THROG SLUDGE

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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.

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Refueling

THROG SLUDGE is taking a break while we accumulate some new submissions. If you're of a mind, please send 5-7 poems in a single .doc with a brief bio to acezeroacezero AT gmail. Stay tuned!

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can I post something, too?

The blog is run by submission. I love to read submissions! If you leave your contact info I can send you the info. Thanks for asking!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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SHRINE (Andrew K. Peterson)

sit before stone carved in the shape of black milk ray of human like a hum  is to kindness saffron robes flow open to right the ship, a nipple wheel in flameswell the spoke     & the take of your seat rests weight     on the bulk         of a wallet – the crown of your head holds the flame –   three petals of an empty lotus  

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.

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AULD LANG SIGNIFIER (Andrew K. Peterson)

Incomprehensible syntax of snow ‘green gray and white all wrestling for their place’ Isis or Iris between party driveways I forget whom the socialites, whom the soliditudes, whom the fake spider on the post-earthquake scene    & whom the nervous turtle dreaming the sound of bowling lost in the wide halls of a moment   like a duplicate       years held in reserve to learn is it a sickness for past lavender foam jet streams scrubs a violet range, the anger I remember     or  pick blue flowers for the bestiary shrine      my favorite song is Wooly Mammoth      What’s your New Year’s re- solution?    Insulation & simulacra          Watermarks       more Ice Age Music

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.

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OCCASIONAL SONNET (Andrew K. Peterson)

On Allen Ginsberg's Birthday

Funny crepe paper crowns arrive in disposable eggs to commemorate birth. What’s that again you seem to want to carry into the future of choice? is it one hundred percent we add up to, or just one? sweet protester, I love when you offer it simpler coronations, that’s all. Free, just free to share a one- off grace with the imperfectly frank. The muse is cold, put a blanket over her. I suppose we’ve all seen better strays, & as for this heart-hard heart: does it say or stay when I’m up and at it again? empty sugar packet slugs, fallen leafs for a bookmark. That’s holds. a place between Three Airs so I won’t forget to sit when it strays with all that sweetness gone. Just once June 3rd 2014 I’d love to learn, not overcook this hamburger.

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.

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POINT B (Joel Sloman)

A flicker bathing its red nape in the sand by the shore. Returning in boats to the inn on the Seine to play cards or shoot someone. Someone is shot.  I wake up with a gun in my hand, then I wake up again and the gun is gone. I'm sitting on a bench in a square looking at the windows of a hotel where a suspect is staying. Another time, I walk down a hill where I've been protecting cows and see an old car rumbling along a dusty road. A hen sits on warm eggs. There's a mill that processes sugar and a swamp with dead trees. Nauseating artificial scents. I walk and think. This feels like the beginning of a new phase in my life. I subdue the suspect. It could be any year. A new identity.  I begin walking from point A to point B, which is buried beneath layers of ancient trash. I try to stay out of the sun.

Joel Sloman was born in 1943 in Brooklyn and grew up there. He is the author of Virgil's Machines (1966), Bus Poems (1992), Stops (1997), and Cuban Journal (2000). His most recent publication is a chapbook, Off the Beaten Trakl (2009). He lives in Medford MA.

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TOUJOURS L'AMOUR (Joel Sloman)

Beneath leering exotic plants roses and cherries play From a distance they look like diamonds or pearls that can be pared Beyond reflections on fat flasks of a cross-hatched field with trained grapes on vines' unruly ripples a graveyard is half visible And you at the very last stop the world running slowly in brief timesteps behind evening’s bowls and jars A despairing gesture multiplies possible outcomes You hold a net that traps waves from which the designer makes her selection White jars are filled with pansies that endure wintry winds and a muddy spring I’m trapped in ancient snares and by rules I can’t break It’s even worse today than yesterday after Pierre Reverdy

Joel Sloman was born in 1943 in Brooklyn and grew up there. He is the author of Virgil's Machines (1966), Bus Poems (1992), Stops (1997), and Cuban Journal (2000). His most recent publication is a chapbook, Off the Beaten Trakl (2009). He lives in Medford MA.

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THE STORY ON PAGE ONE (Joel Sloman)

The flowered sofa was frayed here and there. The staircase behind it presumably led to the bedroom and bath, neat and orderly because she was an obsessive housekeeper, a middle-aged woman in a housedress, a solid color, maybe pale pink or lilac, with gray piping. Bill pretended to bowl in the boardroom.  Strike! He held a decapitated green head by the hair. The tube of toothpaste had a different crumpled shape each night.  Douglas fumed and paced back and forth.  The servant mowing the lawn looked through the window closely enough to see his eyes narrowing.  Clip clip.  A few young hoodlums and would-be toughs carried pots of red geraniums to the florist’s pickup, watching for the armored truck that stopped at the bank next door every morning at this hour.

Joel Sloman was born in 1943 in Brooklyn and grew up there. He is the author of Virgil's Machines (1966), Bus Poems (1992), Stops (1997), and Cuban Journal (2000). His most recent publication is a chapbook, Off the Beaten Trakl (2009). He lives in Medford MA.

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PARKER MEADOW (Joel Sloman)

Flattened narrow funnels, ferns uncurling. Red leaves—born—raise themselves from the mat. Others first appear at dizzying heights. A large woodpecker low on trunks, canes wave in sunny gusts. The air is wandering around diminishing spaces. We face death together, even share one, share all of them. I can see people—them!—from here. A fly stops on a leaf, then weaves effortlessly through an     obstacle course of twigs. I accept my confusion, the “train” of a life. I’m everywhere at once, mute or just speechless, or talking to myself. I lose track of you. I outlive you. Tugged to return to my place in line, tin cup and tin plate in hand.

Joel Sloman was born in 1943 in Brooklyn and grew up there. He is the author of Virgil's Machines (1966), Bus Poems (1992), Stops (1997), and Cuban Journal (2000). His most recent publication is a chapbook, Off the Beaten Trakl (2009). He lives in Medford MA.