comes the new chemical.

the reasonable obsolescence
of love displaced
by this new chemical.
digital blood and laughter
down from the fucking sun.

ironically, like the wrath
and loving scorn of gomorrah’s god
and their blood and their love.

-garrett dawson

rolls throughout
his rattle skull.

it’s like wind, it’s like the wind
stirring up a hail of sand.
womb to blood to dirt

as he stares
as he stares with eyes of milk
as he stares blind to sorrow
as he stares, drowned in the filament
of a million torrents

as he stares, this muse
is perpetually late. and he stares

while a heart turns iron.
heart of iron,
heart of pot metal.

heart of entropy

and he stares, while this thorn
pulls blood from his side.

an anchor.

-garrett dawson

casts out, wells up
from the antique stomach.
a smattering of loneliness

heart of iron.

-

he stands there (here)
along the lip of a canyon,
the edge of a deep wound.
perpetual restoration, as
gravity delivers him up.

instead of down.

-

the hissing tines, taking up
their mouthfuls of skin.
spitty runnels of black ink
evidenced in the wound.

in the word.

-

this revelation of vomitous despair
runs along the corners of his mouth.
old man, old loneliness. age old.

smattering of loneliness

-garrett dawson

is another work I can only guess at.
spells the robbery, smoke
from the dog kilns. oh – there’s love.

somewhere, this universe too large
for a thing to be absent. the truth
has it’s opposite; he’s riding hard
on a black/buckling foal, through the language.
swollen heart, fat with hatred – not discipline.

-garrett dawson

I was wandering the woods and slept in a duck blind, I heard wings flapping close to me and then a rifle shot and a splash, the full moon panicked and rolled across the sky like a gray marble, and tore through all clouds in its way -

I drink the air if its warm enough, I leave it inside of me to heat me up, because my heart became cold a long time ago, I smoke to loosen up my lips and someday I will tell you how I came here, for now I can only see properly when there is smoky air, I see faces assembled out of wisps and they call out my name but when I turn my head all I see is traffic -

Can you lend me some shoes so I can make it over there? My shoes get stolen whenever I go to sleep, or sometimes filled in with shit, my socks are tearing open and my skin is tearing open too, kids come with spray cans and once I asked them for socks or food and they kicked and pissed on me instead, I want to sleep in the empty millionaire summer houses and keep those ghosts company, misery loves company -

Sometimes I step into the woods and if I blink I see corpses hanging by nooses from the branches, naked but wearing blankets, thick wool blankets, they hang by their necks from old stiff branches way above me, I see blood dripping to the ground, the ground littered with take out containers and a deep bed of leaves, I know some people sleep beneath, their graves are marked by the stone they tripped on when they fell in, collapsed in the cold, I cover them with my body but they never warm up, I cut my hand open so they can drink it but of course they drink it all -

I reached out for the moon, the moon was a rolling coin that night, maybe a nickel, it rolled into the horizon, into a slot in the horizon and it was a payment for the day to begin, like turning on a pinball machine, I reached out and if I had grabbed it I would have had an extra nickel, but then who would pay for the day to begin?

I buried him in the leaves, I buried her in the leaves, the bodies I saw hanging from branches fell apart, each limb floated away instead of falling, the limbs formed faint flocks of birds, maybe every flock passing over is actually a body cut apart, and when the birds land in moonlit clearings they reassemble into people again and walk laps around town, to consecrate the town, to protect the town, to curse the town -

I blinked again and the bodies were gone

I ran to the bridge, the sun wasn’t up yet, I took a fishing pole and tossed the hook and fished out the sun and tossed it into the sky and it flew across the sky so quickly most people slept through it and didn’t know a day had passed, but I lived through that short day and have added it to my age -

in the evening I stood in my own smoke, in front of the train station, I saw jesus throw a cross necklace into the air and catch it, mary slept on the steps nearby, she had an affair with a human man, god was jealous but he didn’t tell anyone for fear it would be recorded in scripture, and he always forgets to say ‘this is off the record’, I knew she was dreaming up wishes she could only tell to the devil since her and the lord have some history already -

I slept under the bridge, the cars passed over me, at first it was loud and aggressive but as my dreams got larger the sounds got smaller and all I could hear were memories of old mistakes I made when I thought I was always right, but now I know I am always wrong, and only in that belief am I correct, ironically -

christopher bullock

and up, sends his crown
through the crystal ceiling.

like the clouds are liquidating
their almost angels. blood and water.

brings down the sky, shower
of teeth. an unexpected gomorrah.

garrett dawson

Just got a job,
but still broke as before
but now with less time.
I need to do more wrong things
since the wrong plans are the
only plans which ever work out.
People walk away when I speak
so I might as well shout,
towns are made for cars now
so these legs are unsure of themselves.
It takes so long to get anywhere -
might as well lie down
and let hunger eat itself.

(let hunger eat my legs
let hunger eat my arms
let hunger eat my head
and the skull inside
the brain the eyes the jaw the lips
hunger will eat my body
and when this body is gone
hunger will eat my bed
hunger will eat my room
hunger will never stop
until a baby cries
then it might stop)

I woke up in a hospital
I thought I saw animals all around me
bears, giraffes, transparent but alive.
I blinked and heard gunfire downstairs.
Then you found me and fed me some water,
it is good you never called me back -

I don’t mean to bring you down,
but I probably will anyway.
Hanging out by the water fountain
watching ants pour out of the sidewalk
I look up and all of a sudden
I can see into the sun and
I see particles of light
not yet exposed to
our contagious darkness
down here.

christopher bullock

you—in that dirty, yellow tank top,
the once white fabric holding in
the bronzed body caked in grit and dust.

And was it her—that lovely skinny thing—
who kissed your neck, her flowing brown hair
falling down around her? (And how she’d look

when it was raining—hands in pockets,
looking up to God for it was spring
and indeed time for resurrection.)

And what about those times when
she threw off all her clothes and danced
naked and wild and howling?

Do you remember how together you’d lie at night
in the back of a pick-up
parked exactly half-way between here and

Pueblo? And what of that one particular instant
when she looked at you
as if she wanted to scream, but she

swallowed and held it in and you swallowed
and asked nothing and so
nothing was said until dawn?

This—this existence of too much sun
and not enough drugs, food, sex
(what was it that was lacking?)—

this existence of the suntanned pauper king
and his 6 string pawn shop guitar,
this existence spent dwelling,

understanding the notion of sharing bodies—
it was not enough for any of us
and so we packed cardboard boxes,

dreamt of other horizons,
and dared to believe that what we didn’t need
we would leave behind.

christopher poore

garrett dawson

separate and ghostly perditions,
hallways of image and vastness-
both bright and terrible.

yours and mine own biological artifice
sees son-cast shadows that
eat imagination by the measure,
grind-and-tumble rapturous laughter,
jumps, so bacchic for the
crackling spaces in between.

robert cole-sackett

robert cole-sackett

a brother’s name,
exumed from foreign soil.
their numbered years next-

a sloppy list
on a cold sidewalk
that lines the border
between private enterprise
and public agony

i don’t see anyone praying

these lightly chalked epitaphs.
the snow will bury them
again tonight, the cold
will separate powder from cement,
offering up dust
to reverberating emptiness

melt water has never learned of letters,
will carry these names
into a deeper gutter

garrett dawson

robert cole-sackett

And as I rooted deep
in mediation,
shadows grew and shadow’d figures on the wall
became my distant, grudging host and legion,
eating at my hearts desire.
The curse that ate the later coming body
came the same as that which ate at
Lazarus’ flesh, and at the tomb’s gate swallowed up
the child that rested in the mother’s softening womb.
When these eyes bright-flashed at omens,
simple and unbending, telling of a passing life,
the child in ceremony sang
and bowed before the movement of the tepid knife.

Up in the hills
(precluding mounds of death and mountain),
parching for the swallowed crest,
the whorish sang of sex and Babylon,
and songs that sang of tasted lust passed by, in pace,
and carried on, so that the pious
gave me meaning,
there I lingered on.

And as the sage’s rustlling tampered,
beaten by the snow’s-bed falling,
the window filled became the saddened calling
for the green to go about its dying
and to fall about our paths.

robert cole-sackett

of your mother’s life.
segue from her mother
into you, mother

seems an endlessly repeating
field of vision.
snow on a television

what can you pull
from those drifts of emptiness

garrett dawson

unfolded fingers let loosen stoplights on a slow blink
a necklace of yellow teeth pulled from a meth head’s mouth
i was desparate for a dollar but forgot to check her bra
i folded fingers back up again, and lifted a sidewalk tile
shined a cellphone flashlight on worms and beetles.
(had to click the buttons to keep the screen lit,
heard a voice and said nothing until they hung up)

you can check the accuracy of a number by the phonebooks i have stacked in the bathroom,
the letter z is a hidden compartment hollowed out and glued solid.
a wedding ring shook around inside, bent at impossible angles
i switched it out with some wire and unlucky broken mirror parts
flushed the toilet, pulled up my pants, accidentally locked the door behind me

i held the ring in my sweaty hands and closed my eyes and let it guide me
walked in random directions until i found her, choking on peanut butter
McDonalds wasnt open yet, so she was doing what she needed to do -
i dropped the ring into her hand and said it was a great painkiller
(she said she didn’t take pills but i didn’t believe her
i could tell because i saw ghosts between the trees, spying on her flesh
since the dead want to take her over an experience weak life again)

somebodys alarm clock went crazy with loud talk radio
i stepped aside to let the sounds pass by
but a bus went by instead, the one i wanted to catch,
and i wondered if she would mind if i stayed there for an hour

(my mumbling facade, my blow dryed hair
i was getting wet again with sweat, giggling to myself once in while
over an old joke that doesn’t make much sense nowadays)

chris bullock

the family tree
from a water rotten acorn

it sows the blind ambiguity
of a man growing
out of something not completely whole

out of ground salted
with visions of god
with the goatish television

that tree be tangled
the branches hang
in empty space
isolated, apart, and forgetting…

grudgingly dropping their rotten fruit
at winter wind’s undeniable claim

the identical seed
a blackened forest of identical trees

garrett dawson

Oh well, I saw an old bird chewing on
a roadkill of macabre colors.
Oh well, I saw a little girl
sewing something on the swingset,
while the barbeque flirtations went inside
for uncomfortable sex in the pale bedrooms -
mattresses inflated on the floor.
A book about dinosaurs lay open
and the wind turned the pages.
When the wind was done reading
it just blew the book into the wall.

Footprints on homework:
that’s how I felt at that age,
or was I ever that age?
I don’t remember it.

The sun turned around and mooned us,
that’s how I knew it was night.
We covered our eyes and hoped
a vision of the holy ghost in our head
would light up the hallway with its gospel,
but I just saw my own fingers over my eyes
but I just saw the microscopic geometry
of my own breath, spreading out, evaporating.

She buried her flowers in the backyard,
made a grave and everything -
named each one twice, different names,
in case the first name was taken already.
The pots became storage for bubble gum wrappers
always useful for licking the old taste off later,
The evening is a parade of grownups
they hope they’ll enjoy the day before it ends -
the fragrance of fingerprints rising from
the kitchen counter where several small bugs
were born.

chris bullock