I am the rushing in
                              my stopped     ears

I am the stone in my stomach
                                        sinking

I am the glass half-empty
                                   emptied
                    by half

I am the first drunk day
                                   dizzy     the sun still up

I am the memories
                         that spring like traps

               as I walk through the house

I am the memories that crumble
                                             like old bones

                                                       lifted to light

Jenn Koiter lives in Wyoming. Her poems have recently appeared in Copper Nickel, Bateau, Rock and Sling, The Barefoot Muse, and The Externalist. Good times.

Julia Cohen is the poetry editor of the print journal Saltgrass. She has three chapbooks available: If Fire, Arrival from horse less press, Who Could Forget the Sensational First Evening of the Night, from H_NGM_N B__KS, and When We Broke the Microscope, (with Mathias Svalina) from Small Fires Press.

Brandon Shimoda’s writings can be found in recent installments of A Public Space, Cannibal, Denver Quarterly, Mrs. Maybe, jubilat, as well as forthcoming in The Alps (Flim Forum Press), The Inland Sea (Tarpaulin Sky Press) and Lake M (Corollary Press).

In the garage, leaning on the fender,
angling the droplight, worrying
what if this car rejects new parts,

like a body refusing a new liver, but not a heart
because the fuel pump and Weber downdraft
carburetor work just fine, those being
the closest to the heart beneath the grease
and layered work clothes.

Reject, the auto-immune response.
Sometimes the beast just wants to die,
and I keep bringing it back,
a little more gusto every time.
Pull the choke to run it rich.
It’s that easy.

I got this thing on a hydraulic hoist,
hung like an animal I’ve hunted, gutted
and drained, dried out. Hacked away
the rotted pipes, replaced worn mounts, bearings.

I nail bits of the body up in my rooms
like taxidermic heads of game or pets who were loved.
My muffler, ruptured slave cylinder, worn disc
to be mounted, displayed, lifelike.

Adam Deutsch lives in San Diego and is the editor of Cooper Dillon Books.

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Noah Falck is author of Measuring Tape for the Midwest (Pavement Saw), Homemade Engines from a Dream (Pudding House), and Life As A Crossword Puzzle, which was a finalist in the Boom Chapbook Contest. His work is forthcoming in POOL, Sir!, and diode. He lives in Ohio.

We sat next to a lady
on the train

with one of those phones
attached to her ear

that looks like a gigantic
black scorpion eating

her head off
Suddenly she perked up

started talking
to no one about

someone named Eli’s
personnel file

The guy in Birks
reading the NYT

got super razzed
and projected

his righteousness
across great distances

while we quietly played
a game called

if you had to kill
everyone

in this snack car
who would go first

We went to the store
to buy mouth guards

for when we sleep
but there was only

this one kind
for sports

so we got
Gatorades and kind of

made bedtime
something else

Emily Kendal Frey lives in Portland, Oregon, where she teaches writing at Portland Community College.

Zachary Schomburg is the author of The Man Suit (Black Ocean 2007) and the forthcoming Scary, No Scary. His chapbooks, The Pond and I Am a Small Boy, are forthcoming from Greying Ghost Press and Factory Hollow Press respectively. Other collaborations with Emily Kendal Frey are in diode, jubilat, and Sir!. He lives in Portland.

Chet Gresham is a displaced Kansan on the Chicago lakefront. His dream is to live sustainably with his wife, cat, canary, and parakeets, somewhere away from gridlock. His poems have been published or are upcoming in Diagram, Gulf Stream, and Columbia Poetry Review, among others.

     Subject to breaking up
     are all compounded things.

          —The Buddha’s final words

I

I can’t sleep.
Fetch me coffee: I’m going to write.

     Mehr Licht!

     Turn up the lights—
(I don’t want to go home in the dark.)

Read some more.

That tastes good.

     That’s good.

II

Little Cousins, Called back

I must go in, the fog is rising.

Now day and night are locked in combat.

The Earth is suffocating

Do you hear the rain? Do you?
Hear the rain?

It is walking towards me, without hurrying.

Everything is mortal.
I see black light.

     This is the last of Earth! I am content.

III

Pardonnez-moi, monsieur.

(I don’t think they even heard me.)

Pardonnez-moi, monsieur.

(I don’t think they even heard me.)
(I don’t think they even heard me.)
(I don’t think they even heard me.)

Adieu…

          mes amis. Je vais à la gloire!

IV

Only one man ever understood me.

(Don’t disturb my circles!)

And he really didn’t understand me.

—Das ist absurd! Das ist absurd!—

We must be on you,
                              but cannot see you.

V

The paper
burns, but the words

fly free.

O, holy
simplicity.

I am in flames!

Christopher Hennessy is the editor of Outside the Lines: Talking with Contemporary Gay Poets (University of Michigan Press). His writing has appeared in Ploughshares’ “Emerging Writers” edition, American Poetry Review, Verse, Cimarron Review, The Writer’s Chronicle, The Bloomsbury Review, Crab Orchard Review, Natural Bridge, The Brooklyn Review, and elsewhere.

At readings, two drinks, minimum, will make you as brilliant as you think you are. This goes for the audience as well.

Never write poems using the following words, mainly because it will annoy me: blackberries, poppies, detritus, bifurcation, sluiced, slaked.

James Wright has already seen horses in a field.

Do not admit to being a poet unless asked directly. It’s kind of like saying your grandmother died. Maybe you weren’t close with your grandmother? People don’t know what to do.

Get a bad haircut and pretend it’s a good one.

Get used to disappointing your mother.

Write poems with these words in them: Squirrel. Rabbit. Rabbits are the new monkeys, they’re just funny.

Learn to read aloud without “poet voice”—that long, overdrawn singsong. Are you trying to put your audience to sleep? They’ve already had two drinks apiece.

Respect. Earn it. Use it. Own it. Being nice gets you a lot further than being a dick.

Develop at least one addiction.

When asked whether you’ve experimented with the opposite sex, say yes. Otherwise, people don’t know what to do.

Memorize at least one of your own poems to perform on command. It’s kind of like an engagement story that you’ll be asked to repeat for the rest of your life. Make it a good one.

Do not list your Pushcart Prize nomination in your bio. I mean, ever.

Be hot. Things will go easier for you and you’ll get plenty of action.

OR, be good. Be very, very good and you’ll get plenty of action.

Thank your parents. They put you here, even if you don’t like it. Not liking it makes for some good poetry.

Do not have birds on your book cover, mainly because it will annoy me.

Use your real name, you chicken. You are not a rock star. If you want to be a rock star, learn to play an instrument.

Brush your teeth. Nobody likes a poet with four teeth.

Finally, never, ever write poems about being a poet. Publishers don’t like them. Instead, substitute every instance of the word “poet” with “rabbit.”

Then send the poem to me.

Said Friend 1 to me once over merlot at Gioco. I think of this often, like when Friend 2 announces she’s getting married, making me the last of our group not to be.

I think of this when the first dress goes over her head, and Friend 2 looks so beautiful I pause. Discussing details, her groom-to-be turns a little green and she pats his hand smiling.

Friend 1 tells me anyone can be married, have children, own a house, run a business. Why be just anyone she says, when you can be someone?

Friend 1 goes on to say that I’m a peacock while others are pigeons. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a pigeon she says. Pigeons are honorable creatures. You’re just a peacock she says. Why do you want to be a pigeon!

I can think of plenty of reasons not to be a peacock I say. What will my mother tell her friends? At parties, small talk stops when people find out what I am. Pigeons are puzzled by peacocks I say.

Let them be puzzled she says. You are a beautiful Indian Blue!

But I’ve lived my whole life among pigeons I say. I don’t know how to live as a peacock. I’m scared of peacocks. I am a pigeon!

Friend 3 tries to solve the problem. You are neither peacock nor pigeon she says, but a combination. Something like a jackalope she says, you’re not one or the other.

What “one” or “the other” was, Friend 3 didn’t say.

Still, the pigeons and I know something’s not right. Am I then a robin among sparrows? Close to passing, with this bright red burning I keep trying to hide.

Brandi Homan is the author of Hard Reds (Shearsman Books) and Two Kinds of Arson (dancing girl press). She earned her MFA from Columbia College Chicago and is editor-in-chief of Switchback Books.

Again, his mother. I would’ve ignored him,
too. She forgot him at band practice. Never
congratulated him for a B+ in geometry.
He stayed on her couch till he turned thirty.
I’m sure he was an embarrassment. A bore.
Twenty minutes until I can pick up the dry
cleaning. Ron’s going to be late. Always late.
For some reason he refuses to look me
in the eyes. Interesting shoes, I want to ask.
Snobby jeans, unbuttoned shirts. If he
thought about himself in human terms
he might be O.K. Instead, he’s a bug.
I’ve seen that before. My own son shoplifts.
He’s good at it because his bedroom closet
is full of DVDs and video games I’ve
never seen before. Maybe he deals weed.
Last night Ron kissed me with tongue.
His mouth tasted foreign. Cinnamon gum.
What a sad patient. He stole his girlfriend’s
alarm clock. Denied it when she found out.
He says he keeps its frozen at the hour
they broke up. Pathetic. My son dates plenty
of girls. Hasn’t cried once. Like his father.

Donald Illich has published poetry in The Iowa Review, LIT, Fourteen Hills, Passages North, and Cold Mountain Review. He was a semifinalist for the 2008 “Discovery”/Boston Review Poetry Contest.