EP: Occupation by Suji Kwock Kim

The soldiers are hard at work, building a house. They hammer bodies into the earth like nails, they paint the walls with blood. Inside, the doors are locked, shut like eyes of stones. And the stairs are icy, all flights go down. There is no floor, only a roof, where ash is falling- dark snow,…

EP: An Hymn to the Morning By Phillis Wheatley

Attend my lays, ye ever honour’d nine, Assist my labours, and my strains refine; In smoothest numbers pour the notes along, For bright Aurora now demands my song. Aurora hail, and all the thousand dies, Which deck thy progress through the vaulted skies: The morn awakes, and wide extends her rays, On ev’ry leaf the…

Trashed

On the first page of my scroll I’m in a small provincial cityIn a frisky foreign country The apartments all darkenedMinuscule storefronts shuttered Hours before a suggested curfewIt’s always a cool and calm evening My traditional “sober” mask in onI’m walking past a trim street corner Where I admittedly shouldn’t beAlone, wavering and coatless againOut…

EP: The Herdsman

I’m herdsman of a flock. The sheep are my thoughts And my thoughts are all sensations. I think with my eyes and my ears And my hands and feet And nostrils and mouth. To think a flower is to see and smell it. To eat a fruit is to sense its savor. And that is…

Antiseptic Zirconias

A boy collected dried elks from gangling husks in Jersey kicked land moved north on purple quails randomly several tried understanding Victor who x-rayed young zigzaggers

EP: Envoi

Go, dumb-born book, Tell her that sang me once that song of Lawes: Hadst thou but song As thou hast subjects known, Then were there cause in thee that should condone Even my faults that heavy upon me lie And build her glories their longevity. Tell her that sheds Such treasure in the air, Recking…

Sandy Toes

Sand is always unsteady Never still Where will it end up Stop stirring When will the breeze tire Break free Will it escape the moon, Or clap With a sizzling audience Carrying warmth Swirl through cracked roads Remaining fluid Rubbing the darkest corners As freed grains Burring unfamiliar wisdom In the glass By Amaury Genao

Flipping the board

The vagueness of life is crafty, it has so many tools to whittle Vermont maples into thin frail brooms of compost which scrub away our chalky fields of fears; burdens harvested over 14,235 days you don’t always listen to me because I’m a rambling old jointless 2+2=4 logician a pragmatic alarm clock with a broken…

EP: Suppose

suppose Life is an old man carrying flowers on his head. young death sits in a café smiling,a piece of money held between his thumb and first finger (i say “will he buy flowers” to you and “Death is young life wears velour trousers life totters,life has a beard” i say to you who are…

EP: Bouquet of Roses in Sunlight

Say that it is a crude effect, black reds, Pink yellows, orange whites, too much as they are To be anything else in the sunlight of the room, Too much as they are to be changed by metaphor, Too actual, things that in being real Make any imaginings of them lesser things. And yet this…