Issue 13: Colin Lee Marshall

500 Advanced Phrasal Verbs

1-100

Melted up

             unable any longer to

loaf into

             a maligned circadian rhythm, we

graft astowards

             the docility of legislative object.

             Such pliancy makes it difficult even

             to masturbate on the sofa at 4 AM—

             so I detumesce in my palm, have a non-wank

             to the meiosis of our

being juggled out of

             flesh and

into

             tenoned number.

             If there’s to be any chance of getting through

             the mortise will have to

hole out

             (for pricks like me) into analogy

             a thing to

do off out into for.

101-200

             So keen is the guilt that it must be real

blent inthrough

             the machinery, to be offset only when I

wake through

             money, when I

lucre it out

             or when I

slot to.

             Or when the body politic

discorporates opposite

             seeing itself finally as a vulnerable écorché

             with muscles learnable into wyrd design(s)

             and bones amenable to creative ossature.

201-300

             How deep am I into those days

             the world’s ommatidia

can’t saw

             dirty with scotomata(s) I

be’d onto

             them, these days when we couldn’t see each other (I

was myself out

             of it, and it likewise

was’d me out

             ). I

fell awake with

             world, was

tickled into

             the road.

301-400

             The little boy who

gagged down

             his apology, near-yoked by words

             into formal contrition, dreamt a new archetype

             of burnt mother

constricted down into

             lupine denial of the stepfather he

screamed inverse

             after he was

thrown still

             on his sister’s birthday.

401-500

             Wild, hominid blood

checked under

             by the great styptic, I have learned to hate you nature

             in other seas, and to fear it in my own as dreadful, or weak

             and both. I had almost

turned wrong

             the can’t into a moral won’t

subrepted above

defected beyond

             the future of what I will never reject—the world become

             words that would be charged only towards euphony. [O]

             most etiolated music[!] I am walking down the road…

             I am walking down the road, waiting for the dog that will

bound upthrough

             me as a revenant congener to wolves, that I might finally

horripilate out of

             despair, or

shrivel into

             duty.

Colin Lee Marshall is an Englishman living in South Korea. He recently began writing poetry as a kind of perverse response to (and respite from) his ongoing efforts to make inroads into the Korean language.

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