John Updike

18 March 1932 - 27 January 2009

New Poetry From Andrew Dotson

Scumboy

Too many times I’ve lied

Lied to you, to myself

On your futon sprawled like an open sparrow

That moment you saw me at the back of the bus

Hunched into line

Expecting nothing

You remarked about my gold watch

And I winced.

You were far apart

Yet so near

To me at the terminal

Where we debussed

Rambling in aimless effort

Entering a cool bistro amid a sweltering wave

You couldn’t afford to foot my terms

So we left to find a better plane.

It was there that things began

At that mahogany table

In the Hotel Congress

Wared through the ages

Serving countless customers

Through flappers, to corporates

To vagrants – you

Offering me a chance to get better acquainted

Sucking marijuana smoke through a tube.

The ultimate resolution

I didn’t go with you that first day

Up to your greasy flat filled with cans

To loll some and let the seriousness fade.

I kept firm, played hard to get

So hard when you called me I went to relent

The next time you spotted me

Sitting in the courtyard

I agreed.

It lasted, then ended

All else my departure

I wanted so much for it

But what?

You to seize me

You to please?

But that was too much to ask for.

Too many times I’ve lied

Lied to you, to myself

Reclined on my spine

In wait for the unexpected to come at last

My comic book geek, my scumboy

That trance…

Andrew Dotson is a 19 year-old poet, songwriter and student currently residing in Arizona. His poetry has appeared previously in Zone.

Three Poems From RC Miller

MOTION LOTION

This is a rock from the earth.
We will curse it warm.
This is how we train ourselves.

On overdose rumors
Let us continue having lungs.

O my puddle.
O my smoked person.
O my puddle of briers.

Mimicking the muzzle of gizzard bags
We must turn back
Toward the two-headed mermaid's shifty lagoon.

We must reach back
For the one-footed crow.
We must be swept back
Into a collection of shingles
Falling from the one-footed pigeon's stubby deliverance.

O my puddle.
O my smoked person.
O my profession of briers.

O shit say word.

Innate surrender makes known what really is,
From where,
From how what is came to be.

The transcendence of the sickle
Speculating an event unborn.
Our kindle of excessive kingdoms
Amazing as a beauty without risk.

Within its multiple nature
The approaching world humiliates another womb
Innately liberating our authentic hypnosis.

On a scale not worshipped before
Derivative outbreaks reject the broth of delusion
Foraging multiple lumps
Obsessed with yet another zipper not graphic enough,
Another reflector
Masquerading omens from our earliest interior.

O my wolves.
O my acid saliva wolves.
O our dignified collapse.

If in this twilight oven
The bitter dragon rain
Holds its saddle tightly,
Let glory praise the unborn
Fighting to mimic our seed.

Let glory praise
The highest pawnbrokers face to face,
Mounting bald microwaves on cruel meteors
Sweeping dizzy ash
Aroused to impress patches of disaster.

My black origins filter out
The tumbled crease of deceased husk.

My decay quiets
Like the wrinkled design of our sedation.

O we receive the black.
O we premiere the blank.

We disappear from window ledges
With black vomit on our rugs.

Our pious haze evasively submerged in jagged petal bodies.

Shadows ooze from the prophet's pores.
Halls are dedicated to green oil boiled in clay.

Octopus blood sits down
Snorting spooky bacon crowns.

Cargo of wood beyond the rock
Mirrors an innovation beyond our matter.

O my shit.
O my words.
O I stay

Below the itchy crucifix,
A space shaved by immense and anonymous smirks.

A needy enigma combing extra spasms,
Receiving the blank,
Premiering our black,

O there is no turning back.


CHEST OF BITCHES

The child toasts his wheel and winks.
I drink and work
As do indefinite feats.
The monks they peg a natural slave within reach.

You start your paws upon the threshold of another's flesh.
A buff Bin Laden moodswing
Pumps wastebaskets into the dicey rags.
Your shoulders are such spare orchards
Hoagie hopping the crunk and elusive mess.

Nihilism is my shuffling issue.
There I relapse
Manila prongs of recurring stink.

We cannot die.
We die.
My dark
I no longer borrow
A youth starved you.

On the run
I use your cleavage to masturbate
In seasons mocking
A certain damp snuff of tantrum.
Intimately we shuffle our issues.
What is imagined appears as reason.

We die with so much shock left to buy.
We cannot die no matter how chunk I dry.

From airline to flatline
I take disaster to give relief.
I pray our purpose remains a comedy
Starving those tamed at last.

From habitat to fracture
I flay in chalk to get relief.
Your shoulders soon weep their spares
Purring like rented glitches of me.

We've always died
Striving for the single string and curved branch
Made aware if they are carried.
It's too sad our tourniquets
Ebb when recovery moats
Arrange all flesh aflame.

My dark
I begin again where once was pride.


THE STORY SO FAR

Brains get chummy once the master conveys a torrid illusion
Called get lucky.
Brains a million and drumming up roses
Once placebos kill the downpour passing before we fall.
Everything's illusion.
The downpour's sequential, a manner for brains.
Our collars get lucky as they're mastered,
And everything's illusion and passing us dolls.
Ideas of the sacred, too old to derive sense from my youth.
I'm pigs sitting at desks.
I'm pigs watching their watches watch.
I'm pigs with points of view.
By day I want anything.
I want anything, but still
I'm an awful pill to get cummed on.
And as you grow the sun I taste the matter where we live.
A lonely when comes after night.
Though blindness is fun, another waits.
The plumber next door was busted by cops then buried alive.
My neighbor's rooftop is the best place to smoke weed.
Be it your breathmint or milkbone, I always make room for strangers.
All is sorrow.
There is sorrow.
The cause of sorrow.
The removal of sorrow.
The way to the removal of sorrow.
All is sorrow.



Born 1974 in Parkersburg, West Virgina, RC Miller is a poet and photographer currently living in New York City. He blogs sporadically at Vision Blues.