ABOUT

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

excerpt from Morpheu
by A.M.J. Crawford

                                                  There was a froth
                                                                 to the water,

                                                               lipid
                                                              bilayer,

                                                      like a lactescent divorce
                                                                   was coupled by
                                                               a dysgenic tube-
                                                               amp†
                      “Were gonna go
                      LIVE now to Moloch!

                      “Moloch! now,
                       you were standing on the narrow balcony
                      when it all went down;
  
                         “were you witness to
                        the lucid youth of the eye
                                 of the octet?”

                      Pausing.
                                                       “Well Tom I’m not sure.”

                                                        Then I was in a back-
                                                      room collecting ingots,    

                                                                  “what kind?”

                                                     Oocyte City/

                                                                          spiny shoots!

                                                       Hurt to watch!

                                                               “Right plus I just got
                                                   totally merced by the market,”

                                                      sank all my shares in white-
                                                    orange,
                                                                        and a stellar
                                                                            eburnation
                                                   followed
                                                                         /yellow mutant
                                                                                      type 1/

                     an anonymous vectoring,
                           necrotic vesicles
                                                             //frameshift//

                                                       “there was a music to
                                                       the vagabond tongue
                                                       of yr petiole,”

                                                                     said Moloch
                                                                             aside,

                                             Congenitally loosen
                                                      -ing his neck-
                                                  tie,

                                             lubing his panicles
                                                        with
                                                   reverie

                                             and landscape jargon,

                                     left his resin in the snow of
                                   pale winter, its winnowing red
                                              dust†

                                      //red type 2//

                           “Moloch, now
                                    I can see that
                                    you’re having to dust
                                     off the diamond of
                                       your brooch
                                     pretty regularly now†
                                              now,
                                       should we take that
                                     as an indication of
                                       the kind of con-
                                    ditions one might
                                    expect to find out
                                            there at ground Zero,”

                                               /satellite delay,
                                                           Zero-wait-state
                                                                     semantic
                                                                        Static,


                                                 uttering each grunt in
                                                             spurts of tonal Aerosol/

                                                                       //red type 3//

                                                              “Well there’s a kind of silent
                                                                adoration at work here,”

                                                              there’s a waving corpse
                                                               every now and then†

                                                                      this one’s fluid
                                                                        is draining†

                                                      an indicator, Tom,
                                                 of an anemia of the Soul,

                                                     "That or There’s a sleeping
                                                   polyploid around,”
                                                                                           //grinning//
                                                                     lacking in
                                                           the color of vice

                                                 and a slouching
                                               glacial jaw,
                                                                 evidence
                                                          of a stroke†

                                                                    /the bodies,
                                                                        pooling in
                                                                           a river of melting
                                                                      labial concentrate,
                                                                                half-sunk/

                                     a sign that Salomé
                                              was really dead/

                                                                              “That’s right Tom,

                                                 “we were forced to paddle down-
                                                     stream with her arms/

                                    “& fended off the others
                                           with her legs, kicking out
                                      the riffraff,
                                                           & bludgeoning
                                       the gypsy mothers climbing up
                                          our sides,

                                      & their babes,
                                        o their babes.

                                                               “& then we passed
                                                               the day on the cut
                                                                bank, in the shadow of
                                                               a cloud bruised hard
                                                                 by the bomb,

                                                              “by the braze
                                                                        of its vigor”

                                                                                   Call Dropped††