By NORMAN LOCK
Fluent in the languages of unnatural death, Luis Boscán set down on thick paper the confessions of the Spanish damned while, outside the cruel chamber furnished ingeniously with instruments of torment, the fountains of Seville produced liquid acanthus leaves to the sound of castanets.
By NORMAN LOCK
from Alphabets of Desire & Sorrow: A Book of Imaginary Colophons
At St. Mary Bethlehem (which the world calls Bedlam), Jeremy Watt, shut up for insanity, discovered in a maze of scratches scribed by others’ lunatic hands an alphabet with which he might invoke things not apparent to the eye.
By AVRAM KLINE
thday tadashi was driving thcorolla,
four menonites showed up with signs
that said contemporary opinion re
our use of color is mixed
By KAREN CHASE
My windowsill, that skinny altar
above the kitchen sink, helps me
combine death with wind,
and air with birth—
fire, water, time, dirt.
I.
A whooshing passed over us—
and perched on a branch—something
see-sawed in the bright dark air,
sailed the clearing sharp-
eyed through pole pine sapling,
beech, maple and hemlock
My parrot has died in a clinic in Huntington. His life was a miracle
He was the envy of all the birds in the neighborhood. For five
years he sang a piece by Boccherini and knew a couple Mexican
pop songs by heart. When he got excited he whistled at the girls who
passed by my house.
Which of the two writes the poem?
He who sleeps waking with the cypresses
of India or you who live enamored
of the streets of Buenos Aires
I’m going to build a window in the middle of the street in order to not feel lonely. I will plant a tree in the middle of the street, and it will grow to the astonishment of the passersby. I’ll raise birds that will never flit to other trees, and they will remain perched and chirping to the surrounding noise and general disinterest. I’ll grow an ocean framed within the window.
By ANGELA VERONICA WONG, AMY LAWLESS
Let’s just see if it fits, and your voice blurred, your hand brushing away mine, me laughing because seriously who says that? I flashed out of my body picturing you saying this to other girls, and laughed again.
Dear Johnny,
In your last letter, you requested
. Take my photograph down, you wrote. Disremember.
Yesterday M started talking. All at once, as if inside, she had alphabets that ached to break
out. We were and relieved. We it would never happen. Johnny, the
tomato plant takes water as if in love, and a map upside down is still a map. The arrows,
, . I’ve
. placed Europe above the . It hangs like our .
Every morning, I
. I trace where you could be: Newbury, Canterbury, ,
Maidstone, Kent. will bring you to another place: Merville, Pas de Calais, Caen,
. You are pushing through fields. In , one cloud like an apology. I
think the word verdant, and it brings me closer to . I the word tomorrow. It
a falling body. . Johnny, I am busy history.
We were climbing a hill in . The ice soaked through our mittens. I
. You . Johnny, the ocean has salt
enough without your blood. I feel your hurried fear, tendoned and tight. You make your
body small. We split at what seems . We
. Johnny, .
There are so many spaces my body needs filled. Love, your dark-haired
doll.
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