People was for history

By cris cheek.

The ghosts, barricaded, with murderers
Come planned, like . . . cider under arrest
That clever dick refused to play by any drift
Agreed rules. Poised in the bugged costumes
Of gestalt the answerphone powdered
Personal destiny. It was all they couldn’t do
To hang on to the cheapest street . . gesture
And flay their neighbors raw, after the pot

Luck repartee subsided. Nobody took the guns
Back home. Nobody said . . philosophy was
Chummy. Nobody illuminated the mud harbor.
Wit and generosity were formally abandoned,
Behind the bike shed stench of rotting wood
Into which new year woodpeckers . . drilled.

Sonnet 101

By Sophie Robinson.

why is everybody always writing
about fucking like me the more writing
to be done the less time to do the
necessary fucking for poetry

which is just as well when “at a bar” or
side by side alone & almost having
sex but in the end we change our minds ‘cos
work is early/harsh work makes you nervous

lines up the days & besides you don’t love
each other so much today as yesterday
& that dwindle’s dampened the itch to do
anything but write some stupid sonnet

frigid at the kitchen table no damp
itch to speak of no great love to leap off

From “Kazoo Dreamboats”

Or, On What There Is.
By J H Prynne.

[...] No dream
all hunger in the mouth get the fuck out of joy and beauty come on
be direct for a change truth to tell not even war but abject misery
the nothing to not have not eat, feel your mouth lost for words
and minimum fluid intake. Dry is not a sound dwindling beyond
utterance because in the very internal being of the nothing that
is not there, empty. What language is this unable to be spoken
tongue cracked I saw no need nor use for the dialect beyond all
that so is self-being implicit as a luxury good, fancy handbag
for what you’ll never put in it or snap its glitzy closure void
at heart and brain where mouth unoccupied not even known, even
or not, masticate on words of the species unquoted on the ex-
change so far below par. Keep very calm since excess along the
indigent/indignant border is the radiant bonus paid out against
Rule One. The calmness is a special kind of final joy even at
deep unkindness, because it is the truth of things and this
truth shall not make you free, to sit still or not it is for
sure necessitous but man-made and not by necessity this limpet
contradiction faces the void and is the truth of captivity, to
know this is the joy of ruin and needfulness feel these words
in the feral mouth of separation this too no lick no spittle,
freedom too costly even at the top end or especially there (Rule
Four) our bonds are our sure bondage already in manifest plain
view I saw this too. [...]

From “Reverses Heart’s Reassembly”

By Scott Thurston.

knowledge an encounter
safe in your hands
being equal to your shame
meeting the counter-flash
before over against
deferring the point
a world that is ordered
sent packing into objects
is to language order
not possible to live here now
yin and yang at play
in a lightning bolt
virtue in flames
thorns cutting into space
create movement
fortunate for change

exhausted aggressive
in time over done
to bleak revival
mould over sensitive
cueless floods over
the light plain
warmth in work
beckons bereavement