This month's featured album was written in a vacant orphanage in Guatemala. Mountain Sounds is the result of a last-ditch attempt by friends Tim Hoyt and Franc Castillejos to collaborate one last time.

Simon Perchik Its arms still around her, this dirt clings between what’s left behind and the rain –-its stones stare back can’t make out the fingers nearby easily yours and with each handful something that is not her forehead just the over and over nearness you pull closer and with your mouth welcomes this dirt, covers it the way any helpless wound is kept moist and on her cheeks, something later no longer remembers, barely...

Benjamin Roesch The holidays, as usual, had played her for a damn fool. Had plied her with deep fried turkey. With gravy and greens. With her daughter’s big eyes and the promise of Santa! With the temptation of Dale’s annual felt box of something shiny. With glitter shirts and midnight kisses. But now it was the middle of December and Nell just wished the whole sad parade was over. The calories they would never burn. The money they...

Yvonne Zipter I. Our lips are so dry, she says, we could start a fire, kissing. Once, we were incendiary as match tips, any flick of skin on skin: a conflagration, a curtain of flame through which we saw the world. Something as coy as oxygen fed us, our bodies the proverbial two sticks rubbed in concert. And wasn’t it exciting? But fire never holds still, never latches on to a sole identity. Like when the dollar-store factory caught...

Hilary Sideris Could I labor better, repress my yes hiss in the power of a higher wage, a multitasking tongue, a sticky kiss in the Employees Only pantry over free cookies? Can you breathe life into me, mortal to whom I submit my report, by whom I’m blessed when I sneeze. Hilary Sideris holds an MFA from The Writers’ Workshop at The University of Iowa. Her poems have appeared in Arts & Letters, Barrow Street, The...

klipschutz Sirens advertise their right-of-way on empty streets, guards conjugate in workbooks, lobbies glisten. Glass shatters, voices carry, pressure drops. Entire buildings perfect the parlor trick of vanishing in fog. Found, they’re gone again, like that. And so are you. Finger moon deveins the dark as orbits cross. Not a hiccup, not a hitch, the moon’s gone too. Klipschutz (pen name of Kurt Lipschutz) is a poet, songwriter...

The gentlemen from Mountain Sounds sat down in separate continents to record this exclusive Fogged Clarity session.

Scott Hightower reviews poet Sean Nevin's "Oblivio Gate"

Vievee Francis for J With our down-turned mouths, and trenches forming on each side, evidence of our disappointments. Look at the nests by the eyes, we were so easily amused, (what else was there to be), and nurtured (if reluctantly) those who insisted upon our goodness. Ah, morality. Did you buy it? I didn’t. Ethics, sure, sure one needs those, but I value the wisdom of my own furrows. Look at my brow. I know what I know. We are...

Vievee Francis I want to put down what the mountain has awakened. My mouthful of straw. I want to stand still but find myself moving from patch to patch. There’s a low In my throat. I sink to my knees tired or not. My hair a charcoal fire. What Man could live with this? When I am forgotten, the valley floor will be The valley floor. Smoke will rise from the limbs without me. Without me. Other poems featured by Vievee...