Poems for Shy Communists by Sam Lohmann

Against the Moment

Two-day-old plum cake: I want some
made with two kinds of plums from one tree
Wait for the moment, still the moment? It’s
a thirteen-day-old plum cake.

I don’t know where the recipe went
wrong, butter too soft or should mix
with paddle not whisk or mix less or sift,
it turned out sorta biscuit-
you-can’t-imagine. Try again
with sour cream or something.
Fried or toasted in places by the “heat dome” back in June
now every tree and shrub looks at me too
out of its former enclosure—
                                           lineaments of threadbare, henplucked delight!

The plum cake is six days old but the plum cake is gone!

*** 

Poems for Shy Communists

by Sam Lohmann

[airfoil 10]

32-page chapbook with laserprinted cover

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Strange Attractors by David Abel

show was 

a dress 

in skin 

by swim 

is gorgeous 

power bitter 

to arm 

to rock 

***

Strange Attractors

by David Abel

[airfoil 9]

36-page chapbook with laserprinted cover

$8

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a green shade! by Chris Daniels

we are never welcome to elsinore

entre nós e as palavras, os emparedados 

e entre nós e as palavras, o nosso dever falar 

between us and words, the immured 

and between us and words, our duty to speak 

mário cesariny    

you are welcome to elsinore 

you and me between word and deed 

you and me buffeted by need 

you and me between crusher and grit 

you and me mauled by capital: 

compa, the wells are burning oil 

we have no gun, can barely spit 

while the smirking serpent stacks 

coil on coil to 

keep us in a world of shit 

you and me angry, you and me sad 

you and me muddled till we might go mad 

you and me sink into loving care 

as the ruling class slaughters us everywhere 

you and me want love with minimal rue 

you and me will love just the way we do 

you and me hope for heaven 

from deep in their millennial hell 

you and me wish not to serve them 

you and me say fuck pavlov’s bell 

let’s you and me do the best we can: 

let’s you and me give each other a hand 

let’s you and me leap beyond our depth 

in these sad and nasty times 

when all the angels piss in our wind 

and another empire declines 

***

a green shade!

Chris Daniels

[airfoil 8]

36-page chapbook with laserprinted cover

$8

*****

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KU: A THUMB BOOK by Judith Roitman

they used to come through all the time

* * *

Ku

a thumb book

by Judith Roitman, with images by Lee Chapman

66 cards in printed envelope

[airfoil 7]

$15

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WORDS THAT by J. A. Lee

APOSTROPHE

The possessive form of the pronoun it is not written with an apostrophe. The contraction it's (for it is or it has) is written in the form of a contract to replace something with nothing, a tooth mark on memory. The apostrophe itself is often misplaced because it indicates possession: You can't find your glasses, the word you want, the house you grew up in.

A digression, or turning away in discourse, leads you from one room to another in search of the apostrophe. You speak directly to it, employing an improbable pronoun, and find that the degree of its absence is proportional to its power of accumulation, which is infinite. But the apostrophe remains defenseless against ownership, and so is consumed by the word in which it occurs.

* * *

Words That

by J. A. Lee

40-page stapled chapbook with letterpress cover

[airfoil 6]

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BELL-LLOC by Chris Piuma

Ella

{illa}

If Nadia is an island,
and she totally is (if you
saw her swimming, which she hardly
ever does, because the last time
she went swimming, after a few
laps, she had stomach cramps for weeks,
it was not worth it, she is not
going to do that again (though

if pressed, if cajoled by a group
of friends at some beautiful lake,
remote, uncrowded, not too cold,
and assuming it wasn’t, like,
skinny-dipping, not that her friends
would go skinny-dipping, or, well,
not most of them, and they would know
better than to try to get her

to participate in those sorts
of hijinks (though if it’s hijinks,
then what’s a hijink?), not that she
has anything against hijinks
or hijinkery, it’s just not
for her, just like swimming isn’t
for her, and her friends (and if she
hasn’t thought much about her friends

for the past few days, it’s because
she’s on another continent,
having many wild adventures,
some of which involve oranges,
and some of which involve the moon,
but not all of them, not at all
(and if you must know, she has been
thinking about her friends back home,

and not just thinking about them
thinking about her and all her
adventures, how when she got home
they would get to hear her retell
(or relate, or maybe retract)
everything she had been up to,
and how she would start with that night
with the moon and the oranges

and, you know, build up from there, and
how much they would enjoy her tale,
or at least enjoy her telling,
and if she included the bits
about her thinking about them
instead of having adventures,
or tried to explain how thinking
about the moon and oranges

was more her sort of adventure,
then that would make for a sucky
adventure, that would be less than
epic, that would be a waste of
all that travel, all that escape)
and anyway, she’ll figure out
a proper adventure to have
soon), they know not-for-her–for-her

from not-for-her–not-for-her ( jink:
“to dance about wildly”: so then,
not-for-her–for-her) and so then
they probably could convince her)
then you’d see the resemblance as
she floated upon the water)
then what, she wonders, does it take
to become a peninsula.

***

bell-lloc

by Chris Piuma

20-page stapled chapbook with letterpress cover

[airfoil 5]

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MARROWING by Maryrose Larkin

Breath and effort

my face turned blue

the opposite of chaos

the action itself

rigor or comfort or

my joy ascending

greater than

how he comes

apart explained and

I'm not breathing

time puncture

whole joy amok

***

marrowing

by Maryrose Larkin

16-page stapled chapbook with letterpress cover

[airfoil 4]

$10

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