David Alpaugh, THREW…/MATTER…

Snake Eyes, Internet Image 

Fortune’s Finishing Touch

Fini, c’est fini, ça va finir, ça va peut-être finir.

—Samuel Beckett, Fin de Partie

THREW…

99 double titles down an elliptical staircase.

Picked ’em up—willy-nilly—to baptize my

book in the blood of random order.  Chance

puts this poem on page 98. I’d’ve put it on 2.

Unintended consequences happened when I

Threw. All I meant to do was slay The Decider.

But, choral director gone, can there be a choir?

Drifting down your stare, with chaos in the air,

go my snake eyes—and, like dice, they scatter.

I’m thru.... What say you? Do chance thoughts

MATTER…

—David Alpaugh 

Rupert M. Loydell, Posthuman Landscape #1 - #6

Posthuman Landscape #1, Rupert M. Loydell 

Posthuman Landscape #2, Rupert M. Loydell 

Posthuman Landscape #3, Rupert M. Loydell 

Posthuman Landscape #4, Rupert M. Loydell

Posthuman Landscape #5, Rupert M. Loydell

Posthuman Landscape #6, Rupert M. Loydell

Sacha Archer, excerpts from The Nature of Language

The Nature of Language - Leaf #2

excerpts from The Nature of Language 

Reading through journal entries composed in reflection on this project, The Nature of Language, I remember (how quickly I forget) what a wealth of ideas opened up to me with this work. But this is not the place for a lengthy meandering through those scattered ideas. The whole point of visual poetry, just like a traditional poem, is that the poem is presented to be read. Of course, it is a joy to reflect, to give further insight, to explain—after all, we desire it. I will say that with these poems (only poems because we have become sufficiently disconnected to apprehend them as such—or because they have always been poems) I was and am interested in an idea of language form, a precursory shadow of language, embedded in natural forms. God/s did not give us language, but we are never so original as to be able to claim anything without influence. In the beginning was the word. No, I don’t think so. In the beginning (our beginning) was desire and need, and the world around us which we learned, no doubt very swiftly, to read. We read the signs of health, of poison, of danger and safety. It seems that form is an expression of language—once it is read. So, in what context do we find ourselves where we read the poems which I present here?

—Sacha Archer

The Nature of Language - Birch Bark #6

The Nature of Language - Mushrooms #2

The Nature of Language - Stalk and Pod #4

The Nature of Language - Stalk and Roots #3

The Nature of Language - Stick and Growth #4

The Nature of Language - Wood #3

Serena Mayer, The Lost Sonnets

Iconoclasm, image by Irene Koronas

The Lost Sonnets

1.

   so as to avoid being caught up

      He had met the writer

 and this is the name by which

   here he thought the sound

not permit him to entertain

    unable to leave the country

  a buried cache of nature

    which to conjure and juggle

 yanked the curtain of hair

   who knew him best.

     sensible provisions

when such events

   permission to seek treatment

        . He is not unreasonable

2.

        iconoclasm

   of spiral shapes

and plays his hand.

   oblivion, dreaming,

     , between the fields,

  her process of working

    critical acclaim

  and the speed

      and duration

  kept in his apartment

    failed to deliver

 permanent works

        won’t stay forever

   from the beginning

3.

   made something positive out of

chaotic gestural traces

      need is not more.

   people about whether or not

      that was more difficult

 but not as he had imagined.

       considered failures

    distant prospect of the original

            type of work.

      remnants was influenced

         , or even liquid.

       It has become her,

   for the first time it was quiet

 I’ve seen the work myself.

4.

    you to desist.

engaged in any mischief

        a correct count

  partial records

    had made a name for

        after I was sent here

 would return to

       the broader tragedies

     pushed back down

        bound and sold

  a site of uncontrolled

        that will one day reach

     other visionaries will

 , and at every stage write you

5.

         to the next story,

             as not there

  among the secret community

       unsettled areas.

    and spectacular fossils

  systematic disintegration

     is nothing left of either

   history, manifested

       free movement of finance

         unreason ever more rapidly

had some money in her hand

        enquiries were made

 a continuous voiceover

   shimmering with mirages.

6.

     in opposition to the restraint

        focus on the mechanisms

  staging spectacles which

   have been working at speed

      have been deemed unfit

         erasing the whole thing

  dangers of antagonising

       personal freedoms became

underscore the importance

    rather than its subject matter

  It is necessary to work

             to understand that

      hidden or dispose of

  and exhibiting while working

7.

    and reverent in treatment

      slowly under the weight

  another's particular history

        within the shouting

     the night time walk.

  time to gain the approval

    an old man by now

       the path marked by

  mislaid or discarded

pasted over immediately

     impose their beliefs

   damage, destroying both

the gradual erosion of

  , nothing remained after

—Serena Mayer

Serena Mayer studied anthropology and social geography, and is interested in hidden texts and forgotten or discarded language. Her writing has previously appeared in Nutshell, Electric Zone, Here to Stay, I Am Not A Silent Poet, X-Peri, Amethyst Review, Odd Moments, Reflections, A Restricted View From Under the Hedge, Poetry WTF, Storm Warning, and International Times. Her first book, Theoretical Complexities, is forthcoming from Broken Sleep Books. 

Mark Young, excerpts from Residual Sonnets

King N. Epal’s Organophosphates, image by Daniel Y. Harris 

excerpts from Residual Sonnets  

Sect

In his first public statement

since taking an unknown

dose of organophosphate

insecticide, the King of Nepal

said that he was struck speech-

less by the notation, fingering,

& keyboard diagrams under-

lying the stylistic aspects

of the artwork of Wassily

Kandinsky. How by the

removal of one element of cDNA

they could be used as a sex-

pheromone trap to lure blood-

sucking pests to their deaths.

Shrinking ad budgets

Were there any persons of color —

apart from those who wanted to

spend a fortune on antique French

Furniture or a brown Lolita dress

which featured ruffles on the hem —

in any of the traveler reviews &

photos for the hotel? Extremely

complex chromatograms are often

very difficult to interpret. Better to

use Art Deco fortune telling cards.

They produce fast, deep colors

on cottons when the velocity μx

is null, & are easily obtained at

your local sheet & duvet store.

—Mark Young

Mark Young’s most recent book is les échiquiers effrontés, a collection of surrealist visual poems laid out on chessboard grids, just published by Luna Bisonte Prods. Due out later this year is The Word Factory: a miscellany, from gradient books of Finland, & an e-book, A Vicarious Life — the backing tracks, from otata.

Rose Knapp, Americas’ Lotus Easters

L’Amour Fou for Daeæscmons Salut 

image by Daniel Y. Harris 

Americas’ Lotus Easters 

Dissociated Dome of the Rock

Seth sets Lokis’ form intoquicksand 

Renaissance melodies masquerade 

Glass pyramids tessellate modality 

Baroqueballroombackhallalleycats 

Silver bracelets hover distorted

On my slightly slit wrists Akiko 

Akhenaten Sakutarō Hagiwara

حج hajj sphinx riddles slip seep 

Gnawing their ways through 

Wastelands theoretical heretical 

Black bone marrow splits open

Clouds have known no Avila

Pietà Jihad domed apparitions 

Jinxed Judith Jupiters’ red moons

Blood Scatting jazz and power 

Pulsing from Mecca mechanically

I catch it in the deserted LA night

Streets gaze at the cube 

Hovering there as if it was a Borgia

I slit one ghostly ghazal 

In its' side admirecutstonemarble

Watch as pieces of Eden

Free fall flittering shards of Mani 

Voltaic Visions

Lightning lashes laconic 

Across LA sky lines [frag 

Ment]cius mists drift down

Sifting over clout cashflows

Running into Hollywood

Data rushing DTLA tar

Split sieves Sycophantic

Cores encapsulated 

By choruses of chaos

Sprawl surrounding

Glazed over teal 

Eyes peering over 

Verbatim Verses 

Peeling petrified 

Latin words out

Of silken air the

Silent stills whisper

Midway lais lapis ruby Isis glares

Catatonic Laüstic cat velaric clāvis

White slashes of piercing castrating noise

Prostrates its’ acrolect ascetic ink dashes in emblazoning altars

Ἡρόδοτος’ ἱστορία Gregorian Antipater patois basilectalization

Hexehedral of Our Lady

Of Angels Thien Hau 

Templeless Mazu sakuras 

Subtle Fragrant tapestries

Of decadent domine decay

Incense burns sentiente é nonsense 

Bisclavret Daeæscmons salut one

An other on In---Concrète 

Slabaths wordsseparating 

Hallowed spaces

Outside Taoist 

Catholic Uni(vision)

Studios temples 

I watch the endless

Blazing pile of books

Blacks and unborn 

(Lucky bastards

And a superstitious 

Black man preaching)

Bête noire noir Alpha 

Et tu wonder at times

Why noir means black

Nègre negative filmstrip 

Lit--//Nile Grime Crime 

Anagram\\Règne Rene

Changeling Dao De Jing Channeling

Pure ecstatic noise

Screeches nails on a Nazis’

Crosswalk straight central

Zeitgeist please don't press Pound 

On a chalk 0...0 outline Ouija

Touché 

Cafe ceremony 

Static bounds only 

Know pathetic Kantian

Reasons Pauline Words

Pulverize themselves into

Perversity for perpetuity 

Evaporates intolerable

Scats as only black

Things can appari

Tion iron lion Leon 

Nonsense nous non

Hope non change non

[Post] Commentary Waste Lands

[Cantos] Chanticleers Changelings

Lamplit night clearcuts tourists diptych past bright red-gold brushed kitsch Shanghai sillsjaded kimonos

Flutter on mannequins gawking in aviators shade 妖怪 spirits harmonized in calligraphicflute notes   

Purity splitting deranged dreamscapes 

Debased borderlines déflorer Decatur florescent

Decanters deconstructing flâneuses 

—Rose Knapp

Nathan Spoon & Tom C. Hunley, An Exhalation of Springheads

 Misinformed Genie 

(acrylic and paper on canvas; 8 x 10 inches) 

image by Nathan Spoon

An Exhalation of Springheads

The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed…

                                   ―John Milton

In the beginning, a single cell divides

itself, becoming two cells in symbiosis,

giving a third dimension to words spoken

(once written), like Cerberus with an extra

serpentine pair of eyes gazing into

ambient spaces, until it becomes clear

that three times two is six and two

more is a new plant leafing itself into

a row of jelly bean-colored houses,

along the water running through

Burano, Italy, I can’t get those

figureheads off my bed. Or off

the walls! My forehead has grown

embarrassingly smaller than yours,

whoever you may be. I designed a labyrinth

to thrive inside and I hid the prototype

underneath a stone near my outdoor plants –

also embarrassingly smaller than yours.

Now, from a bottom corner of the canvas,

nymphs are sprinkling leaves on my head

which is secretly hosting a hive of bees.

I’m making honey and a movie trailer.

The honey is sweet, and it sticks to bones.

If you like the trailer, I’ll make the movie,

which will make you love me doubly, love me

two times two divided by our unruly, wayward

children. Fractious, if passages can wind

into abysses blank as frozen zaffer,

as the trees give rise to a hive by leaning,

finally, into Hell. I like being wayward

and drifting drunkenly in a boat copied

and pasted onto the river Styx. This is what

happens after spending more than two hundred

billable hours kicking up extra dopamine with

other runners. Suddenly you are accidental besties

with people who were probably antelopes

in recent lifetimes! Tomorrow I’ll peel

away from work and visit Mansard.

The place is a marsh and isn’t a marsh

mostly as unassuming as Westhaven?

Let’s say I’m a map and you’re “You are here” and someone

else, we don’t know who, is lost and needs our help.

When the planet is sleeping inside

a gigantic piece of Silly Putty,

while Platonic wings emerge on randomized

whims projected from the insides of flowers,

there is something unsayable

(which isn’t being mentioned now) that flashes

from the depths of insentience. It’s beautiful!

―Nathan Spoon & Tom C. Hunley