The neural duct: iron work
discharged as an alignment issue
a service questionnaire title
“on income failure”:
an indictment party
broadcast for a stairwell in a journal drop
the combo
of eroticism tied to lactic acid
breakdown— a protein synthesis
orchestra a community table
paranoid basketful of artifice
construction & king beat makers
break down guilt/love
aspersions cast restive/riotous
in a dogmatic engine subtle like
villainy in bridges just spanning gaps
These brick lungs become
bad news oxygen—
can’t breathe a building
but the building can breathe you
THE RUNNER
Coming
back air-tight
finger diction
the poor
grammar of covering the face
the
non-reflective mirror of palms
the crawl space for the tongue
smuggling malapropisms
decorating the page
w/ a few shed hairs
the obligation is the weight
routine but some comforts
wish
to remain unbroken & mellow
&
into the faux-Persian runner beneath the feet
some
starry-eyed
blur
connection in the aftermath
of a yawn
opens a door
beacon
of oxygen
deprivation
wherein floored now means
lying down
MIDWEEK ARGOT
it starts w/ the skin
crawling
capture-the-word
the last ten
minutes
remaining in Tuesday’s speech—
the burning
pasture— news wears
needles
w/ high fashion
& barricades
are woven
into the
onset of sleep
paint on
a mask of water
snuffing
daytime’s
long
strings still playing the
lips
when all
the notes go slack
The
ambient noise
drips
down the walks in shades of purple
bruises this script
small traumas rolled out
unsuspecting skin—
the
fruit is still edible you know
HALF-DONE
Where
does the weight in ashes come from?
It is
found sifting
through
the remainder of songs sung
distances traveled
containers
& salutations
letters lineage & farewells
Do not
linger on the phone
last inkling of loneliness
live on as the memory
of a
steadfast tower
an
unshakeable resolve
a
determination: miles
driven
snows fallen
summers sweat
springs wept
&
the fall
the
leaving
the
algae painted
edges of a lake
always looming
like a
cagey shadow by the cottage in the
woods
&
the pitch streets
that rise into
unknowable
futures
the
change
the
stoicism of
tragedies
memories
laced in the chagrin
of dead grass
he
grooves of hands & the
grooves of hands &
the grooves of hands
the
undone sentences
of long distance
the statuary of time
in the weight of ashes
the
weight of ashes
ashes & the stains of hopes
the
distance of those
stains
in us the distance of stillness
& the absence in the receiver
the weight in ashes
The
story we carry
forward in blood &
bones
in
murmurs tones in the ashes
we become
Adam Stutz is the co-curator of the
Non-Standard Lit Reading Series with Mark Wallace. His work has appeared or is
forthcoming in The Equalizer: Second
Series, White Stag, The Cultural Society, A Sharp Piece of Awesome, Prelude, Be About It, Deluge and The Pinch. He is the author of the
chapbook Transcript (Cooper Dillon
Books, 2017) and The Scales (White
Stag Publishing, 2018). He currently resides in San Diego, CA.