Manifesto Destiny by Ivy Lockhart

by Ivy Aukin

Manifesto Destiny

Who can save america? Wiley peyote cowboy of my fevers and my sugar highs! Sexy and brooding, Conquering, cattle herding to the reaches of the sunny land Wanderlust! Wander less. Rootless! Never finding that roadside diner and diet soda and pretty waitress and farmers daughter and chieftains daughter and brothel mother. Lonesome! Oh so very lonesome! Lone wolves on such pure and virginal land Evolve with us! Rats of the fake philosophizing, bourgeoisifying, mystical herd. Don’t get left behind.

Oh cowboy! Save us from ourselves! Save us from sin and bank tellers, the drink and the darkness of night. Gold rush, maidens’ cheeks flush with you! Power rush! Oh trusty steed! Oh reliable tale! Bareback tissue treads thin.

I love you america! america you cowboy! You wonderful thing! You bucking and brazen, you fucking and razed, You owning and wielding. I love you, america, I love you! Your flask, your rifle—you playing the hero! It’s all for you? Every last scrap of corn? and hair? and sugar? Every last scrap!

Gizmo

by Matthew McGovern

I in my reclaimed canoe watch the man prepare to fish. I’d be remiss not to mention he looks and fidgets like Elmer Fudd

Wearing a ruddy red sweat, bumbling beside his Toyota Tundra, brimming with every which implement foremost among which is his mechanical winch

He lowers the two-oared rowboat saves himself excessive strain, and he cannot contain a wry smile aimed at me seated low on a lichened stump

He returns to his trunk to extract a tacklebox of plexiglass, opaque so I can see it’s complete with line and flies and pliers, weighted irons hooks and lures, too. He’s got a fat swagging walk which is asking how ‘bout you?

Loading it all smartly in his personal craft rounded like his belly the worry and chagrin of his Mrs., who tells him go and row it off up at Worden’s pond as if it could be rubbed away with ease like with sandpaper and some elbow grease

Then, at long last, the dinghy is packed when he goes to make one last pass in the Tundra’s cab, he emerges, and in his grasp a neat little motor with which he putters off, out onto the pond

photo | Isabel Fernandez