D.Joseph

I turn off the television set living room bathed in black We all will be working from home till 2016 comes back.

There are two dish towels hanging on oven handle one blue one gray one is for hands one is for pans I always forget which is which so they both hang damp dingy Drying by heat of evening’s supper

In the midnight periphery broadsword situated, hilt deep, between dragon neck scales I sigh one monster slain while another takes first breath In blackblue I inhale

- Excerpt from DogJaw

- Excerpt from Laundry, Monday Morning

The poem will also be included in the journal’s February issue.

-Excerpt from Tom is Going to Die

- Excerpt from Currently

For each pick- up game on Saturday I came to see if you knew. You never let on any particular point of view. Utilitarian as always, I shower alone.

Give me that tight rope tooth paste tube squeeze: coxa to C7 pomace pulled toward heaven gritty self-doubt mirrored as photo-realistic sitting portrait CLASSIC GRAY 1054 Claims of the canine see light come first phase of new moon an echoing plea, a fleeting argument reminiscent of infant recollections regarding first solitary experience: slated stained oak, starched cotton silver plastic clipped to acrylic tangential acceleration increases following earth’s curvature straight into wrinkled duvets Claims of sus scrofa see air between thirsty, excited gasps eastern-born lake wind carries hunting scents willingly wanton serpentine through lampposts particles stimulus bristle remaining scruf clinging to dry mesa – crow’s bleaching table REVERE PEWTER cloudless eyelids embracing sandstone reminders transform intermittent pilot ignition, log cracker/mantle tracker | carpenter following unsupervised trespass | last deputy from summer of late rose | finding perfection fourth from first | Montana mason | river basin settler | simple star-gazer ,to roaring organic blaze contained beneath cake glass GRAY OWL Rooting through the draws which nestle nightly above head boards moving loose pens from east side of particle board valley to west side loose scales left, snow colloquially, a blessed feast for unwavering, if unnoticed, support You may see better than I in twilight but you look for gaseous anxiety clothed in flesh transparent flaws lead to gapping maws and each needle teeth sprouting I seek opacity tenaciously it always finds me

-From “Raynaud’s Phenomenon”

i can hardly keep my eyes open But going to sleep seems like so much work why do you live so far away Why are you such a jerk?

Mentally, he wrote his letter while acetaldehyde pumped piped, cytokine concentrations spiked He wrote his letter because his parent’s didn’t pay the phone bill “I think better drunk”

Dampness gathers around each baseball sized joint | A mere handful of decades I’ve collected | Even fewer time dedicated to full-fledged glossy black feathers / social grooming / whispery eyes | Burlap memory bag | Primitive Roman Room | effective enough / utilitarian as boiled chicken | Down the hall nine pins tumbled | Sunday’s first games begun  

May each arrow fly straight as a crow May each child exhibit innocence of feral doe May each blade be clean, straight, true May each lament be kept between me and you May each mirror tell the truth Unlike any woman in my life May each year take us further from fancies of youth Each moment between wisdom causing me strife Thought I was praying to all the skyward gods But my words have fallen head first in the sod

“He’s not a good man” he thought while scent of wet breakfast meat reached him through elevator shafts shut clam valves full of carbonation, short on sugar low leaves dehydrated brown as hope ground, crystalline as salt “Nothing will grow here Again” a selkie shriveled on Pacific shores a handful of soil, as in funeral films, slowly shifted toward the maw on a contemporary summer solstice remember your manners don’t stay sore

Forgetting herself she laughed Over the phone presumptive silence.