S/he did not go by bus. S/he did not leave by train.
The sad horses are still tethered downtown, their antique trough for sale. For the centennial, the sad horses will cue the parades, the throngs of hamfisted officers. ********The bit, bone against. ********Taste of it? Metal ********like blood, of course, ********or a warm body, or ********a plush equivalent.
Here, we have mostly only known the donkey. Or the zoo, lumps of orangutans pressed against glass hide against glass peel hide off glass. Or that bit about brutes, cereal boxes and sunday cartoons. Ride away into the poster sunset.
The teller put two fingers under his chin and in forming the L with his thumb says thank you.
In dream: a Spanish church—Saint Victoria—at the top of two thousand stairs. An elm, pedagogical in its lean. ********(acid blue ********leaf work ********of elms) The students were waiting, lined against an old world wall. Number One was waiting, “patiently,” they said. Patiently like leaf work’s cut into acid blue sky, like the flood’s work on a ribboned trunk. There, Number One points, was the year of my birth.
The inaugural lecture is posted on Victoria’s door.
Brimming vat, long walk, prostrate light: lightbulb slate light of the northerly storm. First the wind, as if motion harbinged wet **** dark **** portrait flash. I am empty full up, the students chant.
*
Emma Train is a poet from Berkeley, California. A graduate of UC Davis’s MFA program in creative writing, she is a PhD candidate at the University of Texas at Austin, where she is writing her dissertation on contemporary queer ecopoetics. Her poetry has appeared, or is forthcoming, in the Berkeley Poetry Review, the Colorado Review, Grist, and Interim. She was most recently a finalist for the 2020 Omnidawn Open Book Prize and a finalist for Interim’s 2020 Test Site Poetry Series.
The fire has jumped the river limned with redwoods
Baptismal font, ball bearing beam. Last year he asked where he could swim around here, here the beaches are all washed. I told him there is the pacific ten miles downstream and the estuary is shallow.
The diablo winds have risen. The fire is here like a second coming they are all saying come, come quick the fire has jumped the four-lane highway, the oak groves, the chaparral.
But I have yet to matriculate into a self. The project of it all, the missing desperation, mapping the rate of smolder, until it’s not we don’t see what’s here. We had all the right tools: the shovel for the well. The pick- axe for the wall,
the pick for the lock; we were shiny, new, the river limned with children.
Things are burning, the approaching trot. This life someone said is easy. The fire has jumped the river.
Only life and another is a catastrophe, that sanctuary.
*
Emma Train is a poet from Berkeley, California. A graduate of UC Davis’s MFA program in creative writing, she is a PhD candidate at the University of Texas at Austin, where she is writing her dissertation on contemporary queer ecopoetics. Her poetry has appeared, or is forthcoming, in the Berkeley Poetry Review, the Colorado Review, Grist, and Interim. She was most recently a finalist for the 2020 Omnidawn Open Book Prize and a finalist for Interim’s 2020 Test Site Poetry Series.
Cockroach enamors a forgiving door Where’s your cord to history? Desk’s weight, that grand canyon. Only so much sitting so much of the eponymous brown bag. I’ve been unruly, lost the keys (the frosted glass neighbors don’t peak)
Highway, behind a car with lost letters: CAPITAL SUBURB Precise, correct, like ****************a boat on water
Look, it’s trash day again and the wind gropes cool
Birds are named out the sky ****************(the manly thing to do) Family tree hangs on the fridge, waiting or amended
I’ve lost all the pictures of the family jewels Mistakes are laid ********down like forks
I’m sorry. You’re spring ****************loaded You ask why we should eat when there’s fire Eat me please please please eat me but where are your edges?
Here the yardstick is king Haven’t you all heard the expression a forest can’t hide crouched behind trees
Please tide us over or tide out the wreck because the bronze men are removed by night hardhats and the city is content this is not the kind of nation where every town has a square and every square a wall of names
No matter how far we drive into the hills we are always on the edge of a bad neighborhood
Rows of young lavender are planted in black bark and the last string of lights is unwrapped from the maple tree, top to bottom
The cliché is ‘raised by wolves’ Not raised, but suckled, not wolf but she-wolf
Ask what regrets
*
Emma Train is a poet from Berkeley, California. A graduate of UC Davis’s MFA program in creative writing, she is a PhD candidate at the University of Texas at Austin, where she is writing her dissertation on contemporary queer ecopoetics. Her poetry has appeared, or is forthcoming, in the Berkeley Poetry Review, the Colorado Review, Grist, and Interim. She was most recently a finalist for the 2020 Omnidawn Open Book Prize and a finalist for Interim’s 2020 Test Site Poetry Series.
Sad to say, most artists, when they set out to “think outside the box,” instantly think themselves into some other box. If we can say the intended effect is that of a jack-in-the-box, the actual achievement is usually more like what you get with a Slinky: same exact metal coil, different (and lower) step.
It’s hard, clearing one’s mind of the assumptions governing genre. It means distrusting what one is accustomed to calling one’s taste. Instead, one seeks to pass legislation (in one’s spirit) making something legal that was hitherto, at best, frowned upon—and, at worst, hunted to extinction.
The book under review is what happens when, by genius or luck, things work out. The risk is taken, an ocean of effort is expended, and something explodes out of the top of the box, a thing that did not seem like it could even be in there at all.
You have to understand what a graphic poem even is. The usual Slinky is the “illustrated poem”—a normal poem that could easily stand on its own, accompanied by a picture or series of pictures. Nothing wrong with this! But it’s familiar. It’s really not a new kind of poem; it’s the old kind of poem with “a li’l something extra.” The words of the poemprompt the picture. They are not part of it.
An instructive comparison can be made to the graphic work of Kenneth Patchen. That stuff is wonderful, but even when it is at its most wild, it is fundamentally cartoon work. You don’t doubt for a second that the words precede the images.
Whereas! if one were to set out to make words part and parcel of the images—if {“words”} could legitimately be added to the list of items specifying the “mixed media” that went into making the work (“pen and ink, colored pencil, magazine cutouts, words, sentences, sheet music, water color,” etc)—then you’d have a real crisis. The implicit demotion of the verbal aspect goes against many people’s taste/assumptions/cardboard walls. Many will not give that kind of graphic poem a chance. But in the present case, they’ll miss out on something good.
Fujimoto’s pages erupt with colors. There are bold, Matisse-like shapes, futuristic stripes, girlish drawings, upside-down words and images, secret themes and negotiations being pursued in the background, in the foreground, in the textures. The aesthetic is very busy.
In order to keep the words from taking over, they are not allowed to gain any momentum. Lots of fragments—and, when there are sentences, they’re in a more-or-less flat affect. Declarative statements, laconic. They’re not made to be quoted, and indeed quoting them would be misleading. The way to look at these pieces is not to readthem; you have to gaze at the work and wander around in it.
The book format is not ideal for this kind of thing, by the way. But it’s a necessary evil. The ideal thing would be to have your favorite of these pieces hanging on the wall by your desk, so that every time you look up, every time you give way to reverie, every time you’re hunting for a word or image for your own work, you could consult with the piece hanging there. Whereas, in a book, the temptation is too great to turn the pages and see everything the artist has to offer all at once. Then you miss everything.
In the spirit of what I just said, I’m going to include exactly one image here. I suggest you screen-shot it and keep it on your “desktop” for a while. If you find the experience satisfactory, the book is only twenty-two dollars. There’s enough stuff here (forty-five discrete items) to keep you in a very special state for a decade. Just go slow, please. Slow.
*
Anthony Madrid lives in Victoria, Texas. His poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Boston Review, Fence, Harvard Review, Lana Turner, LIT, and Poetry. He is the author of I Am Your Slave Now Do What I Say (Canarium, 2012) and Try Never (Canarium, 2017). He also did a “children’s book for adults,” called There Was an Old Man with a Springbok (Prelude Books, 2019). Website at www.anthonymadrid.net.
I swam over roads as the trapped rains rose. My allegiance to lines: even as the pavement distorted under refractions of cloud-light through brackish waters. By midnight only chimneys remained above water. I slept perched, one lid open, one closed. I dreamt of being in a car driving swiftly west, of finding a wall and climbing it. After the wall, there were mountains, owned by no state, claimed by no god, but to scale them, I had to strap on crampons. I tethered rope through my belt straps. The climb took all night. When I reached the side where there was no god and there were no rains, I woke on my own chimney, lifted both eyelids, surveyed the muddy waters by dawn-light. Why bother? I floated East on my back, hung above the park so I could swim out of lanes. That night, awake on the precipice of the next storm, a tree floated by me glowing green and yellow. I grabbed at its branches. Together, we floated North, where rooted evergreens peeked above the water. We collided into one, so I rested, ran my hands over the lights of the glowing tree I had swam with. The lights were mushrooms, and I was hungry, so I ate them, then waited on my fingers to turn green, orange, to ignite, but instead I grew very sick in the dark. In the limbs of an evergreen, in the dark, I dreamt the peak of a mountain, roped, I dreamt the edge of a gate, a border, a fence. I drew a map of the neighborhood, traced the lines with my luciferin tongue. The edges glowed.
*
Aimee Wright Clow is a writer and book designer living in Durham, NC, where she co-curates the Octopod Poetry & Music Series. Her book arts project, A Brief Map of Albany, is available from Utilities Included. aimeewrightclow.com
We sleep in a red velvet room the novel drew up, and at breakfast there are fourteen people at the table having toast and chicory tea. Swallow the heat that steams, practicing speech. We’ve forgotten how to narrate more than ourselves, but it’s okay, the meal’s over. All the chairs shift and scuff. Here’s a revolution to believe in. Behind the velvet curtains you have hung the stocks and barrels, locked. I see no reason to learn to aim them. The guests move into the living room and light a fire. One tells a joke. Two name myths. The fourteenth has a plan for us to step into. This is a party, remember: Joy. I weigh the heat outside my skin, sip tea, the heat inside me. As the fire dwindles, the guests exit stage left, so it is only you and me at the oak table for lunch. We eat sandwiches and reminisce a time when we were always alone, then I clear the table, while you fondle curtains, take down a gun and aim it at the window. I read you passages from the novel, about Paula, how she could have sung but chose not to; about Nadine, who tried to grow up but smeared the charcoal under her eyes; about all the men at bars speaking the conditions and conceits of war. You lock the barrel to the wall. Out the window, the street is pavement, it is raining, all the pit bull puppies thrash at their fences. Yes, I know what will change, only nothing has happened yet. Yes, we light candles, untie ribbons, cover the windows. You open the book. I finger the locks. We speak belief, and it is only a word.
*
Aimee Wright Clow is a writer and book designer living in Durham, NC, where she co-curates the Octopod Poetry & Music Series. Her book arts project, A Brief Map of Albany, is available from Utilities Included. aimeewrightclow.com
I consent to release the necessary information to determine my eligibility for the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Program. I understand that providing false information or making false statements may be grounds for the denial of my application. I also understand that such action may result in criminal penalties.
we use gut (to keep living) to mean taking (in my home) something out what we are (i fill) taking out (out the paper) are guts guts separate (to prove i don’t) what our bodies need (have money) from what we cannot use when gutted (sign a waver) guts separate (for the damage) from the body that needs them name this (i may incur) a thing (from their official fingers) after what it does not have
(rooting through my guts) Applicant hereby (hunting for unclaimed pennies) authorizes management (to cut my children with) to verify above information (dumping unlabeled organs) and make independent investigations in person, by mail, phone, fax, or otherwise (in the shredder) to determine Applicant’s rental, credit, financial, and character standing (tell me it is necessary) Applicant releases management (is fraud prevention) from any liability whatsoever (to catch me) concerning the release or use of said information (in a deficit) and will defend and hold them all harmless (of deserving) from any suit (name this body) or reprisal
(this body’s human services)
guts is a way
(a thing)
of saying the courage
(after what)
it takes to keep living
(it does not have)
*
Jessica Lawson (she/her/hers) is Denver-based writer, teacher, and queer single parent. She is the author of Gash Atlas, winner of the Kore Press Institute Poetry Prize, and the chapbook Rot Contracts (Trouble Department 2020). A Pushcart-nominated poet, her work has appeared in The Rumpus; Entropy; Dreginald; Yes, Poetry; The Wanderer; Cosmonauts Avenue; and elsewhere.
How she buzzes while watering her rose. Does she expect me to bloom too?
Honey, I don’t say, while resin and glue I’m no less due.
But all I can do is look true as tears roll down my stem.
*
Kenton K. Yee has placed poetry most recently in Ligeia Magazine, Plume Poetry and Summerset Review, among others. An Iowa Summer Poetry Workshop alum, he’s a member of the Attic Institute for Literary Arts. Kenton makes his home in northern California.
Larva shall eat our burnt bodies, leaving molds for posterity.
No telling who will care to cast our plasters.
*
Kenton K. Yee has placed poetry most recently in Ligeia Magazine, Plume Poetry and Summerset Review, among others. An Iowa Summer Poetry Workshop alum, he’s a member of the Attic Institute for Literary Arts. Kenton makes his home in northern California.
****************************************hours and hours
************************Blank
************************in the mirror it is my ******* face it is not my
face ***** is is not
********my palm loiters on the counter above ** the tampon box in the drawer ***** that goes
*****thunk
Just leave them I said to him but a man comes and sprays
our limens again
cellar spiders *******************************dangle and hurry
************************he says these webs hand scything through the air ************************he sends me to the ************************community office *******************************************************again
****************I mumble through ****************silk threads my fingers ************************I’m sorry it’s the spiders again
********************************we’ll send another man to spray them
now he wants
************************Resist
****** { my head goes thunk }
********I wake in the meat department styrofoam snow vermillion ****************with bloody beef ****************above in the mirror ****************it is my
face? it is not
my face is is not
vermillion bloody beef ********vermillion—
he grabs my arm
********************************my brain goes
********************************thunk
I wake in the pickup
leaving the Costco parking lot
I wasn’t asleep I returned
****************************************************************from the mirror?
I am am not
He wants
Pizza
My brain goes thunk bloody beef
My brain goes thunk
bloody beef
He says he wants
Pizza
I wake up on the couch
************************in front of the tv
I wasn’t asleep I returned
***************************************************************from the kitchen?
I am
************************Blank
a cheesy ad for green card lawyers he says let’s rip up your passport
My brain goes thunk
bloody beef
sure I say I have to pee
he’s eating pizza
I take off my slippers I take off my socks I pull my socks over my fingers so when I take my passport from his dresser drawer it doesn’t go
thunk
I hover over the toilet seat ****************I pull my socks off my fingers ******** I drop my pants and squat ********************************hurrying a spider ****************************************behind the bowl I put on my socks ********************************************************I put on my slippers
********I hide my passport in the tampon box ******** slide the drawer quietly closed ****************so he doesn’t hear it
************************thunk
*
Kayla Geitzler is from Moncton, within Siknikt of the Mi’kma’ki, the traditional territory of the Mi’kmaq People (New Brunswick). Named “A Rad Woman of Canadian Poetry” by All Lit Up, she is Moncton’s inaugural Anglophone Poet Laureate. Her first book That Light Feeling Under Your Feet was a Calgary Bestseller & finalist for two poetry awards. Kayla is co-editor of CadenceVoix Feminines Female Voices (Frog Hollow Press 2020), the first publication of its kind in her province. Host of the Attic Owl Reading Series and Writing Life columnist for The Miramichi Reader, Kayla holds an MA in English Creative Writing. She works as an editor & writing consultant. Kayla’s writing has appeared in The Fiddlehead, Gnaw & Gnarl, Thirteen: New Collected Poems from LGBTQI2S Writers in Canada, Poetry Is Dead, The Antigonish Review, Chutes Reversibles 2, as well as in other Canadian literary publications.
Matter 