The Interrogatory

by Marc Vincenz


Failure to meet tight deadlines—

a nagging, or perhaps an itch to fight back

against the morass, your tender

gardening pleasures, the Zen

of green thumb, the nurturing of integers,

where a plus didn’t mean more than this

and a negative was just another tax haven

until—as had frequently been divined,

cross-legged in rapt meditation, staring

into the Mists of Lake Hangzhou

a hesitation arrived, something

did not multiply. Lucky for you

the world was no solid ball, but a spongy

mass that gave way and bounced back.

_______________________________

Marc Vincenz is a regular contributor to this blog. He appeared in AlteredScale.com issue 2, and he edits MadHat.

See his entry at Poets & Writers.

oh, the grey haze

by Jefferson Hansen

             the plans went awry
when facing the grey
     haze of duty
         I have a job
   but I must pro
                      crastinate, must
             because writing calls me
away from grey
      to tourquoise
         to the play of vermilion
   the dance of words
       arising from the click
          of fingertips
  makes me happy
    now
& that's the way I want to be
       now
so, in honor of that feeling I say
     oromoropoly & thorumphree
  oh, yes, I say
           umphrodim & tredolup
      as carnelian waxes
  toward slate
slips into sienna
        disperses,
     arises in cyan
my fingertips entertain me
    form
          the pulse & pull
     the shift & shimmy
         of purple
   gone
peru
    mauve to maroon
  minkelup to
        perstrumint
     wikstrom without
             wipworth
down the drastic
             drum
     & line lazing
  a way across
       the page
            this, now, is the life
   I guess


    thanks for listening
fun's over
      &, now
          hopefully
                     to work

unintended feeling

by Jefferson Hansen

We played basketball in the driveway of the

group home in a southern suburb of Minneapolis

—three developmentally disabled men and I.

They were all in their 40’s. They laughed

and giggled when one of them made a basket.

They sometimes pretended to buzz off each

others’ hair where their bald spots were.

I was a little annoyed to be at work,

but that doesn’t mean I didn’t love them.

A man slouched in a lawn chair on a driveway

across the street. He had a large gut, like me,

and he was drinking a beer—I could tell because

you sip at a beer with a more pecking motion than

you do with a pop, for instance. I, too, like beer.

sky opens sad                         english on bas

this day                                   ket

the trick                                  ball l

the try                                               i

the whelm of over                                k

in the trivial                                             e

trick                                        normandy

His garage door was open behind him, revealing some

thing clearly immaculate. Everything hanging in place,

nothing jammed between one of his trucks and

the wall, both trucks gleaming, rakes and tools

hooked on the walls, floor cleanly swept. Outside, a

glistening Harley. Gothic heavy metal poured and spread

from unseen speakers. It was big and snarly, like a

Harley. His entire yard was cleanly mowed. You could

still clearly see the straight line left by

the wheel of the mower. Absolutely straight. 

            i say, “this                               ball goes

            is how u                                  flat a

            play ‘h-o-r-s-e’                        gainst

            & i hear giggles                       the call the crack

            ripple &                                   the wacky      

            ride the autumn                      wir

            air clear like                                    i

            crisp we                                       n

            r not a                                        g

            lone                                         of this brain or

Just last week, I felt nostalgia for this kind of set

up when visiting a friend in a northern suburb.

I may, at some time, enjoy talking to the man across

the wide street about the latest Slayer concert he

attended, or the joys of motorcycle riding, or how best to

landscape (oh, his shrubs were perfect.) But not now.

(from beneath the soles of my feet to the blistering azure

of the sky i perceived that moment that day in the quiet

breeze the rustling of the leaves in that weird tree that

always dropped sap on my windshield in the guys saying,

“watch me make this, man, I’m a cool guy” in voices only

those used to them could understand against all I believe in

I hated

that man

across the street

as much as I

took joy

in my friends

pretending to buzz each other’s hair

affirmative lived resistance against towering commerce

by Billy Cancel

amongst insincere little glows

     communal feed loop transmitted  
image back over itself lines drawn 
against hellish margin someone on roster didn't insert dip    
     amplified signage     tourists     explosion jigsaw done 
bright white no pulse     disconcerting configuration
so took path to riotous     
color maintained 
appropriate playlist    not belting out assignment but
killing time     speculating piss-warmer's back story 
     kind of sentimental vertigo     ingratiating time pattern
     re-enforced fat clicker bad dream     channel full of 
wreck     night off not superceding each other but 
each on drip slipping off pile     don't match the 
grin of a man enjoying unfolding scene     activate
sensor     got my lights trimmed at chamber 
recital now floaters are back     found you 
rollicking courageous left you down 
looking selfish amongst unpassed rocks struggling to make n's meat

___________________________

Billy is a regular contributor to the blog. His work can also be seen in AlteredScale.com issues 2 and 3.

See his webpage.

baldly is scary

by Jefferson Hansen

      our necks trained
         into spasms
       beside rivers
  draining not into but
            next to
                  polluted ocean
    in a parallel
               zone not
of our making
   but of our
         doing
                   dinging
this will end
                     my child, no worries, no
& then we will
      miss it terribly
                because
                          memory stopped being
reality stopped being
       a dream last week
                and is now
             its barren
     self
                 just is
                      not meaning
          like you & me
my child
    so bare to each other
seeing so baldly is scary
yes
sometimes

_______________________

Jefferson Hansen runs this blog and is the editor of AlteredScale.com. Jazz Forms, a selection of his jazz-influenced poems, appeared from Blue Lion in 2009.

Bullet Flag VIII

by Neill Ellman

(after the recovered bullet

assemblage by Dave Cole)

A thousand bullets

Make a flag

.22 caliber rimfire

cartridges

a nation’s emblem

drawn in lead

and blood

unfurled and spent

in war and peace—

a thousand rounds

make a nation beautiful

repeat its name

in anthems for the dead.

______________________

Twice nominated for Best of the Net, as well as for the Rhysling Award from the Science Fiction Poetry Association, Neil Ellman writes from New Jersey.  Almost 800 of his poems, many of which are ekphrastic and written in response to works of modern and contemporary art, appear in print and  online journals, anthologies and chapbooks throughout the world.

Terry Folz & Ann Tweedy AlteredScale.com Issue 4 Launch Reading

The AlteredScale.com Issue 4 Launch Reading took place at Boneshaker  Books on September 21. Terry and Ann were two of the readers. Films of other readings appeared on this blog this week.



Terry Folz



Ann Tweedy

 _____________________________________________

Terrence Folz is an experimental poet whose influences include poets of the Beat era such as Charles Bukowski and Delmore Schwartz, but also the dadaists/surrealists and French symbolist poets such as Baudelaire. He’s read at various poetry mics in the twin cities since moving here in 1990. A few of these include readings at Kieran’s Irish Pub, Speedboat Gallery, The Artists Quarter,The Beat Cafe, Tillie’s Bean, Dusty’s Bar, The Nicollet, and the Coffee Gallery. For a year Terrence hosted a monthly open mic at the Coffee Gallery. Mr. Folz is also a member of Vonnegut’s Bureau, a spoken word band, along with musicians Rush Merchant and Richard Griffith. Watch for them at a coffeehouse or bar near you.

Ann Tweedy loves traveling, especially the strangeness of being an outsider in a tiny town and the disorientation of exploring foreign countries. She’s shy but relishes the rush of doing the things that scare her. While in law school, she studied poetry writing with Robert Hass. She currently teaches law at Hamline University in St. Paul. Her poetry has been widely published in journals and anthologies, including Rattle, Clackamas Literary Review, and Wisconsin Review, and she has been nominated for both a Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net Award. She also has read in New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, Minneapolis, and elsewhere. tcCreativePress of Los Angeles published her first chapbook, Beleaguered Oases, in 2010, and her second chapbook, White Out, was just published by Green Fuse Press.