ABOUT

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

Two Poems
by John Schertzer

Elizabethan Pamphlet

The law of the jungle says all things will cannibalize themselves
all things will fall into disuse

Side by side we have a red chart
and a blue chart. We no longer have any need for a green chart

A red cart and a blue cart. The oily cart
Still moves the other has lost its wheels

We no longer use the words of the seamstress and her mistress
Though there are stress marks on this one

It's wheels are bent and it's no longer any good for carrying
Signals to and from the television. The law of the jungle

Says a bent antenna is better than none. It says
How can I help you Please will you go now I have a headache

The seamstress biting the blue thread returns to her 17th century
Disappears in the padded pattern of her mistress

The size of the jungle is proportionate to the law that surrounds it
And the silence it evokes when the red light flashes

Self-styled Ceiling

My name was "when spaceships landed"
But more recently people have come to know
Me as "the situation will never be the same"
Ideas have filled my heads for years, and I have become
Somewhat of a hive. I have become a recluse
Since in this world the other is a picture
And all its talk and all its doing, running about
Moving from square to square, pixel to pixel
Is preemptive fumbling, is me watching from inside
Which is why they sent me. Not for nothing
They sent me for committing errors--not crimes
They sent me flowers and gift certificates
I was in the movies when they sent this body
So I could smell it, taste it, not like I can now

Move over--of course I lie to you. There's no place
To go no place to be except this languid saying
Long march which never quite began or ended
But spreads across the papered geography
The way water evaporates. I rode the shaft
Through every brain in my body
But nothing happened. I found myself amid
Ecclesiastical nurses trying to fall down
The chute into the garbage bin of redemptive sin.
I tried to mix with them but they couldn't see me.
No one knew my name so I went on a budget.
I tore hunks out of their faces until they
Looked more like the kinds of arguments
I needed. My name is solar baby. Or wing wing wing.