MAYDAY

GOATSPEAK by Jerrod Bohn

Contributed By:

bastard rhythm-jigs’ cloven hooves scatter
earth song
beat hearth pulse
bleat

turtledoves with fire tongues’ sharpened
fork-lick brambles
thorn whips
and throw blood on pine trees
stomp

grape skins        juice-stained knees’
buckle bow
snap syllables
pop
pelvis
pile another palm frond on the fire

that lyre too       string-gap music’s flames
aspire to source
inspire exaltations ex-
halations

horned hallucinations               wallflower
don’t stand
wallflower                   dance

hand-hoof bobbing to huff-huff bone-drums
garbled warblers’ invocations
battered bashful
muse                             defrock
suck
twine-kinked beard                 fuck

 

Return to table of contents for Issue 1 Spring 2009

Filed Under: Poetry

Further Reading

Contributor Bios for Issue 7 Winter 2013

Issue 7 Winter 2013 DAVID ABRAMS is the author of Fobbit (Grove/Atlantic), a New York Times Notable Book for 2012. It was also selected as both an Indie Next pick and for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers program. His short stories have appeared in Esquire, Narrative, Salon, Electric, Literature, Salamander, Connecticut Review, Five Chapters, […]

The End of Snow by Helen Degen Cohen

 after reading Anna Swir                                                 1. 1939 and my mother is not the town beauty my mother is an orange flower the wind can move only so much. Iron in hand she curls the butcher’s wife’s hair. Powerful gypsies come      in  and  out whispering secrets    their eyes like bats their skirts sweeping the floor of the […]

The Snow Kept Falling by Stanislav Stratiev
(Translated from Russian by Risa Shargel)

Translator’s Note: Under communist rule, the government strongly discouraged celebration of religious holidays. In a pragmatic nod to the difficulty of stopping Christmas celebrations altogether, the government used a carrot-and-stick approach to associate the celebrations with the New Year’s holiday instead. Much as the church had earlier absorbed pagan traditions such as survakane into Christmas, […]