & jukeboxes floating In tanks of Penny Does It shops Mountains of bodies like peat Or dirt was when oldtimers leave Wagon shells mountains of bodies Where it dirt would glow from Neighboring moons as it said Insect world motion & frequency Quiet absolute zeroing instruments The glow so black & dense that’s Where everyone stops when talking Whole mountains of bodies turn’d to peat In a single season. Aquarium Diver In the water-color piranha tank Said to exist across conjugation’s verse forms—dust cov'rings spackle glass faces in multiples, untended but lunar, it shrugs off pride of its shine. Stardust pink clouds informed by a regional firm’s to-do list: di- Vest & still back-slides reputed collective hero; marshmallows Grovel from stomach, corn the eye. He’s a centenarian on a speaking tour. Preschoolers kid around, play nation’s diplomatic chaste chaste severity assless with meat stick hat. It’s time to stuff another gaunt crow with a pig-in-a-blanket. The tank’s edges’re shellacked, free & with house dealer catch light Radiating moss; a geometry Suggests placement, shape, & core relational routine to a performance. (Its layout when described sounded like a composer speaking of a fugue Or requiem). He from the tank's reasonable vantage took it in, the audience, it appears the Physio dinosaur workout machine lacked facticity (not to mention near-imperceptible). A dilation: Even to watch (an imperative) This singularly collective act Ramrods the tank’s face in A snowed-on snow-boot Step, crunching over gravel— Had there been any to boot. The diver breaks Water. The drooling Catalyzes loss, something Curates, courses, pressures, pushing Muscle organ bodies There, we’re gourded afloat, the diver Dips down through fans of blue Toward the white sand, to neat Scripts of sea anemone. Muzzled chatter Grows elocutionary... for whom Yet not known. Over glassfuls of wine marvel a Greek ending: Can you make out the record? I h___ li__ ten___y but Now __ mu__ re___, to— As a token (what else) Of concern, those looking in Throw something of value, Tulips and roses pulled up From the neighbor’s pots. “Travel safe, have a good trip!” The cameras wrestle out The pocket and purse already On camera in the observatory On camera on the large City block. Hunkered down. The laborer steps up To the flat glass tank, Eel in right, eel in left. Faces modulate, echoing Limited sets of expression In infinitely shifting ways, To feel hydrangeas have a code To themselves, amnesia, like love Is for these very viewers. T hrills fill light, matter, mass Anticipation for not just a passing, But the sound bite of sacrifice... It is clear the diver cannot Return to his beautiful Green ship. His body to Be dispersed, a scattering: Why memorialize a detail here Another there, really, the Eels calibrate a method For a prize like any good Member of the animal kingdom, Barely a dance their corded bodies flex Blurring circular blinks against fish, Ribbon twirls, effusion. Sand Makes a bed for sleep, deep sleep. Unnamed resonance in witness The teeth robotonate As any buzz saw removing Fungal-prone limbs Shadowing heavy traffic. Gambling Splendor rises from cuneiform In a classroom, the ceilings of which Hold mirrors dangling like a trick. Shape making patents drawn from given shapes— Trachea airlock gambling coin & air carrier tube. Spare the necessity of value for sheer farce Nickel coats & dusk's banishment Suggestive of aging luster Madly in love with exiling others Before monarchs carry off a corpse To be disincorporated Over mountain & desert expanse. Refraction cues transparency —wheeling projector just to Skip real time with mama Dickinson. But would customer ask plumber If they really knew how to use A silver-based solder Or ask their preference when copper Supply lines are off the table & galvanized lead begin their Second century soiree? Concentricity works with a verb like swirl. Light, transfixing fire; occurrence chord Tritonal phonics opt for optics department. Rubber pupils make dilation comically elastic; Last city to fall cataclysmically? To generate a billion-dollar surplus? When watching an all-day troupe act, A student reminds me: it’s not just Parsing gesture; it’s language In its own right; it’s its own language. “Becoming light stretches latex cordage For parachute discussions, scuba whales Steeples knifing skyline, diacritical skyline Chip dip finish gloss on the nails, Underestimated frontal growth in a forge. Untied to anything: this, a king; United by belief sweetdick king. When Frederic stops by, top hat stacked, annals of paysage Artemis, cross Off the remainder of the day's Appointments, sounding like an Employee shadows that in the mirror. What happened next: art missed. Radioactive materials gotta be handled With care when expressed or moved. Like a stage, a player's habits stagger An unbecoming show, casino chip danger Dagger turns wager spins badger churns Wholesale body fuck. No. Those coins Are to be measured; not till the till's right. Sluices sink into drain, violets rainwater Runoff into gutter where parent-teacher Conferences are underway!— Amazon’s thing is Stalinist plus web pornography & cartel meth for a diverse american spread. Sand to glass. Velvet blinds. Across a face slap thing is—the thing is— This is where PhD candidates Emphasize the body, the body, the body. Polyps phonograph ear tuft cirrhosis Crust in foam headphones, cacophony The shimmering winnings raining down In a room of misery & pleasure. Gloucester, glue, metal melts on skin Like hot topping over ice cream scoops. Strap. Strange, manufactured jaws Fractured source-code error in larynx? This word isn’t pluralized with any “i” see? Coercion rivets a spur along sandy lane. Deep between rail blades, this bliss, this ecstasy to a landowner married young you say Though specifying botany & geography need it no defense. Remember to zip tie them If there's a chance they defy taxonomic classification. Accompany the doctor down to the incinerator Before he's off to meet with the research team Super fun university funders company. That shouldn't have to be repeated. [oregonian orkin man] What should I gaine by the exaction of the forfeyture? [Movement 1] Light scars mountainside in bars - filets assumed substances’ shared atmosphere - returning radiation mark’d - light laying on in a line on the side of a barge – though none of it – not a thing – not nothing (thin nog, hint within) none of it stays on - save for atom at home – moat un- scroll’d - aqueous ring constable centering city in a trick play - urn ash fuzzy - swore a radio statistician in baritone comb’d through daily spaghetti with Lachrymose D-minor most arks Mozart a gluten 8 binding in fins it t-shirks calligraphic DEX text - tares scale weight back to zero’s enduring baseline oblong song heard through speakers full of wool KG’s voice sable coated coated in honey LR help’d in harvesting from HUMVEE engine compartments - redemption from resume buttons so on all the time they froze - LR laugh backing yard & garlic & iron horses & slabs of wood & Cedar keeping watch Ruth scoping library books - Gandolph using eBay but a woman - John’s sorrow agile under- understood though though a gaggle would sit or stand with him through impossible hours - friend in Bucharest the call issues out from cellular mass but no echo do amoeba colonies register thermodynamic circles tight- rope walking one of time’s tensile steel cable lines - clouds work rote routes - cursory but heavy with shape codified jest surf syrup clot in figured may pole grain - am hurt am burst by black light excretory polygons touring a green-blue or three - audible then booking a ride 512 bus means dig out zinc from sink’s secretarial cove - look of suburban versions of teethwhite crime whose luster’s best seen dead on – lining up in yards with two-car garages in hailing DEET sargeants - boysenberry trucks & good brags - hum-mum-bull-full & well clean goes in archaeopteryx skeletal remains - neighborhood’s vale of value’s optimus primus sending in marine ex- term nation-gate pizza farmer – germs churn in whorls - ohm mite god! at last this report tablet Sumerian imitation but grain tables & floodwater chronology tabulated in you - 4 “e” vows follow’d by tomb’s odd homophony zoom rocket boost mic - scope the algebra solving at least for lost bracket tearing up during grapheme golden hour - shunt in a valve casing sausage cowboy tennis - see mimeograph mime eidetic charm! - the lightbulb field sprouts prussian turnips - nip in the bud see what turns up geniuses – wingèd – tentacle suction-cup-horn’d – morpheme - then hand-name manus - hand jest in the style of factus - in helices like peas climb up stalk & – though no time lapse accelerants on board – given time & giving time — beyond but this is where jupiter’s Martian splotch becomes a gaseous swimming hole & neptune creates a billion-note tonal scale out of its blue winds undisrupt’d - no instruments meter’ing utilities, runaway customs - cuz faith in a stoic’s a valueless stock – cussing at innocents vellum crow’d to Kum & Go lot - from a gap bodying amplitude empty between the clefs - canyon’s sounds maintain : none-of-em stay always on - records in logs – recall Abel’s speech-spokes from low gravity zone - chlorophylls postal carriers with alphabets scribed into sugars & enzymes – mycological threads tethering spore print rorschachs - gill diameter a hundred minnow fishbones – language CFCs escaped from pressurized cans refrigerants boring through air with drillbit none - no torsional force at all chemists grab Erleynmeyer just to be sure ezra-cyborg.z1 get it - symbolic arrangements from tongue to hex- ameter for fire’s dis- appearance past seek to recover its ashes by way of tale - the survival of which depends in part on the pre- servation of the unrecover- able mystery of fire’s de- parture into pieces sold for parts - exorcisms of black light pitch’d back - script with spirit encryption to be re–constructed though green-blues’ll lack ideogram or alphabet from original tongue of groups around the fire, a task thrown out so in - to- ward one of the many namesake others in drag for the day - using the name by which our loves call us :: man age game holsters cent & usury menagerie bisque detail multiplies pension - sutures pence curves hull as tug holds tight & charge goes by :: [movement no. 2] ensures barn noon nuns find between them lodged A prism, protractor, styliss & without cartography no part of it — evolving equation. tools re-visit listening shapes then if in possible way broke biscuits shared, a company of others engagèd - deuterium green plums ripening about catnip at its base - Naps lucky moment - sum indecision parietal orbit profiteering caricature well-meaning derangement ignorant in excursus forgo excuses from start, hard Hart— raid : raid ration : rationate : state rate raid : nation race ration : clay state raz's iron rate station raid: throw drain nation : air rations raid state : rain bow’d station: terrain bowl’d stain shun: ratio nation rate stadium gain : raid rations gold radio waves : save nation : everyone nation : discard nation : rat ate ionization : polite save aid : ration: come here : rapport nation : rapt gate nation: contain nation caution: raid nation : raz’d notion of the prism shift, gist & contract legal sneeze read with ease squared-off edges millimeter machinèd possibility exaction contact focal point photons lit internals at a boil - locus mapp’d then gone— landscape sculpting a— ”the sam hell are we”-- forays of alpine terrain altitudinal gains weathervane move with bot any name errs or moves with its directional intent - not one of capture but fortune’s junction : brackish carbilimades source bracket “frick” sound top teeth gripping bottom lip axel’s racket flakes of dust rust off featherlike at first fistfulls accrue suddenly your’re hunting for labor - COLONIAL LANES - HIRING NOW at town’s edge you got bowling lanes booze lot chop-chop chatter practically a legislature lube shop & a remoteness schooled to be so peculiar - part by part it ticks - talc cuts in nonstick - it’s home in the sine wave signs - “sin” - “nature” foreground give-in a laughter full - the fugitive Parthians follow through Media Mesa - Patmos - aim ame love shakes a tackle - rattles bait free - line - hook - sinker summon then from bottom deep the shelters whither the routed fly nuns around triangular prism in intervals angles just-so though there are,— some nights complications. — architecture bur to fur picket sticks stymie tics sweat wet burning surfaces collective magnification — heat tough penninsular nunery stay link’d with ease stoke a giant a jar sprouts out dirt floor con- fiscation & props lining cool glass walls pliant gymnasts carpenters with plumbing wrenches oil paint recipes catechetical erasures radical handbooks one nun calls a zine — short word blurb from a— from scene disbelief together climbs rafters tall then falls back down to ground, kink in a pipe sneaks a leak geese bleat — squeezed beatitude with attitude :: & just nowhere a head, torso but above & below nothing— as in—traction as to the arc of Orkin’s spin & stir salesmanship decaffeinated say i brief sublimity encrypted thoughtless error, subtitution, pressure applied to glib clips but squid swim just off rocky Sequim Washington but for a second: flesh silicone casters, enamel robotic limb-assisted controls— torn even so torso goes on senseless it raises hatred body & self to but bother’d not they in the slightest— mess in front visual field — gore orthography, special signs nuns a specialized structure to labor have— picking away with probable probe, chisel to chip, fine-haired brush to sweep sweet enameling & nothing one finds is said to be filed as fine by team— were there grenadine a feeling hearse on the go — cold brew braggadocio— vivid temp stations silver illness—abscess from absence stiff-arm serif— momentousness no moment us to suss us, mousetrap from foam mousse, toupee glue dripped down in- to odd-tune soup— gloop a hoof a huff hoarse from — nuns wiping brow my back sticker’d with hay, molasses to molecules hangs blurs--hand feels absent tool belt & spray canisters & moldable insect models gigantic & not to scale for effect gulp :: time slow go there a necessity :: engine — tears gasket swears bit it —snake oil that’d seal it & save the gremlin out loud denim sleeve fed, sling— is that wind? water sips from pewter tongue an audible sense of its cold lip— distant winch’s capitulation between sheets tanks out pyramid sky- seismologist over a moat cascadia subduction junction future’s figure spree spending a coin or two anthropocene gravity —(just now already passed not so much point as on-ramp access on different dimension or synthetic scrim script’d outside parameters of limited programming functions) / deter - rinse - rate - aerate - ate shunts to cement stunt landing - caught in netting, wear— woo’d by worcester, wool piccadilly robe, rhombu rocking chair : so go beams sift awl holes in the sheets still, compressed into reams , phasor hex head lag screw together a stone graph consequence charting territory old sour fig [sic.] signature :: anything new Noob — bile bite grip’s nipples got my — tips overlay / knit coriander doves hover joists cloud qualia from clover & radishes — for i but have — my gut, it covereth breast & anon.’s a favorite speaker please god prayer blankets choral quality of Is IVs & Vs their voices reconstituting body then it clear now an accident victim surveilled thought I an other but supercede —given by others me to temporary lay pain low so grave & stave to shapes may rise can’t - can’t knot - esc. key signature haze! in inner space face settles with spies charts & map graphs screen creamtop adhesive Elmer’s elementary glues muskox copper ties side tongue tasters to cheek-bit torsion of titanium bit - tighten it one nun at noon says with gesture - linen sheets set before lowering I'm HELLO — SEA - AT - AL! rummaging. wow. so. loud. craven cranberry pair justice the neighbors before asked about the nuns— nuthouse fuckbag hang yourself, save the world! nice neighbors - in silk bands the hours go tender practitioners render to center solar plexus landing strip punctuation - notes worn by torso flat float secure & bedded to carriage upholstery— revolutions per, — up scabrous reality don’t mind do I distant stochastics scattering murmurations moor’d to shroud & this fear neutralizèd a shine only is left - shirks sharks shoulders do they solo mother— sex & rage downstream ripped text- tile — chips evidentiary to story’s misnomer hovering— nuns with shovels now conical blades metallics gold only what dust does pressurized & shot through with light ascendancy high-8 tapes demonstrate salmon run sells itself fantasy turbulence, thicket gross domestic product recollection recovery - lost daimon dominion prints prison,— scratch wall border the fact of a body scarf or collar jug- ular in regular thumps swells into drum earing disappearing —calendar baseball on AM radio in pitcher’s palm who happened to be dad of a boy in a book— scene overcrowded with nature’s angels roaming moor in romantic flux on schisms rely - nuns social bulwark against this —what scenes degrade as most light cannot get through layers of dirt covering blood hares skate surfaces pools light inside & glass sacrament wine, ligature & typeface design patriot at his climax truest rendition :: gratitude glazed by grace’s drunken fender expeditional piths myths molten-core driven show true, how to— background of sirens & vehicles moving with velocity accelerating, danger (how shine incisors with the sale, no training in drama, awe, obvious) scrap sell-off from any collision floss through teeth as if a meal metal flesh together proxied by petrochemical fires — blue-grey & red with weaponries of white moonshine for a feeding step right up to drive-in theater seats endeavor letters heat-death's in leather afternoon sun driving through un- an T’s adage sort teary hullos hourglass god gives mourning folk waiting at the wake for forest of clear rings cut - kind of thing where as long as rock tumbler or track spins the lot loose - ‘’ not of loss but from it - wade in to banks whose river-marsh don dune buggies they themselves caught with tusks - walrus tusk, mammoth oathes - it doesn’t come but but the wake works - this ending up leech gripping concrete between orange sutures & backhoes frozen as if waiting for a pike from drainage grate to strike - construction project, bolts soldiers aligned With flags & settlements if hit by idiots— T-REX PROJECT & congestion— sienna lilac bogies thick spokes of upward brushstrokes suspended beneath cash register’s 100-story shadow.
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