When I was a child, I experienced my first orgasm (I was not alone there, but was with a phantom of you), in the family spa. The spa with a red casing that covered the spa light, making the night red. There, I convexed my legs above me, around the lip of the top of the spa, and submerged my head and body underwater, using my legs as the power to hold me down. I pinched my nose closed with my quavering hands, my genitals pressed firmly against the constancy of the beating jets. This feeling always made me thrash. I would clamp myself under by force until I came. Crimp-like. I never rose for air until I had peaked. After piquant climax, I let myself augment, gently upward for air. The air was so much more richness above me than was there before I had gone under. Ampleness of aroma, texture and temperature, now! In those moments of rich air, post come, I remember envisaging my finding you as liquid-inverse to come in as my future, and take me.

It is true that all bindery scenes smell like pine to me. Gaudy glandular rushes. Luxuriant defecations lucubrating the cells’ previous by way of compression. I know that all of this is why when I read about xems ritual of cutting off the kimono in the night air, I felt like someone else’s muscles were in my legs. Tempting me with more strength from within my own strength.
To be obliged into presence during relatively harsh shifts enforces endocrine ecstasies.

Perhaps the only next was to rest and record beauty.

________________________________________________________
j/j hastain is the author of several cross-genre books including the trans-genre book libertine monk (Scrambler Press), anti-memoir a vigorous (Black Coffee Press/ Eight Ball Press) and The Xyr Trilogy: a Metaphysical Romance. j/j’s writing has most recently appeared in Caketrain, Trickhouse, The Collagist, Housefire, Bombay Gin and Aufgabe. j/j has been a guest lecturer at Naropa University and University of Colorado.

Bone Socket Dialects

The darkness is bilingual. It mouths flawless exits, our bodiless waltz moving, as on a conveyer belt, toward the door of an empty house. In the voice of a dream, worry sands syllables from tooth to nerve: Will I see you again before I die? A submarine hum softening distance, your grandmother’s question.

Follow it inside the gate. Where rust bleeds from a keyhole, two skeletons grout laughter between bricks in the garden wall; where birds of paradise wire night’s jaws with nothing but orange, fear sends
a cat to the corner of a disappearing oak. If the crows continue to scale the barbed-wire fence, they

will get to where? Knowledge of night is a feeling not even a lifetime can master. Yet we still move forward and the wingless mountain still crows useless confessions and the town still trees us not with bloodhounds or ghosts but with subjectivity—how rain could sound like hunger, how truth muted

memory. Climb down and try to explain this to the person you love. Where children begged with Bibles and knives, a staggering stranger walked as slow as rivers run dry, broken bottle in hand, body carrying bruised skin, cracked lips damming blood. Remember the lines worming grief and rage across her

forehead. Between helping and running, we opted for forgetting. Turned the key and hurried inside. To return to that home we would have to skin the detachment that no longer grows on us, un-imagine the contents within the damp paper towel sent home for my five-year-old hands to open. What was

real is real sometimes. Now the dissection I once unwrapped as I would a gift, finding an eye color of yellow teeth, drops repetitively from my hands, flowering into a scar again and again against the linoleum floor. Eyelids slam shut, and in the darkness of my mind a language houses the echoes of

a waltz, hollow of any syllables except the three in emptiness. In that bone-socket dialect, home clears its throat to call us back, and we will go someday to visit our laughing ghosts and your grandmother’s grave. The past, as you know, is the safest place to live since its nightmares have already been dreamt.

__________________________________________________
Tara Williams lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she seldom wins at bingo and is the weakest link on her trivia team. This is her second time in Spork.

WHAT THE PROSE KNOWS
 
 
*
 
The same nightmare that unites us, awakens us—a long process of continual revision—his first book, a night without armor—who is stalking who—everyone is either cold or sad—as illustrated by Juan Gris—a strange and snakelike syntax—the sidewalk is always changing—girls are terrible dolls with strings—and phantom limbs where phantom leans—CAUTION: may contain nudity—false faces & useful illusions—fun in hotels—the world is very old—each star in its constellation feels alone—how much you should read depends on your mood—or consult with your moon—if you didn’t come to laugh, you will die from enthusiasm—is it the windows that keep you from leaping—lines, nothing but lines
  
 
 
*
 
Much has been said and there is—a propensity to claim Lincoln—but as a goth I’m claiming him—and as a spirit—I am knifing a hole in the cloud of this tree—and as a psychic I’m despairing—in an orange dress laid out for you and picked by an oracle—an animal that died because it had to—words typing themselves—a message struggling through the wall—some of them demons, some charming—watch out for colors—all dreams are cliché—you will read them in field notes—red lights over Oakland—red eyes over Ohio—a rusty little piglet—pale then red then pale —do we move through the decades or does the decade move through us—I dreamt a swarm of bees—and then an avalanche—this is black eye for pretty
  
 
 
*
 
As if we could scrape the color off the iris—I, too, have fallen in love with fragments—a disjointed memory—Joni Mitchell, New York City, that orange restaurant—calendula, to be exact, and to be exact is the nature of color—what does it mean to have light—to be lit from within—I have a friend whom I call intoxicating—her energy literally emanates—when she leaves we get sad and don’t know why—when I lose an object I get sad and don’t know why—does the object contain our happiness displaced—an old thought but with new gravity—obsession is funny like that—here is my question—which is sadder, a red balloon or a blue balloon—if you answer both you are like me whose skin is both—and my friend—we look at her skin together as she describes this pain
 
 _______________________________________________
*italicized lines are from ‘Prose Poems’ by Pierre Reverdy, ‘The Marvelous Bones of Time’ by Brenda Coultas, and ‘Bluets’ by Maggie Nelson, respectively
 
Stella Corso lives in Western Massachusetts where she co-curates the Blue Peter Readings with Alex Phillips and acts as Assistant Editor for jubilat magazine. Her recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Action Yes, Everyday Genius, Tarpaulin Sky, and Dear, Sir.
 

Once Over With Air Piped In

       Calm they come
                     the Ushers
scrubbed scentless        issuing

       directives I eschew but who
              am I (insurance poor & fresh
out of band-aids back home)?

Reeking procedure, they wait me up
              for measurement. Hiss of air
       piped in         tick tock too loud by half.

              Out of reach     Examiners play
Touch      & Go with time => Send
       lackeys in ahead to pull down

stretch of paper sheet & hand me gown
              gone pale-thin from too many
       hot water washing.

Change says they & I change
              Tell me bottle needs filling
       Say open a vein & be fountain

              Spit milksop of history.    I spit
(as instructed):
       Voila! my trainwreck

              litany.     See symptom checklist =>
       X for yes     initial here & here
       at bottom         sign:

       Shall Speak Only As Spoken To.

Now they truss me up
              for table ready    (or not)     & set
               for scrutiny.

       Doctor of Notes to crack
              open the door & go groping.
Stirrups & poker up next on agenda –

       Order me spread & I spread.
__________________________________________________________

Eye To Eye

are you my doppelganger
              or a piece of glass
                     (are those)

little MEs reflected
       in your eyes or hapless
              fish in history’s net

the pupil dilates
       drinking sidelong dust
              from slats of light

I follow        (dissolving)
       an out-of-whack planet
              tripped up in invisible moons

when substrate binds with enzyme
              something catalytic
                     happens

chromosomes scatter
       like bread crumbs
              for pigeons

the circle reduced to a lasso of matter
       a time-noose        a bracelet
              of chicken and egg

O second hand        grab me
       and hold on for dearly
              O first hand unclench me

       and let me alone

__________________________________________________________

Becoming Mortal Man: The ForeGoing

They will OFFer your ashes at no extra charge.
We will ask for time to cogitate.

An amber valence overcoming. One step
from sepia greets us (a pLUG in

the wall with cord gone off kilter). The man
in the palindrome hat will recommend mahogANY.

Hustle us into a room in the back.
Stealth exit, a side door unDIGnified.

Back in the LOBby, he does Uriah Heap things
with his hands. Obsequious gestures

sidestepping discussion of low cost options
(your elbow digs into my left side).

We will tire of polishing hardWARe. Know the bronze
for no bargain, no throw-in.

Receipt in an unsealed envelope. Lid open –
but subtly. Next stop, the NEEDle procedure.

We will settle on the barebones special. Pauper pine.
The palindrome hat looks ASKance

(Drab as a fool, aloof as a barD). In sum,
the eyebrows have it. All sewn up. And SOon

we’ll be stuck
with the finicky lid. Warped so LITtle

pandoras sLIP out.
We will joke about dumpsters and ice floes.

Our sleep will offEND us.

_____________________________________________
Nina Corwin is the author of two books of poetry,The Uncertainty of Maps and Conversations With Friendly Demons and Tainted Saints. Her poetry has appeared in From the Fishouse, ACM, Forklift OH, Hotel Amerika, New Ohio Review/nor, Poetry East, Southern Poetry Review and Verse and has been nominated for the Pushcart prize. Corwin is an Advisory Editor for Fifth Wednesday Journal and curator for the reading series at Chicago’s Woman Made Gallery. She lives in Chicago, where she is a practicing psychotherapist known for her work on behalf of victims of violence.

Dear Pete Moore I Hope You Enjoy This Dedication

Wow, modest
Feelings have
Decided
To saturate
My cellular
Make-up like
Rad eye
Liner on its way to
Music, a few
Notes, a few
Particulars
Sounding
Pricks on the
Map, routes for
Negotiating possibility.

:::::

Style is
Not going to

The furthest
Circumference

If it doesn’t achieve a
Libratory degree.

A few
Chrysanthemums
Shake in a
Green glass vase.

Dew dissolves
On its way to
Glitter and glare:

A lion
Lightly
Sated by a hare
Looks through
Her full
Intelligence.

::::::::

Of where, plus plumbers and
Memories involve
Plums, porches, crotches,
Backsides forged from denim and
Apple cheeks filling
Each square to its seat.

::::::

In the limbic lick, the
Foreleg as
It stretches
Across the freshet, sexy
Obscenity, such succulent crisps
The starving carnivores eat, carrion
A not particularly
Southern
Comfort, no
Present can
Console that
Past that presence
And I can’t know so
Thus world goes aglow
And what the
Glimmer signifies
Stands at
No less than a span,
Agreement unto anger
An easy moment’s ran.

::::::

Boy at sad, boy at the
Circumference of a tear
As it drips onto
Page one thirty two.
Cynical as a phonograph
Like a maniacal laugh
As it’s perpetually put in its corner
Like a cenotaph
At the most official Modern Art
Museum, belles
Made dumb not through intrinsic
Idiocy rather the
Location, location at
Its most basic
Sense, and surely even the basics
Vary as all-get-out and
Into fullest view.
_________________________________________

Incubation

Her shock, her shells
Out, inters, enters, strides

The high wire then
The live one, trail of

Eggs, arabesques
Dipped in

Gold, sweat from
Orchids lining

The terrace
Fronting the

Palace of almost
All the gods of these

People, if indeed
They are not

Other than
Hallucinations, than gem

Work a wondrous
Prolepsis, party

Favor pretty much
Sums it up.
_________________________________________

Jumpy Jubilance

Why would a heart
Break when it
Can be
Healthy.

I mean
Really Sweet
Pea why?!

Bonked towards
The boxwoods, brindled
Blowhards, I tipped my
Cap, capricious
Monotone
So all’s I
Did was go
Into the zone!
_________________________________________

I Do Not Condemn Myself

I do not know enough about the field to
Speak within its purview.

Solids. Fleshtoned
Cubes. A green
Calyx. Tangerine hued
Radio.

The bits. The
Pieces add
Up. I’m looking down. The street is
Seven stories below.

Roses are selling their vendors.
Some of the most
Superbly seductive buyers are
Getting more than they should for the price.

Some of them
Are repeat offenders.

The tones and
Tangs of
That phrase
A deal renders

Me. I like to think
I’m brims with love.
My penchant for
Gleeful judgment does

Not freak me out
Precisely because
I know every one
Is its myriad limits!
_________________________________________
Adam Strauss has poems out in Witness, Country Music, and the Laurel Review, as well as ones forthcoming in Verse. Too, he has a full-length collection, For Days, out with BlazeVox, as well as poems out in the anthology The Arcadia Project: North American Postmodern Pastoral, edited by Joshua Corey and G. C. Waldrep.