The Execution, by Brandon Shimoda

after "The radiant point" by Megan M. Garr


The passing blazes
Does not fast

Enough. Look up

The wind
Along the lines

Might get
To everyone more than just
As concentrated

Storm and Prussian
Blue, vermilion and white
Equally near to shadow—


The sound
Approaching

Onslaught—



Every event is this
Every night this night. Burnt earth and even vermilion—
Every arm incorrigibly composed
Upon the solar
Gesture, every gesture violence gray, moving
The radiant dome, the stars
Do exit

Swallowed
Into muscle—


Every history
Is this
Hand perhaps
It opens out
The flesh sings wide at the new
Architecture, holding
The execution
Together



What can I do with such small
Children on my hands?

NIGHT POEM #3 by Brandon Shimoda

after "Insomniac Night Poem #2 (ambien)"
by Amanda Deutch


So I prepare to count every tooth
In the yellow alloy mouth
The yellow house
At night
Knocking wooden alley mirrors
Amber lights
And siblings that appear there
Wearing
Maternal skirts
Hopped up
Within maternal paper skirts

When a brash scare of red
Blows
Past the rice and sea
Lips and folk men dance
And folk women dance
Vulnerable and very soft
Each grain that rises
The wavering glass
Must be permitted
Also
And
Convulse volcanoes

I save the first impression for later
Like ringing in a jar
A small machine
And the better of dynastic fruits
Kept well before the throat

Sleepchains by Brandon Shimoda

after "Circadian Rhythm" by Amit Dwibedy,
after "Circadian Rhythm" by Jennifer K. Dick



O
Cycles
The sleepchains

Vast
And cobalt

Froth
That belongs
To lured Libanaise
Sounds

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

A Hauntless Wind by Brandon Shimoda

after A First Hypothesis by Jonathan Wonham


Even so
It was the first hypothesis. Who said
So tramp
The result was once a loss? The tramp said
So
He grew a horn

Of knowing. Now that is impossible
However, But
By shining a sharpened light
Into the daw's bridal hemorrhage, The possible
Came in
Spite of its loss. The creek

Became a flood
The daw drew out its losses
Destroyed the lap of potatoes

Would they grow angry? They would grow
Angry
Was the second hypothesis

The creek became distant
The result of which
Was not exactly proof of its disappearance. However

The daw
Wore a wig
In its illness, Breaching the flattened temperature
Of illness
The result of which
Was not knowing, Exactly, But

Result. The tramp put the rubber into his cheek
For the day before he had first kissed
But who, The tramp
Was in a room
With an angular black
Only a hauntless wind in mind

The more the tramp turned, the less
The tramp shone
The less the tramp shone; It said yes

POINT TO THE EYE by Brandon Shimoda

after "Down to the Wire" by Amy Hollowell


the great gust
reduced to the wire
stripped storm




please, the white
mobile spinning
dire stems, extend

a thin vapor, corpse
in mortar
and maiden blind crescent

Giacometti stretches
limbs, loving
lean toward secret

Peacock by Brandon Shimoda

after "could" by Lisa Pasold


Get in, the
Brighter
Lights the

Transmission the
Strike, swell of meats weathering
Together

Gargoyles winter in the lush
Like
Sand, the scavenge

Strikes, the hickory
Of
Prejudices

Collapses the chain
Of arms
Gather, get

In the lights, ropes of tails grace
The water as
Voodoo

Swarm sees
The edits in
Grease

Water penance in circle
Li-
Chen, the familiar

Tense solarized
Models
At

The counter
Careless
Invention, weathered

Meats in the
Swell, take this eye
Let from the casing

I meant history when
I let
History

Be bound
In victory string
Peacock

To get her involved
Or
Involute

Could darkness into silhouette
Come, in
Lush, winter

Removes the source
Stuck
To the neck

Wrangled the very
Meat you
Stalled again

After "Whit(h)er" (Version 2), by Jennifer K. Dick

WHIT(H)ER
Version #3
by Brandon Shimoda

particles float in the morning bonelets break flags accordingly skeletal, sagging splinters, the terrible bags, hers hears my confectionary burns white while steeples while through dust, away, whalebones prick ineluctable sky dost cast a statuesque pillar of bark and foam, an inveigled rib parts like cousins pulling hands from the bridge, a way for carcasses to carry Charon’s boating to eye-thicken portaged without

clothes, with out-closing lace manifest in the baling moss hung from trunk’s desire, is taffy—lenses' bottlebottom like ruby lips drenched through glass openings peer at her (me) we’re ladder-rungs (you, by the belt, by the middle state, the soft foot wedged into the potted drum), echelons steepled in white while dust cloud-climbing Lethe’s muffling wavelets, like boating, like limbs (sacre), livers (orders), lugged over lucubrations of flower-conversation in lapsed artefact—get fur le snow

artifactual plaster where found the Spain, the commonplace powder unhemmed, what will wise lessons restitch rays of oll-revealed atoms, teeth like thieves narrowing into wood, lay (me)(you) horizontal in the kestrel, find (you)(me) shaking a thicket over thistles, tapestries palmfrond our hands over mouth over thighs over sighed sight ululas

tonsils, larynxes…….boxes, springs, conical heads, the tail in the greenth produces a hand…….lettuce…….launched into…….choral…….inflammation laid with ceremony corralled…….by her ……. sere shift ripped forth and forward float low…….ing raft tile tilt, whirl of, while…….white the flesh stretches the world whorled of…….particle…..splitting

After "While You Were Out an Old Man/Woman Came and Replaced You (After "Stainless Sunset with Interesting Water Loop" by M. Noteboom") by A. Deutch

Imagine Laid with Ceremony
by Brandon Shimoda


In the morning

                                           move
buildings
echelon as clouds
do buildings echelon as clouds do

bonelets form       in morning
buildings
move white dust

as hands as hands
all feathers wake as
clouds confectionary burns

bonelets form              scab green mouths

the clouds of the chorus
embraces white photos in the wide window


shake another face
speaks the clouds of the chorus
embraces white photos on the wide walls


shake the noh mask
haggles over confectionary        was

it you
were out an old man in a noh mask
breaks the thick glass shakes        was

it you
were a woman came and replaced the
flowers with a conversation
lapsed in artifact


pink, little thief
bonelets coming through the photos coming
through the windows

the walls shake
each flower
swallows the building it sounds like
one or more than
three                photos

in succession
hand over mouth hand over
mouth hand over mouth

the choral inflammation
echelons as clouds do
you imagine laid with ceremony

the particles still
or float her