6.14 / November 2011

Almighty [wpaudio url=”/audio/6_14/Verlee1.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] His twitch. His gaptooth. His meathook hands. His whiskey. His cocaine. His lie. His momma. His lie. His girl. His lie. His lie. His mask. His blame. His finger-point. His backstab. His loyal. His game. His drunk. His spill. His fool. His freeload. His pass-out. His breath.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/6_14/Ellingsen.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/6_14/Kispert.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] A fire, they say, down in the paper mills. In the field, a cradle of spined nettles. A forest of ferns unfolding like mittens in the push of late evening. Four tight-chinned women ferry supplies toward the town, floral dresses catching noiselessly on ribbed thistle.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/6_15/Bowlin.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/6_14/Hobbs.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] x#=??(x)pi i=1 order of operations On the day of our wedding she couldn’t afford a dress. I borrowed a suit from a friend and drove to city hall. When she took my last name, it meant forever. It was addition: the happiest kind of math.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/6_14/Rosenthal.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] With his left eye clamped on the brass monocular and his right eye splashed with sea salts, Christopher Columbus felt the sting of a long, drawn-out mistake.

A Worm [wpaudio url=”/audio/6_14/Veisblatt1.MP3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] A weird worm crawled into my heart And It said, “All of your thoughts are Not true thoughts”. The tongue tastes the air and the air tastes like sawdust. Grey crowds of people crumble on the sidewalks.

The house had three stories.

THE OTHER WOMAN’S VOICE [wpaudio url=”/audio/6_14/Orourke1.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] A moment like that-you hearing me- would have an actual, defined sound- no right hand noiseless pulling, typing hurriedly, or muffling over the phone.

She was on her back under a stiff sheet in a bed with metal side rails too low for her to pull herself up by. With her shoulder weight on one elbow and slowly onto both she was able to boost herself upright with only slender flashes deep in her head that did not ignite.

Pennies Hong Kong, 2011 Seven million wriggling tiny agonies behind whose smiles lies the trembling of the lost. I, as all the others, clutch my past; am like the outside: too big, too everywhere. Seven million nobodies for a nothing in this world, we cry, cry, cry for survival from obscurity.

At a dinner table set for two I feel like the only person at a rest stop off the interstate walking under orange streetlights in the parking lot.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/6_14/Martone.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] THE WOODS Me and her, we go into the woods behind the park on the north side of town, past the crumbling statue of the district’s founder.  Me and her, we go into the woods behind the park, past the people walking their big dogs.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/6_14/Lago.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] I was the first to notice the water pooling in front of the staircase. I looked up, but didn’t see any watermarks, no sign of a drip from the high ceiling. I soaked up the water with towels and buffed the floor with lemon-scented wood polish.

My daughter Ramona’s coach puts her in backstroke at meets, since she’s still afraid to dive, but freestyle is her favorite. When she does the 100-yard free, at practice, her face is in the water too much for me. Like now, as she’s finishing up and the other kids are getting out of the pool.

Pretty Girl Says: I’m not afraid of anything. Once, I walked the yellow brick road. I don’t like yellow. I made it pink. Don’t ask me about eating, you won’t like my answer. I think food is god’s way of turning everything into his own. We’re all food, all edible.

Greg’s got a mantra in his head that just keeps going:  I am entering the world like a big, naked baby. He turns the deadbolt and opens the door.  Like a big, naked baby. The grass outside is starting to grow back from being dead over the winter.

Birth as Agathism [wpaudio url=”/audio/6_14/Jesse1.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] First, we’ll say: O Mama-cow, milk-giver, how your legs                     scissor apart. How your hooves twitch in dirt. We’ll say: We will drink what you give us. We’ll say: How we could eat.

They Must Bake an Awful Lot of Cakes [wpaudio url=”/audio/6_14/Citro1.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] Try venturing out beyond the searchlights and see where it gets you. I remember when it was Gerry out venturing beyond the searchlights to see where it’d get him.

The Jeffersons [wpaudio url=”/audio/6_14/Jeffersons.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] On the living room set of The Jeffersons there is a man and a woman and another man who becomes a man named Lionel when he stands or sits in front of the camera.

this morning I pulled a picture of my mother from my mouth You confound me every day. You are not who you look like. You are not you. Look at your tiny eyes and lips. Look at those cheeks, apple-like. You hate apples. You eat them-entirely, skin to seeds to stem.

BULLY PUPPET Sometimes it was like this: first a Hummer, then two black town cars and then three SUVs.