I try to imagine what air conditioners would say if they had mouths and minds of their own, like after a really long day of trying to cool a really hot house, at night when they can finally turn off because they got it cool enough they go, Good job today, guys. We really lowered the temperature of the air in here. Or if a strange car pulls up into the driveway, in the middle of cooling the house, without even skipping a beat they go, Who the fuck's car is that? Or let's say somebody's grandmother dies, and the family decides to hold the wake at the house, and the grandmother was always really mean to her daughter, always reminding her daughter how disappointed she was in her, and always belittling the daughter's husband for not bringing in enough money, even though the family was, in actuality, quite well-provided for by him, and so while they are cooling all of that the air conditioners are also observing it when the funeral parlor guys wheel her casket in through the front door, and one of them goes, Man, I don't want to be an asshole, but I'm sort of glad she's gone. I never really liked her. To which the other air conditioner replies, Dude, totally. She was a true bitch. Good riddance. Meanwhile wanting to solemnly nod, but being held well in place by a few screws through the window pane, and pinned beneath the weight of the top half of the window itself, it cannot. So it does the only thing it can do, which is go on cooling the house. The Thin Dream by Talia Reed Take something new from me. Call it shale, the layers of murky-watered foliage, the Sierra Nevada consolidated clay. All peaking now; weight, strength, all it can hold. Take something spiraling and prong-like that doesn’t fit in your pocket, can’t be hidden under your shirt, that scrapes into the tender side and glints bright in the sun of any time of day. Like the lichen-plagued leaf, the patched-over rooftops, the scrim curtain fall and blanket be. The red-turning and gold-turning. The crisp growing and time haunting of this season. It dovetails only the slightest of my consciousness. The life of all of us goes ratcheting up and the refuse gets sloughed off, we lessen, and our hearts slush out in abandon. No one else hears the warning of the world being on fire, of all the turning points being blown up. A thin dream, vaporous as cobwebs. Sorry as silence. Dumped as darkness from dawn.
07/20/08
Cooling the House
by Mark Leidner
Mark Leidner's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Forklift, Ohio, The Iowa Review, Notnostrums, Skein, and Thermos. His chapbook The Night of 1,000 Murders is available through Factory Hollow Press. He teaches at Abraham Baldwin College in his hometown of Tifton, GA.
07/13/08
You Think This Poem Is About You
by J. Bradley
Your moose knuckle
knocks the wind
out of tornadoes.
When you ask
"What's your sign?"
people answer "Dead End".
You make masturbating
with chainsaws
an attractive alternative.
If God had a plan for you,
he would give it to others
so they could escape.
J. Bradley dreams of piloting the Black Lion. Word Riot, MungBeing Magazine, and Clockwork Cat gave some of his work a home. Find him here at myspace.com/jbradley.
07/06/08
Talia Reed graduated from Indiana University with a degree in Secondary English Education. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Switchback, Arsenic Lobster, Avatar Review, Elimae, Wicked Alice, Main Street Rag and others. She is a columnist for Oranges & Sardines and she occasionally writes for her local South Bend Tribune. She lives in Indiana with her husband, 3 year-old, and chihuahua, all of whom speak Spanish.
05/01/08
Banana and cucumber masturbating
by Eli Halpern
banana and cucumber in strongly worded e-mail
or say we gaped with puns
in receiving her
a sham of clicking out
found plugged in cucumber
and carrot
her profiled
"i will always remember u drinking
beer from a vase" spread of
speaking vase region "what a classic
momentary drawl!"
when the French tricked us into
opening in cars
against her pile
Mike had granted us
god of speech and finally we pulled him
from his car.
to this day the armor
feels gross. like it went on TV.
"i remember when
i would ask if he was going out.. and he would say
does a bear shit in the woods...."
no one knew
to lodge weapon shapes in
sleep. one story
with his old lady
went out but does a bear
his vaselined guardian
angles and all this one
ruins of christmas
I wanted to tell you your laces are undone. Please, make sure you have your belongings before you go walking off again. I hate fires.
I am also selling your handmade wooden desk chair. It is now kindling. You will pay me re: funds for these matches that support you. There's also no more way you can see my grunion. Nope. You really consider as student. How could you have worn my shows to the shower? Didn't you think that hmmm perhaps these technologies wear out? Why are you so blunt and disgusted with my version of oatmeal. Yar!
Ryan Daley just got engaged. Long, hard and deep. Likening this to "in a jar of pennies" are how he'd prefer to spend his time. Instead he teaches and uploads web content. His work has appeared recently in Galatea Resurrects, Scantily Clad Press, Blazevox, and GlitterPony. He blogs at Giver.
Villa Nova
by Christopher Mulrooney
a sort of railway station
in a small town with a theater
it's a comfy place
one knows the people there
it welcomes you
you have won
that's what would have happened
the spectacular things have written themselves
across the zodiac
blankly
all the girls were there
the bright mentality
the weigher of purposes
the distinguisher of finer things
the lioness
with our purposive figments
it is a very happy converse
top to bottom
and here is the time of day
when the buggering gods hid their faces
and the Dea Mater shrouded us
dance attendance upon us
in our beds
beside the reliquaries
the disputations continue
and we are as subdued
here we miscalculate
as well as we can
it is made to order for we
have worked very hard
to bear away the simple palms
and the bays as one
what do we think about it?
it is a sealed door
with magnificent openings
to be gracious tends
to help a little
a Consort of broken Musicke
if I might suggest something
else try
this
the great da