Say a witty line, watch it dance
on the lip of a wine glass. Peck at the cannoli
though you are not hungry, have never known
hunger. Judge everyone at the table, the policeman
nonchalant as he flips an envelope
over and over in his hand,
the waiter’s toothy grin when no one is watching,
the grandmother doodling on napkins,
wondering what to do with the zygote
no one will believe is inside her.
You are hiding Ibsen’s lessons,
how what it is that brought you to this table
was buried long ago without fanfare.
Jeff Calhoun’s writing credits include The 2River View, Lily, Softblow, Poetry Midwest, Stirring, and Triplopia. His recent chapbook, Navigating the Throes of Concrete Ravines, is freely available online from Lily Press. When not mining genomes for patterns or found poems, he’s probably dreaming about banana pancakes or chocolate milkshakes.
Your coming here, pure accident. Dodging. The barometer was wrong; it promised grey and wet. Heavy skies. Instead, it is black and on me. Some sun in my ear. I feel it in the back of my eyes: the confusion to focus. How close? How much to get closer? How many slowly rolled before you said, “Come here. You’re getting too wet.”
Maybe you’ll always see a window. I can’t stop myself from looking, and looking again. And maybe again.
Mackenzie Carignan lives in Broomfield, Colorado. She recently quit a steady and lucrative desk job to teach, bought a king-sized bed, and completed her Ph.D. in Creative Writing. Her poetry has appeared in Fourteen Hills, ACM, MiPOesias, and Dusie. She teaches at Metro State College of Denver.
Dawn: two down, one up.
I’m a blown-out tire, limp,
scuttling to roadside diners,
sipping coffee alone, both
hungers hung like posters
in chill blood-contours,
sputtered past me, paste.
I took them on in haste,
so close behind me they
lay, laid, lying in wait to
do it all again, leave me
without a pump, means
of being full. I feel dull.
Memento mori means eggs.
Adam Fieled is the author of two books: Opera Bufa (Otoliths, 2007) and Beams (BlazeVOX, 2007), as well as two chapbooks, Posit (Dusie Press) and Funtime (Funtime Press). He has work in Jacket, Dusie, Rain Taxi, MiPOesias, Cordite, Nth Position, Big Bridge, and elsewhere.
Exquisite me. Angelic me.
I never say I’m sorry for anything
(one of us thinks). I can’t remember
the present, for all the unthinkable
future reversing back into me.
Tentative. Me in suspense.
The art on the walls is hanged
at nefarious angles;
a boy at the counter disappears,
or I can see through him.
How does my x-ray vision
know when to stop? I
was trying to get to the way end.
What are you looking at, dog.
OK, I don’t belong in the park,
with nature: I’m not enough rich,
not enough poor; the fluff from a tree
makes my heart sore. I’m not crazy.
I just prefer the feminine remove
of a reproduction, of a living room—
the miniature texts exquisitely real,
if you had the means to read them.
Tiny poison in the wallpaper
in theory would eventually kill you.
Did you know fruit flies can have sex
for twenty minutes? That’s like half
their lifespan. There’s a couple going at it
on the parquet floor. The future
of the species depends on it. Unless
they’re just writhing in death throes—
hard to tell at this size. Either way
I’m not traumatized.
Elisa Gabbert is an editor of Absent. She has work in Boston Review, Pleiades, Cannibal, Meridian, and LIT, and a chapbook, Thanks for Sending the Engine, from Kitchen Press. She is author, with Kathleen Rooney, of Something Really Wonderful (dancing girl press, 2007) and That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness (Otoliths, 2008).
[ discovery ]
Behind cat’s eyes hide mirrors. At night the reflections of torches burn inside them.
[ pixels ]
The cursor taps its thin impatient finger against snow.
[ broadband ]
A photographer in Spain invites me to compose captions for a documentary about the war, pressing the SEND key like a doorbell.
[ proof ]
A webpage printed on paper. Hyperlinks underlined blue. The proofer sharpens her pencil, reaches for the department dictionary.
[ mouse ]
The error message asks Are you sure you want to proceed? Every day I enter Yes without second thought. A red line questions if I’ve spelled my name correctly.
[ cube ]
First the batteries in my desktop meditation fountain drain dead. Then the water trickles dry. The Buddha figurine kneels in an empty basin.
[ happy birthday ]
My father posts another anonymous comment.
[ inbox ]
A hunter-orange rebar mast rises behind my rural mailstop. In winter, snowed over, plowed in, the black breadbox door freezes on its rusting hinge.
[ coaxial ]
The Indian Wetland Tiger swims up to 2 miles a day. A diver captures how outstretched paws shape quite efficient paddles. The narrator explains how big cats swim the same way they walk, walk the way they swim, chins skimming water.
[ privacy laws ]
I mistakenly Reply All to the message questioning your absence.
[ charter ]
A single wire connects us to the world. Stretching for miles to the horizon, a clear-cut swath of forest towering with crosses, thin black lines slack between.
