Addiction as Ecotone - Part 17 - Kathleen Flenniken

THE MAN WHO PLAYED TOO MUCH TETRIS - Kathleen Flenniken
______________________________________

It wasn’t just the way he ate his toast
..................................................................changed lanes

or squeezed between
two women
on the elevator

He looked too often toward the sky
........................................................and talked too much

with his hands

At meetings
.......................the space between executive heads

...............................................................................asked to be filled

with the world

caving in

At lunch
.......................birds swooped down
...........................................................on his crumbs

the way he’d trained them

He was a doomsday prophet

He was up to his eyeballs

.......................................flooded

...................................................with everything fallen

....................................................................................or falling

and try as he might
he couldn’t
find space
for it
all

It made him sad

when the women stepped away

___________
Kathleen Flenniken's poems have appeared in Poetry, The Iowa Review, The Southern Review, Mid-American Review, Farm Pulp, Prairie Schooner, and Poetry Daily. She is the recipient of a 2005 Literary Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a 2003 Literary Fellowship from Artist Trust, along with grants from Artist Trust and Seattle Office of Arts and Culture. Her first collection of poems, Famous, winner of the 2005 Prairie Schooner Prize, was released by University of Nebraska Press in 2006, and has been named a Notable Book of the Year by the American Library Association (ALA)

Addiction as Ecotone - Part 16 - Sam Rasnake

Self-portrait - Sam Rasnake
______________

And if this morning is a dream,
how deep the water? how dark the closet?
I've invested the grackles of winter
to a field, sloped, untended,
with its brown almost angry stubble,
a fierce resistance to the new.
My only certainty is this window,
and not the life pitched against the glass.


_________

Sam's poetry has appeared in journals such as MiPOesias, Pebble Lake Review, and Boxcar Poetry Review. He is the author of one chapbook, Religions of the Blood (Pudding House), and one collection, Necessary Motions (Sow's Ear Press). He edits Blue Fifth Review, an online poetry journal.

Addiction as Ecotone - Part 15 - Dave Bonta

Lines - Dave Bonta
______

Just as I'm about to take a freight train up my nose,
I stop with my head halfway to the rails:
a small spider is descending past my face.
I'm struck by the precise choreography of it,
her two pairs of forelegs moving in circles
like the arms of a swimmer, the next pair
sticking straight out like oars at the ready
& the hindmost pair paying out the line.
Not here, I say, giving it a nudge
to keep her off the tray's smooth lake.
She reels herself in, heading for my finger.
I push the thread a little farther & she severs
her connection. Sorry, sister, I mutter
as she drops to the floor — a chaos of newspapers —
touching down without incident among the headlines.

______

Dave blogs at Via Negativa and helps curate the online literary magazine qarrtsiluni,
which is currently seeking submissions for an Ecotone-compatable theme
"Nature in the Cracks."

Addiction as Ecotone - Part 14 - Stephanie Goehring

I'm probably lying - Stephanie Goehring
____________________

but I first overdosed to understand

your addiction to injury, your obsession with chainsaws.

After the butterfly flew backward (the thrum of its wings so white)

and the bees confessed their immortality, I forgot you,

remembering how god created the world from nothing

but a scythe and the way his declaration of light

fell on a field of beans.

I overdosed again and found forgiveness was a man

walking through the lack of rain, wet to his bones.

He was wearing your clothes and said, "History is like cedar:

Get some nails for your palms or burn it for warmth,"

so I let the kerosene lick my throat.

I awoke coughing blood, pulling splinters

from between my teeth. After the wood turned to dirt,

the dirt turned to beans and the bees turned up dead

on the butterfly's wings, I remembered god

and how she created the world with no memory

of who had ever wronged her.