A Poem 

That time I leaned in too close and almost burnt down the castle. Almost burnt my body up while your body was downstairs next to another fire, burning. Almost burnt your birthday cake and its birthday candle wax. We made such a mess of ourselves. Building fires. Putting them back out. It was February and the cows lowed in the mud. We were sinking and it wasn't easy. Not like anything was easy. Only easy like anything to light a fire on fire. Easy to turn around and stomp it cold. I keep lighting little fires hoping you'll find me in the light. Some nights are harder than others. Some, afternoons. Some, mornings. 

—Brandi Katherine Herrera

Brandi Katherine Herrera's Album

A Poem // Brandi Katherine Herrera

My other poem

My other poem is a dune cougar
My other poem is a manhole cover 
My other poem is a Curious George book
My other poem is an espresso zombie flick
My other poem is an Alaskan license plate 
My other poem is an alligator eating a crocodile 
My other poem is a trucker with a dvd player 
My other poem is a toenail in quicksand 
My other poem is cardboard tumbleweed
My other poem is 14.2 miles wide 
My other poem is a sneaker wave 
My other poem is a fork lifter 
My other poem is a lot hairier 

—Shane van Hayden

My other poem // Shane van Hayden

ONLY 

a life has a perimeter 
beyond which it 
rarely extends 
ownership in a state 
secured by guns is 
secured by guns 
what did I think 
I was doing I boarded the ferry 
at Anacortes only 
to disembark on 
the island where 
they killed the 
golden spruce 

—Jesse Lichtenstein

Only // Jesse Lichtenstein

BOW ARROW EGG

Learning a thing’s shape
while it was still in that shape
is what we were doing. 
We picked lemons, picked 
a hairbrush cactus, let
Bellefonte sing us out of Deepwell,
right through our fantasy of water
and highways, of lives going out the out. 
What if telling makes it bloom in aerial darkness.
What if it arrests each state in a different era. 
Suns purr to pools pools suck at air.
Let me tell you what we were doing,
because even then I just sat there, not drinking my coffee
fractal, watching the pool toys drift and eddy
in constant return to each other. 

—Veronica Martin

BOW ARROW EGG // Veronica Martin

When at 4:30 in the Morning Jupiter Showed Me the Crown

I’m at startling. I’m at what happened here. 
I’m at this was the world I was to keep myself from, 
when I was the one from which it needed to be kept. 
I’m at thanks but no thanks was all I ever said. 
I am here’s a taste of forget and live a second 
I laughed and spat out instead. I’m at contiguity, 
watch me and learn. I am my father’s fear 
and my mother’s mother’s—I’m here’s my tongue 
but not my body, my hiked up skirt but not my want. 
I was never the woods and its tender beds of blowdown, 
I am that I was no vault to roll away. I am that I was 
born for what again. I am I’m not the alter, 
nor the butchers, I’m I’m the hurdler. 
I’m jump the crosses that have always lined the ditches, I’m wait, 
it’s my steeplechase so I’ll be the one who I am who lives.

—Liz Mehl

When at 4:30 in the Morning Jupiter Showed Me the Crown // Liz Mehl

DIMINISHING RETURNS 

Rage fileted me until I was a filet An elevator winging open on the 30th floor of a building 
A new baby blue to be up to the hilt in This many years later the diminishing returns of our petty indiscretions 
diminish us no longer Our quarrel quiet as a quarter between the couch 
cushions, the jammed tape 
deck of your teenage station wagon 

—Hajara Quinn

DIMINISHING RETURNS // Hajara Quinn

A Mountain’s Job is to Jut / A Buoy’s, to Bob

It’s true, I did get fired
from the globe factory. 
I put a beach in N.D.
and us on it but then 
I put us in the waves
in a bed on the waviness. 
It’s best to just put things 
where you think you 
want them. When I think 
of mountains I think 
of beer, and how clean 
everything can be. 
When I think of buoys 
I think of the darkness. 
But also I think of seals. 
An island is the wrong 
symbol for loneliness. 
I never wanted two cats. 
Now I have nothing
in cats. 

—Zachary Schomburg

A Mountain’s Job is to Jut / A Buoy’s, to Bob // Zachary Schomburg

Animism/Holidays 

I want to be a fly on the wall I want to be the ghost in the machine I want the Halo God of Dark Things to slide the velvet down 
I want to put souls into objects I want the testimonial of houses still standing under oaks I want a sunrise and a sunset in the same day I want coffee twice, and breakfast made at home I want to keep the weeds at bay with hotels in other places 
I want a little sugar for my hysteria I want to carry your misery in my teeth I want to be my shadow, and bend around corners I want grasshopper legs, I want a feathery instinct I want a paper valentine, I want infinite chances I want the reliability of chemicals I want the sigils to burn and work 

—Coleman Stevenson

Animism/Holidays // Coleman Stevenson

Love Bird: A joint sound + poetics collaboration between Brandi Katherine Herrera & Andrew Foster Glei

Love Bird // Brandi Katherine Herrera + Andrew Foster Glei

A poetics + sound installation housed inside a 1940s antique phone booth at Noun: a person's place for things (Portland, Ore.). Each April, nine local artists are commissioned to write and record an original piece for the project, which culminates in a live reading in celebration of National Poetry Month.

http://www.shopnoun.com/phonebooth/

Telefon Poems