Testimony

I followed a friend to her youth group one summer
and won two savings bonds for reciting passages,
submitting sermon notes, and writing Christian book reports.

I was invited to an evening service
and honored with first place in their competition.
The bulletin reminded the congregation
winning the contest doesn’t prove salvation.

I assumed they thought I was God’s child,
a Bible-believer, safe from Hell.
I didn’t know Pastor Dan already knew
I placed a baby for adoption.

I had lived the previous year in hiding.
My folks pulled me out of tenth grade,
put me in the laundry room when we had guests.
For months they told my grandparents
I was too sick to leave home.
They weren’t supposed to know. They knew.

But the bulletin was right.
Knowing Bible stuff doesn’t mean
I think a guy who created everything
died, woke up, and flew into the sky.

I know Reformed theology about a god less moral
than me, full of power who made us just for suffering.

Don’t worship evil that people call good.
Don’t be threatened by your own imagination.
The scripture you hear in your head is you.

---

Christian influencer, dead at 89

In the 80’s
his show played on Family Radio
in kitchens late afternoons
while mothers peeled potatoes.

His books lined shelves in dens,
and parents got together to study them.

Face your strong-willed child
and threaten him with destruction.
Hurt him so he feels your authority.

They learned to manage behavior with pain
and practiced hard on their firstborn.
It was a godly display to march a kid
out of the sanctuary to spank them
in the bathroom.

A generation of parents sought to show off
obedient kids who kept eyes on the pulpit,
who didn’t race each other under pews
after the service, but stood still though hungry
while adults talked exhaustively.

Younger siblings were easier in comparison.
After belting the oldest for each misstep,
parents ran out of energy.

Two lifetimes ago, Catherine performed her poetry in Madrid. Now her main jobs are to write and hang out with her family. Her chapbook, Soul Full of Eye, is published by Kelsay Books. Find her socially in the Bluesky and watch/read more at http://www.caththegreat.blogspot.com

ANGLO NIGHT

Fall on me anglo night, bury my heavy heart so it can rise to see a new tropic
If the only desperate truth is desperately true why do i see it all in eastman blue
rainlessly i mix water and oil
My moment dies in the lullaby of night time fawned by retrospect
Blades slit me away into this heavently nightmare the one i dream about the one i live
within
the moment is torn like the shadows of a staircase luring my eyes with desires of destiny far
far away from the land i sit on
Candles tell me through their gentle dance i see you there typing in the darkness
Taunted by haunted houses in the corpse of my past
In the woodlands of my mind
In the hot desert of my heart
Those faces burn away like the temperature of time on a hot summer day
Paddling bare feet by the cold swimming pool
i only see when i open my eyes that laughter that singing that bird breezing over head as
the helicopters search for someone but never me
The sway of the trees and the sway of the wind and the eucapaliptis fragrances peeling me
away like a tangerine, i merge with the waxy magic of the oily sunset

---

ANTI-BALANCE

I am not interested in balance.

I am interested in the brush strokes.
The edges of a rectangle.
The margins of a page.

The unfinished poem.

Mise en abyme.

---

PEN SQUIBS

pen squibs, enscribing rhymes across my time in the ages,
tattoing pages with my rivers my wrists my twists my flux in a tux your bucks in my pocket
i jockey the jokes i poke the smoke
arrive sublime spread love over time
il be seeing you tomorrow night
neg-filled in the moonlight
tonguing-truth in ya-eyesight
all things pass through everything
its gonna be alright
lick the wick
eat the candle
stick to it
sear brains in wax
forego tax
in lieu
of you
my fellow
human
my self
over you
your you
spread over
me
sharpen your shapes
by the enth
degree
toothen your jaws
crunch the claws
that feed you the tyranny
harmonize the lies
and protect
the harmony

being free
costs
nothing.

Browzan is the professional name for Christopher Brown, a contemporary visual artist, filmmaker, and poet from Brighton, UK. He is known for his avant-garde films and experimental art, which often explore themes of time, memory, and beauty through mixed media, performance, and installation. Brown has also published poetry, including collections like Quest for Ions and Carpe Delirium, which are noted for their personal and often dark reflections on the human condition.

One very close since birth

Revealed ?only to me
That although may
Be is a projection
Come to Jesus
Life partner’s
Raggedy ass
Fool’s gold

Moment

Tarnished
Personized
Ad hominem
Attitude was
D/ evolution
Fast to way too
Often just plain mean

---

GURU ←> NOT READY FOR PRIMETIME? [ii]

i.Some Mentor Exposure

Special relationship
I piloted firstborn
grandkid (maybe
if lucky you can
duplicate with
our younger
6 so far?):

To date Ger
introduced to
my country doctor
role model—though
rest of them are now
deceased—+ buddies
from grade/high school/

college: Nobel
Laureate, VPOTUS
two MacArthur fellows
one hi-tech entrepreneur
oy social justice paragons
Zen-oid relative; to simple
satisfied just Every Persons!

ii.tanka [accused of Identity Tourism]

“Don’t know who you are!”
–decade older wise woman
(once?) — together one
year — 3-way Zoom – judged me — when
I’d just turned assured 80

Eighty-year-old late-phase often graphic chronicler arrived in seventh decade, aphorist, humorist or sometimes meanderist; Gerard Sarnat’s a multiple prize winner plus Pushcart/Best of Net Award nominee who also has been invited to serve as judge for competitions. Activism Through Poetry: How Gerard Sarnat Uses Verse as a Form of Protest is a 2025 retrospective. His words have been widely published in four collections; including by Rattle, Gargoyle, Main Street Rag, New Delta Review, Black Mountain College Press, Anomaly, Songs of Eretz, London Arts-Based Research Centre, Israel Association of Writers in English, The Nature of Our Times/Poets For Science, Hyperbolic Math-Poetry Review, Gravity of the Thing, Third Wednesday, Poetry Center of San Jose, Brooklyn Review, Tokyo Poetry Journal, Gargoyle, Deronda Review, Buddhist Review, New York Times, Mount Saint Mary’s LA/ Saint Benedict/ Saint John’s Universities, Oberlin, Slippery Rock, St. John’s University, Northwestern, Yale, Pomona, Harvard, Missouri Baptist, Stanford, Dartmouth, Penn, Columbia, Grinnell, Johns Hopkins, NYU, Brown, North Dakota, CUNY, McMaster, Maine, Oklahoma/British Columbia/Toronto/Chicago/Virginia/Alabama university presses — and more. He’s a Harvard College and Medical School-trained physician, Stanford professor, healthcare CEO. Currently, he’s devoting energy and resources dealing with climate justice, serving on Climate Action Now’s board. Sarnat’s belonged to the longest-running U.S. Jewish-Palestinian Dialogue Group. Gerry’s been married since 1969 and has three kids, seven grandsons — and looks forward to future granddaughters. gerardsarnat.co

Blue Plums

sense of found within a tragic longing
born of hiding the sources you muddy

the water anything you wouldn’t do
nearly there, nearly there
to welcome strange hands shaking

in the sweat of palms hold blue plums
and what the sum will be of delusions
how a why makes any what bearable

and comfort in random expressions
have your way & this way is mine

they are not delusional those who dance
to music you can suddenly somehow hear now

---

A U M

Communion
releasing regret

stuck in a loop
deepening a whole

stumbling back
exit the apartment
shut the door

hear it through the door
feet first in the garbage chute
roll away

hooves
screeching

Barnyard spirituality
mirrors reflecting infinite versions
money doesn’t absolve responsibility here

toxic fumes
sneakers
garbage is dinner

flat line
syringe

grief
the conductor
reaches in

pulls out nothing
air tastes of metal
fish belly up

study tree
NYC skyline

detaching from horizon
leaf feather giant
memento mori

---

The moon will change your mind

high school seniors coming down

off orange sunshine bummer trip
people’s park drug market palace

not so beautiful now depressed all year suicidal in winter
everyone got too high freaked out
now a week or two of not talking about it

4pm rick wants to hang out calls his friend
donny works at taco bell has anxiety attacks
controlling parents it’s raining he’s into it

let’s call sean he’s got a car a known reckless driver
five kids pile into car drive to bay street mall

hang out where kids like to go down at designer row
donny splits gotta get home before his parents know
he’s not at work now it’s rick kristen sonya and sean

where do you wanna go anywhere but home
5pm rick calls eli says no
just wanna drink listen to the cure and wallow in depression

convinces him to come along, what could possibly go wrong?
6pm sean picks up eli drives the group to remote

rugged point near the bay
sean screws around behind the wheel scaring everyone
sean accelerates

break-neck screamin’
clashes with fence
wedged six inches

from sure death
eli’s hurt the worst

7pm all walk away from wreck
for miles in disillusioned dark
leaving sean with ruined car

9pm rick and eli stay up all night
cover life like shades
sun rises orange sunshine

bummer fades
yesterday was yesterday a nightmare of my past sipping on another cocktail from the same glass

is this what it feels like not to die?
ordinary boys
happy

knowing nothing
happy
being no one

but themselves

Deborah C. Segal is a writer and diy publisher, gratefully living with her partner Bruce, where we are delighted daily by the birds, clouds, and trees we encounter here on unceded Ohlone lands known as Berkeley, California.

TOUCHING BLONDE

She was a touching blonde.
Yes, she liked touching
and, afterwards
douching, bathing
and turning herself into cottony kittenish candy
again
so she could be eaten all up
by the big bad wolfs
and then through a short regime of bath and powder and war paint
and transubstantiation
she could become a part of the Goddess again and again
a little twinkling star among’st the stars
and not herself at all— almost— anymore and most importantly—
full of woe and anger —
cursed by a wormy womb
and an even wormier brilliant brain
with little tunnels eaten in it
where you could just go round n round going mad— which she did—
and that’s why they treated her so— like shoddy goods—
that and her lateness on set is why. No—
the wolfs aren’t enchanted, not by her, and they weren’t priests, either
for all their pretty speeches and their holy arty airs.
They were more like candy makers pinching pennies behind counters.
They put her in pretty wrappers
of both her and their design.
That’s just the show businesses in general, it’s retail—
and they pimp her out like she’s the raciest sugar high:
“5 Stars!” — Of All Time!—
… And that’s how she becomes the original M & M
before they pimp her out again after her final fumbled scene
remaindering her for now and all discount-time
as the Simone Weil of our dreams…
instead of as a Gretel who got lost in the forest
and died in a gingerbreading accident
which is what she probably really was and is.

---

EVERYTHING IS SPLASHED

i tickle the electric lamp
where it likes it
by its switch
i relieve its frustration
and it comes like a moon shining like a tiny sun
who’s just been let out of a prison
after a million years
and it just keeps coming and coming and coming
like it’s a very big boy, or a woman
until everything is splashed with light
and now i sit down and read
techno-punk pornography— tech tech tech
William will willie Bill William Gibson
as the morning combs my hair with the air
and the whole world seems like it’s a crackling radio voice
having a conversation with its echo, echo, echo —
with our little old lonely “‘i’s” bouncing inside of it
like life is the inside of a sea shell
and you, oh, mythical reader, you— are the ocean
that’s roaring all around, all around, all around in the waves
that keep lapping like an orgasm that never ends
at least
until you turn the page

David Earl Williams is the Absurdilachian, a writer of absurdist anti-dada dadaist poetry. His latest collection A.I. YOKOHAMA YANKEES TWELVE, RIO-ATLANTA DANTES 36 LONG 12″… MYSTERIOUSLY TIED AFTER 9… Or, “The Sock Puppet Melodrama” is available for purchase  @https://c22press.wordpress.com (under open editions) only $10 per copy— order 11— it’s an easy mistake to make— !  Or, download a free pdf.