Issue 32: James Garwood-Cole

from EXPENDED SEQUENCE OUT OF

V.

Kitchen

over

sink, dead-plugged or

puckered ‘n’ all...  huffy.

It’s a kitchen       poem

the morning of it,       cuffing bottomed        out

serrating diameters,    so simple there,     cut-

-ting fingers up, making them say:               bloody.

Getting into the little hole

you open it, in the ending—

there’s no base is to it          just

like                                           houses.

In the kitchen sink drama everything is,      anyways

alike, there’s everything in it,                     haunted,

            how it really is!

VII.

                        Coming out like liver

slick, twist

                        lie up it, listing/speak, former

                        twisted or             fall back down.

Tell them tell them tell them tell them go

away       it’s going to

Battenberg Britain,     an endless

is it like cake?

                        Spongy like Victorian terracing

                       made into flats—

                       remade into millionaire

                       shortbread/       sweet in the middle.

Another little soapbox drama

and inside it, ha!

Game feet.

VIII.

                        Short poems are so bloody

                        stupid, they’re

                        class in that                     this way,

                        democratic, read them at lunch.

Pace out      foot   foot   foot foot foot

lefting harvested just   over

easy walking—a random

walk stop probably...    nvr.

                        So contrivances there’s

                        yeah that’s so right,    put the piece

                        together launched,     semifictional by,

                        by Du Pont       TEFLON TEFLON TEFLON  does stick!

Making it about turtle/Oh!

What a wonderful, unpretencing about the world

/poetry.

IX.

Not one but the any

other so much space away,

by miles counted, ploughing

oxgangs if yes if it’s swimmable.

One million two-hundred

sixty-three thousand, six-

hundred fifty-one, point!

, two furlongs.

Forty rods per furlong and

five- and one-half yard to a rod;

that’s so much tilling to,  do

between now and it then.

They swim the channel               you get

to know, no virgate, one oxens

one fucking ox stupid/      I’m stuck in.

XIV.

We made it to space!

And the ground is soft,

and the sun is     weak,

and it’s all          gently and weighted.

Have a flat in the space

like slack line/the level on

making it      homey and—Oh! baby,

sun in the growing-panel.

Bloodless and bitten tong

windower, scrap puck any  

lays to luddite-ing;      call it

going around                   your “nee-nooring.”

Not a single Robbie

on the wee-woo wet space

and                          no illegal dusting.

James Garwood-Cole is completing a PhD at the University of Chicago and is CoEditor of Chicago Review. They live in Chicago, IL. James has previously lived in London and Brighton, UK.

Copyright © 2024 by James Garwood-Cole, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of Copyright law. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author