Breadcrumb #440

MATTHEW D. ROWE

I am a slap bag of tears.
A couple of birds tear apart
a beef stick.
My eyes well up
with the pungent August air.

My grandfather sits up.
Partly pumps his own lungs again.
I crumble in pure joy.
The pummeling cosmos
a little less an anvil.

The infant takes his first steps
in the park,
smile-kisses the dewy grass.
No spoken language yet formed
for his parents’ explosion.

A familiar smile leaps
across the street.
Impeccably timed talk
of tethers and floating.
Whether or not the two collide.

I am a magenta-chested mess,
in the barber shop.

The magic camera is accurate.
A rhythmic buzzing.
A cluster of assurance.

• • •

Breadcrumb #439

MILTON ERLICH

My Uncle Bebe galloped out of Berlad between bullets and flames,
chased by dogs and Cossack whips.

In blood-swollen eyes he flew over the moon of the rugged Carpathian Mountains.
Gypsy music played In soulless mountains, he once called home.

He survived on stolen apples, raw sturgeon and cold mamaliga.
Unselfishness no longer existed.

When a Chamois mountain antelope spooked his horse,
he was flung to the ground and lay in perfect stillness.

Only his eyes moved.

A loser in the game of fate, he couldn’t win with a low score.

• • •

Breadcrumb #438

MICHELLE WHITTAKER

Down-and-Out sleepwalk
hand-in-hand like two lone star ticks
found buried above the sternum.

Watch them trance.
Watch them yawn
wilderness into a nighttide.

Often, Down-and-Out transmit
their anesthetic touch to the other, although
they decided not to conceive children.

But how might they continue
traveling turpentine bloodlines
in this bog-iron island?

Watch them headtrip.
Watch them overthink as a single them,
strobing through the pinelands

while gorging into the sand gully
of pine tar and vanishing foxes.
Watch them no longer concerned

they might split as they release
care about the rocky beaches
former self. The glacial physique.

When Down-and-Out exchanged vows
sub-secretly just like the late-stage
of Lyme disease, who also understood

what it means
on trying to stay together
in sickness and in helpless,

even when 12,000 years tried
putting in a bright repeat
of parental advice about sustainable living,

perhaps from the supervening
or superstitions, they woke their wishes
to un-hear the veracious warnings.

• • •

Breadcrumb #437

BILL LESSARD

blue tartan kilt Sylvia wore to her first suicide;
sold for $14,000

spectacle the sizzle
brand against flesh against flesh 

story about Hollywood about Buddhists
suing each other
for 100 million  

Dalí walking pet anteater in Paris (1969)

—the new flâneur journeying by thumb
glass perambulations  

miracle that requires two (2) forms of ID 

New York the crime drama
filmed in Pittsburgh 

single fleck of glitter found at tip of penis
provenance unknown 

on the 90th day of January,
ice cream as sympathetic magic  

Sontag making Mailer’s exposed chest hair wilt

a penetrative agent
that colorizes
the fabric

meant to be sipped from a shell with pickled flowers dotting the lip 

neurocuration
the artist
living on
as rogue AI 

—to own the painting
and the hatred that made it 

gaze making U-turn
into
oncoming hermeneutic 

the world’s oldest spider that died in a burrow pursed with silk

wrong
to date someone
from
a different algorithm? (Y/N) 

99 cents in the app store

yoni,
a Sanskrit word
conflating
vagina
and
sacred space

Liz Taylor asking why she was only queen in Technicolor

triptych,
for when we paint our sin

drips missing the canvas,
true confession  

wonder if Louise’s spiders
were based on anyone she knew  

wrapping your body in wool on the last day of April

KIT KAT®
for dinner
as way
of staying
young  

the German word
for “man who eats dinner
in a hole he pretends
he is unable
to climb out of”

Asgard AmEx

Miles thinking of someone he hates, extinguishes cigarette with sole of his Italian loafer

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every time the screen darkens,
the slate Malevich gave us

the last human sound
passed
between teeth 

the air inside Miles’ trumpet no longer human breath

• • •

Breadcrumb #436

COLIN JAMES

                   I'm way in the back
                   can just make out forms.
                   A definite sound delay.
                   Pithy like goose honks
                   coming at you unnaturally.
                   Witch could mean any number of things.
                   I hope they don't land.
                   Their fur is feather fucked
                   with a whole bunch of cruelty
                   and a creative amount
                   of self importance.

• • •