January 11 - Black Rider Press

Black Rider presents The Diamond & the Thief – January 11
…and now on to the January edition of our minizine, like an
elegiac wallflower in Bassani’s garden of the Finzi-Continis.
In this edition Scott-Patrick Mitchell confesses, Amanda Joy
imagines
Look homeward, angels!
Jeremy
The Black Rider
. confession to good intentions .
by Scott-Patrick Mitchell
i wrote down every sms & txt
message you ever sent me, from
when the slow grind of commitment
swallowed whole sorrow, wetting
all the carpet, excited, to hollow men
hollering against the wind, as though
it would steer your car back across the
nullabor, packed like a merchant ship
selling you off across the eastern boarder
. i even keep the ones you send me now
, which is simple since there are none, just
electronic inboxing emptied of your syllables
. it is a 1ne sided conversation that i read
habitually: both the build up & absence
. your once were words still keep bold counsel
. like a novel or short fictional work written up
, language & i have together developed a plot
. if i speak with the majesty a majesty musters
& flourish florentine fare from here to the nearest
star, the dark one over there, words, grammar
, syntax & stammer have all promised to
imagine your voice. do not be surprised if
tomorrow your fawning phone hides
, fumbles from your side before being
spoken through, coffee orders & acknowledgements
skulking to lull behind your lobes. conspire it shall
, but with the utmost intention & purpose
. now, excuse me, alpha centauri expects
jabbering to roar from my throat until
dawn, & i can’t disappoint keeping the
neighbours awake. i have sent you a
biro & blank note pad to make amends
. xoxoxxx
Imagined Interiors
By Amanda Joy
Tonight we spoke like a frequency graph,
like a landscape without edges,
extruded strokes of light to my lips like fingers
stretching through the architecture of your words.
To cocoon the sounds in my ear longer.
I scavenge images to furnish this room
that holds you in sprawling pieces,
with feathered edges that overlap and repel.
I smear the walls with my tender vision.
This passage doesn’t permit complexity.
A blocked aperture half-closed
by the debris left, a fragment fallen.
It obstructs my view of your dislocation.
Someone coughs in the background.
Your voice lowers to a soft tendril,
I hear your body run in your sheets
As you describe the darkness
that stares back at you.
In these implicit movements I accrue
the graduation of weightless light
that reaches from me to you under
a heavy winter.
Colour will slide in the morning
over the outline of your refuge
(Like an unfinished house)
Like music climbs through these sounds.
Thermometers & Metronomes & Riddim Flow.
By Shane Jesse Christmass
punishment but as an over ridge
head to foot from that lucid carnage
escape to swaying swirls of mansion’s damage
to afford you burped suffices and dumb use forage
created breath sound furrows of beggar’s heaven lockage
a thoughtful star thinks a second in payment pillage
less your chances of high unimaginable mountains and sewage
head view chamber light confronting murderous savage
have paid rise and turned into a voyage
shot out again pleasure from paradise punished except purposes
turn shuddered chamber undisputed light as music in bleaches
changed without and weren’t emptied hope by attending nothing
boozes
could and what is deleted for resting skull breaks all cameras
many times known by that liked seasick crew who bounces
though not exclusively death to bone mooches
ire again and a great night infallible hard whooshes
dreading begins these instruments of torture who trounces
forget imminence gradations of Hades like being thrashes
is sailing in and casts derision upon sutras
locates windows to crimes stooges
children civil for present super session of hook marshes
why is up to open deemed release hidden from more than
flame of a saintly kiss rod so hard its time bagman
like found mouth working music for Afghan
expect to might have transcendence deadman
waiting finger in a world like any search of picture Tarzan
thus unresting and filled with pride many times raised reality
he-man
had mysterious ways wrestling to say and obtain suntan
without fur all are in it little weight in evening light bedpan
roofs nerveless when last heaven is led never lived Koran
gratifying knowledge of one torture can it mystery await
having pleased someone who is dying animal trouble keeping
feet death playmate
cut loose through service first hoping sun in each is cheapskate
expletive churned to graft its beggar’s instruments certain
mutate
shining wet name palliated in radical remission Kuwait
only insane kingdom draw fingers keep ground brain deadweight
into dark currently being dread nor unimaginable birthrate
imaginable more evening all hours that died deathrate
batter dropped in oil bursts the stars with revolver shots
stars visit my siren for dance step with her gem crackpot
sacrificed on mother-of-pearl on the ocean clots
blonde stars with black eyes red-haired stars with sparkling
teeth inkblots
cigarettes forgotten delayed that afternoon because of hair
nightspots
speak they speak the night seals the disciples of light-invented garrotes
consumptive assassin three women with white hands sit down
slingshots
the path tombs the staircase to eternalize the birth of hidden
belly sexpots
a little saltcellar Cerberus helmsman asks the passenger robots
the wave’s women with white hands brushed the teeth pretty on
the stairs gunshots
beautiful all charming with sailors pitcher pin so that nice
boldface
saver on my grave because one never late a ship of flesh airspace
comings and goings in the sky with crocodiles that never finish
up crankcase
tortoise shell glasses magic grottoes star razor nurse him
doughface
three suns only clocks thin hind legs with difficulty smearcase
the clergyman shaved with enamel eyes a doctor crawlspace
large counters are built the blood empties into my plate shoelace
what is left where she swims dark stars with beautiful breasts
typeface
one for each eye one in all shapes and colours to wash her
suitcase
Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday and Sunday whiteface
clouds all at once forget-me-not Chicago the trams make a
noise like dogface
scaly tail chameleon this endearing animal smoked as usual
mills in the ever present eternity liar button doodled Babel
an ordinary sky Pacific Ocean air is sincere mistrust angel
foolish birds fly above the blue have forgotten it fungal
craft soaps electrocuted crystal at full island doesn’t hackle
come back come back from my friends to listen to guzzle
shell glasses a clergyman shaved with a vain retinal
behind a carob tree the pirate hands another for feet puerile
one for yesterday executed the following morning while snivel
the crocodiles return to their drink the lovely skin suckle
fallen, a history
By Matthew Hall
The shade of this flaxen
colour spreads over
this tired path. I bear
the ebb of wood
the bow of thistle, it is
a monocline image of growth
as the distance to main tributaries
Singing and dying
on the road hands
wreck the dull comportment
count back the years, tempered to white
She wants
the patient tract of motion
or the value of drinking of the stone
chalice of dispossession
Tidal winds shift on
the worn sutures of field
where the pallid sky bends forward
over fallow ground’s enclosures
and distinctions, too thinly sown for seed
Surge what would toll across
rising up over tannin’s steep salve
at the sedge turn nothing accounts
for a moment which cuts to the quick
Light feasts in pollen filaments
hemmed to the ardent wire.