Junk Yard-
I just don't know how to make the numbers work
I'm looking down on the world
complexity and simplicity of their stuff
you've got 1,000 magazines I think it's a great bond fire
the vision against the prettiest package
you get us why we are who we are
you can't cut the balloons
be a steward of the earth
awareness outside of the strip
you went all the way around the US to get there
choices. no wonder life is so difficult
panty bandit
lovers quarrel and swaddle coo
you can conceal it in science
her under stomach
someone told me he stunks
I told him about your ivy
cheers to long johns onesies, burning wood, and excessive cuddle season
For the next two weeks I'm gonna be a vegan
heavy napped
generally free people
I'm usually good at sucking the flavor out of gum
my hands dropped 10 degrees
More than a proton on electron
often the same thoughts reorganized... still the same language. What's unique?
Fuck being a dirty word that comes out clean
Wanderlust
My 7 year old nephew said I have 140 calories
the silence takes you, then I hope it takes me too
that was the most worthless work out I ever had
I know I'm not the only one who had a bad ashy spot, no lotion, so licked hand then wiped spot! Improvise
Random Notes to self: Free Write
My babysitter taught me the 5 finger discount with the neighbors california naples
I believe in bleeding ink stained skin. I believe in talking to stranger in Colorado at a mimi market waiting on the bus to struggle us up the snow cap mountain forcing us to face the choke wind. To find our selves at the top plating in the sun cut ribbon smiling to slope back to the bottom and repeat the challenges we are forced to face in life.
As children being taught to not talk to strangers was a typical practice. I don't believe in that. I believe in facing the world fearless
I believe in the fairy tales in our heads, they're not ruled out possibilities, even the queen of hearts has her moments, allow the fearful cuffs around the mind to click open roads and sails to beautiful worldly location
I believe in hesitation and then jump
I believe in endless possibilities, even the ones that stop the rhythmic beeps and flatten the lines of our decisions
The headphones our mothers placed on us at birth, the always right in our head
The never wrong in our head
She taught me to be fearful of the world to never talk to strangers. I didn't listen instead I took one extensive leap to the next. I talked to the stranger at the colorado super market as we waited for the bus.
I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt
but not even in my crazy state of mind
could a period excuse my actions, crazy bitch.
Improvs-
#1 When the City Calls Me Names
Erica Dawson
I holler back, and the people with cellphones walk sideways
carrying their copy of Star Magazine, beating the dead girl
with misplaced letters in the text out of the box.
She was knocked and little talked by the gavel grip necks
of vapor wrinkled labels handled by suited men nicely woven
into a formal event, she wore a chandelier mask while feeding
the handkerchief bibliomaniacs, the unpin baby
cutting coos and the miss yous, misused
a thousand magazines and one great bond fire.
#2 Credo
Erica Dawson
The World has No Excuses, but I Do
I understand vintage sterling men's tie and Chivas Regal Royal Salute,
its vulnerable neck tipped $10,000 in motion down my right thigh
tickling my excessive want to be the bubonic plague so that I might cherry
tree truth hampered under the most popular guns of the east Appalachain
trilliums. I am an experienced seed, a fleshy organ illegal to pick
durring the summer months when the body fevers into mole skin.
The world is a short hike to a keepsake box.
#3 Somewhere Between Columbus and Cincinnati
Erica Dawson
Five States, There and Back in 48 Hours
We have 1,045 miles between us and only the stars
to keep me motivated under the Georgia night sky
as I dance past the Tennessee lines to Bourbon Street
where the live music blares jazzy tunes and waves
invisible notes into pictures of you and I by the river's
bank hopping carelessly between the cobble stone cracks
continuing our road trip to the fatty state of KFC
where the chicken skin fries our tongue twist make out
session into motivation of the agriculture smell of cows
in open fields of flat farmlands, only to make it to the city
where my hand traced your face towards mine
and we forgot about the world.
#4 The Rumor Mill
Matthew Roth
Shut doors not quite shut. The vents.
The recycle talks of Bainbridge, GA.
The vegan leather, fancy lady coat,
fox fur and the mustache mugs
black coffee brim, jungle red lip stain.
I can't stop staring.
She frames black and white,
a red fishnet Fedora, a beige shadow
"man stopper,"a .38 barrel harkening
the riverboat gamblers and the dead,
or soon to bes. She came to the city
crawling, light-weight and underpinned.
and honestly
#5 Directions
Matthew Roth
Pinching yourself to forget the ache inside your head
I'm looking down on the world,
and I am ready to cut the strings.
I am ready swaddle in the goat hair
and un-glaze the silk, the gold ribbed
couture, velour leather pants
intricately woven like motorway maps
or processed Blonde d'Aquitaine,
the famous premier fashion house
imitating the soft nape neck
The only benefit, 300 days of sun.
#6 Unused Lines
Chelsea Rathburn
False starts, limp rhymes, feet bruised and lame,
the collapsed lung in silence, she plagues humankind
with a fishnet torso, feather split and fit, gown petticoat
peeks of pantalette underwear and thick mascara
her blue iris and wilt oleander petals drop
extinct historical book names
#7 Mistakes
Chelsea Rathburn
So we, born whole, who think we've more to lose
are free to seek whatever ruin we choose,
under bank low lamps and quite words
that fog and heat with the radio cries,
the dread of wilderness and wood stove burns
the visible erosion of human mandible
pass, or cause to pasee ridge stepped dust
about the girl in love with nothing but mindless
hair, shit, dreams or dots like themselves
#8 Face in the Pillow
Erica Dawson
Then I can't say a word,
the dogs on their paws,
jaw down,
completely relaxed belly meat
warm on the living room floor—
winter midnight's frosty silence
felt my body
the physical reamins
a guitar and wine ribs
with a fine collection of Merino wood
socks
sleek wild flower necks
bent
to the belly fat grass
and fresh biscuits
#9 Biopsy
Chelsea Rathburn
My knees gave out before I made the bench
and the phone shattered on the carpet mall floor
while people became fool or wise to judge me
in a burst of blushed cheeks,
shortlived nose breaths, how strange
the ephermal world to reach, stroke
all living and dying with out exist,
to think my felt body sink, blank
with my hands clasped and arranged legs worn
into little broken down paths to nowhere.
The others slept, slipped into my bag
and spent with me midnight.
#10 Placebo
Erica Dawson
I've become the strongest word to the west coast
the superlative 'rad,' tired and overused shoes
paint the bottom sole with mint green eyes
and heavy purple studs. I move in more subtle ways
than the lost breakfast at the Original Pancake House
after a night of inhumane dance pleasure and whiskey
witness of the British man being chain to the cries
of a loose behavior girl in thigh black pants and exposed
middrift, drifting into sheets, hopes to find a boy
to console the fairy tale reality that does not exist,
these girls and their placebo thoughts of desire
tumble like the broken sand in the Encinitas wave
collide like the paint on the canvas half tumbled
off the wall in splats. Splats. Splats break
#11 How Memory Works
Matthew Roth
When I stepped off the plane the salt waved air,
suddenly I'm propelled me back to California
down L street and third by the Beach House bar
and we are sitting across from each other, I stare
discreetly unannounced so no one could tell
for some reason I feel you eyeing me through
glass and it feels warmer than the rays
#12 Letters from Minor Loves
Chelsea Rathburn
The letter at the post office is lost
between the blur lines of the cubbies,
each scent like the Honduran Mahogany,
each loud pen smeared by the tears
of the writer trying to erase thoughts
him, or her. It's funny how we think
too much, or not enough.
We never seem to pinch the salt right
when baking bread, it always seems to dry,
crust and discourage the adjusting stale,
sale. Until the water attracts the texture
#13 Slow Drowning
Chelsea Rathburn
When the California girl was crazy,
I walked to the couch to sleep
and you followed, laid your head
on my stomach and listened to me breathe
until, the California girl found you
and slapped your face. I pretended to sleep
While you remained still on my stomach.
She wanted you bad but instead I had you.
#14 Going Gray
Chelsea Rathburn
The stitch of my sweater unravels like the curls in my mother's hair.
I only see her back as she face the chosen mahogany coffin.
The scent of japanese cherry blossom carries in the wind and I swore
it was my grandmother whispering into the dark strands of my hair,
remedying me, the reason for the ink panther on her left shoulder,
the family mascot earn living in the philippines.
Today I think I'll wear gray and forget about the red roses of yesterday.
I'll smear its petals against the concrete and watch is stain
like a coffee drinkers teeth, watch it crack like winter elbows, dry
my mouth into lost words.
#15 La Temptressa
Erica Dawson
I wore sheer tights under my lace red dress,
its no control waist band tease, tight
around my thigh, there was no need for a garter.
I stretched my arm to the contour of my leg
and strap my heavy rouge heels with the buckle
fasten faster than the slow following curious eye,
controlled movement to keep attention, poor guy
didn't know the steam from the black top pavement
could reel you in with its twisting dance
graft the skin and permanently remind his heart
the trouble it takes to breathe.
They cigarettes damage the lungs, the truth is women
do with the single inhale of her Chanel scent.
#16 If you died today and were reincarnated, What would you be?
Erica Dawson
In the rhinestone of the six inch heel
reflect the face of a mad, desirous woman,
deeper in its soul is a tiger painted heavy
in orange and bio-ethanol yellow.
The mouth open like the men oogling
at her hammer jack concrete steps,
she has steps that kill almost as hard
as the North African scorpion's human
fingernail body, piercing headache
sting memories of hospital trips
like the visits made to visit grandma
during her fail kidney.
She is the creature found everywhere
in billboards, kitchen butter knives,
and foot stools. She has a secret,
only found out when chest is heeled
and the answer of the story is end.
#17 The Poet, Mid-Career
Matthew Roth
Got an answer in the story today,
every fourth letter in the typeface,
Pristina font, spelt torches
so I immediately set fire to the war
inside my head, re-wrote the agenda
and packed my only black underfur coat
over aged from the thrift store, faded
like the stripes on the thinned out neck
of the boy in the pajamas, who faded
into black like the molar on the left side jaw,
finally to twist freely in the smoke, that move
like spiders crawling across my pillow,
myself in my blankey, my face like a hot shower,
I can't stop thinking about the disabled
bodies of history.
#18 The Present Bird
Matthew Roth
The thief, he kindly spoke to me
as if I were a princess among cold,
strung on a violin carved like Sunday,
the everyday laze we wish for.
He knew exactly how to gem the stone,
how to play the video game with the amethyst
mines, the beautiful eye lashed Aquarius
pouring waves of breathe back into foreign places,
the fears of dust in a suitcase riddled full
of old magazines, building floors of fallen cards
because the Queen of diamonds struggled
interaction at the turn of water powered wheels,
striking the ideas, ducking and move into swollen eyes.
#19 May Cause Drowsiness
Erica Dawson
The females are typically larger than independent skull on hwy 20,
east bound towards the blue fir tree, where the bark spider lives in 67 degrees
of silk water string seen only by prey seeking to drink populations
of adult bones strengthen by living environments. What am I writing?
The reasons of racist, defenseless human hind legs,
the indeed correct labels for mass killings
carried out in public grunt claims to "necessary"
massacres diets that rip thick foundation
to the 1970's ending year written in the books
justified
#20 God Girl
Erica Dawson
Many names around the world, she is served both cold and Caribbean,
mixed in the tanginess of herbs she is served mixed with Jamaican rum.
She boils in copper pots to destroy the needed metal taste men's body
crave. The hibiscus movement of her hips shares a story about the West African
trader who found the metal color music box leached to the ears of the children
in half torn diapers still enameled in smiles with their steep petal caved
stomachs mimicking the ice cube diet of the teen on Vogue magazine
dying for attention to ignore the little ones fighting to not plume like the broken
waterfront
#21 Calling
Matthew Roth
The world's oldest light bulb has been burning 111 years,
more facts and ancestry than I know about my own family
—so little wanderlust nights in southern California
where the record-hold on my family's beginning history,
when my mom and dad made the "best" of a diminutive
relationship, pride. But it wasn't too long before the fire engines
siren miles between truck routes and gas station trade offs,
as if I were an exchanging rate of drug. Laurel Thatcher
had it right to say "Well behaved women seldom make history"
So at seventeen I sheered my legs open like the Belladonna
photograph, I pivoted my hip bone to match the crease
page of the pervasive rebellion, mothers and daughters
voiced only in a quite book to be heard and not paid,
not fully human yet labored between the legs, under the roof
bought by the man with the unfaithful wedding band, band together
with a clench fist at the local bar, laughing moustaches
to signify age and testosterone respect. The silent obscurity
of bottled Southern Comfort, original with the line of tea bags.......
#22 That Time Frank Thought a Plastic Bag was a Jellyfish
Erica Dawson
This morning I open the screen to my laptop and read the daily horoscope
of a Leo and thought about the concerns of the environment that no longer
promotes family value because speaking on a disagreement is a matter that dress
under intimidating ties of a suit that ignores the sun to comfort in the waves
that fall and rise like the smartass remarks of a Thanksgiving dinner a family
did not want to share so they stuff their mouths full as an excuse to not talk
about the whether or the fresh scent of the lilac garden colorful
#23 She Wishes Her Beloved Not So Pure, Nor 900 Miles Away
Chelsea Rathburn
At night when I lay in bed I question myself
I answer the question of what I want
and when I want to dial your number, I don't
because what I want is for the sirens
chasing the 936 Peugeot Darl'Mat down the hwy.
I want the mouth watering of a man
wiling to distance the miles between us, closer
with out words but assembly and recovery
from the American Depression, a self inflicted
wound of the mind.
#24 Sixteen
Chelsea Rathburn
Before I was sixteen I use to sing "Strawberry Wine"
and pretend I was seventeen, completely ignoring
the listening year of the first independent movement
from home to the mall, the calling of age and money
and desirous desires to be a model in Malian. How silly
a world to teach the girls how to be snotty brats dressed up
in the news, taking away the "lucky" man's numbers
for personal pleasure to learn nothing.
#25 The Sixth Grade Lunchroom
Chelsea Rathburn
When I was eleven years old I had attended eleven different schools
and had lived only in three states and one very poor desert heated country
I didn't complain but I made observation of it and when I stated the facts
my father stated his mistakes and settled into a community
that had already established the life long friendships of children
who would live with in a ten mile radius to where they grew up.
What a strange experience to be around people who couldn't speak
outside a southern draw or respect the cultural difference of the snow globe
county of Douglasville.
Credo Drafts-
1— The World has No Excuses, but I Do
I understand vintage sterling men's tie and Chivas Regal Royal Salute,
its vulnerable neck tipped $10,000 in motion down my right thigh
tickling my excessive want to be the bubonic plague so that I might cherry
tree truth hampered under the most popular guns of the east Appalachain
trilliums. I am an experienced seed, a fleshy organ illegal to pick
durring the summer months when the body fevers into mole skin.
The world is a short hike to a keepsake box.
2—
I believe in bleeding ink stained skin.
I believe in talking to stranger especially in Colorado
at a mimi market waiting on the bus
that would struggle us up the snow cap mountain
forcing us to face the choke wind. To find
our selves at the top plating in the sun cut ribbon
smiling to slope back to the bottom and repeat
the challenges we are forced to face in life.
As children being taught to not talk to strangers,
I don't believe in that. I believe in facing the world fearless
I understand vintage sterling men's tie and Chivas Regal Royal Salute,
its vulnerable neck tipped $10,000 in motion down my right thigh
tickling my excessive want to be the bubonic plague so that I might cherry
tree truth hampered under the most popular guns of the east Appalachain
trilliums. I am an experienced seed, a fleshy organ illegal to pick
durring the summer months when the body fevers into mole skin.
I believe in the fairy tales in our heads, they're not ruled out possibilities,
even the queen of hearts has her moments, allow the fearful cuffs
around the mind to click open roads and sails to beautiful worldly location.
I believe in hesitation and then jump.
3—
The Little Anchors in Life
When I was young my mother tried to make me fearful of the world,
she placed headphones on my ears and recycled the words that told
me to listen to her because she was always right. I sang against
her not to be rebellious but for myself. As a child she tried to teach
me not to talk to strangers, but I don't believe in that. How would people
make friends? I believe in facing the world fearless. I understand
vintage sterling men's tie and Chivas Regal Royal Salute,
its vulnerable neck tipped $10,000 in motion down my right thigh
tickling my excessive want to be the bubonic plague so that I might cherry
tree truth hampered under the most popular guns of the east Appalachain
trilliums. I am an experienced seed, a fleshy organ illegal to pick
durring the summer months when the body fevers into mole skin.
I believe in the fairy tales in our heads, they're not ruled out possibilities,
even the queen of hearts has her moments, allow the fearful cuffs
around the mind to click open roads and sails to beautiful worldly location.
I believe in hesitation and then jump.
Childhood experience from adult perspective drafts:
1—
I had just learned how to ride a bike when I rode it past the neighbors house
in my favorite worn out yellow dress with the big white polka dots,
my hair was short, dark, and thicker than the fur coat of my favorite teddy bear.
I made sure my smile only exposed my two front teeth because the rest were trading
spaces which left my mouth full of space, dark doors open to the practiced giggles
for subjects like big wheel racing down fourteenth street, the things I didn't care for.
I had barbie teach me how to stand with my shoulders back and how to extend my limbs
into desirable lengths for eyes to trace in curiosity, this was the age we were all learning
to explore the different anatomy of boys and girls.
2—
For as long as I can remember I think we've been assembled by the production line of toys,
barbies teaching girls how to hold their shoulders back and extend their limbs into desirable
eye tracing lengths, and big wheels were created for boys to take interests in machinery
and fast moving moments to foreshadow the approaching years of aggressive behavior
in mating season, teenage hormones. For as long as I can remember girls were plastic,
even before its twenty first discovery. Girls have always had a way of utilizing dirt,
a way of "accentuating" their flaws to be flawless and men encouraged girls to keep covered,
they liked perfection: round tear glazed eyes, baby soft skin, and the qualities of a domesticate
house kitten he challenged before he met the girl he'd marry.
3—
When I was about six I learned how to ride my bike in the most stubborn way possible,
my parents had no role. I climbed the wooden fence in the front yard, mound the seat
held the splintering wood as my feet barley reached the petals into a forward motion.
Once I kept the rhythm of my body I let go to steer past my neighbors house,
where the boy with the largest collection of Pokemon cards lived, I had to impress
the impressive.
For as long as I can remember I think we've been assembled by the production line of toys,
barbies teaching girls how to hold their shoulders back and extend their limbs into desirable
eye tracing lengths, and big wheels were created for boys to take interests in machinery
and fast moving moments to foreshadow the approaching years of aggressive behavior
in mating season, teenage hormones. For as long as I can remember girls were plastic,
even before its twenty first discovery. Girls have always had a way of utilizing dirt,
a way of "accentuating" their flaws to be flawless and men encouraged girls to keep covered,
they liked perfection: round tear glazed eyes, baby soft skin, and the qualities of a domesticate
house kitten he challenged before he met the girl he'd marry.
Workplace Poem (redemptive quality) drafts:
1—
When I was 19 I had less than fifty dollars in my bank account,
I needed a job so I hitch hiked to Atlanta and started to barge buildings
because I refused to be the homeless man on 10th street, as nice as he was
that was not the life for me. Each building had a new greeter with new rules
request to apply online. Yeah right. While walking streets a man stopped me
and hired me, not even aware of my skills and I said yes. He must have answered
the prayer that I did not say and I must have been lucky.
The job was long hours and tangled in a network of drug users or abusers
that tried to peer pressure like the high school hallways everyone hated
to grow up in. Thank my stubborn to not choke on the smoke
from the coworkers who could not hold their own sanity.
2—
The things you learn while being a bartender is that people need to talk
about themselves, people need to drink and drown in their stories,
they need to assist their thoughts into confidence to be okay
to open the gaps of missing (not forgotten) bads they achieved in their life.
The man on the stool at five o'clock somewhere has a left sleeve that is slightly
wrinkles by the writs exposing the three raised attempts to drown with the wine,
the thick heavy red that his divorced wife left him tumored and their daughter
lost in the headphones trying not to listen to either side of the court papers
that would not allow her to leave. Everyone needs a drink for therapy.
3—
I'm convinced that a glass of Jack and an aspirin bottle might be the therapy
that saves the world and mellows out the highly strung and orchestrated
suits that move in lines of two or three out the revolving doors for lunch.
The things you learn while being a bartender is that people need to talk
about themselves, people need to drink and drown in their stories,
they need to assist their thoughts into confidence to be okay
to open the gaps of missing (not forgotten) bads they achieved in their life.
The man on the stool, it's five o'clock somewhere has a left sleeve that is slightly
wrinkles by the writs exposing the three raised attempts to drown with the wine,
the thick heavy red that his divorced wife left him tumored and their daughter
lost in the headphones trying not to listen to either side of the court papers
that would not allow her to leave. He stops by every afternoon at lunch, sits
third stool from the west entrance of the door and somehow returns to work.
Everyone needs a drink for therapy.
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