NEW! Poem by Micah Bateman

Micah Bateman


ONE


One starves, one
Activates a cigarette.
Outside the bush
Of limbs billowing: a
Mime’s glove.
One leaves, one
Selects a glossy
From a selection
Of glossies, hand
Deliberate, printless.
One’s eye dissects
The room like
Cut fruit, one
Swells like a pear
In the serpent’s
Unhinged entry, one
Streaks a blind flash,
One cringes, one’s
Mouth ejects
A deluge of grain,
Cascading brown
Gestalt of particles
Only discernible
By the lightning’s
Quick crack, rescission
Of verbs bonded
To nouns, plucked right
Out of the loop, one
Blowing a bubble, entering
It, only to wave
Goodbye, only to
Meet the wall’s
Ballistic exactitude.
A crop circle is stitched
Radian by radian
Into the mown rows
Of pasture, cows
Given over to the
Chore of sleep
And dream, of what?,
One wonders, flicking
Her toe too relentlessly
To answer one.

NEW! Poem by Stephanie Ann Whited

Stephanie Ann Whited


IT STARTS IN THE BELLY

I am losing prayers to these eardrums. In a whale
stomach that needs a scrubbing. A good detox. No
more shellfish for this fiend who just opens his mouth
taking in any old thing that comes along. I
dream the ark teeters on the precipice

of embargo. How about
some Palmolive to shiny

the hull? I hear
the figs have eyes

to rest on laurels
made of patent pig
skin and red #
40.

I spy something black and white and radioactive

All over.