Joe Pan

After failed attempts to temper the course set upon by man in nature,
following violent earthquakes & floods, the great city sank beneath
the ocean waves in a single day & night of misfortune.

                          – P. Aristonson, History of the Great Atlantic Coastal Creep

Miami Lost

Apollo. Florida sunset.
Tropics. Sea oats lulled by
the wind. Mustard sand lee, oxeye’s
humid droop. Ocean winds offer watercress,
spores. Eighty degrees. Water hymn—
“Mariner II”—a sure-fire hit, a rhyme
without an author. Of baseball—
Marlins rode the ‘roid parade,
but ghosts will find their closets. Finer
surf, dark clay, innocence—easy to drown.

Mi Ami, Loosed*

A pall of Fleur eau de Sound Set.
Trope pics. Sea-ode lullaby.
Twinned mist ardently hawks an aisle
of human rope. Ashen wand of a waitress
pours our tea, decrees (what?) her hymen
martyred to a surfer. Hit the rye,
mewed—outed art whore of Basel.
Marilyn’s old thyroid; pray debut
goes well. Pines her corset. Finds
herself darkly in a sunny seaside town.

*Oral pandiculation of the original fragment by Unknown.

Joe Pan’s debut collection of poetry, Autobiomythography & Gallery, was named Best First Book of the Year by Coldfront Magazine. His poem “Ode to the MQ-9 Reaper,” a piece about drones, recently made the front page of The New York Times. He grew up along the Space Coast of Florida, attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, & serves as the poetry editor for the arts magazine Hyperallergic. Recent poetry has appeared in such journals as Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, Epiphany, & H_ngm_n, his fiction in Glimmer Train & Cimarron Review, & his nonfiction in The New York Times. Joe is the founder & publisher of Brooklyn Arts Press, an independent house that publishes poetry, fiction, & art monographs.