Breadcrumb #450

MATTHEW ROWE

While you waited
for the sliver of panic

to peel itself free
from the smoking radiator,

I dove headfirst
and waded to the dock.

The biting tinfoil tinge
vibrating in my gums.

My chicken skin plucking
at your boiling heart strings

in minute reverberations.
While you counted miscues,

I caught the train moving
in the opposite direction.

I licked a 9-volt battery,
poked my bruises,

cracked the ice tray
into smithereens.

One at a time,
I blessed the bumps,

as the Uptown 4 jerked
forward in a fearless plunder.

I kissed the beads of sweat
careening down your forehead,

the sky splitting
with each pucker.

The slivers of nightmares
tenderizing into a raw nothingness.

• • •

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 #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 #428

ANDREW KNOTT

The streets are full of children missing
teeth and teething all over—
sharp bits emerging
from every corner, poking
and slowly slicing
the gumline of their minds.

Summertime has dappled them,
and the weight of the stones
(in their hands and in their pockets)
creates a flux in the field. 
The town is equally sunspotted.

Wind blows through a broken window
And whistles.
The children whistle
as they speak. Every tinkling of glass,
every throaty clang of a light pole
is an echo

Of a farm shut down,
boarded up,
machines halted and gone to seed. 
The chimes taken off the front porch
and sold.

There is so much space
in every direction.
Desire lines of highway
cross-cutting the original
sidewalks of the country. 

Missing it makes you rambunctious.
The children stomp their feet. 

• • •