Jeffrey Little (dadathin@aol.com) has appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Juxta, and has two new chapbooks out: "buckshoot & sammy davis: a land- scape of tubas" (Undulating Bedsheets Productions) and "Gnommonclature" (Luna Bisonte Productions).



"it's a suicide" squeeze executed
by the book & what w/the water
table steadily rising turning end over end
it's the world series it's hotcakes in the big house
it's noah petitioning The Council of Arks
for lumber & a rudder w/kick it's the whole biscuit
& by god it's getting wet mabel i demand a word
w/your god! the window
it's cracked it's a puddle a pothole tire rims fly
like insane frisbees off the ford wagon
against the front door they too spin & come to a stop
at the crack of a bat.
the infield fly rule in effect it reminds you of grammar
of growing up nervous under the thumb
of the unnameable but it passes
it's nothing the 7th inning stretch won't cure
or a snub-nosed .38 frozen roped over the centerfield
fence it's spring!12 tongues rooted growing weeds
in my mouth we would like to take a walk
we would buy each other beers
then to an accord broadcast
live on CNN bigger than baseball in boats.










diction in prague


last night instead of my
wife a 140 pound
menthol cigarette
crawled into our bed.

what a martian might
call - communication.

all at once i was
covered in canola oil

eating a ring ding

surrounded by yodelling
& the impossibly
nordic scent
of this massive cigarette.

in the morning my wife
opened her eyes - she
smiled & said "ted koppel".



when holland shines

the siamese twins that are my arms share but a single liver
& it's a liver like a phosphorescent jihad. a fierce clattering

occupies holland, so much so that it gnaws the name tag off
its overalls, it lobs its lone ranger zip gun into the box seats

along the third base side of the united nations where a dozen
vikings dawdle behind door #3 - when their holland decides

to shine. where my arms end this nebulous sense of method
begins, & the ringing, a tower of sound which flatly bottoms

the banks - holland takes what's inside the box, a belt driven
salad shooter & crib-full of the noble gases. on good friday

a retired milkman from oklahoma will circumnavigate a rice
paddy in a pedal boat thinking himself the first biped ever to

conjugate an orange - when holland finally decides to shine
a satellite will shimmy itself out of its orbit & spiral to earth

like an undercooked rotini, nancy blue helmet w/steel guitar
filtered through a sunburn suit & a flag that reads "no acorn".





the otis elevator company of yonkers new york
est. 1853

entering an elevator it changes people in ways only too few see,
the skin slides slowly shut, like clouds in a science fiction film or

the one w/her sleeves rolled revealing the retractable flap in her
forearm, a silver gyroscope w/its engaged gearwork & vladimir

mayakovsky - on the fifth floor the light shifts red to blue. track
the clarinet darting through a delirious klezmer band & you can

appreciate otis' conveyance, the precision of the steel hoist cable
in mastering all strata of understanding & the little stool that sits

by the wall. no one carpet can be held accountable for the fall,
the corridors lined w/balding pairs of mukluks as if to recapture

the glories that were the wingtip years, a mad era of ping-pong
& prussian clam bakes & buildings steadily mounting upwards

the hat, how is not the question but a strategy of fog, a left hand
inside of a fire alarm filling out a flourish w/the simplest of runs.





antique steam music


working the front desk is the catskills of firefights here.
larry riddled the foyer w/his impersonation of a foyer,
brilliant w/tin cans & tweed & the signpost for the last
of the blighted lobby shops: Al Axlerod, Diesel Florist.

viruses reflected in the sunlight of a silver lunch truck,
larry likens it to his idea for the wall to wall petri dish.
in germantown, clouds are antique steam music, rich
w/the sacrifice of the cosmonauts still suspended from

the rafters in the hotel's penthouse - sleep as a tender,
blue retreat. thirty-six mysteries were revealed to him
in a bowl of potato chowder on chelten avenue & he's
eaten nothing but soda crackers since, behind the front

desk - watching - another midnight-to-noon of no rain.
larry's head it was once a box of cedar shake shingles
tied up w/the loveliest of twine - there was even some
talk of a radio show but when lester young he comes

to him he comes to him in dream, w/a teacup in both
his hands & eyes that could almost pull notes through
time, a hovercraft floating in an atmosphere of sferics,
navigation - if it's anywhere then it's somewhere there.













the science of mind

i'm in fever, there can be no other explanation.
l. ron hubbard walks through a wall & into our
living room tugging at his spandex goiter, he's

wearing a leather football helmet & hissing out
old torch songs in an unknown tongue, norman
vincent peale spinning in the tightest of orbits on
his ass like the finest timepiece that's ever tread

upon the earth. another spark plug gums up in
my skull - i take a physical inventory of the test
tubes frothing atop of the ether bar only to hear

over the ham radio that my ankle's been named
the fifty-first state, all the while the instrumental
hambone of a half-crazed country fuck's healing
hands slaps its rhythms into my ears like jelly roll

morton summering w/a jug band in appalachia -
thick mornings smelling of a diner that refuses to
butter its bread & the skies all seemed of smoke.





apropos of an appendix

the transit authority revoked my license to boil snowpack
for the state - it was a legacy - i turned to insurance. a
calming certainty, like a flu shot, colored my every step.

after the first day i began whipping up fruity rum drinks for
all the stray mutts haunting the block. the collarless, i
called them, the mixologist, they barked - & it took. we

came to an understanding - we had a deal. then i made
my first sale, a snarled homeowners policy so intricate it
took a breath on its own then raised itself to its full height

& nearly walked out the door. it looked like an eel fitted
w/prosthetic legs obviously conned off of a silverfish & i
was the only one standing who could catch. there would

be no stopping the dogs - at night the endless smacking
of their lips all but drove me bats w/a fright more apropos
of an appendix, an appendix suddenly kicking into gear.

the knocking at the screen door soon turned to drums,
behind which in a clearing of dogs various parchments
conferred. it did not hesitate in making up for lost time.



the polygamy of the wind chest


the frothy manifest of the sky it reads like an outfield fence advertising pedals for the instant arson organ & its asbestos jamboree - i stick a wet finger in the air - mortified - a reluctant proctologist assessing the clouds, two packets of foaming pin boys in my hip pocket & a mussolini hat my

team of sled dogs begins brushing its teeth. it's apparent now that a war w/the habsburgs is unavoidable : just today on their planks of scaffolding a group of window washers swapped three squeegees for a bucket full of cherry bombs & portable edition of proust - the infield fly rule remains

in effect. a bag of rubber bands sitting unopened atop a lunch counter is a fearful, secret thing & like a cavern it's convinced of its end. i return
to the spectral analysis of the lime. if i take into consideration the various conversions of the rainwater my computations start to walk on all fours,

they leave nothing of the cardboard box but the box & a lurking of dish soap that's the chicago fire. the humid, kept chords of the baby elephant walk accompany our conquest of the final hill, astral kazoos all wrapping about the purling of the goatskins & a moon steadily risen beyond its line.












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