R. Gordon Wasson, American Author

We need more eyes. I am legitimate, me
this street’s smoker. I didn’t make a thing
save invisible hoofprints, transformed air.
No one heard my messages behind the dire
times pizzeria. In order to become the mayor,
I first became spry enough to scale these
cakes with their barbed wire toppings, their
smashed bottle sprinkles. Only hacienda
yoga courses ensured my limber dips into
dark walled gardens where the night was still
again. I thought. I arranged cigarette butts, left
contemplative notes stuffed with considered
quotes I knew by my heart, texts like pockets
of earth chunky with shards of monumental
pasts. When the jacaranda lowered, I squatted
among buzz, and so I dreamt of bees. (Once
I wrote simply: Cow Eat Flower). Therefore the
dogs were bears to me, as lizards in daylight
read whatever they please. By the time that I
got to the mushroom conference above the
coldly guarded Franciscan library, I’d kept
company with such sunny lies that when the
healer explained the requirement of being
struck by lightning in order to know the rain,
I wrote to the government instantly, the tips
of my fingers noiseless, before placing an order
for my favorite lotion, the one they call sea salt.

BITING HANNAH WEINER 

the only green living part of me is that I want to read a biography and I don’t have it and it’s no buying day green isn’t a feeling LOOK FOR GREEN NARRATION my back is the internet archive my back hurts i didn’t donate to the internet archive your files a pinche desmadre OR JUST SEE IT THE FIELD that’s not your idea that’s somebody else’s old experiment times WATER DO SOMETHING stop thinking about your skin Fine it’s true I was thinking about my skin, how when I try and sense transmissions my face feels dry unlike child psychology you’re fucking up the code LISTEN fields in boxes religions in boxes it’s like this era is the most boring experiment I guess or read antiquity LIFE HAS NO RULES GO BACK TO THE TERRENO possibly face skin transmissions GREEN ONES AND ZEROS aunque if aún DO NOT ASK FOR TRANSMISSIONS these green unethics DELETE DELETE IF YOU ARE READING THIS KNOW IT WAS A DESPERATE REPRODUCTION LIKE STUPID MARVEL REMAKES OF HANNAH WEINER’S THE CLAIRVOYANT JOURNAL PUBLISHED BY ANGEL HAIR PRESS IN 1978

From the Joyce Hammond Papers

You Won’t Know

if you’re talking to a person or a bot
if he loves you like a biography or a reel
if they’re the voices of the dead or you imagining the voices of the dead
you won’t know if it’s something you read or an idea
if the birds sound different
if you made the appointment and when 
word arrives of the analyst’s archive
of course you won’t have known
that your grandfather told
his dreams to her if
the whole universal subconscious was
mantasy bleat or a true stank tide
slurped dry by the vagus nerve

Jeopardy Sounds

 It isn’t too late to walk one snowy mile
to the hospital where in the former century
you entered the slur. The parking lot lights
all soothing and flaky: woman under mute
flurries inside the forms’ zip code.
You don’t need linked footage
on your phone in a bed to connect to the first
white planes that framed you. You don’t have
to track down a former nurse or janitor to know
linoleum colors. You have a night to go into.
You have Jeopardy sounds to walk out of.

The Files
after Isaac Jarnot

 That the men were managers, that they were managed, that they dreamed, that my grandfather dreamed of frog employees, that he was not exceptional for dreaming of his personal factory staffed by frogs, that the exhilarated analyst recorded the dreams of the men, that she thought of the dreams chewing steak, that the men and the analysts believed the dreams had meaning, that the analysts’ files are arriving to the families of the dead men, that the analyst studied the dreams of frogs and read frog mythology and symbols and contemplated their calls in summer nights but did not pursue inquiries into frog communication and its relation to human vowels, that frogs do not appear on the current survey for Typical Dreams, that “snakes,” “insects or spiders,” “wild, violent beasts,” “being an animal,” and “discovering a new room at home” are listed as Typical Dreams, that current dream research focuses on sleep quality to the detriment of the development of the unconscious which some argue can atrophy, that this current neglect represents an opportunity, that my grandfather’s dreams were heard by a woman analyst, written in a notebook and subsequently typed up and organized, that the managed men dreamt of wet frogs in swept factories, that the men smoked and wore suits reporting the dreams, and went out on the street smoking, that the whole gold world was covered in smoke as the men went to work dreaming drank, that office zones where managers upon carpeting dictated dreams did pluck a creamy geography.

Pond Time

When server sounds

char pond time,

as crisp windows

sweeten heaters,

a crossroads, small

and muddy, generates.

The staircase tastes

like aloe juice.

Gloss hour, deepened

brown, cattail broth,

burnt hum darkening,

hammer amphibian

syllables.

My Dad Nero

Before you relinquish the dark breathing dream
(of course by dark you mean jewel colors, after-
noon light, you mean the 3AM oranges and table
quiets, you mean talking with me, questions and
homework, you mean reading to me, reading to
me) of the focus on one growing, you shirk that
river called seven words for throat.

Grace Smith is a poet and teacher from Baltimore, currently living in Cholula. Her poetry has been published in R&R, Muzzle Magazine, Posit, and Belt Magazine. With poet and musician Maribel Roldán, she is coordinating an online workshop for Spanish language learners who would like to read contemporary literature by living Mexican authors, especially by women and gender dissidents. Please contact bodyspritzlaclasse@gmail.com if you’d like to join! She is also working on Runnin Mix, an anarchic poetry audio project. Free Palestine.