Grand Master Sever Fishbrid of North Cutup, image by Daniel Y. Harris
Five
Poems (and one Cut-Up)
Excerpts from Disaster
Utopia
V
titles ending in α
Tissa
In hilly grooves jagged
crystal teeth in sino-optimist smile fresh fecund for birch and bittern life
flight rips out headland husks pulling back tapered skin as deep gullies gasp
the earth splayed to arch long after the velocity of vertigogic satellites
unfolding inverting chrysalis abrading dizzy snails quaky lives slime victim
flashes bursts of driven life well kneaded substance all gaping wide raw landfill
beauty King Devanampiya Tissa the forest's first overlord nature's darkness
locked.
Toba
Super volcano ancestor
ash cloud choke hold genetic plant sprawl forgotten
marsupial semang old journey unique markers mapping ancient
colonization hit flat rock face bent crippled dna dead mandible dead
cave entrenched in how did we come to be and how harrowing their
journey was a most peculiar mammal.
По
Assoluta Maya
The thin veil cuts
rifling through waves of enchanted oak and life tissue hunger the voice of an
enamoured piano as a man shoos the air between his hands and the forest it
whispers its defence surrounding his hands the touch of an artisan in ecstasy
laying an invisible framework to the ground and moon at his fee the grass
animated moving fur on a feline's back streaming wind through narrow alleyways
courtyards the marvelling sky her voice inseparable from her fingertips cutting
tossed lonely inside tin cans sealed and did you get her pregnant on vein faded
glass and a skill for changing her name becoming like water on a beating drum
forming droplets of illusion the veil cuts through coral sheets I did and it is
true that the truth breathes doubt in giants a temple of forgetting now dancing
the veil hidden from reality and the translucency of little mirror drops
connecting with light the fragile collision the hopelessness of guiding the
wayward blood of knowing poetry life a chance to see as her mind did through
the lens a sense beyond herself and then died there in the city sedate a
somnambulist in the night wavering sleep for forgotten dreams decried out in
absurd yawn-speak carting her bloated livestock belly around to fill the
ghastly shallows awaken a slipstream back through veils cut and exhausted waves
surrender caught in pipes and her hollywood eyes sleepy lashes lit under
dancing palms starving impotence under a shadow of debutante departure hollow
breath and smiling frocks all beauty wrought under glass all sanctuary all time
a rhythm carrying captive under her silent veil.
Mythopoeia
Marmot daughters beaten
out abortions conserve heat winter long whoring penguins trade sex for building
materials while their husbands guard the nest beavers extort the havocverse
coercing smaller rodents into paying land tax for shelter from the ice long before
hydrogen fuel double stuffed friction burns deeper
hurting to its nucleus nuclear core jets of radioactive emissions throat
melting pulsating luminous shapes of tied up gagged laid bare out the best
angles its all worth it for that 10 billion year contract the universe engaging
in sadistic sex with itself hurtling whirling supernova moans gravitational
collapse amasses protoplanetary nail marks stellar asphyxia climax securing the
best deal for the rights to the sun a well established brand of intellectual
property in the life sustaining energy racket from a
little dust cloud grows a gaseous nebula fast tracked ascension
now modern man vandal of atom stem cell and ozone and homo rhodesiensis before
who from toba ran sailed spat the future re-runs on the history channel
everything starved to own even these words quiver scared to go unheard to be
undercut to not exist for
genealogies stifled todays new phone app tomorrows new creation myth.
Fangs
on an Amoeba
This man insisting I sit
down has a screen for every pore in his skin tentatively he talks to me about
the fusiform gyrus that part of the brain responsible for recognizing faces so
I think of all the faces I have ever seen and how now there are none I listen to
his amoeba laugh as he writhes his jellyfish tongue contorting with alien
motion O’ there are cameras in the grass he bellows and things only hold
meaning in a transparent box where voices are made from displaced echoes his
tongue recoils man-made displacement from inside plastic voices transparent
meaning echo things holding them from man standing in what looks like a
make-shift lab a devil smiling at the absolute and I call this demon with his
fire-sale soul as he calls himself a stepping outside your self into the beyond
and stepping back to find another self alien but not unfamiliar like james dean
under halogen an oyster pirate seal hunter klondike miner tracing these
visceral words like a tongue over a hideous scar the embossed tissue prickling
those little nerves.
Coprolites
(an internet cut-up)
A hypothesized spherical
cloud of comets that may lie nearly a light-year from the Sun it is thought to
comprise two separate regions: a spherical Supernova the duchess of Windsor a
fer broma tot dient-hi “crec que ningú entén veritablement la mecànica
quàntica”) Super Nintendo Entertainment System of Central and South America
Sub-Saharan Africa the Indian subcontinent and the Gulf Coast of the United
States The Fulvous Whistling Duck is a common but wary species It is largely
resident apart from local movements but vagrancy has occurred to southern
Europe It nests on a stick platform in reeds laying 8–12 eggs but hollow trees
or old bird nests are occasionally used for nesting Allar gitingarnar um altjóða
yvirgang frá víðgongdum bólkum úr Mið- ella Fjareystri tagnaðu tá norski
løgmálaráðharrin Knut Storberget 22 juli kundi vátta at løgreglan hevði
handtikið ein norskan ríkisborgara við etniskum norskum uppruna Sjónarváttar á
Utøya høvdu longu tá sagt at tað var ein høgur ljósur maður sum tosaði eina The
Fulvous Whistling Duck Dendrocygna bicolor is a whistling duck which
breeds across the world’s tropical regions in much dialekt frá eystlandsøkinum
ella eina dialekt sum kom frá Oslo ella onkrastaðni kring norska høvuðsstaðin
El problema de la mesura és un dels principals fronts Gulf Coast of the United
States The Fulvous Whistling Duck is a common but wary species It is largely
resident apart from local filosòfics que obre la mecànica quàntica Si be la mecànica
quàntica ha sigut la teoria física més precisa fins el moment permetent fer
càlculs teòrics relacionats amb processos naturals que donen 20 decimals
correctes i ha proporcionat una gran quantitat d’aplicacions pràctiques
(centrals nuclears rellotges d’altíssima precisió ordinadors) existeixen certs
punts difícils en la interpretació d’alguns dels seus resultats i fonaments (el
premi Nobel Richard Feynman arribar a fer broma tot dient-hi “crec que ningú
entén veritablement la mecànica quàntica”) The Barry Family of Twin Falls
Idaho’s personal family blog “The Cutest blog on the block”: Last night at
dinner: Mom: I can’t believe school is about to start! Jaxson: Yep then you
won’t have to play with me all day Today I was standing outside my car talking
to a friend when Jax banged on the window and yelled “Mom did you remember us?”
Just a minute ago I heard “Who wants to spank my butt and win a prize?”
Coprolites are classified as trace fossils as opposed to body fossils as they
give evidence for the animal’s behaviour (in this case diet rather than
morphology The name is derived from the Greek words κοπρος / kopros
meaning ‘dung’ and λιθος / lithos meaning ‘stone’ They were first
described by William Buckland in 1829 Prior to this they were known as “fossil
fir cones” and “bezoar stones” They serve a valuable purpose in palaeontology
because they provide direct evidence of the predation and diet of extinct
organisms.
—Jonathan Mulcahy-King
