(the unconscious)
benumbed
/bəˈnəmd/
[deprived of physical or emotional feeling]
1: to make inactive : DEADEN
2: to make numb especially by cold
benumb(v.)”deprive of sensation,” late 15c., from be- + numb. Originally of mental states; of the physical body from 1520s. Related: Benumbed; benumbing.
Beyond Hill Country by Chris Blexrud
this road is endless
so maybe you’re here
beside me now in this
tiny car pushed around
by Texas winds
that swirl the golden
prairie grasses in
a kind of dance
that calls for fire
as much as rain
Soft Archaeology by Ford Dagenham
i would go
once again
to the places
i have been
to see what of me
i might find there
in the memory
of the streets
& the minds
of the hills
~
time has never known
what its to do with me
but i am infested
with its minutes
backwatered
by the tides
of its great bowl
breaking down by nat raum
there are days when i insist there is no way for me to carry on—not with this brain and this body. they don’t tell you how aging is a constant state of decay in those college-level high school biology classes; they just tell you about the circulatory system in such detail that you almost pass out. they don’t tell you how it doubles when you have enough disabilities and disorders to fill all the seats in that biology classroom.
start with the body: straighten out spine. strengthen pelvic floor. seal the hole in leftmost canine. disconnect faulty tendons from everything below the hips and start over. maybe once, there was somewhere, something i could trace this all back to, but i lost it in the wreckage. but in the end, no body survives, so how much would my preemptive autopsy count for, anyway?
don’t forget the brain: so full of static i’m surprised there’s still room for duress, but much like we joke about second stomachs for dessert, i fear my brain has also cloned itself to satiate these indulgences. i have wondered before if i would be incomplete without all of the ways i fall apart. i could name them by name, but absolutely nothing describes the sound of when they are all pinballing around my head, suffocating everything else in something louder than the static.
there are days where a gentle digital scratching sound is the most of my worries, just as there are days where i can hear nothing but the wails of every need i’ve let languish in search of belonging. i wonder sometimes if my fear of the bloodstream is really so much about bodies and not the ways i can picture mine decomposing already, flesh over bone. i wonder if i will regret any of this in hindsight.
clavicle (or “abjection gnosis”) by M. Myre
end by M. Myre
we are at the beginning of the end of things
we are surrounded and alone
isolated in a local universe
when the last star is born
everything will rush to horizon and crush
we never contract again
we can see them and
view the ancient past
and never touch
we are at the beginning of the end of things
we are surrounded and alone
isolated in a local universe
in rapid expansion the light hits
wretched growth and creation
these giants crest the horizon
all technically in reach
held tight to dying in our pockets
time and luck
and the dead past
time and luck
and the spectacle of closing
Cake by Damon Hubbs
Nadia unnerves the limbs
finger-feet boots, pretty phalluses.
She has eyes like medicine cabinets,
Fleet Street surrealism to die for.
She’s in Johnny’s kitchen
eating a banana
wearing a shirt that says Selfish in Bed.
Come on Johnny, why the Holocaust face?
I open a can of beer
in front of my genitals,
bait and
switch, go down easy.
There’s talk of a New England serial killer
bunny girls, suggestive assemblage.
At Vassar I was taught never to use I.
Pattie drinks kefir when she’s sad.
Yesterday she wrote a poem about a topless kiss-o-gram
blood in her milk
Adderall and Adler:
it defies neat reading.
We listen to Radio Alice
talk about the uprising of poetry and finance,
the drift of Humpty Dumpty.
Pattie goes to the chiropractor when she’s horny.
It’s not a political thing, Johnny says.
Girls love to have mental disorders.
They love emeralds the size of credit cards.
I eat Starburst the color
of a Pre-Raphaelite fantasy.
I wonder if my Stockholm Syndrome is acting up.
Johnny’s dating a TikTok actress.
She sends nudes and has a thing for Quaker furniture.
When she dies there will be riots
big mood
la la bop.
Let them eat cunt.
ACCIDENT VICTIM by John Grey
So few minutes remain,
so little time,
dripping skull,
glass legs,
stillness in the last red wound
has stood my memory well,
crunched to death
and stripped of everything,
more subconscious than unconscious.
suddenly,
sure I will die,
return to surf-splashed beaches,
dig in the sand,
swallow the salt,
silently weave the sun
into my pleasured skin…
siren somewhere,
the limit of the dream…
metal, blood and lingering scream…
there I pose.
Anatomy of Grief by Bart Edelman
Parcel every grief—
Ten sorrows at a time.
Beat them back with sticks,
When the need arises.
Retreat to a room,
Safe enough for sleep,
Although you have none left,
Wishing solace could be drawn
On funds made available
Through banks of despair.
Gaze into the mirror,
Knowing an imposter awaits,
Ready to confront you
The moment you step aside.
Prepare for seasons ahead—
One long winter after another.
Engage in senseless patter
Life offers each day,
Until regret’s rueful ache
Haunts you no more.
REMEMBER by Macy Craig
Mid-Life Crisis by R. Gerry Fabian
As a child, I was a summer wharf rat.
With six children beside me,
my mother did her best to survive the day.
As the sun rose, I departed,
spitting out sour milk
while the salt dew still covered the grass.
At the wharf, I hustled for the fishermen
by carrying coolers, rods and reels and bait pots.
With luck, one would invite me aboard
offering a cup of black coffee or a beer
as a small breakfast token.
I would untangle lines, bait hooks and swab decks.
Today,
as I look out this eleventh floor window
from my metal cubicle waiting for the computer
to analyze the difference in data from last week;
I longer for the ocean spray spitting in my face.
Photography by shiv litely
poems by Priyanuj Mazumdar
i’ve never had sex
i lie.
i am sixteen after all,
you offer to take me
to the slaughterhouse.
you are twenty-three.
chop, chop, let’s get to work.
why is everything dark in here,
is the light playing tricks on us,
or are you?
your skin
is crimson
like the
moon.
and when you say
no one can find us here,
i believe
it’s a good thing.
eat me like you are starving
boys are animals
filthy pigs
belong to the streets
eat me like you mean it
i taste your flesh
festering like hungry filth
only to realize i don’t have an appetite
maggots
devour
corpses
like words
on
white
space
boys are liars grinding their teeth while spewing vile poetry
their venom in my skin i’m bleeding bleeding bleeding bleeding
they make me hard and then break my heart
so i fuck girls now in the hope no one knows i like boys
unresponsive heartbeats
forgive me for saying i love you
too quickly. i am aware of the stigma
around planting your heart
in newer grounds prematurely.
falling in love takes forever
or no time at all. look at me
getting all personal again, like a parent’s tongue spilling
unfiltered about their child’s insignificant achievements.
tell me one thing, what’s this obsession with getting over people?
like we are rocks lurking under streambeds getting washed over
by new waves every day. was i the bedrock, you the stream,
and one fine morning, you quietly changed channels?
i went to the forest yesterday and listened for the heartbeat
of the wisteria tree. it was unresponsive, like our love.
you never liked the tree anyway—it reminded you
of being stuck in one place. it’s beautiful—long, cascading
clusters like a waterfall in motion. but what good is beauty,
you always said, if it’s stationary? you point at the blue canvas above us.
it changes constantly. it’s lost some of its hue, i admit—dull
and cloudless and bereft of you. but here’s the thing:
although trees never move, the sky comes back home every morning.
Skipped by Daryl Gussin
We decided it was probably best to skip the dating,
To skip the relationship,
To skip the wedding,
To skip the marriage,
To skip the divorce,
To skip the hurt and the pain and the irreconcilable differences,
To just do what we actually wanted to do,
To go on a honeymoon,
And then we came home and we went back to just being friends, even though, in its own
way, that hurt too.
Poems by Tim Frank
Ghost in the Ghetto
There’s a ghost in the ghetto
Gasping
Like a model
With needles in his eyes.
Follow me, he groans
As he limps
Through broken doors.
Picture
No one is happy. Not really.
Not now.
Myself, I’m walking
Like an injured bear
Amongst the debris
Of a party in ruins
Where everybody smiled
For a picture
For an instant.
And for an instant everyone was happy,
Forever.
Poems by Eleanor Graydon
Soft Epilogue
We deserve a soft epilogue, my love
Where we can watch the skies up above
That lets us rest in peace and comfort
With a love that showers us in support
With family and simple love that grows
Like a never-ending river that flows
Content in what is safe and known
Something obvious and etched in stone
We deserve a chance at happiness, my dear
Where nothing we know would cause us to fear
The kind that lets us notice the simple things
And lets us enjoy all that life brings
A well-known world waiting at home
Where we know to return after we roam
And settle to sleep in comfort and wealth
We sit and drink to hearth and to health
Wakeful Dreams
We spend endless nights –
Staring at ceilings in tired apathy,
Wishing we could fall into slumber,
And stay asleep for an eternity.
Oh, dreams of every colour –
Take me into the iridescent twilight,
Let the imagination of the subconscious,
Hold tight onto my sight and sleep.
Sweet calm softness –
Cover me like a warm blanket,
And let me sink away from wakefulness,
Let insomnia disappear into the dusk.
– To dream of cockroaches…
Poems by James Diaz
That’s Just How It Goes
It’s wood under the skin
It’s the seventh hour
It’s Roy Orbinson on a little transistor
Heat from the stove
Crossing the river barefooted and alive
Oh so strange to be alive
And it gets no easier
But you make it work
You make it work
It’s 4 am and the stillness awash in holy
Get that pure shine away from me
Muddy up and right down to it
Not much you need to put things back together
Your life, your life
Worn handle on a good knife
And the sun do shine like that sometimes
Yes, everything got that shine on it
Sometimes
It’s panic with purpose cause life is great
It’s Howl and woosh when it ain’t
It ain’t
Pick yourself up from the root
The roof, haul and heal
Your next meal, pennies in a cup
Get up, step up, go down to the hurt
It’s what happens, with or without you
You grow so reluctantly
So beautifully
Keeping that good stuff on the low shelf
So you can just kick it open with your feet
Sometimes
It’s the loss and the linger
The bite, the stinger
Oh, what wouldn’t you give
What wouldn’t you
To just once more
Feel them arms wrap round ya
Home advantage on the pain
The pain
And yeah
It’s kinda nice
After all
This life
This life
Worn handle on a good knife
But oh, what wouldn’t you give?
On The Way To Therapy, I List Every Reason
To stay alive
in awe
Of each step
I’ve taken
Since the days I died
In the burning house
of my own shame
trying to cut away
The hurt, hands in dirt
I was so alone
No need to be so alone
I see myself in windows
Like a child sees
The hint of mystery
In fields at night
That roll out for miles
And the sky cups the day in its palms
And soft doesn’t mean killable
And I’ve barely begun to unravel
My core from my wound
My wound from my heart
Have you forgiven yourself yet?
Not yet. Almost. I’m on my way.
Eyes Stitched With Doom’s Thread by D.W. Baker
I. Eyes
Vision points the mind
like a needle guiding thread.
Inner life may also sway
the focus of the eye—
stare behind, or seek ahead—
II. Stitched
Neural net of gossamer thoughts
spiraled into strings—
massive textile’s fraying edges
beg for patches
of what clings—
III. With
Television is approaching 100 years old.
The Internet is nearing 40.
WiFi’s only 28.
The first iPhone just turned 18.
How long since your phone checked you?
IV. Doom’s
The edges of my net are catching
in these barbs of dopamine.
Meanwhile, at their center waits
a viral thought—an affect loop—
sickened fiber; one-way string.
V. Thread
If you do not amputate
necrotic thread,
first in patches—gradually—
it will wreck the apertures
for filtering your net—
Electricity by Ashley Gilland
Photography by Naomi Bork
The Palm Tree
Is a crucifix
of sorts
(jonathan hayes)
dungeoness by chauncey low
sex without favor. love without reflex. dungeoness intensifies the prevailing restriction. the screws tighten behind our eyes. we descend a recessed stairwell. tread warily. notice midway there is a hazard step reads WATCH YOUR HEAD. attribute script to personal experience. spotty linkage drawn from the mystic testimony. yes: what goes up must come down. yes: such a taxing challenge to be both success story and cautionary tale. deepness widens into underground den. emerge from smothering passage, walls pulsing black. gaping from the dark, pink neon flares HEAVEN. then first E goes out. left to spell HAVEN. then every letter flickers out except for the letter N. leaves me to wonder Y or N? most certainly N!!!!! reel to reel tape plays a self-defense tutorial. a speaker on the inside, the woman’s voice crisply instructs, “the difference between parasitism and vampirism? intent.” spliced in at elect intervals are snippets of our own voice, “in dreams a mirror can symbolize the power of the unconscious to ‘mirror’ the individual objectively…” jungian thirst trap.lustful mutations in her chained eyes, they glow like the irradiated ovum of a genetic test subject made mad with modified hormones.
lurid lucidity…about to put the mental in experimental, she is all mighty with grope and hope: her hands soaring with touch, the crevice chops thick with possibility. we place on hold our want to masturbate. in this dug deep place, best to keep the guard up. a rehearsal in the mind we extinguish the act before the powers of routine connect us to the brink of a measured oblivion.
the dungeoness knows the complete recipe of every stage of knot assembly but she does not dominate the mirror, only implicates reflection.
isolated from their body roped bulging well lubed breasts scope and gyrate like fat alien organs worked by the bindings into an agonizing ripeness of quivering magnitude. information appears… then disappears.
as a reminder to stay our course, we mention, “i m a daily admirer of tough guy urinal cakes.”
“DONT TELL US EGO DESTRUCT! SHOW US EGO DESTRUCT!”
primordial mating of aggravated idolatry, our hard wired electric vanes taste like oxidized silverware. the underground den has flooring that mobilizes on zerked casters. the switching house provides a seamless transition. our dungeoness enables… like the vision of a mescalero watching train smoke pour across sacred land, we demur to the streamlined confabulation. however, a patron to the arts, underground in the only ways that matter, we whip out our hog to a shined ivory urinal that is presented. the drain basin is missing. below the missing space kneels the teasing fool before the great Z commits manslaughter. positioned there, the fool’s mouth is open (imagine that) and on his tongue is a tough guy urinal cake. he mumbles through the obstruction. dutiful, we exert inner pressure to evoke steaming piss but what opens out is ejaculate. the load hits the cake, sputters hisses vanishes…
our fool lives!
our tits writhe!
our hero realizes reality!
Photography by Nicholas Trandahl
Poems by Jane Stephens Rosenthal
Before Visiting Fetterman’s Massacre
The cigarettes
that were borrowed
were on the floor
by the bed
she finds him
face up
she came
her shirt easily unbuttoned
through the window
the mountains
“now that you’ve got me all worked up”
her body pulled to
a straddle
tongues trying to
behave
his hands not
quite where it counts
the Indians spared no one
Sometimes I Wake Up And Still Dream Of Another Life
One where I sleep.
Taking the eggs out of the refrigerator
waiting for them to come to room temperature.
Brown in a white bowl.
The cat butting her way beneath my hands.
If I dream it is always of the night and we are surrounded
by water. There is always water.
It pools and ripples around your legs like
my body.
A storm coming.
Yesterday someone had made a home under the freeway pass.
Two giant American flags around the tent.
Wildflowers spilling out of bottles perched on the edge of the wall
like an offering. And I thought What has America done for you?
All those broken promises.
All the times I presented my body to love.
The Indians coming over the ridge.
This was still their land
following the girls down the boulevard.
The one night I wasn’t drunk but still
I squatted and peed on the side of the road. And when I got back in the truck you asked
Better? My shirt slipping from my shoulders.
The smell of your dog, and the prairie’s sage, and the marijuana making me high.
She’s a bitch. The bassist said under the stars, showing us a picture of his spaniel and I thought
Yes That is how you think about your women too.
But I didn’t say anything. His father a sailor.
My daughter naming the captain.
Is this your future? I whisper to her.
The wind in our hair.
The water tickling our faces.
The way she waltzed down the starboard side.
Naming the birds she saw.
She already had her sea legs. She wasn’t even three yet.
Yes she whispered back.
And my older brother tells us how the pelicans eventually go blind.
The Great Blue Heron giving me the most delicious creep along the back of my spine.
So close and so wild.
Reminding me of the Hare Krishnas.
The long feathers at the back of his neck
ready for God to pull.
Like Anything Too Good To Be True
I was made out of temptation. Standing in front of the motel mirror and slipping my nightgown off. The boys out looking for mushrooms. The night filling with rum. Your name tattooed between my hips, the ink still fresh and mixed with blood, I scrubbed my body raw and weeping. All through the night, the summer pressed itself up against the morning and the woman next door emerged, having showered and showered and showered, in a yellow bikini and her head shaved, her John leaning in the doorway, heading to the pool, and smiling. The boys catching the moon on their way home, the kitten nipping at their ankles, to spread their morels out on table, to shrivel and dry under the lamplight. And it didn’t matter where I was. I would always love the body. Watching a different girl scale the hillside. Your name a mantra I couldn’t escape. I kept seeing your face underwater. I kept going to touch it.
(photograph) by Nick Dunkenstein
ROOTS OF CHANGE
Poems by Mateo Lara
Dream: Reservation
I pinpoint new issues within this tangle of grief: do I forgive abusers no longer alive; do I
detangle guilt because I reacted unkindly. I see dead relatives in my dreams. One after another,
sitting in a house sold long ago. Coming in, exiting, disappearing before I have a chance to tell
them I love them, come back.
momentarily, in my possessed desire
in dreams, I resurrect those who have died, friends from high school, my Papa, they all enter my
home
sit at the dining table, watch me make wrong choices.
They watch as I drink in my dreams, blackout, though I have been one year sober, I end up with
bloodied hands, shaken, at dream-man’s house
rocking back and forth on the ground
mumbling unintelligible dream-speak,
until my grandma shakes me awake.
I reserve the right to scream
even if my eyes are wide open.
resurrectionmag.com 