Father and Son at the Mesilla Valley Drive-thru Bank

Click here to read Carrie Fountain's poem in AGNI Online.

The Noodle Maker's Shop

click here to read Karina Borowicz's poem at AGNI Online.

Soot

Down deep they dug, the men
of my family. Shovels & picks,
backs bent. Night on their grave
faces. Monday blues black
every bituminous day of the week.
Sex and scriptures, colliery talk.
Grubs, Smuts--Soot
of the earth. Uncles, cousins,
stripped, mined, blasted.
Saturday, jukebox, Schlitz.
Sunday, penance, blessed. Paychecks
already spent. Into the shaft,
lung by lung, down
a song sung went.

:: Jeff Walt, Soot

Incantations Over Alloys

for the carburetor gladiator

O spirit of alloys, valves and kin
I sacrifice to you my knuckle skin.
O floating butterfly choke and rotor
get the juice to the damn motor.
O spirit of alloys, valves and kin
I sacrifice to you my knuckle skin.
Spark, fire and suck up fuel,
grant me luck and work now, tool.
O spirit of alloys, valves and kin
I sacrifice to you my knuckle skin.
Choke it out easy, bleed out the glitch,
work now, tool, you son of a bitch!

:: Kaz Sussman, in qaartsiluni