Choreography For Young Clowns
A misreading dull as a retold dream
and a thinly-veiled threat walk into a bar
Embedded sinner chugs and toots
against farmhouse theme décor
Let root death make teachable
how some stamens touch drastically
The threat makes good, treats the mistake
to a cordial bowl of cherry corn cob pipes
Look hon, we’ve entered the wrong room
the most natural thing in the world
Cloud of fluster and sour chords signals
doomsday we are to jump and who’d argue
Class begins and first the gift horse speaks
The prim little baker concerned about dough
Chthonic figures circulating disorder with duck
limestone almanac flung beside bare teeth
Exposure’s tiresome so the trundling wheeler
reads back into the chapter before this shit storm
Discreetly the woman flips the man over
powers him off and back on again
Roast Beast
best future
the impenetrable
weathered
the lake rose
looking smart
it didn’t sell
certain people
overserved
good for you
chest flushed
the ties all gone
double agency
scattershot
eradicated pests
it’s a job
laserbeam scorn
invisibility’s passé
file sync massacre
open-ended
asked to leave
asked to stay
the ice shelf
quiz me
the journeyman
foreign person
the pie shop
fizz
collecting debts
violators in line
a blinding fog
range of opposition
longer-term vision
abandoneers
beside the juke
rat pelt
another tile roof
the cables frayed
a long shift
sudden virus
the cart’s bell
known area dogs
the lights blink
no 90º angles
pretty good slop
brave speculators
palm tree bark
lakewater
pumping station
the help desk
saddle-stitched
mother, mother
dune erosion
pond scum
encyclopedic
remote access
bolts of cotton
Krystal Languell lives in Chicago, where she is the Deputy Director of Administration at the Poetry Foundation. She is the author of three books: Call the Catastrophists (BlazeVox, 2011), Gray Market (1913 Press, 2016), and Quite Apart (University of Akron Press, 2019). She has published six chapbooks: Last Song (dancing girl press, 2014), Be a Dead Girl (Argos Books, 2014), Fashion Blast Quarter (Flying Object, 2014), Diamonds in the Flesh, a collaboration w/ Robert Alan Wendeborn, (Double Cross Press, 2015), Archive Theft, a collection of interviews, (Essay Press, 2015), and The Big Flawed Heart (Essay Press, 2017). New and recent work can be found in Black Warrior Review, Colorado Review, A Dozen Nothing, and elsewhere.