It's a Fine Line by Jonathan Regier

after Tones are lickin' under by JKD, Approach Misled (Translation) by Sue Chenette, Distillations by Geo Vance, The Music by JW, The Greyhound

In the city night, it looks like a fine line one hundred kilometers away. It has nothing to do with the laws of perspective: it looks like a fine line up close. A homunculus is riding his bike along the line.

I ask him, "Are you a Virtue, a Cherub, or one of the tribe of Seraphim that hide their multitudinous eyes behind peacock feathers?"

Falling off his bike, he shouts, "Be quiet! I'm not far away. It is a ... 'fickle gulf'!"

When he says, 'fickle gulf', the heavens shake as if a tremendous Scrabble piece had been turned over. I cover my head, running to the shelter of a nearby tree.

The next evening, I understand the situation better. It was indeed one from the class of Virtues that I met last night. They must be so tiny because of the very fine lines that they navigate in the world. The winds doth rattle the hand: one must slide one's finger along the creases of the petal or dangerously lose the sense.

The next evening, I approach him from far away. (Although it's difficult to know when I've gotten close enough, because he doesn't change size.)

I holler, "Orchidblues!" A storm cloud appears beside his head. A yellow bolt of lightening pops from the cloud and shocks his hat, and all the felt and stuffing explode.

He looks up at me with terror. He begins racing along his fine line.

"'Hello-tropic'! 'Hype the love'!" (I'd prepared all of these that morning, noting them on a morsel of graph paper that I folded up in my pocket.) A milk truck flies out of the intersection with its horn running so fast and long that the doppler effect puts a shiver in my spine.

I laugh deeply and bellow, "Thou dost ride thy bike like Job himself!" Then: " 'Please relax', 'Shaft of salad', 'Writing about snow'" . . .

A greyhound--which had been hitherto the stone adornment of an ancient fireplace--springs to life and speeds alongside him.

"The spheres turn and comets whizzz, but nothing can out-pace the greyhound! He is faster than television, he is the fastest of all the arts! He is faster still than even Virtue!"

Tones are lickin’ under by JKD

After Sue Chenette’s Approach misled (Translation) and seeing this youtube video of The Passenger: Iggy Pop & the Stooges 70's (click names of authors/vid for links)

Passenger-woven incapable of culbability… high…
remainders understar shoots-up out sun-sin scarred
Heliotropic morrow of bone-thinned sliver slur:
a gold lime, a hunt purr welded carnal step or
steeped up to the mike, perched, poled Iggy
Pop-over to slim down to the slither grounding
Wet-fishers, stitched-eye-shut hutch of hunched
back caterwauling wing he snags cult roan
scenes seen to seem seamed seeing throat-slit
zigzag ziggernaut zip-bag pre-authorized Matilde
-waltz loss, the groan duck blind hexed disc offered
manatees or hands, palm-up, frond of fickle gulf
dreamsounding hooch: mary jane’s flicked-laugh
ground giggle file sandstoned, paperscribbled,
limed botanist’s orchidblues, eyes, a pent need
rent forth note snowed over, bland obliquity
to puddle body ululations aromatic angst
he-snagged in the preceding laugh-loom pulse hop.

A fragment by JKD

after Sue Chenette

Bread bow fire
triangulated outside leaves
the sachel
the space
carrions and cases
reaping stitched
flight

Dunvegan, translated from the English by sean s

after Dunvegan by Sue Chenette

The ideal of all in Dunvegan's heart,
like a home of clapped baked stones, the gate
fashioned per the avenue's limit, an apparition
risen from raw and distant property,
its feet quicklimed in dark and permafrost.

Her libations on our heads, then clambering steps
in the child night. Sleep tumbles us a hall's width,
an unadorned bed, a facecloth and bowl,
as plain as the spiritless, bodiless weather.

Morning and the light stroke of an oak's twig
submerges the daylight's plane against your window.

Neighbor by Brandon Shimoda

after The Dangerous Part of Sleep is the Afternoon by J Regier, after Sleep Cycles by Jennifer K Dick, after Sue Chennette's What Was Offered


Dangerous parting of sleep
From terrible head
Heart
As grease responsibility
Desperate for reason is a feller

Patient
Pear upon a moistened sail
Winter afternoon, I found
Marking
Starry skin

Desperate
And anemic for women
And men
Delicacy of the nose
Inserting itself into the hole

As danger masks starling to greet
I will soon be eating my neighbor's house
Before
From winter splits
Or die. Soon also be eating my neighbor

The Dangerous Part of Sleep is the Afternoon by Jonathan Regier

After Sleep Cycles by Jennifer K Dick, After Sue Chennette's What Was Offered

The dangerous part of sleep is the afternoon.
The dastardly truth about fatigue, it gets desperate
For reason. Getting desperate for reason is a feller
Getting desperate for women, liable to choose the wrong one,
Maybe live with her a long time. Although keep in mind
Wrong reason, come winter, is certainly better than none.
Winter’s funny because light gets cold, specifically light
In the bones. Wherefore I say light, bones, and reason
Should not endure nightly. They should all either sleep
Or die. Too much enduring makes anything crazy.
Have a look at our crazy lie.

Sleep Cycles by Jennifer K Dick

After Sue Chenette's What Was Offered.

There is the body and the sleeping under the gift wrap. There is the sleep in body’s waking no watered silk, to knot. She turns. She whirls. She is in the waking sleep round wool, of wound. She is REM, a doll with stone for a head. She is motor purr rune stone casting over her. Who but rapt locks. Dangling. Therein her body lies. What was offered, it dreams. She is the awoken nervous commands of insomnia settling seaweed under her sleep. She is pillowed, woven into grass placemats. Down feather in her head she is casting herself farther out. She lilts, drawn circles of moisture at its mouth, the cove of it. The body begging, beginning. She follows light pushed into the bones. Her dreamcatcher is farther now. It taught her mineral memory. Of mare to night. Hard meat almost Macadamian she might caterwaul to herself waking here, of her, of howl to keep the vertebrae. She drifts back down, heavier, perishable. She dwindling cell function of storylines leading tightly upright. There where the morning glistens dawn-still cobalts. The radio seeing right through her, a skating trick. Calcium, magnesium phosphorescence against the slick grey where eye movement stops. The trick of seeking inbound on the oilstained woodplank floor. Daring. The sight of and, but, the tissue of her or she is the skeleton fragmenting. Opened.

Moron-egging by G Vance

After J Regier’s ‘Written About Doll’ & S Chenette's 'What Was Offered'

The arrow is light.

The hog is pig who sacks

The crone. Spock fakes

For a Pasteur (Who, Man?) all dead.

It is barred to bare up

And buy curfew : of that self

Can it bare up a lewd meal

Through divers’ epox’.

A Spock is a lewd-tryst acted

Dead. An arrow is light

If a spillage or shitty-hog cannot sack

It, but the south will be vary-fête.

Will she save any killed men

And give to sea-heirs?

^^^^^^

Written About Doll by J Regier

after "What Was Offered" by Sue Chenette

The marrow is bright.
The dog is big who cracks
The bone. Rock makes
For a natural human head.
It is hard to bear up
And by virtue of that
Can itself bear up a good deal
Through diverse epochs.
A rock is a good distracted
Head. A marrow is bright
If a village or city dog cannot crack
It, but the mouth will be very wet.
She will have many children
And live to see theirs.

Slow Waltz by Jonathan Wonham

After Regret by Sue Chennette.

Slow waltz. Night train.
Jinx of a silver sedan
flipped at the crossroads.

One chink and it all
pours through. Life I mean.

Scratched valise, tracking back
through the underbrush,

your cologne that rots paint:
a trail of molecules and old
synaptic dust. Tonight

we must make the next
house, the next field -

take cover before the heat
comes down on us.