Claire’s Game

by Raphael Moser

The miner’s strike
Performed by a reenactment society
The artist stages the scene
The producer conducts a selective interview
With cutaways
Real life miners playing the part of miners
And cops
The BBC and the director
Fashioning a version to revive the working class
The live spectacle
Complete with 80’s favorite dance tunes
The blur of the good and bad cops
And sobriety with cheesy whimsy
Flayed the edges
Smoking bubbles

vinyl

yuriy tarnawsky

London Bridge
sees it already
and cries
rusty
tears,
and rose-colored
girls
find deep sighs
under their dark
hips
and extend them
to its emaciated
face
with its profile
of the thinnest of rectangles,
and they press
to their sunken hands
the beginnings
of its green
beard
that shows
signs
of torture.
It leaves behind
angles
of its viscous
triangles
on the dark sides
of letters
and molecules
but you can see already
the shadow
of its fingers
looking like smiles
in the corners
of mouths
that can’t
free themselves
from under beds
and babies,
and it puts on
impermeable
vestments,
and turns
to the four corners
of the world,
and makes the signs
of circles
and rectangles,
and leaves behind
fireproof
crosses
on the rumpled,
abandoned
retinas,
and it gives away
buckles
full of flowers
to holes
in tattered clothing
so that they’d pass them on
to the bones
that live on the outskirts
of teeth
and rain,
and gums
raise themselves
to the level
of pink asphalt,
and saliva
calls onto fingers
to dig out
hips
from under neon
and to cover them
with phosphorus
and men’s hands,
and last names
loosen their manes
of long woman’s hair
and red letters,
and legs and borders
spread wide,
to let it get to
the splinters
in stubborn hands
and in broken
countries.

It’s still sick,
it still hasn’t recovered
from factories
and paper,
with a name
behind which set
customs
and the sun,
made up of letters
so thin
it can be destroyed
even
by tears….

Let’s pray
that the Lord
won’t call it back
to his side.


from ye-ye songs

De K’s Landscape

by Raphael Moser

The place where sound worked its way
Admonishing as
The old soul manufacturing mourning in the firelight
Architectural paradise
Green reflections of crisp
Structures

hunger

yuriy tarnawsky


A hungry color
was looking
for its own mouth
to open it
in the direction
of his bride
between skyscrapers
and souls
made from stone.
On the edge
of a park
painted black,
where retired paint
comes to die,
he asked a policeman
who’d already been reached
by the overripe
root
of an abyss:
“Where
did she go
with the red suitcases
in her joints?”

“There came a taxi
the color of despair,
the moon
was hiding
behind clocks,
and they vanished
behind the left side
of her head.”

from ye-ye poems

sonnet g’s is better

India wore
cop sunglasses and i
had my new ones puchased
in HK flea and i didn’t run
into sabrina nor the sun nor any of the new flowers of
unknowns from work and there was
nothing for me to think but as she walked along and about
jane alexander’s WORK so mordant in
it’s humor and a little girl took her
stride beside the flanks and ranks of the rain
of those who marched jackal
faced and imperturbable like the night
in its cheese

India wore
cop sunglasses and i
had my new ones puchased
in HK flea and i didn’t run
into sabrina or any of the new
unknowns from work and there was
nothing for me to think but about
jane alexander’s WORK so mordant in
it’s humor and a little girl took
stride beside the flanks and ranks
of those who marched jackal
faced and imperturbable
in their conformity
their continuity

Anon

Ol Ym Puss
When she got on the train on her way all the way back across town she didn’t want anyone else so she dropped her heavy haversack in the empty seat beside her when she sat down. The carriage could have carried many more people and the seating was of a soft blue that suggested skies not seen since glossy childhood. Her cell phone too was saying something special. She read it to like it was an oracle to herself and looked up as if in a daza. Daza. Daza. Daza. Daza. Daza. Her side won in the paralympics. Then came the IM. He was on his way and at the Bexley Gardens, next stop and when he saw her through the train doors as they were opening he knew he had to stand over her while not interrupting her ‘deep’ thoughts. They were both looking at her fingers before he even let it be known that he would like to sit down where the bag was before switching to the signet ring on her long swanny finger. It was made of jade and expressed something about her by the way it was kissing her soft knuckle, the way he would love to and by the way she hid her hand between her mitten legs when he reached out meant that something too had changed “according to Ambiguity” and his darling wasn’t going to be telling and instead kept watching the news go past on her ipod. What would be happening? He was still behind her when she got up at the end of the tunnel and didn’t follow when she got off only to be found again when she was climbing that hill alone – his fine blue flannels still toweling and she stopped at the last step but the second and was about to turn back and reconsider when she heard the talk.

he died in a barbershop

yuriy tarnawsky


I saw a man
die
in a barber’s chair.
He couldn’t bear
his hair
being severed
from continents
and solid objects
behind his back.
He couldn’t bear
the transparent tubes
inside his blood
and windpipe
which the neon
was pointing out
with its double
finger
of bone.
More than seven
years
his tongue
and clothes
fought a battle
with scissors
but they finally triumphed
over his body
and date of birth.
First
he called out
to city squares
which his eyes
were painting red,
then to the buttons
on his jacket
rubbed smooth
by his teeth
and soul,
and finally to the newspaper print
through which
the blue monkeys of mirrors
were following his skin
with their eyes.
But in the end,
putting his fingers away
like a bunch of pencils
he walked
down the staircase
of his body
into the cold water
which already had floating in it
news from the world,
nickel,
and linoleum.

They buried him
on a day
specially created
for the occasion
when barbers
of the whole world
were cutting water
off the sky
with scissors
that were making
people’s hearts
grow sad.

from ye-ye songs

untitled

Gerard Flynn


part of my eye contains
no silence
it is like the million mile sun
spots
jumping
lava love of memory in my broken heart
straining to see
what was left of you
that morning
black and grainy
like the soft end
of your purse
for my searching fingers
have found you changed

WJJ

by Raphael Moser

A behavior is engaged in. A bottle of water is drunk a can of soda is completed, an ice cream bar is eaten, gum is chewed. The husk of desire is debris. WJJ glues colored plastic chips on the scars of these objects. He twists the empty bottle and ties a ribbon with hearts around this scar. A sign of the untouched. These scars are imposed on voided objects. The colored fragments look perfect from afar. Photographs of the restored objects magnify the sculptures ten thousand times. Cracks are visible,sweet things fail. He places the sculpture in front of the photograph. The sculpture sees its flaws. The sculptures are self-portraits. Fetish objects. When the sculpture is confronted with the poverty of its façade WJJ is de-kitschified. The outside world is taken by shiny things. Kitsch pendants with American Flags made in unregulated Chinese factories. Liberty is a tall tale.

unseen and perched on a high branch

Susan Scutti


the god of mystery
attended your birth
imagination was your midwife
and delirium the bath she plunged you in
to wash away your newborn tears

now you are here having flown high above a salty ocean
to arrive where you are wanted

needed

what is required of you is
reflex & gasp
Oh how the others continue wanting to shield themselves
from the secrets of the past