she says i can cook vegan she says savory nutritional yeast flakes harvested for good health our face is probably the only thing of that scale crushed red pepper flakes our face obsessed in its desire for duplicate i didn't choose this sacred hardware our battle ax-thin XXX bride prime butch dress cascading salvo cachaça bottle thick hairy professor in the window sill go fast, she says the advertisements to the confident are coming to advertisers shake you awake
to all decurved contract
workers
both boy
and girl
please note
we offer a paltry 401(k)
cancer herpes
kind-hearted flechette
america
the corporation
complain
the complaint
liable to get nations
flayed guilty imagination
unspoiling
brood parasite
munitions
nesting
in an oval
in a pit
lazy dog
iron heart
suddenly
unleashed
starving
detonating
undetonating
detonating ad
nauseam decorated
celebrated soft
fleshy middle
managers
break’s over!
tumbling
from a cloud
or humanity
sun chops through bowling
the six forty
essential as a fax machine
here’s some good advice
demand luxembourg in the alley
who knows his motivation?
you simply hold all available
hands outward, palms up;
six whistles
doddering thru
tropical depression
her brunette history
stole
of friendship
as a friend places his twisted
erased
bottle durango — no one owning anything
of a sugar shell
one by one
after thermite nights
authoritative as a poet
listening to sparrows pr plans bombfall
or pins rattling inside out
what does it taste like?
in the back of mike’s
from one who demands better worm
it’s all
you can do
unless
his palms to yours
the inert grenades
slowly beautifully you’ve nicked
luxembourg or humanity
hands into hands
yes 10:13 in hackensack and i am wondering
why on earth is my skin so skinny
when all the prayers say i should be greasy
my benedictions
should be known widely
how many people are even in this bolted down town
anyway if i stop with all the bolas de acero
cerveza and el gran
poeta contemporáneo maybe i’ll dry up
maybe i’ll go on that boat trip
i promised my family anyway
here’s to the good colonel
working the corner
for the wrong boxer
why fight at all the dog
lucy her coffee bean
rising in the midday sun
takes a dive into the green grass
was it right acusar al presidente
was it weather crashing down on my head
like a thug’s framing hammer
don’t even got a wallet
there’s certainly no cash
i’ll cancel all the cards
before you spend a dime
i’ve been discourteous look
up at the flying cars stare and steal
a handful of photos
of this first great fear two men
with blond pony tails
look at that lot
i should cast them out
of hell for being so official
so beautiful so dour
on this urine soaked street
i stole that photo of the dog
by the balls my dog with the coffee
bean tried to attack the man
fat man slicking himself with sesame oil
this mobile phone suggests a yellow face crying
of laughter
after with my thumbs
i type urine and sweat 🤣 that one
squeezes through the wire like a stranger
to me anyways
chopping grass the old fashioned way
the calendar says hello
with both hands it is august 1
a lens cap in my pocket
a black coin from not so long ago
i looked up mike kanemitsu now
i’m sweating 🤣 memory
passive dogs attack
the passive voice
yes 10:13 in hackensack
and i am wondering
cherry wave moves fast
consumes gas spark oxy
gen ignites momentary true
tears
apart
asphalt
gives it all away for pennies on the dollar
corpse
of oak
wave of pattern-making
gone now so maybe
aerated biomass
bound to steel
screws i once loved
as a lecture
well cared for
white curator
of white curators
my hands in my filial head
translation
concrete
as total aesthetic loss
as movement
i’ve
stubbed my tone again
against the edge
of some other universe
under the weekly
farmers market
near the free whiskey
samples retired
dentist who
summers in santa
monica who
explains volatilization
charcoal
filters in his coronavirus
mask
the perfect gift
for clark
i’ve
taken off again
around pluto
in the byzantine
eyes of man
nothing to do
wife away
i’ve
glanced out again
from my crashing
self sea
i’ve
named myself again
spoiled oil
spilled spinning
top approaches
edge gravity
angel’s share
bitter ship
gasping heir
to a ruined king-
dom of collapsed
arteries rough
concrete
sidewalk gone
feral over rough dog-
wood root
again
to say
enough.
So much light, dear oblivion, night after night; I offered up my body. You refused. I drank. Begged, really. Said my dreams, you don’t belong here. Some countable mornings ahead, crouched in the internet’s dark corners, hands reaching into prosaic brightness, not to gather, but offer: News spreads of a virgin conception. And so much light.
Prayer peels soul from body. Robin-eyed memory of never known. The scent of winter jasmine, he writes. I ascent, with neither knowledge nor trace experience. Mouth crawls with the acid taste of spider webs. Begging, really. Dear Oblivion, I continue asking the drain — conduit from, passive voice, channel away — to do the hard work. Three-fourteen a.m., a mournful eight-legged poet struggles to drag a stone amphora the size of a casket across the backyard — no vacancies.
All photos copyright Joe Gerace, 2020 (please email for usage permission)
Hundreds gathered on a sweltering June afternoon in Hackensack, NJ, to call for an end to police brutality against people of color in the wake of the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and countless others.
Organizers provided a platform for members of the crowd to step up to the microphone and share their thoughts. Many of those who spoke stressed the need for swift and definitive change to race relations in America, and the importance of community, solidarity, and voting — in local, state, and federal elections.
The peaceful rally convened from noon to 1 p.m. on Ward and State streets in Downtown Hackensack before protesters marched south toward the Bergen County Courthouse.
Uniformed Hackensack police officers blocked traffic to allow protesters to rally and march freely.
The death of Floyd sparked rallies and protests across the country and a handful of protests occurred in New Jersey over the past several days.
dear oblivion
i hear you
shredding bone
in the golden
place
salivating
somewhere
unknowable
a man
grills
meat
a child
screams
what i mean to say
is this, dear oblivion:
i remember
the littoral darkness
of the rising afternoon
the light
never
having
been
enough
dear oblivion
i hear you
crawling away