Welcome to My Magazine

Another summer left us rich in bikinis
And rich in friendship. My friends
Let us toast the acres of air that separate us,
The forests of people who come between.

Indeed, we share many of the same habits:
Staring intently, listening closely,
Hiding behind curtains, even on Sunday.
Je ne puis demeurer loin de toi plus longtemps.

But I can! It's surprising how close
Long-range photography can bring us. I know
Your begonias are growing nicely,
And we're on opposite sides of the park!

Some day, I want to be inside the radius
Of the perfumes you apply so liberally.
Some day, we'll think of the whales,
Probably almost at the same time.

You could say we're inching closer
To intimacy. The slow creep where
Neither of us occupy the moment,
Yet the moment, like here, wants to be there.

The Boat, Drunk (in progress)

As I traveled down impassible Rivers,

I no longer felt the pull of the guides:

Loud Redskins had emptied their quivers,

And nailed to dyed posts their bare hides.

As I went down impassible Rivers,
I no more felt the pull of the guides:
Howling Braves had emptied their quivers,
And then nailed to bright posts their bare hides.

Canton

Who fixes the machines

when they are buried in the deep

dark ground? The night, the train

is endless another unbroken

line that can never stop long enough

to read the faces in the windows

like fingers smoothing down the folds

of a coat feeling the weft

and wanting to go deeper,

or a drop of water, alone,

at the top of a tower of glass.

Let’s not name the ways

our hands have touched the dirt today.

I’d rather focus on the grass,

the Chinese tea and not the past.

Brownfield SIte

Drifting into the corner a knot of thread

Not of wire plugged into the dirt of a sofa

In the forest the walls soaked in urine

Like the earth just a portion of which

Can never return here to what was built

Are layers of paint on broken walls still

Layers under choked vines when the core

Of the wall exposed is cracked and laced

With the song of a hospital’s mother

Everything incites us to walk deeper

Into abandon the leaves the pharmacy

The dank tile floor of the woods

Now would be the time for a story

A pang of suspense in the rank brown air

But sometimes the stories are over

Told once and dispersed in aerosol bursts

Signed dark outside the abandoned lair 

Places Where Inner Others

Each day the unsettled camp

grows expansive with ideas

and the tables strung in a line

from house to shore are filled

with whisperings of lace

and daisies, and swaths

of black-eyed susans chatter

on the return from the range.

Evening activities yet to be planned

are on no one’s mind as the

campers are loath to leave

the woods until sunset,

and then only rarely.

The flag once raised echoes

from a distant horn,

the misty mornings muffling

sounds or slowly conveying

wet letters from the clouds.

After Party

We are all gathered around the point of impact

Seated by the fire of old logs and old tires,

Dried-out flowers, floss and scutellum,

A bowl full of night by our side.

Some started drinking from the middle

Of the bottle, others went looking for lightwood

Just in case we lose ourselves in the sky.

We struggled even to form a bucket brigade

Of emotions, let alone ponder flight.

Better if not examined too closely,

The evening takes on the sheen of weight.

All of our motions fill the containers

Stacked along the circle of companions

Of circumstance, coming and going, unweld,

Accidents maturated in dumb tumult.

Tomorrow, we’ll nomad our way

Out of this wilderness, after it falls.

When Lilacs Last in the Brickyard

Walking through the door a slow scarf wrapped
Around the throat of midday
The flames scorched the bride of the city
And muted the desire of tracks in transit
The last time these cigarettes were smoked
It was in the cotton fields by the stadium
Where the children of our new tribe choose
The skillful actions of sex changing
Patterns of movement above ground
The outskirts up in the air like a tent
Or a reversible umbrella of silk
Anything to keep the muscles from slack
The forms repeat themselves hand in hand
Like the shape of cold in the mind of cold
The ducks keep their bottoms warm in the pond
And the pigeons are wheezing at the sill
When the phone rings the bird ranchers are outside
With a warrant while the dust from their duds
Settles on the porch in the sunshine
Who prosecutes the molesters of lines, of flack,
Angelic in their justice not a serious condition
Just hand spasms and babbling
As the palm trees stir their spiked fronds
We move through a world where rocks move alone
That guy playing the fiddle is blind

Ames Hodges
& Mike Taormina

Device to Summon Commerce Street

Inhaled just enough into the evening

to be drawn in a woodland scene

on that street shaped like an L

we can never seem to find

unless we stop paying attention

or turn the attention around

like reading those slow books

of our youth, the massive ones

always leading in a new direction

despite staying on the same road

at least it would if I replaced a few

chips in the meditation machine

the registers revert too easily

as the coming of night repeated

folding back on to itself

in a cascade of shadows

extra pieces and parts falling out

on the unkempt ash of the way

gradually map the mind at play

Brickyard 2-11-13

The rabble are blitzed on the krieg of nations
wearing the world violator on the back.
There are some very bad ideas, he thinks,
Is this one of them? Whoever handed it
to him, shrinking into the dark, had to be loaded.
Blankety blank blank. Can I borrow your rose-tinted glasses?

We decided to change the song in our head.
Will the grooves still turn in the same direction?
In any case, the girl with the red farmer's boots
will not accept the flowers. Thank you, anyways,
for letting me borrow that dream - can you repair it?
I am not awake during business hours.

The couples in the Afghan restaurant remain docile
although he is sitting on two RPGs
and her hands are drones in the salad.

Le Cheile 6-21

The tides and bodies of boats

Move both ways, into and out of sight

Like a sinuous line between the visible

And the light and the scrutable

A boundary that doesn’t block but bend

All stems to the sun. Dunes curve and writhe

Along the coast til the chaparel reclaims

The dirt from blast and draught

A constant redrawing of wind and shore

An endless line of mad surveyors

Eyeing and chewing and scratching

With lewd stares into the air

Something you can sink your molars into

At last, a blank expression, no, a bank one

Passed through with all of the currencies

Exchanging saliva, despite the prohibition.

We signed for a copy of the resurrection

So now we are the captain.

We call capitalism by its name

And then the shrieking starts

Someone broke a fingernail

Or an iron law and circulation increases

Heading round the cape where markets rip

Stumble and spill into bigger piles of assets

For some the terrible necessity of being underneath

The gameboard of the sea juggling

Its risks like gulls down the line,

Amigo amici, the opening Italian

And the end game a slurry of howling apes

Somehow the vortex looks best in plastic

Pants, in the spirit of dropping,

Called out, collapsing, Pierrot on a string

Vexed at the stasis of his garment

Who are we to check your pockets

Without your coy permission?

James County

Forgive me water

slows the mind

In the days before

The flames engulfed

Only watching

The river was

A prospective lapse

Or a project

From a lounge chair

There are no signs

when entering

or one sign

that reads x-ing

a neglected culvert

and a few machines

used to stack things

I have made a bed
Inside a tube
Small glass tubes
A piece of wine
As fat bodies flow
Down the river
Mumbling

I am always behind
The light unless
It is night or

The smoke fits

The atmosphere

Some places are flat

Others as common

As valleys

Frankly water

I wish you

were as clear as gin

I get my news like a

Human thing

Soaked in a chair

The future in nowhere

Samething again

We is reserved

For the things

That would destroy us

The Long Foam

Trees without leaves

Trees in flower

What is contained between

In the bud

Of imminent coexistence

May be a bubble or not

Thoughts escape their container

Seasonally

It is not always a crime

At least not self-inflicted

When a circle breaks

Into another circle

Many in the pond

Would argue old Bashō was

A secret ninja

So deft in composing

In rhythm with the end

Of all things

And seldom ripping throats

Soft, the hand reaches down

Subtle fingers to pluck

The sewing girl’s needle

From the paralyzed frog

Remember when we lay

On the banks of the river

Two holes in our shirt

From the snares we made

Out of reeds when we rubbed

Grass on our faces to see

What we’d look like older

Much later, the tired village opens

Its reflection in dank loam

Bilious pools and shorn casements

A less than stealthy resignation 

Froth issues from the frog’s mouth

Flecked blades of grass tiny petals

Slowly submerged in the foam

As the white bubbles grow

And alter the direction of the light

In each lenticular orb

So that our scene is myriad

Again

Unsightly the ninja never stops for long

When the globose faces gather

To stare at the mortal hands operant

In the bubble of time a circle feracious

Bunches

The moon shines down on the water

Even after the first time

Playing golf on an island

Small enough to meet you again

If these islands are a system

That can explain the distance

Between as something other

Than the slow geology

That brings us together

And apart so briefly

Shifting the focus of affection

To the drift to furtive glances

Through the telescope

(breakfast in bamboo huts

and tea with raw fish)

Then I will find a way

To send a backwards sign

By smoke by subtext

Or maybe by moon

When you are not watching

And I am not home

T Ceremony

We are a crowd in the clouded spaces

Eyes turned in every direction

Reporting from the general collection,

As it were, a painting hung in the east gallery

Up for forensic analysis

People mill and eddy in and out of frame

Red string delineates the lines of sight,

The path traced, the discharge, the flight

From each eye in the scene – and yet,

As the twine laces the gallery

No two lines intersect or meet

Let me sit in this room

And paint on its walls

Sleep in the temple

And copy, copy, copy

Then clean the floor, very