Ma come quick there’s a quote from Flaubert squirting
out of a magic marker all across the horizon
And twin red cabooses with a man standing with a feet on each one
And eight tiny reindeer
And a cabbage patch kid
And a flag and potatoes and a limestone facade
That says He who know is them that grow old you know that’s how it go

Me said, John don’t you touch that dial
We’re low on eggs a’ready and the pigs came out to play
A game of touch football and they’re using
My earring with the diamond for a first-down marker

This has to be the place because if you look
There’s nothing there except a greyish tiny time pill
And a picture of lizards reading Gray’s anatomy
Round a late-night fireplace piled high with microphones
Used by Edward R. Murrow in his salad days
When he was just a little shaver trying hard to undercover
His malignant capital gains.

Ma what happened to my neo-synephrine I was using to upholster
My sinuses and synapses?
A biscuit wearing baseball shoes replied,
“mene, mene, tekel upharsim”
As it slowly slathered guacamole sauce upon its
Tilted brain.

(ten years after)

Every tone I murmer
Is the interrogative woo—
Whooshing interstate
Escaping city clutches—
Gnawing fingers unbinding
The soiled text of time.

Every note I raise
Billows from red brick
Smokestack lightning rubbed out of
Blinked eyes with raw fists
And coughed into the grey—
Grey spaces.

Every chord I strum
Is the fresh grafitti’d concrete sea,
It’s dying waves expanding—
Cracking underfoot
To trip unsuspecting children
Crying into crevasses that
Swell and close over.

Every song I sing
Is a lie; diffused across
Banners and rading fields with
Death, blindly echoing
A whisper of greatness, tiptoeing over
Naive lips licked by thrashing tongues,
And rocketing into the open space
Where there is only one tune, one voice.

– Rich Yespelkis (1955-1976)

Having many things on her mind, mainly militancy and genetics, Kate averted her eyes, wondering how many times the cashier in the supermarket would ring up the price incorrectly.

When are we, why are we, we people of the Third,
of the incorrect distinction—violently albine
and waiting with open eyes.
Harry said that we of the torched
Gaelic inscriptions are loudly
unreasonable, making anti-governmental
intervention devices in
our damp houses; how have we reaffirmed
our strength to dea with
this situation?

No is what we say to you in the night
when it is dark. No is what we say
to you from the dead mines of
upstate Pennsylvania. We are the flushed face boy
standing before the armory in tears,
an unwilling sanctuary for
your noncommittal sympathies.

– Caroline Burns

in the morning
is my heart
at knowing
you never came home
last night

– Scarlett Faith