Ronald Palmer's poems have recently appeared in magazines including Green Mountains Review and
Issues in Contemporary Culture and Aesthetics.





Camo: Flag: E(L): Lation

"...this earth / Is only for our prison fram'd..."
                                                          - John Donne


Martyr of: The mom: Ent: rusted to your sealed mouth.
National Tour: ni: quet! Pre: Tend: Ency to Skin Envy!
My Ex: (hausted) Mother: sighs into her phone paym: Ent: iced into another
GANG: RENE: (D): REAM (gold:card:keen)
SAVE: THE: GAY: GENE!

Gren: Ade: nitis. Gang: Rene: wed. Send me swe: ating into another
paranoidal scream: but IN:SIDE! (in:side.) Rene: GED on another promise:
of the mom: Ent: ropic Rene: Gade. Aim another billion-dollar: de: fensive
laser:beam.
SAVE: THE: GAY: GENE!

My camouflaged elation becomes pensive flagellation. O my:
staid generational mom: Ent: wined in $: and (pause):
Racial bulimia. Radical de: tox: emia! Martyr of the mom:
Ent: ombed: (I'm im: muring my life): I've:yet:to:be:seen.
SAVE: THE: GAY: GENE!







The Logic of Mourning

"...profusely blinde, / Wee kill our selves to propagate our kinde."
                                                        - John Donne (from An Anatomie of the World)


Sing: (ed) son of sorrow: stay the night. You're right: mourning travels:
like light. Wilt: ed: ition of the self: be warned. Lift the worm: hole
absent-mindedly to your mouth: bend-warp a shortcut across the universe.
Re: verse this song: mourning's might: is absorbed into any object that
feels: like light: (which is everything).

Language and Meaning: a quick cop: ulation inside the body's future
destination. Baiting a threat: BE PRE: PARED TO DIE TONIGHT! Singes humid
blindness: a colon: ized army of tiny ants: march loop-de-loops up our
legs: embroidering darkness: onto my third-tier s: kin. Let the global
class: (war) be: gin on the in: ternet.

(spoon me: your rusted father): Go now: fill your body with tears.
Death's anaesth: etized years. Reach up: stir stagnant darkness: with
your striated thumb. I've just begun: to emit this den: dritic logic:
with a silent tongue. Gal: actic syn: aptic. The info-burnt network
ignites: drains the orange: sunset to whites.







My Top: Ten Requirements For: My Top:

"...while you are not safe I am not safe..."
                                                  - Allen Ginsberg


1. He must be able to kill: me in less: than seven seconds.

2. He must be angry: like a starving: person is angry.

3. He must smell: only of his: own body.

4. He must think like a saint.

5. He must not speak.

6. He must have thumbs of Rodin's Balzac: thumbs solid: like two minor
Gods: thick weights in my hands. (Your thumb is a God in my hand).

7. He must have something blank in his eyes: that reminds me: of my father.

8. He must sob: like a newborn: after love.

9. He must be unshaven everywhere.

10. He must never kiss me. He must: never. Otherwise: I snap:
out: of: my: jolt:numbing dream.







Mor: Al: Arm: Or

(with Billy X. O'Brien)


Freeze the flat screen. A surface is pinned: with pine trees
to the frozen earth. I: train traveling: snip the river at the
bridge.(Later: I am wine. I smell of sugar. Earlier: I am shock.)

Gone from the rigorous house: to rewrite the world: at dawn:
We jerk a circ: le around the de: funct can: (n)on!
Coming:back:home:is:less:demanding:than:you'd:imagine.

A furthering: s:perm for mil:k: con: fuses my dys:
Functional relationship with death. A furthering:
I find myself: yawning: into a logo-fatigued dizziness.

Beside the corp: orate traffic: each driver zoning: rubbernecking
at the sunny wedding. I withhold forgivness: where blame blanks out: a new
drama. Love the colon: loathe the comma. I'm awkward:

Advertisements: for myself. A simple schism of fractured embarrassments.
If I'm for myself as prism: Do I have a choice:
to lift the clouds with my voice? Lecturing at the dust particles:

I swat the briefly radical bulb. Billy says: We're at the dead
end of dust: I trust: your prelogical wings: are less fragile:
than infinity? If not cow: then hen? If not God: then Zen?

O Hill: elian: syllo: gism! This here's a call to blandness:
where I become a fogged field: of atypical neo-blindness. Pine stumps sawed
smooth for my blind eyes. Gloved in gasoline: counting one:one:

Until a boy in a blue truck: arrives with his father
and singular sister. All my voids erode into yelps.
Is this earth a bouy? Or a boy: whoring around:

On the Bareback site: I'm shamedoubled: honortracked:
by a flock of alarmists. Cons: truct thy self: co:quet:tish
with freshly:packed:trauma: re-enacted as flesh:fe:tish:

Return to hell to find the self: renamed: co: co: on: wrapped
in a neatly woven sack: slid into a pupil-sized hole:
in the bored eye of your spirit wall: (grin: pony: flip): All

This: assumes: life's worth living: my moral alarm clan:
ging (horror) clim: bing into my E-laced: moral:armor:plush.
A furthering: voy:euris:tic teenager: seeking mor:alm:esh.

Give up: you can't: ab:so:(lve):rb the father: through the flesh.







Nyb: Bulling The Zen: Tense

(with Billy X. O'Brien)


Nyb: bull the sep: tic: sore:
a He:id:egg:erian ope:
ning: triggers the inse:
rt: I board two: selves into you.

Nibble is cunning: running
its mouth all the time. Nibble is mine.
nibb: le's squirming into elec:
tronic limbo: Nibble should have never been born.

In: formation bouncing bet: ween the sun and the moon:
dis: rupting e-: ownership's a death: (nibble nibble):
a 1940's ill: usion of old men: eyes gla: zed in do: nut shops.
(fl: ash to mod: urn): still sit (still):

One shaking hand on the rim of a cof:
fee cup. As if: my head mat: ters in this ling:
uistic water: nibb: ling my ton: gue
while my eye's break the glassy sur: face (of hope):

nibb: ling a cerebral moat: Holder: lin wrote: "We are a sign
that does not read." I too am sor: ry and skel: etal:
bene: ath this need for ave: rage beauty: an opening:
in my dream: like a rip in my pow: der pink sky:

Let the st: range soul nibbling in: for: cing
me to fastwhisper: into my wet pill: ow:
Iloveyou:Iloveyou:Iloveyou. Nibble's still too quick:
mindwhipped: till I'm flu: ng back

into every: inter: action's comp: lex text.
Nibb:ling through beau: tiful bar codes: of sun: light:
zebra the darling: count: ry road: scrib: bling on a los:
ing: lot: tery ticket: pushes me beyond: the origin of harm:

a warning as farce: I become my own: pole: mical son:
a defi: ant card: inal: flying in: finity: loops around the sun:
like a blood clot: I fly a fast line:
leaving my wing: redtrace: sign like a scratched match

across midair: draws a line from tree to tree: my que: er
thought left linge: ring above the lawn: ec: hoing
a warning: in my queer: mind mirrors the pulsing universe:
Billy says: my app: roach to you: is vertical:

horizon: tal is numb: er one: nibble two: keeled over: didn't sue:
flat like : a number eight (dead on it's side!) Number two?:
this symbol: won't do: nibble: nibble: don't chew:
science presents us: with an illu:

sion we are ap: parent: ly so: lit:ary
and it is sound on which we
walk: the number eight: always be:
neath our gliding feet:

two circles glued together: walking a par: allel line with the horizon until
happen upon a wha: le he: art left on the be: ach let: ting its: elf fil:
ter: death: through sand. (nib:nibble:nib) Then and there I dis: cover: I
am a coat: for exi: stence: a prop: a boot: it's host.

Existence is a: "very-real-looking" virus: as we are: (nibble nibble
nibble): --from the squin: ting squidlike cosmic God's dis: tance-- mold
squiggling through earth's ti: le cracks. Nibble is yours. Nibble is
planetary and social and ultimately sublime. Nibble

erodes the assumption of ethics: Nibble defines its own aesthetics. Nibble
jumps from sense within sense: Nibble only survives quick though dense:
Nibble dissolves the fence. Nibble swims in the in-between: nibble is
orange and purple and green.

skin on the white ground: notice the blood:
had freshly fallen: from backyard of a corporate playground:
snow. One girl will not remember anything. They will remember
it's color: skin. A red coat creates a snowball: by rolling bleeds.

I got up from the bed. The mirror made me think: wet snow from blood on the
back of my thigh: from chaffing: red tiny mittens soaked from wiping clean a
slide. A boy: look out of my office window into my legs: I itch it so much
it breaks. This is rehashed and transfered:

a new eruption. But all of this prevents itself:
and she tetters alone toward a tree. Snow places on her coat
with the precision of a layer of blood
years. So many have been here before and will visit this place.

As I write this their snow skin feels today;
the snow does not feel
like calves it's whiteness, white
like life's lie.

Not: per: haps not: nib: ble will not: die: af: ter all.






Billy X. O'Brien was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1973. He works at Houghton Mifflin and the
Boston Living Center.