Bedfellows spring 2014 by bedfellows magazine

bedfellows spring 2014

bedfellows

"what’s the big deal with sex in poeMs i mean really are you poet or pontiff … you say sex in poeMs is self indulgent well i’M not interested in writing soMething to spite you but i love sex all hail another generable gene probe have soMe fucking faith you tight asses get the genie of genital vibrancy … sex the closest we get to source don’t be hoodwinked into shadows i'd put sex in every single poeM if it were not for My absolute fear of Monotony” ― CAConrad, Deviant Propulsion

CONTENTS

THE ALLURING PROSPECT OF REGULAR SEX | 26 SUSPENDED TOGETHER | 28 BLUE EYE HONEY (MOZARKA) | 29 {THE} ORACLE BONES | 30 QUESTION MARK & THE MYSTERIAN | 32 COCK & BALLS POEM | 34

CONTRIBUTOR KEY | 36 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS | 37 EDITORS | 39

A NOTE FROM THE EDITORS You are a body in a cab writing a letter to a man long dead. You are nostalgic for Ani DiFranco cassette tapes, watching other queer couples documenting their lives in public time. You are a film but not, a familiar plot that moved from one mouth to the next. You have a “you” in your mouth, and it is sour. You are even where aeronautics become lovable. You are the witch a guard has been dreaming about. You are a hooved animal, made of meat and hunger. You are old and have no need to pursue young beauties. You are a sticky-skinned teenager on a sweltering school bus, grazing your neighbor’s leg. You are worried about whether the test will come back positive. You are in an airport, wondering if she got her period. You are cataloging each small walled garden of sweetness. You are fucking on a chair until it breaks. You are what they call survivors. You are in fantasy land where some poets are, which is to say, you are a verse that found its body, a vehicle for confronting desires. The vernal season stirs, something primordial, and you awaken.

from COMMON SENSE | I Dear Tom Paine, During the recent SEPTA strike, I had to take a cab. The driver, from India, asked me about American women. What is wrong with them, he said. Why had they spurned him. Why are the customers so mean. I wanted to say the reason you came to this country is the same reason the women here want nothing to do with you. Two birds with one stone. Efficiency. Common Sense. But I kept the stone in my pocket and shrugged. I tipped him two bucks on a ninedollar ride, which I thought was reasonable, but he didn’t say bye back. We both felt indignant. Two birds, one stone. We love that stone. Love to save it up for the right birds. My friend Brandon says the only thing he loves about New York City is that intimacy is possible through anonymity. There are so many people that sometimes a person’s gotta spill his guts, say the words, the desperately important words, allowing for a real, meaningful exchange. Something’s born, a story, say, out of and in spite of an overwhelming nothing, and the story has a chance to live on for awhile before it is washed away. This Big Nothing might make us honest, but it also cheapens the risk. Tell me about risk, Tom. Why is that important to me? Is it simply that I want a greater return on my investment? Is it just that I want more? What can I call the distance between birth and my writing this very word, so that it’s holy? Time won’t do. Life won’t do. In her essay “Poetry and Grammar”, Gertrude Stein wrote, “As I say a noun is a name of a thing, and therefore slowly if you feel what is inside that thing you do not call it by the name by which it is known. Everybody knows that by the way they do when they are in love and a writer should always have that intensity of emotion about whatever is the object about which he writes. And therefore and I say it again more and more one does not use nouns.”

That we have to name and name and name again and again and again is a real motherfucker, Tom. But that’s how we stay young. It’s the only way. And that means you have to be a poet. There is a poet I loved very deeply who, up until just a few weeks ago, called me love, and I called her love, which is both a noun and a verb but more so a verb. Once I asked her how we had come to call each other that, and she said “because we’re lovers.” I’m one who loves. You’re one who loves. And we had come to be lovers by spilling our guts to each other again and again, and by fucking, another kind of gutspilling. So the action of naming the respective distances between our respective births and the present moments of naming, you might say, the little speeches we offered to one another, brought us closer and closer, til finally we named each other love, the thing we do to each other. Now this type of thing is swell, right, but what if you think of yourself as a noun rather than a verb, and someone’s calling you a word you feel strongly as a verb, such as “love”? It can be a lot of pressure to realize you’re a verb, that you’re in motion all the time, and that you are headed, ultimately, for an unknown intimacy, and you have only dead intimacies to go on, to guide you. What kills me over and over is the paradox that inside the urge to name is the urge to make permanent, and in naming we achieve the opposite, as our little speeches change us, taking us further and further toward some abyss that could be heaven or hell or anything, really. So you can’t know how much it’s worth, the intimacy. Name any price it’s totally arbitrary. Which means it is probably not something to bank on. So what is? God, I guess. And god is not love. I’m speechless right now, Tom, and I don’t know what I am, so I’ll stop here. RE

DUDEBRO | II dudebro friend donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t queertheory me i want to stay here & be indeterminate be a weird animal like in the mid nineties when i would stay awake alone rewinding the ani difranco cassette tape i got at the mall imagining the world when i would be tough and on my own in a big city have so many lovers and be on my own or like eileen myles 12

in the seventies thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s what a girl dreamed of that the city would end up being philadelphia and love would be so difficult and i would never be on my own in the perfect way i actually was then being so sad and reading so many books that i would never grow up and stop being weird and sleep with lots of girls that i 13

would sleep with not that many girls ever but still be a love poet only that

“THE EXPERIENCE OF” | II the experience of embodied love is what i have when i want it. the experience of embodied love is what i want and to have is a form of wanting i’d write in french for you. to have our love is also to need to document it and to send you messages while you are caring for people for wages and i am home with a fever typing. and to look at pictures of queer couples who are my friends and who are strangers who are documenting their lives in public time. to feel what is undefined as desire and the fever i have today in January. to look at the pictures and feel the desire to be close and to make friends and to make you like me and maybe to cut my hair like yours. and to feel also the pain of cuteness and of beauty which is that it makes you want so many things at the same time.

A SINGLE MAN | III We came of age seven times. In the first version the girls kissed & this brought (it was the ’90s) certain integrities to our experiment. In another version the boys did & made a moral economy from which (pretty much) nobody frowned. Niceties looped together like tabs on web-browsers; how to define what was a memory swiftly exceeded our grasp. A person at a point: “No more calling for language to compress itself!” Of older ages we came lesser times. Learned the loops used to agree alone. Subject, kiss, object: words that would travel. We found new tongues for our shoes. We bought a French / English dictionary & moved from one mouth to the next.

TELL THEM HOW YOU LOVE ME | IV Our shelves are cluttered with photographs of us together, from our first, second, and third New Years, pictures of us kissing in chronology. There are snapshots of us at the beach squinting, of us standing in the woods that frame the towns where we grew up. You bring me trinkets: ticket stubs from movies we watch together, movies that expire while we hold hands in the dark, sincerely grateful for each other, and the opportunity to share the same space. We lie in bed. We tell each other all our fears, what we ʻhopeʼ for. We dance in public, close. We kiss. We have pet names. You bake me cakes on the 13th. They are lopsided, suffocating beneath a sheet of glaze. Their candles are thin and pastel. You tell me it takes you hours to find them. You tell me you know what they mean to me. I fill a box with letters. They say you are happy that weʼre together. They say, “You complete me.” Between each envelope, I press the petals of the flowers you send me in impromptu bouquets, always in season. The petals tell me that Iʼm pretty, that you canʼt imagine being with anyone else. The first time you tell me you love me, you mean it. The first time we sleep beside each other you are sober. You remember everything. You never talk to your ex when I am sleeping. You never tell her you miss her while I wash the dishes, make our bed, or make your lunch. When she says I am broken and desperate, you donʼt laugh. You never kiss her. You never share drinks with her at our favorite dive. When she calls, you donʼt pick up. As Julyʼs heat seeps thick through the screens of our windows, you never wonder where she sleeps or who lies beside her. You never lie to me. We never fight. We are always happy. You complete me in every way. I am only sad when we are not together. You tell all of your friends how crazy it is that we are so lucky. You tell them how you love me. 17

THE HUMAN DEVICE | V The golden memes that transcend the minds they led to the morning on a float in a parade that celebrates nothing more than construction of the float or holding the train doors just to fuck our private dialectics in the hate gaze of the delayed This is the grand unification of desire not with its object but with more desire The problem of being of two tents who want the sanghas within to meet and for the ideas within meeting A sunrise that outdoes the non-dual beyond threefold sonnet logic vs. Greek choral antistrophe vs. dehydration synthesis The way way beyond lifelong ambition for long life Beyond hope is for suckers Tomorrow thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s only tomorrow clarified by the effects of enchantment whereby everything is and is not the opposite Up here with the four and twenty blackbirds is where even aeronautics become loveable because there never was a pie only more sky and below it even dated references can reach their wan evanescence out to you how Zucotti is cold but I like where Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m living the sparkle of fingers all through the evening

WE ARE NOT WITCHES | VI “But we are not witches,” she says to the guard through lines of brunette metal. In her palms are a powdering of rust scraps that feel like a day at some memory’s beach. She paws at her ass, softens an itch. In the next cell over her husband is playing solitaire and envisioning asses in clingy bathing suits, asses in polka dots. He is unloading several different kinds of dumb, circuitous thought. I won’t tell you on that which the guard is dreaming, but it would surely soil the contents of this story, you have to believe me.

THE STORY OF HOOVES #3 | VII THE 3-D PRINTER CRUSHES THE OFFICE WITH AN UNCONTROLLABLE VOMIT OF PERFECT REPLICAS OF MY SKULL, IN FULFILLMENT OF THE SCRIPTURES. THE DEATH GETS IN WHERE THE WORLD GETS THIN IN THE PLACE CALLED "FLESH" & POSES AS YOU IN MY COMPUTER IN A SERIES OF STRESS POSITIONS WE PRACTICE SMILING THROUGH UNTIL YOU ARE WET ENOUGH TO DESERVE TO BE TOUCHED. THE ONE YOU HAVE CHOSEN IS CALLED THE STORY OF HOOVES. IT IS GOOD TO BE USED, & WHEN YOU ARE NOT BEING USED, YOU ARE REPLACED WITH FALLING OBJECTS, & WHEN YOU ARE, YOU DREAM, & WHEN YOU DREAM, YOU GET LOST, & WHEN YOU GET LOST, YOU CRASH, & WHEN YOU CRASH, YOU WAKE UP IN THE NEXT LIFE, IN A DIFFERENT STRESS POSITION, WITH A CIVILIZATION TO KEEP YOUR BODY QUIET, PAUSED, & RECONFIGURED INSIDE BY THE EVIL OF THE ALL-POWERFUL SCREENSAVER THAT STANDS BETWEEN US & THE WALL OF PAPER CALLED THE WORLD. IN BED OUR ACTIVITIES ARE RECORDED BY THE BODIES THEY INSTALLED IN US & WE GOT ENGAGED OR ADDICTED TO. WHEN YOU ARE DRY I PLAY THOSE RECORDS. THERE IS ONLY AN EMPTY HISS IN THEM, VANISHING FLAKES, A SOFT & ROAR THING. I LISTEN TO THE SOUND IT MAKES AS IT FOLDS ITSELF CONTINUOUSLY & USE MY TEETH—A DOG'S MOUTH IS ITS HANDS—TO MAKE YOU INTO MUSIC CALLED THE STORY OF HOOVES. THE MUSIC IS AVAILABLE IN MANY FORMATS, INCLUDING TAPE STUCK TO ITSELF & A POLICE SCANNER CRACKED UNDER YOUR PERFECT FEET INSIDE THE HALF-FINISHED SUMMONING CIRCLE OF US ON THE DASHBOARD OF THIS STOLEN CAR, CONTINUOUSLY SCROLLING ON DRUGS RIPPED FROM SOMEWHERE OFF-SCREEN UNTIL YOU ARE RAW & QUIET FROM THE CIVILIZATION, WHERE THE GIRLS HAVE SLEEK, INVISIBLE LAYOUTS & EVEN THE GUITARS LAUGH AT ME & A MOWED VERSION OF CYBERWARFARE GOES LIKE A DOME OF HORNETS HUMMING DEEP GREEN & PARALLAX IN REGULAR SMOKE DOWN LOW & CLOSER. WE STARE AT THE DISTRACTING MADE-UP OBJECT IN THE CORNER. THE GIRL PRESSED AGAINST THE SAME BOX AS ME HEARS THE MUSIC I LISTEN TO & THINKS IT IS LITERALLY SCREWS, & IT IS, & THEY ARE TOO SHORT TO HOLD HER UP AGAINST THE WALL OF PAPER CALLED THE STORY OF HOOVES. AT NIGHT YOU 20

SLIP INTO A BLACK VIBRATION. IT IS THE RIGHT SIZE. IT IS NOT A BUG. I PICK IT UP & ROLL IT BETWEEN MY FINGERS. IT HAS NO LEGS. IT IS NOT EMPTY. WHEN I CRUSH IT IT SEPARATES INTO SEVERAL PIECES & DUST, BECAUSE IT IS NOT A BUG, IT IS A SEED, BUT IT IS STILL FULL OF MY BLOOD. PEOPLE WHOSE MOVEMENTS INTERSECT ARE PEOPLE WHO KNOW EACH OTHER: ON THE WAY TO WORK I PASS TOURISTS TAKING PHOTOS OF THEMSELVES BETWEEN THE BARRICADES & THE WALL OF SCREENS CALLED THE WORLD. THE ALARMS YOU HEAR ARE THE SONG OF MY COUNTRY. IT'S FRIDAY NIGHT: YOU WHO ARE MEAT & YOUR FRIENDS WHO ARE MEAT ARE CUTE WHEN YOU WHO ARE MEAT & YOUR FRIENDS WHO ARE MEAT SAY THAT YOU WHO ARE MEAT & YOUR FRIENDS WHO ARE MEAT ARE NOT MEAT WHEN YOU ARE, & YOU SLIP INTO SLEEK, INVISIBLE LAYOUTS, & YOU MAKE PRESSURE, & YOU FIND SOMEBODY WHO KNOWS THAT AN ANIMAL IS JUST A CIRCUIT & HOW TO UNJAM ONE. APOLOGIES FAIL TO MAKE SENSE OF THE CONFUSING INTERFACE CALLED THE STORY OF HOOVES. THE MEDIUM OF HISTORY IS COLD. THE MORNING AFTER IS MILLIONS OF YEARS OLDER THAN THE ICE IT WAS FOUND UNDER. THE NORMAL TIME LINE HAS GOTTEN TOO LONG. THE DEEP LAYERS ARE COMPRESSED & DEFORMED. THE RECORD BECOMES LESS DISTINCT DOWN THERE. ITS SHADOW APPEARS TO THE RIGHT OF WHERE IT OUGHT TO BE. IT CRACKS, STIMULATED BY FLAVORS OTHER THAN SWEETNESS, & NOW WE ARE GOING TO BITE EACH OTHER FOR REAL.

MILESTONES | VIII When ‘nocturnal emissions’ get transferred to day shift life tends to take on a good deal more excitement Sex exists & is not only available but plentiful tho getting some frequently requires cunning & strategy Be up for anything unless it’s gross & gross like most aesthetic propositions is a relative term No orifice constitutes a pleasure monopoly & each comes w/its own invisible set of directions Eyes speak louder than words, a bulge louder still Incredible sex happens in exact proportion to the effort expended in driving the other person crazy Great balls are rare & call for the royal treatment Sexual exhaustion is the only fun kind : all tuckered out & ready to start fucking again immediately A long, deep fuck (complete w/moans) isn’t work it’s overtime at the karma factory Unless smoke’s coming up from the floor or the sheriff’s at the door w/an eviction notice, slow it down & go all night Underarms are like one of those farms where you get to pick your own apples When nipples stiffen it’s time for a quick course in safecracking Whoever can’t get aroused at the sight of 2 small, perfectly proportioned feet needs to seriously reconsider the matter Never tell people that so-&-so’s a ‘lousy lay’ they’ll only think you’re an asshole for saying so A three-way becomes the freeway if you don’t ask someone’s permission 22

5 from 777 | VIII went home w/somebody nam’d Roddy in Sydney circa 1985 clothes off we get down tho after a minute I feel compelled to say: hey uh we need to have safe sex what do you mean, Jim? okay never mind, just do what I do then when it’s over lying on piled pillows watch’d him smoke: well, that was different! + old & have no need to pursue young beauties what would I do w/them anyway? play chess? request a fresh cup of Ovaltine? chatter about the Paris Commune? who at 35 would believe that ass like the map of paradise frays at every folded crease + the poet who confines his lines to juice y sex descriptors never fails to produce a smile even a laugh or 2 tho after a dozen or so our bathhouse Lothario ’s exploits leave me bored distracted if he insists on sticking to one subject why not let it be love that possesses depths limitless & nuance innumerable + the erotic attraction of some men to other men is a phenomenon certain people lack the honesty or imagination to under stand or even try to remind me again why that should be my problem + love what is love why would anyone think it’s only 1 thing & define that in only 1 way it is both the wish & the granting a dictionary w/as many entries as there are stars 23

LEGS | IX From 8:22 to 8:45 every weekday morning that summer, Jonathan was only aware of his left ankle, calf, knee, and thigh pressed up against the right ankle, calf, knee, and thigh of Aleta Moss. There was nothing else. He rode the bus to camp next to Aleta Moss, who sat by the window so the sun would dry her wet black hair tied in one, two and sometimes four braids secured with brightly colored flower barrettes. What he knew was that she smelled like peppermint and vanilla warmed up and that she ate the dessert from her lunchbox on the morning bus ride, usually Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies, probably to avoid lunch trades and he respected that. She was tidy -always licking the crumbs from her fingers or sucking them from the front of her shirt. She liked ballet and a rock band he didn’t. She doodled on her arm. Heart chains or swirls or roses. What he did not know is whether it was she who first shifted her downy leg to graze his or if he’d been the one to make the first move, if only by accident. It used to be he’d go for days without being touched by anyone except his mother and that was fine. Now there was this. He was ruined. Every morning he willed himself to notice who closed the gap first on the squeaky brown plastic seats. But each day, sweating with nerves, he’d go into a blind trance. His other senses failed him, there was only touch, as if he lived in a world that was just skin sticking to hot plastic, slick thighs, smooth shins, calf meat. The two never spoke on their morning commute but he tried to communicate with her through the Morse code twitches of thigh muscles and knee knocks. Not even he knew what he was trying to say to Aleta. But he studied her for responses. One day he scratched his leg so his knuckles grazed the denim seam of her skirt. She cleared her throat but it was totally not in a bad way. They hit a pothole and clanked ankles so hard they both said, “Ow,” in resounding harmony. Once, she practiced pointing and flexing her feet -- her bare feet, toenails painted blue, slipped out of athletic sandals. Her thigh would press deeper into his with each 24

point, peeling away with each flex. He didn’t know how much more of this he could take. One Monday, it was very hot. The bus smelled sick-sweet. Banana peels and polyurethane and sunscreen. Jonathan was concentrating on not sweating on Aleta. “It’s so hot,” Aleta said to the window. “I can barely breathe.” He said nothing. Maybe the heat had melted her brain and she wasn’t even talking to him. Then he tried to speak but he burped instead. It wasn’t loud and it didn’t smell. But still. Even with a puddle forming under his own thighs from the humidity, Aleta had not separated her leg from his. She fanned herself with a book of Mad Libs, she took a sip of her Capri Sun, she stuck one hand out the window; never breaking the sweaty seal of her right leg suctioned to his. She was diabolical. He loved her kneecaps. He wanted to marry her. “I hope they let us take out the Super Soakers today,” she said, again, to the window. That’d be awesome, is what he wanted to say but it came out more like, “Tuh-Zaw-smm.” She nodded but had nothing to add. Jonathan stared at his sneakers, willing himself to appear like a regular, non-melting human being. They were talking. They were having a conversation and they were touching. He could stand twenty-three minutes of this. He wouldn’t move.

THE ALLURING PROSPECT OF REGULAR SEX | X No. 1 Presidents’ Day celebrates G. Washington’s birth sort of, like, Christmas. It rained for the first time, then. I wore my new rubber shoes: stiff. The laces, tan and red, untwisted through each hole folding and unfolding, never ceasing to its limitation. [There will be no mention of blooming flowers on the grey truth sidewalk nor red deliciouses in full ripeness that glisten in the spray of a farmer’s hose] There was a poster of A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, framed in a translucent polymer case (that dangles on one red pushpin) and hid the riddle of the new sphinx and my armor (or l’amour, mon amour). She said, “Do you think I’d be a good mother?” I hope we are careful. “$9.95” the clerk said hours before. “Do you think I’d be a good mother?” “That’ll be $25 co-pay,” the clerk said hours after. I hope we are careful. Corrupted text messages from my subconscious: Let us go then you and I – Fuck me harder – Oh my God, I am heartily sorry “I need to go pee,” you said. (that is what you’re supposed to do after.)

No. 17 I call/text/write you by your Christian name, nights and weekends. You swallow each letter after I lick each white fold. Sometimes, I lick the stamps, and, sometimes, there are two, both of half faces: They are, at least, useful, but taste nothing like fuzzy peaches, anymore. No. 88 A jackhammer blasts outside while I’m idle near your thigh. I had lived an evening’s worth of lonely yearning: You were on the other bed. We can’t lay together sleeping, however fierce-radiant the sun knights your head. “Morning, dear. Want to do my laundry?” passed from your lips. I wonder, A terrible beauty is born “I’ll do you if you do.” Will we ever fit the form?

SUSPENDED TOGETHER | XI Spying a bin of scissors confiscated by the TSA got me wondering about a headline I shifted eyes over on the other side of the scanners: “Are Breast-fed Kids More Upwardly Mobile?”—I was busy clicking a closeup of my Susan B. Anthony Cracker Jack prize (worst score in Cracker Jack history, sorry), when I realized: I am “human,” but only since 1977—What then before? A new workin-progress: printed-out screen-grabs of the pages you get when you Google “how to buy a breast pump” suspended on filament to create a symbolic geometric volume—Women, an entire volleyball team, just hustled past in a latefor-their-flight commotion wearing Stanford University warm-up gear—“Everything ’s okay,” her voicemail sang. It meant she got her period.

BLUE EYE HONEY (MOZARKA) | XII Grocery lists, laundry lists piles particles. dishes. chores. decencies. Each small walled garden, of sweetness. light fell, music swell, dust rose, lover turn gazelleďź? blue vein under thin skin quicken minute muscle over ribcage, shoulder-bone, gluey suspendedeverything. honey that forgot breath, hours myth. In iteration; maid/faun, maenad/satyr, zeus/semele; over stew. Then the whole things seized, Whatever unconscious chemistry objector, through trajectories equal, opposite foundations crumbled, crosshatched,

playing

{THE} ORACLE BONES | XIII Some call it worship. The pledge of allegiance— The warm wet lecture of my tongue paging the lips of her parts of speech, fingers laced through to consolidate loyalty waves of this naturalized, local euphoria— actually, a current (not waves) Not a nurturing grasp— an aggressive clench threatening to crush my skull and pull it apart by the hair { now } The point is This war to regenerate gravity This is not comfort or cohabitation, This is an act like a nuclear blast flawless, political, cardiovascular, following colorless, faster than sound, then flowering shadows' power to linger along after long in the garden of longing, of utter abandon of physical sense, after the artifact after the art of resistance training, collateral violence rolled in her universe balled up and tossed in the back of her closet leaned against a chair I let her have it groaning like pain screaming like death, but No one is dead, no one is dying but no one is listening—everything's wrong, but we're only denying that 30

time is in sequence or measure Dissemination, disintegration. Total coincidence. How in 2014, somehow, life just still isn't good enough Around us a whole world, shaking itself to pieces The chair moans with her & splits in half I lift & explode with my laughter inside of her mind awash metaphors, whispering, whimpering Houses & nations of heroes & mythsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; Thunder and lightning That's what we're made of everything fucks until everything's nullified Thrashing, thrashing, thrashing & finished.

QUESTION MARK & THE MYSTERIAN | XIV Hope in seasons can be a mistake &

books sometimes bleed onto good friday grass

Who cares

tonight it’s distraction tonight it’s impulse pretending

we know what the world is bouncing off abandoned mattresses that litter alleys of sacrifice zones Your belief in soul music but not the soul can’t prevent me from staring late in the anthropocene night

Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s an abstracted boom box that sounds far away singing about candy but still we have to taste

Like the hunter the fisher the lover often returns empty-handed then

I see our reflection in the face of a drum We are what they call survivors

COCK & BALLS POEM | XV accept love as a city with an entangled highway in her hair I hear symbals in the morning I feel szleepy in the evenings a tad guilty but, not kidding, he sang praises to her two ducks somehow in the Ocean, In Fantasy land, where some poets are, cocks like up ta here balls down to molten earth unmanageable mounds forgive me butt, who will get there?

CONTRIBUTOR KEY

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thankâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; CAConrad for spiritual guidance. Patrick Blagrave & Lauren Faralli for their editorial eyes. Diana Hamm for providing us with a lovely cover. And the Philadelphia Poetry Community for giving us a home.

bedfellows

editors

Jaclyn Sadicario | Alina Pleskova