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Saturday, November 06, 2021

Swarming Idioms

 
Joshua Martin
—Poetry by Joshua Martin, Philadelphia, PA
—Public Domain Photos Courtesy of Joseph Nolan, Stockton, CA



I drag my limp cross your racist uncle

I drag my limp across your racist uncle
the margins spill
a crablike repression of an octagon
shapeless in a girdle
w/ sunglasses shading hurricane pinwheels
where a ventriloquist dummy sputters
into a caterpillar we go
heigh-ho! heigh-ho! heigh-ho!
& across the wooden junkyards
carloads of fishy fire escapes
a not so sudden long hit
accompanying a tomb skull gong
cataclysmic brain fart like a drain clogged
just enough gap toothed flour to bake an anvil
screwdriver fornication
inside a body cam ritual
every device a dictator
every code a monstrosity
every manifestation a Frankenstein’s monster
in vogue
out of breath
played out harpsichord soda
drinking lame duck fascists
pestering your racist uncle to be quiet
there’s no peace
there’s no flinching
w/o the subtle coloring book of a cult
tho you may chuckle at my pince-nez
& puke when sirens wail
& did not need to pump iron
or run in place for an hour
to know an asteroid when I see it. 
 
 
 

 
 
Pencil-breath glaciers

A small maskless store of beehives
situated beneath werewolf lunch counter
exposed as fraudulent bubblegum
a flavor of lipstick unspooled
parting such sweet suckling verb tense
left to lift lust
     saved from savior shaving
     pencil breath glaciers

eyes eased like urine in the pool
front piece codified academic suicide
less meaning than anemia
further afield than astonishing sand
perfunctory as a podcast eligible to squirm

       a vampire lesson
       unprovoked chaps
       assless / formal /
       forced to divide
       nature up
       like colonial miseries
       & in
       honest altitude
       you make a plus/minus
       amendment
       collaged in a
       cabinet
          curiously
       a               country mouse

more frantic than a cloud
less remote than an everywhere
setup as much to lose as a heart
collapsible at once grizzly as on shore leave 
 
 
 

 
 
Parachute

Fangs
demented mannequin coffin
nearer to sunglasses than warts
          an anthem of calligraphy
          touched down on roving
          footprints staining muscles
                               (loosened /
                                    blared/
                    straining to induce ridicule)
as soluble as fish are slippery
      then at most
           the mist spews monkey paws
           until flamethrowers kneel
                to PRAY
 
 
 

 
 
Mysterious zoning variation exposed

August crunching
snappy zapping
buzzing sawblades
made reasonable
everglade fade to burnt
crisp crispy crisped
zooming inward
gesture gulp
nope a rope w/o hope
both Bobs tickle
robbing sore footpath
footbridge a fridge
monumental tonal
shifting shift
zippy zipper zipping
then August cracking
sapling sampling sap. 
 
 
 

 
 
Emptied basement passport

email contagious victim

duplicate numbing agent

undertaker weather
splendid sorry
visitor who melts

stage appears sudden wide
without pacing cricket house

habit made
river flying
little wretched cabin

transformed cell laughter
                     bunched pot a snail
            same tortoise moan built

astonished euphoria burned quotations 
 
 
 

 
 
Notwithstanding swarming idiom

Prodigal fragments of a hung jury
contrary primitive empty chairs
until facile jokes emerge alienated
all didactic in advantageous music
used to reach obligatory concentration
denied ciphers of prison industrial germ
conditioned not human but flat
merely ideologically dense sonnets
cycling horizon blames ball drama
letters skinning heartbroken plastic
disintegrating oyster thread systematized
baffled allergic rhinoceros scene

_____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

Fungus
—Joshua Martin

An unblemished dispensation
the modernity of a beatitude
internet outrage perfected
drenching opportunities
               TORCHED /
   SCORCHED   /               AN
                        IDIOTIC
         childhood phenomenon
         perversely added to
         a stonewall
          charted /
            maps pieced together
            & sunk

_____________________

Joshua Martin is a Philadelphia-based writer and filmmaker who currently works in a library. He is the author of the books,
Pointillistic Venetian Blinds (Alien Buddha Press) and Vagabond fragments of a hole (Schism Neuronics). He has had pieces previously published in Coven, Spontaneous Poetics, Ygdrasil, Expat, Selcouth Station, RASPUTIN, Train, Fugitives & Futurists, Otoliths, M58, Punk Noir Magazine, Beir Bua, and Scud, among others. See more of him at joshuamartinwriting.blogspot.com/.  Welcome to the Kitchen, Joshua, and ya’ll come back!
 
 
 

 
•••Sat. (11/6), 7-9pm: Sac. Poetry Alliance’s First Anniversary Celebration at LowBrau, 1050 20th St., Sac. (20th & K Sts.; see www.lowbrausacramento.com). Info: sacramentopoetryalliance.com/.

___________________________

—Medusa
 
 
 
—Public Domain Photo
 







 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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