Issue 130

In the time before time      artists fill in

the blanks with grain abstractions      Hatch marks

and lattices graze the plain      River grasses

thresh the earth      Grids of inky linen

Natalie and Ben and Ori and Eliora are King of the Jews on Tuesdays and Thursdays
on Sundays and Wednesdays.
They go to their King of the Jews Mall
and spend money at Sephora and Shake Shac

I returned to the imperfect city to retire
the myths I mistook for love.
Coins glinted in imperial fountains.
Flowers awaited a protagonist’s hand.

To the scion of a folded utopia
falls the second draft

Images want to be kissed and touched and heard; they want to trade places with the beholder; they want everything and nothing. W.J.T. Mitchell A scholar asks, What Do Pictures Want? ———–says there’s a surplus ———–in the sign. If a color wants ———–to trade places with me, ——————how does it ask? The last painting I…

, the color for which we get the phrase
born in the purple,

I’m juggling people I’ve known
like someone who’s just learned to juggle.
Two balls is the most I can do:

Hard to tell if this is a path at all.
The only signpost I see, I can’t read.
——Below me lie fields of barley,
uptrail the rockface rears like a dragon’s back.

Given your red eyes, grizzled cheek,
——the boozy scent coming off your skin,
you probably forgot the young woman

In the beginning God created Kansas,
and it was without form and void, a grid
in two dimensions. And God said, Let
there be roads.