John McKernan

MY BROTHER LIVES IN A MANSION


He sleeps
On an alphabet quilt

He wakes
When the sunlight
Pours into his notebook

He dines
On a breakfast
Of memory
Hidden in shadow

He works
Walking slowly
Through my skull
Until every day is identical
The last   The last    The last

John McKernan is now a retired comma herder. He lives--mostly--in West Virgina where he edits ABZ press. His most recent book is a selected poems, Resurrection of the Dust. He has published poems in The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, The New Yorker, Virginia Quarterly Review and many other magazines.

Erika Moya

IMPOSTER

there was a death

there always is         

& a boy with nothing in his pockets           

like he needed her

soft skin of grapefruit

a minute & it's just your face        

& she can't remember the words          

wave a hand

and she moves closer

move it twice

and one is tied down to a cell

imagine pieces

still inside you        

homing pigeons     half-consumed things

the sweet smell of garbage

women dressed like beach-side catalogues

aqua     coral     tamarind  

you can never forget this    

blue and un-fuckable moment

the real of the yellow

with its hooks all in

Erika Moya's poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in forklift, Ohio, Spork Press, & elimae among other places. She co-curates the Stain of Poetry reading series in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn where she resides. 

Lucas Farrell [Part Two]

ICE STORM


Everything in silver. The dog in the road. The two dogs in the road. The limbs of the trees enrobed. In silver. The sun in silver. The tongues of the lambs lapping ice limbs, silver. There is a music in the road that the dogs dog to. That the people people to. It’s a dance I dance to. It’s silver. It goes: who is this place why did it home here, where’s the beginning, now hurt me. There is an honest to god answer. I don’t know what it is or where to find it, but I’m sensual to it. After all, we’re not going to be here for very long. Stand arm in arm with the conditions and marvel.

Lucas Farrell farms goats and the occasional poem or two. Please visit www.bigpicturefarm.com to learn/read more.

Lucas Farrell

GERTRUDE GIVES BIRTH TO TWINS

To birth is to take in
fresher aspects of.
An owl’s nest strewn
in a white field. My brother
coughing up sunlight
in a white field,
feathers. Five o’clock
half-grazes the snowed-in
shadows. Meaning, her kids
arrived here as into a flood.
As out of some liquid prayer.
O Gertrude, whose placenta
stretches clear
across this skyline:
I will listen listen listen
to all the unmurdered
birds. Singing in
the laboring heights.

Lucas Farrell farms goats and the occasional poem or two. Please visit www.bigpicturefarm.com to learn/read more.