SHARON OSMOND

CORA IN WINTER

MMMMMMMMMMMMMsick of weather

leansMMMMMa reed in the blind of the river

covers her ears at four o’clock MMMMMMMagainst the clash

–carillonsMMMcordateMMMredMMMthick as thighs

blue, she saysMMMhollowlyMMMand sees behind closed eyes

bottle gentiansMMMcoraclesMMMthe cloistered botany of purple vespers

she turnsMMMweeds tangle her hairMMMplankton fills her mouth

in her goddess-graceful bonesMMMabsence MMMdespair

years in a riverMMMgreen as a tiled bathroom

and fullMMMof echoed vowels

MMM

MMM

ERIC MAGRANE

Around Alpine

1. Escudilla Mountain

highMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMmeadowMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMslope

MMMMMMMMMMrocky mountain iris, wild parsley

MMMMMstand of aspen, sheltering

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMlight

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMhigh in Engelmann spruce, warblers—

***

MMMMMMMMMMMMon top (10,800+)

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMhighest fire lookout in the state—

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMthe man looking for fires:

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM“being up here keeps me out of the bars,

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMI’m the highest paid person in the state—”

PAUL A. TOTH

The following is the second chapter from Paul A. Toth’s 9/11 work, Airplane Novel, which he not-so-humbly considers the 9/11 novel due to the extraordinary inside-out viewpoint provided by the novel’s crucial conceit: the South Tower serves as the narrator.

In the first chapter, the South Tower introduced itself and Oswald Adorno, the first to set the towers on fire, first one and then later the other, before he was captured. This chapter continues Oswald’s story as other stories begin.

2

He Will Admit to a Fire

The fire began in the mind of a man coincidentally sharing the name of an assassin, Oswald Adorno. One Oswald fired shots, and the other fired fires. This is the start of all the conspiracies against me. Every spectacle makes diamonds of secrets difficult to differentiate from zirconia. I am adorned with Oswald and wear a necklace of conspiracy theories.

PAUL BARRETT

Untitled

When Anne awoke the sun had just set and the air held a chill and, for a moment, she wondered where she was. She could hear the surf in front of her, could taste it, even, and the tip of the lighthouse could be seen over edge of the bluff. There were trees, and the road, and the close-cropped lawn, but nothing else. Anne was alone. She blinked her eyes, rubbed them, then sat up and wrapped her arms around herself against the cold. She turned her head and stared toward where she thought she had last heard Richard’s footsteps, furrowing her brow as if displaying an air of displeasure or irritation might allay her unease. She stood up, found a tenuous break in the leaves and followed it to the edge of the bluff, digging her nails into her bare forearms. Anne gazed down at the lighthouse, the tide pounding against its western edge. For the cold, and for the silence apart from the rhythmic surf, Anne was unable to speak, to call out for her husband, and it was this impotence that forced her to believe that he was nearby. The dunes went on for miles in either direction, besides, and the forest of eucalyptus, only growing darker, was long since impregnable, and so Anne stood, half-paralyzed, watching the waves buffet the lighthouse, biting her lip and gritting her teeth, yawning occasionally and despite herself.

G.P. SKRATZ

MY LIFE AS A DAVID BROMIGE FICTION

In the late 70s, David & I would often run into each other at San Francisco poetry parties where alcohol was consumed, pot was smoked & someone would always set a typewriter up with a blank piece of paper in hopes of fostering collaboration, usually long & rambling exercises in gibberish.

One night, David & I huddled by the typewriter in a more minimal mood, typing the following two collabs:

THE EDGE

Most tightrope walkers don’t die
from falling.

WHO WOULDN’T BE DEPRESSED?

There you are in the 12th century,
& there’s 8 more centuries to go,

at least.

SATURDAY NIGHT!

IT’S SATURDAY NIGHT ! OUR STELLAR LINE-UP: ARIANNE ZWARTJES ! ERIKA WILDER ! LISA O’NEILL ! TOM NURMI !

ARIANNE ZWARTJES

EYES

The human eye is a small globe in an orbit. A bony orbit, to be clear: more than 80% of the eye’s globe is protected in this skeletal socket. Inside the eye, an irreplaceable clear gel called the vitreous humor provides the pressure to keep our eye in its round.

ERIKA WILDER

The Number of Things

There are twenty things in the room. One is a shirtdress, made of chambray, that you would like to wear at a sidewalk café sometime. You’d hold a beer to your lips in a glass. One is a braid of wheat-colored hair, your boyfriend’s, from when he cut it off. One is a thin gold anklet

LISA O’NEILL

Women’s Work

I used to collect things. When I was young, I filled Tupperware bins with my collections. With my hands, I smoothed over natural stones—amethyst, jasper, emerald—kept them in a beaded suede bag that I had purchased with allowance money at the Grand Canyon gift shop. I made my mom take me to Arby’s each week to get a different plastic California Raisin character.

TOM NURMI

prospektr

gunmn

hird hand

Jenny Drai

[from Visitors, Cavaliers]

1.

went to the door  : a little thin :

& opened

flax cream light & peeled   : widely open

glass persons who   : not stained

incarnadine inhabit me

:

are not unrelated to memoirs, of passing through an age,

plait-spoke, feverish

_________________________________________

ever-soak this circumspect /

silence-eye

tears you elsewhere like historicity

(forward free the mastiff is loose among the eaves)

emotions of the warfare I grew up upon, if I didn’t

then flit among the wild & unbrackets,

the red stains of flowers & tall grasses

knowing a submerge-ment

resistant of photography memory annals to alleviate a subject

waiting for a vacancy to open

within the framework of this day-lit moon [ impossibly ] on fire–

someone has a lot to answer for the informant

has destroyed the mastiff, the illuminated parchment

we use to keep track,

of the awestruck, the terrifying

brink-root I compose

as to how I disappeared but reappear again

amid the shade of two moon-lit elms–

I’ll meet you later at examples & not assume a plentitude,

a favor upwards from the new wake, the strong

red dream,

narrational

___________
passage of yellow

ribbons tied upon my mental capacity :

is stretched out

& hours of

day-was-light-laid-over

: to a voice I replay my staff

(forward free the mastiff eats out the carcass of a deer)

of some cities

at the walls

take place in fields, in meadows,

of species in the battles & the meadows

viscous, all the names

in white

sap of milkweed pods, put your finger,

the heaving light of butterflies, the sticky

in places.

Are places in the storyboard & divided in dimension.  I am salvaging

the papers we most enduringly require.

Uncanny subset.  Anthropology.

JAKE LEVINE

Collage Of All 348 Of My Failed Loves Combined Into One Meditation Loosely Located In Gate’s Pass Concerning A Sunset And Its Vague Relationship To My Relationships But Also Dreams And An Angel
For Mayakovsky’s Immortal Soul

1
At night when my lover is warm in bed I take out a pen
from our little nightstand and begin a portrait. First I sketch
the contours of my lover’s body, from line to line to line
her skin gets into mine and I become paralyzed with proximity.
Trembling, I start over

sketching her across a moving blue valley. O.K
so it could either be a field or a large lake. She’s picking flowers
and apples from the one eyed midget’s orchard. She’s growing
older and beautiful, like an escalator blanketed in roses
she delivers my body up to our bed and raises her head
just high enough for my arm to fit in, her hair the sweetest
aborted abortion, and I thank her mother for choosing her hair tickles
on my nose (although I see how it could’ve gone otherwise and can’t
say that I wouldn’t be thanking another mother for another her).

Quickly, her hair and the midget’s face escort me into sleep.
We all collide in a dream. All of my blood paints the debris.

I am thinking beasts do the same. I am thinking about God
and popular sitcoms. God, God and popular sitcoms in a pool
of my blood, can you imagine, I am also thinking about black coffee
and cold work, but because I have yet to think, I am living in a deep sleep.

dawn lonsinger

gray matter

sky smattered, hair
peppered with time,
unflushed photos,
damp clay, smog

what breaches

the surface, ocean
sliced into slivers,
cortex folded in
like challah

concrete seems
a perjury but its cakey
die-hardism lures
storms to move through

density, undo us

with cafeteria, dull nickel,
bark, the rhinoceros
by the watering hole—
majestic antediluvian jaw

LISA COLE

4
this never happened//cracked tile//dishes in the bathroom sink//so many pens//wordswordswordswordswords//so many hours so many men//so many phone calls, birds//therethere//robots are boring//anxiety is boring//cogs and lights for eyes forever and ever//ice cubes on lips//drunkdrunkdrunk//please//little griefling–

JANE MILLER

FEEDING THE QUIVERING NIGHTHAWK

As my patient’s pupils whiten

they are like comets stopped

by a severe stare

it is like feeling the jet to death

the empty billetted corridor

it is like looking at a comet

& seeing the moving stairs to it

as welcoming

& bombed

BENJAMIN RUSSACK

WATERING

We wake together, steeped in skin. Cassie rises and walks naked to the window, her legs barely plump, just enough to curve nicely. She lays her palm against the frosted window, peering through the U’s of her fingers. I can barely see through the glass, but the tree outside glistens with last night’s rain.

ZAC SAWDEY

DA VINCI’S TANK

that grey haired fuck.
the one with the cracked tooth
who reminded me of me;
the one who laughed at
the engineer’s measurements
and had to redrill 40 holes
and set the timeless invention
straight;
his latest update was the
chip in his tooth
and the beanie that
kept his brain in his head.
Hi Friends!
let’s make sure crazy, grey-haired,
future me get’s access to canons
and armor.
Over Here Sir!
the horror of it all is
right this way,
and don’t forget to take
time to listen to the
score!
(And Action!)

MARISA PRIETTO

Coal Minds

Return nothing and nothing is happening.

We are invariably in love, with people, undeniably invented, by cats.

It’s not hard, but it’s true.

Eleven days and eight hours,

I’m hoping it will make me smarter, acting like nothing happened to the

smell of summer night, the bricks and then the red and then the fugue and then the fighting,

Fighting, right?

For esteem, for someone younger, smarterprettier, we are all in doubt

but,

it’s too hot, in my esteem, to think.

Your turn, now.

Give me some furtive gutless compliment.

I’ve been doing it all wrong,

collecting rain drops on one side of my tongue, while the rest smacks on,

not knowing that the other half is tasting,

in the guttural drawl

of conversation

the honey of an abandoned mind

as if it were coal,

for

something.

THANK YOU!

HI ! IM HAPPY TO ANNOUNCE THE NEW MANAGING EDITORS OF BACK ROOM LIVE ! MEAGAN LEHR and DREW KREWER !

AND IN HONOR OF THE FACT THAT it is not after all BRL’S 4 YEAR ANNEVERSARY which is actualy NOVEMBER ! I’D LIKE TO THANK YOU ! Thank you reader ! Thank you ! Javier O. Huerta ! Jenny Drai ! Stephen Vincent ! Sarah Garrigan ! Lukas Champagne ! Janet W. Hardy ! Eleanor Johnson ! Della Watson ! Ailene Sankur ! Jennifer K. Sweeney ! Chad Sweeney ! Sara Mumolo ! Jenny Drai ! Gillian Hamel ! Craig Santos Perez ! Zach Demby ! Rebecca Guyon ! Victoria A. Hudson ! Amanda Benson ! Veronica Carlos-Landa ! Linda Norton ! Ben Perez ! Ben Prickett ! Sarah Fattig ! Lyn Hejinian ! Brenda Hillman ! Graham Foust ! Geoffrey G. O’brien ! Lisa Gschwandtner ! Jack Morgan ! Jarrod Roland ! Erika Stati ! Patrick Holian! Lily Brown ! Victoria Hudson ! Clare Becker ! Evan Sicuranza ! Kathryn FK ! Eleanor Bayne Johnson ! Rebbecca Brown ! Jack Morgan ! Juliet Kinkade ! Tyler Williams ! Allison Landa ! JP Lacrampe ! Trevor Calvert ! Cielo Lutino ! Jeffrey Knutson ! Nicole Polidoro ! Pablo Lopez ! Sara Mumolo ! Barbara Claire Freeman !  Challen Clarke ! Angelo Nikolopoulos ! Teresa Hovis ! Sarah Garrigan ! Beatrix Chan ! Alicia Bleuer ! Lukas Champagne ! Adam Watkins ! Sharon Lynn Osmond ! Andrew Kenower ! Lily Brown ! David Spataro  ! Jason Sattler ! Blake Ellington Larson ! Vicki Hudson ! Jenny Drai ! Janet W. Hardy ! Hillary Gravendyk ! David Larsen ! Julie Choffel ! Scott Berger ! Thomas Cooney ! Ben Brashares ! Jane Miller ! Brian Teare ! Chris Stroffolino ! Harmony Holiday ! for reading at Mc Nally’s!

Thank you ! Gillian Hamel ! Oscar Bermeo ! Wendy Burk ! Trevor Calvert ! Chiwan Choi ! Barbara Cully ! Alisa Heinzman ! Sara Mumolo ! Craig Santos Perez ! Lindsey Bagette ! Ryan Bartlett ! Oscar Bermeo ! Laura Brennan ! Amalia Bueno ! Maurice Burford ! Wendy Burk ! Veronica Carlos-Landa ! Lukas Champagne ! Chiwan Choi ! Kyle Crawford ! Rachelle Cruz ! Barbara Cully ! Jenny Drai ! Steffi Drews ! Lara Durback ! Emily Kendal Frey ! Sarah Garrigan ! Steven Goldman ! Sarah Louise Green ! Alisa Heinzman ! Harmony Holiday ! Victoria A. Hudson ! Bhanu Kapil ! John Kusper ! Jose-Luis Moctezuma ! Jack Morgan ! Sara Mumolo ! Joseph O’Connell ! Simon J. Oritz ! Craig Santos Perez ! Ben Prickett ! Margaret Rhee ! Boyer Rickel ! Frances Sjoberg ! Elizabeth Terrazas ! Franci Washburn ! Della Watson ! Jessica Wickens ! Debbie Yee ! Sharon Zetter ! Drew Krewer ! Meagan Lehr ! Hugh Behm-Steinberg ! Christina Louise Smith ! for showing up here !

It continues to be a pleasure +V.