MAAT SUITE BY GARETT STRICKLAND

DOT

I.

[ The madness I make does it like ]

                          [ THIS ]

is where enters
the night’s worst phase                                                              walking on one’s mother

Remembering the encounter of the book the gestation of it as a blind object the potencies hidden
within herein lies mysteries     the impatience in that desire to know that deep loving want of to be
able to be known by it     and even in the un-understanding in the understanding of knowing it as
it was written     thru pores  →  an unstoppable train     this language as seepage a seepage of
language as the age sees its page in the page of disks sick reference bro you are my brother as
this word     the same the same this homonym this home breathing in in unity and then again
again to be untied and once then more united on and on and     [ a mother does her twin sons in
the steamroom and they are not shy of each other ]     read into a tape already looped it builds a
nest     ( wow mom wow mom wow )  and into another such womb are we all the more
enveloped     a deferment of form     cabin’d in ain soph     thirsty for the outside     the madness
of the day     the nonsense of the moment     [ a diagram of the essential mystification ]     reveals
nothing in the manner that one cannot measure momentum-slash-position     a concentric
cube,     this calendar

II.

"Nothing quenches my step."
André du Bouchet

Designer time signatures
for rent

for bread     light or bust

worry required to keep
hungry

and qualified

thoughtforms all lined up
and nailed to a board

to admire or play
another game of darts at

carve
tonight’s password

into the wood
of our booth because we’re sitting in it and sitting down

can be
a way of loving

something, us

let this be enough
desire
blown out

as an eyelash
into flame

so forceful
so majestic

certain
declarative & willing

to be wrong

"And nothing will be yours except a movement
toward a where that is whereless."
Alejandra Pizarnik

LINE

Ticket
processional

shame parsed
you

whittled person
reenacts

a holocaustian
or bad face

afternoon deprived
of pivot’s distance

yogic piss
on charred glass

piloting
scorched orchards

Savaging thru a
bag

it’s showtime
overtaken

with the
emoticon

of infinite intimacy
with abjection

& you other
havable joy

King size
unbarterable

delusion

a kindness
not yet

knock’d
up faerie folk

on cellar shelves
in middle basements

striking
off planet poses
drinking

all the best
potions we’d

forget     yet

Isle
engine

how you heard

longing
close      or on top

fathoms
from

yr hood

secret  ed
inside

tee shirt thin
lyrics

and the hum
of apt pipes

in the wall
we met

this for

Leashed
crickets

piston out blues

antenna turnt
to oblivion sis

caught lulling
forcing

to expression
a street

sign
full

of holes in a rut

we
made

out
in

all summers
from now

on

This slow out of tune
accumulation

of haircuts     of hedonism

and the shape a mouth makes
in sabotage

to our regularly
scheduled      desk&vessel

does a madness
so nice     so good

in the project our light cleans
of weekends

There is no approach
in presence

I am at the extreme
of this thing here    I am

& your dream makes
the pocket round

for echoing day

---

GARETT STRICKLAND is the editor of .PLINTH., ICHNOS, and other publications of the Unwin-Dunraven Literary Ecclesia. He is the author of a long-poem, WHOA DONT CARE (Jerkpoet, 2015), and UNGULA (forthcoming from Solar▲Luxuriance). He’s an ordealist.

Poetry By Leslie Contreras Schwartz

PAPER DOLL CHAIN

Girls folded in upon girl and
another girl, holding hands of paper

a mask of thick mascara, eye-
liner, owling their eyes

paper dolls for play, holding
hands and repeating
thoughts, solo boats set afloat

by boys and men, pushed
farther still by the white world.

How to anchor except by holding hands with other
girls, girls to size and compare,

how their edges crease or fold more than
yours, how you want that too. That rusty anchor

in my best friend, which I hold onto,
its breast shape and weighted steady

as she practices her hand-smother and the gentle crush
of me. How else are we to prepare for the Mexican boys

now roaming the hallways, their arms
a hanging hook around some brown girl's neck?

Girls wanting to know
what it takes be a woman, how much to erase.

The rubber tip leaving no mark
left of a girl in a woman set inside the body of a man

or a boy. For now, it's a game of that blow
she knows is coming. I let her teach

it to me, practice and practice the art of being
inside other bodies, hers and then his
and his, all those brown, white,

red red bodies.
Never mine.

ANIMAL LIFE

Those black-beat wings. A rustle in my chest, those balled fist-of-hearts beating like lit
bulbs that click on and off, secret spark.       Too many people move about, waist deep in
swamp stench, the doors of buildings breaking into dark waters.     No matter to them.
Their bodies glide like liquid, agile, part of this covering up and over.           So, hide, little
warriors of fur, blood-rimmed eyes staining the night, the quiet blinking, the barely
breath. Hide to live amid these bloated houses, straining to contain all its things,
cosmetics and laced-up shoes and plastic toys that constantly sing. Because everything
sings, constantly, a radio tune that no one wants to hear but keeps on playing. Those can't
keep my hands to myselfs, those go love yourselves.   A smothered piano, a cello, a
symphony, in the tight muscle around my lungs, beating into me like my own bright
blood. I cannot live here if I don't save this hush, this furious sound.

HEADLONG

On the photograph "Pleasure and Terrors of Levitation," by Aaron Siskind

Headlong, body-long
spun into air--
a white man containing a woman
containing her crippled
walk, her brown body,
in his limbs, that whip-shaped
hair. He carries
her freedom in his levity,
that will to never fall to earth,
to be held buoyant by nothing
but air and belief in his own brilliance.
O, to be that light,
and to still be weighted
by the body's core of muscles,
bone and tissues, toughing its way
through sinew and blood to move
and be seen, to be allowed to be
a body that moves through the world
at will, that flock of black birds
crashing through the sky
of white starlight. Not
this life of boxes within boxes
within boxes--

Let me be that. Let all women
and girls, men and boys,
be that, stretching their bodies
along the sun-track to God,
not caring how many times
we fall apart and break,
that fall-apart dance so familiar
to us all. All those beautiful broken
spines lined up to make a ladder
to find what is missing.

---

Leslie Contreras Schwartz  is a Mexican-American writer of Maya descent, and a third-generation Houstonian. Her first collection of poetry, Fuego, was published by St. Julian Press in March 2016. She writes poetry, essays, and fiction about the lives of women and girls, particularly as survivors of bodily and psychic trauma. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Collagist, Hermeneutic Chaos, Tinderbox Literary Journal, Houston Chronicle, Catapult, and more. She lives in Houston with her husband and three children.