Deep

Tissue
Magazine

Number
Ten
Duane Locke

“I THINK I’M IN RAT’S ALLEY WHERE THE DEAD MEN LOST THEIR BONES,”

A SOLILOUY APPRORIATED FROM A DIALOGUE BEWEEN TWO LOVERS IN

T.S. ELIOT

Sunlight segmented by slats slants to put gold braid

On the rectangular still surface of gin as if the gin

Were an Admiral. The bottle is bare-headed. Its cap

Fell on on the open mouth of a hunting dog that designed the rug,

Was staggered on by my steps and became flat. Flat, flat, flat.

This occurred during the historical time when the best bark

In the cinema was from Rin Tin Tin. I took the bush from my kit

To brush the fluid on the door knob, and find out if there were

Any fingerprints. There were none, not even mine, or my

Persona‗s. When a school boy, I hated school and the teacher‘s

Pious attitude, but I loved to see-saw, to be lifted up, dropped down,

Lifted up, dropped down, lifted up, dropped down. But

To see-saw, another was required. Never see-sawed,

Never see-sawed, never had my love fulfilled. No stranger

Ever sat distant from me on a raw wood board. Anne never

Sat in the distance and said, ―Stay with me. Speak to me.

Why do you never speak. Speak.‖ So I never had the opportunity

To reply: ―I think we are in rats‘ alley where the dead men lost their bones.‖

FAR AWAY THE CLIPPED WINGED LAKELAND SWANS

It was a day when Pan had a smooth chin, had shaved off the

Triangle of hair, his slave mentality, the fashionable beard

and played the oboe. We sipped out of one glass the Vin Nobil

Bought for a bargain at an Amsterdam wine store‘s basement sale.

A battery radio gave us music from old Vienna, where we were

At Pensione Louisa near Scheonburn three weeks ago. We had seen

Only swans with clipped wings in public parks, now in the Dike roads

Pearly waters with ivory intervals there were over a thousand wild white swans

On the beige boulder with pale yellow scarves, a billion gulls.

Lind, I remember the deliverance I felt when my palm

Touched the your hand downturned on shore sand.

Even the cold gold of your wedding ring became warm.

LETTER TO LIND CALL, NO. 2

Lind , my stocks soared. I plan to buy

A red convertible BMW, and drive down

Those small, shelled roads by our Gulf beaches,

And be admired by the rich hoi polloi.

I will wear on my bald head,

A wig to resemble the head of that non-artist

Who had no artistic talent at all, and thus

Being supremely inferior became a millionaire.

Our art public is mainly composed of rich psychopaths,

Who despise ordinary sex, of which they are incapable,

But crave the scatological. The trendy art

Is now of George and Gilbert. Even my two sons,

Six and eight, from my fourth wife.

Came into my study the other day

Dressed in identical suits, had identical hair styles,

Wear identical shoes, identical socks,

Said they aspired to be like George and Gilbert.

Then they took off their clothes, walked out naked.

But of course, you know

The wig I wear will be copied from Andy Warhol‘s hair.

I am going to buy some land on Sanibel‘s Captiva Island.

Collect shells, and live where Robert Rausenberg lived.

I never could understand why Rausenberg

Was considered an artist all, but good taste

Had vanished from the 20th century. Everyone

Craves what is egregious and disgusting. We

Really live in a time of degraded taste. I remember when

I was a serious artist, praised by highbrow critics,

Overlooked by the middlebrow audience, and

Hated by the lowbrows. I lived in a decaying house

In the Tampa slums, harassed by city inspectors,

While Robert Rausenberg lived on Captiva Island

And had string-rays, sea robins on his shore line.

But then I invested in stocks, pornography and

Faked art, became rich. The item I invested in

That made the money, that sold as art, was

Old Coca Cola bottles filled with human excrement

And capped with a picture of a butcher knife rape.

Lind, you will not get anywhere with your painting,

For you are trying to paint the beautiful. I know you

Admired Renoir when he said, ―I paint the pretty.‖

Our current high, low, middle classes hate beauty,

Unless trivialized and vulgarized.

You are too intellectual ever to be understood

By an audience educated in colleges by the current

Ignorant, insensitive, slave-mentality Ph. D‘s.

Give up your painting. Remember the girl,

I cannot recall her name, but who was hailed

A great performance artist, became rich.

She stripped herself naked, rolled in chocolate.

LOVE

Allen Bloom has written,

Romantic love among the young generation

Is as dead as Knight-Erranty.

I have noticed when a contemporary poet

Praises hyperbolically the other, the alterity,

The praise is really not applied to the other,

But is a metaphor for amour propre.

Love is so rare today that people

Even find it difficult to love their selves.

Semoticians have already in learned tomes declared

That in the 21st century the word ―love‖

Is an empty concept, and only used

For commodification in a commercial transaction.

I remember reading in one of the

Rare good poems of John Donne

That love was divine, sacred, a circular form.

Andrew Marvell knew much better

That love was parallel lines.

Donne turned lovers into geometric abstractions,

Marvell into ―birds of prey.‖

The only thing that seems divine

Among our young is rock music,

The high priest who preaches in song

Is a drag queen or someone posing

To be so weird that he has gone

Far beyond all classifications.

Poets today seem to excel only in

A neo-kitsch vocabulary, in neo-kitsch,

The ugly has replaced the pretty,

And the ugly is just as meaningless

As the pretty was in late Victorianism,

But now ugliness is au courant

Among the current slave mentalities.

No poet, except some anachronism,

An old man in dotage, uses a

Romantic love vocabulary, sayings like John Keats

That his love burns the brim of his hat,

Or like, who in is life seemed incapable

Of loving anyone except Shelley,

When seeing his supposed beloved

Would write, ―I fail, I fall on grass.‖

The depiction of current love for a while

Was stabbing the lover with a butcher knife,

But that was for our time

A too timid and ordinary action,

Soon went out of fashion.

I remember when a young child,

I saw a woman with a bruised face,

Two teeth knocked out,

One eye blinded. She was

Beat up by a man who was frantic

Because his favorite team,

The Florida Gators has lost a game.

She was the live-in lover of this man.

I saw her pain, and asked her

―Why do you stay with him.

Why don‘t you leave?‖

She replied, puzzled why I

Would ask such a question,

―Because I love him.‖

As a child my first impression

Of love was love meant

That one liked to get beat up.

But now as an adult,

I am confused, I don‘t know

What love is.

AT ALBERGO MILANO NEAR CERTOSE DI PIAVE

A quiver in the twilight azure,

The blue a snowy egret flew though.

The egret, amber feet stretched out from ebony legs, flown, gone,

But the quivering in sky remains, silver spirals,

Concave and convex, sway and shiver, gravity disobeyed,

A back‘s bright feather detached by air current in flight

Floated upwards, accelerating its pace, to go

Higher and higher. We watched a white feather

Repeal what human beings call natural law.

The feather touched the comets luminous thighs as it went by the light

From a dead star that was traveling downward

To illuminate mica- spotted bodies mineral bodies now seen after a mountain landslide.

Erraticism is the correction, not the error.

The old Metaphysics was overcome and untangled

From our neurons, everything was physical, terrestrial,

But not the physical and terrestrial as believed

And spoke of by the people,

But a physical and terrestrial that only a rare few knew existed.

We had been reading together the Romantics,

Now know what the west wind and a burial urn can do.

We had been reading the postmoderns, know now

Buddha has replaced Freud as the base of psychotherapy and abundant life.

We had sat together on a faux leather sofa touched each other,

Felt our toes breath. We found Wordswroth‘s

Orange moon in our albergo room at noon.

Stars were no longer fixed, as believed still at the time

Of John Donne, and all the fixed beliefs of he 20th century disappeared,all

Faiths to rationalize being dead while still alive vanished

From the brains of a few who caressed rice with a press

Of thumb and finger before letting rice float from hands

Into ponds where wild deer no longer are afraid to drink.

We pressed close together with Campari at a raw wood dark table by

The Certosa di Piave near Milano, gazed at the albino deer

That appeared as if a medieval illumination

Of a divine event that was sketched on the rice paper horizon.

Duane Locke lives in Tampa, Florida, has had 6,593 poems published in print magazines

And e zines. Nation, American Poetry Review, Counter-Example Poetics, etc.

His last four books 2009-10 are: Yang Chu‘s Poems 376pp, Crossing Chaos( Canada--

Order: Amazon), Voices from Grave, 40pp., erbacce, England, Soliloquies from

A High Wall Cemetery, Differentia Press, California; A Marble Nude Pauline Borghese

With a Marble Apple in her Marble hand, 53pp.,Scars publications.

He has been awarded the Edna St. Vincent Millay Poetry Prize, Charles Agnoff award,

Poetry Society‘s Walt Whitman award, DeKalb award for best poem, and a Swiss award

For best poem written on Europe.

Also is a painter. His paintings, quasi 300, on sale at Lisa Stone Arts,

290 Parrulli Drive, Olmond Beach, FL, 3217--www.lisastonearts.com .

A photographer, both nature and surphotography, many exhibitions, has done over

30 poetry book covers.

Loring Wirbel

The Legitimacy of a Naked Manning

Synonym search in the Merriam put out to pasture,

a stolen NATO playbook,
assumes a dictionary legible to all.

No-fly in Tobruk
responsibility to protect,
assumes I voted a captive parent
in the last My Weekly Reader poll.

Dangerous toys in wrong hands,

boys in bound hands,
assumes I trust my toy chest
to the warrant officer hiking nuclear football.

Goddess Diana of the thousand-day epoch of Harvey Milk,

leading our blessed prayer of Espionage Act
assumes I have witnessed her halo afire in a leaked life hereafter
Assange assignation assertion assume assume.

I assume nothing.
Myriad miles of copper-zinc pipes springing WikiLeaks
at each T-joint
carry less legitimacy than Bradley‘s hands
testing the slipknot,
The five centuries of Westphalian honor,
Nightmare, triumphalism,
more transitory than the piss spattered on Manning‘s toes.

When Nuns Bring Beer

Sister Barbara poured two perfect-head MGDs

Just as the sun‘s neutrino vomit hit the upper atmosphere
She wondered out loud about reeling in the contemplative sisters
who dismiss the warmth of the barroom.
What fishing lure can return them to the necessary breath?

I reminded her that every Stylite needed to eat and shit

Even if it took a diocese force-feeder ascending that column.
The breath is here, the choice has been made.
But then again, Catholics always proved better at works.
A new crowbar might be required to pull a Calvinist ascetic
from the bubblegum stuckness of prevenient grace.

Not stuckness, Barbara smiled, stuck-in-againstness.

We could feel the corona spillover while we watched the condensation rings
warn us that the necessary breath is a closed circle.
Accept the gift, accept the terror of each anonymous death
without once averting your eyes.

What if the astronomers were wrong,

I thought as I got up to leave.
Maybe that walk to the car, a seach for auroral lights
would leave my bones pliant.
She wondered if a squid was any easier to reel in,
and reminded me of dozens of assassins, closer than the sun,
that might lurk in those last two hundred steps.
And besides, she said, you must finish your beer.
Ecstatic Mistakes

What if neither tactics nor strategies are intended to work? – Kent Ingram

Wisdom attained from the error of infinite looping is merely Lesson One.
Yes, the dessicated nerve endings of the phantom limb
howl like gangrenous boneshard.
And yes, many students flunk early.
Just ask the wrong-angled pile of rag and bone
who leapt from the steak-house roof
in a dizzy stupor of self-imposed identity theft.
He is not having fun.
He will have to take an incomplete.

But that was first semester’s lesson plan.

We skip the obvious sociopath for now.
Watch the peristaltic bile in the healthy specimen
collect for each lover’s lie, each agile cheat,
an acid meant as solvent for chronic pain.
Now here comes the hard part,
take it to the bridge.

Installed the flange upside down.

I love my wrong.
Let my child hear the audible bile.
I love my wrong.
Conduit cut to the wrong diameter.
I love my wrong.
Defrauding the lover that mattered most.
I love my wrong.

Newbie first-formers chant “The things which hurt, instruct.”

You laugh past hurt.
Let the cartoon clown hammering his thumb
be your silly satori.
Every fuckup sparkles in prevenient grace.

Loring Wirbel lives in Monument, Colorado and agitates on any particular subject that holds his
short attention span at the moment. When not hiking, ranting, or producing music, he tries to
come up with devious schemes for people to actually offer him money for writing. When he
remembers to do so, he posts to http://iconocurmudgeonclast.blogspot.com.
Gil Van Wagner

Mad as a Hatter

Open a can of dog food and feed it to the cat.

Dance in your pajamas and sleep in a top hat.

Have breakfast for dinner and cereal for lunch.

Save while you still borrow and spend before you have.

Smile while you panic and tell the world you‘re glad.

Bizzaro is real easy, truth is fucking hard.

Cause They’re Not

They target the lovers. They target the joy.


They target the mighty and pray for their fall.

Cause they're not. Cause they're not

Cause they're so very not.

They target the smiles, the hugs and the kiss.


They target the happy. They target the bliss.

They target the beauty, the righteous and true.


They target the goodness, the shiny, the new.

Cause they‘re not. Cause they‘re not.

Cause they‘re so very not.

They target in anger, and hate, and have not.

They target their wishes that did not come true.

They target the future and try to undo.

They target the pretty, the happy, the haves.

They target the giving, the sharing, the glad.

They target the laughter, the joy, and success.

They target the beauty, the smart, and the best.

Cause they‘re not. Cause they‘re not.

Cause they‘re so very not.

They target and target and target some more.

Painting their target right on your door.

They target from darkness and shoot into light.

They target from evil and aim at the right.

They target from weakness but miss most their shots.

They target the unknown. They fear quite a lot.

They target and hope nothing will change.

They target their failures hoping to blame.

They now shoot in panic and pay any cost.

They target while knowing their war has been lost.

They target the smiles, the hugs and the kiss.


They target the happy. They target the bliss.

They target the beauty, the righteous and true.


They target the goodness, the shiny, the new.

Cause they‘re not. Cause they‘re not.

Cause they‘re so very not.

Caisson Point

A laurel wreath, a hardy handshake, and a twenty-one gun salute.

Folded flag, broken hearts, shattered families, futures lost.

Widows wonder, orphans cry, as even more are sent to die.

Honor the fallen, the wounded, and maimed.

Question why with each thought of their name.

Parades end up in picnics. Soldiers end up in graves.

War is a killing thing. Mute the hip-hip hooray.

Gil Van Wagner is a Writer......by way of a military career, years in corporate America, more

years running his own business, and lots of adventures along the way. Now he writes...and

writes...and writes. Books like "Jersey Sure" and "Dead Drunk" with several others in work.

Poems, missives, massives, rants, raves, and much more. He lives his spirituality every day,

gives away bodywork/energy sessions, and loves life.

Felino A. Soriano

Clarity

I visualized the swan vanishing

—the ornamental neck swathing

continents of my oracular

interest

sifted aerial aquatics

ballet resuscitation burdening

 the yet-built into

guilt‘s promenade of

parallel ambulation

—my disparate fragile

cradle of calm

unfastened as sand‘s sift and warming disposition

and

as my watching became evidential

neurological

heirlooms

dissected writing my presupposed dimension of intention aggregated absence

Ballet of Milestone

Of arrival‘s anecdotical unexpected misery

range and spectrum

collocated attributes of

sedentary permissions. To

realize
whereabouts‘ incorporated leaving

is

vocal

deterioration of invalid

voice of species‘ circumvented mirrors. Completion

caresses the fulfilled physicality of posited nuances. Range and

reinstated memories

hide and hold ability and arouse

mentioning of emission‘s rotating licenses.

Discussion of the Skeletal Occurrences

Child of spoken distance

sits

constructing castle of alabaster sand.

Waves of turquoise wrists

break and farewell brevity of composed

articulation. Strands of seagulls

round or pearled
 bounce upon echoed

certainties

horizonal typographies blue and blurred

resemble fogged reflectional systems

tunneling and revel

reciting and tearing

broken moments of environmental nuances

negating progress of the cultural hallucination of motionless

survival.

Felino A. Soriano (b. 1974) is a case manager and advocate for adults with developmental and

physical disabilities. In 2010, he was chosen for the Gertrude Stein "rose" prize for creativity in

poetry from Wilderness House Literary Review. Philosophical studies collocated with his

connection to various idioms of jazz explains motivation for poetic occurrences. For

information, including his 44 print and electronic collections of poetry, over 2,700 published

poems, interviews, and editorships, please visit his website: www.felinoasoriano.info.

Mike Taylor

quaint/quiet voice during the daytime

but fully open at night

quaint, quiet voice heartwarm

utters commands in 3 / 4 time heartbeat
we are ready, oh so ready heartfelt

alabaster statues sit

on podiums throughout
as the room stutters
windows to the soul
latched close
no misunderstanding here
it sounds like it looks
and that‘s all
we can ever ask
barbarians from the mountains
for those of us

to be sure
unholy – absolutely
from denver
to venice

here now
(low-key)
‗where the dream is‘
this city of tales
(perkoff, scibella and rios‘ city of midnite alleys
and precious words hidden in every crack
and crevice along the dying storefronts
by the constant ocean)

the true barbarians

have arrived
fistful and oh so obvious in our intent,
deadly in our faith,
holiness just another ruse
another flim-flam

we are
here
from kerouac and casady‘s mountain town
with all the midnite-speed runs
and dreams of dead larimer street
in all it‘s wonder
we have arrived intact and alive

hear us hear us
our days are not numbered/
we are not afraid
our standard raised entirely visible-
‗we shall not die
It is too dangerous‘
we have arrived
to whatever destiny awaits
with each fleeting moment

with each fleeting moment

and time a rare commodity
i‘m glad I don‘t have enough sense
to come in out of the rain
to come into the dry, warm place
with teapot full and brewing
with silence sliding off the walls
into puddle/pools of intense concentration
with books piled high, oh so high,
some read, some waiting to be read
but no sense
rain captivates
rain motivates
rain stimulates
told someone once that I‘d never held
an open umbrella …..never
I love leaning in storefront doorways, collar turned up,
cigarette dangling, pint in my pocket
watching the rain
feeling the rain
yea, needing the rain
the pale, hazy yellow dimness from
old street lamp shows rain lessening
pint almost gone now
last smoke flicked away
so hands shoved deep in field jacket pockets
steps slowly to the room
slowly to the solitude of
the room
to the waiting books in
the room
to the brewing tea in
the room

Sixty-four year old retired railroad worker. Flag, Woman & Other Desecrations published by Bowery
Press in 1973. Was one of the Denver/Venice West writers/artists from the 1960/70‘s. Currently live in
the mountains outside of Denver with my son, the poet MJ Taylor.
Paula Lietz

Empty

I remember the smell

of you.
Broad hands enticing
my body.
Taunting until I moaned
for more.
Your rhythm my rhythm
our rhythm.
With parted lips I remember
The taste of you.

Your side of the bed remains empty.

Devil Came Dancing

the Devil came dancing in the

wan of the moon
shadows had no place to hide
dawn betrayed as he quelled
her light and
demanded the lead
fruit was strewn and nature
sidled away from the painful
reminder that was her past
musicians cried as realms collided
instruments pitched
to the floor
our throats were dry as we
continued to tap our toes
to the silence ~ as wallflowers tend to do
the blind dog whined as evil preened and
waltzed alone, although every bit in control
magnificent in his egotistical stride
the Devil came dancing and
we had the nerve to ponder
why we gave him this power
of our self-righteous souls
we feigned ignorance while
he laughed in bliss and blew
a kiss and better than nothing
to our credit we added his name to our dance card
you could feel it then that humanity fell hard
we swayed in darkness to the beat of his drum
drunk in his laughter,
naked in our truth when
the Devil came dancing...
Untitled

the man in the moon

an unexpected surprise ~
slipped through my window

Untitled

you know who you are

walk into my dimension
my arms are open

Paula Lietz ( pd lietz )

a versatile writer, artist and photographer is featured in numerous online articles
her work is featured in various chapbooks around the world
blog < themoonatthewindow.blogspot.com > <twitter pdlietz >
she resides in Manitoba Canada
Chad Repko

LIGHTING OF YOU

I can stare at you from across the room

amongst chaos and smoke

like being struck by divine lighting

and shocked into focus by what awoke

Watching your hands dance

as you spark up purposeless conversation

mesmerized by your glow

and that calming voice of sedation

beyond the crowd

your eyes begin to enhance

 and your body sets the tone

as your hips begin a trance dance

and.....I'm....Drawn.....in........

Only in this time can I catch a glimpse

of the goddess so vibrant within

close whispering and tiny scratches

your nature can play my heart's violin

Driving each other crazy

amongst musical energy

it doesn't matter who is around

I want to make you a symphony

To wake in you what you woke in me

eyes wide open like the midnight sun

no fear can stop the touching

as now our hips become one

and...everything...else....means...nothing

lost, gone--- to that place

frozen in time
with us interlaced

all because your amazing sight

is why I must write....

VENUS, CLOSED

She worn a silken-ed t-shirt,

and a the eyes of a sea-shell
She had the wings of an angel
That flew through the gates of hell
She watched the males extended
And all the asshole semen was cold
She had a life full of stories
But had found it hard for that one to hold

And it turns itself around

As we all see her fall apart
And the window is closing
As she realizes she's not so smart

She had the face of the ocean

and the world at her feet
She was a cloud of perfection
but found it hard to be discreet
She had a body for passion
and a mind filled with suspense
She had a lifetime of horror
that barely made sense

And as we brush off the tables

and make just one more meal
She sits in all the silence
waiting for that feeling to heal
THE DIG

Tired of looking at broken mirrors

visions of truths I attempt to amend

seeing all the might have beens

and unable to comprehend

The things I can see

Used to have meaning

The pieces no longer fit

and all the scales are leaning

Shoveling through each day

Trying to find the heart of it

Seeing all those little connections

of where my reality was split

The dirt piles and whispers

is all that I may seize

The soft silent stars

also carry my disease

I keep digging, there has to be something real

I keep digging, what can I reveal

Arms tired, back broken

everything else is too surreal

It is all becoming clearer

as I slowly reach the core

All that was and will be

anything I had, is not mine anymore

Under a soft dim light,

each memory is buried with bliss

The muscles retract by moonlight

You never said it would be like this

Could I be wrong

and dig for something that doesn't exist

or perhaps my purpose

is not suppose to be doing this

Connections from realities, disconnect

but the sun sure does feel like a friend

I wish no longer to reflect

the colors of this time I spend

Digging up ships that have wrecked

from a life that I do not attend

I am tired of looking at broken mirrors

reflections of things I do not comprehend

Sad and Deep as you

As I wait for fall to cover me,

I close my eyes and think of you
As I wait for fall to bury me
I sit and think of the things you do

As I consume myself to the changes

I bow my head and admire you
As I close my mind to the truth
All that you took from me is nothing new...

I am letting this go- This perfect tattoo

This reminder of how untrue
I have paid the price, but I pull through
I am not as sad and deep as you

As I wait and sit still

I can't believe the things you pursue
As I wait for this lovely ending
I have cracked the wall to get through

I am letting this go- This horrible tattoo

This fictitious color dark and blue
I have lost sight, but have the view
I am not as sad and deep as you

I Will let this thing consume me

I will let this run through me
I will let this feeling accrue
I will let this thing kill you

Chad Repko: Someone who lives in Pottstown PA who is still on the journey..

Painting by Stephen Kent

Andrew Scott

Walk in the Woods

I am facing, hearing the gargoyles of fright,

guardians of the silent forest perched on each tree.
The sights and sounds of walking the woods at night

Blind here. Dark emotions have taken all of my sight.

Turning my mind into anger that I do not like to be,
I am facing, hearing the gargoyles of fright.

Hands are sore from holding tight,

clinched, readying for what mystery here that will approach me.
The sights and sounds of walking the woods at night.

Hear hissing. Why are these tunnels not bright?

Shakes of nervous sweat is what now binds me.
I am facing, hearing the gargoyles of fright.

Screams in my head, cutting through with a piercing knife,

locked doors busting with a hurt possibility.
The sights and sounds of walking the woods at night.

Cannot stop my skin from shaking,

Wish the end of branches would stop touching, whispering.
The sights and sounds of walking the woods at night.
I am facing, hearing the gargoyles of fright.

Andrew Scott is 39 years old and a native of Fredericton, NB. Andrew

started writing as a way to communicate and cleanse his feelings. The
poems written are based on all five senses of emotion. They are
stories of him and others, based loosely on conversations and
observations. These are brought to him by visions in his mind and
relating to his characters as they were real people. Once they are
thought of, these people come to life as their story is told. The
reader can relate as these are emotions based on everyday life.
Andrew has a belief that all can relate and should share in these
stories as they have affected him for the better. All people can
contribute to affecting someone’s life and we should celebrate
everyone’s story. Without them, we would have nothing. To contact
Andrew, email …andrewscott.scott@gmail.com
Ag Sinclair
Amuse bouche

now I can say

I've eaten raw eel

I didnt chew the quivering flesh

I swallowed, like I swallow

my own slithering words

and I laughed

when you told me stories

about little chinese men with gender issues.

Now I can float

above the red clay

I can dissect a piece of you

and hang it from a string around my neck

I can say I love you

I can swallow the eel

and know how it feels

to love your pale, pretty bones.

Livingston, Montana 8:23 a.m.

when I went away that blue morning

you were ripe as November
and I was scarred

there was no air

but enough sunlight for a lifetime
so I wished it away

and the rain

with it's tender hands, held me
under a blood orange Montana sky

A.g. Synclair's work has appeared in numerous literary publications, anthologies,

chapbooks, and 'zines, both online and in print. He suffers from long bouts of writers
block, and doesn't have an MFA in anything. A native New Englander, he now lives,
writes, and otherwise collaborates in southwestern Montana with his significant other,
the artist and poet Heather Brager.