by Clark Coolidge

This thought shall not remain much longer
no matter your laughter     memory water
we are colleagues we meet by the falls     it
starts with alcohol     ends in misty roses
the blunt end of the oxygen

Your information is no good still
you stay     all good things come to
the middle road provides no roses
a skull enclosed in cotton batting
Substance 10 futures await yo
one more moment and

They say you don’t want when you really do
ambition down so many roads
apparitions glowing in carlight
the provisions will run who knows how many
sank to the floor in Placitas lonely

by Clark Coolidge

Cauliflower crystals growing out the gas pipe
sky to give you no warning this weather
Broderick Crawford spoils the albumen task
by task rolls down bank opens belly band
meantime zone shoots altered suspenders
gnawed the windows to shrivel rockets
the note is in the blender dabbled double leader
they’re opening tonight the sponge as the doper is
improper mouse applications welted before you
watch a stand over the body of the one
shoot and sometimes popcorn does shove
shows up their bunk finale     ’member me ?
nice acceptance speech terms numbering in
the superficial just another tourmaline dream

by Carter Ratcliff

For me, it is the page.
Words break through it, but not these words.
Or not necessarily.

The break-through words may be unspoken.
Just as break-through emotions may be unfelt.

So says Diderot in The Paradox of the Actor,
without a word for the paradox of the prop master

or the prompter hidden away in a box itself hidden.
In plain sight, admittedly.

Or the prompter is a tree, alone and impossible to miss
in a glowing sea of grass.

There is light in the grass but no Enlightenment.

Our vegetable friends don’t need it,
nor do most animals.

As for the watery sea,
its ingrained eudemonia is self-evident.

Squid drift, dolphins bask, and as the curtain falls
on another day, the individual asks,

What did I get from this performance ?
How does it help me ?

These questions are the wrong questions, friend,
citizen, member of a diverse and uneasy population.

Ask, instead, what did I bring to the production ?
Did I flub my lines ?

Was I in the audience, even,
cheering as the fourth wall came tumbling down ?

If not, what is the point of my existence ?

by Carter Ratcliff

Those who learned to play checkers
as children played checkers throughout their lives
and they were the great majority.

Then majorities were redefined.
Even the sky was gerrymandered.

Everyone now plays chess.
Gambits proliferate
and we have nothing to love
but love itself.  Sleep

is hectic.  Investigations
of recent incidents have implicated,
so far, only stalwarts of the disloyal
opposition, shadows

as elusive as you
would suspect and
heavily armed.  Or so we
further suspect.

Evading ourselves, we say
this is coalition politics
as usual.

Friendly fire,
enemy smoke
and mirrors
of unknown provenance.