wunderkammer

Out Windows

by Jessica Wickens

and onto horses

pour the thick tea, pulse a finger can’t find

curtains in tears in redwoods, children having troubles

more light than you’ve felt before

over speed bumps 

another blinking in and out, leather cactus 

sleeping sand, what if you knew 

your life was over

into cloud cover

with long braids and paupers’ sign language

stars, they fly efficiently

a full color dance on a man’s back

screaming through the alley

rats scurry around dumpsters with pizza in their jaws

you’re not sorry anymore to wear a pink shirt

flaunt all the warnings and fuck you faces

and through the night you young ones

leaving school and the fields, 25 years

inherited a recipe 

agri-frustrate sweaty nursemaid passive combination

into radio wires   a set of one way 

light bouncing against a mirror, you’d like

to see that, say that, wouldn’t you? 

If Not For Snails: An Accidental Love Song

by Steffi Drewes

Milky moon rings

    orbit our eyes

stand iris to iris 

and after the rain

Puddles double 

    every step

slow touching 

    skin to concrete 

to find more sky

    Sucked in by simple 

swelling mirage

    miraculous antennae

fingertip-flooded memory

bright bumps in the dark

but less than smoke, we

smell wet, bursting

when after she guides my fingers

by Stacey Waite

out from the red memory of her body, 

she turns away toward the window

screen holding up the shadows

of vines.  it’s even possible she’s

conjuring up an old ship harbor

on the coast of maine or whispering

to herself of the stone steps down

to the cellar.  we’ve ended up here before, 

no curtains to soften the quickness

of morning sun, no frame for the bed.

if we need it badly enough, i suppose. 

if we need.  if we pull up 

the nails from the attic floor. 

when in winter you bring home white lilies

by Stacey Waite

some time later

she washes the blood

from the white sheets

we cook the rice softer this time

we eat less of it

we lean out the window

into the city rivers

how they wrap us

in their water arms

Waves and What Have You

by Steffi Drewes

picking up sand daddy dollars

    break to heft some 

beach green seaweed 

what ropes us feather-haired heroes

    here’s a brownish boa

here’s an angel’s ponytail

wind-clipped, we are brave rigging

    smells like boat sneeze

burly backwash 

this leafy rot had legs once fit 

    to ship     and swallow guppies

clammy nose starts to feel like fur 

gulping sea air,     hear a small shell scuttle

    bitten tongue, beginning with salt 

with what I had for water

distant cliffs to coincide with clasp

    dishing out echoes, caught mid-swan dive

we are ocean autogeography

From the Diary of: July 18, 1885

by Amber Nelson

July 18, 1885

wearied for

cushions &

velvet

so

taking off your flesh and sitting down in your own bones

what is sleepless & calcium

repeats this name and adds another

counting chics for sheep

counting cities

Home-bed-oblivion.

meaning dreams

From the Diary of: July 15, 1885

by Amber Nelson

July 15, 1885

we machinists grow

inebriated with industry

like high

on

life

or something

From the Diary of: July 12, 1885

by Amber Nelson

July 12, 1885

Could lunch on the smell of flowers and new mown hay, 

drink the moisture of the air, and dance to the hum of bees.

it’s the country life

of

cultivated red raspberries

invention & 

a church being a heavenly fire escape 

didn’t know it

I explained the necessity of having a rooster.

for waking

& awakened

THE SPECTACLE

by Chad Sweeney

Bones were shaking loose from the sky.

Shattering the lakes. 

Disappearing cleanly 

through the walls of buildings.

The bullets were on high alert.

The answering machines were blinking.

A thought bone caught in a spider’s web.

An eyebone landed in an intersection.

A rib cage rose up to surround the city.  

April bones. Blue as morning.

From the Diary of: July 20, 1885

by Amber Nelson

July 20, 1885

 

it curls

wheat toes

pricks & deflowers

each finger

 

Satan is the scarecrow in the religious cornfield.

 

No Touching

in the

dark

No dark whatever