I’m the kind of guy who when there’s a problem, I like to get on it. I don’t like the problem to get me, I like to get it. When there’s a problem, I face it—I don’t let it faze me. You could say I like to faze it. I like to face my problems and take care of them, I don’t let them take care of me.
In a dark, wood-paneled studio, I’ve sat
for three full days, an eremite with neither
cup nor cause. As hours accumulate,
By MIK AWAKE
Became a skinhead
a year after he moved from
Bumblefucktucky.
Hit me with his cast.
Hurt people hurt people
often with their hurt parts.
Who broke his arm?
His step-dad step on him?
They was poor, but they was white.
Not a place to take flight but where downy-skinned
children can sometimes heal like fallen sparrows
in a shoe box, a place I found myself at nine,
concussed. The child in the rail-rimmed bed
By ALBERTO DE LACERDA
Translated by SCOTT LAUGHLIN
The soft whisper of a river
Mingling slowly
With another river: a force
Surging around us
The profound peace
Of this natural rhythm
And I remember the first slap that followed the slur, how soft
were the fingertips, so slick with oil and sweat the burning mark
seemed to reassure both ‘Know your place’ and ‘This, too, shall pass.’
A flock of Aratinga nenday in the park today—
Green parakeets, so exactly the color of the grass
The grass itself seemed to shriek.
And all at once fly away.
by L. S. KLATT
The lifesaver found himself on a fire escape reading
a set of instructions. Step 1 directed him to match
the conflagration in his mind with a facsimile
that appeared in a diagram on the page.
That much was obvious, but Step 2 required careful
application: facing the riot & attempting to
extinguish it. This was complicated by the reality
A student once
Asked me: what
Is a poem? And
I looked at the
Student’s face—the
Student’s mouth was
Still open and I could
See deeply past gold-
Encrusted molars
By MATT SALYER
Check me on fleek like the night
kitchen mothers, pucker and hum some; come,
I like to liquor louche; let’s watch the flock
of spring-heeled bound as borough cabs
exhaust their carbon phantoms like a gauche
of fuck. Do you unzoo, unrouge
to rat as white, what roughshod? Do.
I want the carnal as straight metacognition,
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