ISSUE EIGHT: Melty Slayers | next poem →

Boatship: Port Layout Gossips

Matthew Johnstone

No here one left owning that
                         so noises stay,
a station
heat
             lets nothing touch
             because organ,
because oilskin
             because told in
             islands, to heavy
the intuition,
threw

             out
to
reformation
so
collision, the
             accusation of
territory.
             Because sure
foam, because
             harpoon, because
             sneer, the
stray
             rot.

+

So what I
have
kept, englishes
that

             surround no island.
Your casting is where
the shade picture works,
             some
plague tore
brogues out.
             My
             far, heard
             mouth
             tighten
             beaks.
This much
the isthmus
collected in,   

outsides out every
second or so,
a lit quarter, dances the fog.

+

Yaw grind in
persistent viscera.
             Surface you
make
             away, oilfire,
             yell among yell.
Stood on chairs,
because
             cenotaph,
vocable
             because
quay, tear

be torn. Merest,

the hand sound a making
             glass,
hurled
             furring

sea.
About away, but go
             that
             assumes arc.
Arrow, from.
Place I stacked my own shade.

Matthew Johnstone places poetry with online journals that provide free and entire, or mostly entire, access to the poetry they present: Word For/Word, Gobbet, Timber, Ohio Edit. He is the author of Let's be close Rope to mast you, Old light (Blue & Yellow Dog, 2010), o n e (Inpatient Press, 2015), and Note on Tundra (DoubleCross Press, forthcoming). He co-edits 'Pider (pidermag.com) and hosts the E t A l. poetry readings, both of Nashville, Tennessee.

ISSUE EIGHT: Melty Slayers | next poem →











ISSUE Eight: Melty Slayers

Laurin DeChae
   Snakes & Ladders
   It Will Be Alive

Jessie Janeshek
   Future Girls with Bikinis
     beneath Bruce Springsteen Tees

Samantha Duncan
   Juliet

Kenzie Allen
   According to Science

Jessy Randall
   Here comes a poor woman
      from baby-land

   Here comes an old woman,
     nimble namble

Ruben Rodriguez
   Because I’m Bad Ass and
      I Said So

Colleen Coyne
   Echolocation

Rob Cook
   Unmarked Neural Pathways
   Keratoconus

Jon Riccio
   The Area Code for ESP

Jennifer MacBain-Stephens
   Solstice

Roger Williams
   Come Eleven

Matthew Johnstone
   Boatship: Port Layout Gossips

Daniel Schwartz
   Out/Night

Amy Carlberg
   Desktop

AP
   Embody the State of the World