Catherine Daly (USA): "T9 Of My Affection"

T9 OF MY AFFECTION

km lot love ah bite cites bites one, one s re sees ah bite cites bites (biter’s) inch image in oh miss mirrors, x yaw at wave water, s pg pig sign shiny of net meta metal.
(x your image a beloved, image of you, beloved image)
x you would I s re sea sean recognize o myself, s re seeing you et due everywhere, would I recognize you.
e don foot font don’t e dec dear fear e desires s pc rag pain – desire s pg she pierces of me.

don’t e dr ere dread x wi who wings’ onr most nostril (onrush) – on me i he s pg sin show showered i his e dec debt death feathers.
since I s re set my e de feet on him, t up tra tram transl trampling his i heart, the ties there he s re pen remains, love s pc ran rampa scorch rampage scorched, km jon longing to s pp pre prep press his on not mouth to my feet.
my image st sub stan stamp subord stamped on your heart.
you’re a as bra cray craze brazen e fa ebb face – i gl I’ll s pg sin show it to the st run sun, I’ll show it to s pc sat rata satan.
g hit give x yourself a to unt tota touch of the x wi wig whip. st sub such desire ty twists my heart, ex eyes, heart.

love o ma oct mates hearts that x we web yearn. love i has a bec beaten me.
love on god goes infrac inescapably km jon look knoll looking out s pp pro prose propels me in got into the of net. I tv tuna tumble as love as apps approaches. x wi zip wish that of net neut netting i he gel held me to you – i he if I’d as arms crop the k lap last to unt tou tota touch of s rye sweetness e dr from your and body.
I’ll the tie vie with a bed adds beer beds bees in at cu bull bulk cull(ing) elm flow floyd flowers –

my so pot soul was on my k lips as I k lips kissed him. it s pl ski slips e do fox down your th tip throb throat as oh mixed with kisses. the s re sea rear secret eh dip fire of his inn good honey goodye (honeyed) lips set te up us ant both alight.
t up tram trans tramp transfer the el flames an cons boost consuming me to him.
i he as arts brush crushe brushes crushes flowers toe todd under his i he gee heels.
as arm around my of mea neck his s pg silt silver kisses s pg sin ring, a necklace. th tin through the tip tire three th tin times as o many ah cha again chains i he gel held me down, I’d i gladly ah air bird agree to lie on his bed. though he was lying down with ou mug others, I x ya want a secret a be bed affa beech affair.

Pierre Joris (Luxembourg/USA): Two Poems

READING EDMOND JABÈS

Here, the end of the word, of the book, of chance.

Desert!
Drop that dice. It is useless.

Here, the end of the game, of resemblance.
The infinite, by the interpretation of its letters
Denies the end.

Here, the end cannot be denied. It is infinite.

Here is not the place
Nor even the trace.

Here is sand.

ON MILES 13TH BIRTHDAY

& the sun rises at 7:05 a.m.
over the Habbous quarter in Casablanca
song birds that use the sky and the house
open house open to the sky to
the train vibrates walls
open to smells of Maghreb
the call of the muezzin at 4:30 a.m.
even though (even though?)
the windows have elegant bars
speech-grilles? sight-grills?
porous borders, but borders.
The cocks have been crowing
for an hour
I have been reading Kateb Yacine
on revolution, on the necessary fight
against arabo-islamism (feeling
relieved that he did not
need to see the horrors of the nineties
in his country — that place with the
“tourist” name, “The Islands” — who
would call a country the islands?
But who would call a country simply
the West, when it clearly has all four
directions? And when can I say
that syllable made my day,
my yesterday, reading Zrika
to the last glass at dinner,
the syllable of “ahh”
comes with or from the tea —
the idea, no the aaah that
is invisible link between
mouth & mint,
sugar & green tea,
in a pot shaped, he wrote,
like the country we call
the West.

David Baratier (USA): Two Poems

YOU CAN'T DROWN IN DEEP WATER

Throw yourself in.
It’s the cup of water
the coffee spoonful
that kills; also
the lawn puddle,
a slick surface,
more than a mouthful
when unconscious.

A drop of water in Xenia, Ohio
killed a man in October.

If there’s enough to tread in—
a lakeful, an ocean blue,
some mystery achievement
could happen, some
sign of overexertion
fast enough to talk
about, make it
worth your while.

UNSOLICITED ADVICE

Watch out for the green ones
do not eat them even though

they have the most currency
and are usually expected to

be better than the yellow
and if we are to find what

we do is acceptable then take
what we hold to be self evident

as evident from those selves
we leave far enough away

to be apart from and therefore
use the device of rhetoric to bring

each of us closer than what we
would ordinarily expect from

this form. Therefore, do not
eat pickles. Even green ones.

mIEKAL aND (USA): "buoyancy"

BUOYANCY

She said "buoyancy" & all was accomplished. It didn't begin with the dreadful rain, cold & dark. The sermon-like whine of the cold night air accomplished nothing. The writer sat back in staccato, wishing water to break his eyes & knock heads with the plot. If asked she knew the writer, not what he was working on at the moment, but more his overall conscience, rooted as it was in ordinary pleasures & offbeat tongueplay. Digression as in the person most likely to takeover the world. Whether a page of paper with its numb rubber surface is relay, what in the end, should impart the instant of motion, everything flying apart, come together murmured heartfelt about. She is working at it. Nothing & credit for doing it yet. Water stood about in the shallows, worked up with anger, that mounting & indelible sensation of the world against you—you know—like the time she contorted her delicate or flimsy body into a futuristic pose, thinking all along without direction or position, the flight of the leaf shaped by its descent. Clearly Water floated if coaxed, children were always one to splash & abandon dreary / wearisome thoughts, but the tide is not the surface, but like the tow of the brain, it works simultaneous with the narrowly visual.

In the backroom she has been working for some time elbowdeep in dishwashing. The job is unfulfilling, the customers never clean their plates & she has all this time to recognize. Like experimenting with the dishwater. Not at all surprising are the contents. Eggs. Cigarette butts. Chili. Green peppers. Cheese. Sponges. Toast. Soggy cookies. Napkins. Hands & dishes. The sink is an open field, she has all day to make the contents obey her imagination. She is a molecule from some years before suddenly brought to consciousness. It was from her time that great megaliths of ice overthrew the continents. Programmed in her DNA, once a protean swelling form of ice, she is presently reduced to an aberration in a back room in a sink, in a molecule of water. Silence & paradox, working to earn enough money to send the writer to an ocean, where he will sit lotus endlessly, waves crushing his lap, his pencil & notebook wet & useless, all this while she is still there, sifting thru the dishwater, closer to water, to luxury.

Makeshift & misplaced in alien havens. The writer took residence on a river-dazed pier. Wharf. Imagine the controversy when he organized a rendezvous in the night, pretext of dreaming new verbs & nouns for said book. "The wharf is very accommodating, wooden slats carved & initialed. I could tell you any story you'd wanna hear." The wharf floated & bobbled indicating that the turbulent city had little enough squirreled away, this generation should follow the water elsewhere. The writer waited, without precedence. He wrote many books & waited. The wharf grew weak, collapsed into the water. No one objected, the city ignored the river, the fisherman ignored the flotsam, the river compended the change, the writer maintained his network of speculations, waited to rendezvous. Water is priceless, again water is priceless.

from "with a back to water" somewhere deep inside SAMSARA CONGERIES, an unfinished 20th century epic

Mark Young (Australia/New Zealand): Two Poems

A NIGHT AT THE OPERA

Even when costumed
as a cloud of
comets, light, for all
practical purposes,
travels in lines too fine
to be detected easily.
That's why opera
is mainly words & music,
although its name derives
from the root for work
& work = energy &
energy is sometimes
light in certain wave-
lengths. But not in
this, & not enough
for dancing to be
clearly seen by. So
it calls in sick, & the
show goes on without
it. The audience
is none the wiser.

A DAY AT THE RACES

Most pathogens have
poor Latin, survive
only through their
ability to oxidize &
turn the surface
certain colours. Across
short distances the
males are nomadic
but still manage to
extend their range by
over-dubbing, Fender-
bending as it's
known in the
trade. The females
stay at home during
the breeding season,
support the patriarchy,
are supported by a
small allowance, enough
to cover living costs
& maintain their
health. Earlier & later
though they are the
true journeymen, under-
take long voyages of
exploration, discover
new bodies of evidence
or parts of speech
which they then bring
home pre-digested to
make it easier for the
following generations.

Feature: Dialogue, Lars Palm (Spain) & Adam Fieled, Seven Poems, Lars Palm

Adam Fieled: Let’s start simple: why is this (Net Publishing) worth doing?

Lars Palm: Why is this worth doing? Obvious question, yes; easy, no. Why is anything worth doing? To me it has a lot to do with a notion I had that there are lots & lots of people out there writing poetry that do strange & wonderful things to my head & my perception of what's known as reality & I wanted to give something back by supplying a venue where their work could be seen. Also it could be worth doing simply because it can be done. Mostly I do it because I want to, & because I enjoy it. Now, what were your reasons for starting PFS Post? Why do you think it's worth doing? Operating it, as you do in an area where there seems to be a lively scene & plenty of places for poets to get published….

Why are so many people doing it? Maybe because they deem it worth doing. Why did so many people start fanzines in the punk-era? Why do so many comics-writers start fanzines (on paper) today? I don't know; or, rather, it could have any number of reasons. How about they find it too difficult getting their things into print through established channels? Sharing a sense of esthetics, or ethics? Or are they just looking to attain control of production of their work? "Indie" web publishing may be similar to that, the main difference being, I think more people now have easy access to computers than photo-copiers. Could it be possible that this easy access to the web has made more people start blogs & webzines than would have started zines on paper?

Just some speculations. Another thing; about submissions; do you take unsolicited submissions, or is it all by solicitation? Apart, of course from the features? & how did you decide on the name?

AF: I was always skeptical about Net publishing until I had an article published in JACKET. Dealing with John Tranter (who helped me edit my piece, & in fact re-titled it), seeing what he was able to accomplish with a Net journal (a primer of wonderful post-avant writing, easily accessible & continually evolving & encouraging the development of a global post-avant community) just sort of blew my mind. Around the same time, I started a blog for the Philly Free School, an artists’ co-op that I was running at the time. When that was put on hiatus, it occurred to me that I could use the blog to publish people whose poetry I admired (including, incidentally, John Tranter). What had been the Philly Free School blog became PFS (Philly Free School) POST.

To me, Net publishing is a worthwhile venture because it enables an international community to develop in a way that it never could before. Rather than staying in little groups & clusters, you can get Australians publishing with Americans publishing with Canadians, etc. Net publishing rebukes xenophobia & prejudices. It’s very egalitarian & establishes a kind of political commensurability between poetic practice & poetry publishing, i.e. you can become a “world citizen” on the Net, whereas before this was unlikely at best. Again, these are all lessons I learned from studying JACKET. I have attempted to emulate Tranter, in my own little way. I don’t identify PFS POST as a “zine”. It’s a blog that functions like a journal. “Blog-journal” works for me.

Like JACKET, PFS POST is invitation only. This isn’t snobbery; my original idea was to accept submissions; but I received so many in the first rush that I knew I couldn’t accept it as a continuing scenario. It’s just too much work. It’s easier to search out poets I like & solicit poems & interviews.

Could you talk a little bit about the Net journals that have influenced LUZMAG? What are your favorites & why?

LP: The first (well, not chronologically) & most profound influence would be DUSIE & that brings us back to your speaking of becoming a world citizen & the human (& hopefully political) implications of that. DUSIE is edited out of Switzerland by Susana Gardner, an (I believe) American expatriate. Living on the other side of the Big Water from most of the poets, she has nonetheless put together two issues so far of some of the finest, mostly younger & mostly U.S. poets around. These are no small issues. That's another thing that inspired me, that she lets the poets stretch out a bit instead of just giving them one or two short poems of space. Because, frankly I think that's precisely where most good net journals fail, by not realizing there is no absolute limit to space & that the only limit there is - the attention-span of the reader - is very abstract & flexible. If the reader likes the text (s)he is most likely prepared to go along with it until it ends.

Another is the first issue of Tony Toasts FASCICLE, due to the reach of
the, mostly, poets published there; in time & space, as well as in styles & approaches to poetry. I also like the notion of having people reporting from their local scenes. FASCICLE, when I reread parts of the first issue yesterday, also made me think of the possibility of blog-chapbook extensions.

These are probably, along, of course, with the outstanding JACKET, my main online influences. I was actually hesitating to mention JACKET as it feels to me to be something like the Adam & Eve or the Ask & Embla of (international) online magazines.

These three are also among my favorite reads. There are of course others, like rob mclennan’s very local pdf-annual OTTAWTER, Mark Kuhars The DEEP CLEVELAND Junk Mail Oracle, William Allegrezzas MORIA & Poetry International - born out of the international poetry festival in Rotterdam to name but a few, but none of them has been really influential on LUZ.

Now it's your turn, which ones (apart, of course, from JACKET) influenced PFS POST, favorites & why? & another thing I'd like to throw in; most net journals work with issues & are annual, biannual or quarterly. That is a practice inherited from the paper journal, where that was an almost forcing necessity. Why do you think so many journals take that practice online? Why don't you work with issues? Has that to do with PFS POST being blog-based or did you choose the blog format because you didn't want to work with issues?

AF: Some of my favorite web-journals would be NTH POSITION (where poetry is edited by Todd Swift), CORDITE (edited by David Prater), HINGE (a Philly web-journal publishing mostly Philly poets), HUTT, Diana Magallon’s te_a_tro, the ARGOTIST and GREAT WORKS. I especially like GREAT WORKS because they had the balls to call themselves GREAT WORKS! Balls count for a lot in my view. The ARGOTIST is excellent because, from what I’ve seen, Jeffrey Side’s taste is impeccable. NTH POSITION is interesting cause it’s a bit like an online New Yorker; they have politics, movie sections, and a whole range of other cultural information. CORDITE is also very tastefully done, and Diana’s site shows a lot of pluck and nerve.

I never really considered doing issues. I know it seems strange, but from the beginning PFS POST was designed to be a sort of morph-machine, where things would change weekly (if not daily), people would come up and then disappear, it would be a flux. The idea of having a closed, fixed, discrete issue was (and is) somewhat distasteful to me; it reeks of patriarchal thinking (closed systems, sharp limits, etc., all patriarchy signifiers). Leaving things open (unlimited, not systematic) keeps PFS POST in the realm of post-structural theory as applied to poetics— there’s always an opening on PFS POST, no deadlines (usually), no sharp delineations between this and that. So, that’s why I don’t do issues.

Do you intend to do issues? Have you done a lot of planning regarding LUZMAG or are you just letting it take its own course? Who are you keen on publishing?

LP: No, I don't intend to do issues, never did. That's one of the advantages of the blog format; it's easy to manage & update. &, I don't have the patience to sit on good material for three or six months just to do a regular issue. To me it's not so much a political issue as one of rhythm, or pacing. I get a poem, or a handful, read & decide quickly & if the decision is "publish" I want to post quickly. My so far decidedly regular schedule of posting every third day (after some early variations) is partly due to that. Partly, however, it's also due to having received enough good submissions to make it just about necessary, as the alternative would be to be booked up until, say, early april instead of mid-february (at the time of writing this).

I did basically no planning regarding LUZMAG. To be truthful, I wasn't even seriously planning on starting a mag, but some circumstances, partly caused by me, partly by a post on Amy King's blog & partly by the sequence by Jonathan Ball, coincided to make me do it either way. The only planning was concerning submissions, name, & inviting a handful of poets to submit. Apart from that, I'm letting it take its own course, simply because I'm too deeply in love with improvisation to either be able or want to plan this thing. As for poets I'm keen on publishing, to my delight I've published a few already (Eileen R. Tabios of today's post is one of them), have a few lined up & have invited some others. Apart from those (this is the
short-list); Tom Clark, Anselm Hollo, Rae Armantrout, Lyn Hejinian, Joanne Kyger, Rachel Blau du Plessis, John Tranter, Bobby Byrd, Tom Raworth & a boatload of younger poets. Also my day would be made if someone submitted translations of people like Hugo Claus, Cees Nooteboom, Hans C.ten Berge, K Michel, Lo Ch'ing, Hsia Yü, Reina Maria Rodriguez, for example.

LARS PALM: SEVEN POEMS

ELEPHANTS IN PINK TUTUS

just ignore them & maybe
they'll go away & anyway
have you ever seen a large land
mammal without them? or
honk when they cross the
street it may make them feel
less subjected to silly poems


ALIEN ABDUCTEES HANDBOOK

not to be overly interesting but
once i was & then am someone
else the banshee stoned out of
her mind (from boredom she says)
was almost hit by their teapot for
they aimed strangely or she may
be nervous it was then it opened


HEADHUNTING IN THE SOLOMON ISLANDS

oh see it run & the man in the long
black coat trying to keep up the wind
is in the willows & the moon in on
the wing lost are the flightless
winged waterfowl wading these shores
or just on vacation now will he
catch up or remain headless?


THE SCREWING OF THE AVERAGE MAN

into the socket with you & beware
the wolf crying man one too many
times so it was said then how
it would be wiser to wave & to
waive your towel to beaches with
stolen sand where the rains remain
silent & spring is noisier than last year


1978 OAHU BUS SCHEDULE

why did who post it on this
bus stop? & in birmingham
no less? the poster for the
1979 punkrock show in
austin fits perfectly beside
it if you want to look into
this why not use a gastroscope


SUTURE SELF

too much metal added to that
girl not of the heavy kind kindly
no guano anywhere near these
feet feeling naked as it is is
that a smirk or are you just
embarking my nerves for a ride
you're not likely to forget?


SUPERFLUOUS HAIR AND ITS REMOVAL

by hand or scissors or knife
or razorblade or trimmer or
terror or sorrow (greying first
then falling) as if by age or
wax or fire or scalping or
wind or shampoo or simply
by ignoring it long enough