J.B. MULLIGAN's poems and stories have most recently appeared in Purple and Aught. He lives in New York.



blindstar

black hole of lost faith, blindstar,
room of collapse he lives in,
looks out the windows
at pelts of dead light
and dark strewn bones
of the past -

falling in all directions at the center,
restless and immobile
in a nonexistent web -
believing himself abandoned
and filling the cave
with booty of his voiding -

the shock! of slow light,
the warm veining and visceration
out like a petaling world,
swollen with luxury
out of luxuriant shrivel -

to rub the skin
raw or smooth,
he will feel, he will feel his life
as if it were a god -

and erect empty altars
of two broken lightbeams
sucking inward




unique rose

flaesh-formed chains of experience
referents
for the clumsy bod
and the timorous heartbeast
hungry

what else to taste and collate
the dozen apples
of a singsong tree

coherence is anathema and faith
and what coheres them
falls between the lips
slips beneath the fall
and shimmys off
while the rope of being
keeps us to the trunc

how to be new...
other...

how to love

what is our god
but the echo of narcissus
by a shoreless pool
we take down our harps
and bloody our thingers
on snapping fings
hoping
to touch it again
for the first time

ah the birth of it
to be mother
to each event we glance upon and off

the first child of spacetime
heartsucking happily

not the art of it
but the living
chainless
as if each unique rose
were unique




stilldance

brightflaesh darkflaesh
sun and antisun exploding
strobelight life in the cave
movement painted and plastered
until it is still still
the drops accumulate coagulate
the eyestars weeping
all amberfrozen wombed
stillborn still

the pictures fan like flames
and something dances
bright or dark
the blur of which
stills us
instills inus
the particule
that the wave is about

notches are cut
into the night brease
and counted

the bottle floating on the sea
surrenders inside
the note rerights itself
in a script like a school
of hungry mating commafish

Help! The eyeland,s escaped
it hides beneath horizon
rizon briefly
to peek like Kilroy

the wave rushes past
what the particule,s about
but a kiss chases after




a free pearl of great prize

something fixes in the flaesh
diamond in light facetless
something stays that went by
taking here to there
not as a photograph
brings a mountain home
& we climbed to the top
then went back down
but as the mountain
follows the climber
slides like a shadow
across river and plane
flowing back from the feet
like a rope of transparent silk
to the stone suncracked heights

taking now to then
then to now
as the midnight star
one among many
springles spores of light
into eyes that look back
from the following noon

the sievior of the occurring world
miner panning the crosswind
gathering magnet
prayst at the marriage
of flotsam and jetsam
blessing the chylde of now
and the birth of tomorrow
some time ago

something of this stays
accumulates on the net of self
+ til the fisher rises
plump and hungry

the meat being set
something sets in the meat
gem in the mud
breath in the leaves
of the fathering tree

something real
without substance
set in the meat
solidified