poem #4, "FLOOD MY BLOOD"
i extend my arms
okay
a man raises his and
they fall
from 2" past my elbow

clinging to the roots
of the wild onions pulled
from the garden each spring.
Holding fast to thin white
filament, heedless the
whole enterprise is failing;
resolute, even when shaken—
refugees quietly settling the
shallow lines of your palm,
still hopeful for asylum
in the murderous country.

This is how she bakes her body into a soufflé. Without access to bowls, eggs, or oven, she crosses her arms into a knot tied with ligaments. She stares at pillows cross-stitched with leaves hardened into lemons. Only the leaves are attacked by butterflies, she can’t help but notice. The leaves have no trees while the butterflies are monstrous.

2 POEMS by

G r a h a m e  H i n t o n - B a r b e r

Inocea.

Nomolecule iscomplete istheTHING that comprises this moment / NoMORE inthis inthin there is a degree that separates my perception / andit itfits fitsin a FIN separates an ocean / It is a perception of momentum which brings the future- in part- tooooothe
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I feel the unmown grass nettle my spine
as I lie gazing at shape-shifting clouds.
First a duck, then a boat and a bearded man
on a late summer afternoon at our cabin.
The sun arcs west intent on soon ending
this day on my tiny patch of Earth.

An orphaned planet was discovered
floating through space with no light,
no life.

Starlight can shine below the visual
threshold of the human eye.

As a boy I would watch Orion
from the outdoor patio
while my parents drank.

Eventually our own sun
will expand to incinerate
Mercury and Venus at least.

Of Orion the central star of his sword
is the Orion Nebula. Not a star at all.

In the winter of oh-six, the fortune cookie plant in town closed down after a communion wafer company from North Carolina bought it out and it left everyone in town pressed for a job. Everyone still drank as much as they did when they'd had work to blame their drinking on, that didn't change. What changed was how people got a hold of money to pay for their fixes, which made the town buzz a bit more. Smith, Thompson and I were sixteen then, with the usual thoughts that boys have slinking and smiling on their way from their brains down to the most southern tips of their extremities. We had those thoughts every second of every minute and we always thought they'd stay thoughts because between the three of us, the best our combined physical features could have made if put together would have resembled something similar to a deer's ass. So we did the most logical thing we could think of to turn those sticky thoughts into action. We started a band. I played bass, Smith played drums, and Thompson sang. We got a gig at The Nose Job a few miles away in Glamadis because Smith's sister knew one of the sound guys, and we told him we could play the first half of some record I can't remember.

Nomolecule iscomplete istheTHING that comprises this moment
NoMORE inthis inthin there is a degree that separates my perception
andit itfits fitsin a FIN separates an ocean
It is a perception of momentum which brings the future- in part- tooooothe

Sapiens: In the Midst by Rick Ewing

PLUG-IN: “RAS-CLOT likkle feds threatened to go after my family.” She began to cry when I got her on the phone. “Oh, Billy, it was horrid. I never heard what agency they were from, but they couldn’t tolerate that a monkey accomplished what you did.” She said my work hadn’t been destroyed, that it had been cached in some kind of inaccessible vault, like a NORAD missile silo.
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Part and parcel of the loyalty I feel towards “the business” is an inherent desire to explain to anyone who'll listen why I think it is of cultural significance and / or, value; there’s always a level of evangelism arising from subculture membership. I have favorite wrestlers, I've fantasy booked the territory. I have a theoretical model for how the business should be transacted.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am delighted to welcome you to the one and only performance of Mitchell Miracle and his Cakes of Instruction!

[Enthusiastic applause and whistling]

Many of you are still settling into your seats, and I will use this opportunity to remind you that all photography, as well as video and audio recording, are prohibited during the performance. You should, in fact, have remitted all electronic devices, in addition to personal effects like purses, wallets, car keys, eye liner, old receipts, bank statements, lip balm, candy, and rape whistles to the gentlemen at the door. Those two guys were hard to miss, am I right?

Grief is too often a tight rope of stoicism
and unbecoming.

For the guests she wore a black gown,
thumbed the chain around her neck like a rosary.

Mouthed the words to a song she once knew
by heart. Perched at the front of a room,
urn knocking against her ribs like a lover.

I decided to run again.

So simple. What’s to it but to start running? To not stop?

After I’d paid my registration fee for the race, after I’d plotted an early-to-bed, early-to-rise sleep schedule and a diet that revolved around kale and Gatorade, and after that initial hamstrings-calves-shins-knees-back-abdominal stretch, I set sneakers to pavement.

My knees ached first, a half-mile in. I’d known this pain before and kicked through it.

At the first mile marker, I sucked wind, a familiar burning in my lungs. Big deal! It’s called conditioning!

Plug-In:

“Ras-clot likkle feds threatened to go after my family.” She began to cry when I got her on the phone. “Oh, Billy, it was horrid. I never heard what agency they were from, but they couldn’t tolerate that a monkey accomplished what you did.” She said my work hadn’t been destroyed, that it had been cached in some kind of inaccessible vault, like a NORAD missile silo.