Ollie Renee Schminkey & Kat Fleckenstein - “Small Towns” (CUPSI 2014) "This town raised me to only cheer for the team we knew would win anyway. To only accept those who already fit in." Our first poem from the 2014 College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational, a group piece from Macalester College! Macalester took 5th place in the tournament overall.

10,000 Strangers and the Moon

Brian Beatty

Baptism River flows nowhere near into or out of Amen Lake.

That much I can tell you for a fact. Spread the word.

There are also, I’ve heard, five Lost Rivers to be found around here somewhere.

Which never happens twice.

Thief River Falls. Cut Face Creek. Egg River. Big Dick Lake.

At the top of the Mississippi and its legend,

true, smaller stories about water are quietly sacrificed.

Because there will always be more. Just wait a night.

Jack the Horse Lake. Crippled Deer Lake. Dirty Nose Lake. Starvation Lake.

So many stories, so perfectly still to the touch, so as not to interrupt our dreams.

Knife River. Onion River. Potato River. Whiteface River. Devil Track River. Temperance River. Wild Rice River. First River.

Too few rivers are still known by their native names,

but Minnesotans boast two Rabbit Rivers, not to mention up north of the Twin Cities and outermost ripple of suburbs

Rabbit Creek, a ghost town I imagine dry as dust except for wells buried beneath bright copper pennies.

Because we’ve always lived to wish for beginnings, middles

and ends to forget in the dark.

the sky/ never simple/ by added sums

»sehtest-text« by timm ulrichs (1972) (+)

augen ~ eyes genau ~ clearly, exactly

A Slalom is a Virility: Crewed and Predominate

and there are old parks that half-understand the grief of evening leaven. Seven passengers tasting blue halibut to the left, a collie fighting without reparations. Taken by schools to the meadows of Miley Cyrus, the kites’ feet are nihilistic with callow biases as two slender Olympians hand you economic debt.

Wake to the sounds of morass philosophies faking it, steeply inclined toward Vicodin. Snorting tonsillitis victims hold intercourse along the kind banks of Mordor slipping past worm holes and dyke bonnets.

Nothingness is a distended muscle, palpitating in light forever, nocturnal with diamonds and alluring cleats. A fortnight of more kittens, calves, and tootsies are knee-jerking in the fine shadows of totem-poles draped in mystique.

art by Sammy Slabbinck

»prepare to shop« by richard tipping (+)

»je t’aime« by frank lalou

Kicking the Apple

Do you believe there is a secret meaning to this title?

I have news for you: capes are long and black.

Ballerinas dumbfoundedly penetrate the case of five-iron beer.

All of us need to redouble our Lenten efforts.

All of us need to understand the solipsism of the knife.

art by Silvio Severino Collage

A haiku from the article: Yes, Please | The Razor’s Edge

nonbeing / Kermit Mulkins

Robert Lowell (via theparisreview)

Latest video release from last year’s Poets Forum — Lee Ann Brown on the poetic inspirations behind her book, In the Laurels, Caught (Fence Books, 2013).

wordrummager

Camping in windy flower pots dusty whirlpools stun with grace a red hood of rabbit sass whence floating pots of honey ebb lifting cobra heads out of the picnic basket Tease me with Tarzan and blowers a bunch of lonely euphemisms overreaching as lured by wet puddles   holding as carried by ill winds  just a little fuzz will suffice   tighten the brace as the elbow flows Erudite lube and plenty   It’s 5am do you playground? for brining twine and sucking kite string downward facing relief on a hydrant it’s always questions and chemicals 

(A Windy Fuzz, written by conversinginmetaphors; 

blustery eddy, [in italics] written by wordrummager,)

From "A Slalom is a Virility: Crewed and Predominate"

by shirin neshat (+)

Peanut Butter Flying Everywhere

March 20, 2014

"Peanut butter flying everywhere" is a note I put on the door when I do not have a chain of causality to convince you that making out saves the world.

I really hope to see you at the fair! We’ll peruse the wonderful tops of trees and crank the sky with our hands.

We’ll adore telepathic pinwheels in late March gusts.

We’ll read my terrorist detection manual.

We’ll talk about the prions and urasters I had sworn to keep forever in my postmodern elbow.

Some arms cannot be part of any army.

art by Eugenia Loli