John F. Buckley and Martin Ott

PANTLESS IN BOSTON This dream of exposure haunted even Minutemen: breechless, stray chowder spotting the inside thigh. Freedom is an extension of the body, not of muskets, shivering in a flag without matchlocks and moggisons, without red coats menstrual in their returns. In the maples, armed naked libertines coil attentive, New World lemurs. Much later, maps of hemp pants and skin papyrus point to a flat in Harvard Square, where a young couple roils in sheets of Tollhouse cookies, cello music, and manifestos with 4.5 GPAs and three varsity letters. Outside, a trench lies belly up from a lengthy construction dig into earth bowels, exposing banded pipes and wiggly things in the zippered dark. There are ramparts that have been rubbed raw, old families that have spilt and intermingled blood and tea. The golden dome of the capitol roof glints a yellow stain along a pair of dungarees tossed over an antique chair arm, the cast of a denim Brahmin molting for grammaw's winter. Their classmates nuzzle pregnant quahogs at Quincy Market and guzzle 1776 bottles of Sam Adams smuggled from package stores in New Hampshire, townie bastions. Their bare legs rub together, friction of flint against firing mechanism, shivering like prisoners poised for fall.       - - - - - -

Raised in Michigan but now living in Southern California, John F. Buckley and Martin Ott began their ongoing games of poetic volleyball in the spring of 2009.  Poetry from their collaboration has also been accepted by the Bryant Literary Review, Conceit Magazine and Confrontation Magazine.