ISSUE THREE: Alertly Messy | next poem →

Not Fade Away

Jon-Michael Frank

morning thought     better do some meaningful shit     today
or     I’m gonna die     a fucking bummer    this camera only took
black pictures     of the world     on our way     through the woods
what’s really so     dark     in my pocket     in my hand under my
lungs     all the trees     are skeletons     the gravestones drink light
in the graveyard     the blonde girl sips     Robitussin by the pool
the fuck if I know     what’s boiling me     alive     I just know     how
things feel     or better yet     how they don’t     always covetous
of water     for so many reasons     although     the only one that
matters     is oblivion     and everything     eventually     is Dean Young’s
heart     failed     and replaced     by a lesser form     we exit onto a
narrow road     and the blonde girl     doesn’t believe me but the cops
are coming for us     although     I don’t mean the cops I mean
something more uniform

Jon-Michael Frank has work published in Anti-, Banango Lit, Inter/rupture, and Sixth Finch, among others. A chapbook of poems is forthcoming from Birds LLC, and another chapbook, of comics, is being released by El Aleph Press in 2014. Jon-Michael is also an assistant editor for BIRDS, LLC and helps run a reading series in Austin, TX called Fun Party.

ISSUE THREE: Alertly Messy | next poem →











ISSUE THREE: Alertly Messy

Kelly Nelson
   My Uncle at Nineteen
   His Mother Writes
      the Warden, 1955

Jon-Michael Frank
   Funny How Time Slips Away
   Not Fade Away

Jacqueline Jules
   Obsolete Angers

J. Bradley
   Yelp Review:
     Planned Parenthood
    of Greater Orlando

   Yelp Review:
     The Milk Bar

Amy Schriebman Walter
   Hope in a Yellow Dress

Miho Kinnas
   Earlobes

Mark Povinelli
   Notes I
   Notes II

Kenneth Nichols
   The Best Writers
     Bombed the SAT

John Patsynski
   The Money Weapon

Aileen Bassis
   Pellucid Musing

Travis Macdonald
   When the Map's Crease
      Becomes an Axis
      and Detaches

Kris Hall
   Pyromanian I
   Pyromanian II

Claire Scott
   Harbor Lights

Elizabeth Kate Switaj
   Poseidon's Canto