Proud brothers
Do not fret
The bus will get you there yet


Karen Kilimnik, The Witchs Meeting House In The Malvern Hills, Buckingham, England, From Blood On Satans Claw, 1604, Water soluble oil colour on canvas, 2005

Thumbing With Bob
-- Dennis Mahagin

On Oregon State Route Twenty-Six, at the outskirts of Jewel-Mist,
Creeley laid backpack on the hot tarmac, and shoved his thumb inside a weary fist. I adjusted my ear bud from the spliced I Pod we were sharing, programmed for an extended Doors Shuffle. Then, Bob’s crazy lazy albino eyeball started rolling back in his skull again, and my worried mind flashed on the belly button of a baby seagull heaving with kazoo-like sobs.

"My God, that is so Creepy, Bob."

"Aye. But Anathema to the Snipers in Winnebago, their brains like Jimbo said—'squirming so…' Now those crazy homicidal fellows lie in wait for adolescent Litter Pickers all got up in gumboots and Day Glo vests!"

"And Morrison? What about him?—his slaughtered Indians on road shoulder? The dust devils of viscera and severed limbs?"

"Pyrrhic Bones, stinking of Gage! Smoke signals from the bowels of a Parade Float, aromatic cartoon balloons rising, vapor trail of ellipses eclipse all we ever wrote."

"Ten miles from the freaking coast, and we can’t catch a bloody Moonlight Ride!"

"Aye."

"Stop looking at me like that!"

"Go on, boy... BRING IT. You know you wanna."

On uptake I was far too slow, so Master Robert lobbed the first salvo:

"Jaundiced Anchor Men—in Aviator Goggles!"

I reeled, backstroking the hollyhocks, my comeback came as a rusty bottle cap, popped off a shaken neck of thoughts:

"Foot-Long Afro Combs, planted as sturdy reflective yield signs in freshly-poured Paving Tar on Ass End of the Turnaround!"

Creeley caressed his goatee, and the one eye-ball focused its hideous energy on me. Then Bob said:

"The Oracular Crows—perched in a stately row on a power line in Oakland… They damned well know the Score!"

I could fairly smell the succulent sea, thoughts of earnest Densmore, Phiso-Hex and Triple A Towing, they terrified me! Big Ride would come, surely as the sun was going down, but independent--always!-- of our jutting thumbs, or Bob’s now-nut-brown chameleon eye sore.

Meanwhile, my lines kept getting better—but Creeley always had so very many more.


To Do
-- Elaine Equi

for Joe Brainard

Never finish everything
on your to do list.

It will look as if you have nothing
better to do.


Swing Shift Blues
-- by Alan Dugan

What is better than leaving a bar
in the middle of the afternoon
besides staying in it or not
having gone into it in the first place
because you had a decent woman to be with?
The air smells particularly fresh
after the stale beer and piss smells.
You can stare up at the whole sky:
it's blue and white and does not
stare back at you like the bar mirror,
and there's Whats-'is-name coming out
right behind you saying, "I don't
believe it, I don't believe it: there
he is, staring up at the fucking sky
with his mouth open. Don't
you realize, you stupid son of a bitch,
that it is a quarter to four
and we have to clock in in
fifteen minutes to go to work?"
So we go to work and do no work
and can even breathe in the Bull's face
because he's been into the other bar
that we don't go to when he's there.