13: WICKS by Daniel Hales

After you found the second eyelash in your eggs we started looking for them. Greasy black wicks in our scrambled yolks. Maybe the chef was crying about something out back, I say, and begin looking for silvery drops.

You told me once that sometimes during sex you think about the most abstract pieces of a jigsaw puzzle: a cloudless sky, an almost undifferentiated hillside, trees, trees, and more identical trees. Now I think about them, too, the accumulation of tempos once distinct. Running all those laps around the soccer field. I raise another forkful of eggs to my mouth.

(from Tempo Maps)

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Other poems from Tempo Maps have appeared in H_NGM_N, Conduit, Sentence, and Kenning Journal. His chapbook, Tempo Maps, Vol. 1, is forthcoming from Ixnay Press. His band, Daniel hales and the frost heaves, have just released their third album, Contrariwise: Songs from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. www.thefrostheaves.com

I WILL GIVE YOU ALL THE JUICE BOXES IN THE WORLD by Ryder Collins

i will make sure all the straws have pointy ends &
you can plunge right in. i'll brown bag you cookies & roll you
in napkins. we are talking lunches forever. i will CSA
you. i will leave you greens on your doorstep.
there'll be salads on your steps all the way to the sidewalk
to the street to your job and back again. you'll parade
in leaves
& there's a fox
in my hen house. there's eggs to be taken.
there's crayon drawings on my ovaries & you flashlight
but not gaslight. i'll give you all the farm creatures. i'll
give you all the old macdonalds. all the old remixes, the techno
beats and glow sticks. vick's vapo-rub & poppers. the left-overs
of rave culture. & that'll be our second course & that'll be dessert
the music
stream that carries you through that takes you beyond
the crummy
juice boxes with non-sucky straws the stale
cookies the greasy bags & napkins the eggs that've
been stolen the eggs that've gone barren the dribbled
juices the smashed gardens the cars speeding through
all the greens & fruit i want to give you

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Ryder Collins has a novel, Homegirl! Her chapbook, The way the sky was now, recently won Heavy Feather Review’s first fiction chapbook contest. She has a chapbook of poetry entitled Orpheus on toast, and another on the way called i am hopscotch without hop.