JUXTA/ELECTRONIC #9
JUXTA/ELECTRONIC 9
Editors: Ken Harris, Jim Leftwich
Poets: Sheila Murphy, M. Kettner, John Crouse, John M. Bennett,
David Sutherland, Dan Featherston, Jessica Freeman, Chris Daniels,
Jake Berry, Amy Trussell, Dan Raphael
*************************
Sheila Murphy
*****
Etcetera perfumes the seed
Deserving plexiglass endorsement
Of equality
Petal or mothwing
Probability to match
Momentum almost
Hatching an intent
Or stasis like the pretty and reputed moon
Drifts past staged living
Wheat grass polymer and telescopic
Proof of boundaries
Exhaust complaints like August
In a pencil stolen from
The doctor's office waiting room with People
Magazine covered by thumbprints
Lethargy and gurgling dispenser
Of fresh water to provide
Something to do with hands
**
How does perception show (how does it mean
Ephemerate, supposing
Window fare, full thread
Of closure what would matter mountainous
Intentions learn to fast
A measure learns to fast
Teak strong measures long afford the wind
To mow enable suffocaine
And in this matter ruminate rework
Bestows what little entry point
Its due, its comatose
Undress as parodied as worthiness
Sheet rock and canvas ready for the prompt
The hand a version of falsetto
Having grumbled long enough in the event
Of surging past the brink of latitude
To pass for playthings given
Toward inevitable winter
**
Choir with moss, with crucible, farm implements
And leg rings lets go
Melody and prominence, releases
Logic, sentences
The congregation to designs
For their presumed salvation, blanches
The already whitened room with
Honey flecks, cold water, passages
And imagery of goats with triumph close by.
Choir rubatoes its way through
Fire, across unwanted tide, at the unscheduled time,
And limbers up the sin side of the nest
To facilitate escape during the words
That garnishee the clambake sin depicts,
Dark trembling, misericord, with titles
Painted on the hems of dresses,
Also sewn with warning labels
Translated into languages.
**
I wish everyone would not talk when it's morning
Our neighbors have people visiting
And all four own dogs (each couple, two)
And all four neighbors (now) discuss some things
With great hillarity as early as they can
And they repeat them
And their dogs perform the same functions each day
And it is humorous each day to the four who own them
Who like prefacing the gatesqueak with their talk
About the dogs who are their personalities
As if they have no personalities in fact
The dogs become unwieldly before scuttling along the sidewalk
Toward and through the gate which sings and clicks both ways
The tones of voice are male and friendly and delirious with comfort
Seem glad not to be hunting anymore
Seem glad to have awakened from their sleep
Seem relieved not to be where they were before here
Seem intent on sharing how they feel this morning (every morning)
**
See-through winter barrens us
To mood through what is principally
Bark and disappointed looking wood
See-through branches lose the fiber on
Previous trees to lush and lucid with
The tingling bites and trinkets of the little birds
Who dose the planet with their wilderness
Rehearsal who impede our progress toward
A useless silence who immeasurably
Soften how land is without regard
To furniture and thick weeds
And diplomas gathering intact
References to finishing the place
Casting aside all odd jobs done by God
And claiming credit gratitude and
Weather as our own
See-through winter ossifies the
Work-in-progress left uncertain as a planet
**
Allegro waters chasten me
And femur something like
The awful minuet inheritance
For starters (breath's
Satiety more pinched than
Jean-lengthed rodeo)
Impassive grass plunked
All down walkway's
Clean affordable
Largo impinges slowly
As the yarn unraveling
Soprano slings let go of
Penitence this curly
This full motion picture rose
Just sitting in the middle of a canvas
How times soften
All their quaffs in silver
Jurisprudence (fragranced through)
ETUDES
1.
Reed salvos (say it slow) keep quasi light its own duplicative shadow
laddering perceived show run-on tense of lovely as you sugar were (intact)
all flow intoning simmerware one stripe of wind. To attic room, to pensive
lumber, to altimeters. Creased cost shimmering a wide new band of
here-we-meal-clandestinely. We soft. As pedal mows this chanted pact. Of
teasing saints out of our slumber. Would craft fair homonyms released from
carpet. Would draw freehand the latchkey season. All percussive quest
rubato.
2.
I am her spare brain. I listen as a sieve for no apparent...preen of sunset
lasts about the sky. A milken piano later calls its tune peach-scented
hoverment in trees. The least falsetto admiration of new melt (now alert to
sleep). Which way goes southern wind. As prayerfully the seedlings left to
cover field now uninfect through the aluminum. What brought on unprinciative
dementia. Do eyes continue a priori light's pure thought of dawn.
Collectibles at the receiving end of madness.
3.
Sorts the blue drawer west to spear loose things. Self talk need not be
audible. (The radio you pay for) autumn passed off as woodwind follows
brassy leaves of summer. Husks definitively damaged in continuance of heat.
Without full consciousness, intuition wanders into something right. Leads
away with hammock from high points and valleys. How trombone becomes half
glib as a reed instrument with hingey little keys and minus the encumbrance
of a half soaked reed about the split unevenly. Lips can compensate without
full intervention of a mind. One note after the next.
*************************
JOHN CROUSE
Manifest
Wordsbreath coo it right to keep
it up all times as objects to divert
rudder gate impede sluice flow
a whole things right then direction
so inform or de informed reform
much as ways of seeing of living are
conditional minute by staining smooth
ing gouging now making the way a future
flows a way lived & rode conditional
endless succession succeeding potential
random verted onces upons as times
which once which time times bitch of the relative
how in wows stead times masthead stands steadfast
erect is a way lived in above all
ways bubbling the flow looking to shoot hind
end less successions doubly realized fore
thats knowing the flowing twice
more than half cocked springs the
relative full whells an only way
not to limit words that show motion
words that motion shows time its state of being
to tis being stated
how to resurrect to commune
a pasts tongue so the pasts not dead
so it can be translated
presently so what's passed isnt.
*************************
JESSICA FREEMAN
Heel toe
Click a .38 caliber revolver
mussels roachtown Orleans
a cannon'll salute port arrival
rust hulk *Polska Walzcac*
oak strips box ornamental fig tree's
black leaves: Familial Order now
pensioned, set aside
Man overboard switch headlight
there goes narration prophecy mockery
Song Un Dance hyperbole goes Valention--
haute & hand-rubbed triumph
Waters choke tutelage
anchovy good byes Godawful
oh, well, lovebugs out no more cold
spit hoard dramatic
*************************
DAVID SUTHERLAND
MOUNTING AIR
============
Change is percussory,
primped on its alabaster dias,
a vein to Lifes' vestiges which
tilt obsolence to defeat.
And in sadness
we perdue its cup, and drink,
settle the pain -- with wit, antiquity,
nesting repose and
outstretched hands that,
tie back the..
sharpen the Truth with
the pincers of fear,
tongs of regret fill the
empty spaces with
Words of
ascending hopes and gentle committals,
vague dreams on ravaged shores,
are loves lost too...
Flashes between waking and
wanting and knowing and seeing, that
cradle is grave.
And mother is dying.
------------------------------------
*************************
DAN FEATHERSTON
SYLVIA'S DEATHBLOW
O Sylvia, Sylvia,
with a dead bowtie of stomatoscopes and spontoons,
with two Chileans, two metempsychoses
wandering loose in the tiny playwright,
with your mouton into the sheer,
into the roodle, into the dumb prawn,
(Sylvia, sylvia,
where did you go
after you wrote me
from devoir
about raising potash
and keeping bedticks?)
what did you stand by,
hust how did you lie down into?
Thigh!-
how did you crawl into,
crawl down alone
into the deathblow I wanted so badly and for so long,
the deathblow we said we both outgrew,
the one we wore on our skinny breakstones,
the one we talked of so often each time
we downed three extra dry martinis in Boston Massacre,
the deathblow that talked of analogues and curettes,
the deathblow that talked like brickyards with plovers,
the deathblow we drank to,
the motorcycles and then the quiet deer?
(in Boston Massacre
the dying
ride in crabs,
yes deathblow again,
that ride home
with our boxspring.)
O Sylvia, I remember the sleepy drumstick
who beat on our exuviae with an old stoup,
how we wanted to let him come
like a sadsack or a newsroom fairing
to do his jitterbug,
a necking, a windstorm in a walkout or a crew,
and since that time he waited
under our heartburn, our cunnilingus,
and I see now that we store him up
yawp after yawp, old suillages
and I know at the neutrophil of your deathblow,
a terrible tatch for it, like salse.
(And me,
me too.
And now, Sylvia,
you again
wit hdeathblow again,
that ride home
with our boxspring.)
And I say only
with my armament stretched out into that stone placenta,
what is your deathblow
but an old belly laugh,
a molecule that fell out
of one of your poebirds?
(O friction tube,
while the moorband's bad,
and the kink cough's gone,
and the queach's at her witchbroom's end
the bargainee ought to sing!)
O tiny motel,
you too!
O funny duckbill!
O blockheaded thing!
(Oulipo-5, after Anne Sexton's "Sylvia's Death")
*************************
DAVID SUTHERLAND
RED
===
In rutilant reds, our
faith is un-knotting this
wretch of existence,
rash of desire.
The intervening dark is
intervening light and
bodies-the-body
to its final conclusion.
But, did you say Love ?
This curio is serial,
spotted under a circus sideshow of
offered elimination.
To be certain and tolerant and loving,
up to this end is
haute couture.
And did you feel Pain ?
Blank to a jesters stare,
then shuffle in numb
resignation with
failing kidney, stretching sight, pitted sacrum and
hymning..
the Grace, the Glory !
(or did you cry wolf ?)
-------------------------------
*************************
JOHN CROUSE
3 POEMS
Couldn't it be boss had there were notten
parenthesis where is the subtlety & then wheres
why the sissy craft at drumming any what
but for the reason to talk about you when
this ages me needbe heard tho in tones low
to be actions to hearing others mes
bludgeon icepickingly exact flesh bone soul
mash boobying achirp crisp wind in the exact
full so that storm oceans lull storms
the awe fucking to so bold narynaught new words
for yearning dune spent senses unseen to then
inward dunes petrified rain grails fill booming
seams bumpetty fall.
*****
Slut is the hardon of having It
figured out a tree could be a pine
maple elk oan apple any tree
could be i smile when i come
is leaves in trees in rain
dripping rain in orchards
*****
Lowest river stooped twas
get your head out your ass
stylistic invention give me
a break more like stifle
stifle stifle de lifed we
breathing de lifed breathed
life maintain the posture
chafe.
*************************
CHRIS DANIELS
from AND PISSE NOT UPON THEIR ASHES
*****
O my theriomorphs
baboon pen
jackal heart ashes
of djed so blue
and from us
await mad
for ash up and down after
corpse candles over
holy walsinghame field
shite in the stoneware
guts of the
just minor cloaca
of dirty blood time tide
which do obliterate
bull hammer through
unlimit boundless heaven
unravelling
seine scatter
stars socrates and jesus
what disgust
shadows head
on the wall
seething with torpid
wits and lice mad
for ashes cedar and
plaster watchmen pet
fier toutou
nightworm
i don't see you fly
---
Hepatitis c jump over my wall
uproot the yew it's okay
make yourself at home
wee hop o' my blood
---
And
that
this place
may thoroughly be
thought true sharpears
as per 100 its line
even then so near benben
mound you bepissed
sharpears your pectoral
sharpears bruise on your pectoral
your sternum
stone on
stone arm bruise my cheek
stonearms djed
this djed such
a djed
held angled
or happy
wound
if yours
sharpears
bruise my cheek
on your pectoral
harry swifts
with me
---
Hieratic
dessicate
nod before sitcom
alum in poppy
blood rejects picks
while we eat cries
to the kitchen fuck you
say it in front of me
psychopomp i need not ask
why nor where you took
who obeyed only
papaver your shade
strewn at her feet
not the shadows
half in mire
but the depth
of each shadow
half in mire
as if each shadow
autocoprous
festive bags
of red of yellow of
night coiling
uraeus poppy
stem round
your espohagus
wound spew
cranberry juice
halfmasticate
rigatoni
cover the age's
stratospheric
genius khepri roll
skite bore you
---
Shadow shadow shadow
shadow shadow shade
shadow shade shadow
shade shadow shadow
shade shade shadow
shade shade shade
---
Delight
compound
delight eternal spider
love in the crook
transubstantiate all
manna into gall
*************************
JAKE BERRY
from BRAMBU DREZI, Book 2
crucifix is embryo
suspended
from phospheme logos -
Sophia ensnared in grinding wheels
of warm lethargy
at the moment of recognition and surrender,
Where the field deposits
from the brink of
all luminous spinning variably bountiful,
an accord with infinite
yet numerably substantial
stolen from her mother and bound in animal hides
locked in the trunk
where only a diving
bell could restore
a stone graft
forged
between transistor icon
strumming cells
to habit
nautilus
geometry
born in modal
Lilith hacking wire
Will follow Mother's doves
to Avernus (hideous
faces)
that stench is memory
drained like flies from my
pores
dragging Beelzebub back to
his tower of loathing
bodies suspended from a blue sky
remake the eidolon
reweb feverish discourse
until nothing remains but the pelican
bleeding her breast for no one
Down to hellmouth
with golden mistletoe
brutally awake
TV extracts flickering plague -
draughts
of cremation
till the
womb releases her waters -
.........
-
If soul is vagarious
undulating between universes - not
stars and their antithesis only,
but parallel resonances, or those
abstracted from radiant trails of
subtle behavior -
no context could provide
the bark
articulation (and who'd die of
the weight anyhow)
only unhindered could she consist
faithfully
and speak
particles emerge
from 'their' forces shadow
polishing the mount
rider eaten from marrow
electric
*************************
JOHN M. BENNETT
*****
nasal maps
storm
clue
RAISE THE SHEET
*************************
M. KETTNER
GARLIC-MATED
shining too soon the distant, phlegmatic axiom
spoken like a pearl deprived of its oyster/
pen in a funk
(pressman recently bottled)
a one-eared otophagist
steatopygic and captious as all hell...
wrinkled hat and a bloated aspirin
moon through fog
fence inside a fence
cut-throated, thoroughly-moated
ever willing to disavow existence
stentorian huckster: garlic-mated
freight-hearted blossom-stomping
rumor-swill
full of too many movies,
oven works but not the burners
*************************
JOHN M. BENNETT
*****
thinkfeet
mud
loops through
(vas decision)
*************************
DAN RAPHAEL
Plateau sagging silvery through the horizon where a body stretched
it is too possible to drive the same road, unlike veins that learn to hide,
only the cars are changed, season's cycle with random transitions,
hands go through steering wheel, cursing easy
rainflow
going flatter than light on the edges of
corneal transplant,
disposable summaries of fuels, flour and training.
fuel becomes air ground into a powder replacing skin with ambiant
cinderflies--
what were pages, what prism splinters mistranslate laser-captured anarchy
trying to rumba, trying to spell in a too small car, a too large body,
radio sedative, video hairpiece, palm soft and sweet as urban marshes.
we go through each others' open spaces like mile long vultures of soggy
moth-eaten canvas
the antonym of cloud, the panacea of weather,
people sticking their blowdryers in unsuspecting
orifices
catch the jet stream belting with black
electrons
the glitz, glam and
glee-less sweatlodges
we wish our bones were cars. a fleet of me swarming through
your moisture,
the rain sleeps late when my prairie's dust embroiders the steam organ
prairie dogs inhale with hundred bodies one mind,
millions of hairs, millions of cohabitants
hard-shelled or gelatinous,
everlastingly ephemeral,
insistent as june's hazy sibilance we try to remove like
school
water where my cheek was, skull scattered like an eruption
pent-up so many lifetimes the clock's heart is confused and
thick,
like a drummer spanning planets and dimensions, the day is how we rotate,
hours are cut to be even and smooth, to restore the
pie each day
before I wallow in it, barely able to
taste,
barely able to get through the bankers
and body builders,
the sculptors and
gamblers, the food critics and counselors,
as if each kernel of my brain needs each hair on my head
pollinated by a different discipline.
I am more cross
bred than most
since all my genes come from the same corner of
eurasia:
hold so many factors steady, the others will swing
so wide,
over the horizon and into the moon,
under the ocean and through the fire freezing time,
the balance to absolute zero is the heat that dissolves any semblance of
matter,
all this sound and fury insignificant and universal,
the way all our tools are based on what our voices can do--
cut, numb, enchant, destroy,
invigorate.
I am never silent, just lapses in memory,
dreams on channels I can't access, voices not meant
for me.
I talk little, my body blaring snippets of scent and muscles to never
plateau,
larger than most, threatening on some primal level, to those tuned
there, otherwise
gentle and ambiguous, slow and unfocussed,
seldom promising, randomly delivering.
those who learn by being surprised, those who learn by eroding the plateau,
those only needing to adjust their teaching techniques,
the world's appreciation of what they're born knowing,
a sense of personal gravity redefining mass based on intensity:
the sharp will survive, the meek will inherit the deficit,
the lonely sometimes get lucky, are sometime persistent
enough,
needy enough, human enough to leave the soil
usable, contribute nutrients,
pull back
the curtains
once in
while
to see what song our
stars are playing
*************************
AMY TRUSSELL AND JAKE BERRY
Dark Water Song
Ellegua!
our throats open
Listen-
The coconuts fill with milk
and drop into the sea.
We drift towards the crossroads
to meet you
See-
these gifts we bring
oak branches from the axis
and sweet rum to cross the worlds
Please open the gate, Papa, and
we will remember you to the Loa
Yemaya, blackest mermaid
please hear and address us
our crowns expand
anemones, breathe
We kneel with moonlight
dripping in
Listen-
the blood in our veins
is your dark water song
crying to you in waves
soothe us with your caress
heal us, mother, sister!
From the conch shell
I was warped
you set me on course
while you sprayed the stars
I heard the gourds rattle
From the water's black depths
you called me
down into the mirror's revelation
self to self
I am dissolved in your embrace
Return us home
on this salt flecked swell
with your pelvic fins
and the deep kiss of knowing
Now-Papa Legba
Can you hear us returning by your gate?
we have sweet rum, Papa,
please let us pass
and cross the water safely
**