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

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.

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

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.

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.