Chris McCabe (London, UK): from Zeppelins, "A Proposal"

There was a night before a day with no rent when I spoke softly in your ear as you slept: one day we will get married. I have never told you this. The heatwave brings out what the winter kept hid. The most extreme since 1911 when The Times at last stopped listing the heat-stifled dead. East London was putrid in trapped tanks of air & as the women joined their men marching on Trafalgar Square the open sky was a massive success, a freedom worth fighting for. Those in Liverpool walked out in sympathy & opened the kegs they had lugged for years to drink the contents on the streets. Tomorrow you might walk on as an extra in the film of Brick Lane— relocated to Turnpike — & the money you make will go into the fund for the plans we make. Reading John James in bed I am starting to believe that I am here again. You say you are hot but wrap your legs into mine, well there’s nothing the breeze from Shoeburyness — through the curtains and over the dresser — can do about that. I can’t wait for our future together you say, but when does it start? The night it happened, two weeks ago, I was no more aware of what I was going to say than would you like more wine? Ness, our time was then. The kestrel had cut its own shape against the sky like a tattoo on the retina — hovered with no wind — & as the bats, like burned swifts, tried to skirt the subject it was too late: the stars had already put us on the map. Very quietly & very secretly should we get married? Between us a glance of vitreous success that wanted to last, as if this piece of Dagenham grass would be our legacy. We waited, holding hands, for the first show of fox. Dogs barked & plotted out the silent tracks she made. Imagined fox gave way to fox — swift on the outhouse, feral, musically-ribbed — all was perfect this as she passed. Mongrel Max clambered his trampoline & scared her off. Midnight we found the doors but the walls were too thick — accustomed as we were to the poise of night our home seemed docile, an oafish fist of brick. We went to bed & the rest is this: a cost of one hundred pounds, a catalogue dress at two pounds sixty for 52 weeks. Last night I dreamt us a thumbnail baby with no rollover link but as we looked close we were so pleased with the breaths that it took. Ness, I think we are starting now. Don’t tell anyone until the Summer’s gone. 

© Chris McCabe 2009

Vladlen Pogorelov (Rocklin, California, USA): from Derelict, "No. 112"

The arrival of the greasy day
With its empty cans on the front porch,
Splashes of dirt from passing cars,
Noisy yellow school buses,
A good example of bad taste

The head is a bit heavy
With a thought:
“In every woman there is a lonely a guitar.”

In the bathroom,
The yellow teeth of
Somebody
Is still
RE-SEMB-LING
Somebody
Which lived in the last quarter
Of the twentieth…hundreds of years ago
Since a carpenter’s son
(Never learned the trade properly)
Was nailed to a wooden symbol
Of a helicopter before…Leonardo
(Performance art >>>>>
                                       A-R-T-Y
J.C. on the cross >>>>>
S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
                                              O.K.
Time to spit out the toothpaste and
Get dressed for just another
Greasy day.

© Vladlen Pogorelov 1997

Andrew Lundwall (Rockford, Illinois, USA): from Gardening at Night, "A Rap for Andre Breton"

the shipwreck of the hair follicles of the sun as sung by the phoenix fox choir of spastic city elastic - turntables like elephant trunks you wish them to be still so - horseback rode a circle and there you were at the city's limit - she turned her hand just so when the trees appeared like curious heads at a poker game - she was absolutely red bobbing head watching the follies on the wall - her boyfriend's got a sexual projector he plays these video things we all watch amused biting our cuticles – somewhere a lonesome pitiful man that it's convenient not to recall is turning over trashcans reeking whiskey trying to recapture a blue obnoxious and jealousy note that got lost somehow with mustache on – what is glamorous was said montgomery clift as he fell from our television set - she'd poured us both a dixie cup of milk from the head of a lemur now so her torrential pep talk broadcast to your little burgundy soul's bootielicious content please but don't get swallowed up this industry will laugh hysterically as it slaughters your testicles in the piano keys of infinity 

 © Andrew Lundwall 2008

William Allegrezza in...

William Allegrezza in Eratio Postmodern Poetry.

Steve Halle officially sanctioned on Internet Archive.

Brooklyn Copeland's Northernmost from Ungovernable Press. 

P.F.S. Post to PennSound: State of Grace, Season in Hell: White Candle. 

Meeting at St. George's

St. George's in Philadelphia, on 7th Street between South and Bainbridge, was a bar that had an upstairs which could be used as a performance space. One night in the late summer of '99, within a few days of shifting to Philadelphia from Manhattan (briefly stationed in Glenside before the move to 21st and Race), I got the tip-off that a bunch of acts were putting on a show at St. George's (I was at Philly Java). It was a sultry night, and cloudy, threatening rain. As I ascended the stairs, I looked and saw Matt Stevenson, who I had met at Robin's Books a little less than a year before at the last Siren's Silence reading, hunched over his keyboards/effects boxes rig, and Lora Bloom reciting into a microphone. This early, "pure" version of Radio Eris, as a duo, remains my favorite. Matt was short and stocky, 5'7, wore spectacles, had a slight hobble, and topped it off with a kind of inverse sartorial splendor, making semi-rags look as distinctive as possible. His speaking voice was rich and memorable, and he spoke quickly and articulately, even when stoned, which he often was. 

If I felt a certain urgency about talking to Matt at length for the first time, it is because an intuitive call had been sent out from somewhere in the universe to me— Philadelphia was going to be a cultural monster, one way or another, and it was my responsibility (and Matt's, if he cared to join me) to start the ball rolling. This, I knew. I managed to convey this to Matt at the upstairs bar, and began to learn Matt's quirks— even when he was deeply interested (and he was), Matt Stevenson had to be a cynical bastard. It's just that I had him, and I knew it. When we looked at what was happening onstage, it was obvious that magic was in the air— as Dave and Nemon Buckery played, the skylight above them was wild with windy rain and lightning, and the phantasmagoric effect was intense, the little crowd there assembled rapt. It spoke to me as a metaphor for what Philadelphia could be culturally, and it did so with the spacy, chiaroscuro, eerie ambiance of Philadelphia at night I was already familiar with.

Seemingly out of nowhere, Matt and I were joined by a third attendee. He introduced himself as Dan Baker, painter and musician. Dan was another lanky six-footer, with flaming red hair cut into a bob and a red beard to match. Dan was a transplant from Chicago, and (he implied instantly) underworld-consonant. You could feel the dangerous edges all around him. For all of Dan's musical involvements, with Dan (for me) the paintings are the point and, for their elegant simplicity, will eventually come to light. As I left St. George's that night, forced to walk to Market East Station (now Jefferson Station) sans umbrella, I felt something click that was like having a sudden million dollars in the bank. In the days that followed, I moved my stuff from Glenside to 154 North 21st Street. The flat was a studio— but, because the front/facade of the apartment faced east (lots of morning sun) and was all bay windows, and the living room space had loft-level high ceilings, it felt loft-ish the right way. I was to live in "2A" until mid 2008, when I moved around the corner to 23rd and Arch.

I had Matt and Dan's contact info, and other things going on— Jeremy Eric Tenenbaum and I were hosting readings in Philly Java's back-room, where the Siren's Silence readings had been in '96-'98. Jeremy and I, oddly enough, knew each other from earlier in the Nineties— when, on semester breaks, I would hang out with Chris DeFranco in Manayunk, I met Jeremy and his Villanova-based "d" magazine posse. Jeremy's unique self-presentation— Al Pacino channels Oscar Wilde, in Smiths-land and with a unique set of verbal tics, which manifested also in his work (both poetry and graphic design)— was difficult to forget. The night of St. George's, I had probably started with Jeremy at Java before migrating over. Perhaps St. George's was not posh enough for Jeremy; I had (and have) a ratty streak, and no such scruples. In fact, Aughts Philly depended on most of us having a ratty streak most of the time. A perfect moment in Aughts Philly could happen anywhere, and we were all attuned to that wavelength.

P.F.S.: Triad

There was a night in October 2002 I was recording in South Philadelphia with Radio Eris keyboardist/utility producer Matt Stevenson. What we were recording became the spoken word album Raw Rainy Fog. I have described in detail elsewhere precisely what Main Street West (aka Webster Street Studios) at 11th and Webster in South Philadelphia was like; to nut-shell the thing, a lovable hovel. I had picked up some Paisano red wine, because we were to have guests that night— Mary Harju and Abby Heller-Burnham. As of autumn '02, Mary and I were entrenched, and Abby was our constant companion. When they arrived, we smoked the requisite bowl (Matt's weed) from Matt's little marble-textured piece, and I poured the wine. This was, I laugh to remember, rather a mistake— Mary and Abby, together or separately, could hold their pot but not their booze. So, Matt was forced to watch, in semi-bemused fashion, as the two painters disintegrated into cacophonous incoherence and tantrum-like upset. They were a tumultuous pair; and, a few months after that (February '03), they moved into a two bedroom flat in a complex on 42nd Street off of Baltimore Avenue in West Philadelphia, where Mary had lived for a few years already at the pictured 4325 commune. I was Mary's hubs, and there constantly.

One nuance to remember about Mary and Abby, as a Dynamic Duo— Mary, through a rigorous and rigorously enforced regimen of scant, vegetarian eating, was always perfectly thin, if still rather more big-boned up close than one would think; Abby Heller-Burnham's weight was always fluctuating between extreme thinness and chunkiness. Her quandary was clear— the better she was painting, the more she liked to eat. Mary had a height advantage, as well— her Grace Kelly-like near 5'8 (later matched, precisely, by Hannah Miller) to Abby's elfin five feet even. The flat itself was nondescript— a large kitchen/living room space (the kitchen had an island), flanked by bedrooms on either side. No serious painting could be done there— Abby and Mary both had studios elsewhere. Because Mary had a hubs, she was given the larger, master bedroom, as we alternated apartments night by night as usual (I was still at 21st and Race). An important facet of Abby's personality which became visible at this time was her slow-burn Virgo temper— she was pissed at Mary's marriage to me, and harbored a secret grievance that she (the reason wasn't important) deserved the master bedroom. It's just that they both knew by then (without necessarily verbalizing it) what it would take me a number of years to realize for myself—Abby Heller-Burnham was a greater artist than Mary Harju. She was more inventive, imaginative, and formally rigorous, building on French Neo-Classicists Ingres and David from a firm base of solid contemporary engagement, while Mary settled for aping the Renaissance and hoping for the best. What was simmering in them in '03 was a congeries of all these issues.

We all enjoyed ourselves in that apartment for a while. We could all sing, so that spring we conceived the idea of writing and rehearsing some tunes. Perhaps Matt could record us at Main Street West or we could play a few clubs. The material we compiled over a few months was intriguing, including a nod to Sister Lovers-era Big Star called "She Slit Her Wrists." We managed to play out together, sans name, precisely once in the summer of '03. It was upstairs at Book Trader, then still at 5th and South, at an event coordinated by Brian Patrick Heston, who was a benevolent presence for us then, and his posse. I'm sure we sounded like lunatics, but a good time was had by all. In the middle of all this, On Love and Hamlet On Pine Street appeared in Hinge Online, Icarus in New York in American Writing; Mary and I were still studying at Penn; I did several readings at the Kelly Writers House on the Penn campus; and Mary and I were planning, and then taking, our trip to Montreal. I was moving, in my writing, away from the Romantic pastiches of '01/'02 towards a kind of groping around (recuperating, especially, the odal form) for a resolutely contemporary voice yet mindful of Romanticism's lessons. Abby, who had then begun The Skaters, was performing roughly the same aesthetic task.