I had a poem published last week on the website of Horned Things Journal. I will publish the poem on this site later this year. But you can read the poem on Horned Things now by following this link:
Horned Things Journal, Issue Two
This site is still relatively young but they have assembled an impressive and eclectic mix of writing and art in this second issue. I feel lucky to have had "Making Minerals" included in their journal.
I am posting today to highlight a poem I had published yesterday on another website.
My poem called "Newville 108" is currently running at a site called the Under Review.
I am hoping you will check my poem out there. Later on this year, I will post it here but for now I want to thank them for publishing my work and I want to invite you to check out their site, and to take a look at my poem there by following this link:
https://www.underreviewlit.com/issues/7-winter-2023
If you are headed there on your phone, I should say that my poem will read best and look best if you tilt your phone sideways so that the screen gets wider, allowing the poem enough room to accommodate the length of its lines. It also looks good on a laptop.
Finally, the Under Review has suggested that it might produce a limited run of print copies of this current issue, which I hope will happen.
The Speaker is third in line to be the President. But it’s more than that. This very House of Representatives could play a massive, deciding role in choosing the next President. I’m not talking about something akin to the illegal attempt to dismiss the Electoral College that some of these same Republicans attempted in 2020. If, in an election for President, no candidate secures 270 electoral votes, the House of Representatives votes to choose a President. The implications are profound. Imagine a third-party candidate who receives, say, twenty percent of the electoral votes, who somehow emerges from the House vote with the White House in hand. It could happen. It’s in the Constitution...
What I’ve got here is some OG #18. I taste meat, grease, gas, incense. Not fruit. Bong rip. No cough but a little tenderness in the throat. Harvest was June ninth, twenty-twenty-two. The THC comes in at 26.1 per cent.
Creeping high. I’m on my first drink, which is not usually the case. Usually I’ve had a couple of drinks by the time I’m craving a smoke but we’ve been driving all day.
It’s Braves 5, Mets 3. An urge to write is a good early side effect but this urge might not be due to the weed. It could be the driving. It’s happened before. It’s the movement, my body through the gravity-controlled space of this planet, the vibration of traveling seventy miles an hour, backward in time, against the spin, in a car.
If I have already
gone insane
but I want to get
crazier yet,
what’s my move?
Go outsane?
Crazy outside means
Attack of leaf blower,
mind wound down
like weedeater string;
the smell of suddenly
snipped neurons;
amphibious on gasoline,
when two strokes are
none too many.
How many RPMs?
How much throttle?
Green guffaw,
zero turn.
In the end,
I throw myself
to the ground
and roll around
on freshly mowed grass
until there’s nothing left
to cut.
Note: This poem first appeared at The Literary Bohemian.
https://literarybohemian.com/poetry/two-poems-by-john-randall/
by Phil Williams
whither you come from
-or-
the magic eight-ball
i venture into something, it's a mind-blower, but i gotta keep it under wraps for j-rand.
see: i had envisioned a wry conversation/transcription that was intertwined. red-vines
and mr. pibb; chronicles.
adjacent antecedent (i.e. addendum): the spatial discrepencies had been a problem, but
the chronological shifting was downright vexing. first it was 2004, then 2007, then 2003,
the years and specific dream ramblings resemble a rorschach test; it's another brick in
the wall.
the wood desired chasing, and the family desired spaghetti. sorry, but my thoughts get
confused, like waves in the midnight surf. german balloon aka led zeppelin: it parks its
dreams @ ground zer0. eros may have called, but failed to identify himself, leading me
to this shell of thoughts. it could be an atkins of fiction.
outra-verted, a word i wordlessly think when i encounter 'yar.' i consider the rivulet to
my s(l)ide, but conclude she's w/ the tall man. i'm obviously hallucinating. the police
have arrived and i've simply said the word 'plant.'
realizing i had entered a house of mirrors and drugs, i texted j. still and nick s. they
were part of my cleaning crew in the mid 90's. i suddenly understand that i'm alone and sweating,
in a basement, no shaman. the disorientation slowly dissipates and my carb-stricken mind intuits
the next phase may require an umbrella, inverted.
Where one leak seemed fixed, another springs up. Well, isn’t that the way it goes? Stained wood, stained mattress. Damp kitchen, scary room.
Stove going. I was in the dirty attic. Three-legged chairs, canceled checks, dauber nests by the hundred. I go up there because the attic is my place to intercept the rain that finds its way through the farmhouse’s old, fallible roof. Like me, the rain keeps returning, keeps coming back to this remote piece of cattle country in the middle of the state.
A mist rises from the pasture, hangs there like a cloud. Above, the sky is clear. There is, thank God, no wind. It is still. I can hear nothing but the nothing that is, the nothing that once will be everything. If you would be so kind as to scatter my ashes here. If you would allow me to play the part of the sandstone, to let the water through.
The mice are back. Two traps, old cheese, picked clean. Leave the droppings where they lay. Wise rodents. Re-bait, try again...
Where did I put that thing? It has to be in here somewhere. I’ve never brought it back into the house. Maybe I threw it behind the seat? Or maybe the kids were playing with it, even though I’ve asked them to stop. Perhaps I stashed it in the console, along with the sunglasses, the pens, the motion sickness tabs, and this notebook. Or maybe it’s hanging on the rearview mirror, hidden in plain sight, like a rabbit’s foot, a pair of dice, or an air freshener that wore out many moons ago.
~
Things that are crumpled: bedspread, sauteed greens, the economy, mask on the ground, the hours of last night in my memory, recyclables once tipped into the collection truck, an old friendship, the silence, a grounded butterfly’s wing, used latex-free gloves, plastic bag in my pocket that once held oatmeal raisin cookies, my stash of reusable cloth bags now outlawed from use at the grocery, deleted email, used coffee filters, my previous laptop after an unfortunate run-in with the suddenly vital videoconferencing app known as Zoom, various articles of clothing that are now just laundry...
The full essay is here
1
The only thing here in the traps was a very crisp frog. There's a bit of a breeze. Only some of the grass has grown, only some of it needs to be mowed. The rest is fried—if it isn't dead it might not grow again this year. So there's one upside to the heat, to the lack of rain: less mowing. If I can stick out the balm, I can spend my time here the next two days doing more of this, and maybe a little reading...
Don’t forget the mountains. Nor the glow on them
as a desert’s winter sunset unfolds in the west,
the mountains in the north latching on to all that light.
Warm, fibrous, resinous—cactuslight.
Altitudinous, the light of late bird activity,
of irrigation drip lines; light that skims golf course greens,
pools, and patios; light by which the bobcat
begins her night of scratch and claw;
light that seems to brake the turn of the Earth
before ceding to the dark once more,
letting loose squadrons of javelina, bands of coyote,
wily packrats, and scores of Sonoran moths and bats.
But this is light that will return, soon enough,
to climb the tall saguaro of morning.
The Writing of John B. Randall 