Riot Grrrl, by Adam Fieled

 

Prize partridge around Media, Mary was also a bad
seed or rebel par excellence. She doped and fucked her
way in divergent directions; got dropped into hospitals;
rode with her assumed husband on a motorbike;
in the parlance of the times, granting complete credulity
to her tales, a wilder riot grrrl never drew breath.
What mattered to me was whether I had her or not.
This remained variable, as Abby also appeared, and both
of us caught viable action on the side. One summer night,
after a brief, mutually adulterous separation, she arrived
by cab to Logan Square, in frilly dress, hair in a bun.
I grabbed her and fucked her on the floor, and that (somehow)
was it— marriage consummated. Even if Mary moaned about
my drug shortages. Love always seemed richer, to her, on Klonopins.

The only one who ever drove me into delirium fits
with jealousy, Mary was. She was adept at being
a little lost sheep, for anyone (curator or not) to salvage
and rescue, if I had displeased her even for a night.
The only one who ever made me weep from pure
obsessive anguish, so that so much of my life became
dramatic, I might as well have been back with the Outlaw
Playwrights. I knew now how to evaluate compositions,
the quirks of colorations, what the Renaissance taught
us about body-soul unity; more importantly, for me, I
knew what body-soul unity meant when an individual
falls in love. I cannot say, the only one I was ever in
love with; but my deepest sense ever was, of love running
in red blood through my veins, out of my pores, into her.

Adam Fieled is a writer based in Philadelphia. His books include Beams, Equations, Opera Bufa, Apparition Poems, and Cheltenham. Manuscripts-in-progress include Something Solid, Curiosities, and Early Work 1996-2006. He edits P.F.S. Post. 

Three poems, by Mark Young

 

The Petrified Forest

Humphrey Bogart was Princess Diana's
seventh cousin. When he died, Lauren
Bacall placed a small gold whistle in-
side his casket. At Diana's funeral, the
Queen's sister, Princess Margaret, un-
like the Queen, did not bow her head.
The cremated remains of Lauren Bacall
are kept at Forest Lawn, the same ceme-
tery as her husband Humphrey, but in a
different area. Princess Diana is buried
on an island in the family estate. Reports
say that the area is not well looked after.
Like Lauren Bacall, Princess Margaret
was cremated, purportedly because there
was no room for a traditional coffin left
in the royal vault at Windsor Castle. Nev-
ertheless, Queen Elizabeth was interred
there when she passed. No one of note is
known to be buried in the 200 million
year old petrified forest in northeastern
Arizona, but the trees, however, are said
to be quite spectacular & worth a visit. The
film was the first that Bogart starred in.

 

 

The gopher ficcione

The tensile strength of gophers
is measured by the depth to which
they build their holes. The record,
established at the 1936 Olympic
Games in Berlin, & recorded for
posterity by Lotte Riefenstahl, still
stands, at just under 2 meters. "We
should get you to build our bunkers"
said Adolf Hitler as he presented the
team with their gold medals. "Cert-
ainly showed those moles & voles
how things should be done" said the
Gopher King at the press conference
that followed. The next two Olympics
were canceled due to the war. When
the Games resumed in London in 1948,
the rules for that particular event had
been changed. Semi-aquatic animals
could now compete, so Egypt was
entering a team of Nile crocodiles; &
since (a) they were reputed to dig
burrows that went down 12 meters
& (b) they had a particular fondness
for small fry, the gophers decided
to follow Shakespeare's maxim that
the better part of valor is discretion
& refused to defend their title. They re-
tained their record, however, under a
clause in the OCOG rules that states
if criteria for a particular event change
dramatically, then a record achieved
under the old conditions would be
considered to be held in perpetuity.

  

Imprison'd

has an anagram in primnoids, a
form of deep-sea corals which are
quite common & characteristically
found in seamounts & deepwater 

coral banks. Their ancestral colony
shape is that of a dichotomous
planar, meaning an organism or
structure that forks into two equal 

parts repeatedly while growing
flat in a single two-dimensional
plane.There is, unfortunately, no
one anagram for that description.

 

 

Mark Young was born in Aotearoa / New Zealand but now lives in a small town on traditional Juru land in North Queensland. He has been publishing poetry for over sixty-six years, & is the author of around eighty books. Recent titles are From the Cave’s jukebox & synecdoche, both from Sandy Press, California, & Curtains from Pat Nolan's Neo-Mimeo Editions, also California. A new collection of visual work, pheromones, is due to be published by Sandy Press.

Three poems, by Eva Ribich

Eva Ribich is a Swedish American award-winning poet and the author of more than ten poetry collections published in Swedish. With her partner, Charlotte Jung, she has also translated North American poets, such as William Carlos Williams and Nelson Ball, into Swedish. In recent years, she has ventured into asemic poetry. www.evaribich.com

Five poems, by Gary Barwin

Tree charm.

Probably Haiku 15 (+2) (after bpNichol)

Haiku

Composition 2025 #7 (for Lamonte Young)

Speech (for Laura Kerr)

Gary Barwin is a writer, musician, educator and multimedia artist and the author of 35 books of poetry, fiction and essays. He won the League of Canadian Poets’ Lifetime Membership Award and has twice been shortlisted for their Spoken Word prize. He has taught and been writer-in-residence in many universities, colleges and universities and is currently a committee member of Parchment Magazine, Meet the Presses Collective and the LitLive Reading Series. His latest novel, The Comedian’s Book of the Dead will be published by Book*Hug in Fall 2026. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario. garybarwin.com

Two poems, by Joshua Martin

 

Adjusted situational precariousness remains vivid

[implied]
…bloodiest histories reach decisions
          …imperial historiographies
              accepted discouraged
              framework…
[alcohol failed dissenters].

   Material stresses shift
   negotiated confessions 

leaping colleges streamed
into conspiracies behind
obvious grammar school
militancy on a mission
to extirpate diligence
          /          / Once
status reached influence
subjects reconciled a
form of surplus     / 

            reduced
long                     term
         population        victory
< 
     contracts
                   > economic
abilities to local
                          defiance. 

[vessels] [northwards]
        [maim]
                [reductive
          irrationality
                            ]. Colonial
in scope – three scoops
ranging circumventing
missionaries rampaging. 

[broadband crusade]
…critical surrender
    under the walls
    later surviving
    discarded uprising…
/
[combined but actual]
reinforcements manifested
as blockade
                   distressed
                           possessed
[summed up] 

entailing a degree of
general sedition 

                 operating out of
                 inevitable conflict.

 

 

 

To crypt explorers
 

waters build
experiences
[…]
coins as digital
as monthly
ventures increasing
focus on captives
[///]
the attention of
hybrid briefings                     ,

subtle infrared
regulatory lists
                     ,
challenges
          insights
perspective
          stigmata
[,,,]
hippo holding astute
wetlands
/
outdated
          impacted
                     aligned
/
masthead
foundational
          descriptive
crisis proposed
          motel
related shoes
          paced
notoriously
          allocated
transparent
          puncture
villainous
          milestones
[;;;]
across virtually
accelerating poverty
formless coverage
ready causation
[:::]
          going forward
no imminent
          potential
clear & present
          hardened
hacking fire
          warehouse
[???]
                     captive
          owners
wander                              pinnacle
                     alternative
          flesh
test               risk
          disillusion
                               [.] 

 

 

Joshua Martin is a Philadelphia based writer and filmmaker, who currently works in a library. He is a member of C22, an experimental writing collective. He is the author most recently of the books punctuated avalanche (Stone Corpse Press) and en=raptur=ed [riverrun] & mingle (Ranger Press) He has had numerous pieces published in various journals. You can find links to his published work at joshuamartinwriting.blogspot.com

from PurgatorioXIX: Sir Samuel Walker Griffith, The Divina Commedia of Dante Alighieri, Oxford UP, 1911, by Andy Weaver

 

1.

in
chill

  

dawn in
long dusk
in dreams stuttering
in distorted
lack

 

 

 

 

to

 

inveigle 

a
song 

when
in
confusion

 

2. 

disdainful

 

rending

 

 

a
mountain 

 

laden with

here

 

wings of

granite
pinion us
to 

art
an
angel mounted
and misgiving

 

3. 

ancient saw

 

 

King orders
falcon
turns
desire 

to

freedom

 

 

with words

 

 

 

thus poet was

 

 

urned
where
desire was king

 

4. 

pleasure
that creature
whose 

return

 

 

 

plunges

its 

 

burdens seem a feather
ah
Roman 

art

of

 

 

purgation
a bitter penance

 

5. 

 

whelmed
tinguished 

stricted
captive

 

 

but
obeisance
bent
to 

an other

owner

 

discourse

disturbs weeping
with
yonder
its wicked
yonder

 

 

 

PurgatorioXIX is a book-length project that erases numerous translations of Canto 19 from Dante’s Purgatorio. Each section works through a different translation, erasing all but nineteen words from each page (taking each page of the translation as a separate numbered part of the section and preserving the line on which each word appears).

 

Andy Weaver is an Associate Professor of creative writing, contemporary poetry, and poetics at York University in Toronto, Canada. His fourth book of poetry, The Loom, was published in 2024 by the University of Calgary Press. His work has been nominated for the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry, the Robert Kroetsch Poetry Book Award, and the 2022 Nelson Ball Prize.

 

Two poems, by Stephen Brockwell

 

Lost Tongues
for Pearl Pirie

It was as if our tongues
escaped the compound
and ran off by themselves
to the riverbank.

Words dropped like spit
into the river
never forming thoughts
that might save us from ourselves.

I could not tell you
I love you; the air
would not hold
the sound of the words.

I could not hear you;
I am no lip reader
and you were wading
downstream in the current.

We had never borne witness 
to such quiet—not silence:
it was as if the wind had chosen
to carry other sounds, not ours.

Our agreement with the air—
ephemeral glyphs
traced by a fingertip
on infant skin,

sung to a dozing child—
had been forgotten;
the pact expired
after generations

failed to remind us of it.
No one whispered, “Oh, Sam,
before I go, don’t forget
your obligation to the air.” 

It was as if the larynx,
loom of the voice,
had lost the warp
of the air.

Even in a storm
I could have brought
my mouth
close to your ear,

cupped my hands,
and spoken over the gusts.
I kneel on riverbed gravel.
I am a clay tablet

for the grief of the air
inscribed on my knees
in the cuneiform
of wind-scattered pebbles.

 

Shade Lakes


Late September sunsets
in the shade lakes in the valleys
of the Colorado Rockies
hold liquid depths of absent light.

Steel crustaceans glint
as they dine on sediment, soil,
stone, ore, and trees
the way a king crab

samples the seabed for barnacles
and sunlight from the surface
reflects from its opening
and closing mandibles.

As we fly toward Denver,
shadows evaporate
into a plain of late fall
sunlight. Boulder houses,

revealed by window
reflections, emerge
on a plateau that was once
an ancient seabed.

See the fossils
of our future remains:
earth-throats of rare
earth mineshafts,

sclerotic vasculature
of superhighways,
skeletal concrete towers,
human coral we

recolonize every morning.
What will future species
make of the pacemaker
they recover from the calcium

birdcage where my lungs
and heart coordinated
the supply chain
of my light-devouring eyes?

“Nothing, darling,”
a nearby passenger sighs,
responding to a question
asked by someone else,

words at least one of us
utters every moment,
somewhere, in a multitude
of tongues, answering

a private question a spouse
whispers because nothing
is what we make of it all
and will be made of all of this.

Stephen Brockwell is an Ottawa poet. His book All of Us Reticent Here Together won the Archibald Lampman award in 2017. He is a software development director at the Environmental Systems Research Institute.