UNPLANNED ACCOUNT

Everybody has a story. The mountain threw rocks at me. I stood up to it. At the top I built a shelf for my record. There was enough sky for another life, an abutment of air. Science itself authorizes blue, whoever comes along may have some. Up here one can appreciate the eye as an exposed part of the brain. That’s Helga, the chick who shares my pad. She’s not really orange, it’s the picture. We’re moving the aerial into the hall. I’m an emotional guy who lacks a cohesive point of view, and Helga has an eating disorder. She’s a monist. I can dig it. I mean, why did the universe go to all that bother? Bears drunk on honey wrestling with monkeys, electric burgundy odd-toed ungulates, and the two-headed snake—one head for eating and drinking, the other just for thinking.

POETRY INFORMATION

Rain with a sour smell. Not to worry, though you might wind up with it— primarily a race against your own skin. The skull is showing. The jerking horses in the old footage, bound to end badly. Psychic hardening, I suppose. Poetry is arranged by sound. I can say no more. A beloved relative from out of town was arriving the next day with a brand new infant who would be tense, disoriented and distraught at discovering herself uprooted from her familiar bassinet and plunged into a great metropolis seething with cutthroats and cheap chiselers. People ought to get out more, play cards more, fight more, fall down more. But we don’t need each other to watch a film, streaming overhead. At your behest, I stood behind the statue, peeking over its shoulder at live persons, catching something of their tenderness. They’ve been marinating, the young and the tough. Meanwhile you should all have live blood cell analysis.

BUS EXPLOSION

Another bespoke poem, written while I wrote! Freddy the Newsboy sees trees and water for the first time thanks to the Fresh Air Fund. What if that were you—a prince with large pie hat? My petunia fairies took me out in an automatic boat. We sailed to the sun, where else could we go? Not back to grandmother with Jim Beam and a whip! Other children were seen under the ice, tallywhacking jellyfish with a rusted bracket, the pouring of time and trouble to junior levels. But I have questions three. What is your favorite cholera? Prince Pointy wuz his name, resided in a cottage wedge. June fairies are free. They lay their eggs under his skin. (That can’t be right.) But stay, they’ll give you the carbon off their backs. And their heads would have to smoke. All corn fairies wear overalls. One is called Spink, a little girl. She took command of the Lady Schick, not caught up in hope and fear. We sailed to Tortola, where else could we go? Flat nudes were mitered like planks. Stabbed in the chest by my own pencil! After death they move with ease. The wind never lets the rain touch the ground. But now we’re traveling in opposite directions, trumpet battles of gold-gold collisions, and thick glorious fields of jewels.

FRANZ K.

The moon belongs to everyone, a scared mirror. Mahoning spoke of free things, invoked a state of nunc stans, or eternal present. He was right, but be alive in all periods, all bodies, living and dead, etc. Allow three to five business days. You are aware of what’s lost yet measure no loss. For example, rabbit disappears in briar patch, a slow business. A new story might spoil the old ones. Black is the color, more luminous than my true love’s hair. The best things in life are black. Or buried reds. Inside the bulldog’s mind, it’s a different it. Old and free, understand? Buffoon did it illogically (horizontal) to himself. Once on board, down on your bended knee. He had a long association with Wingy Manone, who could paint. Beginning and end of fishlike emoting.

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LARRY FAGIN, a New York City native, is the author or co-author of fifteen collections of poems. He co-edits Adventures in Poetry books and teaches at the New School.

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