Issue #32.2 A Triple Issue: Brett Shaw, John Amen, Sebastian Hunter
A Poem by Brett Shaw
not hell
each daydream i wake from killing myself only to enter another classroom, absurdly i’m the most optimistic person here, should i forgive myself, less for lies than the hopes i’ll deposit, each sediment of decay embodying me american, as banking systems i’m teaching kids to be critical of the language, they are critical, but when i claim this work care they can’t buy desires unstrung from ease’s infinitive ever afters, anymore i can’t conduit the rage others seem to, though i’ve watched people kiss for decades and found it less than convincing, these slow desperations i assume we train ai models to simulate, a poet more famous than i’ll ever be once said my eyes reminded her of a cousin, she believed we shared blood, and didn’t feeling this, myself seen kin, keep me alive, continuing a need for each voice overheard, other people are the only way i survive—
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Brett Shaw is a poet living in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Recent poetry appears or is forthcoming in The Georgia Review, Antiphony Journal, Afternoon Visitor, and elsewhere.
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A Poem by John Amen
For Bill Knott, after
He splashed in troughs of light, that boy who never stomped a puddle in a yellow raincoat or muddied a pair of shiny galoshes. His first girlfriend perched on a stump, the sonata prodigy who tried to verse him on major chords. Took you a while, she purred. A Jurassic hand lifted the mossy roof. A foot booted one beam, another beam, rubble strewn in a field, the orphanage gone. Violets, ivy, daffodils, a green piano blushing red. Bad Marky, Little Lucius, Jangle John who couldn’t sit still, so many kids buried in the rocks. They emerged one after another, kicking their feet in the dry dirt, laughing as they got closer. He dashed his eyes against the horizon, all those comic books & dumb diagnoses & the beautiful dawn fluttering his way.
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John Amen was the recipient of the 2021 Jack Grapes Poetry Prize and the 2024 Susan Laughter Myers Fellowship. His poems and prose have appeared recently in Rattle, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Daily, American Literary Review, and Tupelo Quarterly. His latest collection, Dark Souvenirs, was released by New York Quarterly Books in 2024.
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Three Poems by Sebastian Hunter
from Carrie Nation, Carrie Nation
Casual cocktail garb
You can actually just serve yourself from the spigot
Peering like an auspice through the smog
This and a megaton of tits
Popped collar when the ringtone hits
All dudded up Vienna on a midweek date night
The hell of passivity
The one topless joint in an area the size of a zone
My mind dangles where my legs won’t go
The domes open
And flocks of blushing Carrie Nations fly out
Hogs in the holding pen
somehow turned to vapor
of people from Delaware they had to shoo off the rafters
Stuck with gravity for the rest of my wilting days
when El Gaucho and Carrie Nation retire to their suite
If I'm distracted it's only because
California finally passed a proclamation
which is how I became a soft drinks lover
What isn't a fetish of my Capital District? Again
smoking menthols with the shrimpers in a ruin of living things
Infinity scarves the body, the great weakness of gold
generally
a presence craves coupling, wants to watch
Gee, nice scare quote central heating
90-proof absolution
The ornate, workmanlike shape of Carrie Nation
as she rounds the half-lit lived-in garden
with fog or what isn't a fetish
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Sebastian Hunter is a poet and drummer from Seattle. Poems recent and forthcoming in Midcult, Capgras, Heavy Feather Review, and Cult.
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