Matt Galletta

Your name


Your name lives on my tongue.

Not in conversation,
not consciously,
but in the million
mindless moments
of a day,
it comes out.

Pouring coffee,
parking the car,
through all the countless
tiny tasks
that add up
to a life,

it's there:

a steady rhythm,
a gentle hum,
a one-word prayer
I keep repeating
under each breath.



Lately


It's like that night
when we drove home
from Boston
through all that fog.

No street lights
in sight,
we crawled with caution,

windshield wipers
thunking
at the moisture
beading up on the glass.

Barely able to see
the lane markings,
we couldn't tell
if there was a shoulder
to pull over onto.

Checking the rearview,
squinting into the gray
in front of us,
checking the rearview again,

we wondered when,
if ever,
things were going to clear up.



Matt Galletta lives with his wife, daughter, and cats in Troy, NY. His work has appeared in MediaVirus Magazine, PigeonBike, Red Fez, and elsewhere. Find out more at Matt Galletta.

Heller Levinson

mapping like industrial forge

hammering     (out)     a shape

fruition

bringing to fruition

shaping

tending to   (tenderizations pattern beating

finding

the shape of finding 

configuration

poured to/on anvil    pounding into position   into shape    pounding accruing shape   shape establishes position   grants position ... /administers

co-ordinates arrive at position, deliver a position, -- embarkation    accountings & establishment

co-ordinates = finders

the found tossed tenebrous in the incinerative convolute of perennial displacement

furnaces laboring

Map rebuffs Peril

M:   I provide a service.

P:   You imperil.

M:   I guide people.

P:   You only misdirect them further.

M:  Degrees of lostness?

P:   Levels of Perdition.

M:  I’m useful.

P:   So are caskets.

mapping tomb peril

encrustation coarctation astringency assembly syndrome

to get there → how?               not, ... why?

how -- the supracessional

mapping:  an options elimination operation

questing to arrive

maps   }       take you there

gps      }

              the quest is to find, locate ... identify

identity < > locatability

location < > definitionality

discover – uproots from the unknown

                                                         (larval spits

initiate search

the unidentified appears

Philip Byron Oakes

With Sauce

Flibberty giblet corn fed stories

of heroic binges of charity,

feeding the appetite

for having given it all away.

A dyslexic take on a zip code of behavior,

coming up lemons in the hands of the

postman. Ringing twice the normal

speed of light and fluffy words

from home. Commas

with saddles to ride the silence,

to a meaning between the

lines etched in faces making

the weathermen who they are.

Characters in an antagonist’s drawl

fleshing out an alibi for convalescence,

thinly veiled in the thick of a limp

through the Russian revolutions

of the door.

Sure Wood

A forest stumped for an answer

as to where to sit. From whom

to seek shelter, in houses gutted

by old flames, coming back to

haunt the furnace for the hearth.

Culling the herds of the listless

for the brightest of those eyes

lost in sleep. To separate the

wood from the wooden, when

asked to loosen a grip, on a

hand in the making it what it

is. Confounding the unmitigated

with alloys of discretion, in

fending off the queries from

those who might do some good.

Anchor the garden to the ground.

Meet the qualifications in the alley.

An one for all intents serving

as a purpose, for what might

have been, as well as for what

narrowly is. As good a reason

as any to plant a tree.

Ton van ‘t Hof

Untitled


-----

a love story well maybe not
to flow unobstructed through
but one that's still pretty cool while

some stitches without losing any density

haply purporting to kiss the holy moon

all over its length

-----

a next generation neurally based autonomous road

red reusable plastic fire hydrant

trees nature sound effects wind

clouds? well let's face it we googled some

lovely tibetan endless

-----

giving wisely what
they really want
to grow on happiness hope poems do

autism grass roots
fruit flies toolbox policy

its clean green fun be

a third degree polynomial always

a tic-tac-toe for instance

the tuscan risotto sun

standing rib roast or
going round some corners slower

would your lights dim

not love but then one
way of totally open blue sky thinking

----

Lyn Lifshin

All Night the Night Has Been

lightening with moths

white behind the walnuts

If a woman couldn’t sleep

and came to this window

in this light her skin

would glow like bones

Clouds over the full moon

even with the wind

What would have been

nuts looks like limes

on the white stones,

it sounds like some

one tapping on a glass

coffin. It sounds

like someone tapping

from within the tree

July 23

she lets dread

take the form of

tulips, bulbs

planted before

white camouflages

sky. It’s too late

to remember

forgotten

camisole, lace.

Only papers

torn from confetti

on the 2 by 4

floor, the abstraction

of terror, other

cities people left

at night, herbs

never picked,

running through

ephemera, writing

the footnotes

before the text

Music Hall

If there was a lover I could

imagine, his thighs would

take me over the brass. If

I could remember when the

bow or strings could have

been a tongue on the crevice

where a knee and hip join.

If I could touch what I feel in

the cat’s fur or re-reading

Ruffian’s last hours. I

think of the Cadbury in my

pocket book, the winter once

he held me. In a drawer,

the sales slip: 1921, sold to

my grandfather before

he changed his name, good

quality. German, 360 dollars,

so my mother could star.

It was the reason she named

me Rosalyn Diane, a name

for the stage. I try to remember

the feel of the strings. “Talented.”
”Never screeched.” I watch

the first violinist, rhinestones

in her hair, black velvet

skirt near the one with short

stubby legs in what looks like

shorts she shouldn’t be

wearing. . The singer is nice,

making her cooing sounds. Years

after I throw glass as if to get

it out of me when my husband

ran off, he’s at the box office

in line near me a friend says

and like this night, I don’t

feel anything

SJ Fowler

{Jus Primae Noctis}

He could’ve been a colonel in the army.

King of the moth squad,

with his great grandfathers name, easily he could.

But he was not born on sacred soil.

He looks the part, but only just.

She can shut her knees all she wants.

This memory of military degradation has returned

him to sense. He is no rapist!

He has never been a man who needed to take

anything by force.

Just because he has the stomach for it (who doesn’t?)

does not mean that he would.

She opens her legs in pain and he stabs the blade

into her inside thigh. He cannot hear her shout.

The spray is fine at first and he has to stand

away to not get doused in the blood.

She will loose consciousness and though they will not

be able to save her,

they might try beyond the blue still living,

which will look better on the news.

The artery has opened up now.

The blood is coming in ways he did not know it

could. The body is forceful & final.

It will soon pool about the entire toilet. His

distraction is theft.

SJ Fowler

{I am a dancing Cathar, married twice, looming incest}

he enters a double door that carries the face of a bookcase

                   & descends into that rare subbasement

                               to carry on with those who struggle in her name, Jus Primae Noctis!

                       I help them to place a bag under the Museum.

                                                 & the ghosts are welcome to me.

                                                 they are dead for a reason & jealous sweep

                                        I will return the place again to Montague’s fields

                         & raise the Uncle’d spectre that they have forgotten. Complaint

               I do not think they will speak Dutch, or Latin.

                           I think they will just come for everyone I have known.

                  so the incentive grows. A crutch

                           if it cannot roam it cannot be. It must return then,

                                                   to brack &  hood & cea

             it will not be the good half of me that’ll stick to their fingers when it goes

       not the lowerhalf

                            I will not be in sight when the tomb rises in fire.

                                    no notice will be given. That day is this day.

                       the colossal rat

               clearly beneath the white binds it is beginning to cry

          the words beneath the cloth are inquisitive

                                                  there are no apologies or exclamations.

                  it bites down trying to predict the blows.

  I                                       always chewing, trying to sever the gag.

                                                      it cannot save itself now.

                                                            more hitting, more irregular blows,

                                  always with the closed hand.

                               He does not put everything in.

{Nafkhae is the name of that particular form of air or vapour which the angel gabriel is said to have blown or caused to pass from his coat sleeve into the windpipe of Mary for the purpose of impregnation}

during the night, I need to be calmed.

She has bad news. Porphyria is dead.

.

The shape so different from the other girls.

The last time she saw me she was drunk and singing,

her bra sweated through, her arms lacerated, refusing to heal.

The bottle in her hand broken, and her still drinking from it,

wincing at the taste, mocking me, singing so loudly,

deafening the others and she liked me, loved me,

slept with me because I laughed over her falls,

laughed as she sung white power anthems

outside of the off-licences by night and pharmacies by day.

Shouting at the top of her lungs ‘six million lies’,

getting the elderly at bus stops to join in,

wiping billiard balls over my lips,

still warm like platypus eggs from where they had just recently rested.

Porphyriagena is dead. She lies dead.

I must go, lest they suspect it was me.

Clearly she died of cullagium, of poisoning,

but how terribly I would be beaten before they realised this

and confirmed it so.

She wasn’t even that old, she was twenty years old.

Her death cannot be in anyway related to me.

Just a coincidence. None the less…

I leave her undisturbed behind me and do not close the door in my wake.

I need a rest, I seek a massage.