June 2015

#finalpoems / [?]

Daily, I reflect on vignettes from the past and how they contribute to an end where one might feel true and full and patient and understanding of life’s brutality and why that might have made love so precious and indefinable and actions so fragile.

Clarice Lispector’s Near to the Wild Heart is brewed from these moments, allowing her to breathtakingly voice the ineffable – that which we so badly want to convey and make known but don’t know how to parse into pieces as measly as words.

I carry on always inaugurating myself, opening and closing circles of life, tossing them  aside, withered, full of past. … Moments so intense, red, condensed in themselves that they didn’t need past or future in order to exist. They brought a knowledge that didn’t serve as experience – a direct knowledge, more like sensation than perception. The truth then discovered was so much the truth that it couldn’t subsist except in its recipient, in the actual fact that had provoked it. So true, so fatal, that it only revolves around its matrix. Once the moment of life is over, the corresponding truth is also drained.

Like there’s no way in shit I could have articulated that.

But I once dreamt of:

a room where a tide of your own tears rushes in, summoned by questions you ask of yourself while looking in a mirror

a tall, spectral woman in a fitted white satin dress with a Dalmatian at her side

a brotherly friend’s death from being struck by a car

a homecoming.

And remembered:

foggy months of artless sobbing upon making eye contact with anyone, especially     myself

that my grandmother loved Dalmatians

how a friend I never told I loved and valued died on the freeway, struck by a car

the feel of loose tiles and the way grief seeps.

And told:

A man:
el amor regresa a ti

A student in despair:
you’re falling down a pit with stakes at the bottom: find a trampoline

A lover:
no puedo ser la mujer que quieres

A friend:
I want you to cry over this book

Another friend:
that guilt shouldn’t be yours and will kill you

But I can’t have words for the end if I don’t know who they’re for.

This is like that one time I wrote in a job application that I couldn’t propose ideas for fundraisers because I didn’t know all the intricacies of the situation and wanted to avoid offering the impossible. I basically ended with, “So you should hire me and we’ll figure it out.” I don’t work there.

I guess at the end we may all feel a little helpless, much as we did throughout the whole damn racket, but nothing like the start in which we had no reason for doubt or knowledge of life’s trials which infuse and drown us. That’s a romantic and ageist viewpoint. Babies are the smartest – doing the essentials and leaving it at that.

And in that case, I might again state “el amor regresa a ti.” Maybe your broken body will fuel a wayward seed.

#finalpoems / [?]

“A Late Summer Sunset”

It’s almost dark, can’t you hear it?
We weren’t supposed to get this far.
The ending, the setting, the
quieting fire on the horizon.

Hold your breath and
count to ten, it shouldn’t hurt at all.
If you don’t think it will burn
then it won’t,
not at all.

It might feel good even,
if you let it soak in enough.
Like oil on skin, rubbing away the rust
of old scars.

Flesh won’t matter soon,
won’t matter at all.
At sundown in cold shadows,
there’s only silence and the moon.

Let it embrace you,
this hour in all its yearning glory.
The night will extinguish what came undone, and
there won’t be another morning.

#finalpoems / [?]

final offers

Unsaid and unsaid. What kind of silence is it?

The gift of silence must be reserved for the worthy, and carefully offered.

Silence can be: acceptance, surrender, acknowledgment, cessation of request, abandonment,
emptiness or endings.

The unsaid, it goes without saying, is the only thing left
when fear steals hands and feet and minds.

Or silence can be strong. Our voices are not restricted to our lips and tongues, but an integration of every single living mote that defines our lives. What we do, what words ring from us, what ripples from the few moments of each existence, should
be mindful

of the power

of all the potential words, steps, tokens, touches, kisses, encouragements, acknowledgements, whispers, works, songs and howls, that ideate from each
of our best selves.

What kind of silence?

My pages need to evolve faster. Sometimes crisis is the only catalyst that can release me from this torpor. My refractory period is delayed by my algorithm. Is my silence a refusal to choose?

Any silence that I embrace, should be a gathering up of strength, an aligning of my shoulders and feet, preparing me for my next push into whatever work stands in the path.

Do not listen for me, and hearing nothing, think that I have abandoned the fight.
When you hear my silence, stand up. It’s the sound I make when I breathe in.

Let any silence I make become a signal of no surrender.
I give or accept no final poem. Whatever is next, is. My best offerings are bottle-rocket days, filled with the unreserved push of everything I am, focused and released in a single direction.
I make choices and take chances. Then, re-align and push again.

#finalpoems / [?]

Not Everything Straddles the Line Between Hope

& less.

I drank two cups of coffee
this morning
& no one could tell me
what it felt like to be a diamond.

See. No conspiracy.
Just teeth.
I can’t go into hardware stores
without holding every

hammer they have in my arms.

When I collapse beneath them.

I’ll just stay there a while.

When I pull myself out.

I’ll look at the things around me.

A car on fire.
A bumper sticker:

This world is round
because of you. 

Dalton Day is the author of FAKE KNIFE. Dalton Day can be found at myshoesuntied.tumblr.com & twitter.com/lilghosthands. Dalton Day hasn’t stopped trembling in a long, long time.

#finalpoems / [?]

Walking Slow

The sun can rise as many times as it wants to,

the end is no nearer than it was before.

Know this, and feel safe,

because it justifies our stagnation,

our refusal to change our mired ways.

Know that here, you can keep walking slow

and save your unfinished sentences and your frozen clocks,

your promises and your potential and whatever else you plan to leave behind.

Don’t surrender just yet, you’ve still got time to run from the searchlights

and we’re all only young anyway.

Your conclusion is forever ahead of you,

it runs while you sleep. Don’t hope to catch up.

Gaze with fierce wonder upon the world you’ve half-made,

upon the world you’ll someday leave,

and walk slow with your head in the present and your eyes on the sun,

the sun, which will rise in vain,

day after day after unending day, changing nothing.

There is safety in the now. Know this, and feel safe,

because although it will end,

by then it will be tomorrow.

#finalpoems / [?]

An Amulet of Desire

Escaping the labyrinth
in itself gives mirth.

Birth.
Earth.

Giving birth to mirth doesn’t seem
to be the ultimate desire.

Earth is round.
More circles & curves.

But dichotomies are lacing our lives
w/ blurred semantics.

& semantics is not but the study of our desires.—
A study sealing tautological tattoos on our
bodies

,,, again and again,
till the scars are permanently stamped.

Ali Znaidi (b.1977) has had poetry appearing in more than 200 literary publications across several countries. For more details you can visit his blog at  aliznaidi.blogspot.com and follow him on Twitter @AliZnaidi.

#finalpoems / [?]

(Click to view PDF)

#finalpoems / [?]

Too soon…

Bible in my lap,
A bowl of cereal
In my hands,
I await my turn.

A prayer on my dried lips
And my son at my meaty hip,
I await my turn.

Oxidized rain dance and sear targets –
Lemon-yellow brimstone end lives,
Despair and fear tangible,
Eyes round as Oreos, no use
To screaming, this is a mess.

Glimmers of hope
Dangle on staccato heart strums,
Searching for
Last minute miracles,
Fantasy survival fading.

Sulfuric tears,
He is asleep,
I hold on
And await my turn.

Born and raised in South Central Los Angeles, CA, Kiyatana Sapp discovered she could be heard via writing as a little girl. A poet/spoken-word artist, she has earned a B.A. in Child Development, a M.F.A. in Creative Writing, and was recently certified to teach Creative Writing.

#finalpoems / [?]

Tongue Tied at the End

The things I’d tell you
with your arms wrapped around my hips
if the buildings weren’t crumbling
and I could move my lips.

The songs I’d sing you
long after the stroke of midnight
if the clocks would still tick
metronome beats to our bodies’ riffs.

I’d give you the bouquet—
brilliant as blooming hills in the spring—
if rain woke the open-casket river to
let us remember the pinks, the greens.

But
these things,
these songs,
these flowering thoughts,
only come
tongue tied
at the end.

If the Earth stopped shaking
and I moved my lips
I’d tell you how your body is an eclipse
that wraps me in darkness,
the only light, your soul,
a halo around the moon’s last night.

If the clocks moved again with redemption,
I’d sing you a song that would never need
rewrite, the first note to the last would be
flawless, and we’d dance at each hourly
chime.

But
The dry earth crumbles,
rumbles timeless now and
we let our tongues tie together
at the end—
tangled, silent,
intertwined.

#finalpoems / [?]

Tomorrow When I Die

Tomorrow when I die
You will not shed a single tear
For I know how you are
I am so insignificant in your heart
That my death will have no effect on you

She is manic-depressive
That’s why she killed herself
You would say

Tomorrow when I die
All my tears will have run dry
I will have no fame or fortune to leave behind

I will be like an autumn leaf
Falling, falling, falling
Until I finally reach the ground
And then my remains
Will be swept away by the wind
Forever forgotten

#finalpoems / [?]

Reliving

Riding my ten speed bicycle
On the hills of Monterey Park
Like surfing, all that curvy leaning
Flowing with the wind rushing
Over tee shirt, arms, shorts and legs

View from the high dive
At the public park plunge
Then I knife the water
Feel bubbles flow past me
In the turquoise under sky

Waking to bars of light
Through dancing blinds
Slide window open even more
Unseeable air fills the room
Refreshing my face and body

Shaking out cereal for breakfast
Pouring carton milk into plastic bowl
Scooping spoons of flakes
Sterling silver in my mouth
Lumpy river falls down my throat

Driving on the highway
Surrounded by flat chapparal
In the middle of the state
Sunrise on the hilly horizon
Yessongs provide the soundtrack

Carrying her up the stairs
Laying her on the bed
Gazing for the first time upon
Her naked flesh in person
As I undress my future wife

Watching a small wet head
Covered in mucous and blood
Emerge from hairy opening
Gently crying—it’s a boy
As he pees on the delivering doctor

Raphael’s Laxshmi seduces
From a portable CD player
While ponytailed lover lowers
Her tongue encircling my penis
In a room of the massage parlor

Finally losing the snaggletooth
That has been wobbling for months
Drinking vigorously a glass of milk
Sudden space where it used to be
Gulp!

Restaurant French toast, orange juice
Tommy’s chili, thick hot Belly Buster fries
Fosselman’s mint chocolate chip shake
Chunky chocolate chip cookies
Watermelon, cantaloupe, honeydew

In my own rented bathroom
Taking another comforting shit
After a meal, sensing the moist
Brown tuber taper into porcelain
Wiping, flushing the pile away

Kissing soft lips in our office
Sitting in black pleather chairs
Before an unfolded folding table
Laptops resting atop lighted
With colorful internet programs

#finalpoems / [?]

(Click to view complete PDF)

#finalpoems / [?]

For Late Admirers

I see the exiled poet
standing at the edge
of a roman city
waiting for hungry lions
eastern dragons
or dagger-carrying women
to immortalize his work.

too late
to praise lyrics.
a lifetime lived
to hear nothing.
your words are spit
on flowers planted
next to white stones.

I see your secret fear
you cannot face the elephant
or remind our countrymen
that faith is an Art
lost and found
by souls
standing their ground.

now is too late
to worship our work
and ponder clever clues
to your sorry existence
please do that your damn selves
we do not die to leave instruction
we die to leave you.

Mark Antony Rossi’s poetry, criticism, fiction and photography have appeared in The Antigonish Review, Another Chicago Review Bareback Magazine, Black Heart Review, Collages & Bricolages, Death Throes, Deep South Journal, Ethical Specacle, Deep South Journal, Flash Fiction, The Magill Review, Japanophile, On The Rusk, Purple Patch, Sentiment Literary Journal, The Sacrificial and Wild Quarterly.

#finalpoems / [?]

Ten Horns

A crowd waving sticks marches toward us.
My father pushes me up a tree and climbs behind me.

Higher, he says. Higher. He believes we’ll be fine
as long as somebody doesn’t knock down the tree.

The crowd is shouting: Death to the Shah!
I’m pretty sure someone will knock it down.

?

On second thought, it was a rotten idea
to attend the ambiguity conference on our honeymoon.

?

The good news is that there isn’t any right or wrong.
Just because you are right doesn’t mean I am wrong.

And even if you don’t understand what I’m doing,
it doesn’t mean I am doing the wrong thing

again.

?

Cousin Jenny sends me a fish in the mail from Havana,
packed in a form of ice that never melts.
I place it beside a large pile of marijuana.
It is so beautiful no one notices the pot.

?

Julia’s magnetic gaze. The iron in my hand.
She blinks twice. I drop everything.

?

I spend the first week of Ramadan reading a 600 page
novelized homo-erotic poem which boils down to syrup.

How quickly guilt can lead to resentment, and anger
to jealousy and betrayal, and nowhere does it lead to liberty
even though it’s a French novel full of contradictory words.

My favorite part of Ramadan—an extravagant petit dejeuner.

?

Puts down phone. “That was Janet,” Tommy says.
“Willy and Janet just got $30 million.”

Pleading expression. Mouth open. Blinking.
“I mean, what do I have to do around here to get $30 million?”

?

My mother is crying so hard
her tears change the color of Texas.

I am kneeling.
I am kissing each small green stain.

?

Three things:
an Austrian racing chopper,
a lonely intersection in southwest Virginia,
a flatbed ribbed with logs crossing over the painted divider.

?

My father, driving the truck.

Barrett Warner is the author of the forthcoming collection Why Is It So Hard to Kill You? (Jane’s Boy, 2015) and My Friend Ken Harvey (Publishing Genius, 2014).

#finalpoems / [?]

The Sound is the Thing

I’m off to the realm of pure experience! What I’ve left and what I have departed from is as small as a cookie—a sizeable drum. Drum me off to my arrival and in Illyria they’ll say:

This is the country of your experience you will know it by its sound.

Tonight I saw Camille Claudel. There is a scene in the movie that is the most intense spiritual impasse, which could and could not be an impasse and must be one.

I am so sad.

I am appreciating I am not crazy (that I am not in some way worse than in prison). And was Claudel very proud??

Yesterday I missed class! Amelia said she—the teacher—didn’t even notice. But alas I arrived too late and sat in a Barnes and Noble reading an article about Matana Roberts instead of listening to a lecture on William James.

I decided to listen from a far.

You were going to let me sit in on your class on Pure Experience but I have decided to do some investigative work, in the stead of that place where I was supposed to be.

I gather you teach a class so that we can listen to the sound.

The night before the last class I crouched down in a row of Barnes and Noble over “Experience”—it went under me, under my hips on the carpeted ground. I felt, as I was hovering above it, like I was singing in a round.

Everything began, for me, because of invisibility.

Sometimes I feel that it would be necessary to write as if it were impossible, like the transmutation of sound.

That’s because of the spiritual necessity you spoke of, of altering neuronal pathways.

I see Roberts as exploring this possibility, through history, poetry and sound.

I cannot afford to traffic in any sign, Olson said, than the one.

Emerson said he believed that it would not be necessary to be in the same place at the same time for his friend to feel the effects.

Everything I get I get from a magazine, from Barnes and Noble

My solitude pains me but it is not as unsettling as sound.

Have you read a book? I care about it. I speak clumsily but am unsettled, that much is clear.

Caring is not like hurting. What I’ve gotten and should remember in the middle of pictures of dead authors and nameless other people on the wall.

Roberts says: If it wasn’t for these things happening. What would have happened to me?

But who is it that I cannot see but intuit.

I live in the Starbucks. I take off my shoe and drink from the bloody shoe. Through lunacy I examine a religious experience. Up close I disturb myself.

I am not comforted by sound as I am comforted by Starbucks but know, as the cookie was known or knew, before it disappeared, I mean broke down, this pure experience—where—in the realm of a giant’s bum like the play by Nathaniel Mellors, an actor’s sound through Peach Blossom:

Peach Blossom Pool is deep,
            A thousand change, so they say…
            …But it’s nowhere as deep as the love
            you show me, just to see me off so

Trish Aherne is a visual artist and fiction writer living in San Francisco. Aherne lives with her cat, Mouse, and roommate of 7 years. “Saint Margaret in the Belly” is a part of a story collection Trish is working on centered on the theme of saints.

#finalpoems / [?]

RISING WATERS

Jenny fell in the river and drowned three years ago. I still haven’t realized she won’t be pulling herself to shore. She took my virginity to the grave. And falling in love is one argument away from falling to your death. All of my previous girlfriends have driven a Ford Taurus and all have had terrible taste men. My neurotransmitters fall in a forest and nobody hears them. You know how when you buy a carton of cigarettes and it feels like they will be there forever so you smoke more than you usually would, just because you have the resources right in front of you—that’s how I burned through my dopamine. This afternoon my addiction doctor told me I’m a rare case of recovery, most people don’t do this well, he said. I’m just too old to come down anymore, I said back to him while holding a National Geographic magazine about rising sea levels. The Statue of Liberty was trying to keep her head above water on the cover. Just yesterday I was young. Today I sit on my hand to put it to sleep, then I place it on my shoulder to feel the touch of someone else. I haven’t felt attractive since my first camera phone. I haven’t taken a dick pic since I started taking Celexa. Why can’t we live in a world where Haley Joe Osmet never gets old? People try not to stay lonely for very long even if their partner makes them more miserable than being alone. As I child I believed I would die by quicksand and that people in the position of power—doctors, parents, the president, cops, teachers—all knew more than me, they knew what was going on, they spoke the truth, they had this shit handled. But now I believe in quicksand as much as I believe in anybody called human. Wisdom is when you realize people can only be people and nothing more. And part of people is the evil part—the ego, the greed, the baby pictures. I hope for our sake that the Statue of Liberty can swim.

BIG BANG

I want to write something relevant. I want this headache to go away. I want to read inspirational quotes by anonymous people so I can be inspired to be a nobody. The hum of the universe is in D flat, I am tone deaf, clueless in the big bang. Universe fucked—luminous spheres of plasma held together by their own gravity. Deep space, the back of your throat— birthing legions of stars like rabbits fucking in a hutch. So many stars to reach for but I don’t —I might get burned. Instead I take a shit while I look through a small book of useless things. There is a picture of the open road and I watch myself go down it, alone. My chronic wanderlust is stirred by half-buried Cadillacs and the world’s biggest jack rabbit, a dead bird belly up in the rain. We are bouncing on the immense blue sky, barely tethered—tumbleweeds of nerve endings and teeth. We don’t know anything. The sky is what should be worshiped, not the religions that live in it. From the black hole we came out ironic, kicking and breathing and screaming, finally each of us settled on a unique disease. By the luck of the draw I got depression, anxiety and addiction. Low self-esteem isn’t a disease, it’s just in your head. Evolution requires rubber bones and the ability to reason. Pretend you are beautiful until you are, or stay below the river bank where the stars are hazy—a finned creature without lungs

#finalpoems / [?]

If we’re talking about entropy
the end times
nada y pues nada
then let’s go out like we lived.

Let the lawns yellow and brown.
Let the neighbors talk.
Let all pretense of respectability
slip into arguments about celebrities.

I like all the disaster movies
that show me our cities in ruins.
I like all the ruins on exhibit
that show me I have survived.

The end of the world
should have a cool soundtrack.
Can we record the cicadas
and amplify their song?

Can we listen hard this time
and learn something real?
Can this time be the last time
or is it always, forever?