#poetry

On A Dog Hit By A Car

You wash up the blood first from your hands, from the blankets, from inside the car; but when you leave her at last and commit her living to memory, something is forever stained and nothing is as it was — not the date, not the spot on the road, and not the chair in the living room where she slept in the evening with the three-year-old.

The Ladder Tree @Zjoot Lots of things grew on the apple tree we planted, but none of them were apples. There were some glass swans, some hammers, some glow stick necklaces; there were quite a few telescopes, which followed us around on their spindly legs. You climbed hopefully up a tall orange ladder to pick the crate labeled “apples” that had grown on a high bough. You opened it and your dad was sleeping in there. The ladder slowly sank into the ground. The orchestra stood around with its hands in its pockets, mumbling awkwardly about the weather. Next April, there was plenty of rain. Lots of things grew on the ladder tree we planted, and you were one of them. The first thing you asked for was a glass of milk. The second thing you asked for was as many telescopes as I could carry. You built a tiny observatory in the palm of your hand and I crawled in, but all of the astronomy had leaked out of the telescopes during winter, and all I could see was a sort of muted beige. When your dad woke up, he was stuck in the high boughs of a bald and withered apple tree, and it was snowing. Nick Rizzuti is an undergraduate at Hofstra University. He has appeared in Little River, No Assholes, and Fur-Lined Ghettos. Art by owlwise12 .

Exploded diary. Also I wanna give a shoutout to the makers that don’t have/can’t afford a studio and make stuff out of the same room they live/sleep in. I was just thinking about how many articles I’ve seen of yt well-dressed, well-funded artists photographed in their impossibly chic + clean + minimal studios. That shit makes me feel isolated in my practice and very much like I exist in my own little messy vacuum. But then I remember that people that make for the sake of coping/existing can create anywhere and everywhere. Sure, access to a studio would be a total dream, but just a reminder that your mind and immediate surroundings can be your studio.

The river lengths mourn no corpse carry another body styx sticks so sick of the insubstance. moaning barrow. I want to soothe my hollow halo her. and so subtly, do I exist and dusk dawns another absent night how do I make a meaningful life and how do I live it

God has to be masculine Devilishly handsome. Magnificently deviant. Criminally charming. A dad dealing with seeing his formerly-dead son brought back to life by a magic hot tub Waiters appear all dressed in white carrying five gallon magnums of champagne up the filthy crime-ridden streets Some dirty cops thought it was too black and too gay The panda eye makeup the bouffant hair and that voice Two big televised speeches The baseball speech The facing justice speech After five decades on that desert planet I have so many questions and chief among them is why leaving the body behind the spirits lose their way and wander this world forever. Each retains memories of its former life. Each carries a mask that used to be its face when it was human Sometimes they look at it and cry

Sarah Lyn Rogers I have a full-length collection of erasure poems made out of painted-over pages of On the Road . My goal for this project was to remove the framing device of the narrator to “reveal” a multitude of speakers in the text–speakers whose desires and fears are at times surreal and contradictory. Potluck Mag selected five of my spookier erasures for their Halloween week, viewable here . Sarah Lyn Rogers is a writer from the San Francisco Bay Area, currently living in Thimphu, Bhutan. When she’s not writing or doodling, Sarah is the fiction editor for The Rumpus.

History Lesson

We are textbook history, whitewashed written by the victors. I will watch a show: 10 things you didn’t know about – laugh, checking them off. (I will only know two of the ten, a worse score than when I watched Caligula, The American Revolution, Hitler, or Ben Franklin.) It’s past, it’s past; it’s done.

the meek will… what he meant to say dare i say was those with the most practice suffering losses will have it easier when the time comes to let go

Laying New Carpet (a poem)

Laying New Carpet In the empty apartment upstairs they are laying new carpet today stamping it down in time to the radio or maybe across a make-believe hopscotch field that meanders through the living room to the bedroom and back again the silence when they finish thick and heavy like shag and I realize I forgot how it was to be surrounded by other people and still feel at ease.

"Roma"

This ancient city haunts She lures you with her secrets You prowl through her dusty and dark veins, flowing towards her beating yet broken heart Ghosts from centuries past, enter you, casting images in your mind, with dreams…with nightmares Hedonistic spirits possess your modern day vessel, stripping away any inhibitions Seduced by the past Gifted with this present You are there…hungry and driven to devour the sacred flavors of this mysterious, “City of Ruins.” —x-changes

In the old woman’s dream @cserea Baba Marina lived in our attic. When our family moved, she moved with us. She’d throw a fit otherwise. When the old village moved in its new location, Baba Marina moved, too. She didn’t like to be by herself in the attic. One night, when Mother couldn’t sleep, she got up and went to the kitchen. And there was Baba Marina peeling potatoes and the eyes of the dead, throwing them into the boiling pot. In the morning, Mother’s hair was white as if she had walked through falling snow. In the old woman’s dream, they were making a movie about the dictator. There he was again, a white gypsum statue on its pedestal in the square. The crowd surrounded it chanting. Someone placed a noose around its neck and they tore it down. The statue fell and broke. The crowd rushed to get the pieces, all but the piercing index finger showing the brilliant future. On a side street, a man ran with an arm to file it into small bits for souvenirs. When I pressed ENTER, a tiny trap door opened in the keyboard. The stairs were going down into the endless cellar. It was full of roots and spiders. I grabbed the flashlight and a pocketful of pebbles so I could find the way back to my room. On the other side of the trap door it said RETURN, but I knew I wouldn’t be back soon. Everyone’s name was written in the Book of Rain. When we read it, the Nor’easter blew harder, blurring our silhouettes. We were walking home from the edge of the world in the thick cross-hatch of the rain. Covered by lines, your face dissolved, and I could barely hear your voice: Hurry up, the book is closing. And we ran as fast as we could and jumped into the book before it closed with a thunder. We were the last two names on the wet dustcover. art by collageartbyjesse

Girl, by Ashe Vernon

Charles Wright , After Reading the T’ao Ch’ing, I Wander Untethered Through the Short Grass

I wrote this when I was drunk and I refuse to re read it.

One whole year And look where I am Just as fucking lost As I was back then. You ripped my heart out And gave me hope And ripped it out once more How could I be so fucking blind So stupid So naive You said you don’t think That I could be the one You can’t even promise me Tomorrow No matter how much I Tell you I care It meant nothing It all meant nothing I am a fool So dumb to keep Holding onto hope You will never be What I thought we could be Now all I need Is to believe I deserve better

10/23/15

Can you forgive her withholding a spark? Can you forgive yourself for being left behind? Can you forgive your hands for holding all the wrong ones? Can you still feel me? All candlewax and smoke For misunderstanding you, for coming at you with ready accusations Can you still feel me between the sheets on rainy days? Please don’t disconnect, not yet

Am I a failure of duty or dogma? The brain that will not answer to itself, heart that flings itself into the ether, the ever after, full of a strange obligation to believe. Frantic for faith. I find that I have been walking the same narrow passageway for years; thinking each time I am following a fresh hope. The faces change but the destination always reveals itself. Same, same, same. Hands tapping now, a new muttering, and the woman sits across from me and says, “How can I help other people, if I don’t have myself together? Know what I’m saying?” I almost laugh. I almost cry. But no one can help anyone else. All of us are searching, stumbling. This enters the mumbling. Who am I to believe in myself, if you won’t? Who are you to demand belief? I sit in the wooden chair, repeating the words of a familiar language. Everything is simple in the beginning: Words for food, for being, for wanting and liking and doing. I am learning backwards because I hear this language express the unspeakable. My ears are clouded with shadows. Today we learned the word to suffer and I thought, this word, I need. This word, I can use.

Here are 9 of Hillary Clinton’s Most Outrageous Gaffes @einleeshem ​ Is she the little dog of the sea? I don’t know. I am definitely going to extremes to watch telenovelas without paying for Univision. This is probably why I have no winter clothes, have exchanged Bitcoins for compassion without any telephone schools at all, have tricked my dog into running after thin air for black pepper and a blanket to keep me warm while the ice melts in my spirit, and it is harder to stop saying “meow” than ever. The most dangerous hunger suggests that I shudder beneath null-terminated golden books, although some argue it is merely a cult. art by Eugenia Loli

Kristina Haynes , “Your Face is the Clearest Thing”

Labyrinth

Waiting for you. It used to be half the fun. Enter the room. Don’t look now. So much to see with your eyes closed. I take something back. I take off my shirt. It brings back something scarred. Don’t look now. Nothing to see, please remember none of this. Please remember a bus ride through Croatia. A cash withdrawal upon arrival. At gate eighteen, upon departure. Impatience. Wherever you go, it brings back something else. Leaving is so easy. If done right, enter the room.