Issue 34: Catherine Bither

Lines of Flight

  &   I’m of more than two minds 

     you me liquid

     turned to fog and double-dog-dared to begin where life always

     ends up two daring dolls taste the best-ancient brain in the world

Hallucinate you me talking from a distance of a dinner table of another anonymous speaker hollow song hospitable then strays sidewards into a key that’s as-of-now impossible. no one’s  found it. no one’s yet fond of no face. fortunately, the smell remains Every day we the village escape the town escapes the pink  light twitching, dead. worked too hard, shards of sharp morning spill bad ideas. meanwhile, rotting fruit germinates the friendly contagious creatures who role-play anomaly while dried vomit speaks out about performance anxiety. they say the sky’s the limited to 3 lines but not our spells. there must be must be must be the weight of cauldron bubbles tempt a microscopic more until at least we’re shocked into escape into this world that we want. forced to swallow and the fifty we made fun of and the million pains in the neck that matter more since. naked beast in a healthy spread eagle of slick contradictions,  me. you, narcissist. there, hermit of ambivalence. burden. could be turned liquid by avoiding allergens.

psst at me in piano. distinguish one stray rhythm in a rattling sea of poems. find one pair among the overwhelming smacking of lips  roll me dour a cigarette (an example), where are our leaves?  I hallucinate lips as spiderwebs talking sticky in ears as we lap anonymous packs of pathetic green shoulders grass-smelling  curdle at the thought. putrid zombies sew flowers across abject bricks  demonic translations turn daisies despotic, a thought undone by thoughtful playtime.

sorcerer, together we speak a language of overflowing zs I dare you to spill over a million times from the border we blow it all sprint in spirals towards the furthest dimension

Angel, Upstate (Algae Bloom)

Drained egg left unreadable (cold)  Ten-fold told of tent caterpillars encounter their Becoming-swarm we must weave dew differently  whole webs & sew a million tiny eggshell cracks in belching air carry count-less futures’  feet     

    this Mirror : Turquoise, nearly  Gold         is god     is Bathwater    

warm Death in which we float. auburn Accidents alchemical bleeds   & breaks kinetic mayfly beds Malodorous brines infest teals of swimming carbon  tender  subtend trills of broken wings. A bloom of grounded angels red tide angels drop us vials of viral gifts of variegated folds turn our stomachs await Becoming:    to deepen rainbow’s gastric sludge    to nourish Lake’s green underbelly    burning silver brackish water  hide me painted slick and vital paint  my face with it  these colors spiral tired of tides of Cure me malignant of Missing of made to be more by more Malenjoyment of material the shade sheds a notion intensely divine

      We, border Beasts of bone borne indigested into pink storms bound

      for wings   roots, thorns

Dare to usher in your fire pure

Chimeric engine gunfire hit us  Sitting

  frees us Lake

  freeze us in Perpetual  pigment 

Inflect Salvation

Already Dead  What  their-our-out-of-bodies can do,  with nomadic respect,

   can’t trust doomed Repeatable                 abandon this Case

       abandon The Universe.

Chemtrails

                                    breath of everyday edits

                              not how spiders lay their eggs

in one glutinous sac   in-becoming

       divine , this is how you to think about it

       infants infold the unreal stored slow inside the mirror cabinet

                                                                          ,  again  adagio energeated  lucky cirrus insights

                                                                               another day‘s physics

hooray! and        bounce off the walls!

          encourage the sawdust , just go for it  legitimate action tries hard for something,

                                                                                                                                                           a bit of gossip

                                                         self-styling yesterday’s

                 ancestors ,ancient threads unfinished-

                                                                                         language sounds of awkward movement

don’t buy it, follow expired precedents,

 milk   can be  best                                                , regardless,

                                                                                                                                     imagine over-pouring,

                                                                                                             emulate       colorlessness

awake! staves and stamen                                                          evoke rude answer-wokefulness

     hanging notes and botany’s                                   

daughters, smells of                                                                                               

plant or animal behavior – perhaps a new spirit,  play us

    a cadenza for a broken glass, not a masterpiece

  nor  worth speaking of  of the lasting nuisance

                                                                                                            we see you: piece of dust self-lodged

                                                                                                     between the rifts, refuse to dislodge!

                                                                                                                   refuse  to stop!

then softair punished for creating   

  killing time

or killing it 

  something beautiful    takes a strong stomach

      to crush it into better, something microscopic

this longing to be something       stained,    surgeried anti-subject

  wondering how to be

  time‘s daring project 

          extending endings’ endnessless   craggy  wondering

              how to be entropy’s forever-portrait

Catherine Bither is a poet in Chicago. She currently writes in Brighton.

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