And just like in a movie, her hands became her feet


Gert & Uwe Tobias, The Devil is Not Mocked, 2004

Apples
-- by Gregory Corso

In this lovely lonely orchard
perhaps stemmed from Eve’s core
I move in applelight continuum
of no dimension no dominion
And these apples whose certain death breeds more
has me reach for that out of reach one
and quite make it

Reunion
-- by Aoife Mannix

I’m asleep when the phone rings,
though it’s four in the afternoon
so I can’t tell her that.
I don’t recognize the voice,
make her repeat her name stupidly.
‘Kitty, we were in school together.’
I have a flash of staring at her hands
in biology class. I was oddly fascinated
by the way her skin stretched
like paper over the bone.
She’d missed the debs
because she was in the hospital
having nearly succeeded
in starving herself to death.

Now ten years later
she’s ringing me up out of the blue
to invite me to our school reunion.
And I don’t say I doubt I’ll make it,
that in fact the only reason I’m in the country
is because my mother is dying.
Nor do I say what I suddenly feel like saying,
which is that even though
we were never really friends
or knew each other well,
I’m still glad to hear,
after all this time,
that she’s alive,
and I hope these days she’s eating more.
I just thank her politely and hang up.

The One That Starts With
"Bird On The Wire"
-- by James Babbs

I like
the girl
in
the white
blouse
sitting at
the typewriter
on the back
cover of
Leonard Cohen’s
second album

Nothing Left To Write
-- by Ross T. Runfola

Henry Chinaski is dead.
my world turned ass over when I heard the news.
rooming house man whose come will spread no more.
only death renders Buk incapable of erections, ejaculations,
exhibitions, and tales of ordinary madness.

heir of John Fante.
more bard of the barroom than barfly.
translator of Los Angeles skid row.
fucker of rhymes and visionary poetry
in favor of bleakness and truth.

major figure in European literary circles
horseplayer outside the winner’s circle of American literati
until the average American he gives meaning to
tries to make him a cultural icon.

Bukowski refuses to let celebrity devour him like Ginsberg.
stale middle-American air
the sailboats of San Pedro
Madonna’s Hollywood
do not make him soft.
living hard on the street made him fear life not death.

I pay homage to the great one by donating money
for a toilet stall inscription in the women’s john at my college
'To the underground poet Charles Bukowski who discovered more uses for
toilets in American bars than Thomas Crapper could have ever hoped for.'

A fitting tribute to Buk, who even in death
can be near young snatch.
the college president says the inscription is unfit for the academic world
as if his fear of the unholy is fit for any world.

Hell-Nixon got a twenty-one gun salute.
why can’t Hank rest in peace in the women’s shitter?