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Showing posts with the label sixteen

issue sixteen :: March/April 2020

Emily Izsak :: Three poems Heather Sweeney :: Three poems from The Book of Likes Sarah Burgoyne :: Two poems Jason Christie :: Three poems Abigail George :: Two poems Rebecca Rustin :: Three poems

Abigail George :: Two poems

Driftwood (for my paternal grandparents, Ouma, and Oupa) I’m alone. I’m alone again, a solitary figure thinking ever after of you, for you are the love of Ophelia’s life,   of you, and the ownership of daughters in a maze, the race question, the class system when in Rome. You either love me, or you don’t. You either care for me or you don’t. Once my flesh was a prize, now I’m older, wiser, but what to do with this knowledge, there’s no exit out of this soldiering on, sleeping alone, waking alone, and I’m surrounded by star-people who work miracles on me. I trust so hard, I let the sun go down on me, summers are cold, winters are cold, they whisper of their neuroses to me, and I’m asking for forgiveness, and I’m asking to be loved, and I’m asking you to fall in love with me if you dare, she’s transformed into matter, particles, atoms, molecules, air, Norma Jean and Marilyn, and I can’t accept anything that is less than love, or reading the wonderland-feeling ...

Rebecca Rustin :: Three poems

repetition compulsion           I write high literary prose . -- a novelist, on differences of register           "the repetition-compulsion...revives experiences of the past that contain no            potentiality of pleasure" -- Sigmund Freud, trans. CJM Hubback i write low guttural poetry, like i have to go all the way downstairs to get it it's beneath me like this guy i dated once said about the women he dated i mean i could talk about the swamp and the lily the healing power of fungus the fractal rhizomatic underbelly that nourishes us so tenderly it's just that i haven't been inside my body lately and it's starting to wear me down the street. today it walked me like a dog, sniffed at every tree square, aren't we a pair, the soft animal and the hardy machine, or are we a trio animated by light? i've known two muscular men with sun tattoos who held me close and eclipsed....

Jason Christie :: Three poems

26 notes left for customer service from a necessary product reflecting on its experience of the future 1. Is my life worth trading in this game for coins, or cosmetic upgrades? A series of confusing questions might obtain, such as: how much time do I have left? how many coins? What colour of cape? 2. To whom do I pledge fealty: to the hardware designers and bank on short term gains for my lineage? 3. Should I spend my money on software and buy whatever I can get cheaply on the auction house in order to hedge against the time when the hardware finally catches up? 4. Can I expect to be able to use all of the devices in my body with the latest operating system patch? 5. The sound of two long blasts on the horn signals the loss of identity mixed with an unhealthy desire for more identity on Twitter. 6. What gift would you offer to salvage something when the war for our data finally stops and we can look up from the trenches without fear of losing more of our privacy, I aske...

Sarah Burgoyne :: Two poems

DOUBLE HOUSE POEM That one surmounts oneself is the wisdom of the shadow. The light winks constantly because it knows this secret — that Irene sits in front of the mirror, with a rose compact and this is why the smell of powder inexplicably fills the air, and rose is the colour of the wall at night. Shadows rise behind their objects. Memory is this: a peripheral world of pale liquid stone. On the plaster wall the light is wet: a headlight on a rainy bypass. In the room, fin of light, fly of light, twinned light of angels, moving but unscared. Where candlelight illuminates the ceiling—mostly, or lights the underside of a tree's leaves— yes, this: box of the soul. The sink is my palm, upturned on the floor for you; think of your house; descend. The fig tree's shadow is a ladder for you to climb. Press your ear to the fridge; inside is a cautious poet echoing your poem.   Eyes closed the water is porcelain; eyes open it is the vein of...

Emily Izsak :: Three poems from Never Have I Ever

Had Sex With More Than One Person at a Time Three’s a crowd of dissimilar                fussy diversions   busy    within the story Four    marbles the allergies                                We can’t have plain honey   it doesn’t sit           if it isn’t                 bundled  with bandwagons   full to the whim Enough means surplus   solves a trilogy  and extra oars    don’t muck our gut’s   geometry Had Sex With More Than One Person Just a couple of hopeless       hermitic Semitics        consummately   pleased                  ...

Heather Sweeney :: Three poems from The Book of Likes

# Don’t tell me I’m all caught up And don’t tell me to smile like I mean it I mean the poppies you read backwards Are not for touching I’m here to reap not to sow I mean my shoulders are ice caps now & by this I mean I am a walking avalanche # In this selfie my face is a sculpture From a music video My face is a melting chandelier A wine cave wall A mid-80s sunset An ocean of cellophane # In this selfie I think: I’m so good with my brown rice And organic broccoli In this selfie I am holding my favorite Kombucha as if to say like me In this selfie my dog is bored Please do not pet my dog His aura is perfect right now And your energy is a little iffy Heather Sweeney , she/her, lives in San Diego where she writes, teaches and does visual art.   Her chapbooks include Just Let Me Have This (Selcouth Station Press) and Same Bitch, Different Era: The Real Housewives Poems (above/ground press).   Her collections, Dear Marshall, Language is Our ...