Steve Carll


The Feeling of Listening to Underground
 
woke metal underground
I up and threw my breath into the dark world
not a whisper
a sound I voice repeated lengthwise
a claustrophobic underground remark
a telling step down standing light
shake the dark to grow this first light,
fear struck my resolve  
metal breeze suddenly moves me wrong
not found from cornered running that ground love,
but just to ease my left a track began time here
had a move 	strange 	black 	closing now,
no just couldn't nothing "whoo" nowhere whoo
what I said I heard, I took a thing to find
nothing looked along broken light and began floating underground
to a far away hunger I heard
by thirst I encountered the brake
a light stood through my little hall 
and began to place me along along no "whoo"
and find
and found
and (mmm)
 


Midnight, Electrical, Static, Feather

midnight electrical static feather
charted illicit arithmetical chatter
we seethe ethical ditties
our helical slither is tactile italics
atheist citadel attired in calcite
cattier than fragmented catchers
the attache's titanic afterimage stretched
to ratchet tithing lattices
a federalism lighted to clatter
in glitter reciting
theatrical fanaticism inciting the frightened

The Anticipation of Having Something in the Microwave you Really Wanna Eat

is so delicious, you could eat that. But not cold, no, you gotta heat it up before you can eat it up. And this gives rise to the ouroboros snake that is appetite. Or would be, if that snake could eat its own tail cold. But it can't. Few meals are less palatable than cold tail, especially one's own. But how to close the oven door so as to nuke a tail? You could cut it off, but then would it still be yours? And being a snake, you might grow a new one, and then this whole ouroboros thing is thrown into complete chaos. It's an unresolvable paradox, like the ship of Theseus fresh out of the repair dock, trying to sail one league but having to sail a half a league first, with Theseus at the helm shouting "everything I say is a lie!" and trying to figure out whether to believe himself. But just when you think you're going to have to revisit that video on Korzybski's General Semantics to make the whole thing make sense again,
DING!
your burrito is ready and your mouth is watering. Let's see a snake's mouth do that.




Steve Carll recently moved to Humboldt County, California with his family. Previous publications include Tracheal Centrifuge (Factory School, 2006), Tao Drops, I Change (with Bill Marsh, Subpress, 2004), Trace a Moment's Closure For Clues (Logodaedalus, 1996), and Sincerity Loops (Bathysphere, 1995) and his work has most recently appeared in Otoliths #64. From 1988-1998, he edited the literary journal Antenym. Video of him reading his collected poetry 1991-2021 live can be found on YouTube at https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDJeO4dNUaImEVoIt8RkH3PYC_Gx2_04c/.

 
 

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