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Joshua Pearce

January 2012

For the New Year Railroad has a brand new Poet of the Month (POTM) – welcome Joshua Pearce to our ranks! Joshua has come to Railroad through his fellow writer, Kyrsten Bean – it is great to know that Railroad is spreading through friends, networks and colleagues. So, here we have a selection of Joshua’s poetry – I think it will grab you and shake you up as it did to me when I opened the email…

About

Josh Pearce is a renegade gonzo journalist forced to return to The City after five years of effective retirement as a long-haired hermit in a compound in the mountains. Josh uses an extensive and bewildering variety of drugs ranging from mild stimulants, intellect enhancers, and mood-altering drugs to rare, exotic, futuristic drugs. As is common in his society, he is resistant or immune to many forms of drug
addiction, as well as lung cancer. He is easily angered, his displays of temper ranging from mild verbal outbursts to violent physical assault. Empire magazine quotes that “Josh is a true one-off, a character so fearless and vibrant and nonchalantly cool that Patrick Stewart is his biggest fan. And if that’s not a recommendation, we don’t know what is.”

Poetry

The Mountain

The mountain range
(she) is bare and white
and sleeps in ups and downs
like rumpled bedsheets.

From the excavated dish
of her mid (unruffled)
riff I walk toward gentle
inclines the tips of which

are alive
with roses.

Up the strata of ribs I leave
no footprints, cast no
shadow as light flecks reflect
off her every angle.

In her last dendrite trees
twitch the bluebirds
of sleep from branch to branch.

I am shorter
and shorter of breath closer
and closer to her
final summit and here

her trees alight each
dangled ganglia leaf
turning Orange Red Green Yell
with arousal of

dreams
and here

the most zen of mount
aineers would retreat,
frozen from the mound,
respect for the mountain.

But I delve her, watch
the trees blossom white
fruit flower sparks. She
mutters pleasure breaths

through the copse, washes
the flowers off
and out across her thighs.

The mountain sighs,
murmurs,
turns over in her sleep.

your vox burns

your vox
burns
down the telephone
wire

(&up also
the scales of birds’
feet

to the feathery
high notes)

&i see what
you say
in the flinches of finches

in a bowl

in a bowl
on a tall stand

two irises sink deep
their stems
and sop up their life
their light
and color

from a double fist-
ful of clay.

and when a worm
burrows through the fine
threads that root them

and unearths a concept
unearthly

(wormholes full of neurons)

flowers blink

(and tears of honey)

the positive energy of matter

:the positive energy
of matter:

says hawking

:is balanced by
the negative energy
of gravity:

a rock dropped
into a fishpond
depresses the surface
like spacetime fabric

and the splashes rise
above the water just
long enough to scream
their philosophies
at the bright white lilies
across the lake

:so you see,
the total energy
of the universe

is zero:

concentrate

out of
some

gray(stitching
her eyes
with)
threadbare

life

(railroad ties

)

comes our

buttons and soap

just made of strings

if the universe is
in fact
just made of strings

then we are knots
hung suspended
in spacetime’s cat’s
cradle

an intersection of thought

and occasionally the hands
of the gods come together
to stretch us out in jacob’s
ladders

while we remain
unmoved, unblinking, and unaware,

quite suddenly
the lattice of everything
around us

has changed

over the corded rubber bands

over the corded rubber bands
stretched over my pencil bones
I pull on a starched and stiff shirt

(you smooth our your coffee-filter skirt)
and my carbon-ribbon tie.

there’s a memorandum circulating
against the way I feel when I see you.
I paper clip my fingernails
so that I can unbutton the dial
and untie the telephone wires
that keep our bodies apart.

with the milk-carton light
of hesitant fluorescent tubes
behind my eyes, alone
we stand against the xerox
pressed hard until we’re
not alone.

you white-out the mistakes
in your body.
we’ll pass the edges of our credit cards
across our wrists
in order to make each other happy,
until you can laser-scan
my barcode scars and find out
exactly what I think about you.

and through the information
I give you my typewriter smile.

The Electric Boy

boy do the girls
like to lick
the electric boy
for the tingle
thrill
of it.

the electric
boy has a glass
shadow.
he is fast as
greased
the electric boy
is lit.

what a good boy
stuck
in his thumb
what a good
idea is the electric
boy
lightbulbs overhead.

boy do the girls
see flash
bulbs
and stars boy
do the boys
see red.

the electric boy
provides
digital pleasure
beyond
measure.

the electric
boy
zaps
the electric boy
pumps
the electric boy did
and the
electric boy
can.

at automatic
dick
and automatic jack
he finds ohm
but with per
sistence

oh boy in
the girls he
sings the body
he slides
the path
of
least
resistance.

because to
electronic
jill
and ironic jane
what
an improvement
is
he
over mechanical
man!

the spider stinger

the spider stinger
of your sewing machine
spinning string
round anything
caught between needle
and treadle
sits

(as you see smokestacks
of steamships,

derricks, derelict,
and the broken fountain
pens of rigs
in oil)

waiting for you
to finish and throw
aside your apple
nuclear core

(and your thoughts go abroad
on the crazy motion
of a vanderbilt locomotive’s
everywhichway spinning
wheels)

the quickcut steel of your tongue
shields your iron
maiden head

because you’re a copper lass

(a single in a line
in a square
in a prism
of other spider spinners)

who fancies herself
brass

(you hold the thread
of fate and

challenge the gods
to do better
than you)

fermata

starting with
wholes notes on your
forehead

to dotted half
on your nose,
half and quarter
(and whole rests)
at your lips

:your body
stretched straight
and long

gets organized
into open valves,
pipes, stops,
an upshift
of your organs:

an eighth-note
walkdown your breast,
navel, bisects
your centerline

:your body is an organ,
my mouth the organist,
the poem the sheet music:

and slip
into the cleft clef

:your moans the hymnal
notes oh god:

and into sixteenth,
thirty-second,
and impossible trills
of sixty-fourth!

Coming soon – the editor’s critique of Josh’s work and a question and answer session to delve deeper into the mind of the poet…