1648 c/o Chas Carey

Westphalia

These are the lines we have drawn. Before today, I said things, I did things, and I admit, I was wrong, even though deep down inside I still feel like I’m probably right. Shakespeare once wrote “we are the makers of manners,” and maybe that’s true. Do the English even read Shakespeare any more? Who knows. Bad times over there. But I’m putting off the issue of us. Like usual, you’d say.

It wasn’t really war at first, but I don’t think anyone would’ve called it love. We were just there. Lots of shouting arguments in the early mornings, at my place or yours. Heads rolled. There were discussions in dark corridors.

I grew to learn the names of places I had no idea I was unwelcome in. You kept wrecking my reputation during the day and coming back home to me at night. Sometimes we sat across the table from one another, staring until we fell asleep. Why do you stay together if this is what you do? Someone asked me that once. I said I didn’t know any other way. I don’t think you did, either, though.

But yeah, I treated you badly. I never let you be who you wanted to be when you were around me, because you scared me, you and your modern love. I wanted to be the man for all seasons, the guy who went around known to have done everything, been anywhere, and you punched a hole right through all that.

So, sure, yes, I yelled. When it wasn’t going to work, I tried to throw you out. And when I couldn’t, I forced us together. Like I said, I still feel right in some ways. Like I deserved to feel new and you took it away. But these are the lines we have drawn. We can say all we like, but what we do day in, day out, that’s our own business, now. You have your space and I have mine.

I think we’ve got no choice but to try. I mean, you’ve seen through me. I can’t make you un-see. But we’re old enough and tired enough and after all of this maybe we know better. Maybe we can hold each other at arm’s length instead of clutched together screaming in the heat of the night. For a while. Maybe.

1647 c/o Justin Carter

Christmas

Our father traced his earliest ancestor back to 1647, the year Christmas was banned in England by the Puritans. To commemorate our family history, he started going out every Christmas Eve and doing his best Tom Waits impression at the shittiest bars he could find, breathing in whiskey and singing “Christmas Card From A Hooker in Minneapolis” unaccompanied on the karaoke machine until the bartender, growing irate due to our father’s far-too-drunken state, would kick him out onto the street. Mother put me in charge of bringing him home. When my sister grew older, she began joining me on the yearly expedition. We would always find him laid out in an alley way, unaware of everything happening around him, coat-less in a light snow. We would throw him in the car, drive him home, and then leave him alone in the backseat. The next morning, while our father slept in the driveway, our mother would bring us the stockings of candy she had kept hidden from our father. My sister would smile at our only piece of “holiday joy” while I would eat the candy as fast as I could. Then the stockings would go back into the attic, away from our father’s ever-watchful eyes, into a chest in the corner of it, to be stored until the next season arrived and we repeated our secret rituals. When our father inevitably awoke from his stupor, he would walk inside the house, unaware we had celebrated the forbidden holiday, seat himself on the couch, and stare at the television screen. He never turned it on.

1646 c/o Benjamin King

Guillaume Colletet Versus The Karate
Sluts on the Moon (Space Future 1646)

1645 c/o Derek Piotr

you've lost Carlisle

aren't you afraid of Death?

sometimes I need a prompt, a push. a hand
to reach through fog and strike me; remind me
I am the rachis.

the rachis that made these wings is me; when I forget
what flight is, those days exist only to compare
to the times I feel the rachis as my spine, air coursing
through to nourish and lighten.

the days of absence complete the days of potency.

aren't you afraid of losing potency?


I wake and sleep in the same place each day, though each day
I grow stronger, lurch into my years of potency.
you're growing rust, it's coming from your eyes,
it's replacing your heart.

oil is gone from the earth. you follow soon.

(some seed buried deep.
slow rape.)

1644 c/o Shaun Gannon

Nine Haiku

you make the fire
and I'll show you something wonderful:
a baby Bashō!


a Bashō
staggers out
of the peony.


a caterpillar,
this deep in fall--
still not a Bashō.


don't imitate me;
it's as boring
as the two halves of a Bashō.


from time to time
the clouds give rest
to the moon Bashōs.


taking a nap,
feet planted
against a cool Bashō.


winter garden,
the moon thinned to a thread,
Bashōs singing.


a man, infirm
with age, slowly sucks
a Bashō.


what fish feel,
Bashōs feel, I don't know--
the year ending.

1643 c/o Helen Dring

The Soldier Walks Like Light.

He sleeps like he prays, lost and deep. He should be steeled, half awake and always ready but, instead, he slumbers like a man who sleeps with people he trusts with his life. He came a week before the others. He is thin, like a scholar who does not eat because he is too preoccupied with books and parchment. He should not be a soldier.

Clothilde says the man that hides at her house is much different, that he tears great chunks of meat with his teeth and swills down wine like it flows from a spring. Her man is a fighter, pure and bred. He sleeps with a knife in his hand and watches her when she goes to feed the chickens in case she is seeking out Roundheads to betray him to.

But our solider is silent. He nods meekly when we offer him food and nibbles on bread like a child. He reads until the early hours, his eyes straining in the dark. Once, when he saw me watching, he asked if I could read. When I shook my head, he took my finger and traced the shape of the letters on the page, reciting each one to me as he read. That's the closest any woman in my family has come to reading, that would-be soldier holding my hand as he turned the pages.

Tomorrow he moves to the church. The church, my father says, is the central point. There will be many others, ready to defend the King, to fight for God. I wish my soldier would stay, that we could hide him here forever. He could be my brother, or a cousin, or an orphan that we took in years ago. No-one need know. But there is a shame in avoiding battle, in running from the fight.

I closed my eyes as his footsteps walked away from our cottage. Farther up the hill, the church stands proud. His feet are light against the grass and I know, without looking, that he walks with his head held high.

The Roundheads will come with the dawn, and my soldier may not see the dusk.

1642 c/o J. |Bradley

Dinner is Served

The fine China remains locked in the armoire. The silverware sleeps in red linen napkins on the dining room table. My mother watches Hyacinth Bucket correct the new vicar how her last name is pronounced. My father slaps open cabinet doors in the kitchen closed like a jaw.

1641 c/o Sully Sanchez

a description of the famous kingdome of macaria

what is the right number of people to exist
right now

i'm either going to turn you into a magnet and
throw you off a bridge or calmly unzip your
clothing i can’t decide

just relax and stop ruining everything it’s ok to
be a quiet dandelion it’s a utopia after all

the fridge is our utopia and if we had decent
coats we'd live there 8 months a year easy i
reckon

eventually you’re going to think of a reason for
cartwheeling down the street trust me

wait would you rather be experiencing the
moment you’re experiencing right now or the
best moment of an African dictator’s life

i can probably take you out if you want and you
can watch me bowl a 116 or something sounds
fun

i want to sit a badger in a tin bathtub and throw
confetti and then turn around slowly on the
spot as it falls while he watches

ok but you are still only about half as serious as
any kind of sandwich

there are two types of people: us and
gondoliers

i promise

i would like to lie on an iceberg near a penguin
and when he sleeps i'll put a medal round his
neck and call you to come look

this is ours and this a utopia i promise