New zine
Cowan’s Gap #4 is finished; details and photos are here.
Stronghold, part IV
‘Plague Carrier’
The demiurge lived in a windowless tower
overlooking the greenway where three boys
shoved knives in their socks and waded into the birches;
if your companions wear bells it’s still possible
that the jingling behind you is arms in a wolf’s throat,
that the figure who reared up in Buena Vista wasn’t a ghost
and the girl with black dreadlocks drinking tea in the rain
had blast holes for eyes, mine mouths from the witch world.
New story
here (third from bottom)
Stronghold, part III
‘Blast Furnace’
The tiny devil stingrayed around each corner leading with his head
and the panther on his bicep growled over its shoulder, kaleidoscope webs
in the impacted mirror Tonight we ride out into the storm tonight
will be chainrings and strap webbing snapping in the wind will be
predators on the flats with hoop wheels and cracked hooves,
an oroborous bracelet fastened to my left wrist, we’ll not cover
enough ground to catch her in headwaters, somewhere in the woods
huddled around a tiny campfire, it’s cold outside
up north in the map corners, press on, you’re empty
because of it you need to keep covering ground or collapse when
are you coming home
Stronghold, part II
“Diamond Head”
Construct whatever you need from discarded scraps
and other forms of free refuse, he said seers
may fall asleep themselves but never to dream, he said
beneath the panhandle flypole, head below knees, shoulders
unfolded it’s said: he came from a Samurai family, it’s said:
the literal translation is “Enemy” or “Tyrant”, that bright roses
crawled onto his wrists from beneath his shirtsleeves, that
bright green foxfire flashed in his mouth and
nitrogen sprayed from the tank in a gray fan; I pressed my lips
and shut my eyes against it; I ran through
Stronghold, part I
‘Ghost Flesh’
galloping howls of some sedimentary bastard and the fog
predatored down, jaws snapping above the dripping panhandle
where orange lamps ignite like the barrels of roman candles
fired horizontally through a thicket of cottonwoods, hammered
of jupiter silver, draft glasses and chalk globes with fires cackling
there were sapling arms moving in the pines of bear canyon;
there was an owl perched there in the branches when he died
Brake Cables (excerpt from Cowan’s Gap #4, 2012)
Wasn’t he left alone with that prospero sickle blade, lopsided letters trampled through the reeds, and some milky face opening on hinges in the background, some balcony in Buenos Aires decorated with broken glass that flashed in the sunlight like
We climbed into the blasted summer afternoon on Bedford Ave. The sidewalks were packed and sweltering and my hair hung in seaweed wringlets over my shoulders and face. Two boys sold fish tacos in the shade of a crank-operated awning overhanging a massive van. We headed east and a towering model, legs tattooed with symmetrical tallships, walked exactly a car length ahead of us.
I’m about
There’s a low boulder in ohlone meadow, and a frail harlequin with clothes made out of patches who plays
it was a rapturous cab ride over the brooklyn bridge flashglobes and lampposts there were
wagonwheels broken against the ancient roads, fifties and hundreds pawed out of wallets like piles of junkmail, ripped out of pockets like melted chocolate, beers crushed in sprays of icy foam, cigarettes burned to the filter and flicked off of rooftops, metallica riffs in her predatory smile or lex luger synths howling in his razorsharp hair, bracelets dipped in unfolding platinum, tattooed arms hard as marble hard as handlebars as steel poles on the subway
old bro don’t leave me at the loading dock with the faces of thousanders, where the soundsystem
i’m about
Importer of Rare Artifacts
Freight hopper knuckles shielded my pipe
from the tearing wind to extinguish it;
I used to sleep in the crows nest
at the mast of the ancient world.
I dreamt of the frost wind
and stalking long circles,
a hanging blade flashing
in darkdweller eyes.
But what torment gathered
boiling at the sky rim?
What flames on the hills
far beyond the curtain wall?
Whose lips of Voluspo
and tattooed fingers;
what wolf’s tongue dripping,
and diviner’s jaws?
Völuspá, Ragnarök,
I counted the names:
wind elf, magic elf,
Thranduil and Thorin,
and those who marched
from the glacier’s collar;
thunder on the plains
of heels and wardrums.
*****
Clouds above Brocken
pauldrons of thunder
daggers of whalebone
and a headdress of quills;
Somewhere
in the forests near Aricia…
Break Cables (Collar of Winter)
Those aren’t troll swords they must have been stolen
Today I noticed that my face looks like a mask it devoured him
From the inside you know Brooklyn’s just a thing
I like to think about and forget the Apocalypse Forty I’m
glad enough To live I reckon my worth by the log I crawled out of
I reckon my worth by the canaries I stole.
Marlin Eye (Salem)
He wasn’t one for this whorl
of glass pins and mufflers and
under used languages, just rode
thousands of miles on a beat up Harley
through the corn and alfalfa that Summer
of Looking Over Our Shoulders That Final Summer
Of Unextended Christendom of octopus daggers and
some gypsy girl torching the firmament with wing beats and
whiskey and parchment clawed through in the smoking dawn He
simply wasn’t one for this whirl, and if ever discovered
crashed out among the low stars it was only because
someone had nailed him up there.
