I’m sorry that you saw my knife.

I’m sorry that I pulled it

Across your guts, your eyes, and your soft insides.

I’ve tried to clean your wounds with gentleness

With feathered cotton balls

Soaked in chlorhexidine, rinsed with water.

I want to treat you with healing salve,

But the tin rolled away

And lives under a cold bed, gathering dust.

I’ve asked “how?” to my spirit,

And “why?” to yours.

They turned their faces from me, gave not-answers.

But the barbarous blade, while sharp

Is clean

Your blood will run from it but then, coagulate

And I, the wielder, will soften

Like serpents when spring comes

Uncoiling into shining, weird writhing things

So with blades in my mouth

I will sing for you

And cut a path through your resistant flesh, for me.

Patiently you bend
Beneath your own hand
Whose lines you sketched
Empty of afterthoughts.

Imbued with its edges
You sharpen into details
That only take form
Once collected. Now

You flatten yourself again,
Your breath rushing
From the ceiling to smite
Your torso to the carpeted floor.

There you lie
Like a child’s drawing of a man
Sensing the murmurations
Of the earth, its indecision.

By day you wait for night,
And with the ashen hours
You wait again
For a widening square of light

That narrows itself
Into a new shadow at your touch,
The most terrified
Of small animals.

Melting swan, rowing snow:
Deep in you the longing sighs:
Oh, paper bird,
You may yet fly.

Her haircut's like a botched landscaping job

And telegraphs the claim "I am an artist."

We know that imitation is step one

So when she shows him an immaculate

Facsimile of the sketched penises

From Superbad, he tries to act impressed.

It shall not surprise the dear reader that

She had little to contribute to the chat

About the Vedas; nor shall it be a shock

The guy who pawns his time for pennies lied

"I'll call again", after a slog in bed.

​

They say the moon there rises upside-down

Because the girls sleep standing on their heads.

***

It's time for him to go. He's done with reading

Museship into women. Just the thought

Of going has him going like he was

When he was first fished from the deadened gloam

By the island sage who used as bait

The spells of Hopkins, a sublime reminder

To not look at the finger when it points.

She pulls him as he steps above the void,

She's dipped a toe or three, it will be warm

Down there, she thinks, not knowing that the nerves

Will proffer kind illusions in the cold.

​

The kali yuga man of twenty-eight,

That is, an elder boy, counts his possessions--

He's sharp, tough, erudite, has learned to keep

His lips sealed when they're not required

To chatter his way out of a DUI.

He's got a car, he's got his books, he's got

Seven lines back to comfort should he need,

He's got a better reason than most to quell

The beastly appetites. Nice hair, a pretty face.

​

He will go down south, where the weather's better

For sleeping under trees, he will find work

That fortifies the body, and meanwhile search

For the last remnants of the hieratic orders,

The mercenary bands on grail quests.

​

He cares not if the price is blindness, yearning

To stare at the sun's secret: water, burning.

Golden mane

Of summer day

Piercing with your rays,

You are like daubs of yellow paint

Against houses

And in mason jars,

Following the Sun.

I have taken your small and silver seeds,

And some of them I’ve planted,

Along the path I ride to town.

Some went to rocky places and some to fertile.

Many grew up

Into beauty,

Into more.

But some,

Some I have given over to salt and oven

I baked and hardened them with fire

To take their life into myself.

By the handful,

I have thrown them into my open mouth

And savored them

In my cheek.

One by one,

I have brought them forward.

With an insistent, addicted tongue,

I’ve sought out their burning secrets,

Their decadent oil,

Their yielding flesh.

For my own joy,

For my own pleasure,

I break open the very body of summer,

And spit out the shells

On my way.

Capture a light.

It’s hard to do.

They dance.

They change,

Or they burn.

They hold you accountable.

The theory is

That if you can see

Light, shadow, and hue

Then you can create anything

It’s just a matter of knowing the medium

And yourself

Your own hand will betray you.

Too much pressure.

Too little

Conviction to put brush to canvas,

Knowing the limitations

Of starting from nothing.

Strokes will have to be gone over.

Boundary upon boundary,

Making and unmaking the place

Where things live.

Killing darlings that do not fit the schema.

You want glory?

Here is glory:

The immortal art

And those it depicts.

Those who make it,

And those who try to destroy it.

Kings would be nothing

Without those who paint them.

Without those who recognize their right to rule.

And this one idea

This one notion

Is why true masters revere, above all, the subject.

A waterfall, a riverrun, a drop

Of your dandelion tincture blooms the tongue

And plants itself on the top ladder-rung

Which curls through the heart. The pale men crop

​

Away the work that breaks their heaving pump

Idea (sojourn with Torrent-Guasp, then mark

Them blithely sharpen bonesaws in the dark,

Thinking to live is to fret over a lump).

​

They say this era birthed our kind, and yet

It is not clear that they are much like us;

For one, we wouldn't think spangles on an ass

Would help it race the horse. Instead, we bet

​

Our double-coil extends beyond our cells

And resonates with more than leaden bells.

I

We were born in the belly of a fish

Like Jonah, but without the knowing leap

Into God’s wrath.

//

We developed in a vessel, tight like a dish.

Tossed on the sea, and immersed in the fear of the sea,

Like a baptism

//

I can't believe

I found you there,

we didn't even know what we were!

We thought we were something Else.

A new man, a child wife, we gripped each others’ wrists and started out

With a blood vow against the world

But it was each other we cut,

Matching wounds.

We bled freely into each other and

You are the only one I Know!

//

We carved out of ourselves an idolatrous image of four laughing fish babies

//

(We are sorry

We didn't know

We thought we were something Else.

A fish?

Certainly some sea thing, a sea weed?

Loathing our salt-stung hands and feet that never worked for a damn in the sea)

We sliced out of ourselves red shapes:

Four babies, half drowned in ignorance.

//

I birthed our babies underwater.

I pushed her and

You caught her.

“You have your girl”, you said.

But you had her, this small wonder,

And we marvelled at our good creation!

I grew her!

Your daughter!

God!

We can’t keep living underwater.

//

II

Our waterlogged eyes could almost see a different glow,

Through a glass,

Darkly.

Maybe we can leap a new direction, unthought of, outside the freezing salt of God’s wrath.

God, our false lover,

A deep sea monster with a tiny lamp,

It ate us both!

//

It told us we were something beautiful, digested together in its belly, and

We were safe there in the warm slurry.

//

How did we ever swim to the surface?

How did we find this place we didn’t belong?

So unfamiliar, all this light,

So dangerous, the light deceived us last time.

III

We were set on the sea together, and got lost together, and

Washed up on different beaches.

Where are you now?

I see you but you’re not here.

I see your blood and I'm bleeding.

Couldn’t we learn to stitch each other up?

Couldn’t we learn to drop our covenant blade down into the sea,

Watch the blood wash off,

Let it sink down down forever?

Can’t you hold me close? And

Hold me closed?

//

I never meant to hurt you, love,

I was only going to taste you.

You're all I knew, and

You're so lovely,

It's no wonder that I ate you!

You lived inside my belly,

Another dimension of my self,

But it was Fish Love, and you never were my self.

//

If we come apart I might come undone,

But my hands have begun to dry and learned a stitch.

Maybe I could make me something new and warm.

A soft, dry place?

//

(My babies, I'm sorry, we didn't know what there was here!

We thought it meant something different.

We thought we were something Else!

We put you down, gently, but down,

You’re grown so heavy now, my baby,

I love you,

You’re so heavy.)

//

My heart, my love, we are still so heavy with water, soaked.

Please wait here and see our bodies after all this, they are waterproof!

What if the air will come and heal our wound, and

In our extremities we learn what hands and feet

may do.

why do we speak to

children

as if we are

robbing them?

why do we speak to lovers,

as though we can

afford to

lose them?

If children are the future,

and will become,

lovers,

Then why

do we rob them,

Blind,

Without, within,

As if

we can afford,

to lose them?

“Be quiet!”

“Hurry up!”

“Go to your room.”

“Get the belt.”

And why do we speak

the way we do

to children,

To our future,

To ourselves?

(@someone out there in charge, it would be cool if we could add trigger warnings to our posts in flair form. Will you consider it?)

An electron is:

Driving a tiny car on its spherical road

Going anywhere OR any speed

Looking for one lover who can jump, fast.

//

The following fact was unknown for thirteen billion years until now:

We are alive by an accident of electrons.

//

A valence is:

The sphere made of nothing

That can touch and stick,

Covalence,

The driver has found a lover.

She is not faithful

//

Catalysis is:

Nothing about a cat.

It's an enzyme in the dark of your cytoplasm

With a geometric hole in its heart

For another molecule to fit into, like a key

Into the custom-made depression

Whose form dictates its function.

//

And I:

With a will so weak I could not

synthesize an amino to save my own child,

Could not summon a proton

With any kind of prayer,

I learn to calculate the shift in entropy

That keeps my heart hugging itself

For eighty years

But not the desperation of a hemoglobin,

Shoved sideways,

Grabbing an oxygen

And giving it away to any cell.

Like a dream, in piety

Obeying its keeper, sleep

Tied to ropes and hung, sustained

By its paladin, the bed

​

Such is our filiation

Tied by ropes to our father mother

Obeying our great father king

Father Rex, king of our heart

​

Tied to the rope of being

We confess with bright proud tongues

Our bindings to life’s monarchs

Our filial masters, lords

​

Adored scepter of future

Providence has shined on me

Son of heaven, filial

Pious as a feminine restful dream

​

I bathe in desire, pleasure

To the machinations which

My dreams conjure, fatherly

A lord over my mother

​

A lord over my desire

William entered the big town

with his son

painfully unaware

and apolitical. He walked upright

through a crowd on bended knee

past the many new symbols

of an occupation.

​

"Psst, William!" a close friend offered,

"They will ruin you if you don't bow down here."

​

"Psst, William!" another intervened,

"They love to go after your children!"

​

"Psst, William!" a third protested,

"They already see you!"

1 2

​

And I Stand Alone

I Stand Between My Past

And My Future

Sure There’s No Turning Back

But There’s Not Much Left To Do Either

I Can Feel My Skin Turning White

And I Can See The Dirt

From The Core Of My Body

A Dirt Stays Alone

As I Try To Clean It

I Can Feel It Controlling Me

I Don’t Like What I’m Becoming

But Instead It Feels Right

It Just Feels Right To Get A Little Dirt On Your Hands

But This White Skin Bothers Me

That Sure Is Not Right

But This Is What I’m Becoming

A Clean Dirty Man

I Don’t Like What I’m Becoming

I Don’t Like It.

https://wolfgarwords.com/

A poetry collaboration by Alex Gutierrez and Brenden Norwood.

i. The Dance of Black and White

The dunes are still, the waves are calm,

Beneath the dance of black and white.

The moon casts its light on crabs that crawl

Beneath the dance of black and white.

Shrouded in cold light, the ocean plumes

Beneath the dance of black and white.

Here I sit, sipping the remains of a beer

Beneath the dance of black and white.

The small human reflects, and the world turns

Beneath the dance of black and white.

ii. The Tide Departs the Shore

Neck aches dull-warmish

Beats the glaring burn of a

Memory; the story leaks out

A loose faucet– i recall how

Each syllable sputtered from

The tear ducts from the eyes

& the I once-loved: bask

In the too-tight hug of a

Too-insistent warmth. Lick

Your wounds. Dollop green

Goo and lie your way out

Of it: oh, how our paths

Will cross like a stuffy

Intersection honking &

Stagnant. It's summer &

Everyone wants to leave

The same one-ness. A rain

Begins: wets the flags to

Limp flowers. You could

Never handle the cold

Or any disturbance to you-

Topia. A variation to

The Rhythm; the pattering

On a metal roof, the badum

Of a heart in solitary, the timed

Sprinkler tossing currents

At precise, careful intervals:

The cage of two hands joined

& all intimate machinations.

The flame of your once you-

Thful eyes untruthful im-

Molates the world in pure

Molasses. Your love directed

At the aftershadow, caught in the

Amber, & i some magician

Making a sleight of hand:

Observe how the world spasms

A forelimb, sinks beneath

A horizon red and gold &

You– the season beneath the

Summer, prelude to the dew.

iii. And This Day Went On and On

Raindrops thunder against a sheet of metal.

Outside, the beachfolk have returned home.

There is nothing but water and wind.

Beneath the swinging pendulum, a young boy

Rolls a rubber ball, and lets it smack

Against the metal tacks. And this day

Went on and on, and this day

Could last forever.

iv. Ritual

Seaweed, scarred shells, bits of styrofoam

Create a fickle crown: a longitude of all

Residue and half-images. A laugh without

The face, a soft voice without the words.

I do not need to crawl, ragged and rhythmic

To your shore, just to form a fragile union

Love is not a brief and brittle force, an inter-

Section between sand and wave. It is the

Blue-heaving, the catch in a breath, an

Undercurrent invisible as the gales that lift

Motionless wings. It is the wind, and the salt,

And a force that would exist without myself,

Or even you. I leave one trail of footsteps

In the sand, and this is no great or beautiful

Tragedy. It is only the path which I tread,

The wave that falls into itself, the sun

That bobs like a buoy, signaling some treasure

Trapped, fluttering within ribs– (caged in our chests.)

v. A Fathomless Ocean

A fathomless ocean lurks

Behind every waking eye.

A Corona on the beach

Is a listening shell,

And cigarette butts

Start to wriggle

Beneath dark, stormy clouds.

You might expect to hear me speak. But,

silence. You might expect a ringing in your ears. But,

silence. You might expect for the words to return, one day. But

I’ve gone away.

abacus-counting

by the river by the

creek, how each stone

displaces low-shifting waters

enough to touch the air to

formulate a hypothesis:

god flows blue between the

heads of pious clouds

in postcards’ glossy dreams of

jerry-rigged splendor where

kilns burn and bake without

letting the door ever open–

me in the scripted fire’s

nook, stuck like rock misted

over, like some un-

perennial flower doomed to

quiet starvation, petals

retract in the withered air

slinking through eden through

tomorrows chiseled in granite–

unfolds Isaac like a letter with a

vorpal instrument: for faith

when done as instructed

x-rays a man to bones to schematics to

yoke-burdened surety, the breath a

zephyr precisely anticipated, carefully mapped.

This little town of Jackson Heights,
of immigrants. The city lights
are not as bright, but we can see
the boulevard, the rising peaks,
how, distantly, by day, the
empire shines so brilliantly.

On Saturday, the local kids
ride back and forth on skates and swings.
Our little town shines with a force:
a lamp, a torch. We are the voice
of those who come to seek a dream,
our little shops, our little streets,

the future paths, the history,
this point in time, the time before,
the children’s laughter, pure and sweet,
so full of possibility.
This spot I’ve filled and left, returned,
I’ll leave a part of me to stay,

to always watch, to always hope,
that all of us will find our way
and not forget this place we found,
the starting point for those who’ve come
on Saturday to Travers’ Park,
this little town, this little spark,

the future paths, the history,
a single step's trajectory,
the form of lines which curve and sway
about the ranks' divide and come
around below the soaring skies
while scattering the scampering

of little feet, in tiny homes,
that lack of things, but not of hope:
it grows, it shines, it radiates.
I’ll let my eyes rest on the sight,
this little spark, this little hope,
this shining star, this satellite,

my home, my wife and family,
this immigrant community,
my grandparents, their sacrifice,
this little town, this little light,
this spot I’ve filled, and now, returned,
I’ll leave a part of me to stay,

just as I am, with all my might,
with open arms, to usher in
the boulevard, the rising peaks,
our little town, this little street,
a prayer, a wish, one candle's light
to guide another's through the night.

Every day I kill the Boxelder bug
that has found its way to the warm tile
of my bathroom. I squeeze tight
the toilet paper, before I flush them,
because I know that drowning is worse
than being crushed. 

I kept them out this summer
as they swarmed the window sill, traversing
the screen with ease. But with some small hole
these beetles come in ones and twos
alerting me in the soft tap of their chitin 
wings against the sash, above the radiator.

I wonder if they know,
amidst the tasteful blue of my shower curtain
and two surviving bamboo plants, I wait.
A prosthetic horror god, or compassionate 
executioner, my fingers gripping tighter than 
they would this blue ballpoint pen. For I can’t

host their kind here. No space in my life
for their small presences, and their need
for warmth, a generational task received
each winter. And my house is not
a boxelder tree, so please
stay away.

Stay away.

wept napalm, cinders for a face

the sun bombards the slinking sky-

line, falling with finality. the slow

eye-tracing of a resolution made

through layers of black-tied bureau-

crats sending blue-collared boys

to sic the fuggun [sic] they're called

fever jungle dabs its damp green head

where homes sound strange on lips

arkansas saw the body sawed in two

mississippi blood burbled on its own syllables

louisiana wailed trumpet agony with

psychadelic munitions with orange agents

with wet bullets and dry faces with

ruptured flags and waving ribbons of

skin and eyes blue and white and pin-

point and red and red and red.

a tiger, always a tiger, invisible to the eye

lurks among the bushes where the charlies

lie. words balloon common men to slurs

their deaths to ten point font upon a page

of intention blurred we gave it to 'em we

really gave 'em hell and hell we gave to

"slow down aggression" chew a cigar

wonder how peace could go so fubar.

Oh the humanity

Oh the significance of the virus in wastewater
Oh the sickly pink, pink foam
Oh the vaccination calls unanswered
Oh the deer in headlight eyes

Oh the humanity

Oh the sextuple boosted sickly partner
Oh the pink ruddy faces watching convulsions
Oh the question what do we do next

Oh the humanity

Oh the triple shift coughing waitress
Oh the voluntary kevlar vests
Oh the sloppy imperial hand me downs

Oh the humanity

Oh the we’re never going back bloggers chiding
Oh the confusion as deaths rise with cases
Oh the pink foam on your great grandmother’s duvet
Oh the feigned confusion

Oh the humanity

Oh the sliver of henny poured at the sidewalk memorial
Oh the cases in Southie
Oh the cases in Springfield
Oh the cases in Worcester
Oh the Worcester county jail
Oh the millions of pared geriatric lungs

Oh the humanity

Oh the one million deaths pulled from the future
Oh in our country alone
Oh we still fly without giving
Oh those poor airplane cleaners
Oh free masking and ventilation and
Oh humanity

Oh the humanity
Oh

Let's look back at some memorable moments and interesting insights from last year.

Your top 10 posts:

• "Oracle Bone Issue 1 — New Poetry Journal (OUT NOW!)" by u/w33nuz
• "love letter to sisyphus" by u/StrangeGlaringEye
• "On the day I realized I was no longer poor" by u/LeninovaLesbian
• "How to get out of bed" by u/brenden_norwood
• "A Present" by u/StrangeGlaringEye
• "Leftovers, new monometer series about food" by u/brenden_norwood
• "Archips Semiferanus" by u/bootstraps17
• "SOPHIE" by u/StrangeGlaringEye
• "Brushfire" by u/bootstraps17
• "Love poem." by u/ParadiseEngineer

Squinting across the blue noon river lapping
In the singing cicada buzz screwed up the hot breeze
Squat by the bank stuck-dry and waiting for
Mirages to condense across the blue noon river lapping
Young Maynard waiting longer than he thought
Buzzing with burned skin under his wet loose shirt
Through mayflies across the blue noon river lapping

I thought it was God

There. Silently

Weighing my deeds good and wicked.

How then to look up and notice

I was alone?

Gathering my faults like rocks.

My good deeds like feathers,

Blowing away as soon as I set them down.

a lightning rod without a sudden flash

may bear no great companion,

my bones without your touch may gash

this futile, waiting flesh. a canyon

forms by watery persistence—

so i sit with desert tongue and sky

forgetting memory of clouds. sense

the anomalies: the shrouded, cherished lie

which i accept as lightning or rain, as

laughter or pain. this body's dull device

repeats ad nauseum, an alcatraz

built only to contain one thing. you slice

out that which gave my form a form:

skybound eyes await a future storm.

After a quiet dinner
mouthing words
we go to bed early.
You wear the socks
that were my gift last fall,
and I am inside
the red sweater you wove.

My love for you, though still
half-soft root, rises
like warm fog
to your touch.
I guess if I shut my
eyes I can hear
the patterns of rain
bruising the sky.
Lightning: a cruel
but brilliant
stroke of genius.

We fall back into sleep
a second time.
Don't listen.
One day we will not be
here, welcomed back
by mud or wiped
clean, a seething black
hole in our place.

Therefore focus
on the fireplace,
its continuous
luminous chord,
and don't pay too much
attention to the
horror, the melting
caps and sinking
white ships, since ice
is but frozen water,
and water
is frozen light.

It’s your birthday
and I forgot to buy you a present,
which is why I am trying to think
of the perfect line of poetry.

Though best unthought before,
I brought a book by Baudelaire
whose margins I come to
like a lover waiting for the ships

to be birthed again by the horizon
with his lover inside.
It should be something clear and
astonishing, the sped-up clip

of a flower blooming flame-like,
a video explaining evolution
by showing how life
one day just walked out of the ocean.

I try out: missing you is as sad
and elegant as the skeleton of a bird.
Maybe this: being in your arms feels like
being the innermost ring of a tree.

I am already in my uber,
and don’t have my perfect line.
Time is running out,
and the kinetic avenue is running,

a stream of consciousness
beneath the car. There is this song
blasting in the radio,
and the sky changes color

with the chorus, so I rip out
a page from Baudelaire
and the right line leaves my body:
loving you turns my blood into music.

galloping ivory zebra

scales hill on hill from

cymbal gold crashing

rippling roaring the

trees lock them in like

bars and suddenly the

poor steed has to coda

to an ending, stripes

seized from exhaustion,

rhythms syncopated

with contrasting pulses–

one of hunger, one of

fear. stride, piano limbs

from high to low, from

standing to splayed,

from not alive to not

yet dead. watch, now, as

a hand falls from keys

reaches for a highball-propped cigarette

as smoke brays a final note.