m58

[m58]

A Poem by Cliff Yates and Morgan Francis

Except for Love

‘You’ll have to stand up as well,’  Morgan says. We’re side by side  on the train to Paddington after our Upanishads course, and he’s  struggling to take off his coat.  I grab hold of one of the shoulders.  ‘No, pull the SLEEVE,’ he says. 

A little later: ‘What’s up, Morgan?’    ‘I’m trying to get this fleece off,  I’m too hot.’ I pull the sleeve,  then both sleeves. His fleece  pulled down as far as his wrists,  his arms are trapped behind his back. 

Fleece off, he sits down, it goes quiet.  Then: ‘Are you OK, Morgan?’  ‘I’m cold,  I’m trying to put this fleece back on.’ I’m beginning to get the hang of this but it’s making me hot.

‘What are you looking for, Morgan?’   ‘A pencil,’ he says, rummaging  in his bag. He takes everything out  and piles the contents on my lap  including four pink table napkins from Rendlesham, he was always  walking off with them.

‘Would you like to borrow a pen?’    ‘Yes please.’  He can’t get it to work. ‘That’s funny, it is working.’  ‘I think we have different definitions  of working,’ he says. I take the pen  and scribble in the corner. Success. Morgan writes: close to trees of gold… 

*

close to trees of gold blue gathers in departure among pass away leaves   sky wires  rein acceleration above bark trunk slip along

smile out divine clouds  scurry white in revel above 

i would like to cry with happiness on expedition from rest pen journey different levels multi story rush towards home pass through embankment vacancy like poets  juggling air path relief

their enclosure  a ghost of unknown terminal except for love         

Cliff Yates has been writing and publishing poems since the 1980s. His New & Selected Poems is published by Smith/Doorstop. Previous work includes Henry's Clock (Fenton Aldeburgh prize), Frank Freeman's Dancing School (ACE Writers Award) and Jam. 

Morgan Francis lives in Cardiff. His collections include The Sun Lights and the Sun Shades, Holiness of Clay, Selected Poems and Donkey Jacket.

[m58]

three from Martin Stannard

DEPARTURE LOUNGE Women look at the door. Men look at the door. Men are afraid to go through the door. Women are afraid to go through the door. No one knows what’s on the other side of the door.                                           - Doug Lang The idea of the countryside, quiet, the countryside beckons, although one’s starting point often determines the nature of where one ends up. An open mind is also a factor, don’t you know? The time is fast approaching and I’m about to leave through one of them there doors,           the sliding, the aluminium, the bifold,           the barn, the storm, the stable— No doubt I shall be expected to follow some signs. But I see that some of the audience have questions: Kate asks, What are you up to? Jasmine would like to know, Are you taking a packed lunch? Penny has a query concerning the winter sunlight lighting upon the river:           Why is it so fragile? Daisy, sweet Daisy, asks, Is Crime and Punishment any good? Aunt Agatha has a lot to say, but it boils down to questioning           my judgement. Doreen asks, What are you interested in? Charlie, by way of written note, enquires as to whether or not           the pleasures of peace are illusory. Chloe asks, Are you coming back ever? Jessica says, If you don’t want them, may I have the books           from your library? Blossom asks, Can you see how the distant hills are capped           with what remains of yesterday’s snow? Miranda wants to know what I’m wearing. I’m attired fashionably,           and attracting one or two admiring glances           from other sightless wanderers. I’m just going to check my bag, make sure I have everything I need for the trip: tiara; slap; mouthwash; inhaler; exhaler; heart; rosehip syrup; notebook, pencils and sharpener; packet of guiding principles; phial of wonder; two recipes for rapture (1 carnivorous, 1 vegetarian); photo of Ma & Pa; The Seven Sermons of the Bishop of Shantung; homing pigeon; betting slips (bets hedged); contemplation mat; tickets to the travelling carnival; lucky penny; star map; hour of bliss; Stories for Boys (Chosen by Anthony Buckeridge), (Faber & Faber, 1957).

from POEMS DERIVATIVE, PLAGIARIZED, AND OUTRIGHT STOLEN

Movies that bite back against convention. Paintings that turn the tables. Music that crosses tribal boundaries. “It’s the arts that have heralded dramatic changes in our lives,” says Simon Schama, examining the realities of what the queen’s coronation, the Commonwealth and mass immigration meant for Britain – using Ian Fleming’s James Bond, Hanif Kureishi’s radical writing, and 2 Tone band The Specials. So it continued, a day of excitement, blooming winter flowers, an old hat cocked i.e. an elephant living in back of one’s mind, the thrill of thinking one thing and doing its exact opposite, flip of the coin, if you try hard enough you too can be surprisingly happy at the same time as failing woefully to keep up with the latest fashions and taking instead snapshots for your Instagram of the local wildlife wandering around foraging for food, any food, they’re starving, approaching desperate, because photography’s a hobby, and everyone should have a hobby, keep the mind active, maybe something seasonal, indoors and out, there are many from which to choose and more are waiting to be invented, and they can be shared, generosity being, if not always desirable or possible, laudable, for as our holy man always says, it won’t do for us to be selfish, though pretty much nobody bothers to read his newsletter, putting it instead under their kindling to light their fires, one of the ways to keep warm in this cold snap that has set us all on edge while time spent deciding which hat to wear to prayer meeting is ever apt to put everyone in our little social group, gentlemen and ladies alike, in something of a dither, and frankly it’d be more honest if we were to admit that we don’t really have a clue as to what we’re doing with so many ideas whizzing around and about our ears which if they could only be tamed, with words of calm and reason, serenity returning, take a breath, that’d be good, that’s the way the argument goes, the spirit extinguished, the fire doused, the candles snuffed, then coma would come, followed by morning, another day. There’s also Live Sport: Premier League football, Arsenal v Tottenham 6.30pm, TNT Sports 1. Three other matches, including Everton v Aston Villa, are also on TNT Sports channels tonight.

from POEMS OF MIRTH AND MELANCHOLY

. . . every disposition of the mind takes hold on those by which it may be gratified.                           - Samuel Johnson

Extremely sensible of cold, Alexander Pope wore a kind of fur doublet under a shirt of very coarse warm linen with fine sleeves. Icicles are depending from the eaves as I write this, conjure this, as the year dawns and our son yawns in my arms. The sun rises in its glory; boys and the girls set out on their day; women and men set out on theirs. I remember looking up at a window where slumbered one whom one might love to love. O, those days. Lark and song. Where once was the strut of an exultant male of late I have been insensitive to the charms of the members of the chorus line, youth and beauty, and have adopted an austere countenance: I wear black to signify lack of compassion, grey to allay the overtures of humour and its irritating companion, wit. When I’m alone

I wrap myself in a heated throw. When I’m with you it’s more likely we have a heated row.           Rising from his bed, Alexander Pope was invested in a bodice made of stiff canvas, being scarce able to hold himself erect till they were laced, and he then put on a flannel waistcoat. The wind is whipping in from the North as I write this, worrying the senses, seeking out the holes in our defences, stirring the curtains and whistling tunelessly about the corners of the house. Of late I have slept long into the morning, deaf to the song of the maid, immune to the demands of the telephone; sundry labourers labour as they dismantle and reassemble a neighbour’s home, but they do so only in theory. Getting up I’m prone to stumble over what remains of the previous night: I don’t remember her name.           His legs were so slender that Alexander Pope enlarged their bulk with three pair of stockings. Apropos legs, I consider, as I write this, abandoning talking, and walking off into the woods instead, while at the same time I’m inclined to give the chorus line another shot although I can no longer see them. My mind’s eye is weakening as the days pass, and the ways in which joy and ecstasy might be called forth are far too much of a faff, if I’m honest, which I may or may not be. Mornings come, glory of the rising sun or gloomy with wind and rain; in the evening the nightingale and curfew in a room lighted only with sullen embers. There is so much to remember, but the face presented to an indifferent audience has of late itself been indifferent: like, I’ve been wearing the same clothes all of the Winter, black and grey, lost in the crowd, walking the cloister, frequenting the quietest corners.

Martin Stannard lives in quiet retirement in Nottingham with his cat, Xiao Mei. Information regarding his publishing history, sporting achievements, and intimate personal life can be found at www.martinstannard.com. 

[m58]

A poem by Terry Trowbridge

Aten prayer wanders Off-tOpic

I will take the sun in my mouth and leap into the ripe air alive with closed eyes to dash against darkness – Bjork

Aten disk, my palms are Opened upwards

empty fOr your rays accOrding tO the instructions

in the ancient graffiti carvings

at least i hope sO

my alphabet dOes nOt share the ancient lOgOsyllables

by my alphabet yOu Open the sOund Of OM

suppOse yOur rays are the humming vibrations

alan watts wrOte about

that wOuld wOrk if Aten is the Ur-Frisbee

and rays the cOnnectiOns between peOple On the beach

thrOwing the cOsmic Om dOwn the shoreline between them

what a party

with ismael reed’s RAdiO Of MOses’ bush, waves carrying the bOat of RA

Aten high Overhead

Aten disk, my alphabet

lOgOsyllablizes dusk as the wOrd “sunset”   ([sun/set], [Sun Set] see?)

and that way my language perpetuates eternal struggle between

Aten and Set

sO sOrry that i inherited yOur conflict

apparently we find SunSet RAther rOmantic

we can be Obsessed with duality even find struggle sexy

nO halOs On us i guess just reflexive cOntradictiOns

mmm AtenOm i guess OmAten AtenOmAten

O O O O O O O mmm thrOw mm thrOw

rays palm up rays palm up rays palm up rays palm up

rays

            palm

                        up

            palm

rays

            up

Terry Trowbridge appeared in M58 before. He is grateful to the Ontario Arts Council for 2 writing grants during the polycrisis.

[m58]

Eleven Untitled Monostichs by J.D. Nelson

bright wasp one I mentioned raisins — is it outlaw egg it is without dimes —

ne’er saith ammoniac o! —

3% corvid tax dracula’s brain to bear —

doorknob juice the blinking dryness —

sandwich frosting headlight particles —

orange robotic that soft island —

the movement of air especially grim(m) —

grand piano amalgamation stain —

toast a jam is hungry elephant facts —

old salt I was laughing because

—

J. D. Nelson (b. 1971) is the author of eleven print chapbooks and e-books of poetry, including purgatorio (wlovolw, 2024). His first full-length collection is in ghostly onehead (Post-Asemic Press, 2022). Visit his website, MadVerse.com, for more information and links to his published work. Nelson lives in Boulder, Colorado, USA.

[m58]

Bacquo by Jim Meirose

 Jim Meirose's short work is widely published, and his novels include Sunday Dinner with Father Dwyer (Optional Books), Le Overgivers au Club de la Résurrection (Mannequin Haus), No and Maybe - Maybe and No (Pski's Porch), Audio Bookies (LJMcD Communications), Et Tu (C22 press), Game 5 (Soyos Books), and Game 4 (Ranger Press) info: www.jimmeirose.com 

[m58]

'Degrading Conversation at 11.13pm' by Stephen Sunderland.

Stephen Sunderland is the author of the surrealist film-novel The Cinema Beneath the Lake, three BBC radio dramas, and the visual poetry collections Eye Movement (Steel Incisors, 2022), Oneiroscope (Kingston University Press, 2023) and Refrains (Steel Incisors, 2023).His work also appears in anthologies Seen as Read (Kingston University Press 2021) and Seeing in Tongues (Steel Incisors, 2023); and in journals Mercurius, Overground Underground, Shuddhashar, Litter, The Debutante and Lune: A Journal of Literary Misrule. Find him on Twitter @stephensunderla - and on Mastodon @Corsairsanglot@mastodon.social

[m58]

from "Words Made For Night: A Book of Psalms" by Alan Baker

PSALM 6

Though I am weak give me wellness

Though arrhythmic give me the pulse of a younger man

Under the streetlight, hunched, hooded, I saw him

Who in life was never there, afibrillated, rumoured to fail

Unfriend me now, or else suffer my trolling and discourtesy

And was he a stray, shivering on the path, eyes almost human?

A tree's last leaf the final pulse of a quasar

A snail on the kitchen floor leaving a trail in Deep Time

Late spoiler alerts, forgotten punchlines hide

In toadstool rings and the eyes of hollow trees

I used to know the night, I said, but it's ghosted me

PSALM 7

Steady my irregular heartbeat, song, my ventricular rhythm

My heart rebels as if it didn’t want to be a servant any more

The sunflower, the lily, the daisy and all other symbols

Of fragility and impermanence are under the rain's protection

It’s the Sun that ages everything, “preserver and destroyer”

I made me gardens and orchards and I planted trees

Of all kind of fruits, the world continues in spite of the Sun

And the servant heart and that which is wanting cannot be numbered

And only the rain speaks in its incessant whisper

PSALM 8

The re-wilding of woods and waters, and the common weal

The smell of a wet day, alarm calls and a scattering

Look to the patient life of the hive, top-soil and leaf layer

Sing as if the colour were turquoise and the air full of pollen

Sing as if there were a fully functional and diverse ecosystem

Not that evil is banal, but that banality leads to evil

I looked at the bullet-holed walls of a City stranded in time

I read all the sacred texts then emptied the memory cache

I asked my fingers what they think of other hands

Why nails scratch at the sky's lid, and why the Sun

In the figure of a woman, offers up the morning for our delight

PSALM 43

If it should ever come, and I suppose it must, let it be

On a bright morning when all the possibilities settle as one

Like a flock of sparrows who don't know whether they're coming or going

Or whether the air seems cooler, their numbers fewer

Who don’t know that they're symbols of lust and vulgarity

Who deserve a constellation to be their aid and shelter

And to notice their fall, to hover over late-night pharmacies

To dart between the eaves of Amazon warehouses, to alight at last

In a dream I had of a red-brick terrace in some northern Celestial City

PSALM 54

Poets celebrate the cicada's song, the cricket's orchestra

But all I hear is a blue-bottle's drone, a mosquito's whine

The bar is closing, the waitress sweeps the floor

A single room waits for me under endless skies

And I ask, where are the insectivores, the swift and martin

On their long haul from savannah and tropical forest

Inhabiting a zone of magnetism and short-lived molecular fragments

Their consciousness tuned to quantum-mechanical properties

Of spin angular momentum? Maybe they'll echo in a child's ear

Or make an old man in an lonely bar look quizzical

As if the world had shifted on its axis

Alan Baker was born and raise in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne and has lived in Nottingham since 1985 where he runs the poetry publisher Leafe Press. Recent books include Riverrun a series of modernist sonnets about the river Trent, and A Book of Odes.

[m58]

three from Jerome Berglund.

Jerome Berglund has worked as everything from dishwasher to paralegal, night watchman to assembler of heart valves. Many haiku, haiga and haibun he’s written have been exhibited or are forthcoming online and in print, most recently in bottle rockets, Frogpond, Kingfisher, and Presence. His first full-length collections of poetry Bathtub Poems and Funny Pages were just released by Setu and Meat For Tea press, and a mixed media chapbook showcasing his fine art photography is available now from Yavanika.

[m58]

from "Words Made for Night: A Book of Psalms" by Alan Baker

PSALM 1

A smoky bar in blurred light, men playing cards

A crowded bus, a stray dog sniffing at litter bins

A mood of turbulent change throughout the nation

I sat outside the cafe, falling in love with every passer-by

Living on the margins of the world in the twilight, the crunch

Of a wasp in casual snow emptied into a summer room

Windows that let the breeze fondle my hair

Translate a smile into something absolved

A piece of music like a layer of time

So that my eyes construct the street from spores and pollen

Fungus and leaf-mould and listen to the song birds

Who offer music and new life to the months to come then turn

To forage nonchalantly as if such a gift were easily in their power 

PSALM 2

I can survive mundane miracles and accept

A scene from the oldest book in the world

Dreaming of endless journeys and favourable winds

Tuber and taproot, the grimace of winter under

A place of stillness, tendrils and plasma membranes

Leaf-mould, moss, spores and a handprint

On the cave wall, someone already there

A fox-run opened onto a clearing

Was this wildwood or domesticated menace?

Next year's bulbs stir in my optic nerve

Fungal strands take hold in the chambers of my ear

A life of multiple forms and sloughed skins

Everyday acts of kindness remembered

PSALM 3

I write from the safety of the neutral zone

Though I know that all around

The fires smoulder and men in clown masks

Are armed and dangerous but at least

There are mothers walking their kids to school

A man scraping ice from his car window

The exhaust smoke white, floating, toxic, beautiful

Two figures in orange overalls

Emptying litter bins in the park

And now a lorry with shouting men tips

Tarmac onto the road, steam

Melted tar, flames and smell of burning

And tomorrow the road will be new

PSALM 4

As I walked through the wilderness of this world

Sea-birds raised their instinctual broods, long-distance travellers

Down by the docks among cranes and warehouses

Where a solitary walker feels as though a door had been opened

Into a wholly unexpected dimension where words fail

A place to sleep: and as I slept, to dream a dream

I saw a man anchoring weights on something that should fill like a sail

Flit like a swift from town to town bringing good news

Too unbelievable to be put into words

PSALM 5

I peered into the windows of the public library

Leaking radiators, polished floors, books on everyday wellness

The sky was night-tinged over the pound shop and advice centre

When I am lost, be my GPS, when I am weary be my single bed

Trees absorb the petrol fumes which they later turn into leaves

Leaf-vein atlas suddenly awake to sun on wings, flit and hover

In a sudden march snow-shower jab at dead leaves, switch

To litter-laden playground like a local deity of the edgelands

Concrete and buddleia, damp and cloudy skies

To the roadside at night to regally regard the passing cars

Alan Baker was born and raise in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne and has lived in Nottingham since 1985 where he runs the poetry publisher Leafe Press. Recent books include Riverrun a series of modernist sonnets about the river Trent, and A Book of Odes.

[m58]

Jessy Randall 'All of the Above' (with Ken Cenicola)

Jessy Randall's poems, comics, and other things have appeared in M58, Poetry, Scientific American, and Women's Review of Books. She is the author of Mathematics for Ladies: Poems on Women in Science (Gold SF / MIT, 2022). She's a librarian at Colorado College and her website is http://bit.ly/JessyRandall.

[m58]

two from Tom Formaro

Act of Attrition

Erode or entwine before a favorite loss of sight— Faux regrets in the last strand up the latter until the form succumbs to the old ways— meaning what you pray—Not today or even a stone fold in time can explain where my memory of revery has gone or if—Let’s not make a rigged  wheel of this  unless a charmer’s smile is the first dead giveaway

Bodied

Speaking of  a lack of a trilogy the biology failed—or succeeded if defeat  of one corpse by another is the standard But I regress— noblesse oblige a kind of strip tease— anthropomorphize  the sound of two  left hands asleep to find something to grab hold of Is that not what they thought before the habeas corpus

Tom Formaro is a writer, drummer, and dad. His work has appeared in Janus Head, Otoliths and dadakuku and is forthcoming in White Cresset Arts Journal and Indefinite Space. His poetry takes random and deliberate thoughts, glances, and earshots and torques them until some sense of motion emerges. He lives in Des Moines, Iowa with his wife and daughter.

[m58]

A triptych from 'Digits After Orph' by Chris Gutkind

L-R '1:19', '1:21' and B: '1:25' (click to expand)

Chris Gutkind was born in The Hague, raised mostly in Montreal, and lived mostly in London since 1988 and worked as a librarian. Books are Inside to Outside (Shearsman), Options (Knives Forks Spoons) with artist Trevor Simmons, and a privately printed collection What Happened. Some poems from his Shearsman collection can be found at poetrypf, more recent poems are at Pamenar and in Writers Forum e-zine. More of the current project published here, Digits After Orph, can be found in Datableed, theHythe, Berfrois, Erotoplasty, Firmament, Shearsman, Otoliths, Ludd Gang. It is a series of 55 poems gridded atop Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus and in book form all will have options for selected words or lines on facing pages. It is forthcoming from Veer. Anthologies: The Stumbling Dance, Disease, Hilson Hilson, Corroding the Now, Kruk Book, Wretched Strangers. A photo-project, Isolation Collaboration, done during the UK covid lockdown can be seen at Permeable Barrier, and a poetry collab from the time, Gravity Bubbles, done with Marcus Silcock and Callie Michail, is printed in the 2021 Prototype annual and online at Babel Tower Notice Board.

[m58]

three from Daniel Lehan.

top - 'fullstops', middle - 'no ribbon - commas' bottom - 'no ribbon - letters.' (click to enlarge).

Daniel Lehan has lived in New York, Florence, Finland, and Quebec, and now lives in Dungeness, on the south coast of England, facing France.  

He delivers collage workshops to a wide range of participants including those in prison.

His visual and collaged poetry has appeared in numerous print and online magazines, including And/Or, DITCH, experientialexperimental-literature, foam:e, Indefinite Space, Kumquat Poetry, the delinquent, shuf, and small po[r]tions.

His work - 'Book Pages Destroyed By Typewriter' - is included in The New Concrete, Visual Poetry in the 21st Century, published by Hayward Publishing, 2015.

[m58]

haiku by Tohm Bakelas

grey days

waiting on change   like a broken pane of glass—   we splinter in the wind  

 

happy birthday

with each passing year   we grow ugly and bitter   waiting for the end  

perspectives 

i extend my hand   a green dragonfly takes hold   we have become one  

friday afternoon when i called out

pigeons peck concrete   like a chain gang breaking rocks—   the weather is hot    

on a scale of 1-10 how are you feeling? 

disconnected—my   body remains on the ground,   my head in the clouds   

i remember

i watch a small child’s balloon   float towards white clouds—   i watch a dream die   

Tohm Bakelas is a social worker in a psychiatric hospital. He was born in New Jersey, resides there, and will die there. His poems have been printed widely in journals, zines, and online publications all over the world.  He has authored twenty-five chapbooks and several collections of poetry, including Cleaning the Gutters of Hell (Zeitgeist Press, 2023).  As editor of Between Shadows Press, he’s curated two editions of the notorious journal, “Haikus, Nearkus, Fauxkus, Fuckyous.” 

[m58]

three from David Miller

Top L - Ink & Collage ('Diagram')', Top R - Ink & Collage ('Poem'), bottom - Ink, pencil Biro ('With Dodo's Words'). Click to enlarge.

David Miller was born in Melbourne, Australia, but has lived in the UK for many years. His recent publications include Spiritual Letters (Series 1-5) (Chax Press, 2011), Reassembling Still: Collected Poems (Shearsman Books, 2014), Spiritual Letters (Contraband Books, 2017 / Spuyten Duyvil, 2022), Towards a Menagerie (Chax Press, 2019), Matrix I & II (Guillemot Press, 2020), Some Other Days and Nights (above/ground press, 2021),  Afterword (Shearsman Books, 2022),  circle square triangle (Spuyten Duyvil, 2022), An Envelope for Silence (above/ground press, 2022) and Some Other Shadows (Knives Forks and Spoons Press, 2022). He is also a painter and a musician.

[m58]

two from Rebecca M. Ross

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x = traumatic event (past + present) / life: A Math Problem

Solve for x, in which x equals generalized anxiety  unexpressed rage a sum greater than zero  words disguised as symbols disguised as words disguised  yes, where yes = every people pleaser in search of validation a field left blank unsolved or unresolved

Solve for x, in which x equals the secret scars of mental self-harm born from centuries of abuse, the gaping chasm  of a million mutilations  so vast  so wide so deep that whole generations are lost to its depths

Solve for x, in which x equals  every insult every slight  every egregious violation of trust  Let x equal a variable so variable that there are no known solutions only parallel possibilities traveling side by side, never crossing paths.

Rebecca M. Ross is a Brooklyn native living and teaching in New York’s Hudson Valley, where she experiences things like trees, mountains, and easy parking. Her work has been published in The Medical Literary Messenger, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, The Voices Project, and elsewhere, and she has work forthcoming in the Dissent Anthology. Rebecca has a BFA in creative writing and an MA in English from Brooklyn College.

[m58]

new work from David Wolf

Yielder 

Yardage forgotten, solstitial fade, as I reimagine that old severing song leading me to polka right out of ballroom dance class. Ginsberg offered a spontaneous revision to one of my haiku. Sure. 

Got a postcard from the Sandhills. Turned it into a found poem: “Everything’s fine and dandy. / Bought myself a mobile home. / Two bedrooms, living room, the works. / All worn out from digging a ditch / 5 feet by 25. / Fell into it last night in the dark. / Shit. / Write soon. / B.” To be clear, America is not my favorite summer movie (things passing in and out of the mind, mind passing in and out of things). Unfair work— that is, the empire—stretched right on through evensong. 

With my in-laws, looking for their ancestors in an English graveyard, watching a young family load into their car, I thought of an idea for a short story. The title: “Writing is a Form of Discovery.” A man discovers he is not the moon, possessing, as he always has, a bad sense of chronology, a scratchy faith in kismet, an indifference to Keats’s “Bright Star,” and, like most, a pedestrian sense of oneness.  

Again a general cry: the past eight hours! Thanksgivings (oh please!)! And lately? Just hanging at Cap d’Ail. Year’s end, more Googlism, mileage, meaning, lonely, lonely. Hey! The sublime’s fogging to blue, a distillation of roses, knowledge in review, grand allusions filling the French triptych smeared with tankas in drippy translation. 

To wit, t’ tweet, to whom it may concern. Sing it. Bah, oui. Creative nonfiction followed me from Savannah to Charleston. Welcome (better late than . . .). On the cab ride to the Camelback Inn Resort and Spa, I spun for the cabbie my now forgotten Killarney Trilogy. 

Words listing, I tried to remain upright, riffing another intro, a morning in May exercising fragments, good interpretations, a memoir of one autumn and its remembrance of faux horse sense. Please pass the cookies. Marvelous. And the vin ordinaire. 

Echovox stew: meaning matters, before and after and back at you doling out Benjamins like comparisons trumping loosey-goosey, still projecting memories of the latest shooting in sonnet form, cutting across the OK panhandle in the paisley seashore rain, proverbs glowing red and gold in spring’s promising air. Must be the beans. Or Dad’s favorite golf balls bouncing around the interior of the old noodle. Pick up the pen and call it a poem, not an institutional rubric, filler like success, a testamental ambience, a selfie earnest as any treasury of emptiness, variation in the wind yapping. Zurpreeze! 

A gathering erasure of firsts strewn along Hackney Pass. How to know precisely how the memo’s useless distraction fouls the pin’s fall into the bin. Tuppence for your thoughts? Well, just the sorry boom of ye olde avant-garde, a shouldering of pesky trite tropes. 

Yarner 

Turn out the artifacts of your imagination. Tea? illspreoogud. ; ; ature. Hark! Back to some steaming order? Crawling from my solarium to my data turret, I went in search of the nightmare’s measurable outcomes. train whistle blowing in thick fog, echoing up the river valley a third-tone higher, muted I read the critical introduction explaining what is going on in the work. I annotated the sunrise slipping across the page. I may be addressing you soon, fair thoughts for the fair, procedural sludge for the decimators. Feeling mixed, a bit of alachrymosity as I count the embedded chimes springing through June foliage. Waiting for that singular narrative to emerge, endlessly revisable, worthy of memory’s revisitation, I framed the present. Gathered some lavender and white phlox . . . and now on my sox I’ve got burrs that clingle-tangle-stingle. Cool it. Going nowhere. Like the apple that rolled a promising distance from the pear tree. Like the toss that sent it further, into the chaparral. Why the tire swing doubt? I’ll trust the pattern in the rope, the weave, the braid, the tale. Nascence tells me something is still quaking in the lost meadow on the cutting room floor. Eternity, I apologize for all the cuckoo figuration. Hastening to find some peace of mind, I’m up. Understandably sweaty. Maybe I’ll return to the fading climate of wonder. I watch the haze hang. Dry winter endurance, forgotten scratch. Imitation’s theatrics yawn. tree-trunk shadow—drooling a squirrel

Fabler At The Lucky Duck gastropub we see no duck on the menu but of course that’s why they call it The Lucky Duck—cheers! A fly lands on the page I am typing up, less obtrusive than my remembered cat. It will only take a wave of my hand to send the fly on its way. The shoe that was on the other foot has now dropped—after some effort. Brushed a croissant flake from my trouser leg— before a butter stain could set in. The sparkling lights of Nice at night across the bay have given way to the sparkling morning sea— as Black Sabbath’s “Hole in the Sky” plays in my head. Idling, we encounter the road ahead: three signals: red, yellow, flashing yellow: two directions down to one lane: no green. And now a motorbike speeding past that sounds like a weed whacker. through the canicular haze: snow-streaked Alps Got a jolly reprimand—got a real cheerful. Sapped of light and patience for the itch to resolve, we caught the coast lining through the haze and stupefying heat. The level sea, pine, palm, tourterelle, gull’s bark, diesel, rampart ruin— the tableau of morning offers a fine napkin to wipe away the dirt of ardor. “How are you today?” “Fine, can’t complain, no use complaining anyway, I mean, no one’s listening.” “Did you say something?” “I said—.” “Yes, I heard you. Just a little joke.” “Yes, a little one.” “Have a nice day.” “Another joke. ‘Nice day.’ You’re a funny one.” 

Teller Love made me want to cry like a ladle dripping acid fog. Cold as . . . mice. Dead, test-rattled mice. Cat-rattled? No. Keep it human. Though once true at heart, the youthful enthusiasms felt now like distant fictions, delusions. Any gleam off the fossil, artificial. I begged the lily to shadow me through the highlands. The narrows of attachment proved easily cast. Harrowed to the last. I stand supplanted in the clearing, in the heraldry of sun and stone, a shiftless relic eked from aught. Guessing as always, I follow the lost eclogue balancing before nebulous ease. Rail, yaw, as we must. As the monuments rot in the pale rushes, the drafts of indolence dim the turn to inward solace. Supple revelry. Supplicatory. Applicable. Billable neglect. Needlework. The air bluffs composure, fleet as honey. The jewel found in the knapsack shines its naysayer’s music. Open, peony bud, we cannot help thinking. Quarried. Time upstages a whiff of Xanadu. What a wind. What a zeal-zoned moment. Late summer afternoon—an owl hooting— on the lookout for an early bird special? All leeward these leanings, roughing up the dimming afterglow, shed, deciduous as sanity. Levity enrages. Almost dawn. Time scuffs the overwrought you in youth. Apropos, out to pasture, no pie dish in the sky pooling rain either. Care insinuates an aperture, a tithing of effortless chirping. Comfort, oscillating most frivolously, outraged rhetoric’s tambourine. Zoning optics neutralized effervescence. What to expect. A dry field, mole mounds, stone cross stretched in pale grass, keep your eyes on your path, your way across, look out for dog shit. Do a little quickstep, quirkstep, quiet as the stardust in the blade, as sunlight on skin. It’s not a lack of this but of that that’s causing it. A lack of that but this. While this. You are busier than you think, which is why you forgot to finish reading that must-read. Must be it, must be the reason, you tell yourself as if you were two. In the flow of it. Dreams free of recent hauntings. Ghosts in the old family home just up the hill. Why did you buy a place so close? You weren’t thinking? Live for the swim beneath the cliffs, the trees. Live for many reasons. Now you are thinking.  

We still have plenty of cereal for breakfast. No need to thaw the muffins just yet. If the manual says to hold the button for three seconds, that means three seconds, not a quick count of three. Evasive answers return in several layers of erasure. Unintended meaning of something you said occurring. Power just went out. It’s back. What was I saying? Hardy mums. The word. Took a chance, showered during the thunderstorm, had to. Made it quick. As fern thorns snagged an opening drape. 

Closer Open up, said the season. In exchange for the word, I was sent on maneuvers with a love letter from Michigan in my pocket. After the great quarrel, abiding, wincing at the figure “damaged goods,” I penned a poem, an aubade of sorts. What could be done against it all?

Sunday overslept. Meanwhile legend after legend frayed like all the great love poems do, mid-August every year as we put off unpacking, thunderheads thirty miles east. Poems fizzled, frizzled then fizzled. Random gales delivered more origins to the sodden brain. “Indian Summer”?  

Golly, hear that report? That’s not dialogue. You and your bear claw were such a sight. So much a live poem, and who needs to write it down, just take it in. Sure I get bored. What’s up tonight? We could start earlier to avoid the question. “Vinny, Vinny, Vinny,” I said, “no solution will redevelop lost spring trees in early leaf or my old Olivetti.” It’s like a hometown layover, a snapshot too brief to consider going home, coming back. A holiday beckoned, the glint of momentum missing from my morning inventory. Poems, some aphorisms, Venice—the lists can be endless. If you regard tourists as fantasizing emperor moths, you may gain some insight into the landfill of “civilization.” Lakeshore love song, glacial teardrop, help move us along to rest down by the river of sapience. Again we were foiled, which prompted me to say, losing all patience, “I ask you, is that your banana on the counter or is it the intersection of Hope and Wisdom, a lost zone demanding lidless ignorance?” 

David Wolf is the author of six collections of poetry, Open Season, The Moment Forever, Sablier I, Sablier II, Visions (with artist David Richmond), and Weir (a micro-chapbook from Origami Poems Project). His work has appeared in numerous literary magazines and journals, including BlazeVOX, Cleaver Magazine, dadakuku, decomp, E·ratio, Indefinite Space, Lotus-eater Magazine, New York Quarterly, Otoliths, and River Styx Magazine. He is a professor emeritus of English at Simpson College and serves as the literary editor for Janus Head: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature, Continental Philosophy, Phenomenological Psychology, and the Arts.