Great Grey Shrike

Funny how in my head was strange how or childish how really vice versa what a way to go you tell me who i’ve been kissing by tasting my diction memory being google that or bing this it’s funnier recording endless survival as the great grey shrike separates the humane evolutionary fact of its call i don’t remember fred moten beefing with mayonnaise then i do his car alarm soars high under the birdcall stoops how could this be the last poem as twenty five gs crash my collection of rare tubercles and tomial teeth stories multiply in data bath when i’m not looking blast out the back of my throat.

‘Antiquity Calling’ by Elaine Equi

Looking at Mapplethorpe’s Polaroids, I learn that he
liked shoes and armpit crotch-shots of men and women,
both shaved and un’—all giving a good whiff to the camera.
But best of all are his pictures of ordinary phones
which convey a palpable sense of expectancy as if
at any moment, one of the fabulous, laconic nude men
strewn about might call. One could pick up the receiver
and hear the garbled sound of ancient Greek and Roman
voices reveling in the background. But even when silent,
the dingy phone is a sex organ—cock asleep in its cradle.


Equi, Elaine. “Antiquity Calling.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Magazine, November 2008, www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/51805/antiquity-calling. Accessed 1 Oct. 2023.

Callejón de Nubes

No thinking about the holes in teeth confused in cloud alley but elegant not selling elegance but true put the phone down elegance you ballet of proper verb forms then say ballet until her enjambment snaps off in her right hand the regional manager says put identity up there on the shelf beside the open box returns she’s talking about mycelium now or was a violent idiot a little tape holding it all together don’t take the comma deep underground take the coma of metaphor hey you guys look like you respect ska and city police neat and disorderly no one trying to reproduce scan or distribute any printed or electronic form of outre elder smoke returns through heavy mirrored interior of toilet paper tube violent design wins every time.