Vulcan’s Invisible Ink Trap

Sky-spanning Venus peacock tail
Blur of nodes streaked past our eyes
Goddess sex leaves vapor trail
Sky-spanning Venus peacock tail
Lurid colors, black-chain-mail
Herald copper-plated lies
Sky-spanning Venus peacock tail
Blur of nodes streaked past our eyes.

UCHE OGBUJI was born in Calabar, Nigeria. He lived, among other places, in Egypt and England before settling near Boulder, Colorado. Uche is a computer engineer and entrepreneur whose abiding passion is poetry. His poems, fusing native Igbo culture, European Classicism, U.S. Mountain West setting, and Hip-Hop influences, have appeared widely, most recently in IthacaLit, Unsplendid, String Poet, Mountain Gazette, The Raintown Review, Victorian Violet, YB Poetry, Shadow Road Quarterly, Angle Poetry Journal, and Featherlit. He is editor at Kin Poetry Journal and The Nervous Breakdown.

Ahab

The creak of timber
Coupled with the lashed
Slap of splayed wave,
The men’s billowing white cries

Coupled with the lashed,
Lashing tongue of ivory—the
Men’s billowing white cries and
Hands, snagging at rigging, the

Lashing tongue of ivory
Curls within its black cloaked mouth, his
Hands, snagging at rigging, the
Sound of his voice is the storm. It

Curls within his black cloaked mouth, his
Teeth bite through the rain. The
Sound of his voice is the storm, his
Hands are lightning across the wheel, and his

Teeth bite through the rain. The
Men’s cries fill the sails and his
Hands are lightning across the wheel, and his
Good leg plants like stone.

Men’s cries fill the sails and his
Hands are the gale itself. The
Good leg plants like stone.
His fingers are knuckled clouds and his
Hands are the gale itself. The
Cupped mouth of the sea inhales,
His fingers are knuckled clouds and his
Eyes – their strained outlines.

The cupped mouth of the sea inhales,
The men’s cries rise to the topmast, and he
Eyes their strained outlines,
Battling the knotted rigging.

The men’s cries rise to the topmast, and he,
Gnashing his teeth,
Battling the knotted rigging,
Bays and howls, and they hear the

Gnashing of his teeth, the
Slap of splayed wave.
He bays and howls, and they hear
The creak of timber.

Lafayette, Colorado. ERIC WESTERLIND is opening the garage for the year, thank god, too, because sawdust is everywhere and the lawnmower has gone kaputz. Twenty-seven years, one hundred and forty pounds, several thousand dollars, a bike, a new helmet, a dog and a girlfriend. See: The Bacon Review.

Kinnings

We must have skinned our naked minds.
Our butcher hangs from a sinewy thread
slobbered on by three leaks overhead.
Daily we do the moody grind.
Weekly we tongue a morbid tune
burped by lugubrious walrus mares
lately widowed. Their flanks bared
to those wiggly eyeballs in the moon’s
pate. No telling who’s beneath the cleaver
as daughter and son glaze each other’s
guts. Now the intestine-faced mother
enters gripping the shank of a beaver.
Dentures are growing out of her palms
as if a toothless man asked for alms.

RICHARD PRINS is a New Yorker who sometimes lives in Dar es Salaam. He received his MFA degree from New York University. His work appears or is forthcoming in Los Angeles Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Rattle, Redivider and Strange Horizons.