where is the river :: a poetry experiment

Travis Sharp :: Five poems from Monoculture Stephanie Valente :: Three poems Ilse Griffin :: Three poems Chris Caruso :: Four poems Dale Tracy :: Four poems S imon Perchik :: Five untitled poems

I’m unsure what I(‘m) like I’m unsure what I like. I don’t know if I like making love slowly, You  know, the type where the skin is seen up close As we kiss tenderly the exospheres of our each others’ bodies Where it’s not about movements but moments Maybe I like it fast the onomatopoeia of banging The crush and slap of body parts The damp rush, moving too fast for thoughts We don’t slow down enough to catch our feelings To sweep our hands through the cobwebs of our thoughts And then lick the glistening strands from our fingers I’m unsure what I’m like Am I the warm chaos of melted chocolate? Someone standing in the shade of a big beautiful tree to polish the lingering shine off their thumb A strange place for a stain Or, am I a starchy pair of pants? The kind you don’t wear They lay folded in the deep recesses of closets, arrogantly waiting To live Yesterday, I sunk my fork into the moist body of a cake, unsure of whether I’d continue its journey to m...

MYTHOS tuesday nights: fold tiny paper birds smudged white ignore phone numbers i’ll never text tie off lovers like old stories with a string i’ll crown myself jeweled with flowers hide my face cross out the name of you like a to-do list make vows for tomorrow, to growl alone. NOTHING HAUNTS YOU LIKE A VISION it’s the older men the ones i let open me like rain water it’s the men i wanted to fuck turning me into their tobacco cologne it’s the final pause after a shuttered window it’s the moment i thought about loving myself but, i just walked through the night stumbling home. ONE NIGHT STAND i’m a good show runner —watch my waltz tongue — just smooth, no speed bumps; i want yr sheets to smell like me; i’m easy, for the right single malt; i’m sorry, did you think this was about you?; little fool; i like my sex like a cube of salt; it purses your lips long after it’s over; meaty; waiting to ripen; i’m not listening to what you say; i k...

from “if p, then q, then not-p, then [proposition 2]” 2.0 sometimes God dies 2.1 and there is no longer a totality 2.2 so the nation-state is created 2.2a to fill the void 2.3 the nation = 1 2.4 but also contains many 1s 2.5 the nation = 1 > 1 2.6 this is called American exceptionalism 2.6a an exception is a limit 2.6b a limit is a horizon 2.6c a horizon is a form of destiny 2.6d therefore, American exceptionalism is a form of Americanness understood as having a limit 2.6d1 a limit of delimits 2.6d2 or a limitless limit, always limiting 2.7 it sounds so exhausting 2.8 it exhausts itself and everyone else like so much time pollution from “if p, then q, then not-p, then [proposition 3]” 3.0 the nation is a 1 3.1 that creates many 1s 3.1a in its image 3.1b it ’s as if there are cameras on every corner 3.1c the contemporary city is so erotic 3.2 that is called becoming a citizen 3.3 a citizen = 1 < 1 3.4 the subtraction inherent in value 3.5 the violen...

                    * These windows know all about lakes hiding among the dead –by instinct the glass freezes, just so and slowly you carve two initials as if the name underneath would follow the way a small hole heats the ice, lures the fish closer taking hold though the glare is already marshland, drains where one finger let go the other and the room fills counts on you to come. * This bloom still reckless, its heat breaking into the furious hum bugs use for melting snow   –there’s no interest in romance though every winter now is warmed, takes hold your hand by brushing against the dirt risks its place to lure you, naked in front the house, her breasts surrounded and across your tongue a lingering darkness welcomes them knows nothing why your fingers smell from avalanche and salt and never had that taste for sweets moving mouth to mouth snatching things up, louder and louder certain thi...

The First I entered empty through the cockleshell, foot first protruding, the snail of my cockled heart. The first of my heart is this pump. I am the glistentrail that circulates. The water never starts new; it’s our net, the one we’re in since we were a gleam in space’s eye, in the black hole at the centre of the shell’s whorl. Open Gods made us with windows to see how we’re doing inside. Otherwise we’d be rocks, with no way in and nothing to eat. We’re open. My parents’ bookshelf headboard must have birthed mine. Books basically were my pillow or maybe were reading me. I was asleep. As per quantum physics, animal behaviour, and time travel, how do I know my feelings don’t change when I watch them? They are in a field. Legacy contaminants interfere with my qualia. One quale for each foreign molecule. My thoughts leave their own trail. Its head is compromised. Semiaquatic crocodiles warn infrasonically, closed-lipped. Open though are their mystery po...

Dearest Envy, I cannot help but believe that this window is more real than me. Not even a reflection, but light bouncing in its particles and waves ignoring me. How convincing this is true. I find this most disturbing the way to survive conversations of ourselves. An encounter I saw today.   A squirrel with a stump for a fourth leg. It did not seem bothered by this emptying. If only it could be captured on film. Let Us Reach Upon These Silent Stories Of Night So much like that film, the one in the language neither of us spoke. A cartoon of two mallards in a frozen pond surround by a city. I commented on how their quacks turned to screams. You were drawn to their fierce flapping, feathers beating into slicks of oil. We never learned how they arrived. Perhaps an earlier story before we were born. You remarked how it should have taken longer for them to die. I said it was pacing to keep the emotion real. Dearest Tapeworm, This is how I explain hunger—a longi...