[03/13/26]

[POETRY]

Four Occult Games

Poems by Sam Robinson

Jeu No. 13

Maybe I should gatekeep but in the spirit
of generosity, may I direct attention to this
one specific room in a vast hot complex:
the Jade Sauna in Koreatown is a portal
through the veil of maya to the absolute.

Jeu No. 16

Receipts keep falling out of lovely books
I purchase from men who fight pall-bearers,
spit in open holes while standing aside,
the internment crew smokes and waits.
A coyote can tell a joke, a ripping yarn
good enough to fill a menswear catalogue.
Please be quiet now. My stories are on,
this episode projected on granite & treebark.

Jeu No. 17

Praise be the simplists and self-trepanners!
Best I can do is lay upside-down for minutes.
Yogis practice inversion, and they were smart
enough to regard a heifer noble and correct.
Barbarian that I am, I must admit I ate him.
With sufficient bloodbrainvolume, I may feel
regret, longing, something else transcendent.

Jeu No. 20

Consider the unity of spirit and matter as the bold
undertaking available to you, as always, who was it
who spoke of this? Artaud, I believe, something
that concerns convening a flash mob to violate all
dearly held custom. I make myself sick when I speak
in the way other people do. I threw up at a museum
when I saw “The Persistence of Memory.” Twas not
bigger than a piece of printer paper! A true forgery...
No, it was not Artaud! It was your little cousin, a boy-
king, abolishing all danger by tyrannic fiat. Long live,
infanta! Preside over the approaching consummation
of a ghost and a living being, you be the one to name
your successor… a serpent, as foretold? With hands.

SAM ROBINSON is a writer from Massachusetts whose work has appeared variously at Soft Union, Die Quieter Please, Grotto Journal, Expat Press, High Horse Magazine, La Piccioletta Barca, Charm School, Blue Arrangements, and elsewhere. He is also the author of two chapbooks, New Age Self Help (Bottlecap Press) and Boston Spleen (All Flux Press), as well as a full length collection of poetry, Man with Head Removed (All Flux Press). He can be found on instagram @baldsinatra, publishes regularly at sunworship.substack.com.