These poems were selected through Sixty Literary, a biannual call for literary writing from writers and artists based in the Midwest. You can learn more about Sixty Lit’s inaugural call for writing here.
Mother Bis
I.
Scores we were
inbed diamonds
in heat facet
incrusted liturgies
to surface
terrane re:
turn breaking, the shores fluted
we were
rivers end
barges the fording
deer
Stumblehoof ::
electrified planes
we will be edges to
silos, where you were
deposits
magnetic recording, recoding the substrate
fossil records in
-gathering
muzzles the lapsus
redacted
structure
in sentences inter
-rupted
the seed pods
un
/fold yr cartography
Music
strains when ascending
their reprisals slumped
sinking the groundwork we weather
away
still you re
Spires
III. The vault unrolled
thunder
graves,
here
IV. my mother like branches, I don't
tributary
spilled half
gone
I
“volvió a servir de sustento a las ruinas de una poética comprometida, híbrido anacrónico de corazón atómico y coraza medieval”
-augusto de campos
Violin: Cage
Fingers passed thru
Diamond pulver
the lapping
Shores
Latitude
I. Tact, are you in
-tact You were my Archangel
of thought
Apocalypsis
Yr clef
I don’t
Touch, here
Horses un
-stable vistas I
went out to—
ideogrammar
you were / in-flected
facets
II…
III. Heteronomous
Miseryforests
You were a lattice after
dimensions
Saddled where
do estuaries
End
scraping
Trapping en
entelechy
Glaciating
Counterparts a
Tendu
The Laurel branches
Crown You
Seismicity
The Mountain belts
Rifted down
Faulting
Night plows
Nothing but it
Self
Come In Appellating
I. Godblossoms
The scraping
And all hands were
looking for
You
II. Shuntself
Stone
Deafening
–Platforms of stars
Saltfires stud
Inflexible in
Surfacing
Reflections
But Heavy metals
Dream plates
III. A horse show
Beauty
Detuned
IV. Annunciates An Anarchitecture
You were
Loosing yr mooring
Unligated vowelssound
Hollow trying to
Ground : circuits
Sheet music / Eaten away
In florescence Decomposed
riverbranches We could
be time
signatures
Contra Angelsounds driven auracular
danses ///Comescreaming
Ferric
plates trans
form Intercalating
Mine.
V.
Surgesurgesurge
Lunar Wave
I. Torn fringes You
clattered nimbus
to me
the mirror vaulted
likeness aureoles, the rim takes
cleaving un/
known
depth sounds:
internecine, topography frays
effigy the transforming end
plates
// the terrestrial overturn
still you?
Drowning the pellucid
edges the subjunctive, all my days were
Hyaline
/decay lakes
II. Feed back
III. pelagic grief
rutsrutsruts
IV. once known
unraveling
an alluvion, timebedded
the crests to
surface debris, waves rattled
plunging echelons
level in
drift tectonics, till plates
traverse harmonics
interval auroras
return: voices
You were
the overtones
transverse
–stay awake.
V. deerafterdeerafter
green river branch
deer, deer
come to
Deer Raiders
Proem.
Vertiginous outpost, I was
when returning
reflections you were
there you entered / the mirror skins you
sloughtime
I.
Flood lands the deer
rustle
Intertwined
sinew
Lace shadow
torrents
The resounding
inextricable
Steepnessing cliffs face / we will be
Lakeness
Sky vaults horizon lapses
The faulted earth re
Chorded its tension
Doesn’t transmit
Semblances cipher history
Selves
A latent symbl
Fr fire
Th stars rinse
Th empyrean
Glow like sanctuary
Recessed the infinite
Degenerescing
citadels
Don’t ever
Halterstep
II. Subterrestrial birds
But I thought we were digging up
Grave turf / & caving in
the openwork
Auscultated earth
III. hoof beatdown
Vertebral columns you collapse
a musical strain
grammatical
syncope—when she doesn’t
return
the Mississippi river
IV. tussocks comb
ripped yr hair
tides comb tufted
tussocks yr ripped
hair tides
floods you were
silt the tussocks eat
rip tides earth
deracinated
posies
I draft their ends
comeback auroral
tracing branches
Streamnoise—
Gables Melt
I.Yr voice
Pitching ravines
Melt to
The pre ambles
You telegraph:
Mine. Engulfing
Sea/walls
borders don’t go
Tamping
Earth edges
Crushing verbiage
Glottalsong.
Heaping the nebulous in the slow Radii
Arch becoming
Garden hedges
are you
Green enough?
Chalking katabasis outlines
A littoral erosion
Denominators drowned
In an
Tiphony, you gathered
Tidal beds, the lichen dressed
A mineral body
Assemblage foliageheavy
Clustering sentinels
II. Shypny horizon
About the author: Ulrich Baer was born in Georgia and grew up beneath Southern power plants. He received his MFA from Brown University in 2017. He has published a poetry book with Red Hen (Deer Black Out, 2024), a science fiction chapbook with Essay Press (At One End, 2020), and a full-length book experimental fiction text with Apocalypse Party (Midwestern Infinity Doctrine, 2021). Two of his homoerotic space vampire books deconstructing Enlightenment Humanism will be out in 2025 on Inside The Castle Press and CLASH. He has been included in journals such as FENCE, Baest, and Afternoon Visitor. He loves horses, and lives in Paris, or anywhere, or more often nowhere. Email him about ufo sightings or other unexplained phenomena at ulrichulrichbaer@gmail.com.
About the illustrator: Sammi Crowley was born and raised in the rural suburbs of Detroit. She received her BA in Fine Art from the University of the District of Columbia and aims to create images where the viewer has the distinct sense of encountering a memory they thought they’d forgotten.
