Mark Young

translucent filigree

I am rethinking the illusion

of control. Tomorrow I’m

going shopping. If I do come

across a sugar daddy scam

should I provide originals

or certified copies since I

must appear as real to them?

*

Our team listens to you. Most

people do not truly listen. Snakes

don’t have any sort of social bond.

*

Fabric like textured paper with

patterns in glitter. Facets in the

shape of a donut. Comes pack-

aged in a box! Want to be notified

when this product is back in stock?

an ancillary maelstrom

It can be tempting to try to swim

to land, especially if one feels

they have done nothing wrong.

Don’t, however, describe it as a

lifestyle of green consumerism,

trite as that conclusion may be.

The latest outbreak of right-wing

extremism in America has been

attributed to high solar activity

according to media disclosures

from the CIA; & since no prop mod

was included in the package it’s slow

boats all round, even though extin-

guisher bottles have been fitted &

data sharing & training introduced

for new investigators. It was mostly

Celtics fans who cheered when they

found he had survived the shipwreck.

trace elements in terrestial environments

Translucency of the tapioca pearls

should come within fifteen minutes,

just like a Nuchal translucency ultra-

sound. I use the time learning how

to stretch & fold sourdough, & de-

ciding what I would do if I lived in

a self-sustainable city. Here & now

I am required to drink fluids & re-

frain from going to the toilet for the

next sixty minutes. I think of writing

a novel composed completely of hash-

tags, decide against spending days on

something that would only be read

by gophers & raccoons, settle for using

a hashtag just for the chapter headings.

Now only the index page resembles

animal tracks; but even that seems ex-

cessive so I backpedal, & content myself

with only one hashtag, as title, which will

probably be: #puddingsotherthanrice.

Poverty & teenage marriage

It’s winter in Rimini, & even

recent events are hard to re-

call. The lavish orchestras of

yesteryear are gone; & an older

poet who describes herself as

“invisible” is milfing it up by

singing Coolio’s Gangsta’s Para-

dise, an interpretation that includes

such personal inputs as sneezing

& a stream of consciousness

telling of her current halluci-

nations. I came out as a lesbian

at the age of 82, she adds. Every-

one else came from an orgasm.

Mark Young was born in Aotearoa New Zealand but now lives in a small town on traditional Juru land in North Queensland, Australia. He is the author of more than sixty-five books, primarily text poetry but also including speculative fiction, vispo, memoir, & art history. His most recent books are a pdf, Mercator Projected, published by Half Day Moon Press (Turkey) in August 2023; Ley Lines II published by Sandy Press (California) in November 2023; un saut de chat published by Otoliths Books (Australia) in February 2024; & Melancholy, a James Tate Poetry Prize winner, published by SurVision Books (Ireland) in March 2024.