Cordite Poetry Review

I Can’t Believe I Set Myself on Fire for This

Posted on May 1, 2019 by Sean M. Whelan

Out on the perimeter of my bed their eyes glow in the dark. I tried tracing the lines between them once, like staring into the starry night to read the horoscope of my horror. But they never stay still long enough to ascertain their precise formations. And besides if somebody told you they could reveal the exact moment of your death would you really want to know?

 Astrologists sell you the dreams you want to have. The night sells me the promise that tomorrow is another day. But tomorrow has always been another day, until it isn’t. For weeks now I’ve been sleeping only four or five hours a night, my bed a drift-less ghost ship, the captain a cartographer of catastrophe.

I wake with the sun and the moon standing over me, the hatches of my eyes smeared with the sticky black residue of receding night terrors. They don’t realise I can hear them but I can.

The sun says, Is he dead yet? The moon answers, It’s your turn to poke him with a stick. The sun replies, I can’t believe I set myself on fire for this. The moon feels like it might cry. The moon wants to cry but it can’t remember water or what it’s even for, tear ducts as dry and dusty as a long abandoned water slide.

Posted in 91: MONSTER | Tagged sean m. whelan

Portrait of Emma Palandra in the CBD, Melbourne, July 2018

Posted on May 1, 2019 by Peter Bakowski

Wearing a fake fur,
her greying hair unwashed,
a T2 bag at her feet,
Emma sits in Self Preservation,
hunched over her iPhone.

She’s still thinking of phoning Eric
now that the bruise below her left eye has faded.

Eric had insisted things will be better
once he got his hands on a gun—
claimed that he’s cased the Lennox Street milk bar
every day for the last month—
the till’s a honeypot,
will bankroll them to Noosa.

But Eric has always been
more puff than progress,
more skateboard than limousine.

Feeling sorry for oneself—
Emma has had years of practice.
She walks through the Treasury Gardens,
sits on a park bench,
tells herself that she’s worth more
than any scavenging pigeon,
will win more from this world
than crumbs and flight.

Posted in 91: MONSTER | Tagged Peter Bakowski

Chapter One: in which Edward survives in a sandwich

Posted on May 1, 2019 by Lucy Dougan

When, in the franchise,
Edward becomes wraith-like
you are inconsolable.
I make you school sandwiches
with blood-red sauce and polony.
With the sauce I draw a love heart
and embellish its middle with a cursive ‘E’.
There, I say, for now he is safe in your sandwich.
Ok, it’s not a cloven-pine or an attic
or any other high-styling bolt-hole
but it is portable, economical,
disposable –oh and also something else–
it feeds you.
You are convinced,
or at least put on a show
of being convinced,
this spell will hold
in soft white halves
for now. And later
I picture you sinking
your nine-year old incisors
into the sticky sweet
legend of love, ingesting its messed up
promise, leaving its tired wrappings
in the bottom of your bag.

Posted in 91: MONSTER | Tagged Lucy Dougan

Microbiome

Posted on May 1, 2019 by Andy Jackson

While we live, we ourselves are inhabited
– William Bryant Logan, ‘Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth’

In the earth, prepared and silent, what will I
be offering you? It’s said the menu opens

with the liver and the brain, for their wealth
of enzymes and water, the heart
before the bones. But so many of you

are already here at this soft table, always hungry,
unfussy. I’ve been feeding you protein,

fibre, starch, sugar, paper and ink,
self-consciousness, the crimson jolt of the rosella
in the leafless tree, my own dying cells,

hesitation in the face of violence, more water,
the scent of the skin of the one I love,

confusion with almost everything else.
And what will you make of all this
turning? Warm compost, what remains.

Posted in 91: MONSTER | Tagged Andy Jackson

Reverse Godzilla

Posted on May 1, 2019 by John McDonough

The day you left you said I never looked at you like I look at Godzilla
O.K.
Point taken
But
I still look at you
I look at you like Godzilla looks at a big building or
Tokyo
Which really should be enough
It used to be enough
But it’s not
And this house is too big
And it’s full of tapes that have already been watched
I’ve got no one to rewind them for me
This house is littered with them
I put the first tape in and started the thing in reverse
Godzilla wasn’t knocking over buildings anymore
He didn’t ruin anything at all he just sorta
Fixed stuff
He built things
He picked up his feet and created life
He doesn’t stomp on anything
I watched him help a giant bird back into the sky
I watched him breath a blue ray of light and
Wham
A lighthouse
I think it was for us

I’ve been watching all night
His tender hand builds cities
I love Godzilla, and I love you
But now I love reverse Godzilla too
So I gained him in losing you
But I would trade him for just one tape of us
I’d rewind it every day

Posted in 91: MONSTER | Tagged John McDonough

OH GOD, I HAVE A BODY

Posted on May 1, 2019 by Alayne Dick

Every time I
have a pap smear
it is a nightmare

I got my first one at uni
The doctor asked if there was any chance I was
pregnant
I said no
I am a Gay
She said
“oh good
we probably don’t need to swab for STDs then”
As if lesbianism
makes me immune
to diseases

The second time
the doctor told me to sing
to relax
She said it would
make the procedure
more comfortable

This year
my doctor
struggled to find my cervix
“You won’t find it”
I say
“It’s a myth
Like a saucy Loch Ness Monster”

To distract me
from the pain
she asked me what my comedy is like
and
if it is hard to work freelance

Posted in 91: MONSTER | Tagged Alayne Dick

The creature runs through the Arctic ice, pursued by Dr Frankenstein

Posted on May 1, 2019 by P S Cottier

What have these blunt fingers touched
what made this heart beat faster

in the flesh chest that grew it?
Before they became mine: became

the motley coat that is me?
Did this palm stroke softer flesh

in reciprocal love? My hands,
(if mine they be through mere possession)

may turn black from the kiss of frost.
Even these broad splayed toes

propelling me through snow.
My flesh spreads away from itself,

as if it too finds the latticework
of my woven skin disgusting.

He chases me now, a blind dog
chained to me by loathing.

Yet he sewed these fingers
with his own. These toes he assayed

as a surveyor uses an alidade
to map continents, or mere streets.

He loved the precious detail,
retracts himself from the whole,

and would smear me on the ice.
Me, the only one ever born

without a mother, made
by pure scientific fumbling.

And so we run. Always north.
This sharpened North

tears my skin with teeth
always all its own. My own teeth

tasted flesh I never saw;
this tongue may speak languages

that even he can’t speak.
I am the king of second-hand

The prince of second-feet.

Posted in 91: MONSTER | Tagged P. S. Cottier

Thursday night, 1979

Posted on May 1, 2019 by Vanessa Page

My goldfish died
the night Dad pushed the fridge over.

The machine lay on its side,
exposing lines of dusty metal coils

that were somehow terrifying,
– all those parts, not meant to be seen.

It was the surprise of the violence,
mostly, that became the earworm;

my tiny brother screaming inside-out
from the cot across the hall;

the smell of shit swelling like a balloon
inside our old wooden house.

Through the kitchen door slit, a
woman I recognised as my mother,

moving deliberately in a rigid calm;
gathering up her purse,

stepping over the broken pot-plant,
a silver crucifix bouncing from her chest.

Through the open window, the sweet
rot of wild jasmine seeping thick:

an entire suburb
groaning under the weight.

Posted in 91: MONSTER | Tagged Vanessa Page

Mangled, or Yet Another Hierarchical Official Oracle

Posted on May 1, 2019 by Toby Fitch

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Posted in 91: MONSTER | Tagged Toby Fitch

Stained

Posted on May 1, 2019 by Julie Chevalier

This incredible guy, Jay Gatsby, the best, has a friend from Goldman Sachs, another truly great guy, Mr Wolfshiem. Wolfshiem wears the best cufflinks. Human teeth. Everybody looks at them, honestly, everybody. I described them to Ivanka for her accessory line. I promised Flynn, ex-National Security guy, a pair. Golden handshake. Not bad after twenty-four days on the job. I gave Sean Spicer a pair when he quit. The Mooch got his. I even promised Putin a pair but sh-h-h-h, very hush hush, okay? Everyone will want these cufflinks! So I said to Ivanka, she’s a great great gal, isn’t she? Very, very important to me. So said to her, a little business gonnegation. Get the molars anywhere you can. The real deal, right? Don’t let anyone use whitener on them. I will say this, I have great, great sources. I really do.

after F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby

Posted in 91: MONSTER | Tagged Julie Chevalier

Gothic

Posted on May 1, 2019 by Amanda Lucas-Frith

How long can it rain when there has been no rain—
what is want, what is exactitude—when is an ending
a beginning. There is never any

snow in winter, never rain—always nature
concluding—giving you stars when you forgot stars,
giving you abundance. When you leave you let

the light in. When you leave for one reason or another—
a sudden car in liminal space—a lost liturgy to
immovable climate, or the way

breath brings you to the borders of your body.
Sometimes it bares its teeth, shows its bones, embraces
and invites. Sometimes it won’t let you in.

The precision of language—a gesture towards the
answer you forgot the question for—this, you say,
pointing in the other

direction, at trees existing for themselves the way you
and I do. And I mean it when I say it—I would do it all
over again, not remembering who

asked for thirst first, for drought break. Small fists
of hail on brown grass—a baby cries—
love is a bullet in the eye.

Posted in 91: MONSTER | Tagged Amanda Lucas-Frith

MOTHER

Posted on May 1, 2019 by Natalie Wang

i have covered the mirrors
hung red banners on the door
salted the corners
burned the sage
painted the ceilings blue
sprayed holy water while
murmuring the catechisms
you taught me on bent knee
and open hard palms
all while drinking the ash water¹
from the seedy priest at
the guan yin ma temple²
you would take me to
after sunday school

mother i have thrown away
all my childhood dolls
stuffed scissors and red thread
in every bag i own
stopped my ears each time i heard
my name called at night³
checked the pin on the banana tree⁴
left the bloodied pads out
whenever the unseen baby wailed⁵
hung a crucifix on the door
carry a yellow paper amulet
in my pocket still stained
from the priest’s bleeding tongue⁶
burned the joss sticks and paper
left your favourite food
in front of your altar

so mother when will you
stop knocking each night?

¹ A Taoist practice is to burn a paper talisman, mix the ashes with water, and drink it in order to
imbibe the power of the talisman.
² Guan Yin Ma is the Buddhist goddess of mercy
³ Pontianaks, a Malay vampiric female ghost, are thought to be afraid of scissors and sharp objects.
Red threads are given at Chinese funerals in order to prevent ghosts from following a person home.
⁴ Pontianaks are thought to live in banana trees. A way to control them is to hammer a pin onto the tree.
⁵ Toyols are the ghosts of aborted or miscarried babies who eat blood to survive.
⁶ Another Taoist practice.

Posted in 91: MONSTER | Tagged Natalie Wang

The Tall Man

Posted on May 1, 2019 by Ben Walter

the vision has retreated into tamer signs,
but for a moment I saw further;
when the crowds of street
petered into gum gravel
and humble lights lifted up
their irises of glass,

there, an effigy jangled my heart,
stalking at my weary eyes and
summoning last fears.

before its faceless glow
I shuddered in my seat
till the road bowed low;
the glare eclipsed
in angles.

a pole.
a pipe.
and my blood pumping.

Posted in 91: MONSTER | Tagged Ben Walter

Lycanthrope

Posted on May 1, 2019 by Gloria Demillo

In the city
there are wolves in men’s clothing.
One bares his tongue, a man
howling serrated speeches.
Listen.
He assures her
flesh gutted the knife
not the other way around.
He tells her
the women shot him; it is instinct
to swallow them whole.

Delirious imaginings: skeletal fingers
wrists bound,
gagged,
rib gouged; he is rabid.
Claws stretched between birthmarks
torn, and muscle bitten raw.
Gnawed upon,
their names are an afterthought.

The city, dressed in embers
an ethereal pyre evacuating dawn,
reveal apparitions as common limbs
hidden in lawns, beer bottles, bed sheets
back streets hazed with sweat,
white sheet.

Wolves costumed in leather shoes, perhaps, boots
matched with suits or linen shirts or t-shirt or no
matter their frivolous choice,
they howl and forget evening’s blood.

Posted in 91: MONSTER | Tagged Gloria Demillo

In the Belly of the Whale

Posted on May 1, 2019 by Rita Tognini

If Jonah’s whale swallowed an ocean liner
it would become
a roving Atlantis —
a doubly submerged city
crossing from equator to Antarctic
from Arctic to Tropic of Cancer.

Would propellers pollute acoustic channels
scramble the whale’s sonic songs,
strand it from its kin?

Would vermin breed in the bilge
betwixt ship and ribs
and the whale
trail rubbish and sewage
when it breached?

Mutated to a Whaltropolis
it would haunt the ocean depths
a cretaceous Marie Celeste
gravid with its corroding captive.

Posted in 91: MONSTER | Tagged Rita Tognini

camping underground

Posted on May 1, 2019 by Greg McLaren

After

The small town
to the south-east of what’d 
seemed 
                safe –

the neat array of bodies in front yards
feet first, entry wounds clean
in their foreheads.

And, looking closer – you always
need to look closer – small
marks pocked on the skin,

like a speed limit sign
dinged with pellets
from a moving car

or a ute.


Getting out

there’s a woman (7.23 [a.m.]) in the doorway
                of her art deco flat the next floor up
                in a brown-looking dressing gown, choking a longneck.


Weeks before

Everyone at Cronulla North that Australia Day
                got sick – the shits and a bad flu.


Then – right then

The first I heard – I thought I heard – was 
                a rash of fireworks near the racecourse – or shots.
                The sound of yelling, more bungers, then silence, 
                except for the sound of running/stopping/hiding.

Something sparks in, or against,
                the night’s damp gauze – 
                                                           a neighbour
in the next lot rubbing a switch,
                an image skidding from a dream.

Wouldn’t’ve done that. 
                Someone at their door.

Two days later, his head out in the hot street – 
                his face, featureless
                                                     as a country airport.

Apart from the flies, that is.

It had been said he had a “vernacular way” of playing footy.


After

When it began
I thought I was prepared.

I’d been watching The Walking Dead.

	I’d lost track of which season.


After

Along the railway
from stanchions
 
the council of developers
the miners’ government

dangle buzzed and charred
hooked up as bait
for who was left 

                from the military
                the local muscle

                                their families.

Word still got around
                                        for a while

Then

Day five, the telco networks went down 

and stayed down. Then people started guessing
things were pretty much fucked.

Going on to non-government 
news sites was no longer advisable.

False flag dirty bombs in country towns,
you heard.

On the town hall forecourt 
dozens of lumpy flags, draped in ants.

Burnt-out substations, 
suburbs’ skin patched with carcinomas


After 

A half-burnt body
with a blue southern cross
calf tattoo


Before: Still life with still-birth

The vase on the trundle table –
flowers, natives sent by friends
assuming and wishing the three of us 
the best,
                the empty ward of light
falling across them.   
                                     The midwife
unable to find a heartbeat. 
                                                So, 
of wattlebird feathers
that remind me of those thin
pale striations 
in orange tree flesh

caught in the low
winter morning sun
that trickles between 
the shed and the flats
behind
                as her daughter
plays in her toy car
and rolls herself in dew, so,
	
none of that.

The first time ever
I saw your face.


After

Shit. 
        That red dress, 
                                     its black butterfly motif, 
clasping her breasts.

                                        Her breasts.


Before

A local clip; not the first incident
around here, but the footage 
gone viral 0 to 60:

Broadmeadow station, 
the bridge’s shade on its slow 
creep along the platform. 

There’re two men, moving erratically, 
torsos hovering above the kids
squatting/standing, arsing about. 

A woman edges back, 
draws two children behind her, 
and is screaming, 

No, put it down, no. Oh, fuck no.

White noise white space. 

The awning’s underside, then, motionless.


After

Car bombs are so Julia Roberts,
circa 1993, The Pelican Brief, but then,
I am totally a legal romcom kind of girl.


Before

Kiribati became a reef
and we stopped the boats.


After

Once a backyard goey enthusiast,
now she’s an ace sentry/rosterer.

Somewhere, there’s singing, more
or less.
                The next thing, her top
was coming off over her head,
sliding from her shoulders, those
wiry arms.
                    My mouth sudden
on her mouth. Her hand 
at my vulva.


Before

A source close to the research clinic
suggested the behaviour was not
what had been evident

in the modelling
or the laboratory.
On the live feed,

one of the technicians said
The engineering process, this is
not what we would have expected,

this was not the intended 
application (meaning,
not here). She coughed 

as she shot herself. 
It was an autofeed
direct from her desk,

so it kept running, the focus
fixing on her still chin,
the seeping muck.


Getting out

The main roads blocked or gone – remembering
side paths onto the old fire trails from Guides,
and up the hills’ steep and gullied
switchbacks, killing mum’s car getting up through

there and over, walking the rest
of the way, past the party bus, empty,
headed once for the vineyards, and must’ve
detoured and detoured one of those early

nights: the doors swinging out and draining
dew onto the wrong side of the road –
look, a Louis Vitton handbag squeezed

behind the left rear tyre, unzipped. 
a sharded compact’s sticking out,
catching a crack of the sun. That happened, too.


After

The virus moving, a vast predator across the flat 
and crowded suburbs, the busy districts,
following the movement of crowds – it loved
an audience – speeding into dense populations,
a whale slicing through dark and silent water
after cornered schools, slurping us up like krill.


Before 

I remember our last time
in that hot dusty house 
the pink fibro, the floors you swayed on;
streaming Nina Simone on Spotify,
The Beasts of Bourbon left on
in the spare room.


Before

The custard pie the Home Affairs 
Minister bought in the face
at his final presser,
making everything official – 
laced with arsenic. The gasping, 
the waggling cameras and the actual 
falling and dying.
No-one minded, 
                                not really. 


After

Lorikeets, little iridescent Geiger counters 
in the ironbark.


After

I think the worst thing 
I saw was a collapsible pram 
writhing in the running gully.

Posted in 91: MONSTER | Tagged Greg McLaren

Channel-billed Cuckoo / Summers of Trump

Posted on May 1, 2019 by Dael Allison

you appear on the air’s first hot blast
an anomaly among regular cut-outs of blue
with your call of car gears not meshing
your grating sense of entitlement, your list

of what you have the right to destroy.
brood parasite, you cuckold the future, fly
like a heat-seeking missile across the sun
targeting birds with the fiercest

belief in their rights. the gullible
noisy miners flock to you, convinced
by your rhetoric. their attention diverted
your mate lays a time-bomb.

your chicks inflict a regime where bullies
prosper. when i find a small unfledged body
tossed from its defenceless nest i hear
a metal heart dragging on gravel.

your flight through everyday geometries
of rooftops, tv aerials, norfolk island pines
and the curved horizon of the sea, skews
our kilter. your voice cants this world.

Posted in 91: MONSTER | Tagged Dael Allison

Eurydice: a triptych

Posted on May 1, 2019 by Kirstyn McDermott

1. Recipe

Take:
one woman
preferably young
and pretty enough to sell papers
with a name that sticks
in your mind
and the back of your throat

Then:
rape her
kill her
lay her out on a field
as warning to all the other women
young and not so young
pretty or otherwise
with names that
you have never cared to know

Tell them:
don’t walk alone after dark
don’t walk alone
look just don’t walk at all
you’re women
where do you possibly have to go
that’s so important

After a week, or two:
clear off the flowers
smooth over the pitch
no one wants to see that forever
and men have other sports to play

2. Museum Piece

At night, walk with your house-key thrust
between your middle and third fingers.
Do not wear headphones
or lose yourself in thought
or laugh too loud.
Do not smile.
Text your friend your mother your sister
your cat
when you leave the place
when you pass the library
when you cross the road
and the other road
and that one too.
Text every five minutes every two minutes
every thirty seconds
until you are home.
If the litany is broken
at least they will know where
to look for your body.

Or
you can fold yourself in half
and half again and then once more
pressed neat as the handkerchief
that belonged to your grandmother
that you keep in the back of your bedside drawer

Or
you can tuck yourself between
the pages of some half-read novel
like you did with that photo once
that you have never found again
or much thought about really.

Such things remain
untouched
unspoiled
safe
as museum pieces

Remember when we used to see them
in public everywhere
every day
like they didn’t even know
how fragile they were
how vulnerable
how valuable
like they didn’t even care
who saw them
or what was thought

those girls those women
we used to see them
walking
faces turned to the sun
to the moon

walking away from us
into the light

3. Eurydice

Maybe it was a joke
the last good thought
that crossed your mind that night
before what happened
happened.
The best joke you never got to tell
but it made you grin
that shiny new joke
the thought of delivering it
on stage one night
before what happened
happened.

Maybe it was just the shitty icing
on a shitty cake of a day
in the shittiest ever banquet of a week
and you were already half in tears
about paying rent
and how your cheap shoes hurt
and how tired and worn and cold you were already
at the age of twenty-two
before what happened
happened.

Maybe you were simply
making a shopping list
trying to remember the lyrics of a song
planning to feed your cat
wondering who owned those footsteps
how close they were
how fast you could run on slippery grass
before what happened
happened.

But I hope it was the joke.
And yes I’m hoping that
more for my sake than yours
Because I need it
this small hope too thin
to weave any kind of blanket from

I mean
did you even own a cat?

Eurydice, I don’t know what to do anymore
with this dense and sour rage
that swills and swells with each fresh slight
I have vomited up so much of the stuff
thick and stubborn as clay
I pummel it with fists that will not uncurl
mould and shape a form
from terror and for comfort both

one day I will know what to call it
one day I will write that name
your name her name
all her names
on a ricepaper scroll the size and shape of its tongue
one day I will send it slouching forth
on its urgent wrathful path
not once looking back
at you at me at any of us

and then they will see
all of them
what rough beast it is we have wrought

Posted in 91: MONSTER | Tagged Kirstyn McDermott

a clown car named desire

Posted on May 1, 2019 by Jini Maxwell

spending a summer afternoon eating a box of cherries in bed
is arguably a very sexy thing to do

unlike drinking red bull in the shower,
which is the other meal i had today

writing a love poem is like writing contract
if it seems convincing enough, no-one reads every word

i’m giving sentiment a go and it’s going fine: in fact
i’m going at it with mawkish sincerity!
putting down one word after another. focussing on
purpose, genre, context— esses, effs, long vowels…………

writing something like: “baby, you make me feel [fill in later]”
a love poem is basically like a long-ass greeting card

& isn’t the history of western intimacy
just footnotes to Hallmark? i feel smarter
when i say that than i do
with my tongue on your neck,

or pushing my face into your stomach—
it’s like see the face of god—

what do you reckon? does this gesture
convey meaning? i’m “going out on a limb”

as if we fall the same way. when you go,
it will be like rain does, easy, always into something new.
not like me—a brick—thrown like an afterthought
and breaking every branch on the way down

Posted in 91: MONSTER | Tagged Jini Maxwell

Poet Wrestling with the Poetics of Unsolvable Physics

Posted on May 1, 2019 by Rosebud Ben-Oni

Maybe I am writing this to get you to stop
pursuing me, my little vampire bunny— & maybe

these questions aren’t meant to be
solved. Maybe they are playing

you & me like a fork a little too sharply
tuned. Is the true nature of dark energy.

Being a little off is the right kind
of beacon. For eternity.

Owes everything to lust,

the cruelest kind
of swelling that cannot release {release}

& will always cost
any kind of future
{worth remembering}.

Maybe I am. Writing this for you, my sweet, sweet.
But I’m lost. In a bigger thicket of grit & greed

wanting more of itself, just a second longer? Do you ever think

that’s why you’re always hungry. & those love bites aren’t so
tender. & whatever. Force drives you {to spring upon me}

doesn’t yet exist. It’s
okay. To say well, nothing

would change ::you:: {would still. Love me. } I don’t
mind, the attempts to fertilize immortality.

But does perfect pitch lead anywhere & beyond {closing
a circle}? Like tying intricate knot without purpose?

But go on. & anyway. Bind my legs & arms in your infinite & immaculate
vampire bunny charms. & gravity of desire. Isn’t an eternal light left alone

in perfection a life gone stale. I’m betting & only on
defects. & kinks. As what moves anything. Forward. No,

it’s not light. Or reaching.
Apex— not the kind of animal
you pretend to reconcile.
I know the living dead are real.

Every time you kill me.
To prove my protons
Are. Fundamentally stable. Talk is cheap.
As it is small. I’d rather take {chance} & get

gnawed. & chewed & chomped
& become delicious & seduced
as. Evolution. Is. Seriously

screwed. Since questions
seek {out} their own
silencing.

Is that why you bite me {dead},
my little bunny— to turn us
into peculiar
velocity?

Your quantum features seeking my gravity. & maybe
infinitely cottontail & fangs getting caught on

doorways because dark energy says we shouldn’t?
What multiplies when yet still. I arise from torn fur & nails

digging? Maybe it were. Big Bounce more than. Big Bang.

Maybe dry veins
nibble. & one more night
we’re still bloody peas.
& quarks.
& maybe it’s not important.
To the Theory of Everything,

but even after they come for you,

I keep & keep. Seeing. & everywhere,
my sweet little bloodsucking.
How you appear, suddenly,
on trains

popping out of cat carriers & staring
from screened windowsill.
Is that not you purring

at the diner when they serve you up medium-
rare on gilded plate. Skunned & still
bloody. Steam
rising

from the toothpick they speared
into your twitching,
cold heart
& I tear

onto, my tears like the problem
of {capital T} Theory & my ears
like {capital E} Everything. Is

it all over the moment
one gets just close enough
to what is Ultimate
& Final—

is that when Everything is proven. Fatal. Because such proximity
does not lead to anything more
than little vampire bunnies
who were just as human
as the last question
I will eat from my own
swollen & stained lips.

Posted in 91: MONSTER | Tagged Rosebud Ben-Oni

fear and other feelings

Posted on May 1, 2019 by Claire Albrecht

                         the 
                                     wasp will 
                                                         just 
                                                      not fucking 
                                                                              give up

floats along our old back wall like a drone patrolling we have cut off her access with duct tape a mud house inside she brings caterpillars to feed her young grasping wriggling I think to myself what if I held my head to the boards would I hear them writhing they will die I watch a news report of a dam collapsing all mud and death I do not want to mourn my family ever it has been three soft striped days she will not give up I am sorry

Posted in 91: MONSTER | Tagged Claire Albrecht

Clones don’t sleep

Posted on May 1, 2019 by Emily Meller

i had a bad dream my clone says what was it you say
– Oscar Schwartz, “what side of the bed does your clone sleep on?”

My clone is acting strangely.
My clone is breathing fast.
How do we know – she says
walking into glass.

My clone thinks we are pregnant
given my tender breasts,
she says we dreamt of anemones
but I don’t remember it.

Convenience stores only stock
tests with teethy women
smiling widely on the box.

You know – my clone says
an oasis faded
is a desert found.
I hear her voice folded
through sheets dipped in waves,
hidden water falling out.

My clone will not panic.
My clone is always calm.
My clone cannot get pregnant.
How do I know – she says.

My clone remembers star jasmine
arched up against our windows,
as it swallowed our fence
and breathed all night against glass.

My clone remembers the coolness of the dive
into my grandfather’s pool.
My clone would never
buy a German car.

At a certain point my clone
will lie with my head against her chest.

She will bite her bleeding lip
and I’ll taste none of it.

Posted in 91: MONSTER | Tagged Emily Meller

ROBIN WRIGHT IN HOUSE OF CARDS OMG

Posted on May 1, 2019 by Emilie Zoey Baker

ROBIN WRIGHT!
Your blonde helmet shines like a Greek god’s whip.
I want to join your army of whatever.
I want to wear that military figure-hugging dress with just a hint of brocade.
Little buttons and hooks wink like a glint of evil in a child’s eye.
You pour down hallways
hang-glide into the Oval Office in your effortless heels.

DAMN.

Your eyes emit an icy breeze as if in an ad for breath mints –
people get cold and glamorous simultaneously.

When you flirt with fake Vladimir Putin
I feel America blush a colour just shy of the old Soviet flag.

Girl.

Kevin Spacey’s ghost was slapped out the window of the White House,
hot hashtags burned into his skin.
Recast as a little bird.
Fuck that guy.

I vote for you with your weaponised feminism.
I vote for you with your fourth-wall sentences that
scissor-glide.
I vote for you with your nasty plans
and occasional murder.

Death threats are as common as Facebook notifications –
whatever.
You dismiss them with arms elegant as a crane landing on a lake.
A secret smile disappears like a coffee bean into milk.
Pregnant with lies, or maybe a girl, who knows, they didn’t renew the series.

Your armour glistens like your teeth,
snake-spine fingers signing bills. Doing business.
First Lady, you had a plan all along.
They pulled your anger out like a doll string
and now it’s time to hear it speak.

But Americans can’t cope with your Khaleesi
the same way they meltdown if they hear
a female voice coming from the cockpit.

When the army recruit said,
Do you have a plan that’s not going to get us all killed?
You said,
Would you ask me that question if I was a man?
No.
HELL NO.
Hell the fuck no, Robin Wright.

We trust you like venom trusts death,
we trust you like a nail trusts penetration,
we trust you like sin trusts guilt.
You got this, you delicious monster.

Posted in 91: MONSTER | Tagged Emilie Zoey Baker

Who Shot Camilo Catrillanca?

Posted on May 1, 2019 by Juan Garrido Salgado

Who shot Camilo Catrillanca?
It was the antiterrorist law applied by Pinochet.
It was the “anti-terrorist” unit of the Chilean police
Known as Comando Jungla;
Command that trained in the Colombian tropical jungle
With collaboration from the US & Chilean governments.
Or it was the four police members of the JC?
They shed blood on the Wallmapu,
Shooting the Mapuche warrior, calling him a Weifaliche.

He was driving his tractor back home.
He ground the land and built his house
With his hands and his ancestral dreams at sunset.
Land recovered by Mapuche traditional community of Temucuicu.
There was the Weifaliche with a bullet in the head
And his blood spilled on earth.
His eyes are stuck in the beams of his unfinished house.
Walls of love massacred,
Fallen space of dying love,
A roof of sky and stars to protect
The life of their children.

Who shot Camilo Catrillanca?
Who are those armed monsters with hate, thirsty for blood?
They shot to kill, not knowing that his death
Is a seed in the blood of their ancestors who sow in the eternal waters of love.

Posted in 91: MONSTER | Tagged Juan Garrido-Salgado

Issue Launches.Submissions Windows.

Issue Launches.
Submissions Windows.