Sunday Service: Lucy Tiven
like this
when I burnt my fingertip
it was because I wanted to turn the candle
into a tiny trashcan. because I don’t know
how to make people pay attention to me
without acting like a wastebin set on fire
outside the park
like people need something
for people to swerve around
and then video with their phone
like there is a voice inside you
that you actually can’t turn off
by arching your feet
the lamp I ordered from eBay
turned out to be a dollhouse lamp.
you have to order a tiny adaptor
to make it plug to a usual outlet. it sucks.
I still want to be a doll though
birds in the engine
I don’t feel that hopeless
Dropping my luggage
with reckless abandon
Isn’t it funny that there is a monk in the airport?
Everyone is quietly trying to take his picture
without giving themselves up
bio: Lucy Tiven is an MFA student at San Francisco State University and a contributing writer for The Fanzine. She is currently working on a chapbook about Mark Rothko for Plain Wrap and trying to get hired as a sales associate at Pet Food Express.
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Sunday Service: Brooke Ellsworth
Dove
I knew a boy named Dove
I never touched him
The rest in the park beneath
The shining bottoms of seagulls
Came out of the gated housing estates
Where nobody ever did touch him
Still the homegrown closed in on him
Their arms always came away with nothing
Oh how he would work a crowd of war daddies
With those Dove eyes he’d give a waitress
When he’d order waffles at midnight
Coffee and pie on the house
Poor Dove couldn’t help it
He’d say goodnight to the officers
To every convict and then to me
Good night everybody Dove would say
There’s no more to what I saw
What’s more is everybody went hungry
Brooke Ellsworth is author of the chapbook, Thrown (The New Megaphone 2014). She has recent poems in gobbet, Pinwheel, and ILK. She teaches at The New School.
Sunday Service: Russell Bennetts poem
Foxxcan Suicide (Stylish Boys in the Riot)
La Anaconda. A hooded black teenager. Teen upskirts. Such happy spirits! Sosostris of da liver. Jaws yack beer around and around and. A 1000 little deaths over a pic of Mr. Starnbergersee. Death n’ obstruction in town. In’t town. and gown. Can’t go left! LIMBO! 3 p.m. 3.16 p.m. Sergeant Snare on Pussy Patrol. Keep da Game Genie far fence, that’s fo’ mensch. If your not rreading this. I juice wanna surf the nite away. Turn it over and watch what REALLY happens. 199*: did you choose something else? Sumfin else?
White man came. – Maiden
Apocalypse as hook. What’s your Legacy, Russell? Requiem***.
It’s so easy, but nothing seems to please me. – Axl W. Rose
The audience knows this by heart. The audience know this by heart. She got big ol’booty an’ bloodshot eyes. A black Blondie. Underage. Overage. Walking stick.
Die in your class, I’ll die inmine.
Russell Bennetts is the editor of Berfrois. He lives in Kentish Town, London.