JUXTA/ELETRONIC #13
JUXTA/ELECTRONIC 13
Editors: Ken Harris, Jim Leftwich
Poets: Peter Ganick, Steve Fried, David Golumbia, Cheryl Burket, John M.
Bennett, Dan Featherston, Charles Ardinger, Michael Crye, Amy Trussell
David Golumbia
The Veery
Grape vines, curled around imaginary central stalks
That color us, that while defining us reflect
Fine seeds, flax seeds, practice we can see -
Fall around us, it is good not to be curtailing
Aromatic pull of sight, you tell me to gaze
And it is perfect here, night is a garden
We lounge in our silk garments, you take me in the
Describing myself
Your body made of language
Water. Rocks formed with rushing over them
Your white breath
Listens
Geese striking the gray-green 5:30 sky
It is afternoon - it is night
////
Peter Ganick
from SPACIOUS // ENTRY // LABEL
Increasingly chop-street
frond pirouette
unceasingly air planet dowse
how attach to is
cancer beltway of promotion
The music is (at last) loud
korean ginseng, royal jelly
Yonder finicky
command nodules
free barn price
as ordinate
from
prison thought this
Donor set
it may
be that...
////
Steve Fried
from plackets
Edgar: ..."keep thy foot out of brothels, thy hand out of
plackets, thy pen from lenders' books, and defy the foul fiend."
King Lear III, iv, 99-101
1\fickler plackets
stones lie where the heart remotely is
the future faced irresolutely, shaken
CAdiz femembered into unprofitable bones
be the first to - slowly singed - awaken
seize the burning sheaf of poems
faker fall pinned to burns, see
fleas hear fear feed phones
free dreams skin film takes
scenes I've sinned, donated piss
planned to seek keys lake or window
3\pressure session
cancer doesn't mean to be harsh
call it my unsympathetic spiel
march gold-plates February's answer
owl eyes hover where I craftily kneel
creche to corpseheap, panzer
deals spew spates of stool
torque can make any dancer
spooled light-tight steal
tantra from state sponsored forks
mated to fool creeds cautiously masturbate
5\chronic teutonic
thy fate lies in thy dread hand
had thee played platinum plus
sand might train thine eye
plaid weeds and peonies dead men push
land explosively or with sighs
crush the plain lined pad
panned across emptily invisible sky
bad lenses drain achromatic pus
high German stain covertly spanned
brain to wad shush who remain
13\parent synapse
skin has various faces in our sheets
hand half gloved in cunt
sweet to please and spin
bands of anticipation around a hot lunch
fleet as eyelids are thin
pun seas seize mucosa and
street shrieks mouth can pin
standing joined but not one
within buckled knees pulses beat
freeze under tan shunt our disease
////
David Golumbia
Gel
In this direction, a stream of
Fresh buds on spring trees,
Detecting strings night stands
On, so carefully threaded. To
Grasp all this, to hold out towards
Harmony a murmur, north star
Shining in clear darkness. A strand
Fuses, lime on the cool lawn, forms
That name themselves, our fronds.
////
Michael Crye
desert recipe
red rock, burned forearms of a boy who never
met the sun so close to his face, high in the sky
where the stone is transparent beneath, resting
like air beneath my heels. the roads and rivers
below, twisted into snake tracks, bare skins of god's
past lives, his first stirrings dead in these stones
laying out in the sun to rot hard and pretified
a fossil of deceased moons, lifeless
civilization of sunlight's ruse off road and barb wire
rusted into thin shadows of birds, making the horizon
wet and flowing with empty seas of space, sweating
from my skin, a smell hanging from the rock cliff,
bringing vultures from the scrub. their weak break
in the atlitude muttering "feed off this dead air of the world,
be a carrion creature, and in your own belly
learn what small creatures digest here
...devouring silence."
////
David Golumbia
Amy Model
These blue powers make a whole - the rib
String, a potent gaze, a noise - I know
The rain pins us, the sea is our focus,
Your name rings, exploring me, a bell -
My grasp of the matter is firm at least.
I feel, full - I want something impossible.
////
Cheryl Burket
IN PLAIN SIGHT
I.
Beginning with last night's blackouts & those lullabies. I
thought I had a vision, something to tell you. Acres out back,
willow trees & power lines only in this land. And then the
blackbirds, hundreds from nowhere, in one gesture bring the
house down. The willows side by side, wood snapping in half
here & there. Their incessant screeching disturbs the base of
our necks with delight & fear. Absent of any corridor they
wait for the rain. Tiny claws curled into the bones of the trees.
Our road outside suddenly taking in nothing. No one driving
through for miles.
II.
Vertical the color of the beachfront winds. Back inside
lighting one silver columnar candle, boneweary matches
slipping to the floor; picking them up again, hands shaking.
Walking out of the kitchen with the candle & placing it on the
front mantlepiece. We have the radio on for good now. It will
only be time before these power lines snap in half under their
clutching weight.
III.
Standing back outside, finally, watching them. All of us in
plain sight. Suddenly the landscape seeming to age too fast.
Taking us back to a childhood photograph. Somewhere
between a white road & a white sky the memory returns to its
beginning. Pictures & words of this landscape piece together.
IV.
It changes in a word & they lift off, black point meteorites
into a new translation of the coastal fog. Left behind under
one willow is a rock the size of a desert story. We were awake
long into the night thinking about those birds. Was there the
chance pacing of a mountain lion outside the black screen
door late last night? Or did we dream this together?
Increments of rain falling the next few days over our
beachfront house.
////
Michael Crye
helen's skeleton
Troy lifts into heaven
as pieces of ash & cinder
a trail of black ships
sliding spear point
between the ribs
of wooden horses
helen lifts herself
from the ruins
her beauty, vulture wings
reduced to burnt offerings
language's love
burning in her mouth
////
Dan Featherston
1-900 SEXTINA
Despite distance, anonymity may contain hot
conversation recorded through the core
use of telephones. As feral is to phone,
complaints may be directed as samples:
imagined arbitrary and wild,
or anonymous and you know what I mean:
teased with the breathy flush of mean
as meant to allude a furtive glance at hot.
You don't have to say, just listen for a wild:
hear feral housewives, swingers at the core.
Any hole may mean you or me or samples -
aural swatches fitting fetish to phone.
Buy straight sex, but no vistas by phone;
nonetheless, you're alone and way the mean.
It may be the best, you and I for x samples:
a soundbite, a gist or highlight of hot
filling some hole, some hollow core
dialed open, each phoneme triggering wild.
The brotheled body probably bottled, wild
wriggling awake from sleep to phone,
out of the cradle endlessly desiring core.
Says he, About that wild ogre last night: what's it mean
to say a lonely housewife's pain throbbing so hot
round the clothed line of her life, hanging hot samples?
Says she, Grip any phone and I'll yell for samples,
(that tubercular cough so kinked with wild).
It's tongue and cheek and get a grip, collar hot
and why bothered, barking over the phone?
It's all commodity changing hands to mean
something hard extracted from the core.
He thinks to unwind, dialing life loose from its core.
But how make-sense-per-minutiae of life's samples?
Who cares the content or context? It makes him mean
what he says for once: going out for a wild,
be right back ... down to the pay-phone
for more of the naughty tongue's hot.
The paradox of core: both hard and wild.
It's only samples we bear on the phone,
to mean, despite distance, something close, hot.
////
David Golumbia
The Spar
The aubade of consciousness, a crack
In drapes, it shows bare trees reflected
Light cast on them. Now last night is gone.
Now in the feeling dark you will forget
What gulled all this, material thought
Marking our grounded outlines together.
It's cool on skin but warm outside, your lace
Covers sight - morning, barely after night.
////
Charles Ardinger
KEN LOVES BARBIE
smiles made possible
by industrial process.
no elbows.
crotches like tables.
no dinner.
no problem.
in their dream home.
nerves painted blue
perhaps (but probably
not) inside their hollow
torsos. no hunger.
they smile forever.
////
David Golumbia
The Funnel
I will not give in - model sash
Consciously reflects that here
Stalk, altogether - alliterative, mark
Insistence, diction - bowl of picks
And nut-meat, shells - fluent
Blank confounding simple taste
Celery on the wet - every word
To repair as we evoke. Solve
Rows of white houses in afternoon
Country of inland respected cap
Discussion granite conclusion tip
Thus the wild forest reduces
In full degree - how dark it is -
Ice becomes pyramid of meaning
The port - right atop - sprung
////
John M. Bennett
Plantings
Smells like the seashore "my (eye sluff)" wiping's
palm hanged off the shelf of chin like a chew o'
'baccy leave "(ink sinks in the) sheen sure back slops"
same shoes every day, surfy path, clings to's leg
like's pants' rank drip. Burying the fish or the
rope's thick wrist, he's in the manure naked, "groping
through the fist" Later, "on the coffin-log sits
you", biting back sand, where the thirsty rotting ...
Crumbling, fertilization, sticky hand
////
Thomas Lowe Taylor
RETIVO
balanced
person
change
________________________
roto mindfuc
maledict nomen
shithead prolax
sensitive dick
sed the whole thing blasto
profundo, nodded downside
plutarn, the other side out
memory of the whole the
blood of the fathers
intact
they'd shented down, made
plain the history of it
nosko the bold
whence trained they folded
time-out the further sign
design
Nay Mox! baby blue, its
all over now you know
who
buttressed and calm in
sheer number magnitude
what
persist agon describo
hints afar synchron'd
Look
they'd occluded calm, and
made pretense out of sheer
disaster
Here at not knot)
in general terms to
spuds
their own porn silence
edict, a non tribute
gainsayd
politic-all what sux
demento predicto funk
-ola
give me signs and no
bullshit in between
signs
du ya wanna some my
plum in hearts heat
heated
ensue emotion i reach
within arcs and come
unscathed
hod. you'd went them down
and sung alot aloud along
the way
inseeming and tense perhaps
another keeper in the flame
betides
yet held outward gnomes at
polar stumps attached within
sentences
thucks newer plint her ardor
unattended tew longe, recall
formers
at added rooms delight return
joy at joy, there scampers
plowed
good night. yeast prints held
at last regained within lights
portuned
////
Amy Trussell
Libations To Bridget
Slippery as a broomstick
the branch which crosses
over the creek
taking the spill
in mountain cold
The false skins
ditch them next to the tent
then go in with Patrick
breasted mountains swallow
the sun
Stars rise to the top of the sky
sweet cream
we pray Brie
take the blood that still trickles
from under the fourchette
possiblity lost under a mound
The butter urn you tipped over
has been burning five hundred years
we stand before the sky
filled and flaming
Earlier we had spotted a dark mass
at first I thought
a lightning charred stump
he shaped-shifted into bear
we took slow backsteps
A sequoia grove held us we waited
our turn on the narrow passage
while he pulled off berries
juice darkened his tongue
then he vanished
Knowing the scent of lochia
bloomed on me
painted self with invocations
started down the path after Patrick
pack as heavy as a small child
My sisters used to drive a spike
into a tree trunk
to drive out a changeling
and bring back the baby
The midwife called it a blighted ovum
went into the garden
and eventually fed
the meloned vines of summer
At Kildare where Bridget reigned
St.Patrick took the corridor
to the underworld
and cornish money-wort
sprang in her footsteps
The color returns
to the skin of the sky
we hike off the map and it blows away
a wolf sneaks from the lake
mercury gray rippling haunches
Breathless we muscle
to the top of the pass come
over a blanket of snow
tinged with red algae
growing up from beneath
Cliff face a waterfall is mostly
hidden by snow
though there is an aperture
where we see through to liquid
Your invisible harlots
pulled me into the creek
and through to the karst
with its cavities
From drainage points we scaled
up to where earth swells
and arches to you tensely
from its bed of rock
////
Michael Crye
a brief history of fireworks
popping black jacks into the river, watching
them implode, clearing off dark eddies. the belly
of fish ignited.
his unfinished face crumbling back into darkness
as the flare sinks, turning cold in the murk.
upturned glass lips screaming off bottle rockets.
our childhood lapsed years in slow rivertown. excited purple dusk
whistling and cracking K-Mart parking lots.
those July nights the rockets rain trailing
kite strings of unmade bodies.
spark babies of gunpowder without hearts or
craniniums.
an autopshy of howling lungs, turning to ash and
cinder,
bits of small color that linger on your
eyelids.
the crickets hushed as chinese mummies sleeping
in clay beds. places where children make cheap watches.
our hills and river valleys loud and smokey
as revolutions in burned hands, or dragons
snoring.