A Bouquet of Mistakes

There’s not much around that we can call wild. Is it a creature with two horns, or is it a seashell? You haven’t found it yet. It could be a mud puddle. It could be a bright red tractor in the rain. It could be an altar left behind by a tribe. The world has got all this shit in it: texts, tweets, emails. Everything just accelerates. I don’t remember who told us. I just remember darkness. I want to proceed by means of violations and defacements. My sneaker has a hole in it; my car has a flat tire.

Howie Good is the author of three recent collections, I’m Not a Robot from Tolsun Books, The Titanic Sails at Dawn from Alien Buddha Press, and What It Is and How to Use It from Grey Book Press.  

TRAVEL NOTES

GOOD NEWS

All those hours spent in a tree are now lost to me. 

THE ARGUMENT AGAINST SWIMMING

Any fish in the world can do it better than you.

The difficulty of eating a pizza in a polite way while swimming the butterfly.

THE ARGUMENT AGAINST THE CHARLESTON

Dated; embarrassing; complicated. Difficult to say if you don’t like to say the word ‘Charles.’

THINGS YOU CANNOT DO WHILE HAVING A POUNDING HEADACHE THAT ISN’T A MIGRAINE

Draw a bearded Satan in Hell woodcut as well as the mature work of Gustave Doré (mustachioed.)

INTERESTING FACT ABOUT THE NOBEL PRIZE CEREMONY YEARS AGO

Before Orhan Pamuk accepted his prize, there was a great fanfare of trumpets, and then a woman came to the stage and said Orhan. 

Ricky Garni grew up in Miami and Maine. He works as a graphic designer by day and writes music by night. His latest book, A CONCERNED PARTY MEETS A PERSON OF INTEREST, was released in the Spring of 2019.

huffing raid at five in the morning

perhaps it isn’t
as bad as the wafts of morning breath

filmy sugar residue
plastered to the tongue
from last night’s potion
of vodka and wine

coming off a restless, anxiety filled sleep
in which the recurring dream was my own demise

or the sound
of my wife’s hands
slapping the cracked linoleum of the kitchen
before my eyes
have even adjusted to the light

i just wish there
weren’t so many of them

little kafka fucks scurrying around

big ones leading the little ones
leading the ones that are no bigger
than a speck of dirt

racing for their goddamned lives

as i grab the can
from under the sink

and spray like an assassin

until there’s a cloud
of stink and foam so pungent

that if it were anybody else but me doing the deed

i’d be on the horn
with the ever-loving landlord
or that crooked EPA.

John Grochalski is the author of the five poetry collections and two novels.  Grochalski currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, where the garbage can smell like roses if you wish on it hard enough.

Dedicated to Scott Weiland 

Arrest this lament
this false flag of endeavor
parachute of the midnight aplomb
splendor soils christened by an exorama
defouled by a parasite cancel
who are you in the liturgy of night?
nameless index
of heathen imperial purple
no margin, no reprieve
augur of ceremonial reimagining
of unnoticed thoughts
searing in erasure
murmur of accidental day
a chastised saucerful of secrets
eviscerator heaven on call

Rus Khomutoff is an experimental poet in Brooklyn, NY. His poetry has appeared in San Francisco review of books, Proprose magazine and Hypnopomp. Last year he published his debut, Immaculate days (Alien Buddha Press). This summer his new chapbook Radia will be released by Void Front Press.