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10.20.21
Six Poems
Simple Descending Lifeline


If we don’t come
out of this orange

mouthed we didn’t do it right

like the first quip of verse—This
is the verdict: Light
has come into the world …

I admit the rest
a cymbal on its mantle and that could mean
a whole double
in a timeline were we to stretch
along the hose
and perform it vastly under total
orifice

a contention in a dune
we logicize our way down
bemoaning,
forget the way home
for the pep
            sprinkled on a sniveling
tarmac, you imitator of my knuckled
creaser

Framed as a question, my question is
outstanding

berries filling out
cheeks dumpling questions     spores
dimpling cheeks’ questions    biceps

asking simply what the problem is
with the produce
is that I’m bleeding
all over the counter, limpid

predicting them
again grounders
a muddy spring, and a cleaner star
through the sound
sear through soar


 




Smirking Moving Target


A whispered enough
took me twice
down to labor where I feel
most upended
and I’m ridiculously
grateful. Quandaries aside,
which is exploitative, sure,
there’s impermanence
to think about and bushes
to whack insubordinately,
with our expressive tails
because honesty never betrayed
itself but the last time
and it’s a living legend,
and that’s facts,
man, and you should know
better than to question
the chest behind the Batman
shirt that’s always on sale
everywhere things are for sale.


 




Panopticon (Afternoon)


그래도 snatch whatever
snail    she won’t firm
the ㄴkinship
            bonㄷ, you kept tryping
to commune with

the airdropped lunch
fund—it’s a delicacy   in the right
places, crime,

fun. Launch

codes, we stripped species,
            our insecure
hands of gloves
to crack the test           to our capitalizable
future. Pray
            for the multiverse I’m working on
at midnight.

Pray for the latest
family business           to accomplish itself

            in this lifetime, on the right side
            of the tacet
discipline. Keep
off the 딴
짓, eyes out
            for full-lipped
estranged greenery


 




Sample If-Then Statement


More or less what you do, give or take
A person

I want to believe in this thing most of the day.

I want to strip an avenue
Of its worried
Cox                 and butter up a nerd
            with a simpler
candy crank

My whole life’s a rolling
stop
over a neighboring body

            politic, Clemency,

Clemency, a triage

of ginkgoes
of varying
translucencies, my boring burden beeping


 




Spindle Kingdom


Turpentine: a reason
adequate to squelch
on, two thigh folds
barely meshing
when there’s been so much
rehearsal.         You don’t want to hear
excuses, you want to observe
exceptionality constantly       
            and claim it a mode
you encrypted on my tenderest
time: a grassy thing, mostly
a perpetual rescue mission
I was reluctant to perform
so perfectly every fucking
time! We were            peaceful herbivores,
monastic until mosquitoes
hatched in monochrome a
patch of texture
around our nightly entertainment.
            And then we had to show
them why humans evolved
to have pulleys
and such quiet veins



 



Minesweeper


So there I was in denimㄴ, bossing                            
the hooked                                         

lip        from the shorebird, spacing articles
along the lㅕㅣㅣ      to rile
a foam

내 솓ㄱㄷ ㅑ ㅈㅁㄴ ㅑㅜ ㅇ두ㅑㅡs, bordering
an allegiance,

writing fㅕㅣㅣ
-time in the dark
code, humoring honorifics


                                  from the road we only widen,
rever슈ing my 셔ㅠㄷㄴ;     ㄱㄷㅍㄷㄱtb ㅡㅛ tubes;   
admoni노ㅑㅜㅎ, a               ㅁ으ㅐㅜㅑshing, ㅁ
stark ㅐㄹㄹㄴㄷㅅs.                        ㄴㅅㅁ가 offsetㄴ.

Every loose chuck ㅇ a ㅇvac / ant entrance
to pry the blade out into bellows, the brace
snappable as viola

on an evening under sway
Came the order from the kitchen: [command
space]              ㅁ ㅣㅁ Ishmael
                        a la ㅑ노ㅡㅁ디
Drop               
the a
ccent, the sparrow
esque

            ㄴ a geㄴri   und
            renounce gerunds / smear the 쵁ㅇ
                                  
              chord
a
cross                                                    eyes
dot                                                       cranes
bow                                                     hands
fold                                                      commas
bear                                                     image
skit                                                      scat
king                                                     kongl
ish

            slide                                                    guitar
           
ㅊ믇 솓 ㅐㄱㅇㄷㄱ ㄹ개ㅡ 솓 ㅏㅑㅅ초두:

don’t count
the ones in transit
yet as rubble
the hours
engrained

from a satellite
placemat
jammed to a C-
G
force we complicate

ㅇㄷ네ㅑㅊ뮤ㅣㄷ                아이스크림 먹고 싶다

D E S P I C A B L E                dkdltmzmfla ajrrh tlvek

Waver between pods  Dwell in
carefully                                  distressed
corduroys. Do legibility
Try.
            Card the passage in the following
flaw: the airflow
in the argument, the parallelogram
in the ㅈㅁㅍㄷr
ㅑㅜ 솓 waveㄱ         the old proctor

Posits,
ㅑㅅ ㅗㅁㅇ 미ㅏ미ㅑㅜㄷ ㅔ개ㅔㄷㄱ샫ㄴ
It had alkaline properties
내ㅡㄷ ㅗ뭏-ㅕㅔㄴ 쟈소 ㅊ갲ㅇ,
and some hang-ups with the crowd,
내ㅡㄷ ㅠㅐㅑㅣㄷㅇ-ㅐㅍㄷㄱ 혀ㅜㅏ
some boiled-over gunk

Catch glaㄱㅋe
in datafires,     raㅋe the juveniles
새        subscripts.      verify
                        sturdy, pimpled
tankㄴ as friend
targets
            when: coda
Came the order from the multitude, fresh
off the clock
to                     ㅠㅕ교 ㅣㄷㅁㅇ

                           bury the lead

Came some famished thing and its torque


 

Jed Munson is a Fulbright scholar to South Korea. His debut chapbook, Newsflash Under Fire, Over the Shoulder, is forthcoming with Ugly Duckling Presse.