"Threatened / by a / plastic razor blade," "A line from harry k stammer," and "She was an oboe player in the Peloponnesian War"

Threatened / by a / plastic razor blade

Employers can eliminate the
frames of our back patio doors
& turn what could be a life-
threatening situation full of un-
necessary gimmicks into an
organ theme brimming with
allure. There are some draw-
backs — opening those doors
can produce epic sounding
pieces, but they do contain a
kind of darkness within them.

 


 

A line from harry k stammer

Polyps spawn on the lawns of
the State Capitol in Sacramento.
An annual event; but nobody
bothers to count. Lots of guesses,
 
all of them wrong. So, adjust
estimate. Criteria: who the cur-
rent Governor is, similar such.
How many dead celebrities? As
 
many as at a Taylor Swift concert?
More to come? The pass-through
may be even greater. Build in con-
tingencies, selected confounders.

 


 

She was an oboe player in the Peloponnesian War

Salvage crews begin removing a block
of heavily armed infantry standing
shoulder to shoulder. I drive into town.
My cassette collection has disappeared.
 
I pass a grid planting of trees in a garden.
There is no command radius but is there
a spin limit? Column to phalanx, ultra
high density endcapping, thoracic skele-
 
ton with an acetabular articular facet; but
head-on against a similarly arrayed enemy
they couldn't exist without the shield. It's
hard to say who is most dangerous. Pike
 
animations still suggest a #MeToo reckon-
ing, but after articulating the manuscript
submitted by the dockside warehouse
it seems the tumor rarely presents in the
 
hand. That might be true; but she, usually
accompanied by her loyal trigger finger,
makes the most of her preferences by joy-
fully clicking the 'Cookie Settings' button.

 

 

Mark Young

Mark Young was born in Aotearoa New Zealand but now lives in a small town on traditional Juru land in North Queensland, Australia. He is the author of nearly seventy books, primarily text poetry but also including speculative fiction, vispo, memoir, and art history. His most recent books are a pdf, Mercator Projected, published by Half Day Moon Press (Turkey) in August 2023; Ley Lines II published by Sandy Press (California) in November 2023; un saut de chat published by Otoliths Books (Australia) in February 2024; and Melancholy, a James Tate Poetry Prize winner, published by SurVision Books (Ireland) in March 2024. Mark recommends the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

 

Edited for Unlikely by Jonathan Penton, Editor-in-Chief
Last revised on Thursday, June 13, 2024 - 21:09