amphibi.us

I meet the man today
the man that I knew I would.
He told me he had been in trouble again.
The next door neighbour had thrown a bone at him
and he had thrown it back at her.

A big bone like a lamb’s bone, that is what he said.
They threw him in Winchester knick for the night and charged him with battery.
His first taste
of the funhouse.

I told him before that it would not be long.
Maybe I did not expect it to be this soon.
I had a massive fear
that I would end up sharing a cell with him.

God would not do that to me would he?
You see
I think that he is a bit of a joker.

Maybe he is bored up there with nothing to do all day.
Counting clouds.
I wonder if he ever sleeps.
The game says that sleep is the cousin of death.
Perhaps that is why I want to sleep so much.
Goodnight, don’t forget to not wake me up.

© Marc Carver, 2010

[others]

A finger on the map
pointed to another fantasy vacation
he can not afford
the kind of man that dreams
but doesn’t do is the kind of man I married

another lumpish year passed through me
debating divorce vs. new dishwasher

A slender girl stepped out of me
years ago, unzipped me from chin
to vagina, and tip-toed away
with my life.  Like a thief
she watched over her shoulder
and faded into wallpaper someone else hung

He picks his teeth.

I wonder if the wife before me
tried to glue love upon these walls
or decorate her way out of hell?
No such flowers exist on earth
as these eggplant colored blooms
that cascade towards the stained carpet
of my cell.  The repetition of fake-love drowned
by talking  talking  talking of nothing

© Stacy Campbell, 2010

The stoic man with the fake beard
like bootleg cotton candy,
stationed in front of Rite Aid
swung a mean bell.

So mean I couldn’t tell
he only did it one month a year.

Waiting for my transfer to the 94
on my way to junior college,
I walked up to his red pot,
nodded,
and dropped in
thirty-seven cents.

The stoic man with fake beard
like bootleg cotton candy,
looked me up and down
and the second person retort
went,
“You cheap mother fucker…”
And I stopped believing in Santa.

© Daniel Romo, 2010

[others]

rum sent to africa
africans made slaves
slaves brought to the west indies
to farm sugar cane
to make molasses
to sell to america
to make the rum
to send to africa
to trade for
africans

© Ricardo Nazario y Colón, 2010

the torch glance shading the air too long
a dark joyous hair yank to the concrete
bored road workers order the pastrami
she is all alone wrapped around his body
he is all alone inside the cave in her legs

her hard arcs into the long street fade tired
he slopes: the brush swipes ease all the pain
they play act a contrary parody of the sordid
insufferable buttfuck of a postmodern moment

with their lips nicking the eyelids of the space
separating them like deadbolts in sleeping cars

with their tongues sharing a seat on the subway
politely enough to ignore the odor of human punch

with their walkway of genitals linking an underground
portal of deodorant, sweat, and cigarette smoke close
enough to beauty for the crazy to wave so long to life

with a leap in front of the powerful locomotive of death
coming so noisy fast through their vanishing ears they
open their eyes at the same time the girl on her spine
does as the man’s insides splash warming her tunnel

with sterile possibilities of nothing so meaningful that
they have to be warehoused and serialized with each
effort to keep track showing how inconsequential the
greedily burgeoning numbers that hold our places in

this line of talking bodies watching them coil fuck on
the ground nearby, whispering the magazine’s words:

this article is titled what to do when wet dreams dry up
love is a riddle going sour on her thighs’ coffee shop cup
curve half submerged in that puddle holding her grey &
somehow greying skirts oh so lily pad still in the button
push VCR progression speed of time deflowering nobody

and everybody so that no one needs to open up and talk
well, they’re certainly holding their own after work lets
out support group right then & there are not they? i’ll

call out her name tag; say my nametag, hi my name is
the cover story here claims that by the next century or
so human thought will have that extra wanted nuance
to create perversions so complex that no one will fuck

it will feel really awkward if the lovers decide to enter
into our conversation before this late train finally stops

© KJ, 2010