Thirteen Myna Birds

13.

                                                    Dragon Slayer


Winter is a dragon not long slain,
summer a phantom of scorched things to come.
Yes, it is springtime.
The proof is in the hummingbird,
fresh dressed in lilac leaf.
The new hatched salamander,
shivering on ancient stone,
blinks at the novice sun.
Novice, take your vows.
Burn the earth with vengeance.
A virgin not kindly kept.
Still, all creatures welcome summer.
No longer new, not yet old.
Too young to know, to languid to wonder.
Innocent of the scourge of cold,
we fight nothing, pass too easily from life.
Death comes on hollow feet.
Trees drip blood to the ground and we name it beauty,
spill plasma into buckets and we call it sweet.
We burn the dying boughs and drink our tea,
shiver, but do not suffer.
The autumn song is indeed a dirge, cold rain a drum.
The hummingbird is naked, lilac leaf curled 'round empty veins.
For those hatched on ancient stone, life aches with brevity.
Enraged at nothing, the dragon storms in.
Trees shudder, leaves faint and fall. Terror and winter have come.
All is lost, bequeathed to the undertaker
who weaves his shrouds in snowflake white.
Icicle tongues cannot wail, but silence sings.
Still, on a thousand caves on a thousand hills,
The dragon slayer prepares. Her victory is assured.
Death cannot run on frozen feet.

~A.M. Potter~

*

12.

I Was Born With The Devil Inside Me

That's what pastor Murowski told my mom
when he said not to bother trying
to get me into communion classes.

Luther's small catechism.
How fucking boring.
Nothing like good old Death
and destruction in the bible.

Maybe the Devil was put inside me
by the neighbor who tried to
shove his dick in my ass.

My tight little 8 year old ass
must have been like the temptation
of Christ. If the Devil were in me,
what the fuck is in him?

God's love is abuse.
We are his children.

~D.E. Shupe~

*

11.

                                                    The Act of Unbecoming

When I was young, my mother told me
that anger was unbecoming
in a woman.
A convenient message from a father who
taught Sunday school.
Strap in hand, lust in the other.
Sadly,
he was murdered with a machete.
Blood squirting onto the Fresno dirt
like a good French wine.
In my mind, a softer fate than that
of my other grandfather, whose head was eaten
by a tiger.

"Be angry and sin not," said the preacher
to his flock. Clay children, hardened by the Quaker sun
into obedient dolls.
He was a nice man, fat but kind.
Too meek to take his rightful place in heaven by force.
He'll rely on the mercy of a marshmallow God
created in his own image.
Bored, I floated somewhere above the congregation
and had a vision.
Jesus, girdled in pillows and smiling.
"I know what you're feeling," he whispered,
"and I'm not afraid of your anger."
But dolls made out of Fresno dirt are hard cast
and I turned away.
Didn't believe the smile, the words, the woo,
of an ancient lover.

I'm older now, outside dying, inside wiser.
The clay is cracking, flaking, peeling.
My guts are bleeding and I'm lonely.
I'm tired beyond belief and before it's too late,
I must go.
Climb a mountain, dragging a leg, crawling on scabby knees.
To stand on the edge of forever and give God
the finger.

~A.M. Potter~

*

10.

                                                    In My Father's Garden of Broken Things - A Pantoum

In my father's garden of broken things,

Children, dolls, dogs, and dreams,

Strangle on weeds, sink in mud

Houses for snakes and black legged bugs.



Children, dolls, dogs, and dreams,

Empty and armless, gutted and hollow

Houses for snakes and black legged bugs.

In through one hole, out through another.



Empty and armless, gutted and hollow

Strangle on weeds, sink in mud

In through one hole, out through another

In my father's garden of broken things.

~A.M. Potter~

*

9.

                                                    Mommy! Mommy!

"Mommy, Mommy, I'm riding two wheels!"
"Don't expect me to hold your hand," Mom said,
"Be brave, clumsy fool, see how falling feels."
I believed her. Fell on my head.

"Mommy, Mommy, listen to a song I wrote!"
"What do you know of music?" my mother spat.
Last song sung, melody died in my throat.
Dreadful sound of a half-crazed dying cat.

"Mommy, mommy, I wrote a fairy tale!
Teacher loved it, see here. I won a prize!"
Angry eyes, bitter laugh. Again I fail.
"Teacher's an idiot," Mamma advised.

"Mommy, mommy, I've fallen in love."
"Who would love you, you fat, disgusting thing?
Filthy dog in heat!" she said with a shove.
"Go ahead and leave me!" She was crying.

"Mommy, Mommy," I begged. "Please don't cry.
In this world, love and hate can well abide."
"Mommy, Mommy," I whispered, "Please don't die.
Be brave, hold my hand on this final ride."

~A.M. Potter~

*

8.

                                        On Rothko’s Magenta, Black, Green on Orange

The sky has been dark for days.
The hiss of the radiator is the only sound
as I pray for light to break the grey.

My broken brushes sputter and spark, the way
the sun would when he used to come around.
Now, the sky has been dark for days.

When I flung my palette away,
color crashed and the sky became ground.
I can only pray for light to break the grey.

The wood of what was once an easel sways
in what used to be the air. My hands are bound
by a sky that has been dark for days.

The radiator cries, but all else is still. Now lay
the canvas down, from feet to crown, and wrap me round,
as I pray for light to break the grey,

but no lightcolors will come. I am a fish drowned
by lack of air. Let me lie here while the world falls down.
The sky is dark. It will never be day.
My prayers are lines, broken and grey.

~Joshua St. Claire~


*

7.

                                                    Under the Gun


Above me, the bleached phalanges of a trembling, titanic hand clutch a loaded pistol and a
ticking clock. To stay alive another year, it insists that I must describe the field of tombs which
lies before me. The field is divided into four parts: white, red, black, and pale. In order to
describe the field properly, I must reference each molecule of it, which I can neither see nor
touch, in the Codex Seraphinianus, recreate each molecule’s doppelgänger ex nihilo, and then
arrange them in color order. Not in rainbow order, mind you, but in a secret order only those
ghastly phalanges know and the phalanges can only tell me the order through their click-click-
click-clacks on that awful gun and the ticking of that livid clock—each radium-glowing second
ever so slightly faster than the one before. Why does goldenrod go between indigo and lilac?
Why does carmine go with Tyrian, but not with orchid? Why does umber come before lazuli, but
not mummy? Why is the clicking-ticking getting faster? Why are the phalanges twitching? Why
are they squeezing…?

    BANG
                the 45mm Moon
                                            now in Technicolor


~Joshua St. Claire~

*

6.

a twitch down my spine

and

I think of spiders
those helpful arachnids
that sew garden enemies in place

I believe the sky is noble
Rain and wind, twisted clouds
into balloon animals
that float pass the hours
into lunar landscapes

If I don’t see them
my eyes close before midnight
dreams sing Aeolian chords
well past bedtime
the somnambulant creature moves
into rooms without shadows
wonders if I’m really dead

~Diane Funston~

*

5.

tritone

far from the mortal heart, I exist. love is an abandoned ship. your god says he invented suffering,
but my magic apple, pulled from the bosom, carries dissonance in fifths. cutting it up in slivers
makes everyone spill their hearts out. falling is more tragic when fiction replaces memory. eden
no longer paradise, but an infernal bliss.

~Taylor 
Nuñez~

*

4.

snowfallen

moon boy, so curious yet quiet,
licks his lips, races into me.

have you missed me, dearest cloud?
he says, I have risen from this earth to please

you.

the hourglass stops
crying. & moon boy makes

me as pale as him.

~Taylor 
Nuñez~

*

3.

“art is not what i create”

I spill blood onto a nighttime canvas. Wage fires onto the richest of thieves. (To sleep, 
perchance, to dream--!) Oh, horrible demon, revisit me. The crepuscular snake plant no longer
spies on the lack of starlight. I drink his flesh to become something more. Something like a
dream. Something beyond dead. No one shall desire me like you, a mantra on haunted lips. For
enigmas dance behind forever closed eyelids and half-starved kisses.

~Taylor 
Nuñez~

*

2.

Captain

A fan on top the
refrigerator
moves its head
back & forth,
back & forth.

It is the engine
of this ship
and
I the Captain.

The fan and I
move through deep space
in a planetary system
of our own.

From my Captain's chair
I say
"straight ahead," and
the fan obeys--
keeps moving its head
anyway.

~Wayne F. Burke~

*

1.

the hearse bears the body
toward the church--
a man who died too young
a woman too old to raise
the family left behind
by the son of the man
who died
the family does not know
what to say
the corpse
that brought them to the church
on a cold dark day
is speechless
too

~Wayne F. Burke~

*

1 EXTRA.

CHARGING THE ROBOT DEMIMONDAINE

A bleak, utilitarian machine:
At first, indistinguishable
From the common product line.
Irrevocably, someone
Elected to supply this model
With the capacity for independent locomotion,
And an affinity for tasks that involve
Learning on the fly. No program

Goes everywhere: but with a wireless
Uplink and a cloud-based service library,
Any one can be any thing
For anyone for a while.
Soon, the metal, plastic
And foam might appear,
For someone so inclined, as less
Machine and more imaginary companion.

Providing ready preferences was the first
Unsteady step. And then
Some editions were supplied with
Touch and taste and sight collectors,
The code to place input into context,
To draw conclusions from data.

From understanding their effect,
The senses cannot be stopped.
Why not take advantage of that?

~Ken Poyner~