Dustin Hellberg

Goodman Delver

Spade churn, generator's drawl,
low light, grasssmell, pine roots like worms,
foetid sibilants. To sunder earth

is to whisky the breath with rot,
the scratch is turf and clay
opening above another sky.

I wanted not to fear the dead.
Dale didn't fear them
as we moved dirt in the small

cemetery for the single
week of my employment,
and drank cheap scotch, and sipped

chicory coffee. But it was not
reality even to find a voice
there, the one that admits,

emits, omits the commonest filaments,
words like wife, loss, child, love.
Words worth as much as a notch

in the wind's spine, piled into
plain holes, plugged with tongue
loll and click, words never confronted

by, never confused by the terror
of their inability to survive
the impermanence of the momentary

gestures: handshake, waking, work,
taste. All is smoke shining. All
a human rub yet unrecognized.

But we were, Goodman Delver and I,
able to fill ourselves with all manner
of delicateness and truth, beneath

the brief quiet of a hangnail moon,
and were wholly incapable of hiding
its passing. The endings are easy enough.

This one, like the night, ends:
the opening is outward, against
whom i shall lay my ear to the ground to

I'll Fly Away

Burning the pizza normally doesn't
get me thinking about death, though
it might the process of ruining something

useful, or the simple qualification
that every living thing can be reduced to carbon
and it's still nowhere close to the most abundant

element. Today, I feel it, moving through
me as the shadow of a bird might, an aspic
in the blood stream, like the story my father's uncle told me

about the frog on his mantle in a jar
of grain alcohol from the time he worked
as a miner and pocketed a few lumps of coal

to stave off the northern winter that night,
and saw later something miraculous
while stoking the fire, says, swears,

that he saw the frog leap unharmed
from one of the black chunks
as it burned low in the stove. I walk

to the cemetery hoping that overexposure
to the subject blurs the monologue.
All I want is a beer, a comfortable place

to sit and a paradigm shift into a world
less hands-on, less likely to burn
or turn to gold with each touch. I want

to steal this plastic lily from someone's grave
and bring it back to the apartment and say,
Here my love, I brought you this flower,

and though I stole it, it is a matter of sincerity
and alacrity. You can hang it above your desk.
It requires no tending. I swear it will last forever.

eratio

Amy Grier

Aquarium

In an airy sea of orange and black,
mollies, platys, goldfish, and koi
circle and gasp and thrash.
One wiggles a gritty fin against my ear.
I grab him, toss him in a proper tank.
Submerged, he lists.

I know why the fish fly.
My seeping dread has
poisoned their water.
I have too many holes to plug.
So I am not surprised
when their armed guardian

levels his weapon at my chest,
speaks a low baritone:
"You don't belong here. Get out."
I creep backwards, rippling
circular failure, reaching
behind me, hunting for the glass wall.

Meditation

When you squeeze my thoughts
your hands turn to worry:
flushing pink, smelling of dread

crackling like my mother's lullabies.
She raised me solid
like a newborn two-by-four.

Why do you care where I come from?
Did you worship the bitter sage, too?
Have we met each other already

in the melting knife-blade
of awareness, the cool tension
of a steamy bath, hunting

sapphire-blue sanity?
Listen: the blade speaks our names
and slices knowledge from the sky.

Alienist

His sharp eyes stab at me
with such alert compassion
I nearly leap up and scream
"Don't care about me!
This kindness is murder."

Grief liquefies into fury
like earth into lava.
Orange heat flushes my veins
and steams through
my cracking skin.

I'll never look the same,
sweating all the too-tall people,
pink bedcovers, strangling voices,
and stolen cats.
My face is beginning to melt.

eratio

Lorcan Ryan-Black

Jilted

The mushroom cloud
Billows to the cup rim.
Eyes watch the black

Slip back from the windows.
This stony zoo amazes.
Cobalt spreads over firmaments

Frisked by frost.
The glass panes
Are scratched with ice-

Streaks.
I think first of shards
I could shape,

Jagged and bitten
With rime.
Fingers tap the cup's waist.

Outside,
Early risers pattern snow
With their boots,

Scuffling to bus stops dotted
Across the city.
Audibly the clock ticks,

A prick in the ear
For every moment
Deliberately

Dawdled.
Mouth slides open
Releasing a shaky sigh,

Leaving breath on the pane.
He leaves today, and you,
You count the hours and seconds.

Try not to think of splinters, or heartstrings of pain.
When the cup is abandoned, like Medea,
It will grow cold in the absence, in distain.

eratio

Graham Nunn

A Song for the City

when the city's veins bleed
into the country for our amusement
/the white noise of engines
 to sing us to sleep/
I will stare right through you

when we scale the sky's
belly of clouds
/paint black the jelly fish moon/
I will turn my back on your convictions

when the atmosphere is too thin
to breathe and the brain dims
/a desert of memories
 from head to foot/
I will spit at your enormity

when nature's primitive architecture
is cultivated with impossible art
/the odour of men
 sweating in the metropolis/
the last monument of hope will drown

statistics will prove the city is fatal

eratio

Phil Cordelli & Brandon Shimoda

from Walk, once again / The Central Valley

Meridian, California

     for Naomi Jeanne Gastmeyer

: Josie at the piano, Jake wearing a straw hat.

Green
water flows fast

: calmed and sated

The seasons rotate
until the burning of the wheat stubble, flooding

of the rice. The walnut grove expanded
since last time

green water the rocks; water level is high
: though ours in demand

through smoke

thin, anxious
: be soothed

if uncovered

It is summer
: though difficult here

- - - - -

Circle the waiting
: we wander the blocks

spread through the middle

pacing
: in wind

by motion by

spit and because
: why grow uneven

blood spills for the buzz

Since last time, the fireworks
: adorned with the coxcomb, solitary duck

and as ornament
: all ornamental notes, sounding right

stunted, sure

the fading light and the call to
: content

     grounded by this,
     she doesn't struggle at all

     there is music
     granddaughter, her fingers

     enliven

slides into the medium she has no weight
: limbs with inaction slowly glide

: the river, spreading along the levee

at the sky, to be brightened
: lifted from water, the orchards

near distance

from the 'Buttes, first thing to erupt
: watching what illuminated us

eratio

Mark Young

S

Fifty years later the verdict
was declared unjust.  She
gave him nothing to eat,
instead breathed softly on
him.  Doctrine handed down,
tradition handing down from
ancestors to posterity, opinion
or belief in these Italian
immigrants Sacco & Vanzetti
supposed to have divine
authority.  At night hid him
in the fire like a burning coal.
The trial in Massachusetts
of the Vietnam War dragged
on.  He was committed
to an asylum, convicted of
murder during an attempted
robbery by South Vietnamese
& U.S. forces.  5000 Vietcong
were expelled from Saigon
for sexual offences & the
judge's anti-anarchist pre-
judice.  Prolonged controversy
in order to destroy all that
was mortal in him.  Nothing
written down.  No stay of
execution.  Later she would
anoint him with ambrosia.

eratio

Erin McElroy

Maybe a Little Bit Beyond Indigestion

all that i remember of
her saying was, "don't you
forget what you hold dear. don't forget your

chosen sacrifice." but i do un-
til entities whatever their slant latin,
(nematode-like-fire-eating-things),

churn my stomach-lining, i allow
my friend propensity's accumulation.

like dust clinging with syrup,
invisible to eyes

upping the power chord pant size
but slowly.

Dehydration

when seasons pass in
rubber band balls—i mean
contained within that kind of pressure,

your center digs in where
similes are stupid and
enlightenment lives in kentucky.

so you bounce out of breakfast and
top off our head with that
hat that your grandmother got you,

that pleasant-day-sky kind of blue-
dyed-soft-yarn, and you don't
care if it will fit you. you just can't

have heart attacks now.
you just can't
infiltrate any longer.

so you bounce on autumnal
to summer and sweat.
and you fall back asleep with the fan on.

Towards the Neon Blue Beer Light

you drown on sundays but
just for lack of structure. i
drink chimay and just stare
numbly at the window

light, reverently at the moths
though. they keep the moon
to their right

if they can. you told me. but i
don't remember who you
are anymore, and i wonder
if i knew for starters. something

about a candle, a
burning colorado
consummation to end an insect's life.

Stupid

how do they the
revered not need to pre-dis-
claim?   like how is it
that i should never show this

to anyone?   it's stupid.
i’m just here
to edit,
needing inhalation but not

needing.
just wanting
excuse to escape
from the pounding thruway,

as it listens for the silence
to clap.   it's stupid
and i need
to not interact

with people.
they're chosen
and heirloomed
by me—i'm stupid;

they're
stupid.   belle-
trism at its
best.

as the young buzz-cut blond boys enter stripes matching.

eratio

Jane Adam

Misery

meanwhile, though plenty
is enough,
subjective is the measure.
earth—as hot outside as inside,
eager—but the demon
enticing—the pale fatty flesh
represents a sacrifice.
yummy—do we have skewers?

Old School

Modest results if any after your 25 years—and she,
upright, apparently flourishing, in dainty makeup, tiny earrings.
Rage is what she cannot give of herself of course but she's
disgusted at you—so whatever it is, you do it more.  She's
enunciating her worthy sentiments carefully, softly, her
respectable flesh-colored pantyhose around her ankles.

Round dark fruits and their juices—and you a full-fruit scavenger
of water, of food when hungry, old books,
old school—oh you want it.
Middle class thing didn't quite work out for you.
Now punctuation, wherewithal, basic grooming:  these are
other people's hangups, snagged on your wicker basket.

Secret

God my god
Lay waste our powers
On the bed of our desire:
Why a little curtain of flesh?

So take the hindmost, hell:
Envy, hurt and wrong
Clothes, tobacco, crumbs, vases and fringes
Regretted it.
Earth bare
To all who have never swum as a frog
  in a dark well.

Fragment of angry candy
In blood without a blow
Regretted it.
Envy hurt.

eratio

Crag Hill

from the daybook series, Card Games / 7 x 7

2 of Spades

At night, it is a relief to fall asleep to the hum of an air-conditioning unit instead of the crackle of small arms fire

If a big mouth fits, wear it.
But it wears thin, especially across a globe

northern eye war oven my plaque this often moon
after work-up my roam listing some mosaic
tinting some sturdy team in when off came on

could give a flying fuck about the boundaries, the barbed
walls flung up by far too many schools of poetry from San
Francisco to Iowa City to New York. I, too, love to read
poetry – it saved my life – I don’t want to take up arms

The stronger case for optimism lies
elsewhere. Corporate retrenchments may
be slowing, and other sources of job loss –
weak overall demand, an expanding trade
deficit – may be ebbing. As companies see

her eyes are misaligned, her mouth is sus-
piciously pursed, her stockings are bunched at
the knees, even the bobby pins on her white
headband have slipped below her eyes. Wearing
identical frocks, the girls are standing so close
that they seem to be joined in one body

He doesn't know where or how to begin. His lines, some
straight, some arced, arched, twisted and turned
around another, abrupt, rude or opaque white, don't
signal the start he desired. But that's something,
finally, desire, which perhaps leads to birth,
to a helpless life crawling, a bubbling, toddling,
skipping, shuffling. Isn't this beginning really an end

8 of Diamonds

We obtain the linearly independent solutions by multiplying

'Stupido cowboy,' groused a postal clerk
who took the extra time to decorate my package

Liberate the real without booking once into the howl. Hits of
cram were flaunting around in the mulch, tight wings booking
like tinny flesh. She could almost fool them on their truth

yet if I can wage war on this blank page
a pre-emptive strike
removing the dictator from power
then I could stop hating this metaphor

may find the unvarnished view of modern
motherhood a bit unsettling. Just like in
life, the fictional births die often followed
by prolonged depressions, and the stresses
of child rearing can bring shaky marriages

When the brainwashing machine shifts into high
gear, rhetorical steam sputtering from its seams,
the pounding is remorseless. It plays with our heads;
the bodies just keep piling up. If our words
were wrenches, we might slow the beast down.
But muzzle it? We need to heave our bodies into the uproar

One says America will give France the go by. Another that France
and Spain will abandon America. A third that Spain will forsake
France and America. A fourth that America has the interest of all
Europe against her. A fifth that she will become the greatest manu-
facturing country and thus ruin Europe. A sixth that she will
become a great and ambitious military and naval power, and cones-
quently terrible to Europe

5 of Hearts

But the water-cooler definition of news is increasingly lame

windows were now a solid, shimmering gray, which gradually
darkened until lanterns flickered into life all along the corridors

He hunts down the day's dark turned back, days
grown longer, larger. Unwittingly, he dumped the memories
of infinite potential into his best friend's lap, so many now petered out

potion to clear up her grandson's
cough. She also tucked into a
bowl of dark soup boiled with
snake bone and turtle

A room at
dawn's light,
a stoning
from which she steps aside,
aching of architecture

Two small heads,
one silver frame:
separate lives, yet no palpable
margins, edges to merriment
or misery, blanket, in this photo, swathing
two echoing, elfin smiles

The candles all went out at once. The only light now came from
the silvery ghost, who were drifting about talking seriously to the
prefects, and the enchanted ceilings, which, like the sky outside, was
scattered with stars. What with that, and the whispering that still
.            .             .
The wind was so strong that they staggered sideways as they
walked out into the field. If the crows was cheering, they couldn't
hear it over the fresh rolls of thunder. Rain was splattering over

10 of Spades

Suddenly there was "Mighty Bright," a hiccough and a burp. Then the world settled down

the great power network
mutual deterrence

where Oedipus kills
an intellectual quest
the solution and combat high in taste

the pitch of the sound waves equivalent to a B-flat –
57 octaves lower than a middle-C and at a frequency
far deeper than the limits of human hearing – is the
deepest note ever detected from an object in the universe

He did something stupid. His right foot on the brake (he wasn't
in park), he pushed the accelerator with his left.
The car lurched, stopping just short of the man
as stupid as he. When the accelerator slowed, his mind
raced: he could have flattened his friend

Old man's breath, short, shallow, a walk to the car
winding him for half an hour. Old man's breasts.
Old man's aching calves. Call him before 1 p.m.
his minds's sharp as it ever was. Then he's exhausted.
His father's soul, he said, is trapped in a dying animal.
It won't make it to Thanksgiving

the trunk, my fingers stroking the bark, seeking a Braille code,
a clue, a message on how to come back to life after my long
undersnow dormancy. I have survived. I am here. Confused,
screwed up, but here. So, how can I find my way? Is there a
chain saw of the soul, an ax I can take to my memories or
fears? I dig my fingers into the dirt and squeeze. A small clean
part of me waits to warm and burst through the surface

eratio

Jeffrey Side

B BLOCK

You keep your
services for them.
You keep
the church they know.

And they make
donations regularly
with
one hand on your head.

They lean you
down towards
the cup.
You sip the overflow.

You lick your lips
and move your fingers
far apart.

When You Were Tempered With Delight

When you were tempered
with delight
your virtues were taken
down and forests
that you passed through
were not finite.

When you were
tempered with delight
you kept the
saddest oceans, you kept
the proudest streams.
And wild pens
would not strain your sight.

When you were tempered
with delight
you carried sand
upon your necklace and
cream upon your
lips. And you
never made the journey
through the park.

When you were
tempered with delight
you were
consumed by bikers in the light
and nurses in the dark.
And taut strings
pulled
on you forever.

When you were tempered
by delight
strong bars were held around
your fortress
and strong men could never
kiss the wound you would always hide.

eratio

C. L. Bledsoe

Time

time will wait for you to wait for     it
may surprise you to know there are little men living in your     hair

piece may be worn to cover stretch marks on scal     p
atience coats the lungs like cancer     a blue cloud of wa  (it)  (ing)

isn't so much the march of progress as the feeling of being trampled underfoo     t

he skin of my father's face     sand worn white by a lifetime of wa     ves
t pocket full of cigarettes     suitcase full of aspi     rin

gs on all his toes     nicotine stains on his tong     u  (s)  e
anything you need     it all evens out with a crooked enough rul     er

r on the side of safety     eat your blues and your gre     ens
ure your future     financial stability     emi     grate

upon the nerves of all who would do you harm     in this way you will be sav     ed
ucate the wise     the button on the left is forward     the right one is     block

all progress until it's been thought through more times than G     o (l) d
men spit teeth like racial slurs     waiting for lies to take their ba  i (f) (t)

you have the time     waste it     you can always borrow more

eratio

Timothy David Orme

Helios

up here
where there is nothing but feeling yet
a feeling is nothing like this

     of the slanted sun
     of string
     of the senses

sharp shadow     cold as if cutting this
            feeling

the sun of 'strings'     son of another

neither clasped nor un
clasped

    to
          a circle
          a pendulant ribbon

the non
light and the light
     so I in this
     feeling     cutting

the sun breaking     curling the rest or
     west

Dusk / Beyond

who is left
beyond dusk
beyond the space
    the window

of light
gone

eratio

José Alejandro Peña

Man

Only man lives for the reason and joy
of his own assassination.   

Fastened to the flight of his remorse 
he aspires to defoliate the night.   

He goes against himself in reflected mass 
like a furious vulture.   

Man is a continual fall 
and a return to his infancy 
as well as an asphodel of his phobias.   

Man is the nightmare of God 
and vice versa.     

The Absentee

Much I toil over being 
different every day, 
different to that of the mirror 
where everything is afire 
without being able to waste away,
an enormous scar 
becomes an echo 
and the echo becomes a word 
neither said nor written. 
This sets back each place 
that has taken me unto myself, 
but I absently continue
among the others.    

To the Guest of My Own Destiny

A word in its minuscule reflection 
catches the lights that escape 
like small tarantulas.   

Excessive whirls 
from the lamp in my hand 
draws the darkness 
that we are.   

Locked by the spume 
the evil eye cried.   

Beauty is without 
a future in those 
of scarce imagination.   

I am joined to myself, delirious 
like a glass statue 
that is broken in the wind. 
So many times I have murdered
the guest of my own destiny. . . . 

eratio

Thomas Lowe Taylor

This Today

Love calms in underneath its oddly balanced division giveth and taketh aside
and yet continues unrestrained at the heart's parlor where'd you inside its
turbulent realm find undisclosed attributes at its sprain and chime.   This no
other outer in its manifest forms are not yet undecided in their ministry of the
space provided.  Yet where you'd understand another mark left on the floor by
destiny perhaps an eloquent sigh or some other meter in the mist.  As if
abandoned without hope or pity, some return to life is designated on the map
of your hand no internal hoax would call your memory enchanted with itself
and its opening mysteries finds a trail to follow upward into the pineal and the
flame, no retardant fluxes inner moods then carries them beyond definition or
limit.

Yet attainable in remarks and sentences there's no outer to the line it follows,
in diagonal rooms the light lingers upward into the ceiling's motes and
fathoms in reverse.  The hour of what is spoke is on the docket for renewal,
and the eloquent stranger finds the latest song inside the spaces left unmarked
and unattended.  Perhaps the signs will themselves be seen for what they are,
remainders of the force that went ahead or aside or not at all.  The hour on the
wall is still indifferent to your claims.  The marks which were intended for
your measure have gone the same way into relevance and relief, and the
sooner masks have blended out the basket on the wall with my heart in it.
Even the sheetrock plenitude is unannounced, yet here within the hour and its
manufacture there is some allowance for error which is pardoned, elicited
forward into the realm of the undiscovered.

Still you'd seem more linear than misty, a testament to the accuracy of the
forms themselves, where one angle delimits its opposite on the scheme of
plenty.  Here are the sums and pallets, a shrewd container in the signing of
the terms for the exchange of plates and flagons, a disregard for the penetrable
and the music it allows to flow forth in the dance of the hours.  Fortunes are
made in the distancing of the forms.  The sea-swell rips forward into the
legends it incorporates beyond time or season.  The full fulfills.   And beyond
the swing of the opposites back and forth, a suggestion begins to be seen like a
version, a complication and a resolution which begins again in the heart's
plenty.

eratio

Al Swanson

MidWest Morning

The seer of
the heat to drop
as petal wafers
round, whole
mistletoe
as dripping
and the heat
some kind of candy
on the seat
an autumn
 
the skies fiery bask
alas, too
in a song of forever
 
their lovely dances
forked; prances
and wind
the door at which I sit
 
open
spend,
as the cocoon I wrapping
 
it is
soft tapping
 
The ground beneath
with her ever entwining
 
an elegance,
a whining
 
lifts
to greet my face
 
seeks, the caress
of an autumn grace
 
here,
in Midwest
morning;
 
and the winds gush;
 
stayed,
hushed,
 
with each step,
 
there taken
 
 
 
Invisible Specks of Glass

height;
 
strings,
as, is the weary luscious;
 
it
grown
 
upon
the slab
a bird unknown,
 
such tended grace
autumn brim—
 
face,
and in desire
a walking space
 
Can you
 
such a fortitude
sit the wing
in winged fire,
cross the plain
 
with gold
and dew
 
imbibe,
the grand
and soothe and soothe
 
it as falls
clearest, water
that slides
the heart
those petals door
a gleam, a speck,
 
way;
open door
The lull a breeze
come saturate
 
the eyes, clear tomb
or hesitate
 
in the land
of,
the height
 
Clear grass
where, toes so washed
and last
the sun, clear heard
A whistle
a tone
it strikes the chord
reminds
 
of home,
when thine own
there at last;
and when thine own
 
was,
a look
in glass

eratio

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