Tag: experimental

Two Poems by Iain Grinbergs

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Panama City Beach

I clocked into Dusty Dick’s hungover, having stained
downtown with Bud Light and Captain Morgan,
smelling like sweat and Lucky Strike, still wearing
the eyeliner from the night before at Splash Bar,
where I once tried to kiss a basketball player from
high school, the seat of my Levi’s wet from sitting
in a puddle of my gin and tonic. The beach wasn’t beautiful—
it was a means to an end, and the end kept coming,
every Spring Break another rerun, the same spent
mess, Front Beach Road nothing but neon madness,
a gusset of brake lights, trying to get to my new
food runner job where I soon dropped a seafood platter
bigger than a hammerhead’s head, even though I said,
I don’t think I can handle that. A blonde-haired waitress
was nice enough to help me collect the snow crab legs
and scallops and hush puppies and coleslaw and tartar sauce
from the dark wood floor, our hands sticky and greasy,
my saying, Sorry, sorry, so sorry, and her saying, It’s fine, fine, fine.
They fired me five minutes later, and I couldn’t get
my share of the tips because I hadn’t worked there long.
What was I to do but go to the nearest bar and sing
Kesha until my skull shook enough, then share
a Newport with an Air Force guy who turned out
to be a drag queen—her name was Spite and she came
from Tennessee. She said, People don’t like when you make
the Bible Belt glittery, and I nodded because I knew—
the back seat of my ‘92 Honda still had a few
fake nails as mementos from another night, when I told
myself not to drive and somehow made it back from
St. Andrews quite alive, then the next morning I managed
to pass an Intro to Psych test, slipping in before the professor
locked the door. She said she had lost it after no one cared
for her research on mice and moved to Key West,
and I thought, What if psych professors are actually
all crazy?, but I failed remedial algebra twice—
I was writing sad sonnets on Scantrons, then getting
sunburns on the Tilt-a-Whirl before scooping
ice cream at my new job, smelling of sour milk, playing
made-up games like Gum Ball Hockey and Banana Ball,
crying in the walk-in cooler before popping out
and saying, Welcome! Our latest flavor is pumpkin.

*

Letter from the Farmers Market

It’s when a boy, his face sticky with guava,
licks the rim of a honey jar—his eyes locked on mine,

defiant—that I think about how incredible this world is in all
its violations, like when a Pomeranian cocks its leg by

a crate of purple potatoes, someone laughing: Oh! Oh! Oh!
Sometimes, it’s endearing to ruin what was almost perfect—

a woman haggling over peaches like she’s bargaining
for more time, the air smelling like tulsi and sourdough, while a toddler streaks past

a box of Seminole squashes still furbished with earth. Adam means
formed from the ground, and I think of my own body—

the congenital rhythm that once held me, a rogue pulse burning through
my chest, a shortcut in the heart, a bypassing signal meant to wait

its turn but creating a dare, the dizziness like the soul punching up for air.
And there I am, holding a wet head of lettuce next to a wedge

of watermelon clenched in a baby’s fist, the sun stumbling across
the roof of a Cuban food truck, remembering the knock

of waking up three times on an operating table, then the farmer saying:
Hi? Hello? Will that be card or cash? The world is what it looks like.

*

Iain Grinbergs is an English professor and the author of Vanity Twist, a chapbook (Bottlecap Press). His latest work is in Sho Poetry Journal, South Florida Poetry Journal, storySouth, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Rogue Agent.

Fear of a House Fire by Sara Letourneau

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Fear of a House Fire

you never wanted to be acquainted with / its slow slithering / its sulfur stench / the thin molten orange tearing across a room / the existential threat / the destruction of what you hold dear / a neighbor heard the bang / in the apartment below hers / moments later / incessant beeping / do you hear that? she texts you / you do / and you smell it / you know you should not go looking / should not open the locked door / no one answers when you knock / the owner texts you her door lock’s passcode / you wonder whether your neighbors would do this / if they heard your smoke alarm screaming / you open that door / your body tenses / black smoke / tendrils rising down the hall / you wonder whether curiosity and stupidity are cousins / in the boy’s bedroom / flames swallow carpet / later you’ll learn / a battery in a charging nightlight / overheated / exploded / catching the closest stuffed animal / but right now / you turn around / order everyone out / out / out of the building / your fingers flurry / against smartphone screen / 9-1-1 / your mouth moves / tells the operator / there’s a fire / where it is / how you know / as memory engulfs you / you were eleven / at a sleepover / you played Nightmare with your friends / on the VHS tape / the Gatekeeper ordered / what is your greatest fear? / write it now on this slip of paper / thirty years later / your answer is taunting you / licking its lips at you / as you run out of the building / pocketbook and laptop in your arms / phone cradled against your ear / wailing sirens down the street / do not calm you / do not reassure you / that you have saved lives / that you have saved your home / that you are safe

*

Sara Letourneau is the author of Wild Gardens (Kelsay Books, 2024). She is also a book editor and writing coach at Heart of the Story Editorial & Coaching Services; the cofounder and cohost of the Pour Me a Poem open mic in Mansfield, Massachusetts; and the co-editor of the Pour Me a Poem anthology. Her poetry has won the 2023 Beals Prize for Poetry. Her latest work can be found in The Ekphrastic Review, Ibbetson Street, Moss Puppy Magazine, Silver Birch Press, and WAVES: A Confluence of Women’s Voices. Sara is also the author of the Substack column The Wild Garden of Poetry (and Life), which you can read at https://saraheartofthestory.substack.com/. Visit Sara online at her website, on Facebook @heartofthestoryeditorial, on Instagram @sara_heartofthestory, and on LinkedIn @sara-letourneau.

Two Poems by Mary Paterson

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We did not capture the bird

The bird bombed itself into the kitchen window,
repeated calamities against the glass – beak / blood /

beak / blood. As a result I cannot come to your party. I am too full
of elastic and stinging nettles. My arms are shot with feathers

out of sympathy for the cadaver, its neck stabbed backwards into its body,
its wings a broken protractor. There are reasons

the birds are throwing themselves away like this & I’m in charge
of none of them. My role is to witness

using almost obsolete technologies. Think of the man
who built a library of creature songs in California,

who lived long enough with water bottles and escalators
to see his tapes ingested by fire. Recently, I will not name things –

not robin, nor Mohammed, nor Olivia – because I hope
the unnamed may proliferate. Ask me how I know

about the Zayante band-winged grasshopper, its buzz
that sounds entirely like plastic melting.

*

Defences

He says, you must locate the heart
of the enemy. You must pour boiling water

onto their queen. You must watch the steam
worry the sunless morning. What a morning.

What a honey trap sticky with ants. He says,
probably the ants are farming the aphids.

Probably the ants have nested under the bath.
What a forest of rose-fists knocking

on the bathroom window. We refuse
to kill the ants because we believe

in the sanctity of bodies clambering
for a future. Because we know what we will

become. Let us cloister inside with vinegar.
Let us sign a petition. The petition

says, please: not me, please, please, not me.

*

Mary Paterson is a writer and curator based in London (UK). She writes mainly for performance, and her work has been performed around the world including with Live Art DK (Copenhagen), Wellcome Collection (London) & Arnolfini (Bristol). Her poetry has been published by Poetry Magazine, 3am Magazine, & Ambient Receiver, amongst others. Mary is the co-founder of ‘Something Other’: a platform for experimental writing and performance, running since 2014.