Gasmask Turntable

A carousel of squirming freemasons
justifying indignation at three in the afternoon
gasmask turntable trembling to the touch
flames engulfing maddening spears
like I meant to tell before stubbing my
abracadabra on an arachnid yellow foam hand
                        asleep in a haystack
                        phantom of the operator
                        telephone booth memory
            & I realize
            I’m not guessing
            like I know I’m
            not an ankle
            bracelet like
            I know I’m
            only here for
            the antifreeze
            that flows
            through town
            like a life
            giving river
                                    if the life being given were
                                    nothing more than riveting
                                    tooth & nail jumbo jets
                                    forgetting birthdays and
                                    lining up outside Tennessee
                                    Williams shoe stores covered
                                    in cockroaches listening to
                                    flight attendants call pianists
                                    the mother of all stop drop
                                    and rolling firewood set ablaze
                                    never ceasing
like I am willing to blossom
only when I see everything from behind
as though a distance
from which no gaseous material
can form to overtake my dismemberment

automatic message

an Immaculate Corpse
is not a feather
        hourglass a furnace
        unlike a fishmonger
once having stepped over canyon pepper shaker
                              scissors a personal manifesto
                              howling a midnight papyrus

there’s a hotdog without a burn
& khaki had a jumpsuit champion
in enough sulphuric crashing  
                                          too big for a wave          
                                          too hairy for a home

                  weightless

Carving Monuments Out of Soap Bubbles

England froze in stepladder promenading ducks. As a sore throat turned on its owner, a rising stool pondered grape leaves until a heart shook all the teeth loose. Into piano keys lips sunk the racoon spleen that blessed the seashell indications & crevices flowing chunky tho variable. Spring yarned rotten breath. While an Adam’s apple split. Then, in a sordid flash of beach bum desire, Velma held frost to her temple in an attempted coup. Marty was sorry to have ever dropped a question into a pile of guts tho Velma hadn’t taken it personally. Peace b/t the Hatfields & the McCoys stuttered coughing fits. Chugging along morosely. Marty could not spell words backwards or forwards. Until sunrise, Velma would wander the ocean floor looking for friendship bracelets & a better or at least less obvious song to sing. In the shade of a skyscraper, there appeared hobos dusty & covered in cobweb wings. Velma took a pill. Marty ate an otter. Together, they separated while eating shelled pistachios & shaking their fists at passing car frenzies. Not unlike a Hitchcock film, they felt not only wrongly accused but hunted. Now, that’s what they call date night!

Joshua Martin is a Philadelphia based writer and filmmaker, who currently works in a library. He is the author of the book Vagabond: fragments of a hole (Schism Neuronics). He has had pieces previously published in E-ratio, Nauseated Drive, Fixator Press, The Vital Sparks, and Breakwater Review, among others.