Juliet Escoria
To view “In the Woods” in full screen, go here.
Juliet Escoria is the author of Black Cloud, a collection of videos, pictures, and stories. “In the Woods” serves as the tenth video for the book.
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Ben Morgan
Where are you going
Two Christians came to my doorstep while I drank coffee
This was a couple minutes ago, on my porch (right
now I’m recording it in a poem). They spoke
of death. To me, the man and woman, probably
married, very old but in an endearing way, seemed
possessed of knowledge concerning some end/hereafter
The woman tried to read of death to me
I ended up reading to myself out loud, for her
Afterwards, the man asked me if I was a ‘scholar’
I hesitated and said ‘yes,’ then came quick
a vague discussion of my hobbies leading
into one, as directionless as death, about
a perceived lack of ‘goodness’ in the world
and resulting senses of fallacious hopelessness
Our reasons for defying/defining loss are different
They still gave me a little pamphlet though
On the back of it is a blurb titled ‘is it designed’
demarcating the biological system of navigation
dung beetles use, specifically in regard to
their utilization of the Milky Way’s band of light
as a sort of GPS satellite, but more efficient than one
I feel, re: significantly less computational power
Even on the darkest nights they check distant starlight
against their position in the universe for movement
I don’t know what the article is implying, but it brought to mind
an occurrence yesterday, wherein waking up outside
the chapel, I went in and almost prayed
instead opting to sit at the organ and attempt to play
realizing it requires a labyrinth of neural organization
I’m incapable of aligning my body’s movement with the electrical impulses needed
to operate complicated machinery in a purposeful, directive manner
I’ve been trying to figure something out ever since
like if God was watching me and laughing at my failure
in his/her house; some people really don’t like a house
being disrespected; God might be one of those people
or simply detritus in the pockets of those people
Bio: You can get Ben Morgan’s book here.
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Stella Corso
PERFECT PERSON
and when I laid my hands upon his person
I thought this is the perfect person
and so was stricken
and became nauseous
then he asked me for money
and I was honored
I felt flattered
and when his freedom finally leaked
I thought how terrifying
how torturous
and was touched again
everyone around us grew disgusted
I leaned over
and threw up into their milk
Bio: Stella Corso lives in the Pioneer Valley where she runs a vintage clothing shop called Pale Circus and teaches at Western New England University. Some of her poems can be found in Coconut Magazine, jubilat, Caketrain, notnostrums and Everyday Genius. She is a founding member of the Connecticut River Valley Poet’s Theater, also known as CRVPT.
Niina Pollari
Vampire
I am a vampire in a grayly coughing dawn
I prepare a ritual of the hallucinogenic sleep
I lay down and spread
My gnatted arms by my sides
I cannot
But let
An Autobahn of blood be mealy in me
You know what I mean
We king our impulses, love
Eat and prey
Every day
It’s a fakey arcade
And I am its operator laughing copper with blood in my teeth
I spin a bright novelty ball on my finger
While I watch you watch me
I can’t make myself be alive
I do not feel sorry
I only talk about me
the laptop shudders violently when I type my About Me
You ask if I will stay here in the ruin
With you, and of course I will
When I say those words exactly
I let them rope out of my mouth
And twine around my fingers
What I do is a conjunction
I smooth the gothic filament of my agreeing
And I close my eyes
And how an hourglass is wide on both ends
But wide enough in the center for one grain only
That image is my voice
Working in my throat
I use it to gorge you
With my gentle introduction
“I can smell you
It’s nice and I like it
Did you know that I am real”
Bio: Niina Pollari’s first book Dead Horse will come out from Birds Llc in November. She coordinates Popsickle, a yearly, traditionally sweaty mega reading in Brooklyn.
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Ashley Opheim
To view the collection in fullscreen, go here.
Bio: Ashley Opheim (Ashley Obscura) is the author of the poetry collection I Am Here. She lives in Montreal, where she is the founding editor of Metatron and co-director of the reading series This Is Happening Whether You Like It Or Not. She can be followed on Twitter @hologramrainbow.
Russel Swensen (@scribblymouse)
Selected Tweets
so no i don’t exactly think there’s hope for any of us ok
ice isn’t melting btw it’s rejecting you
can’t tell if this sunshine is trying to be ironic or what
not a statue i just stay still a lot
what if you “listened to your body” and all it said was “goodbye”
the furniture seems to be a lot more on fire since i started thinking of you
*pregames with bone marrow*
my fantasy is a room you’re not walking out of
writing “who did this to you” as the caption to every childhood photo of yourself you can find
there are a lot of cups of coffee but this one hasn’t betrayed me or made me feel worthless yet
i’m the part of the story you fall asleep during
how old is your depression supposed to be before you talk about girls
i like to drive real slow like my life isn’t meaningless
what’s the yoga position where i lie down in your driveway and promise not to breathe
yelling at my blood that it’s not allowed on the bed
twisted dark fantasies about emotional stability
point a camera at me and watch it detonate
now count back from you miss her but she doesn’t miss you
every five minutes i whisper “it sounds like someone’s dying out there” and even i do not know what I mean
teaching the baby how to say yeezy
have your funeral at a poetry reading so you can blame poor attendance on the genre
put my name in your bio wrap it up in a blanket and weigh it down with rocks drop it off the pier
your heart’s first words were “no touching.”
there is cornbread in my tears tonight
i thought i was in love but it turns out i just left the oven on
gonna take your temperature by burning you at the stake
“i always wanted to fuck the most depressed cheerleader in the world”
“you’re making it worse” me every time i look in a mirror
smh if your entire body isn’t a cast you never figured out how to remove
there’s like one self esteem for every twenty people on twitter and they pass it back and forth
today i wore a canary yellow shirt so that people would know i am completely dead inside
taze me until i cum
tbh every time i look at a baby i can already tell how bad its twitter will be
#girlslikeitwhen you kill their parents trust me this one works
So You Think You Can Cum Without Crying
gonna keep buying diet coke until this vending machine is empty enough to double as a coffin
gonna raise these feelings like they’re my own
lower yr expectations lower them gently into the ground
happily married couple seeks third party to kill them
hey girl are you science friday because you are the only thing i love and it seems like you never come
how many fireflies do you have to kill to cure a depression
i look too good to wake up
IF YOU REALLY LOVED ME I’D BE FUCKING DEAD BY NOW
jealous of all the people whose iphones keep killing them
like you’d notice if the fucking rapture happened
no one who can touch a girl’s collarbone needs to build a dream catcher
people only ever want one thing from me and it is space
Bio: RUSSEL SWENSEN earned his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and his doctorate from the University of Houston. His fiction and poetry have appeared in Black Clock, Quarterly West, Pank, Third Coast, The Collagist, The Destroyer, and elsewhere. His poetry chapbook, “Santa Ana,” was released by Black Lawrence Press. His full length collection, “The Magic Kingdom,” is forthcoming (January 2016).
Debora Kuan
PORTRAIT OF MY STALKER
When my stalker stopped stalking me
I died the death of
a million fat blue genies.
That’s how sick in the bream I was.
I wanted to call him Porgy—
because he could follow the scent
of my truffle—
before I knew a porgy is a fish.
The lava lamps slid all the way
into the psychedelic canal.
Fiddlehead ferns wove a shag rug
that couldn’t fly.
I wept hard
in the terminal.
I couldn’t weep.
My god wings
looped in the gold
from a dying head.
For seven years, I didn’t
hear anything
from the state.
And then my certificate
thighs returned
burned.
I tried to soldier on
without. I vacuumed
in the powder
all the way up the snow scraper
and sucked my hair
into a trapezoid.
Running of the things
off a cliff–
Running of my nerves
off my spine–
Porgy, I begged,
I’m a dwarf
planet, I’m a morphed
laminate.
I’m a shut canister
in shut cycle,
spinning out of time.
Bio: Debora Kuan is the author of XING (Saturnalia Books, 2011). She has recently been awarded residencies at Yaddo and Macdowell, and had poems and fiction published in Adult, Brooklyn Rail, Buenos Aires Review, Hyperallergic, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. She is a director at the College Board and also a senior editor at Brooklyn Arts Press. She lives in Brooklyn.