"a syllogism," by Mary Kasimor (forthcoming in issue 23)

withOUT sound there

IS no story

2:00 a.m. a SOURED

apple moon One note

SONG

under THE bed

a COFfeE table

book about canARIES

a head ACHE an appointment

AN INfection

it must BE dark

outside no MOON in

my mouth tasting HUNG

over NO car

on the street OUTside

silence A BOx of

kleenEX we are

in THIS world

by our SELVES

WITH infinite deTAILS

"Who is Jonathan Richman?" by Dennis James Sweeney (forthcoming in issue 23)

Snow shoe tattoos on snow ridge. White invisible lives in imprint, breaks in empty make the empty. It’s soft. Sing light, light tread disappear. Invisible fill, cold feel on the hand. Empty’s full. Where is air.

from "Poems: Bought and Burnt," by Eric Schmaltz (forthcoming in issue 23)

“{marginalia} the definition of water,” by Valerie Witte (forthcoming in issue 22)

the edge of clarity / charming at times, when

mixed with dirt forms mud / crystals / total cubic

feet / a mitigation estimate / what it takes

to resolve a triangular entanglement / dissolve

a small calm / what I mean is how learning

to float one averts drowning / a question

of liability once disaster is confirmed

the source of blame is multiple / the difference

between what we want / and expect, at least

I'm not surprised / the beginning of a slow

flood is moisture bleeding / into or; am I bleeding

out / I was a clearing / an excess of pillows

“Poem,” by John Myers (forthcoming in issue 22)

Because I was too shy the marquee casts me as the bad guy.

In its limited vocabulary the sun’s weird voice.

Marigolds keep bugs out of the garden.

A sunshine mangers your hair.

“December 15,” by Valerie Witte (forthcoming in issue 22)

Wouldn’t dare say I love you ~ a sound like waves.

“Tour,” by John Myers (forthcoming in issue 22)

Peals and green sheep, their muzzles

smelling like perfect acorns

all caught in the gel air like

thirds in Bach. Is it pleasure

that keeps a city together?

I’m reading through pages of

old fortunes, validity

is subjective as our words

for weather. My chaise lounge won’t

fit through our new door, newspapers

will but they’d rather pile against

one another like round faces.

When I saw how awesome your

picture of Bermuda grass

was I knew we were moths,

exclamation-ready, and

that we’d need to come up with

another sign for waiting.

On the street, including bluebirds

my other pleasures defer. Overheard

boys describe new boyfriends to

one another. Adjectives

like to be grounded somehow,

like power lifters. The verb

feels better to me today,

grammar like a mobile made

of it or one made of walking.

A linked set of arms requires

two people and what does collage

require? Two sitting calmly.

Blank means everything. Plural

likenesses, some rain which passes

wherever early afternoon

crosses the meadow. The heightening

effect of travel, its scalene

uncertainty. Again into

verticality I begin

to unearth my show, private

and strong as a spine.

If I were wearing the sky like a bathing suit

this lip like the pink lip of a shell is glossy as.

“Poem,” by John Myers (forthcoming in issue 22)

I trust the village chin. We are both in bloom

as the dropped pie. This is love

this is perhaps the least still of things.

We watch the loom in the hands of a genius

while I blow canned air at cherries. I take Fridays off.

As one truly who champions herself

walk with me. I’ll bring a pinwheel in case there’s

wind. I’ll be eyeshadow and my country lips and sourness.

Dee Sunshine (forthcoming in issue 22)

“{marginalia} a limited body of iterations

inner tracks adjacent, a star, this song

asserts animation / agitation / if in sequence

performed kneeling / beside a woman becoming

whole as a patchwork evolves incrementally

over generations, from clay and water

the part a chamber, rib or beam / a hand fallen

and the legs are snakes she has sewn

or reconstructed herself in the image of her

maker / if nameless while the earth spins

whom to call into question / what we assumed

were finite waters / a tornado in restoration

violently exploding a myth known as churn

“{marginalia} anatomy of an organ,” by Valerie Witte (forthcoming in issue 22)

a fist enclosed in a double-walled sac

depends on gradation / the thickness profile

and varnish, which nourishes as a bridge

prevents shocks of blood / overflowing

could we ever pump it out / in response

to its own contractions a muscle may achieve

oscillation / protect its surrounding vibrations

an encroachment upon the inner layer also

to lengthwise scoop we negotiate between

fluid and seclusion, a lubricated surface

in which to play with good intention and anchor

sliding to preserve a structure made of adjacent

spaces, two superior and two / inferior, attached

to literally heartstrings wound around tuning

pegs held in an arc, each sounded separately

and fit into a tapered hole / a lover

in the receiving chamber, where a tension built

might burst: no / frets to stop dividing

into outer walls / passion and pain, contained

Dee Sunshine (forthcoming in issue 22)

Dee Sunshine (forthcoming in issue 22)

from “The Escapist,” by Jennifer Mackenzie (forthcoming in issue 22)

Or perhaps it is you who is painting me as an owl

my head still separated from my child’s body

in secret like a knife stuck under a wife’s pillow

& who shall be intruded upon

by a jasmine picker. The flame she said

is quite beautiful. Moves like breathing

between me & everyone else

such terror at the casual

guttering of any form. In this heat

helicopter gunships hover to keep us cool

You blow on my face, we scrawl warm

alphabet still in rootball. One head reading

political science (“Theories of the future”)

& the other “Life with Picasso”

Then his miserable luck, a he-goat

he called she was taken away

by gypsies & he was left calling

Where’s my little white she-

goat that I love so much?

Tiny orange crayons scatter blazing

from the sky, lit seed-darts star

doubt bright or dark

We will blossom coolly

coolly to author Thieves of the Future

Carlyle Baker (forthcoming in issue 22)

from “The Escapist,” by Jennifer Mackenzie (forthcoming in issue 22)

Hitherto this sylph this azimuth

construed a dome sewn

w/ tracers. Clatter above

from carpenters stumbling

on roof beams, rafters. A ship upturned

was ripped & scuttled, filled

w/ stones. Bang Bang! Nikita

Maximalist. Firehosing plaster

from our lips. Spitting in

our pinstriped eyes unsealed

“2 global & searing themes”: How

our laughter resembles monsters’

rough uncut garnet stuckness of

children’s slitthroat scabs unearthed

power. (“Now either you are

a personality (especially

a personality of such magnitude)

or you are not.” (Mayakovsky))

Only 2 faint stars

& the occasional booms. They come

in ones or twos or threes. Then there are

minutes of quiet. Dark blistered blocks

of listeners murmuring on  rooftops

What is the make of gun Mayakovsky

used on himself in lieu of vinegar

& sponge. Autarchic. Father

father in the future, maybe

you want to watch TV forever? 

Carlyle Baker (forthcoming in issue 22)

from “The Escapist,” by Jennifer Mackenzie (forthcoming in issue 22)

Morning, horse-breath disturbing

the cold air inside the cup

Wake up my fellow gardenia

dry feet & hatred terrified

of my heart, I can’t do anything

about it if everything I showed you

was a further kind of concealment 

Sockmouth. Castles of trout. What is

they are me. The shoes around the faces

of the dead. This one has no head

& above the darkness of old table

wood the cardsharper’s hands sprout pink

splitting buds. Terror as a god of indolence

One wicked Indian alone in the weather

knowing the sign for love

but what does it mean. I the loath dirigible

sadness never as improvised as one feels

Closing the book in the cold-lashed

pewter afternoon—Breton!

—envy is joy

—no, exultation 

Carlyle Baker (forthcoming in issue 22)

An excerpt from an interview in SAPLING

Sapling: Word For/Word is an online journal of poetry, prose, and other good stuff. Tell us a bit of your story—how did the journal come to be, and what should people know about you?

Jonathan Minton: I started Word For/Word in 2000 while I was a doctoral candidate in the University at Buffalo's Poetics Program. I had the classic 1950s “little magazine” in mind as a model – magazines such as Cid Corman’s Origin. I had originally planned to publish a print magazine that would have, at the insistence of my co-editor, an online supplement. The first issue had a narrow, specialized focus. I was at the time mostly interested in publishing writers who shared a common background with either UB’s Poetics Program or with Language Poetry. This changed after the third issue. I abandoned the print-model altogether when I realized that being online was expanding the scope of what I had originally planned. And beginning with issue three, I started featuring guest editors who have introduced me to visual poetry, Chilean sound poetry, electronic poetry, post-avant poetries, and a wealth of established and emerging forms of writing. Word For/Word has become a curiously hybrid creature.  And happily so.

Sapling is published by Black Lawrence Press and focuses on the small press industry.

http://www.blacklawrencepress.com/

from “The Escapist,” by Jennifer Mackenzie (forthcoming in issue 22)

Lately I’m worried I’m Picasso

& you Francoise? w/me clutching

your breasts carefully

from my totally self-enclosed solitude

Such lunches & ferocity

to despise—so as to devour

the most interesting others

My carved monkey face

seeking its twin inside

you, & to make it

be nude! Obediently uniformly

brown, my little savage

nun,  my wobbling-away bicycle

-soul functionally bent

& veering jabbingly indigo

with thickly scabbed chagrin  

Carlyle Baker (forthcoming in issue 22)

from “The Escapist,” by Jennifer Mackenzie (forthcoming in issue 22)

Amen’s underpants cannot be panties

nor chrysanthemums flame-trees

armies streaming. Don’t start

with pity, don’t

waiting for a taxi at noon

everyone’s patience red

vigilance selling

milk fruit petrol

valor and squalor

nakedness between

fights you breathed by

The flame she said is quite beautiful. Moves

like breathing. Between me and everyone else

soft tongueless severance from the casual guttering

at the bus stop my whore-calves glow like salt

they signify wishing, the burning one

who can do nothing, every ruler

Red skirt and dust

and chickenwhite wait—

You blow on my face

go back to reading Theories of the Future 

“For Eddie, the Cynosure, Wherever You Are,” by Jessie Janeshek (forthcoming in issue 22)

Lock Zephyr in the steel shed with plastic flamingos

tie me to white wicker with brownbread hide

find my red truck in the moon

plot knocks our teeth

to the ghosts of the river                      the money

the hex on her dress

the sausage-curled, thorn-fanged rosette

the dogs you’ll call off

ere they eat the mother

amputee with the key

that will tighten the tambourine’s skin

“{marginalia} the definition of pressure, 2,” by Valerie Witte (forthcoming in issue 22)

when subject to terms, within

conditions and limits of our own calamities

unlike other animals who simply beg

on / would you believe it didn’t / hurt, neurosis

as a locale where we dwell too long / until

we train ourselves to ignore the impression

a finger leaves lasting / here

are my regrets; let me lay them out for you

“The Moon Is a Painted Stone,” by James Capozzi (forthcoming in issue 22)

The Muse is a room you find beneath the cork trees

near the abbey's door, with aromas of manure

yarrow, and oranges.  The study of the Muse requires

quietude, so you place the barrel in your ear

           

and blast your way into the room, are implicit in its angles

its magnificent triptych depicting a saint, pursued and named

by her sin.  Not when or why, but here—the world's road.

A throng like leather puppets makes its evil

           

rounds on it, below the cliffs, among the rocks.  Their faces are

a soggy blur.  Your face is dark and now you are

deaf with stone, the painted air

           

so she sails into the ocellated oaks and sees that

your obsequity is nothing like humility.

That the whole is greater than the part.

Scott Helmes (forthcoming in issue 22)

“November 12,” by Valerie Witte (forthcoming in issue 22)

She was looking for a place that could hold a body ~ to pinpoint

that moment of recession ~ the solace of declining, to say nothing

of denial ~ he said there was room for two and what he wanted,

application of flame to a body ~ she didn’t like sharing with

another ~ we all have a comfort level ~ a murmur a minimum of

one chamber to enter before passing through ~ she needed a lot of

water, to vaporize ~ because she was empty ~ what can be burned

off; we all have a reason to eliminate ~ because it was open, an exit

flue ~ she didn’t like being put under, away ~ at minimum, one to

incinerate ~ because it was empty ~ because it was open.

Scott Helmes (forthcoming in issue 22)

“{marginalia} bartering lessons,” by Valerie Witte (forthcoming in issue 22)

I gave up stories, shuttering / dogs to nurture

bodies to belong to small things I can keep; they take

up very little space but oversized rooms, furniture

what’s a basement or a yard if not for hoarding / if

houses let you go unfulfilled in exchange offer

an abundance of redwood, tile or the like employed

in an overlapping series of compromises held

to terms and I’m bound, a settlement by concession

endangered as a skirt is vulnernable / the underside

exposed / erosion or a weathering hoped for / I traded

love for casement: the simple perception of hue

value and saturation / water, tables / in turn we live

with strangers and do not expect affection pressing

against a building / remains of swag forms: intercourse

I need bartering lessons / to cheat the rolling

mechanism we learn to give up for radiating / glazing

bars stripped / metal bent and stretched to fit

any circumstance / a channel to catch

and carry companionship / I never knew I’d have only

one chance when we let go a recess opened

I’ll always distinguish yours from all the other faces

from “Bride of Paradise,” by James Capozzi (forthcoming in issue 22)

Thee bears, jaguars, beavers never get plugged into this the bleakest street

in America.  The neighbors behind their Xmas decoration are dead.  Lights

winking in their circuit are a warning do not call, walk on: fists in pocket

shoulders hunched, shambolic through this desolated hall.  Be emptied onto

Main Street.  There the bar turns out its furnace heat, the dilapidated rambler

gets a brand new coat, the stone foundation holds.  We live for this, more or less.

The buses take us in, we sob and think, drink bourbon and screw like people do.

Anyone might find us here together in my office, beneath an ancient photo of

a chocolate lab emerging from a shadow, taut chain shivering, bees noiseless

in the grasses.  I guess the question is: where does it end?  Do you want to be

some asshole in search of the perfect meal and a dream home, extending his

life all over a road between two worlds?  One here, where the snow lays its

hand across our many mouths, and another in the skies, where I sail around

to parties in heaven, dancing too hard, smoldering at the periphery, thinking

you'

Dee Sunshine (forthcoming in issue 22)

“The Early Histories,” by James Capozzi (forthcoming in issue 22)

It's more important they lay open in the ocean

And whether or not we mount the red birds

Like beveled ornaments

Less sophisticate

The shifting tents are mutinous

New movement

Eats the grain each day, little by little

Even the noun eats acid

You are in a Roman place

But the year is out of order

Only the tent city stirs in the morning

Nothing more