Jesse Morse & Allison Cobb

Concordia Coffee House
2909 NE Alberta

$5.00 suggested donation


Jesse Morse, for the time being, lives and writes out of Portland, Oregon. His work, most recently, appears in Peaches & Bats, Vanitas, and Page Boy. He curates the Smorg reading series. He's been writing sonnets, with a revolving acrostic, for the last half year.

Allison Cobb is the author of Born2 (Chax Press) and the just-published Green-Wood (Factory School), which chronicles her experiences in Brooklyn, New York's famous nineteenth-century Green-Wood Cemetery. She was born in Los Alamos, New Mexico, as were the first atomic bombs, and she now lives in Portland, Oregon.



Alibis aren't needed to mitigate the confusion of
Veins, Eric. This parking lot romance shot stick through the
Evening's curtained heart. Attraction's fleeting pull as
Zelig, the chameleon, adrift from one week to next. How to hold these
 
Explanations in lieu of your support? I can't. I miss the
Reality of our past superstitions, their myths an
Inconceivable destination at this point, the whole thing caught in
Crossfire, your stubborn need to tauten the bow. If you
 
Cared enough you'd be consistent. All the trophies you
Held dear now lost, Eric, in the rotating field, night's omnibus
Against the committed future. So leave the superfluity and
 
Vitriol to its minor key, not in imagination nor
Expectation, but presentation, putting dreams on hold the
Zone you often navigate to build your ideal.

Jesse Morse



from Green-Wood


LITTLE WONDER leaf blower   Hi daddy

in black marker on a pumpkin partly

eaten near no grave   poised today

above the Astroturf   the flag

draped coffin of a soldier    bowed head

honor guard beside the road   bus horn

blast from Jackie Gleason depot    I skirt

the mourning circle almost stumble

on a soldier standing in the trees   waiting

with his trumpet to play taps     the sun

floods out from clouds     hands lift to eyes

to noses     warm I stand in changing

light   muscles tensed like the intruder

that I am   two white-gloved soldiers

work to tuck the folded flag ends in

peaked hats pressed together  

in the subway sings a guy

with few teeth in clear bell voice

I ain't gonna study war no more

but I am   more and more


Allison Cobb