Sandy Florian   |   And your messages
But your words were like blinds.

Bill Marsh   |   from Dead Letter Game
Text, that seeming neutral, blankets an old regime.

Sandy Florian   |   And your messages
And you wanted to cut off my hands.

Amina Cain   |   from Watching a Bird Fight as Person
“Do men like you as much as they did when you had two hands?” Caroline asked.

Noah Eli Gordon & Joshua Marie Wilkinson   |   from Figures for a Darkroom Voice
The police radio’s comforting dispatcher ignores the private detective’s stony leer

Derek White   |   Post-Holing to the Flesh Temple
My physics professor, Dr. Slatoris, was being convicted of a crime against reality.

Noah Eli Gordon & Joshua Marie Wilkinson   |   from Figures for a Darkroom Voice
The police radio’s comforting dispatcher ignores the private detective’s stony leer

Paul Gacioch   |   When the Law Comes
When the law comes and yes the law will come, I will say to them the snake was just here before you.

Noah Eli Gordon & Joshua Marie Wilkinson   |   from Figures for a Darkroom Voice
a crawlspace against & rusty an exit sign

Kristin Prevallet   |   Orphée
A man creates a space, but refuses to live in it.

Cathi Murphy   |   The Man Who Ate Breakfast for Dinner
He enjoyed his solitude at night. The gradual comfort he would feel in the sense that nothing existed in him. Wet toast on the windowsill. And the darkness beyond. The absolute absence of singularity.

Noah Eli Gordon & Joshua Marie Wilkinson   |   from Figures for a Darkroom Voice
becomes this garden camera & smoke

Eireene Nealand   |   No Excuse for the Tension of a Possible Storm
Between the last gardening job and this one Christian, God has let there be too much light.

Nico Vassilakis   |   Punct
(…)___!{…..}+{…..}____,_____.(…)

Chris Tysh   |   from Mother, I
his hand flies to his throat aware of a sudden ache there

Brian Evenson   |   Stung
The throat was crammed with bees as far down as he could reach, and farther.

Doug MacPherson   |   24
and doesn’t think when it saw / nor sees when it dresses its wound

Jenny Allan   |   Halt & Hither
That shiner of a reminiscence. Me, wounded, approaching at the next station.

Brian Evenson   |   Stung
The carpet thread had been sewn in blood-tipped cross-stitch all the way along the lips, nine stitches in all

Cathi Murphy   |   The Man Who Ate Breakfast for Dinner
He enjoyed his solitude at night. The gradual comfort he would feel in the sense that nothing existed in him. Wet toast on the windowsill. And the darkness beyond. The absolute absence of singularity.

Amina Cain   |   from Watching a Bird Fight as Person
There was nothing to look at, just the dark disappearing behind the trees.

Raymond Farr   |   Opus Californium
Ect.) etc. etc.—the experiment / posterity makes / of radiant darkness.

Kyle Simonsen   |   listen bro,
like fucking / toast popping got no answer.

Paul Hardacre   |   from The river is far behind us
rain eating toast / at the window /

Cathi Murphy   |   The Man Who Ate Breakfast for Dinner
He enjoyed his solitude at night. The gradual comfort he would feel in the sense that nothing existed in him. Wet toast on the windowsill. And the darkness beyond. The absolute absence of singularity.

James Wagner   |   from Reynolds—part one of Claims of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
The movie trailer narratives, broken up pieces of the sequential film, were much more interesting than the film itself.

Ed Skoog   |   Dog Highway
I lent a student a book last week, / and she found his Missoulian obit, / phlegm-yellow.

Eireene Nealand   |   No Excuse for the Tension of a Possible Storm
My one friend/neighbor arrested. MJ sales and possession.

Eireene Nealand   |   Dear Lo,
One cop knew about the echo. He was tripping his partner out

Julia Bloch   |   from Letters to Kelly Clarkson
This winter, everyone’s hunched over in their own private airplane seats, sight-reading the street.

kathryn l. pringle   |   BART ii. head bandage replete with hole
a suitcase on a passenger plane

James Wagner   |   from Reynolds—part one of Claims of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
It has occurred to K that everyone may be dead, and this is what is after life—a small occasion near a sea or wheatfield, a joke that pokes under a layering of disguises, that vestigial sense of being incomplete in the hours alone.

Kate Hill Cantrill   |   Dear All Mouses,
—Yours in solidarity, K

Paul Gacioch   |   When the Law Comes
The law will wear redblue sweaters with doves stapled onto them giving a wingflap or a squawk at appropriate moments but otherwise feigning death.

Eireene Nealand   |   Dear Lo,
One cop knew about the echo. He was tripping his partner out

Doug MacPherson   |   24
the birds don’t come for seeds / stop thinking already / let’s make out

John Cleary   |   dear jack,
“when was the last time you kissed on someone”

Derek White   |   Post-Holing to the Flesh Temple
One freshman girl with ripped fishnet stockings was sobbing quietly to herself.

Scott Glassman   |   Aegean Redux
rushed through radiology / with Leachianus (Leo for short) under her skirt / hiked high as her fishnets:

AE Reiff   |   Ailin Penlight
Leo opened his mouth. Happy stuffed hers with the primal vox poemato.

Eireene Nealand   |   No Excuse for the Tension of a Possible Storm
So many possible loves flickering. Each one wants to weave his own pattern into the rug.

AE Reiff   |   Ailin Penlight
Penlight studies show the connected thing.

Paul Hardacre   |   from The river is far behind us
inertiacomes in silence

Anne Germanacos   |   Students
he communed with the mountain, the berries doing most of the work

AE Reiff   |   Ailin Penlight
High upon a mountaintop a stone may dream of flight.

Eireene Nealand   |   Dear Lo,
But with this Aimi—she goes out with Z—it’s like multiple kids at the same time.

James Wagner   |   from Reynolds—part one of Claims of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
One always fails to find a shutter that’s been making the noise everyone hears and no one can find.

Scott Glassman   |   Aegean Redux
the same / “Z” as in Zyprexa

Scott Glassman   |   Aegean Redux
The monastery of Mr. J’s / produce aisle English cucumber / skin-laden closet

Joanne Tracy   |   Queenie
His johnnie strained the cloth of his pants, skinny like an English cucumber not all the way grown.

John Cleary   |   dear jack,
open up, swallow. drop one on the floor for the sound.

Derek White   |   Post-Holing to the Flesh Temple
I kicked a metal cotter pin off the ledge just to hear it hit the ground.

Kristin Prevallet   |   Orphée
The bedroom, where they always return.

Brian Evenson   |   Stung
He carried the glass back into bedroom and began to fill it with bees.

Raymond Farr   |   Opus Californium
the grim padres of abominations / abandoned (too / soon) their quest for purer californium

Daniel C. Remein   |   from keystone service letters
the form for rules is that of logical, optical, / and western / skeletal imperative.

Malia Jackson   |   Postcards From a Family Roadtrip Through the American West
abnormally high, and the / moribund horse festoons the town with its grim / iconography.

Raymond Farr   |   “Pg. 24” A Pseudo-Litany, Being Lines Written by Anon.
A poem abridged.

John Cleary   |   dear jack,
thirteen was a black-out jack.

Raymond Farr   |   Journal Entry: 12-26-05
LAZY BOY recliner,

Eireene Nealand   |   No Excuse for the Tension of a Possible Storm
That sounds exactly right: church made out of what looks like nothing when sober.

Chris Tysh   |   from Mother, I
a darkened confessional: its lacy partition, shimmering shadows and rustling of priestly robes

Brett Evans & Chris Stroffolino   |   Mercenary Beverages
3 cripples pool / ing

Carrie-Sinclair Katz   |   from Meanwhile (a Movement Missive Series)
Snap of your head when you thought you heard something move in the foyer.

John Cleary   |   dear jack,
I just felt some static when I touched the back of my neck.

rob mclennan   |   neck
today I am human; thrum on its neck.

Sandy Florian   |   24
so the arrow is associated with the archer, through narrow waters channels, the writer, of course, with the corpse

Bill Marsh   |   from Dead Letter Game
Playing this game is like scanning an old yearbook: the faces rise up afresh but as they have always been, secure and encrypted, perfect little corpses.

Zach Savich   |   Composition 24
The blue / Twilled cloth / / Called Corpse / A horse / Before / A storm / To warn

Angela Woodward   |   Lost Languages
Barriers to communication—

Catherine Daly   |   from Discretionary (virtual)
what do tongues mime?

Carrie-Sinclair Katz   |   from Meanwhile (a Movement Missive Series)
Every word is an unnecessary stain.

Sandy Florian   |   24
for example, turn more quickly than horses, horses more quickly than stags,

Angela Woodward   |   Lost Languages
relationship with horses?

Kyle Simonsen   |   listen bro,
throw a backward / echo on this shit

Paul Hardacre   |   from The river is far behind us
a dub echo effect i.e. ‘(((((((’

Nina Shope   |   Three Fragments
the rhythm, a dirge driven into the dirt.

Julia Bloch   |   from Letters to Kelly Clarkson
I am so tired of pointing, just pointing.

Carrie-Sinclair Katz   |   from Meanwhile (a Movement Missive Series)
No need to look outside, but I did.

Amina Cain   |   from Watching a Bird Fight as Person
There was nothing to look at, just the dark disappearing behind the trees.

Ed Skoog   |   Season Finale
recording the damage / with the phone’s camera,

John Cleary   |   dear jack,
the schedule of taking pills.

Raymond Farr   |   Journal Entry: 12-26-05
An object half structured as language is half structured?

Ed Skoog   |   Pat Walleck’s Leg
surrendered my prize / to the room where other hopers had left / braces, trusses, videotaped mastectomies, / plaster casts of hands feet elbows faces.

Paul Hardacre   |   from The river is far behind us
part of his leg under the cyclone wire concrete

Amina Cain   |   from Watching a Bird Fight as Person
“Do men like you as much as they did when you had two hands?” Caroline asked.

Ed Skoog   |   Dog Highway
And your role? You’re yourself, / fighting ahead past this moment / highway impatient and blind.

John Cleary   |   dear jack,
I hated you the most in arizona jack.

Nina Shope   |   Three Fragments
their mother entombed alive after giving birth, her remains shifting under dirt and the dust of buried relics.

Amina Cain   |   from Watching a Bird Fight as Person
“I was making the rounds.”

Kyle Simonsen   |   listen bro,
but she was smoking, and coked / and I wanted to say something but / shiiiiiiit she was in that red dress / we bought her

Joanne Tracy   |   Queenie
The coat from the Hasbeen thrift store, bought because of the deep pockets.

John Cleary   |   dear jack,
“when was the last time you kissed on someone”

Nico Vassilakis   |   Punct
(…)+{…..}____,_____.(…)___!{…..}

Malia Jackson   |   Postcards From a Family Roadtrip Through the American West
An atheist can witness / the earth breathe and still be assured it’s purely / geologic.

Cathi Murphy   |   The Man Who Ate Breakfast for Dinner
Feeling the ground with naked feet was important to him—it was a reminder of the apparent solidity and certainty of the sphere beneath.

John Cleary   |   dear jack,
we who need some skin in our lives.

Raymond Farr   |   Dear Nadine,
question / as a sonnet: 14 lines (Petrachean: / abbaabba, cdecde.)

Carrie-Sinclair Katz   |   from Meanwhile (a Movement Missive Series)
After last night, please.

Ed Skoog   |   Season Finale
My last look around the house

Cathi Murphy   |   The Man Who Ate Breakfast for Dinner
Now, there was no more escape. That had all been left behind. It wasn’t explained. It would not be explained. It was one day without and then another, a journey outward and a matter of not returning

Cathi Murphy   |   The Man Who Ate Breakfast for Dinner
It was a blinding existence.

Andrea Baker   |   River
The birds walked out, open beaked / on water

Greg Mulcahy   |   Picayune
Someone, he thought, had shot a beam into his skull.

Amina Cain   |   from Watching a Bird Fight as Person
“I was making the rounds.”

Cole Swensen   |   They
Because I know her houseand thus think of it as age

Paul Hardacre   |   from The river is far behind us
her metal cage or mango tree sunlight

Cole Swensen   |   They
Only recently have ghosts been people we never knew

Bill Marsh   |   from Dead Letter Game
Playing this game is like scanning an old yearbook: the faces rise up afresh but as they have always been, secure and encrypted, perfect little corpses.

Cole Swensen   |   It Is Wrong
She sat at the edge of the playground, next to the swings, and finished the story:

Catherine Daly   |   from Discretionary (virtual)
When she got back she was horribly / abused. She stood at the shower opening / closing curtains when the princess bathed / she was a princess and would like to get warm

Cole Swensen   |   It Is Wrong
and the ghost should not be taken for snow, though / he will tell you, that is not what I meant / to do to you.

Andrea Baker   |   Gather
Then / one bird pushed open / into migrant snow

Andrea Baker   |   River
and slow megaphone of sound on water

Ed Skoog   |   Pat Walleck’s Leg
In the best elegy for my friend, / which this can’t be, he’d be left high / on the riverbank watching us / across the slow water.

Bill Marsh   |   from Dead Letter Game
convinced that I had cracked the code when really I had simply found yet another way to rally behind old habits dying hard

Nico Vassilakis   |   Punct
(…)____,_____.{…..}+{…..}___!(…)

Eireene Nealand   |   No Excuse for the Tension of a Possible Storm
My one friend/neighbor arrested. MJ sales and possession.

Ed Skoog   |   The World-Famous Topeka Zoo
Only the janitor on work-release had a question:

Anne Germanacos   |   Students
She picks up his blue notebook, reads it in the quiet of her house.

Daniel C. Remein   |   from keystone service letters
to a prof. of american romanticism on the effects of reading dostoevsky at age 17

Nina Shope   |   Three Fragments
twin brothers molding their mother’s body out of marble, travertine, mortar. a body they’ve never known

Ed Skoog   |   Pat Walleck’s Leg
Do your work, I asked the statues, not seeing how.

Chris Tysh   |   from Mother, I
Could it be he’s already itching to be black and blue, bruised to the core, bits of skin raised to meet the blood?

Nina Shope   |   Three Fragments
the convulsionaries of saint medard appear before him, their bodies covered in wounds

James Wagner   |   from Reynolds—part one of Claims of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
I woke up with blood on my pillow, and glass in my hand.

Kristin Prevallet   |   Orphée
The ecstasy of saints is the realization that they are water.

Nina Shope   |   Three Fragments
the convulsionaries of saint medard appear before him, their bodies covered in wounds

HL Hazuka   |   Still
weeds peek through / rubble piles / forgotten / remains

Kristin Prevallet   |   Orphée
The underworld, a dark hallway littered with debris.

Kim Chinquee   |   Our Fathers
When we were in church, my father yelled in the middle of the sermon, “God help me, help me, help me. Our Father Who Art in Heaven, God help me, help me, help me.”

Eireene Nealand   |   Dear Lo,
They could have come to church, I told her. The services would have ended well before kickoff time. But she kept asking about you.

John Cleary   |   dear jack,
how long can someone be not yours, knot touched and nothing more before she stays that way.

Julia Bloch   |   from Letters to Kelly Clarkson
I don’t have any appetite for this appetite.

Anne Heide   |   from Wiving
This shape is scarce / because it is hers.

rob mclennan   |   still
water remembers the shape of the stone.

Elizabeth Robinson   |   from Proposition
the cause of a depression / is the lake that fills it

Anne Heide   |   from Wiving
A wife in the corner / and you in the corner / beginning.

Kristin Prevallet   |   Orphée
Where a man and a woman come in and out, very quickly: a departure.

Stephen Ratcliffe   |   from Painting
watercolor / the daughter paints

Julia Bloch   |   from Letters to Kelly Clarkson
Like my sister’s face on the flute, that greenery, suburban pointillism,

Stephen Ratcliffe   |   from Painting
(being) present / the moment she answers the phone, person the father calls the next morning knowing she is awake / in the painting (unconscious)

John Cleary   |   dear jack,
then her father on the answering machine

Kim Chinquee   |   Our Fathers
I would sit in Rebecca’s living room, staring at her father.

Cathi Murphy   |   The Man Who Ate Breakfast for Dinner
Sitting in a chair in a yard all day was part of a similar determination.

Ed Skoog   |   Pat Walleck’s Leg
In the best elegy for my friend, / which this can’t be, he’d be left high / on the riverbank watching us / across the slow water.

Chris Tysh   |   from Mother, I
the more he craves to taste that wet shrine, the more he blesses her divine gift, and, face aflame, his entire body innervated by a strangling pleasure, he asks for death

Nina Shope   |   Three Fragments
the scientists, like sailors, nestled between their knees—bowed before, amidst, below that wet shrine.

Eireene Nealand   |   No Excuse for the Tension of a Possible Storm
A different regret every night—and afterwards. Just the time getting past.

Brian Evenson   |   Esquisse
“Sometimes the bell rang and a person we did not know stood in the doorway. I am so and so, he said, and have no hand. But he had a hand.”

Amina Cain   |   from Watching a Bird Fight as Person
“Do men like you as much as they did when you had two hands?” Caroline asked.

James Wagner   |   from Reynolds—part one of Claims of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
wonders if he should say: “we meet so often, under such strange circumstances, maybe we should begin having sex.”

John Cleary   |   dear jack,
cancel me from the unadvantagetakers.

Carrie-Sinclair Katz   |   from Meanwhile (a Movement Missive Series)
It’s not your memory, it’s you. Bloody coming up. / Halt

James Wagner   |   from Reynolds—part one of Claims of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
I woke up with blood on my pillow, and glass in my hand.

Norman Lock   |   The King and the Cotter-Pin
Except the cookies. Kings, they were called — shortbreads robed in Belgium chocolate, filled with raspberry cream. I picked them up for him at Teak’s.

Joanne Tracy   |   Queenie
Kings is what they ended up being called, after the owner’s dog.

Carrie-Sinclair Katz   |   from Meanwhile (a Movement Missive Series)
Meanwhile, / Here I am in domestic bliss and blister.

Chris Tysh   |   from Mother, I
Pierre sinks deeper into the dusty rose damask, his thoughts a wild tumult igniting his suspicions about Hansi.

Julia Bloch   |   from Letters to Kelly Clarkson
I know now how I want the book to end: on a crease.

Amina Cain   |   from Watching a Bird Fight as Person
Caroline began to read The Fold.

Nick Bredie   |   Camera & Properties
The dress undresses itself.

Brian Evenson   |   Esquisse
“As she walked, the girl pulled her skin over her head, a long bloody sheet, and stood in glittering splendor in the gutter.”

Brian Evenson   |   Scene
So he is still standing at the hall’s far end, watching and suffering, as the two women embrace, pressing their masks against one another.

Nick Bredie   |   Camera & Properties
The mask.

Kyle Simonsen   |   listen bro,
her bags are in / the top drawer of the armoire but / she’s on the dark side now.

Paul Hardacre   |   from The river is far behind us
she’s on the dark side . . .’

Joanne Tracy   |   Queenie
Mint marvels for my suitcase, emergency food to go with my emergency clothes.

HL Hazuka   |   Dear Grady,
And / you’re free of me except / like a whisper hairlash in / your eye you keep pullin / at, I’m still there, figurin / I guess you’ll come back / down this road.

Cathi Murphy   |   The Man Who Ate Breakfast for Dinner
Now, there was no more escape. That had all been left behind. It wasn’t explained. It would not be explained. It was one day without and then another, a journey outward and a matter of not returning

Paul Hardacre   |   from The river is far behind us
something out of town

Ed Skoog   |   Pat Walleck’s Leg
scraped up from when his girlfriend / shoved him down the long steel stairs.

Kyle Simonsen   |   listen bro,
we waited until Walleck fell and fuck, / man, that sound drug on for days.

Brian Evenson   |   Scene
It is a gesture that gives her away.

Julia Bloch   |   from Letters to Kelly Clarkson
Ugh, what a repetitive gesture.

Brett Evans & Chris Stroffolino   |   Mercenary Beverages
4:30 a.m. / last 3 fools ali- / ing

Chris Tysh   |   from Mother, I
In this self-con game, Pierre tries to outwit the very thing that scares him to death by pretending to succumb to the most detailed phantasms his febrile imagination spits up.

Cathi Murphy   |   The Man Who Ate Breakfast for Dinner
He enjoyed his solitude at night. The gradual comfort he would feel in the sense that nothing existed in him. Wet toast on the windowsill. And the darkness beyond. The absolute absence of singularity.

Paul Gacioch   |   Sweet Ringo
I have gathered that his chief horror is that he wants to be neither buried nor cremated.

Greg Mulcahy   |   Picayune
How could this document, apparently entitled “How to Make a Martial Arts Porno Movie,” have come to him?

Paul Gacioch   |   Sweet Ringo
It is not pornography played loudly:

A.K. Arkadin   |   For Robert Blake’s Sake
I was the youngest, and my father, Robert Blake the first, made it a practice to never directly address me—using either my mother when she was out on bail or asking my sister when the situation became too urgent for someone not to speak.

Norman Lock   |   The King and the Cotter-Pin
I was a young man waiting for something to happen.

Daniel C. Remein   |   from keystone service letters
to a prof. of american romanticism on the effects of reading dostoevsky at age 17

Anne Germanacos   |   Students
The student, who is almost a man—though small for one, with dainty hands—begins to seduce the girl far away in Canada, but only through writing everything down for the woman, his teacher.

Ed Skoog   |   Dog Highway
That highway still fights north

HL Hazuka   |   Dear Grady,
My last / fill, the last stop on this / highway, all prettied up / in Jean Nate after wipin / down greasy windowsills,

Norman Lock   |   The King and the Cotter-Pin
I delivered Slatoris his groceries.

Derek White   |   Post-Holing to the Flesh Temple
My physics professor, Dr. Slatoris, was being convicted of a crime against reality.

John Cleary   |   dear jack,
the schedule of taking pills.

Brett Evans & Chris Stroffolino   |   Mercenary Beverages
on the vicadin just / can’t wait to get on

Julia Bloch   |   from Letters to Kelly Clarkson
I feel it’s time to wear more skirts, it’s time to change brains, it’s time to up my dose, it’s time for less empathy.

Chris Tysh   |   from Mother, I
the more unutterable, excessive and sacrilegious our pleasures, the more we cling to them

Raymond Farr   |   “Pg. 24” A Pseudo-Litany, Being Lines Written by Anon.
Old Spice GermX Qtips Crest Tegrin Lancômbe are prose poems.

Raymond Farr   |   Journal Entry: 12-26-05
A snuff box of self?

Greg Mulcahy   |   Picayune
The best thing would be to live in a box.

A.K. Arkadin   |   For Robert Blake’s Sake
You know I was the only thing that kept you kids boxed up and ready to move like a good father should.

Eireene Nealand   |   No Excuse for the Tension of a Possible Storm
Haven’t managed to get a package off to my heroin addict.

Cathi Murphy   |   The Man Who Ate Breakfast for Dinner
He no longer used, but it was hiding in the shadow of every moment.

John Cleary   |   dear jack,
three days rideing that italian trolley girl out to tulane.

Ed Skoog   |   Dog Highway
I lent a student a book last week, / and she found his Missoulian obit, / phlegm-yellow.

Raymond Farr   |   Journal Entry: 12-26-05
A piece of writing breaking ground.

Daniel C. Remein   |   from keystone service letters
(each mark on the page a bit of clawed mud)

Bill Marsh   |   from Dead Letter Game
I got used to the idea of craftwork as strategic self-defense.

Derek White   |   Post-Holing to the Flesh Temple
My physics professor, Dr. Slatoris, was being convicted of a crime against reality.

Greg Mulcahy   |   Picayune
Wasn’t who he was. Or could be.