Carter and Maria in the Desert
 
My heart is a broken flower. Fuck me. Don't do that. Do it this way
That is how The West was won. Hollywood cowboys cutting into film
In screening rooms they cuss, cut create what we know as blue noir
Belle Fleur was her nom du plume. She envisioned The Golden Age
L'Age d'or, Bunuel hysteria. Suicidal chefs making chocolate roux
She had a room with a view overlooking an archway within a garden
Where she snail-tapped her way thinking male gender emasculation
Mundo civilizado. Long drives along lonely Los Angeles highways
In bloom, face like lilac, she listens to Cage the Elephant remixes
What is this the press to play gee whiz affectations of entitlement?
Must clouds creep so low - not while in our bathing suits we vent
Cram disposable logic inside hot breezy quips that qualify as gizz
Jazz. Thelonious Monk's Epistrophy. We zoom in and out of scenes
Roles heartthrobs play man-sizing. Their star-lit lovers fib and faint
Young Warren Beatty would do it differently. So would Paul Newman
Perhaps the wife beater exposing his American flesh. Jack Lalanne
No, a young Paul Newman wouldn't walk the floor porno pathetic
He'd play her down like a boss man with a bow and an upright bass
Watch him grip the fold of hair, tilt her head back lightly, breathe on
With these words he'd say to her commands from a Southern beau
Looking at a Ruscha painting and knowing where you came from
This is Hollywood. North by Northwest. Mann's Chinese Theatre
We fight among the cinematographers, grapple with our posture
 
 
 
 
Maelstrom
 
Bluest eye. Comment c'est. Pence to plus. I am a Muybridge
Human heck silhouette figure sprinting from white euphoria
In the arms of Bangladeshi woman I recall Marjorie Christie
How else do Black Europeans dissimulate their whiteness?
I murder roses place them ceremoniously over Brian's grave
Jonestown Massacre. Blood red lips murmuring "Rosebud"
Bonanza. Caribbean cowboys incognito emulate Roy Rogers
Becoming Buscemi. There were once Rastafarian cavalcades.
We now worship Wiz Khalifa. Long live King Jeru the Damaja!
Aburi Hills, the night sky as Nina Simone glamorizing meth
Music is a whore named Telula! She reads aloud The Bell Jar
How the girls at Cal Arts cut into their skin the word "Awula"
Ghanaian wunderkinds paint themselves dressed as Napoleon
Lady Days at Bellevue Psyche with smells like cooked snails
Mad men impersonate Emperor Selassies and Indira Gandhis
In this world a black goth girl is considered bipolar case number
Give me your industrial disease! Trade you for my hypothesis!
Where the punks on dope smash guitars I inherit my ubiquity
 
 
 


Of a Lesbian Body in an Episcopalian Church
 
of stone. that bronzed element yet lily at heart fluttering. as if his feathers were
of rooster at fight. king no less mirroring me, a pugilist shambling. poet collecting
words like geese possessing the sky. he opens dictionary page words starting with
letter "d" fixates on the word "diphthong". an example of which "oi". (oy) is it a
punk as pig or does the word "pig" make you think of pig Latin?
 
prospectus erectus "rospectuspay erectusway". opening paragraph Nabakov's
Lolita. have you ever undressed a word to find its cult or key? have you ever
heard of Throbbing Gristle? there's a great noise coming from the interim. I read
Portnoy's Complaint as an alternative to shafting.
 
bestowed upon me is the question of thus - am I an incorrigible thing? perceived
as jaundice, nearly putting in verse dialogue for our conquest. much of what is
said is unretractable. I am of this. it is my sermonology. you speak words hot in
happenstance. we are not lovers. in this I possess you. taste of Camembert on the tongue.
 
your phraseology, unnurtured, carries with it murmuring of a submissive
interlocutor. in this our wrong-doing the reflective "I" purports a feminist stance.
is it the "she" I sense in the ever-governing me? what I usurped from her spirit,
her lesbian body as she stood before me, an Episcopalian in the church of God
questioning my chi.
 
 
 
 
Bird Man's Bronzed Coq
 
Out Sir! Come out you he-body bruvva man!
 
Resurrection from bones of this American Horror Story
White Heads of Southern California claim your pigs
Punk these gasoline thirsty barbarians with lead pipes
Surf water serenading life guard - An Albino Dennis Hopper
 
Auf wiedersehen - blue boys and gigolos on Venice Beach
A demain - body builders and hustlers in bell bottoms
 
To you I preach Easton Ellis monologues, Basketball Diaries
We are at a breach between what is god and what is gutless
The librarian claims our conversations are lovemaking actions
A poet-thief who dreams Mastroianni's dialogue in La Dolce Vita
 
Marcello! Marcello! Come si fa?! Come si diventa una celebrita?!
Bird man from the Bronx speaks the part of Brando in Godfather
He soliloquy's early morning as a police car circles the courtyard
At night gang warfare erupts stressing Abuelitas walking Nietas
 
King Felix tonight paint the corners like Georges Rouault
Hank's men answer to me wearing pinstripes and baseball caps
I call them ceremoniously one after another to the batter's box
Standing smitten if I were woman I would flash my Double D's
 
Ambrosia! Ambrosia! I the masculine feast on the femur
The feminine at her post pubescent erotic grotesquely mature
Haves at mon coq voluptuous grind bounces the buttocks beat
Heart palpitating breathing strong breaths aroused hallucinating
 
 
 

Virtual Misogyny
 
At Martha's Vineyard love lives in trees. Come let us go
We are acquiescing tempestuousness of middle-age coitus
With neuroticism we seduce clit-lit bimbos in fuck and kill cafes
Virtual misogyny where ghost like funk captures our imagination
This is Ibiza by the sea navigating news feeds and timelines posts
Where imago suicidal Dorothy Parkers cut blow as poetic verses
Sanguine sun-night scintillating luminescence lifts my conscience
Arabethic sexo-disciplinarian. God is country I claim citizenship
Inside blue rooms I house corporate-cuntus fantasy girls meditating
I was projectionist of these NC-17 brain wave art documentaries
Colors of Vermeer paintings brought to life becoming faux nudism
Narcissistic up and over I sensed cataclysmic voyeuristic terrorism
Her caterpillar cat eyes under black hair ferociously piercing screen
Catch and catapult I made muse-sense of her Warholian profile pic
Fleshed out her Freudian body within mental pornographic celluloid
Hunger for carnal knowledge envisioning us approximating intimacy
Like Grade B movie actress modeling for a photograph by Weegee
Come alive during sex scene of a Margaret Thatcher era British film
She posed an American Anais Nin looking into me province of He
Aromatic essence beauty captured by the face lamenting desire
Red hues encompass each frame brilliantly and painterly evocative
"Who would be magistrate of our mutual harassment kinky torture"?
Potentially psycho in its inception we met death one shot at a time



​

Hair Dye
 
 
She bought a box of hair dye,
so I know she didn’t kill herself:
the thought kicks up dirt in my head.
 
It’s sort of awful, & I sort of regret it,
but don’t know where I might
find coolant for the doubt engine.
 
She plays hopscotch amongst abysses:
each day a new look at old horrors.
I take her to her visits with the doc,
 
try to keep her occupied, &
I feel like a ghost in the garden.
I latch onto whatever sounds like hope, &
 
what’s more hopeful than hair dye?
Brown Six-A, I think: closer to her natural
than the various shades of low
 
self-esteem she’s worn for months.
Better a dye job than a die job: another
unpleasant thought. So’s do-it-yourself--
 
a phrase I’m glad is missing from the box
as if a sign inside a casket that avers,
If you can read this, you’re too close.
 
 
 
 
Motion Picture
                                                 
 
Attention, please! Silence your cellphones or set them to a muffled buzz
Before the show begins—an epic film: romantic, action/adventure, scary story
Called Your Life from the Beginning. You should expect a fair amount of sex
Despite the protagonist’s blemishes, awkward manner, anxieties like a stew
Eerily oozing with tension like old, embittered soldiers on stools at the V
FW as they relive their wars. Wouldn’t watch if it all went smoothly, would you?
Great stretches might drag on a bit, so you’ll beg for the excitement,
However dark, when the hero suffers enough, stops crying, & finally kisses
Insecurities goodbye. Oh, how glorious as you see him (or her)
Just wing it, damn the torpedoes, etc., etc., disarming fears like bombs in Iraq.
Keep seated for the good parts. If you need to use the restroom, don’t get up
Lest you miss a major plot point: childhood fistfight, high school, clarinet solo,
Malicious words to a lover on the phone that leave him (or her) alone again.
Now the hero faces obstacles like doing laundry & paying rent, an encomium
Of day-to-day drudgeries more awful than ax-wielding psychos. You will
Plead for pause from the carnage, yet suspect that heroes at first lack
Quick enough wits, sometimes more than half. One might goof like a hapless DJ
Rocking out on his first day to a song in his head he doesn’t play. I
Swear, it’s better as scenes get faster & tough-goings tougher. Oh,
The star wises up amidst jobs, marriage, kids, divorce, a cold-nosed dog
Under blankets prodding her skin on a winter night, then a countdown of
Violent outbursts: parents dying, uncles, siblings, cousins (one, two, three).
Where the story finally falls apart—you should anticipate—is near the end:
Xing out the last days with too many epilogues, a climax anticlimactic.
You will witness the fade-to-black as it mostly grays, drains the tub,
Zaps all life from the cinema with its, Que sera sera.
 
 
 
 
 
When Worlds Collide


                      Paramount Pictures, 1951


Remember when the world ended?
Remember when most people died
because they weren’t engineers,
smart enough, or lucky? Yes,
tsunami or two, a little shake,
rattle & roll, & bye-bye kids
with their semiautomatic rifles,
dim- & slick-witted politicians,
cowboys, cornfields &
portraits of carpenters.
Sayonara outspoken actors,
church steeples, bourbon, &
Collected Poems of Pablo Neruda.


We never saw any intimate details,
although the cover on the DVD swore
Academy Award, Best Special Effects.
Must have been the panoramic shots
of corpseless devastation, or else
that alien landscape briefly glimpsed
by those pragmatic sons of bitches
after you & I & everyone were toast.





Bio: Ace Boggess is the author of two books of poetry: The Prisoners (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2014) and The Beautiful Girl Whose Wish Was Not Fulfilled (Highwire Press, 2003). His novel, A Song Without a Melody, is forthcoming from Hyperborea Publishing. His writing has appeared in Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, RATTLE, River Styx, North Dakota Quarterly and many other journals. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia.

SKATING

I have always preferred the surface
Of things

On which one may cut
A fine figure

In winter
(Carving lines of beautiful precision)
I would rather sink

Than barter my dance
For the frog-ish talent of suspension

On the temporary element
I loop and dip 

My blades
Curve and curlicue

Skating 
Upon the icy flow of what lies beneath




TRANSPARENT

if I could see through your skin

would the rouse of examination
soon pall

the secrets of the pubic bone
the brain
balanced upon a narrow stem 

automatic cogs
satisfy sense

and with an odour of medicine
we make co-habitation

with what lies close
upon the heart

the communion between bedfellows
(too little or too much)

is a praecox procedure
but would the sleep from which you may not wake

bless you
or would needles poke you
through the fragile yoke of your gown

if I could see through your skin
I would not 

​there are some things
​we should not know

Bio: Gareth Writer-Davies was Commended in the Prole Laureate Competition in 2015, Specially Commended in the Welsh Poetry Competition and Highly Commended in the Sherborne Open Poetry Competition.
Shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and the Erbacce Prize in 2014.

​His pamphlet "Bodies", was published in 2015  through Indigo Dreams.

#1 Internal Wish
#2 Worried Burden
#3 Lost in Plain Sight



Carlie Sherry's art practice is positioned in the realm of introspection, where self-reflection reveals issues of identity and shared humanness. In her paintings she deals with the unmasking of self, which is buried under the weight of social constructs. Her processes of unmasking involve the breakdown and build up of the inner and outer self, in the pursuit of discovering her own truths. Carlie is a working artist in Clinton NY, and has her Masters of Fine Arts Degree from Syracuse University.

Isochronism

She came to the city in order to identify a mind.
The body was no longer a problem for her, a source
of comfort whenever she rubbed her skin.
Her boosting mother gave her all the right books
and dolls that were far from figurines.
She told her girl to think for herself, hence the journey

She aimed to turn her head before any other,
yet the boys still peered at her from between their bangs,
looking up and down the spine of the book
resting in her hands at the coffee shop or wine bar.
One afternoon she displayed a cycle of dust jackets
and realized their reading was just a proxy for her skin.

Next stop, the rack, bringing growing pains
to clothes and shoes, as she searched for the perfect fit
and contrast over what she could not change.
From ripped jeans and t-shirts to sashes and sundresses
the faces on the streets watched her cycle
through advertisements for herself, whoever that was.





Wine and Dark Chocolate

No, we won't develop a written plan
To plot out the financial health
We hope to have in twenty or thirty years' time,
This is the way to really plan, without a plan,
Go round in circles, digging and cursing,
Wine and dark chocolate all around,
Because who knows might happen tomorrow?
Yellowstone could blow up,
Plain accidents might cripple us out of life,
Or the whole capitalist system might collapse
At the hands of a proletarian revolution,
The only thing we can do?
Not get too used to wine and dark chocolate.





Intellectual Affinities and Recurring Themes

A dialog with Europe, oh man
here it comes!

Can’t you just feel the pounding
hard surface of marble

Coming at you right now 
at five thousand years an hour?

From the Age of Bronze
to the post-modern Paleolithic

So much opens up to us about
the slavery behind it

Confessions and bashful 
recollections of tasteless nudes

None of the artists can be reached,
typical chauvinism

Or nationalism, I forget which,
the galleries don’t like me talking to them 



​

FRACTURE

You dabbled in sentiment
          and it felt good
                     while it lasted.

For years, you kept the glass ball
    suspended on your fingertips.
           You held the sphere aloft, and
                     it rotated slowly
    in the sunlight, while
                            you stared at it, hypnotized.

I was that ball, until
        the light grew dull and shattered:

             or maybe you were that ball,
             I no longer remember.

Now someone sweeps the pieces
          from the floor, but neither
                       of us recognizes him.

               He refuses to look us in the eye.

The shards disappear
          into the dustpan
            and the floor is clear.
                        but the gray air is filled
with the drooping weight


of all the rain that will never fall.





FREE-RANGE TEENS

I worried about promiscuity
when I was seventeen,
and its alignment
with moral character.
I felt certain
I had sacrificed
my own values
without much resistance,
and I feared this
would go on
a permanent record
that would reflect badly
on me, later.

In secret locations,
I furtively opened
medical pamphlets,
library books,
and paperbacks I'd bought
at yard sales.
I read everything I could
about penises and vaginas,
eagerly devoured details
about their angles
and dimensions.
I gorged myself
with gaudy images,
but felt sick afterward,
as if I'd eaten
too many hamburgers.

My boyfriend and I
had an elaborate ritual
that summer-
I spread out my body
on his basement couch
like a cheap buffet.
While my head
nestled in his lap,
my boyfriend probed
the inside of my vagina
one furtive digit at a time,
until he was finally able
to place his entire hand
inside me, at least as far
as his knuckles.

His parents
never came downstairs,
and never asked
what we were doing:
it was 1970s America,
and they couldn't
have been less interested.
We ate hot dogs
in bright red baskets
at the drive-in afterward,
and my boyfriend
talked about planets
and where he was going
to college in the fall.

None of my
moral pronouncements
made a goddamn
bit of difference,
because our parents
and geography
would shove us
so far apart that
we would never find
each other again.

Milkshakes and sex
were all we had
at the moment-
the viscous sweetness
of cream,
and rapid metabolisms
that would make it
much easier
to forget everything.





CAFE ROKA

A desert dessert
of green sorbet
in a small glass cup
while outside
the mountains disappear,
and the turrets
vanish into black.
Unlearning noise
takes time, and you
have less of it
than ever.
The Pluto line
of death and mines
runs underneath the soil,
buried yet moving.
You perch above
the fault line,
spoon poised in mid-air,
try not to fall off
your chair.
Some day
you will die here
like your ancestors,
or make a clean
getaway, and
be instantly forgotten
like the dust of bones.
Meanwhile the sorbet
rolls down your throat
and keeps you alive
for a while longer,
until the check
finally arrives.



​

Harvest Time 

A Métis lady, drunk-
hands folded, blanketed as in prayer
over a large brown fruit basket
naked of fruit, no vine, no vineyard
inside-approaches the Edmonton,
Alberta adoption agency.
There are only spirit gods
inside her empty purse.

Inside the basket, an infant,
restrained from life,
with a fruity winesap apple
wedged like a teaspoon
of autumn sun
inside its mouth.
A shallow pool of tears mounts
in his native baby blue eyes.
Snuffling, the mother offers
a slim smile, turns away.
She slithers voyeuristically
through near slum streets
and alleyways,
looking for drinking buddies
to share a hefty pint
of applejack wine.


​
Bio: Michael Lee Johnson lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era. He is a Canadian and USA citizen. Today he is a poet, editor, publisher, freelance writer, amateur photographer, small business owner in Itasca, Illinois.  He has been published in more than 880 small press magazines in 27 countries, and he edits 10 poetry sites.  Author's website http://poetryman.mysite.com/.  Michael is the author of The Lost American:  From Exile to Freedom (136 page book) ISBN:  978-0-595-46091-5, several chapbooks of poetry, including From Which Place the Morning Rises and Challenge of Night and Day, and Chicago Poems.  He also has over 91 poetry videos on YouTube as of 2015:  https://www.youtube.com/user/poetrymanusa/videos  Michael Lee Johnson, Itasca, IL. nominated for 2 Pushcart Prize awards for poetry 2015.  Visit his Facebook Poetry Group and joinhttps://www.facebook.com/groups/807679459328998/  He is also the editor/publisher of anthology, Moonlight Dreamers of Yellow Haze:  http://www.amazon.com/dp/1530456762   https://www.createspace.com/6126977.

This Is The Bad Part
 
This is the bad part
Bad part
Of the neighborhood’s reach
 
Empty building
Hidden within many empty buildings
A forgotten horror zone of passing through homeless
And those of us too young to leave
An economic battlefield of now and years ago
Yesterday’s continuing fall of a country’s greed
 
Trash on the floor
Plugs of hair
Dried blood
Cigarette butts
 
Crap in the corner
Curl of turds petrified
Beneath a dirty window for staring out
Eyes half opened and closing
 
Newspapers and torn magazines smeared
Shit and snot and ecstasy
Images branded in the brain
 
This is the bad part
Bad part
Of where they took me
 
That back room
In the darkness near evening
A used pizza box
They knelt me on
Hole in the ceiling
Where everyone watched
Flashlights shining down through the quiet dust
 
My long neck exposed
Sweating
Shivering
Waiting for the explosion or the guillotine
 
This is the bad part
Bad part
 
I enjoyed it.
 
 
 


​Barefoot
 
We played games
Little gangs of us not yet men
In the deserted warehouse by the tracks
A skull painted over the front door
 
Shoes and socks lined against the back wall
Placing bets and pointing fingers
Across a sea of broken glass
 
Every window smashed out
Laid out like a carpet puzzle of razor veins
 
First one to the other side
Was the bloody winner….
 
 
 


After Everyone Went Home
 
I stayed
Climbing the stairs of suicide tower
Stories told that someone had jumped
 
The whole abandoned block fenced off
We played and partied in the adjacent buildings
 
No one went up the tower stairs
Cement steps crumbling
Railings loose and dangling
 
At the top a platform and circular roof
Dead birds and bones on the floor
The wind whistling
The whole city lit at night
 
Getting back down in the darkness would be very hard
Or very easy….
 
 
 


I dream Of Her Often
 
She moved away last summer
Her father taking her out of this slum
 
We were a secret even to our friends
I was the poet of doom
She was the churchgoer
 
We were experts of sneakiness
Meeting at night in the church basement
 
Where we loved pure and lustfully beautiful.
 
 
 

Silence

I’ve grown restless 
Peace evades my solitude 
My madness wore the tread 
Emptiness lies in her tracks 
Deranging the apathy 
My mind escapes me 
Falling into the pits 
Rummaging through the graveyard 
Stumbling  through the skeletons 
Riffling through the ashes 
She awakens the ghosts 
They ensue me now 
through the sludge of my brokenness’ 
I scatter the shattering’s 
Piercing screams echo through the hollows 
Yet I am numb to their terror 
compared to the still that follows 
They are innocuous 
Chaos screeches to a grinding  halt 
Stillness invades the darkness 
The most horrific cacophony 
Is complete silence 
Loneliness is the loudest sound





Sorrow 

As the early morning light ravishes my eyes 
in the wake of another dreaded dawn 
I am brutally awakened, 
torn from the splendor of my  dreams 
where you abide with me still. 
Reality jabs her crushing dagger deep within my chest 
Sorrow pulses through my veins 
Frigid emptiness takes her seat upon the throne of my heart 
Merciless force draws me into this living nightmare 
Another hot tear escapes my eye 
Endlessly will I face dismay 
To once again feel you in the night 


​