Austori

Dodging your persuasion I sidestep headlights Head down Heading down your talley-marked rows No* No* N- No time for wasting youth I'm a fountain spilled sideways Anyways Rulers rule nothing But cross-eyed equations Of your arrogant machine: Ouroboros, killing itself again and again. I've become Something of my own bandaid Wrapped around my middle finger Cast in your direction. What a fucking joke of a compass A campus I Am so much less lost without you.

The dead skin Peeling like clementines My snakeskin Darting eyes and swift tongue A flicker of anger Left to simmer Like an iron bolt in my stomach Sinking In Syllables are like grating Midnight vocalations garish pink And waiting to be ruined This violence Slugged tired round and round Musing the cracked glass That twittering birds are breaking In Like roaches spilling ink black bile And rising Up the telephone wires And walls too bare Too thin You pop this bubble perverse and irrelevant In your hallmarked love Lost in rinds cast on the floor All I wait for now Is your silence quelled in citrus glow

It is (just) enough Coffee still stale on your breath You move with a rhythm unaccustomed to: Midnight fires and burning words. Burning pages. And the traceable outlines of watching eyes Illused butterfly tigers Seeking blood from tightroping children Mouths opening like rubbery fish All gray. You are a sickness Unrealized You fill the room with your surface-skimming stink Screeching forks Like creature nails Across cold porcelain sinks: Down the drain To strawberry lane. I just wanted it to be sweeter But this mid-morning ache Is (just) enough To sink my ship In that harbor between shrill embers And clinking glassier.

Her father told her she was greedy. But, how could she help herself? Her mind like a magpie's, she plucked the gold that her father could never find from the great river and hid it away in her nest: nuggets upon lockets upon dental implants long lost. Rummaging past those treasures shaped like teeth, Hazel threaded a chain through her hair and felt herself to be a queen. She dragged the fishing boat along the shore to an ensemble of croaks and crickets. The splash of water! With a song, she thrust the boat out in front of her before leaping into its depths and she laughed and laughed as the wood rocked around her. Because she was the storm of course. The river carried her cocoon of girlhood past the whorls like eyes. Orbs of light. Tigereye moths fluttered from the silent trees. With a luxurious sigh, she unfurled her arms to the sky and upon her raised hand alighted- a magpie. Grinning, Hazel tweaked the bird on its little beak. "Hello, my spirit animal. Ah-!" The creature flung

He was like an aquarium drenched from the inside. Out. Pressing his blue-numbed hand on the glass, David observed all the muted kelp colors as the city lights drizzled down. If one lives in a place long enough, doesn't that person take on the same character of the town around him? Pausing, David withdrew him hand. From that idea. Because he was certain he was a self-contained universe. Forever. He took more glance at his ringed finger before he walked out of the department store and into the steady hum of oil-slick smog and watery lights- pulsing in that insistent drizzle. What was he looking for? A magic crystal revelation? Aquarius. He had intended to walk down to the river, but the streets themselves were now rivers as well and the ring dropped into the sluggish rush and was gone. The usual crowds pushed and pulled at him with their own tides and David staggered for a moment. Untethered and left to drift. Feeling a rush of seasickness, he ran towards the synagogue with its

What is conflict but poetry in reverse? Perverse paintbrushes clutched in teeth too sore for talking: Circles and eclipses. Slow. I ease down the slope Or is it a hole? I'm entirely flavorless. Burbling about jackdaws and bluebirds feather flitting responses like neurons strung up on the highwire. I'm a live wire. Perhaps that's why I sit like static and angry ocean tides: All silt water salt-stung and steel-sung.

Accessible only by backroads, the ranch preserved itself against encroaching civilization. Cows that would never become hamburgers spread purple tongues across teeth a little too long. Too sharp. Their horns burnished copper against the sky. They were brooding towers of the almost divine bovine. India and indians. One of their skulls hung in bleached worship upon the barn wall with the woolen prizes of strings and golden trinkets of crows and owls. From beyond the blood red roof watched the bleached birches with vultures lavishing inverted upon their branches. It was a sunbleached land in a sunbleached time. Except the man who emerged from the hay like a perverse Poseidon had skin darker than a bovine's pupil. He stood: a figure cut out like a shadow. His presence: an absence. The cows bellowed their whale songs at the flutter of his fur cape. Cacti shuddered and lost their quills to his touch. Bearing themselves open for him, the man read the ancient rivers, long dried, in their

It all started with an explosion in the kitchen. "The cauldron! The cauldron is boiling over!" "Not my problem! I'm too busy ravishing my bubbies!" Kathrine paused, fiddled with her one loose tooth before screaming out again: "I meant the kiln! Your bubbies are boiling over!" Herbs swung wildly from the masts of the cottage as the door upstairs shut and a solid lump of woman thundered down the stairs. She was all bison-breath and clay-dusted trousers as Ruth stomped over to the kiln and groaned. All her little clay creations groaned back at her in turn: through half-formed mouths and gaping holes where their stomachs were supposed to be. "Gutted." She muttered between curses and pulling on her long gray braid. "Absolutely gutted." Katherine perched her little body atop the towering pile of unwashed laundry to watch the drama unfold. Between little flicks of her pink tongue upon her loose tooth, she offered: "Water?" "Water's not going to save my bubbies now." Ruth replied with a sigh.

Dusty, dusky summons: I sat in that puddle of yellow streetlamp and dared myself to recreate it. That dangerous feeling. The rock doves circled like phantom fish above the fishbowl of a town. Licking my fingers, I stood and moved back into darkness to toss the greasy fish and chips. The last time I had experienced it, it had been during the witching hour. One, two- three strikes the lonely town clock. I went over to the briny dock and stared out into the vast swath of abyss. Where rock doves supposed to be nocturnal? Perhaps not, but neither were humans and that didn't stop me from being out at three o'clock in the morning. Pulling my coat tighter against the jab of sunless breezes, I waited for the starlit steam- the sudden swell of galaxies rising from the shifting surface. And I continued waiting. The witching hour was more delirious than magical. A horn honked on some hidden road and gasoline mixed with the fatty stench of pizza- it was all so horribly normal that I wanted to