fragment: bone by Amanda Deutch

dental arcade
palaelodus
plume d’oiseau

answer in

"A Love Note Left Behind" by Rob

Paris,
I will miss
your obligation to make kisses
and the smak of foreign tongues;
but that's about it.

Slippage, by JKD

After Amanda Deutch's "Flask", "Terminanl Inferno" by Amy Hollowell, & Sean Standish's"The Cull".

I am in a dangerous mood at the end of the rink, my
undercover PI coat giving me away, bungalow afire
right now your pink flamingo drink spying the laser
sight you down the red want all I do is monsters
American or otherwise, to walk any weather, wake in
underflows of, stinging, underbreath rays about
love and wind, flings and sunken sirocco slabs.
There is the sound of treasure, a cold clank in the night
creak, creep along the plank to walk Tuesday pull
your hair back before, so easily, I fall into you.
Grown and dying, groan and… the coatflap open, the
exposure in love with, bleary-eyed, sub-Saharan, over
the corralled reefs or ears, Earth, around your pinkie
I call you a cab, every name but the one from Brooklyn.
Naked, you take the 4 train, crawl out at 16th street like
a performance piece before coughing up the number. Torture
never felt this exquisite in tights, the mighty slip-down-the
groined packet I will come back towards, lighting a pipe,
a cigarette for the dame. Your spilt daiquiri stains his coat, it
could be just a sign, just a code to signal but for how
everything is every gold, round a step back, aquatic urban grey.
The long end of the stick? On fire. Heard any good voices?
A pixie leans right along the avenues. I catch it on sepia film,
cross your statements, gaze with a gaggle of good ol boys at
blogged photos of thigh-high stockings in a meat locker, eat
salamanders. Could we shuffle the deck, try again. A hook
for a hand is not as cliché as the classic fishnet digging
into the edge of heels. A marcel wave in the blonde silk with a dark
line. Ash, lava. Rock deep between to sea and this bar’s a dive.
Asked, will be left in time? Left in ruins? A barometric shift
glints or gather round, folks. This babe’s a doosie, but whodunit
really? I step out onto the plank. I might push, I might go under.

the cull by sean s

after Flask by Amanda Deutch,
Terminal Inferno by Amy Hollowell


All writing about missing.
A man on a train. A woman on fire.
A schedule derailing. The
leaves kissing monsters.

Remember
the bungalow of my eyes held the heavens,
the skies over the terminal roof
seated on the border of España and France.

Travelers' hats roll indoors from the soaked
mediterranean azure, the suntemple
swedish girl's skin,
chatter of espresso cups on glass tabletops.

Wings folded. My
table surrounds me. Coffee
in my mouth. To push you
in there, every inch, a slice of café
cake filling my mouth, liqueur
spilling down my chin, to hear as in touch
the blind chuckle in my throat's mess,
your hips caught inside
my elbows, shoulderblades arched
against a wall, the avenues from
your knees to my chest. And let's say
clothing on marble floor. A sports bra.
Glacier glasses. Ankle socks with those
grippy feet. Necklace.

I am the left ash, the avenue of
beetle-stricken trees
burning at some stranger's mercy.

All are left in time. Too
immortal for our deaths
pleasure it is we.

Terminal Inferno by Amy Hollowell

After Amanda Deutch's "Flask"


Everything is on fire
roaring in licks
that I covet and
abhor.
You see me
I'm desiring
the desire for desire.
In my mouth
your foreign tongue
is an ember
aglow.
Occupy me
sound me and cull me
for cries
fathom my avenues
without time or a thought
of current address.
We live here
in the burning terminus.
Nothing is ever left.

Flask by Amanda Deutch

After JKD's "After Fall"

I am in a dangerous mood right now.
All I want to do is kiss monsters
American or otherwise,
to walk in any weather singing
underbreath about love and wind.
There is a sound of Tuesday
pulled from your hair.
So easily, I fall in love
with years.
Earth, grown
and dying,
I call your name
from Brooklyn
then take the 4 train
to 16^th street.
I will come back,
but for how long?
Everything is on fire.
What voices, thighs, avenues
will be left in time?

A hued farther, thought of in greyscale by JKD

After "In a Pond" by Sean S & various paintings at the Pompidou Center.

Yellow eyeless as a fawn in the Crimea she says bugles, or bungles at gunpoint he grounded the black lens down into stardust, pinches of it, stinging us blind. Would it be then, wonderful to touch the muck, the insectless dream inching towards us in the hungover mountain glen? These severe glances, slivers as glacial as that swing, a robed languorous afternoon you read from one chaise to another, coffee to cocktail, all weekend, weekends, summer. Elegant as promenaders in angular hats, boas, constricted in their chatter, this space as wide as the arm’s touch is close. Whisper now on the bare seascape, omniscient green of, and tell me, what will it be then, or next, or hours, or ours.

Gone to Ground by CM

There is a string

we pull from the earth into

the wailing room

that sound

we set to fire

The Truth is Lovely by J Wonham

from "After fall" by JKD

The truth is
lovely, women
in the arms of other women
or your hair

the only one
again it is
at least once, once taken
not because.

After fall (new-ish) by JKD

after "Falling" by Patrick Phillips, from Boy (U of GA Press, read on today’s writers’ almanac by Garisson Keillor) (click here & scroll down to May 10th to hear/see poem) I took the poem and added much (though not all) of the column to the right, just to see…

The truth is.....................so easily, years
that I fall in love...............I’ve become younger

so easily because..............time beckons your eyes
it's easy. It happens...........backwards as in autumn

a dozen times some days......lovely, women in the world,
I've lived whole lives,...........but because each time,

had children,.....................dying in their arms
grown old, and died............I call your name.

in the arms of other women....voices, eyelines, thigh
in no more time..................I will come back to one

than it takes the 2-train.........this you, this time again
to get from City Hall.............the auburn of leaves

to Brooklyn,.......................or your hair glimpsed
which always brings me..........where would I be strolling

back to you:.......................along Madison avenue
the only one.......................if not always towards you

I fall in love with..................again it is as if once
at least once every day—.........seen is once taken

not because........................stopped in my tracks
there are no other.................for you there, yellowing leaf

A pack of Carthage and Windsor by Rufo Quintavalle

after All around the living ones by JKD

A pack of Carthage and Windsor, four pickled eggs
and a Coke float later
things stood thus:
house: unfinished;
home: inexistent;
garden: getting there;
going: good.
And being neither master nor slave
but one of those lukewarm things that God spits out,
I was shirking my responsibilities with gusto:
poking at the shrubbery,
tinkering with the mise en scène,
as if if I could sort out my borders
I’d have it, or most of it, licked.