Submissions

Friday 16 April 2010

Issue four// J. R. Pearson

History of Fish

(Part 1)
Interview with the Moon & Altruistic Intentions
of the Venerable Judge Whoseits In The Sky

Here's a voice with a knife in its neck.
Says palm the pulse in the pavement,
moves to the touch & never blinks at the trance
washed over your beach-clean brain. Thread the road thru
your open iris, it's a matter of leverage;
whorled fingerpads play down the galactic arm,
it's a problem of resonance. How to whip pianola notes
into heavier elements. How the flame lifts below carapace, zero G
pulls the flu
thru bones, a rope-a-dope on your stomach. O-O the moon is a
material witness
to a murder, sits in dark, pale on a single stool & dangleburns a
bent Camel.
Says: sommeil avec la chair mortelle, sommeil avec la chair
mortelle.
In translation: vitamin D don't grow on trees son.
Don't find it frozen cartons on your doorstep
come first light. Your momma never buttered brains into bread
that walked around & built spontaneous kingdoms from nothing
but lust for heavy words.
Either way be prepared to taste the
avalanche, fiver fingers of midnight
talc & the sound of steel torn in two.


(Part 2)
Anthem for the Disenfranchised Fiddle-Drawn Frogmen
& their Mistress the Inevitable Granite Conclusion

Double helix anthem? "Rage rectangular, rise isosceles.
Act octagonal invertebrates!"
Best response? A pause in retractable fangs
silent as water sitting Indian-style
on sandstone, cool as a wash of creosote bushes beneath quartz
when the sun spools off in bolts.
Nothing spins like Bassey in June.
Listen to rusted Ric-Rac notes peel the wind raw,
reminds you of half-breathed songs
& a secret room behind a third rib
that never tells lies except the ones you reeeally need.
Truth is water in the desert basin falls like the back of a coat
& come star-black night
roots let go in one long sweep of a wing,
rivers resurrect themselves from bone
& ply fish to unborn algae. Picture steel
rasp on lilted nerves. Raise wet-slapped palms
to nuclear winters in your psyche's
last broke-open door; count to fifty &
you'll never think twice about trading the shallow roar in your
lungs
for eyesockets sliced under straight-faced marble, reads:
HERE LIES (INSERT NAME).
BEST LIVED BEFORE 2010.

Look! There we are, gone in a finger of smoke.


© J. R. Pearson 2010
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J.R. Pearson directs MFA studies at the Antarctic Middleclass University for Brainfreeze Origin Studies. He spends his summers bird-watching as a charter member of Annual Atlantic Pegasus & VHS Viewers. His work is in or forthcoming in Biz-Dat Blingery, A Penguins List of Tragic Consequences for Adultery, 9mm Driveby Piercing, Spicey Itialian Sausage, and Sh!tfaced & Loving It!

And if you don't believe that then you're a pessimistic jagweed.