Mary Buchinger – On the Eighth Day

On the Eighth Day the garden left me and a boat was made in that boat the mind left the body and the spirit too became a separate thing and the winds of philosophy drove + so when I pierced my ear it was only the fleshy lobe that made way nothing else in the […]

Frank Paino – Nesyamun

Nesyamun Priest and Scribe of the Karnak Temple (Mummified remains displayed in Leeds City Museum, England) Forty layers               of incensed linen stripped               in the slow seduction               of science. Cumin, myrrh,               oils of cedar and cinnamon               whose aromatics swirl               like the potent scent of burnt               offerings. Here, beneath               […]

Bruce Bond – Lunette 4

Lunette 4 Even the dead feel incomplete and drift        through the garden floor like a feeling of displacement or the scent of rain.        You know that smell, the way a body knows to end the dream and drink. It knows itself        as mostly water and therefore passing through. The breath of millions polishes the wall […]

Jan Beatty – California

California Around here, trees are hats, little bowlers, van gogh lids of blown divi trees that lean sideways for the better view— toppers, kangols, pork pies, wig hats. I woke to the racket hailstorm: little funnels of green at the edge of the hillside—jutting out over the sea—the lives of people closeted inside—who are they? […]