Issue eight// Ray Succre

Pull

I tore off the white paper.
Under the paper was a hat box.
From the box hung a string,
and on the string was a black paper,
a note folded twice.
I opened the folds and found the word:
---------"Pull"
I was of too mediocre an age
to enjoy surprise, but I pulled the string.

The lid lifted and fell off.
I moved over it and looked down.
Inside the box was a little ship,
and on the main deck
were two little, waving, black women,
peering up at me as if I were
deep inside a demise at sea.

I leaned in and was going to speak
but the ship’s foghorn shook the box,
and when it cleared:

"You’re wrecked," one of them said.
I looked at my scarred, young arms.
"Nah, you’re not so bad," said the other.
I didn’t blush, I was thirty.
"He is. You look like those hairy ...
oh, what are the hairy ones - yaks,
yeah, you have yak-face."
I liked her.
"Uh uh; he’s a pale handsomite,"
the other responded.

This was a box of ends met.

I tossed them the note,
held the string,
and waited.



Aggregram

Collision impart------graze of hysteria
Collision imminence------poultices on blacked orbits
The crack is fished------eel as from orifice
The chip-truck overturns------sawdusted blacktop
Marcus Ulpius Nerva Traianus is reported a festive man
in Gentleman’s Quarterly------August------a.d. 107
How slowly the hornets fill my mouth like a bowl
Necessity------two fat people fucking in a collision of shake
Collision impartial------dugongs------groping their
flesh in a turnstile.

© Ray Succre 2010

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Ray Suc­cre cur­rently lives on the south­ern Ore­gon coast with his wife and son. He has had poems pub­lished in Aes­thet­ica, BlazeVOX and Pank, as well as in numer­ous oth­ers across as many coun­tries. His nov­els Tat­ter­de­malion (2008) and Amphis­baena (2009), both through Cau­liay, are widely avail­able in print. Other Cruel Things (2009), an online col­lec­tion of poetry, is avail­able through Dif­fer­en­tia Press.