TABLE OF DISCONTENTS by Russell Streur

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Offering 55 is now available: Table of Discontents by Russell Streur.

 

TABLE OF DISCONTENTS #21

DNA testing
Grief and fury
A continuous loop
Ceaseless violence
A rock and no place
Denial of the genocide
Records are sealed
A dark film
Deadlock

“They will come get me now,”
the man outside the café said.
“They will torture me and I will disappear.”

Information leak
Ordinary business.

ill of i by Joseph A. W. Quintela

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Offering 53 is now available: ill of i by Joseph A. W. Quintela.

 

On Becoming Mrs. Dalloway
Mrs. Dalloway said she would
love walking in London, said Mrs. Dalloway, really it’s better than
being Mrs. Dalloway; not even Clarissa anymore, this being
the violent explosion which made Mrs. Dalloway.
Mrs. Dalloway, coming to the window with her arms full of [       ]
Mrs. Dalloway, coming out of [       ]
Mrs. Dalloway, raised her hand to her eyes and
taking Mrs. Dalloway’s parasol, handled it like a sacred weapon.
In came Mrs. Dalloway.
But, said Mrs. Dalloway, she had enough.
Oh, thank you, said Mrs. Dalloway, and thank you, thank you, she went on.
Mrs. Dalloway will see me, said the elderly man in the hall.
Who can — what can, asked Mrs. Dalloway (thinking it was outrageous to be
Mrs. Dalloway, who seldom met, and appeared when they did meet indifferent)
But Mrs. Dalloway had
been in a factory; behind a counter; Mrs. Dalloway and all the
hatred of Mrs. Dalloway. This grudge against the world, she thought,
did not hate Mrs. Dalloway.
Mrs. Dalloway said,
She despised Mrs. Dalloway from the bottom of her heart.
Mrs. Dalloway had triumphed,
had impressed Mrs. Dalloway (she could not get the thought
up), one by one, Mrs. Dalloway walking last and almost always
felt that Mrs. Dalloway was far the best of the
movies — when Mrs. Dalloway came
late (dear Mrs. Dalloway, we hardly dared to come),
drawing Mrs. Dalloway into the [       ].

HEART PIE by David Mac

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Offering 52 is now available: Heart Pie by David Mac.

 

Mascara

 

beetles in your boudoir belch from your black liquid eyes

your heart’s a grey ashtray the shape of a skull

 

I have come here again with my bouquet of wilting flowers

I have come to lovingly break your neck

 

and you can hardly believe the words hissing from my mouthpiece

they are not the ones you expected

 

so, as I cross the room to find a vase, all that separates us is

the sound of tears from your eyes, and poison from mine

 

 

– previously appeared in Purple Patch

OF THE NONE EXPOSED by Michael Mc Aloran

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Offering 50 now available: Of the None Exposed by Michael Mc Aloran.

 

15-

 

Breathless eye
 
Of the begun
 
(spoken less of)
 
Vapours
 
Tracing the night’s
 
Parchment
 
Meat to tear
 
In sun sunk spun
 
Of ashes
 
Cadaver guillotine
 
Noose/ dread/ scuttling
 
In the dark
 
Muscle of pulse
 
All the while the ebbing
 
And the absence
 
Of all
 
Graceless
 
Traceless as the eye
 
Vacant of pupil’s light

HOJO BOY by Kyle Hemmings

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Offering 49 is now available: Hojo Boy by Kyle Hemmings.

 

hojo boy #11

when your fort[u]ne cookies make the hostess
w/ the most delicately timed noodles–blush

when we can no longer capture the white summer
girls in barefeet-barley-hop  w/ instant flash

when i can no longer sauté your icelandic heart
in 3/5th wine & 2/5th jungle combat

will i reveal to you the secret ingredients
to my watergate goose-silent long-necked stew

i cook to the taste.

NOSE BUSTER by David Lawrence

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Offering 48 is now available: Nose Buster by David Lawrence

HAND IN HAND

Be a have not in a sack containing nothing at all.
In the promise of tomorrow you shut down.
You forget me not
And then no longer remember my name.
Have you given all your milk to that cow?
Is separation an impetus to come back together?
I love you so much that I could be content
Watching our hands walk down the street together.

THE TEN PAGES PRESS READER – VOL. 3

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Offering 47 is now available: The Ten Pages Press Reader (Volume III).

like a voice
David McLean
like a voice in the nighttime
a lady asking how empires fall
and what the point of it might be
building stones on bodies on pieces of time
they have sliced and keep in buckets,

all the happy ghosts standing on fortifications
where they have been soldiers,
where they have been swordsmen
or whores and glorious,
like a god dressed in the seed

of some deep avocation. promises
and whatever, all the reasons we are lacking,
all dressed up in eyes and voices
in the nighttime, ghosts again;
sex and time out of mind,

a night alive

FLESH WOUNDS by RC Edrington

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Offering 46 now available: Flesh Wounds by RC Edrington.

 

Sick Fucks

in a trailer
with boarded-up windows
on 33rd & 5th
a rookie cop puked
into a shit clogged toilet
& called for an ambulance
despite the fact
2 year old Melissa
had been rotting
from starvation
& dehydration
for at least a week
while in the trash
cluttered bedroom
momma lay overdosed
with a welfare check
coursing pure Afghani
horse through her caved
hypodermic veins

2 blocks away
on South 6th Avenue
Johnny’s 3rd grade head
bounced like an 8-ball
against a scarred
black hardwood floor
blood splattered
an abstract painting
to stain the vomit
stenched Ice-T shirt
of momma’s white-nigger
wanna-be pimp
whacked out on
crack cocaine

3 blocks south
& 1 block east
this alcoholic writer
sits at a pool hall
& slams his
5th shot of Jose Cuervo
& fist against the bar
while Shorty passes
a Folger’s coffee can
for the families
left behind
& tells me services
will be held at
St. Anthony’s Cathedral
over on 6th & 22nd
3 days apart
& in my reflective
drunkeness
wonder if
these loyal Catholics
had been permitted
condoms & abortion
none of this shit
would have had
to go down

HOW WE FUCK SHIT UP by Aleathia Drehmer & Brad Burjan

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Offering 45 is now available: How We Fuck Shit Up by Aleathia Drehmer & Brad Burjan.

Toy(ing) with the Revolution

For Brad Burjan
 
You can’t wrap your fingers
around it, the elusive it.
 
There aren’t too many
things to wrap a finger
 
around, but the image
burns my eyes; your
 
fingers long and rough
wrapping around the neck
 
of the establishment.  You
mutter it is all gift wrap
 
for tiny toys anyway.  I try to laugh
but all I see are toy machetes
 
and your fingers the revolutionaries
taking it all down; your breath
 
the revolution itself, pulling
it in and spitting it back out.
 
Your tears create the flood
that washes them all away.
 

Aleathia Drehmer

WE WILL PLAN BIG THINGS by Mary Stone Dockery

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Offering 44 is now available: We Will Plan Big Things by Mary Stone Dockery.

Like Gravity

The dots on the star charts

are the same size as ants trailing

from the kitchen counter

to the back door, the same size

as holes in the mesh screen.

They are the same size

as the moles on your back,

as stars we point to

from the back patio at night.

Your back is the same

silky substance as the sky

contains as many constellations,

I trace each mole

as if the sky begins at my fingers.

Each day we are tugged closer

to the ground, microscopic moments

us touching, that thing you said ,

your back arching over a bed

the ground beneath us trembling

with the weight of clouds, pain, comets –

flung into cosmic distances.

The whites of your eyes

work like gravity,

drawing me in

PARROT IN A PIRATE’S HAT by Mark Cunningham

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Offering 43 is now available: Parrot in a Pirate’s Hat by Mark Cunningham.

 

 

The corn cob holders looked like little cobs of corn.  I was suspicious of tampering because the new plastic didn’t come wrapped in plastic.  Charlie Brown doesn’t have a belly button.  She pointed out that “know” and “no” are pronounced the same.  If You Can Read This, You Are Too Close.

THE TEN PAGES PRESS READER – VOLUME 2

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Offering 42 is now available: The Ten Pages Press Reader (Volume II).

CLUSTER
David Tomaloff
i.
the elephant, the lion,
&the scarecrow—

how we traded our hearts
for the flesh-colored soil

ii.
upon our shoulders,
the trembling hands of the forest

,  &how all we could muster was
everything &tomorrow

iii.
how we folded ourselves
into clusters

of average little bombs

THE TEN PAGES PRESS READER VOL. 1

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Offering 41 is now available: The Ten Pages Press Reader (Volume I).

Thank you to all the contributors for such a quick response to my call for submissions. I am still accepting submissions for additional volumes.

Matterhorn
Keith Higginbotham

Heart, heart:
cataracts are not my scene.

The mirror
ricochets headphone
cymbals, keys.

Puzzle paper beats
its rope.

No is the stuff of aureoles:
a sterilized place already

zeroed
into pyramid sleep.

THE TEN PAGES PRESS READER — CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

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Since the first release in March of this year, Ten Pages Press has published 40 e-chapbooks. To celebrate this nice round number, I would like to put out what I’m calling The Ten Pages Press Reader. It will be a collection of work by multiple authors in the same format as 10PP’s chaps: 10 pages of work, with an 11th on the website.

So, previous 10PPers (and noobs), please send in 1-3 pieces to the usual email address. Poetry or prose accepted, however keep in mind the page limit. Meaning, the shorter the better. This time new work only, please. I will put multiple pieces on the same page, and if I receive enough quality submissions, I will release multiple readers, however we shall see.