bric-a-brac

Coming To | Daniel Gutstein

In comes diesel out goes diesel in comes diesel.
108 degrees in the shade of a wall
where a hummingbird dines in the bright bell
of a common foxglove. At dusk,
a thundercloud beats over the mountain.

Coming to. Coming to lines and area.
The early light, buoyant; the triangle of its music.
Deductions like the mouth unclowning.
The hand finding itself. The nose.
A dose of leg uncurving to the paste of language.

Neighbors beneath the prophecy of a windy oak.
An oriole there plays curtain, water wheel.
Inside, fingerprints trace the pattern of
an old centrality: The strapless shoulder,
seldom freckle, breeze a deep draw.

“Anemia per se or sudden anemia.”
By afternoon, few stopping points.
The wind’s ignition, the quotient of its disrespect.
That puffy cloud a head of cauliflower,
that mistranslation a dusty thistle.

The rain’s volume, sound, and volume, much.
Brookwater’s down through stones until
the interval between lamplight and nightfall.
Death is a lengthening still. Dark is
a consequence, still, and lengthening.

Fall for You | Todd McCarty

Here-let’s string a little gray
in the background. Next, a maple
and walnut tree tossed on the grass.
At the base of one of them, a little
black Schnauzer sniffing around.
A gust or two to shove the leaves
all over. Just a touch of rain.
Now, I want you right here with
your pink umbrella like a tulip
turned inside out. That’s good enough
isn’t it?

Scylla | Heidy Steidlmayer

I marvel at the lean
agency of ships—
tall sloops cutting
the cold elegance
of perfect silence
while winds dim
to a dead gleam.
Some have heard
my dogs, shallow in
the hearts of them,
sound a warning
either too suddenly
or too late, snakes
touching all there is.
You would think
the sea was blind
to me as I stare out,
deaf to the dull
pull of waters that
promise, if not love,
then love or nothing.

My Suicide | Maggie Nelson

My Suicide
       

A truck came, a truck
full of morphine. I had ordered

the truck to come. It came
and filled the yard, until

I was lavender, then
lead. This was before I became

a body trying to exit itself
through a stick. In the meantime,

my soul wandered into a corner
of the lobby, holding a sack

of popcorn. It was waiting to see
if its services would be further

required. If only I could have found
the right words, a friend told me

I would never have attempted it.
I nodded, but I didn’t believe.

Our Song | William Matthews

And when you shake your colonies of hair,
you are a willow of bellropes.
All who have loved you clang:
a treeful of musical bruises.
It gives you something to hum,
an anthem, falling asleep.

I tried to write the truth, but it made me miserable | Karyna McGlynn

like throwing a brick into a bubble-bath. I confess!
I yelled, and bade my words make wine-dark angels
on the snowy carpet of discourse. The undertaking
smelled like middleclass brimstone, but I could not
determine the source of the smell. There was no
country song at the heart of my tiny mansion,
just a scribbling sound from the basement, like
the sound of a child punishing himself for a crime
he knows he didn’t really commit. I tried to find
the source of the smell, the scribbling, but
wherever I went someone was there to switch
on the floodlights or flip up the floorboards.
It was a ruinous sort of hide and seek in which
the hider catches wind, goes to live in another house,
or disappears altogether. I tried tracking the wine-dark
footprints, but they made circles and came to
baffling in-conclusions: the landing of the stairs,
the side of the davenport, a claw-foot tub full
of lukewarm lavender water and bits of mortar.

Diagnosis: Birds in the Blood | Anna Journey

The hummingbird’s nervous embroidery
through beach fog by our back

patio’s potato vine
reminds me of my mother’s southern

drawl from the kitchen: She’s flying,
flying like bird! I’ve heard that

as a child I involuntarily flapped my hands
at my side during moments

of intense concentration. I’d flutter
over a drawing, a doll, a blond hamster

in a shoebox maze. There are ways
to keep from breaking

apart. My guardians. My avian
blood. I believed

birds bubbled inside me—my own
diagnosis—though the doctors called it

something else: a harmless
twitch. A body’s

crossed wires. The lost
birds of my childhood

nerves have never
returned. But when you held

my elbow as we walked the four
blocks to the boardwalk,

we saw the brief
dazzle of a black-

chinned hummingbird—the first
I’d ever seen. It sheened

and tried to sip
from my sizzled wrists’

vanilla perfume. I knew
a single one

from the magic
flock had finally found me.

Fang Face | Matt Hart

The joy is too much, and the mouth is too
mouth, and one person’s shit storm
is another’s small business venture

in the wilds of whatever’s left of the wilderness
capitalism. The satellites and hockey pucks

forever in our orbit. The meadow’s not
pastoral, or at least not enough, so the prey
and the predators get colder by the second,

eyeing each other by the lamplight provided,
and the library books in their flood

of radiation. If only we could be less
human, from our bleeding liquid centers
to our janitor’s ascension, maybe then

we wouldn’t feel so tearful at the first glancing
blow of the rows and rows of serrated fences,

the dress of leaves so beautifully constructed.
And seemingly lovely, the princess
and the strawberry, the hunter and the bees,

swarming the house and the keeper in his dream
until nobody recognizes how deadly

we can be, and then I’m a fiction
or you’re a technician. I hate the way stories
seem to love a conclusion. I love
the bird’s singing just before it gets eaten.

Marriage | Sara Michas-Martin

One side at a time scientists paralyze the brain, then ask
the other side questions. You told me last night
conflict was contagious. Eating eggs raw
I feel poisoned a little, and on the highway
that stain is not from a deer. I was half asleep so
I missed what you said. Your hands on my
buttons. Me twisting your wheels. How often
does paint fly out of a truck? Bump the cortex
you’ll hysterically laugh. Ever heard of a deer
with pink or green blood? Left half says
spinnaker. Right half: I miss you, go fish.
They hope to close the gap between unsure
and hailing. What if all day your job
was to retrieve ruined animals? When you’re funny
I picture my left-glow, my inhibited amygdala.
Together we make an imperfect riot. I mean, it’s
questionable either of our cities is real.

City of Lavender | Jason Bredle

I had everything I ever wanted to say to you organized in my head
but forgot it all when you took my palm in your hand and with
your index finger wrote “disaster.” If you were to ask me how I
ended up here, I don’t even know. Every night at 8:25 I can’t
believe it’s already 8:25 and I’m so happy it’s only 8:25. Sometimes
I find tragedy reassuring. Sometimes the cat licks my neck. I don’t
want to think about where I’ve been or where I’m going anymore.
Sometimes I just want to cry. Sometimes I just want to sit in a
quiet space. It’s within me to rip my own head off. Let me tell you
about the city. It’s a city of lavender. I can’t remember its name.
There aren’t enough bank holidays. Someday you’ll read this and
understand what type of person I am.

Valentine | Laurie Lamon

In Manhattan, after wit and spar, after

the dog stops being a joke, for a moment

everyone shuts up and it’s the bridge

that holds us suspended. For a moment,

nothing is funny or aslant. If there is rain

falling on the woman’s hair, the man’s

coat, it isn’t narrative or metaphor.

Everyone is tired and thinking of a last

drink and bed. It is the dog who is certain

of loneliness, who follows the street’s perfume

,taking no one to his undiminished heart.

Flight, Fight Or | Dora Malech

Every rearview a lovescape of ex-towns.
Bumper to bumper dear what do you heart?
I favor my left side I favor leaving.
My pheasants can fly but they’d rather run.
Never said feather oars or father me.
Where recipe calls for apricots try fog.
There should have been a strap from yoke to harness.
For record whatever I never kissed the bride.
Here lies the sigh begun nine lines ago.
I miss your wingspan miss your hollow bones.

[20] | Shelly Taylor

When proxy all night I poured Jack into

the morning. Heat makes the dogs heave

on the porch, blue the roof

to dissuade dirt daubers from home-making—

& ramshackle that which keeps him well-nourished,

High Life, his Redbreast. Hourglass round

the steakhouse, if I started up again no one could

keep me from trying, all night a rodeo, all morning

rye grass, water to paw I could roll into your body

to keep me safe not sage, but the longing,

the still of incomprehension, the bottles from

the speedrack I drove off another night bruised legs &

G Straited myself right again, all Jäger down my arms,

whiskey arms & all over my britches, you could

punch the eye of. A homemade mother

never washing dishes, such gentle hands, nutshells

across the floor, left your boots that lasted

three tours to the monsoon, mama,

her boy, my boy, her dissolute sadness.

[7] | Shelly Taylor

The beach gives onlookers, men with poles. I am just trying to jog

this beach, if I yelled you fucking voyeur it would not be got. I liken

myself to Faulkner’s going on about nature while being sharp

with the two characters of this working—you know, & God always God

let’s call him Higher Power the way the Al-Anon book says.

In the past you were shot at, mid-hand dealt as if shuffle inward yet

leave it alone. I drink a Mich Ultra, that’s what in the fridge. And

slow to the gunny, the time spent I drug myself by belly, slept

when the sun came up, my hands back again. A picture

of you, ain’t it funny, in the bar forever, my good tap tap, fingers

& feet now I’ve no speedrack, five hundred bottles a night, two

in each hand & this is Heaven. But your hands in my hair,

a periodic newness for remembrance which like a shrug dully evokes

the winter coming. I have my graces from which

I carry the sun to violence all my mistakes, born into thick hands,

cruelty & choose so. If I curl my hair I’m taking on the town,

the real of the town, everyone with their beer whiskey hands all sad

behind their beer whiskey hands, you cannot run it down—pilé & shade

from any ray that looks you step right because right cannot tell

the difference between a marsh & a swamp: we kill both. I thought

Jo home again & it was murky, the sea unfledged, myself

in the backyard watching closely the cats

don’t jump the fence & get out there on the road.

A Shape with Forty Wings | Luke Hankins

Love is strange and calls me to stranger things.
When I was young I thought that I'd know why.
I've drawn my life—a shape with forty wings.

The woods at night are full of awesome beings.
Listen carefully and you can hear them cry:
Love is strange and calls us to stranger things.

I want to follow everything that sings,
but I cannot tell you how afraid I am to fly.
I've drawn my life—a shape with forty wings.

The unseen Being deep inside me brings
ideas to mind I hope I'll never try—
Love is strange and calls me to stranger things.

Possibilities surround me in concentric rings.
A light shines down that I cannot see by,
yet I've drawn my life—a shape with forty wings.

I walk about as if I understood my wanderings.
If You are near, show me how to die.
Love is strange and calls me to stranger things.
I've drawn my life—a shape with forty wings.