Among the Forgetters #79

We will see gold.
Consciousness will progress.
We will wear costumes 

and pull a plastic bee from a tangle
of real flowers.

We will post our hours under our names.

A tame animal will return
to the wild,

and we will cry to find
its hands 

in a campsite abandoned by poachers. 
In the meantime,
we sit here

wondering if the sweet by-and-by
is in fact just the meantime
with a fresh coat

of gold paint.

Slash for Cotton Mather #1

••••• •••• •• ••••• ••• ••• ••• ••• •••• ••• ••••••• •••••• ••••• • •••••••• •• ••• •••••• ••••••••••• ••• ••••• •• ••• ••• ••••• •••• • ••••• •• ••• •••• •• •••••• •••••• YOU CAN RELAX •••••••••• ••• •• •••• ••• •••• •• ••• •• ••••• ••••• •••• •• •••••• •••••• •••• •• •••••• •••• •• ••••• 

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Glen Armstrong edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters.and has two new chapbooks: Simpler Times nd Staring Down Miracles.

4.6

and thymine (T). How false
is the glitz? Rely on a certain salto mortale
when the predicate is denied
3,Source/Original/ShadowBot v3 – March
2007/index.log,botnet,ShadowBot,3,unknown,cpp,
03/2007,x86,win32. At last, ein Untier. The Nephilim kill.
In the alkali reach, ARYH, traumatic core, δαιμόνιον
or Dogon mask in the Ars Goetia.
Assemblages effectuate the abstract.
Interchange, troia, nod from (Latin: rapiemur),
is evasive later, not inborn. Lock the truce filial insider,
stillicide:  a) Micro-entax b) Meso-entax c) Macro-entax.
Faith. Logic can’t bend this 4,Source/Original/rBot
0.3.3 – May 2004/index.log,botnet,rBot,0.3.3,unknown,
cpp,05/2004,x86,win32. The mediatrix deposits a .docx
in the Lumen gentium and decathects the revenant.
(Not even Baudelairean ennui nor Blanchotian désœuvrement.) 
Agency: the passive structure, postpostpostrevolts.
Refuse collection? In the Sphinx circle, Weyer’s
Pseudomonarchia Daemonum is derived from the Greek
Χριστός (Christos). Mathemes hunt univocity. Not one,
the multiple, is not. Dynamosophy is restored. Seize
fidelity. Enown the Party. Processal flux or vox
populi as militant truth. SAVE UP TO 80%
ON HEALTHCARE and the Spartacus rebellion
5,Source/Original/ZeuS 2.0.8.9 – Feb 2013/index.log,
botnet,ZeuS,2.0.8.9,unknown,
c,02/2013,x86,win32. Spelunk duplex
lung brackish, the suffix rung’s host,
havoc, then bloodied, signifiers.   
Flâneurs pose a surface, fling clew
or demes, taken up. Unfortunately F_edit and F_balance
are not orthogonal, well yield. Caesuras

Daniel Y. Harris is the author of numerous collections of xperimental writing. His individual collections include The Tryst of Thetica Zorg (BlazeVOX, 2018), Volume II of his Posthuman Series and The Rapture of Eddy Daemon (BlazeVOX, 2016), Volume I of his Posthuman Series. He holds an M.Div from The University of Chicago and is Publisher & Editor-in-Chief of X-Peri. His website is danielyharris.com.

In St Mary’s churchyard

a worn path winds through chest tombs
beech branches throw sunlight confetti
to waltz with grave grass and windswept
rain-pocked benches

you prefer this side of the city
where the traffic is a whisper
history a step from the high street

where you know their names
and they say to stay a while

and you have all day – the doctor
signed you off work with anxiety
for a fortnight when your husband
started sleeping with your boss

and she hugged you and thanked
you for the blessing you didn’t give
when you said she was welcome to him

and you prefer keeping the company
of skeletons—the dead give the best advice

as you read their names inside your head
they always share their own transgressions

and they remind you they know you brought
the dark-eyed boy here (the dead have long
memories) no one is innocent
but some try harder than others, they say

and you wonder if they’d rather be
remembered this way, or not at all

Even in another timeline you would not be together

You’ve had this number for years but never dial it. It’s fixed in fading ink and framed by dust – when there was still a choice to make, you made the wrong one. You find yourself resting your chin on her shoulder, reading a line of letters that make perfect sense until you open your eyes. Her shoulder is a pillow. The love notes are scribbled and scrambled on your palms. You string hours together like spiders’ webs; these light nights keep you awake. You capture each minute with drawing pins – tacking them down, cracking the glass orchid sky before it can nudge you off the edge.

Kate Garrett is the editor of Three Drops from a Cauldron, Picaroon Poetry, and Bonnie’s Crew, and her own writing is widely published. Born in rural southern Ohio, she moved to the UK in 1999, where she still lives in Sheffield with her husband, five children, and a sleepy cat. 

deep lime slip light swerkett

a small ball
of green wax

c.w. cracking
eleven angles

that’s the old world
with the wingéd bulls

spider opened a can of coke
& now for the news, he said

that last rotten lettersaurus laughing

dewy insects vs. loading the program

on the edge of the prairie wet and dry

a selenium yarn combo for the post nacho crowd
that miracle color chart changes with the wind

balance of the food groups
to find one waiting on the beach

thinking of the young machines in the river
as the faces melt into the puddle below

the cooking was done in a sandy pit
the juices of all worlds were commingled

J. D. Nelson (b. 1971) experiments with words and sound in his subterranean laboratory. Visit www.MadVerse.com for more information and links to his published work. Nelson lives in Colorado.

oscillation

4 frozen
circles sink in 

                          genetic withdrawal 

500 million 
functions

                          mutate

genomic 
sugar chain 
adenine base
                           hydrogen bond

aligns two strand
end double helix 
encode

                           condons

covert 
long cap replication
spindles fib

                           transfer

tata box.kilobase
less available       

phantom

mixed fuse
vogue abrupts

the plasm 
parity fashion 

a raven 
bites regret

Irene Koronas is the author of numerous collections of xperimental writing. Her individual collections include declivities (BlazeVOX, 2018), Volume III in her Grammaton Series, ninth iota (The Knives Forks and Spoons Press, 2018), Volume II in her Grammaton Series and Codify (Éditions du Cygne, 2017), Volume I in her Grammaton Series). She is an internationally acclaimed painter and digital artist, a graduate of the Massachusetts College of Art & Design and the Publisher and Managing Editor of X-Peri. 

Her hand falls through water,
lotus nocturne, the spinning flower
illuminates the silver treetops.

Moon at the footbridge, the willow
trilling since she was born,
the sky she could be captured.

Riverflow, her nightshade back,
unable to be turned aside,
her fate alights like a dragonfly.

Night flower, the falling water
crushed in red, the dark wood floods
an amulet, the streak lights open.

John Swain lives in Louisville, Kentucky. His most recent chapbook is Over the Silver Maple. 

Here alone
where the
whiskey bent
Western skyline
looks like
twenty four 
yellow roses 
in a
Symphony 
crystal vase

Americana songwriter and Kansas-City-based storyteller K.W. Peery is the author of eight poetry collections: Tales of a Receding Hairline; Purgatory; Wicked Rhythm; Ozark Howler; Gallatin Gallows; Howler Holler; Bootlegger’s Bluff; Cockpit Chronicles. His work is included in the Vincent Van Gogh Anthology Resurrection of a Sunflower, The Cosmic Lost and Found: An Anthology of Missouri Poets (Spartan Press) & Best of Mad Swirl Anthology 2018 Website: www.kwpeery.com

you walk along with the shadows

and the howling sounds of some

alien animals inside your head;

it doesn’t matter, how hard you try-

to keep your gods by the side

you keep the lights on; there

are hands of life touching your face

telling the most innocent of all stories

you have ever heard. you have

a reason to keep it dumb, you have

a reason to hide behind

the veil of comforting geometries; but

the urge to forget, and wake up

in a different universe through the worm-holes

of over-bearing guilt-

it keeps finding you, like those breadcrumbs

for the skin i once had. 

Sudeep Adhikari is a structural engineer/Lecturer from Kathmandu, Nepal.   His poetry has recently appeared in the venues like Boned, The Magnolia Review and Mojave River Review. His 5th book of poetry “anti-philosophical deep dreams” was released by Pski’s Porch Publishing, New-York, USA in March, 2019.  

Portamento

Bedewed groin at dayspring
corporeal blank call to love.

When you oil the system
be wary of skidding.

Friseur or fitter
will never be in the frame.

When you sulk I wish I were
a crackerjack in zoosemiotics.

Laboratory of lazy lines
some fine ones set in.

Post power they gain weight.
Flab isn’t necessarily cellulite.

Don’t evaluate every accomplishment
summative is freighted with substance.

Memo

Sieves through which I peep into you
are rimmed in desire I can’t decrypt.
Body has its breath, may I be permitted
to soak in your senses. Wolves will  
growl. Let them. With mental agility  
we will erect gated enclaves and
rustle them to a fictional menagerie.

Sanjeev Sethi is the author of three books of poetry.  He is published in more than 25 countries. Recent credits: The Poetry Village, Amethyst Review, Picaroon Poetry, Selcouth Station,Talking Writing, Packingtown Review, Modern Poets Magazine,Poydras Review, Red Savina Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Mumbai, India.

Acknowledgments: ‘Portamento’ was first published in Futures Trading. ‘Memo’ was first published in Ann Arbor Review.

(re)lapse

let me tell you this interlock      is not always strength
but sometimes a downfall      I am mostly borrowed limbs

& digits     today I fix that clasp by letting it fall open      
it is the only way      I am trying not to flinch      it makes

things worse      & I don’t want to show you      how in
these fallow times      I use up every good thing   slow

today      I am easily miss-aligned      mistaking neglect
for erasure      or maybe just plain forgetting      it’s not

purely passive      sometimes it’s a sport      & while I
lack the muscle tone      it needs I’ll make up for it

with exhaustion      today I am not at home      but out
learning to be intimate with stones      learning to be

dangerously compressed      & lousy I carry weight
when I could be a filament burning      delicate coiled

alight     & there are all sorts of judgments to be made
but today      I am seeking to be gluttonous

as this want      this longing
                               to be held not held
                               to breathe but not as you taught me

Blood knot

You’ll mistake it for nothing, then. A moment, in which your arms
were a soft parenthesis, your palm open across my back. You pull me

in like a breath and I let it out slow; how love proved a slow decay,
how he etched himself in the marrow. And how I learned fear before

I learned to hope. Now, while you teach me how a blood knot ties
Jupiter is hanging over Brixton. And we mistake her for a star.

Zelda’s work has been widely published in journals, magazines and anthologies including HVTN, The Interpreters House, Popshot, RAUM and Under the Radar. Her first collection, The Girl in the Dog-tooth Coat, was published by Bare Fiction Press in 2015.