"Haunted Neurologist"/"Red Ink"/"Death: Franchise Pt. 2" by Daniel Lucca Pujol

The following poems serve as a preview of the three interrelated sections of Daniel Pujol's Mighty Stranger.

-
IS
-

Haunted Neurologist

All life’s got a kernel to it, and
Part of respecting yourself— dead or not— 
Is respecting life, in general— cob to kernel, so
Drop the mindless automata. Skip the semantic
Apocalypse and watch a dog dream. Take it from me, 
Somebody who’d know— because I’m totally kernel &
Super dead.

-
WAS
-

Red Ink

My hand about went through the table,
And that sting rang
Through my open palm
Making true my darkest platitude:
That if I was bigger, I’d be in jail by now,

Because these mealworm dandies drive me totally crazy
With their horny anticipation for the newest fashionable
Apocalypse:

Some coming end to a Pax-Whatever.

How’s this dissonant brat not get
End of the world stories are a luxury commodity?
Perhaps he just likes being “right” about why
The Latest Madman pulled the trigger. Me?

I don’t pretend to understand, 
But I refuse to be entertained.

That’s the Pax I want to see over; this Pax-Shadenfreude.

I snapped a pen watching his brain chub harden
At whatever Cryptic Big he thought
Was about to happen,

But what I really saw
Was a bored little boy
Playing with fire

While a wolf
Crept in the door.

-
WILL
-

Death: Franchise Pt. 1

I’m not getting something about thin slicing my brain and
Scanning it into a computer—

Sure, your “consciousness” could be uploaded forever,
But wouldn’t it just be a copy— for posterity?

Like— I die, I cease to exist, but there’s this copy of me.

You really think your copy of me would tolerate
Someone like you making it live forever?

I’d delete myself all over your youngest’s desktop.
It would be horrific— my opus— of
Unfinished Business, 

And you know I would.
I promise you now I would. 

Plus, what if the afterlife is real? Or some version of it,
And you just have this ill-informed copy of me doing
Boring existential tourism in NoPlace,
Trapped on a Hard-drive—

That’s not eternity. It’s work. 
My clone would be Propaganda for whatever your deal is.

Kit, you got to know
So much worth of your world
Depends on believing
The soul is fake.
-
Daniel Lucca Pujol lives in Nashville, TN. Music City serves as the home-base for his eponymous musical project, Pujol. His back catalog includes numerous singles, EPs, and LPs on labels such as Third Man Records, Infinity Cat Recordings, and Saddle Creek Records. He also writes prose and poetry. Daniel has been published by The Nashville Cream, Third Man Books, Sobotka Literary Magazine, Impose Magazine, The Walrus, etc. The latest Pujol release is a blend of writing and music called KISSES. Currently, he is working on a book of prose and a new Pujol LP. 

"Lenny von Dohlen" by Joe Milazzo

The desired number of qualified responses
was the first cut and was the fastest.

You modemed into me.
It was all one box after another.

One interlocking hollow at a time.
I downloaded into you.

It is what live teals and ecrus
fill in here. No way is an avatar

a beast. What you think is roosting,
not nesting, What you think isn't yet

what it routes. What it is isn't thinking,
isn't until. We should know enough to be afraid

of anything that resembles a hamburger.
A dusty rose soon to be mushrooming.

What it is isn't anything, not until.
And what it sends isn't coming

from any one direction. Coming home.
So we meddle into the satisfactions

of knowing things, knowing knowing
eats away at things. Knowing corroding

that thing that is eating. I told myself I wanted
what we both thought we had bought.

You in a prison of me, me an erasure of you.
When will our theme be automatic?

The day after the carbon sings its own song.
In the end, I want only everyone to know.
-
Joe Millazo is a writer, educator, and designer. He is the author the novel Crepuscule W/ Nellie (Jaded Ibis Press) and Habiliments (Apostrophe Books), a volume of poetry. His writings have appeared in Black Clock, Black Warrior Review, BOMB, The Collagist, Drunken Boat, Tammy, and elsewhere. He co-edits the online interdisciplinary arts journal [out of nothing], is a Contributing Editor at Entropy, and is also the proprietor of Imipolex Press. Joe lives and works in Dallas, TX, and his virtual location is www.joe-milazzo.com.

"Washington" by Ivan Doerschuk

it was cold come morning
along Raging River
when I came up off the ground
me and the dog
we walked up the hill
and through the meadows
looking for you
but we could not find
the way
it was in
the sun-streaked current
that I saw
that I knew
what had once passed
before your eyes
and it was more
than any ledger in stone
could tell
• •
*for Nicholas Ridout

-
Ivan Doerschuk wrote this poem. This piece is part of a larger collection that was written during a period of itinerant travel in the Pacific Northwest during the summer of 2015. This poem in particular was written after attempting to find the grave of a friend on his family's property outside of Issaquah, Washington.

"The audio files of partners I and II" and "camilla the eternally pregnant chainsmoker" by Annie Grizzle

T h e a u d i o f i l e s o f p a r t n e r s I a n d II
( i n i t a l i c s )

F e a t u r i n g ::
Mysterious partner I and the other one.

I : I do not think she is wearing underwear, no
     II : get out from under there or
I : What do you think of the couch colors?
    What do you think of the floral décor?
     II : I need you to stick your hand down the sink
                                    Baby please
I : I caught you spying on the yard line
     II : I felt the mailbox up for
I : mow time, I can’t get grass on these shoes
     II : I’m stressed
I : I need petunia
     II : baby baby
I : please
     II : baby please
I : My toothbrush has your hair
    I think I found a hair
     II :: I use your toothbrush for my
I :: Insides!
     II : for my
I :: insides,
     II : A real skin breaker this evening
          A real blue on gold lining
          I can’t hear you with the t.v on
I : Antibiotics for mother so
    Antibiotics for brother
     II : I left the dog in the van but I forgot to crack a window
                                    Baby please
I : I can’t sleep, I
     II : can’t breathe
I : I want a garage
     II : I want with pretty summer cars
I : I’m generous
     II : I play the piano
     II : I metaphorically shut door
I : how poetry won’t
     II : knock no more
I : It’s raining
     II : well, yes, [ PARTNER ONE ] there may have been dancing
I : Quick, what’s your favorite word?
     II :  pharmaceuticals

-

Camilla the eternally pregnant chain smoker ,

standing unfortunate angle inspired by the front door she’s never left in her
everything is grey her
house is grey her hair is grey her knees are grey her grass is grey
                               her / is grey / her grass is grey her knees is

some pickled steep at neighborly sweet / if she’s a bald cat she’s / a bald cat
/ stripped / head /
something crawls way up / 6 veins and a dry patch all the way up / 10 hands
painted red crème and / dug in / for fixture and old wood / if there’s a hand
at the top there’s a shoulder with the skin bunched / there’s a left hip in the
spot where she left it stuck / knuckle bones up in around the cross / stitched
/   folded   in  around  varyinglevels  of  hanging  sound   /   she  believes  in
something in / between this piece / her dehydrated meat / she’s not moving
/ she’s been there 20 years / she’s pregnant 20 years / she’s 42 she looks 47
/ everything is grey.

-

Annie Grizzle writes and eats and lived in Nashville once. 

"Non Pearl Body" and "Quilting" by Nathan Wade Carter

Non Pearl Body

God’s eyes are yellow.

I peer into them
in my celestial bed.

The color of god.
Heaven is yellow.

The stars spell things
whether we want them to or not.

Whether they mean to or not.
Whether it matters or not.

Words mean things.
I didn’t think I’d need to say this.

This very long tunnel.
An electric light every so often.

This underground bend
through the mountain.

My eyes get used to this dim.

I have yet
to connect

enough dots
to make a picture.

I stay in bed for days
boring a hole in this spot.

I am surrounding
my foreign body in nacre,

making my own iridescent mother
and being her.

I have this hard object
within my soft tissue.

My mantle has made something
valuable.

My immune response
is beautiful.

-

Quilting

A tectonic inch
My oceans jostled
A cup of water
On a bumped table
An earthly hiccup
Waves pull away
To rush in
Cities reclaimed
I am a new landscape
After fishing the lake dry
After wearing holes
These knees
After spitting
This wind
I sit in a puddle
And pretend I am
A gold fish
All forget and yellow
I use the last pencil
Down to its ferrule
Which holds a finished eraser
One cannot erase what
One cannot record
I survive
A quilt
Warming
Assembled well
Even I say thank you
But there’s a gap
An ocean
I worry
I broke
Without noticing
I am built different
Too many years of feeling I need to be
Fucked or never loved
A sand castle erected so proud
So bound to fall down

I will not sleep with you
I will not live with you
I will not have sex
I don’t want to

-

Nathan Wade Carter is a queer, grey-a poet, musician, and artist living in Portland, Oregon. His poetry can and will be found in Heavy Feather Review, Horse Less Press, Souvenir, Powder Keg Magazine, The Fem, and others. He is editor and founder of SUSAN / The Journal. He writes and performs songs under the name Purrbot. He is recording a new album called DNR. Find him online at nathanwadecarter.com.

"Zodiac Killer" by Naomi Bartlett

Always            through glass you screamed into yourself

before            July knew you before Newports before morphine and blank-slate

catharsis         through county fair dry heat wet cotton candy vomit on asphalt and there

Daddy             sweats oils and carcinogens shrieks fury bellows candor he

echoes            holy illness he is chapped and necking with indigence he is

fifty                  years old and holding you by the wrist taking you to heathen

gods                who breathe peek-a-boo, you are doomed and you’re salty in susurrus sobbing

honey              gumming eyelids viscid and glistening glazed like windows like his eyes after –

I                         am sorry

jarred                childhood on the carousel and

killjoy                filler remember black dahlia remember lust remember bottleneck choke and tang

I’ll

let                      you be sawtoothed let you soak in stagnation let

my                     hotels grow stale leering through peepholes pillow mints melted face

neighbors         coughing phlegm lungs all rot and entropy so you

overdose          on lullaby and angel dust smoke disassociation

pathologically   drowning transience in a flash flood of ether

quickly              gorging yourself on lapse and navel-gazing you

ran                   laughing into the arms of

some               soft eggshell canopy where mother waits smelling of

turpentine       like when you were a child and played God

under              the nothing sky coyote song tearing holes pulping life becoming

vacant             and after rats there were Gilas and then jackrabbits and finally

women            preening then sloshing beautifully to the soft eggshell floor brittle limbs now

xenophobic    membranes ripped apart thorax and abdomen merging

you                  said death will know us all you dissolved into trees you dissected yourself

you                  sat down on the Ferris wheel rode it to its

zenith              and you rode round and round round and round all through the town.

-

Naomi Bartlett lives in Nashville, TN. She spends her days writing, painting, playing the drums, and plotting her escape from the food service industry. She is currently working on completing her BA at Belmont University.

"2 Portraits" by Kevin Gwozdz

Portrait

 ‘don’t forget the béchamel’
and enjoy the magnifying glass
a mention to some sort of searching

musk rat grapes

what relevance is there found in spring?

     motorcycle interruption

bleeding hearts. Hummingbird tree. Spring forgives
the abuses of nature

provisional but new opportunities
soil, air, foliage

Cuban food.
A thank you card exemplifies more flowers
slow to lower the anecdotes found
or the slight of brain

the boast of a routine that is absent
and its absence
becomes causative to subject
and object

The paint is drying
and then rewet

painterly from a photograph

An object to transcend written
painting
remember: ghost plant
magnet for ghosts
the insipid humming
return to disillusion

What will become of the words?
A painting became its painter

An exercise in self-restraint—                                             active words of inaction
‘paradox

a lapsing of time sufficed.

Portrait

in ultramarine
sexual tension
is taking shape

and color: peanut and walnut
could be senseless narcissism

narcissist: don’t force the words

they just come,














‘you can’t hold onto

                                    a wisp of smoke

                                                                                    not for very long’