Amanda Stovicek is a poet from Northeast Ohio made of star stuff. Her work has appeared in The Bookends Review, 45th Parallel, Ghost City Review, and elsewhere. You can find her on Twitter @amae099.
poetry
Poems for Driving Away Satan /
by Jesús Carmona-Robles
Translated by Tive Martínez
SYMPOSIUM
he said there's something wrong with me
she said today is so cold
he said we'd better not travel together
she said nobody ever gonna have your eyes
he said my father's dying tomorrow
she said we were rough fuckers
he said i have some money at home
she said let's meet at the graveyard if it snows tomorrow
he said i know i look so scared and it's true
she said Mexico is a funny place
he said take my hand cause the ground's gonna sink
she said i wore this dress for you
he said my friends read your poems
and took two more steps backwards
she said punch my face
whenever i say ME
he said the airplane was covered of blood in my dream and i couldn't find you
she said he nailed me so hard
i felt like dying
he said i don't like the way you cry
she said moi je t'offrirai des perles de pluie
he said let's go dancing
she said my parents don't wanna see you
he said it's been nine days without sunlight
she said let's marry
he said we need to get drunk soon to make love
she said then i received your text message
and he became so aggressive
he said Satan is the man with a burned face
and he wears a blue suit
she said i love you because you understand the blood
he said i am a virgin and that's why i cum so quickly
she said sorry for telling you all this
he said i love you i love you i love you i love you i love you
she said i don't eat meat
he said my niece wants to know you
she said your penis is huge
he said the night stopped being purple and became black
she said i'm gonna give you my dearest thing
he said nire iraganeko bizitzan
euskaren madarikatu bat izan dut
she said smoke as much as you want
he said i'm gonna miss the flavor of your nipples
she said i wanna have a child
he said the poem is the poem is the poem
she said the virus base is up-to-date
he said you must go to the gynecologist
she said please don't hurt me
he said my friends will never forgive you
she said i love you i love you i love you i love you i love you
he said i've never touched such a soft and sacred hand
she said i'm sleepy
he said i'll be the sun
and i'll be the rain if the sun doesn't light your path
she said just shut up i love you shut up
he said and i'll find another way for you to understand
you are okay
even if the rain doesn't wash away your sorrows
she said i'm not gonna fade
he said this is too much
she said hope you'll never feel the need to kill yourself again
he said i'm gonna break your heart
she said i didn't love him anymore
he said please don't you marry
she said call me when you arrive to your hometown
he said i've never ever felt such a rage
she said so this is what i'm supposed to tell
when people ask me why
he said i'm gonna fall in love with you
she said i don't believe i'm in Mexico
and have only taken six bottles of beer
he said if it goes all wrong i'll cut out to Alaska
to die among the polar bears
she said it's not that bad actually
he said ok
she said it's time to die
he said fuckin' ayahuasca is to be blamed
she said i read all these poems that you write
he said thanks for dancing with me
she said i am rotten
he said our blue mansion
she said marry me
and then get divorced
and then we'll marry again
he said Mexico sucks
she said whatabitch
he said all
all is said
BIG STUPID WONDERFUL THINGS
I talk to the women I believed to be in love with
in a moment of vagueness
with one other longing I tell them
lies were white loving elusive
as the night's first smile
which is warm and purple only for a moment
look at her she's the woman I love the extended time
the eternal and invisible watch hand
I want to tell them how I learnt
the appetite for killing from your love
those who acted as an artifice
in the steamy days of your childhood
There's a knife I handle
all of them must know there's a knife
I receive it in my chest thinking my body
as a lie now and forever
my father saw me crying
and he wrapped my heart in his hands
he is my father behold the way he cries
the way he loses his breath
consider him while I locate in my memory
the laughter of this woman I'm loving
her neck hidden in my father's neck
how I smile I hold the knife and he runs
he runs as I run to love an island surrounded by voices
and clockworks a defeated and conquered island
locate my father see my fear in his fear
the fear I turn into a beast
Know in addition that the waiting room is full
nobody can enter please wait outside
I know it's cold outside but there's too many people
not a soul would fit please leave out
I'm taking up five seats
I'm lying all my body down
I am the waiting room I smell like medicine
and my coffee tastes so bad wait in me
inhabit me as the cancer arrives
play in my floor tiles full of footsteps and chlorine
for years now the woman I love is kissing
the disease I invented myself
when I was spore and fungus before being me now
when I could barely move
I know the disease she kisses
but I can't talk
please raise your voice tell her about the night
I almost died I almost disappeared
I mean right now you that inhabit me
as God inhabits dead bodies right now
grab her from her short hair
grab her from her white wrists bite her lips
explain to her how love and hate are braided
in the sharpest end of my soul
and they force me to do big stupid wonderful things.
7754
namaste may your light be unrotten
plenty of food in your pantry namaste
nothing to bring you sorrow
you're also the smell of mouths you didn't kiss namaste
the cricket that keeps the beat namaste
of your sobbing at night
you're the lie in the namaste of your friend
who swears not to dope again
but you're at his side searching for the thickest vein
masturbating statues
you're also the smell of orange trees namaste
one woman steps on your face
she spreads oil and honey on her breasts namaste
you like this don't you you do
namaste you're built by your daily writing
in front of your parents
you're an eco-friendly little house
namaste but you're expensive
however there won't be storm tornado conflagration namaste
to reduce you to what you are
rubble uneven ground step-on land
by those who cannot lie
by those who cannot say namaste
i took out my clothes namaste this is my silver light
this is my scream and my riches namaste
this body belongs to my hands only
when i'm alone
feed yourself from my soft flesh namaste lick this honey
which ignites me
it tastes like vanilla and thunder namaste open your mouth
it tastes like this lightnigh bolt which is my solitude
namaste don't you see there are no questions worth asking
who cares
how was my first namaste my father's job
how was my first failed meeting
with drugs don't you see that questions are like kites
in an electrical storm
namaste just dry my body switch on the tv
play some music call for a taxi
don't you see the sunrise
and the world that gives us another chance
7754 chances already given by grandfather sun
namaste grandpa sun thanks for having faith in me
don't touch it i'm gonna sleep you can leave if you want to
Jesús Carmona-Robles was born in Chihuahua, México in 1992. He is the author of two poetry books: TOS (CONACULTA 2013) and Poemas para ahuyentar a Satán (El Gaviero Editores 2015). Along with Luna Miguel and Adrian Martínez, he edited the anthology "Pasarás de moda: 35 poetas jóvenes en español" (Montea 2015) which is a selection of the most representative works of Hispanic American young poets. His translations of Tao Lin, Robin Myers, Lyn Coffin, Ahmed Shamlou, and others have been published in several magazines in Mexico and South America.
Tive Martínez was born and currently lives in Spain. Their poems and new poetry translations have been published online in La Tribu de Frida, PlayGround, Electric Cereal, and in fanzines like B/Polar.
4 from Acrostic Aspic by Joe Milazzo /
Debralee Scott
At the pinnacle where the ladder springs most narrow or
most yellow, in my lily-bedded attending which
is also my affording, there’s this capital-S
special dumpster. It’s kitted out
with the masonry of mustaches and caged light like malice,
stripes of all those silverskin patches where the pajama
jean’s been treated like a bench ratcheted around kagels. (All personality
is memorized.) “Ovens,” a gentrification of garbage says, and gargles,
and all trending ends up in a pickled vaudeville. What about
degrees of learning? Cataracts? Harumphs? Underneath the pollen and pampered
grass and GMO saguaro this dumpster’s fecal espresso has swallowed, I expect
the fumes of throwaway luxury hide some spire, as peroxide as bare legs
rubbing themselves to a fever underneath the hem
of a premature spring’s cardigan. And at that holy needle’s
tip, a campaign sticker, stuck cattywampus to a backpack
casually deforming its hang before it gets up
the gumption to walk its purse away from the likes of my
membership. (Purging or breaking? More like surfing simulated
with a den’s cushions.) And inside that backpack there’s a bus stop,
crowded with the sun that spots itself on tinted windshields,
the action-deprived film behind which the claw-tooth bucket
of an excavator rides a bicycle frame’s weightlessly inverted
hypotenuses into laneless forests of curbs, aerating shoelaces,
solar granite decomposed in the weak acid of pedal steel and fiddle
solos. Here, in this development, mosquitos are cinderblocks of fire ants, mosquito
hawks in the sowthistle a damp coiffure shaken loose by the passing of an
impatiently executive stranger. In these dim and leafy hallways, reflections
are hazmat-ed in acorns, vested in the burlap that says
“in so many words” in just that exact number of words. Five finger discounts
are out of order inside the crepe myrtle’s drawstring bags. Anthropomorphic plaids
climb the sheathing and slash at the caution tape lensing the dumpster’s
psychosomatic cameras. Every step further into the discarded
depths promises a last step: darting, winking, betwixt.
The columns, each a perfect pull, lie dormant, just like sacredness
chalked within its own loop. Arcing is its own two-way traffic, but
estranged, like an android prodigy, from what aching boundaries it still
bewares. (No simile wants to be inside an ejaculation.) Assuming, that is,
that I begin again as I remember beginning:
outside the dumpster’s big body, high above the conductive and
belly-flopping into permitted phyla, standing (gourmet or
gourmand) at a machine yet to return some article of mine within
the ripped demarcations of a hypothetical kitchen.
Gwen Wells
My mother added a perfectly civil 1:18 pornstache
to the galaxy’s favorite farm-boy’s head.
Masculinity is an opera anything
but hygienic; in the empyrean, no inappropriate uncles
dandle backstage wives. However old he is,
a boy going rebel
strives to sprout the Chevrons that manly men
come with. No, let’s reserve the beard talk; waggish
swagger is for princesses. The follicular destiny of beards
is scrutiny, not barrettes or cornrows interning
in tall and bristly abundance. Allow how a beard is hiding
something to hide the fact of its hiding from us.
Unless, of course, it gets Biblical
and we see a beard for a beard.
First we tweezed the electric ulna
right out of our milk-rajah's arm. One of five points
of articulation, a shoulder for a soldier harrowing
joysticks. Along that affirmative hail and underneath
his incipient drone, we uncharneled his man-cave,
the slot where you’d slide salvation’s junk
into and free from playtime. Just like I remember
it, a wish in reverse, the big
blast of futanari never unsheathes its instant
forthwith, because length quests after length.
This was action, a trick of vinyl twisting
and us neon extras deboned and all spitballing.
As slow as collectormania Christmas, or as dull
as Kickstarter documentary sunshine, the last
crank had to make-do
with a lever and a sequel of tugs.
Every street-sweeper driver
has a potential for melting, and
every crayon, however honor roll or randy,
is fixed, likewise fixed to a finger’s hold. Unlike
dolls, which our American sibling everybody
knows you hug. Ew; gross. This one earliest
experience with the unicum doesn’t
apprentice with a synod . Strip a tubular manhood of what it teases
and all you’re left holding is the gutless cul-de-sac
of an airdancer’s come-hither career. A domineering
imagination may have applied the Dirty
Sanchez but it’s mom who tattooed the deed.
What did we learn
by watching her watch us as we slurped
up engrossment’s puerile and licorice sagas? The relief
of flocculent gnawing. The pineal eye
is a chainsaw, so long as its force growls downstairs. Now
I remember, and remembering
settles the rickety Zen of my hired
hands down. I want a plastic nacre; I want
a merkin to match
the drapes. And I want, how
I want,
for each little flagellation
of sublimation
to keepsake one more jeweled filament
in my shag of distraction
so vast and
as shallow.
Ann Druyan
Emoluments are car batteries and lumberjacks
in time’s pay-per-view event against small towns.
Squatting on wireless, she has to elbow
Google in the throat to tag Yahoo! Answers:
why would anyone care to soap
their windows? Shut-in perfumes sext
her nostalgia with a bouquet of bygone
industries: castile soap and chicory, for instance,
rayon and piccadillies and lamp oil. But
squares queer, brick pavements
stray from the spirit level, birdsong barks
like a Montezuma of dogs.
It’s August.
She can’t remember if she’d left the tape measure
as taut as that, but now the hours chew Beeman's
and maybe it will. Or maybe its graduated
tongue won’t snap back and bridge this money pit.
Dairy Queen breakfast and already the multitools
are in a massive halftime hole. There, —
in the drive-thru under the soft-core stagnation
of catalpa tree beans, three SUVs wait
before she can trade on her novel
nativity for an extra hunk of Texas
toast. One Durango red, one
Escape white, one H2 blue.
Instead of “Have a blessed day,” the busted
Frialator voice on the other end of the box
tells her “We could use your 5s.” Her yuppie
food coupon (yep, while she's at, she’ll be bringing
that back too) is traversed with creases only
an automatic teller wouldn’t
recognize for the crossroads they are.
In the rumble and across the delinquent
languor that’s running away with her languishing,
she’s knows there’s weight—it’s named
“Here”—that can’t ever be cut. No bloodless
revitalization in coming in through the slide of that ice
cream door.
“Ma’am, here’s your parfait.” Between
track ballast and shiplap, its better to be licked
than lick. Only strangers haggle after
the window weights, and wonder
if sashes are screwed as soon as
you submit to anachronistic handles.
Susan Oliver
I say why not
go down dowsing
for the scent of Mr. Sketch.
Or bars where only
locksmiths can score
VIP access
and the stools run analog,
on square waves.
If punch perms
crowd the negronis
and cut off the floor,
I can always thunder
after shells and coins
long into
the subdivided night.
Because freelancing
at this living is some
tumultuous M.C. Escher
shit. Nineteen-fifty
an hour for light
hexadecimal industry.
Specialization clipped me.
I was once a halftone
butterflied in a newspaper,
sprigs of pigtails sweating
the urge of a reel mower.
My dumb head was some
watermelon of a smile
happy for any rules
in my mom’s one
day at a time game.
I can’t mirror myself
now without waiting,
without buffering, without
A joystick palmful
of athlete’s foot
and the acid that I forget
kills it. The brace
on my wrist is one velcro
ass. Conversion lightning,
since its bottled, shouldn’t
it be recyclable? I even
2-D printed that
blue bin, and it
makes me cry,
like WALL-E.
Subreddit
Boko Haram
or the resurrection
of the streetcar
and earn
the scarlet letter
of my “meh”
hand emoji.
My GIFs loop
for Sour Patch
dweebs, LARPing
pirate hoards and
magnetic lasso tools.
My slimed Ghostbuster
walks right
on peppermint planks
that gush over
licorice traffic.
Is that gratification
an IPA? Thank Friday
its Friday, and I need
my Urkel, but tonight
my tastebuds
are totally burnt.
All week it’s phosphor
blocks and plasma dots:
my kaleidoscope
is the atomic clock
downsizing its gears
in anticipation
of an illicit attention’s
DOA. The requested
file is ready. Used
310 times today, OK;
reposting has no ceiling.
This graphic needs
a video. This Taiwan
needs an error message.
This manga needs
a flipbook and this rollover
needs to work.
But what say someone
pretends, just for a minute,
that the office everyone
shares isn’t
the everywhere
that’s nowhere
anyone’ll ever be?
I’m going ride pulse
of a different ellipsis and
hit the Staples I hate.
At least they have
end cap displays.
There’s a girl there
deserting her grandmother.
She’s dreaming out loud
in Staples, sing-song
wants and wills
in the dog pound
of Post-It Note selections.
A girl promising herself
her diary and all
the secrets she’ll
keep upside-down
where it locks.
Look at her swish
her cornrows.
around. Look at
the way her tween
belly promotes
her brand
or the hair
budding under
her arm.
Look to be
a sister to her
brash sulk. Look
at her customer
engagement
and look how it’s
so random, a song
so much stronger
for being tuneless
and soft. That girl.
She can’t escape
the Hot 100 air
conditioning, or
the persistent link
between her phone
number and her
Staples coupons,
and she doesn’t know it
and I can barely
compute how
or comprehend
why this wreckage
of easy supplies
wrecks me, but
I’m downwind from
her body butter and
I see that girl
surrounded by the
identical bricks
and default tiles
of her fluorescent spirit
and I see that she’s
a Numanoid, too.
ARTIST'S STATEMENT: My concern in these so-called “name poems” (themselves contributing to a longer and still-evolving sequence, tentatively entitled Acrostic Aspic) is with the conditions of celebrity as they are lived by non-celebrities, i.e., “you” and “me.” Or: I suppose these poems are all about minor celebrity, as these titles borrowed from the outer limits of fame suggest. Our subjectivities so often cohere in the back and forth between narratives intensely our own and those widespread narratives with which we cannot help but make contact, or which are in constant contact with us. But the latter narratives are so much more easily represented, not to mention “relatable,” while the former remain largely untranslatable. So this self-exchange can never be equal. Still, people live as they live, and their names mean something to them.
Joe Milazzo is a writer, editor, educator, and designer. He is the author of the novel Crepuscule W/ Nellie and two collections of poetry: The Habiliments and the forthcoming Of All Places In This Place Of All Places. His writings have appeared in Black Clock, Black Warrior Review, BOMB, Prelude, and elsewhere. Joe lives and works in Dallas, TX, but his virtual location is www.joe-milazzo.com.