#throg sludge

[throgsludge]

Everybody knows this is nowhere

The THROG SLUDGE hiatus continues while THROG SLUDGE HQ relocates to the wilds of the west. Stay tuned, probably in fall.

[throgsludge]

HERO'S WELCOME (G. L. Ford)

The farther I drove, the more the sky opened, like an oyster, a swirled and clabbered gray hiding no treasure nor thread of rescue. I had examined myself and my motives most carefully. Every seventy-eight minutes a tune on the radio repeated, rattled off the glove box and around my fillings, then caught in my smoke and hummed out the window. I was watching for the river, the cliffs I remembered, their current of green scattered, made placeless images by the renderings of memory and saved, so, from time. My weapons, all catalogued, became the instruments that measured my long, scrawled breaths. Here, I was thinking, here, my brothers, here we may rest.

G.L. Ford is a founding member of the Ugly Duckling Presse collective and has helped edit "6x6" since 2000.

[throgsludge]

POSTCARD POEM #2 (G. L. Ford)

Dear J.P.: The cheeseburgers here are not like you’d remember. In the hills grow cork trees, eucalyptus, poison ivy. When you visit, I will make you a salad. Love to the whelps,       Egg

G.L. Ford is a founding member of the Ugly Duckling Presse collective and has helped edit "6x6" since 2000.

[throgsludge]

MARLENE DIETRICH ATE MY BABY (G. L. Ford)

In that grim advent that ended up all anticipation and no payoff, I found pressed in a book the petal of an opium poppy, shocking friable crimson against the taut yellowed page, that I'd thought long gone. The snow blew sideways past my office window as I sat abstracted, wondering if all my loyalties had been knit from flesh and its formal, intricate bonds or from the word-trammels of will, meshes of mere language that let the raw stuff of living get through. It was going to be a cold night. Down by the river a wind, maybe, howled.

G.L. Ford is a founding member of the Ugly Duckling Presse collective and has helped edit "6x6" since 2000.

[throgsludge]

POSTCARD POEM #1 (G. L. Ford)

Dear Ted: Lord, but life is sad. I mean, a joy, but how can we stand it. The other day I saw a frog in the pond over in Central Park. It looked surprised to see me but it probably wasn't.

G.L. Ford is a founding member of the Ugly Duckling Presse collective and has helped edit "6x6" since 2000.

[throgsludge]

SANS (G. L. Ford)

There is only time a sighing of the frame a constant reckoning with the buttresses and pinions of memory that hold off the collapse of experience into one great wash all but insensate all your musics narrowed down to one note high and colorless your flickering pulse smoothed no longer caught in such potent webbing no longer afrighted no longer glad

G.L. Ford is a founding member of the Ugly Duckling Presse collective and has helped edit "6x6" since 2000.

[throgsludge]

HOW TO PLAY TELEPHONE AT SEA (Andrew K. Peterson)

“Never enlarge an ant, not even in your imagination” Deplete me in radio waves, Oh bling along the isthmus As far out     went viral Low flow spray values at the edge of heights’ Forgotten monument in middle of the forest the first radio voice bounced off the moon unassembled under blooming midnight flowers A Cipher of Atlantis. How to play telephone at sea Omhra mai fu largo The U or Oo sound means ‘watery resistance’ As it goes round, down and right back up against the world As it goes down around and right back up against the world again

Andrew K. Peterson is the author of two full-length poetry collections, some deer left the yard moving day and Museum of Thrown Objects (both published by BlazeVox Books). His chapbook bonjour meriwether and the rabid maps (Fact-Simile Press, 2011) recently appeared in an exhibition on poets’ maps the University of Arizona’s Poetry Center. He edits summer stock, an online poetry journal, and lives in the Boston area.

[throgsludge]

OCCASIONAL SONNET (Andrew K. Peterson)

I was born in the boredom and the chowder— I put on my desires out    at a distance in a like air – Music. & like air, music Angles of Isis welt in a numb May spore.   O I say Seau Jorge Uala, Ualala carefuller leaning on the surer note an instrument adds its thorn to rings your voice clings from

Andrew K. Peterson is the author of two full-length poetry collections, some deer left the yard moving day and Museum of Thrown Objects (both published by BlazeVox Books). His chapbook bonjour meriwether and the rabid maps (Fact-Simile Press, 2011) recently appeared in an exhibition on poets’ maps the University of Arizona’s Poetry Center. He edits summer stock, an online poetry journal, and lives in the Boston area.