Pinprick, deer tick, Blueberry Lake

Reading I Is To Vorticism is like opening the door and finding a dozen seal pups limned in foxfire. "I'm Ben Mirov," they belch, before melting into snakes, then scarves, then little phosphorescent puddles. The puddles hiccup into crows, burst into night. A girl appears with horsemint, currants, and a garibaldi in a mason jar. "Drink," she says. You do. Night crumbles down to crows, and the crows collapse into puddles. In your right hand is an eyeball. In your left hand is a snowstorm. The eyeball is staring at you. "I'm Ben Mirov," it barks.

Hark! All Ye Young Malingerers!

D'ya know about slingshot litareview? Cast your hooded gaze East, my dears, into the briny daggers of the awful sun! For barracudas will bury thy spleen beneath the gourd, and slurp thy carp for supper.

burpy, blurby, and lazy, I am

Are You There God? It's Me, Whitney Houston, by Brad Liening

"Armed with a telephone and a purse full of Kierkegaard, Whitney Houston lurks Brad Liening like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man blasted on amobarbital. W/ Bobby Brown as King Lear." --Austin Pye

Mason jar for water bear

Unemployment has its benefits, namely, opportunities to enter contests such as this.

Meatloaf, mayonnaise, and onions, of course, though memory coddles the first:

Orange roughy. My parents crammed that shit into my mouth as if they had some kind of bet between the two of them.

But it paid off, because in exchange for a lifelong revulsion toward fish, I receive a copy of Molly Gaudry's We Take Me Apart.

Many thanks to Brad Green, htmlgiant, and the kind folks at Mud Luscious Press. Find them here, here, and here.

Brian Evenson will melt your face

And so will Fortunato Salazar.

Thanks, Mike

Going Wrong

By Jack Gilbert

The fish are dreadful. They are brought up

the mountain in the dawn most days, beautiful

and alien and cold from night under the sea,

the grand rooms fading from their flat eyes.

Soft machinery of the dark, the man thinks,

washing them. "What can you know of my machinery!"

demands the Lord. Sure, the man says quietly

and cuts into them, laying back the dozen struts,

getting to the muck of something terrible.

The Lord insists: "You are the one who chooses

to live this way. I build cities where things

are human. I make Tuscany and you go to live

with rocks and silence." The man washes away

the blood and arranges the fish on a big plate.

Starts the onions in the hot olive oil and puts

in peppers. "You have lived all year without women."

He takes out everything and puts in the fish.

"No one knows where you are. People forget you.

You are vain and stubborn." The man slices

tomatoes and lemons. Takes out the fish

and scrambles eggs. I am not stubborn, he thinks,

laying all of it on the table in the courtyard

full of early sun, shadows of swallows flying

on the food. Not stubborn, just greedy.

Lanterns, lungs, etc.

"Nick Demske is a Quetzalcoatl Berryman." --Austin Pye