ABOUT

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

Two Poems
by Karyna McGlynn


When You Move Into A White Birdhouse

You must remember to choose: basement, ground, or attic. Decide quickly or your cottage by the sea will disappear completely. Choose the ground floor apartment. You can only see the sea from here. It is only the only floor with a yard and a patio. Choose the ground floor. The sea is soothing at first, but it will turn violent. The sky is bruised throughout. Are you having a barbeque? If so, perhaps the chairs are saffron yellow & you have a new bouffant hair-do. If so, you feel like a famous poet from the 60s, you bet! If so, beware of the mechanical scorpion inside; he will chase you. If so, go lay outside where the patio stops and the sea starts. Are you wearing your glasses? No? Then you will miss the railing and roll into the sea. You’re always miscalculating distances. If you don’t get out of there, something will bite you. Are the guests at your barbeque paying any attention? There’s Ted Berrigan, waving around a cheese cube on a toothpick. Does he see you? No? Well, here are some young men who have gathered at the railing to laugh at you. You’re such a drama queen. You could get out of there if you really wanted to. Watch. One of these young men will demonstrate. He jumps into the sea, sinks to the bottom of the bay, bends his knees, launches up and out like a performing porpoise! Now you try. As you bubble down, you find yourself face to face with your predator. Oh boy. This old folded in half license plate has been on the ocean floor so long it turned into a saltwater crocodile. Watch out. He wants to take a bite out of your ass. Say it sounds dumb but is actually very scary. Say it all you want. Ted Berrigan is gesticulating wildly to someone on your patio. He has a mouth full of cheese and is saying I'm just mad about Saffron.


Revenge of the Giant Mantis

Another time, this science guy takes me back to his observatory. Instead of fucking me while I stare through a telescope at Venus, he flicks on the lights. In the flood of sudden fluorescence, I see that the white circular room is ringed with women attached to the walls, each in a Styrofoam ejector seat, each naked and ready for sex. My date, the science guy, reveals himself to be a giant mantis. He carries me to the one empty seat—seat No. 23—and straps me in. He perches on a blinking center console and unsheathes his cock—it’s long, thin, pale green and coiling like a blanched dandelion stem. It creeps toward woman No. 1, curls like a question around her calves, insinuates up her inner thighs and services her with a single rude jab. She yelps; the rest of us sigh. The cock retracts quickly, coils back into the mantis like fishing line. The serviced woman is then ejected—whoosh!—through the open roof. Each woman is provided in turn. Each receives a single thrust, no more. As the mantis’ cock twines up my leg, I ask him about the function of my ejector seat. He says: “After you get what you came here for, don’t you want to leave?” I nod. The sepals of his
approaching cock head open wide as a cotton pod at midsummer. “Then it’s good for both of us,” he says with a green smile, “and it happens as efficiently as possible.”