Sonnet for Boston
by Noelle Kocot
A flower in the window, these latitudes, iridescent.
I only wanted to touch your sleeve as you went by,
Foggy and lovely, flaking off the residue of night.
Atmosphere thickening, keep on going in the locked
City, pressed maybe against a store's glass. The
Randomly delicate windows, somewhere, there is
Certain calm, an interior recognizable on these empty
Streets. What reaches something in you, what gives
Its moments unto us. In the hotel, people move about,
Clouds in motion, whatever is dealt to you, accept it,
But not necessarily quietly. My orange quavering, circa
1990, my insoluble bond thereafter, I know you are rumpled
Into the olden sense that does not erode. Building,
Brick-edged, the shadows and whiteness are nearly whole.
*
To the Q
by Sarah Sarai
Tattooed or pimply,
briefcased, suitcased,
stinky plastic bag encased,
fists tight on pillowy
breasts or slack arms,
head atilt, aftersmiles
flickering like flickers
flick as it all streams
open and by unto us,
river, estuary, ocean
limp as a quilt on our
beach ball home and
the sun, the sun sparkling
from, glinting in, flattering
even briefcased wolfish
suits growling to steal
hearts and devour but
first we all (all) inside
the car look for marvels
(marvels) racing past.
*
13/4/13 morningpoem
by Elizabeth Treadwell
*
Urban Consolation : Altar : Subaltern
by Michelle Detorie
*
Altars and subalterns
by Sarah Anne Cox
a garland for Artemis
From virgin meadow from virgin greenery
Hippolytus places reverent
from his pure soul
As much as he hates Aphrodite, she hates him
as much
her altar bare
but scripting death
the lopsided stage
as much as children make one
impure
the night’s labors
her catastrophe a secondary consideration
*
Midwestern Altars & Offerings
(If mine was a family/culture that practiced ancestor worship)
by Nicole Stefanko-Fuentes
Black soil and peonies
a passing shadow in the chrome
a sunfish slipped back into the water
Recitations of the periodic tables
voices in the gravel
by the cars
on the porch at
the cottage at Linden Lake
Horseradish, dill
Crown Royal &
cucumber seedlings under a storm window
cleared of snow
Detroit Tigers & Lions
borscht bright roses
& rosaries
for the grandchildren
Old names & young mothers
Alexo & Stella
elemental again
*
yerba buena
by Elizabeth Treadwell
over in the copse-place, on this royal oak day
by the lake-oak, beneath the temple
send your altar’d consolations,
yo to line this threadbare mecca
with motion y contraption gracias
*
[I blew up a bed]
by Becca Klaver
*
URBAN / CONSOLATION
by Taylor Brady
floating up rooting
complexity of the nude
has no unicorn today
is also spring the rumpled
caterpillar and advice re: tasers
and the test shots cops
fired off last night because they could
an epic poem only 50
copies an amazing London
performance in June should I
fade before horizon comes the whole
picture comes to grief comes to gray comes
in at the window and ignoring it my nose
roots in at the base of your neck
at everyone growing up
in the immediate all-girl
Egyptian heavy metal
talk of poetry and a glass
of wine with you storms out
in honor of the farm
whose “ideology of child-murder”
is this but ours machines
and images of cats
a voiceover gig standing
still before the fountain
which often goes on lockdown
ten years proposed as more or less
enough to forget the mass massing
snow falls not here stop this
lawman at the grocery store
been going mad be safe be over
soon about as empty as it gets the blast
is classed as either public or as
private as the face you share with anyone
/
skin comes to
tend to where
your touch lifts
off and there's
the world that
comes to hurt
*
GOTHAM
by Shanna Compton
The word grotesque
comes hidden
in a small cave.
Its meaning restricted
to an extravagant style.
Copied in factual rooms,
in the unfinished palaces
singed in the unceasing Great Fires.
It is overgrown and buried,
until broken.
It spreads
to other languages.
Long used
for decorative curving,
it sprouts foliage elements.
Generally adjective—
strange, fantastic, ugly,
incongruous, unpleasant,
disgusting—we arrive at
weird shapes In art.
Here is an audience
uncomfortable in their
collective pity.
This is a gargoyle—he is
an immense hybridity,
a fundamental grotesque.
*
for Urban Consolations/Altars/Subalterns
by Ash Smith
*
wifthing two
a (sub)urban consolation for Elizabeth Treadwell et al
by Pattie McCarthy
suburban recompense he
says fundamental grotesque & a large
latte to go bring me the paper
work bring me double-knotted
gnawed on thumbnails bring me
stims bring me my big girl bed
volvo full of ornamental grasses
I'll be on the 2.34 I have
soft pretzels we might even have a gap
coupon for 30% off privacy
winter fall spring l'ete great now
can you say that all in English
what do you mean
a pastoral a paradise & me
without my umbrella at chaos baseball
find my body here & that praxis
*
Faerie Drill
by Melissa Eleftherion Carr
*
the future as it was seen then
by kathryn l. pringle
a tree folds over the falling
ignorance a reckoning of vision
a sign
the stilling veins
an open someone
forgets environment
forgets or becomes
a forensic seer
rounding opposition
salivating orders
remembering so
owns vocalization
a tale sprung and bated
a grandiose schemata
tilling each chord
mining each synapse
what we forget is blood carries everything through us
