Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Sunrise with Sea Monsters

by Melanie Janisse Barlow 


there were no snacks at the breakup
there are no monsters at this ressurection

in it
it is so tender, so so tender
a heart-accordion
each chakra lighting up like a light bulb on the upswing
in it
a battle between earth and water
interactive Geminis
in it
the cup of anger ferments into a dangerous scoby
we drink tumeric until our mouths are yelloworange
sweetsalty blend
in it
you are a dead giveaway

if the sun is god it's a win here
only a whisper of a trap
set somewhere in the silt
of a morning coffee

in it
an inner
            pheasants on Brush Street scattering, multi-lingual 
the skirt of Martha Graham evertwirling
in it gold tinsel swishing

an old, knowing dog crouching
rusts
a tin ceiling bent downwards

init some kind of holy order


morning light is on pause
bent into a broken thing
shadowed

two men in their cups on a beer-bottled brown lawn
candles keeping away bad spirits


plants reaching skywards 
old peeling signs
a wilted text message

tuning forks, tuning

did it die of lonliness Gwen?
was it the last of our mysteries?
indeed
it did, it was

ladies dressed in white lining the walls 
whispering
in it such an inner
in it the bricks are burning
we are eating garlic sauce and 3d pita in Hamtramck
with the sun kinding


perhaps it is all friendly
and really what we have here is fish
but the mothers are voiceless
and loud in their inference

in it my language opposites
in it i tell you to hang pictures of what happened
a productive Tuesday
in it problem solving is A1
in it i was thinking of tying a porkchop around my neck so the cat would play with me

everyone is sorry to see you gone
relax
its just two fish
what is wrong with you?
they are middling

in it the stars are on an upswing
a pearly white dashboard only practical in the a.m.
in it an inner


Sunday, May 15, 2016

Sunrise with Sea Monsters

by Jonathan Bennett

Where there is doubt, there is
information stacked upon data
shoved in between factoids
that I catch and lob back.

If you could just open your mind, he says                                                           
you could begin to believe the evidence.

Air brakes expel, he ducks 
as if shot at, we normalize
the moment for passersby
who flip us weird or pity.

If you could believe the evidence, he says
eventually your mind would begin to open.

Where is radical cool? Frequently 
missed across the dial, surely.
I catch and lob back white noise
squelching as ever-retreating loss. 

Sad face, he says. You are too skeptical. 
You can't believe evidence way back there.


Saturday, May 14, 2016

Sunrise with Sea Monsters

by Nathan Dueck

umami chamomile lathers algae
and acetous ducts salivate C. albicans rheum
alkaline brine

kombucha curdles acerbic mucus
dopamine D4 undulates sulfurous chute flume
and lye vitellus

and saccharin fungi chardonnay gurgles
igneous tracts percolate β-keratin spume
ethanol gall


Friday, May 13, 2016

Sunrise with Sea Monsters

by Alice Burdick 

Sun rides us, inspired by the bristles
that stretch into the mainstream.
The moon rides the deep-down creatures
too. This is every day as a planet.

Whatever sits and stares at us
mixes our colours into a bright portent.
That’s a word you don’t see every day,
but you could. Sun rides us,
long tail into the atmosphere.
I told you it was a bright beginning
but that’s not the whole story.
When you live at the bottom of a bright
day, the mud is a warm and fertile
bed. You are happy there,
and happy here, where all the smallest
breathers dive. They blink right
into your golden maw. Horses
of the ancients paw the clouds
for water’s fall. When you are small
the smallest ancients too loom large.
Will we catch them? We try. We dive,
but we’ll never finish - instruments stuck
deep in the lowest muck.


Thursday, May 5, 2016

Sunrise with Sea Monsters

by Jason Heroux 



Every sunrise

brings its own

sea monsters:

one morning

it was just a rabbit

we saw on our way

home lying injured

alongside the road

in yellow grass

hit by a car still

half-alive gazing up

at us as we went by.