..:: CONTENTS ::..

..:: POETRY ::..
Adam Fieled
  Sarah Israel
Johannes Finke
  Documents etc. do not balance out
  Hardcore angel
  Recording, Melancholy
Dan Fisher
  from Fugue Report
Jenny Gillespie
  Burn
  Personal Forest
Thomas Hibbard
  KOURASAN
  BAD GUY
  RUBBLE
Claudia Keelan
  Little Elegies (Vietnam) 
  Little Elegies (cummingsworth)
  Little Elegies (Self and Other)
David Krump
  The Nine Day Ricochet
  Backsling in the Hickories
  C(harm
Tom Leonard
  suite On the Page
Christopher Mulrooney
  Continental System
Rochelle Ratner
  Date-a-Dog
  Jealous Lover Program Creator Is Indicted
  MUTT AND JEFF AT ALCATRAZ
  Testing
  California Inmate Seeks Release of Stuffed Dog
  Piggy Banks
Dennis Somera
  Earl Lee s. alvation jane=Paterson's curse s.v. Paterson;
  sweet ana lack to es
  Pleas
Stephanie Young
  UPPER MODERATION
  IN TWENTY DAYS I WILL BE THIRTY

..:: PROSE ::..
Douglas Cole
  Ghost
Laura Davis
  Touched
Mandy Kalish
  On the Fourth Pull
William Moor
  Four Robot Recognitions

..:: REVIEWS ::..
Jeremy James Thompson
  Joan Retallack, Memnoir
Sarah Trott
  Stephanie Young, Telling the Future Off
Sara Wintz
  Various, lunapark 0,10

..:: ETC ::..
  Contributor's Notes
  Legals
 

..:: ARCHIVES ::..
  Volume I, Issue I
  Volume I, Issue II
  Volume II, Issue I

 


KOURASAN (from Iraqi Ice Tea)
Thomas Hibbard

     

after 7,000 years
of gazing in the clear pool
of the worthy court of poppies
I, absolute nomad,
from a mountainous region
from a land similar to a black hole
from a land whose flag has turned florescent orange
decorated with an alteric onion
from a land of audacious headstones
experiencing the wakening heat of the mehdi
from a land at once both curved and square
had a troubling thought
perhaps I shouldn't look in clear pools
perhaps it would be more fun
if I were something else
a fragment of a Mudigak jar
made of clay and disapproval
a widening contrast
shushing already the imperial birthday card
succumbing to the motionless couch of delight
the impassioned law of emulation
from Verethragna
god of the end of the age

  

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