8.04 / April 2013

1:Life of Jo-Jo (Suburbs 1988) [wpaudio url=”/audio/8_4/Jo1.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] Cloudless skies, the haze off the blacktop. Man, what else? Wave and snap.

City of Motels [wpaudio url=”/audio/8_4/Mcbride1.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] In the neighboring room is a reel to reel, looping a recording from some SoHo party circa 1968. Jaundiced Polaroids drift like leaves through thick-carpeted hallways— everywhere, these people-echoes.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/8_4/Bertone.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] Leo’s wife Margaret noticed that the only self-portrait he’d given her was the one of himself as a woman. Why? She wanted to know. Why that one? He assured her that it was the only one of himself as a woman so far.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/8_4/Alexander.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] Step One: If no one answers I will leave this message: A daughter runs down a pier, over a rail, into a shark’s jaws.  Suppose I am the shark.  Suppose I say, “Is there no life I would not save you from?” I am asking the wrong question.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/8_4/Jaffe.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] after Cassandra Gillig We had a great run but everything got fucked up and flooded, and you know that. There wasn’t any place to go so we sailed, you and I. I said, I love you. Baby, we’re the last people on earth.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/8_4/Newsom.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] By a strip of highway spilled beside a swamp that exhales sphinx moths and hums mosquito hymns: their kids sack out on sofas while the men make sweatless love to tired wives, then go perspire in oil-smeared, orange hard hats on caffeinated graveyard shifts.

The Boys of the Midwest 1 [wpaudio url=”/audio/8_4/Schmid1.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] The Boys of the Midwest grow up dirty, covered in earth like recently dug up root vegetables.

    [wpaudio url=”/audio/8_4/morgan.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] 1. A straight line segment can be drawn joining any two points. “Nothing works until it does,” the mechanic says, but my Mazda remains indifferent to such wisdom, stubborn on the side of the highway. It’s 6AM and I could use something sweet.

TOURISM IS IMPORTANT [wpaudio url=”/audio/8_4/Swensen1.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] THE SHERRIFS DREAM Nightvale’s town criers have cross-stitched their mouths shut and stapled their eyes open. The benches are all broken. No one sits down anyway. No one can fit their broken wings beneath their cloaks.

Night Swimming, July 4th 2012 After midnight, when the smell of sulfur is strong in the air but most of the explosions have stopped, they climb a neighbor’s fence and greedily pull each other’s clothes off as they creep to the steps at the shallow end of the pool.

The only goodnight kiss I would receive came from the bright burst of headlights as he pulled out of the motel parking lot. Each raw knee, puffy with the negative imprints of the carpet’s braided teeth. Only the sink has hot water. No point in showering when sweat is no longer sweat.

when we first met the devil dressed himself in crow’s wings “hello my love! I am feathers for the wind to rub against” as I opened my mouth I became the warm breath that unwrapped me slowly * one morning the devil woke me “come my love! let’s play a game with your father” he