Hemispheric Terrorism
by shawn misener
There are places in this world bent
by terrible doubt and the disturbing
feeling that if you let your guard down
for one second the whole thing will
collapse around you, leaving you
dumbfounded in the ruins …

Buk’s Dead Body
by shawn misener
Hank’s corpse, suspended over the room,
drips alcoholic blood on all of us.
It’s been up there for almost forty years
and someone should consider taking it down.
It stinks.
All I see around me …

Laptop Sally
by shawn misener
it’s with fuzzy fingers
that I finger you
my love
I wait for you to come
and I twitch away
with fingers fuzzy
and brain looped on pot
maybe I’ll step out
and catch a parliament
on the ghetto porch
I guess …

Go She Hi Gra O E (Pffffft)
by Shawn Misener
We are not safe
ever
We are the product of
salad shooters and
fried twinkies
We build foam walls
to keep the ethnics
out
We cringe vigilantly
at the turban-wearing
terrorists
(PFFFFFT)
We are the sum total
of our bad …

the asterisk is not me, it’s steven wright
by Shawn Misener
In this world we are giants
puffed up with air
we bumble and bobble across the neon plains
in this world we have full-body tattoos of ourselves:
except taller
and with …

Capital City Dream Opera
by Shawn Misener
This town is overpopulated
by weeble-wobbles and beanpoles
lesbian poets and straight strippers
day-glo starfish and black ferrets
stuffed into a tiny ziploc
and crammed between the cottage cheese
and gelled raspberry preserves
I sprayed red ink …

This Is No Freakshow
By Shawn Misener
This is awful, but not awful enough.
A messy wound you could fit a canyon into
leaking clear juicy drops to the white sands.
You charged us five dollars for this?
I could’ve …

trompe l’oeil
By Shawn Misener
Dropped into France with a cosmic vacuous THUD, slowly reaching to awareness to find an old friend married to an asshole. Their baby in hand, glasses knocked off from the distracted head, …

Poems in Dedication to the Whooshay #1
By Shawn Misener
Electric veins running through plastic cows
involved in shampoo experiments.
Fur trophies line the cedar walls while
kool-aid sap seeps through the emergent cracks.
You’re here to meet the barnacle …

Dream Fruit
By Shawn Misener
The australopithecine peeled dried lizards from the rocks
as the man in the pinstriped suit and leather case marched past.
He was resolute, determined to get to the office on time,
unaware that he was …

Three ochre and maroon clad monks walk into a bar.
By Shawn Misener
Whaddya havin?
asks the stylish existential mid-twenties female bartender.
The first monk orders a scotch on the rocks.
The second monk orders a rum and coke.
The third …

The Halverson Encounter
By Shawn Misener
I give the man Richie his change, and he glances at me, eyes wet like a puppy, wanting to say something. He wraps a fist around the neck of the brown-bagged …

Bert Defeated and Worn
by shawn misener
You might not know this:
Sesame Street is real.
Bert is a barista at an overpriced coffeehouse
I frequent on snowy days.
Actually, we’ve struck up a friendship
based on lengthy and heated conversations
regarding the …