P.F.S. Post

Adam Fieled (Philly, USA): from Apparition Poems

2010-02-02T09:31:00.004-05:00

#555

Wood-floored bar on Rue St. Catharine—
you danced, I sat, soused as Herod,
sipped vodka tonic, endless bland
medley belting out of the jukebox—
you smiling, I occupied keeping you happy,
un-frazzled— suddenly sounds behind us,
the bar wasn’t crowded & a patron
(rakish, whisker-flecked big mouth)
lifted a forefinger at beer-bellied
bartender bitching back, soon a real
fight, violence in quiet midnight,
I, scared, got you out of there

but you had to dance, you said,
had to dance so we paved Plateau, tense steps,
found nothing, you started crying & stamping
your feet like a child, I grabbed you & dragged
you back to our room you stripped, curled
into fetal position, beat your fists against
the mattress, in this way you danced
through the night, dozed & woke ready for more—

#1602

I stepped like a mantis off this ship

of fools, felt around for prey, found

a plate of ants to put in a microwave,

I saw how they scurried briefly, put it

into text that had the heat of ovens in

it, shipped this text across vast oceans,

it preyed on suspicions, was placed on

plates, now that I have prayed, I am (or

may be) redeemed, but every step I take

feels like a scurry, as the fools are more

numerous than I thought, just like ants.

#1603

“Be careful what you handle,”
I told her, “you can get to me
even if you touch another,” it
happened in an office shaped
like the foyer of a huge hovel,
built of mud, etchings of bugs
on the wall, perfect perverse
kids scampering among clods.

“You know what I want, and
how I can get it,” she replied,
as she took another out, put
me in, but only inside a brain
used amiss to find a level that,
shaped like a foyer, was past
office, into brick, sans mud.

#1607

Every live body has a dialect:
to the extent that bodies are
in the process of effacing both
themselves, what they efface, I
move past dialect to the extent
that there are no no-brainers
here, what’s moral in this is the
belief that properly used dialects
emanate waves to hold bodies
in place. As to who’s saying this,
I heard this on the street last
night after a few drinks with
an ex at Dirty Frank’s. It was
a bum who meant it, it worked.

#1613

Follow Abraham up the hill:
to the extent that the hill is
constituted already by kinds
of knives, to what extent can
a man go up a hill, shepherd
a son to be sacrificed, to be
worthy before an almighty
power that may or may not
have had conscious intentions

where hills, knives, sons were
concerned, but how, as I watch
this, can I not feel that Abraham,
by braving knives, does not need
the one he holds in his rapt hands?

These poems are available to be purchased in book form from Blazevox.

They can also be listened to on PennSound.

© Adam Fieled 2010

Aaron Belz (Los Angeles, USA): Two Poems

2009-12-22T07:51:00.001-05:00

FAMOUS

This morning the universe
divulged its secret:

“There is no huggy bear.”
Then the universe

sat for a moment
as if in deep thought.

“Rather, huggy bear
is ill and about to die.”

The universe stood up
and shrugged.

“I guess you just do
the best you can, right?”

No, I thought.
That can’t be right.

There must be a back door
to get out of this place.

Then I developed
kaleidoscopic vision.

Everything became
multiplied and divided,

and it was slowly turning.
This must be how

Bono
sees the world, I thought.

SHE TAUGHT US

To avoid certain phrases, such as “like the plague,”
but how desperately were we to avoid them?
She had deprived herself of a way to express this.

“O bubonic plague, bubonic, bubonic. Nothing else
is as bubonic as you!” began one of my essays,
for nothing was, until you came along, my dear.

You proved even more bubonic than the plague,
so I avoided you like the blague—that is to say,
like the joke, trick, or blunder. It’s a French word.

Kelley White (New Hampshire, USA): from Salt Suite

2009-12-18T08:47:00.004-05:00

SALT SUITE I: That Moment We Say Yes to the Water

my good hand an oar
my hair a whisper of torn sail

he offered to wash the sand from my feet

one white feather

as if a bowl of fresh water could keep us safe from the sea
death’s breath
breathing water
to hold all that stiff salt anger
like a phone call about an angry tooth

is it always our mother forcing us to breathe?
and what are sobs but hunger?
and when the mother comes
to lift the shoulders
to make a cup of her chest

now that you can see a little light
what have you
brought up
from the bottom?

the man with the puffed pink scars down his chest?
iron feathers?

what living water?

SALT SUITE II: It Takes a Long Time to Get Past a House

I’d like a jar without sides
I’d like an empty skate
one broken egg, womb warm

“It was the way she welcomed the water,
her thirst, eyes open, gulping great mouth
fulls even as she pushed beneath the skin
and let the it cover her face,
willful, her drunk exhausted
arms, that was the shock,
to see her swallow death, to suck
at death’s breast. . .”

(who did this thing? sinking flowers
in the sand?
the stones know where it is safe
to lie)

I’d like an angry shovel
an abandoned umbrella
I’d like a painted stone

SALT SUITE III: A Painted Stone

1.
she drank, her body face
up and staring
that heavy hair
floating
to hold all that stiff
salt anger

the stones know
where it is safe to lie

2.
if I led you to the water,
if I eased you in, back
against the tide, would
you trust me
to keep you breathing?

would I trust you
to breathe?

3.
death’s breath
not breathing water

as if a bowl of fresh water
could keep us safe
from the sea

Jeffrey Side (UK): The Semantic Limitations of Visual Poetry

2009-12-01T12:35:00.004-05:00

In The Reader, the Text, the Poem, Louise Rosenblatt says: ‘The poem, then, must be thought of as an event in time. It is not an object or an ideal entity. It happens during a coming-together, a co-penetration, of a reader and a text’. She later elaborates:

The reading of a text is an event occurring at a particular time in a particular environment at a particular moment in the life history of the reader. The transaction will involve not only the past experience but also the present state and present interests or preoccupations of the reader. This suggests the possibility that printed marks on a page may even become different linguistic symbols by virtue of transactions with different readers. Just as knowing is the process linking a knower and a known, so a poem should not be thought of as an object, an entity, but rather as an active process lived through during the relationship between a reader and a text.

For the poem to be experienced as an event in time, the importance of mental activity, or “internalisation”, in the reader cannot be overestimated. By internalisation I mean that part of the reader’s response that is able, through conscious decision, to minimise the relevance of the text in the hermeneutical process. This is difficult to achieve with poetry in which the artifice (in the form of certain extra-lexical ingredients—such as the visual and acoustic) is fore-grounded at the expense of semantic elements. Such poetry inhibits internalisation and is, as Charles Bernstein has said, ‘concerned only with representing its own mechanisms’.

These elements of artifice are, like painting and music, non-semantic and, as such, they preclude an exegetical response that is distinct from the hermeneutical procedures employed in the reception of non-representational visual art and music. In ‘The Dollar Value of Poetry’ Charles Bernstein advocates a poetics that is grounded in experiences that are released in the reading. In this sense, then, poetry is seen as being untranslatable and un-paraphrasable for ‘what is untranslatable is the sum of all the specific conditions of the experience (place, time, order, light, mood, position, to infinity) made available by reading’. Bernstein sees this untranslatability as being misunderstood by advocates of ‘certain “concretist” tendencies, who see in radical concrete procedures the manifestation of untranslatability at its fullest flowering’. As Bernstein, stresses ‘what is not translatable is the experience released in the reading’. He goes on to say that ‘in so far as some “visual poems” move toward making the understanding independent of the language it is written in, i.e., no longer requiring translation, they are, indeed, no longer so much writing as works of visual art. In ‘Words and Pictures’, he emphasises the linguistic and semantic criteria necessary for any aesthetic of viewer/reception theory to be plausible: ‘visual experience is only validated when accompanied by a logico-verbal explanation’. For Bernstein, then, as he says in ‘Thought’s Measure’, ‘there is meaning only in terms of language’.

Furthermore, he is well aware of the dangers of too much foregrounding of artifice when he writes in ‘Artifice of Absorption’:

In my poems, I
frequently use opaque & nonabsorbable
elements, digressions &
interruptions, as part of a technological
arsenal to create a more powerful
(“souped up”)
absorption than possible with traditional,
& blander, absorptive techniques. This is a
precarious road because insofar
as the poem seems
overtly self conscious, as opposed to internally
incantatory or psychically
actual, it may produce
self consciousness in the reader in such a way as to
destroy his or her absorption by theatricalizing
or conceptualizing the text, removing
it from the realm of an experience engendered
to that of a technique
exhibited.

Bernstein welcomes internalisation. Without it, it is impossible for poetry to be experienced as an event in time. However, he does tend to view the semantic field as incorporating non-lexical features of a poem. While I agree with incorporation in principle, in practice it is psychologically problematical for most readers. This is perhaps why such poetry is deemed “difficult”.

It could be argued that visual poetry is, indeed, semantic. I agree to an extent. For instance, Ernst Gomringer’s ‘WIND’ (which plays with associations such as the words "in" and “win” contained within the word "WIND”) and Augusto de Campos's ‘CODIGO’ (which contains the word "God" as an anagram and alludes to "cogito ergo sum”) do, indeed, operate semantically. Nevertheless, their semantic operations are extremely meagre. With ‘WIND’ the associations come to only two words: “win” and “in” (perhaps also the word “wind”, as in to wind a clock). The same limitations can be seen in de Campos's ‘CODIGO’. Apart from a reader’s fleeting appreciation of the novel aspects of these poems their affects are exhausted no sooner than they are recognised.

In contrast, if we compare the following lines from ‘Into the Day’ by J. H. Prynne with ‘WIND’ and ‘CODIGO’ we can see their limitations more clearly:

Who does we reign our royal house
is roofed with fateful slates

These lines begin with the words ‘who does’ which immediately puts us into questioning mode, but the next word, ‘we’, draws our attention to the grammatical inappropriateness of the preceding word, ‘does’, in its location between ‘who’ and ‘we’. We have been led to expect a question but the grammatically incorrect syntax has frustrated this expectation. We are left instead with a language that rather than denoting a position of enquiry relies, instead, on connotation for this effect. This sort of “question” belongs to an "enquiry" that is syntactical rather than referential. In other words it is language pretending to be a question.

Similarly, ‘our royal house is roofed with fateful slates’ although syntactically correct contain the juxtaposition of ‘fateful’ with ‘slates’, two words not usually associated or combined with each other. This cannot be said of ‘roofed’ and ‘slate’ which often share the same juxtaposition. If the word ‘fateful’ had not been included there would be little room for plurality of meaning. The word ‘slates’ would mean solely roofing materials. It is the juxtaposition of ‘fateful’ and ‘slates’ that produces the plurality. A few of the dictionary definitions of the word ‘slate’ are: 1) a fine-grained rock that can be easily split into thin layers and is used as a roofing material. 2) a roofing tile of slate. 3) a writing tablet of slate. 4) a dark grey colour. 5) a list of candidates in an election. ‘Slate’ is, thus, rich in connotation. The addition of ‘fateful’ enables any one of these meanings to become appropriate. For example, it is quite possible to have a fateful dark grey colour—as in the sense of an omen. So, too, is it possible to have a fateful group of electoral candidates.

If we were to choose this latter image for one of the meanings of ‘fateful slates’ we could make it fit into the rest of the sentence (if it can rightly be called one) by opening up the meanings of ‘our royal house is roofed with’. This is fairly simple, as the idea of electoral candidates enables ‘royal house’ to connote a political arena of some sort as suggested by the word ‘house’ (The Houses of Parliament or The White House, for example). The word ‘roofed’ connotes a ‘covering-over’—a protection of some sort, as in the image of a bird’s wing covering and protecting its young. If we take this as our connotation, then one of the many meanings of ‘our royal house is roofed with fateful slates’ could be: ‘Our political system is protected from tyranny by its processes of electing political candidates who are under oath (fated) to guarantee this freedom from tyranny’. This interpretation of Prynne's 12 words is only possible with a richer semantic field of possibilities than both ‘WIND’ and ‘CODIGO’ provide.

The formal qualities of a poem are, of course, important but only indirectly: in that they facilitate the inner ear’s appreciation of the poem’s sonorous qualities. They do not contribute overmuch semantically. The only thing of importance is the mental activity experienced by the reader. The reader’s attention should not be focused on the poem’s structure or its rhetorical devices but, rather, should be concentrated on the resonance produced by the semantic qualities of the lexis. Only in this way, then, can the poem be fully experienced as mental activity. It must be remembered that a poem is primarily “heard” in the mind. All that we are able to glean from a poem is conveyed through the poems semantic operation. To argue that the formal qualities of the text facilitate a more than limited semantic response is to rely too heavily on an aesthetic theory that is more appropriate to the visual arts.

Editor’s Footnote: I was unable to format this piece so that Jeffrey’s footnote numbers would appear in the piece. Their omission is my responsibility, not Jeffrey’s.

L. M. Rosenblatt, The Reader, the Text, the Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work (Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978), p.12.
Rosenblatt, pp. 20-21.
Rosenblatt’s attitude to the relevance of the text can be seen in the following quotation where she comments on the titles of literary works: ‘But when we try to think of what a title—Hamlet, say, or Moby Dick—might refer to apart from a reader, whether the author himself or another, “the work” disappears. The title then refers simply to a set of black marks on ordered pages or to a set of sounds vibrating in the air, waiting for some reader or listener to interpret them as verbal symbols and, under their guidance, to make a work of art, the poem or novel or play’. See The Reader, the Text, the Poem, pp.12-13.
Charles Bernstein, A Poetics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), p.10.
Bernstein, Content’s Dream, p.58.
Bernstein, Content’s Dream, p.58.
Bernstein, Content’s Dream, p.58.
Bernstein, Content’s Dream, p.125.
Bernstein, Content’s Dream, p.62.
Bernstein, A Poetics, pp.52-53.
email correspondence with Charles Bernstein dated June 26, 2005.

Mark Young (Rockhampton, Australia): from Geographies

2009-05-25T08:08:00.000-04:00

from GEOGRAPHIES

TIERRA DEL FUEGO

The black hats draw on the
testimony of French combatants
in order to place the object in
a logical relationship to the rest
of the sentence. Mick Jagger
is no exception even though
he appears as an absent image—
all dharmas are ultimately empty
of any distinction that would
separate one dharma from
another. China looms large,
offering free audio pronunciation
of consumer-generated product
reviews. There are no rail-
ways. The beavers must die.

LOMBARDY

It was the spatial
frequencies at the
Fourier transform plane
& the presence of
defense attorneys
dressed in their best
suits that finally
brought him to belief
in the Big Bang theory
of the creation of the

universe.

THE TAKLAMAKAN DESERT

A fairly small
event in terms of
plate tectonics;
but the hard drive
ends up stripped
of all encrypted
data. Tabula rasa.

L'ARC DE TRIOMPHE

Storm surge, river-
boat casinos, the
biggest fertiliser plant
in the world, why
anyone would waste
over a pound of premo
in a giant joint are
some of the nettle-
some paradoxes of
democratic politics.

© Mark Young 2009

Kelley White (New Hampshire, USA): Two Poems

2009-05-25T08:03:00.001-04:00

ART OF THE AMERICAS

i.
unhook the latch
blow off dust
lay on the table beneath a single dangling bulb
spine flat
slick leaves open
always to the tight black-lined woodcut
man on man
manu a manu
knife
blade
empty chest
heart beating overhead

ii.
It is said that Crazy Horse ate Custer’s heart.
This is not true. Buffalo liver, perhaps.

iii.
pyramid
disinhearted
throw the rib-shell over the priest’s shoulder

iv.
abyss

v.
this thing
this flabby old muscle
stilled
red and growing darker
fat encrusted
drying to tallow
gristle
in each chamber
one smooth green stone
marbled
like my eyes

vi.
ice arrest
watch
the saw cut
that grinding buzz
the dental whine

vii.
“hey babe,
I’ll give you water,
I already had
my wine”
(wants a dollar,
give him four bits)

viii.
you won’t answer
(the child had
no ear drum)

ix.
Henry carved a green stone heart
on a brass stand and marble base.
The children broke it.
No one confessed.
They were all punished.

x.
finger crook-and-pull
my own ribs
and still this hubbub

xi.
to become invisible
or rather:
the visible woman
clear plastic
head molded with Berry Crocker
hair
hips a little wide, perhaps
a babe in the womb
no

xii.
ectopia coridis
child with the heart
outside the chest
cordae
cordate
card
iac arrest
press
chest
repressed

xiii.
I will be this small stone you might carry,
the brass paperweight that warms
to your touch,
your mother’s, yours.
Replace my wound
with a stone.
Carry the stone.
Live stone
cold.

WHELK

in the city of sand
we build bone houses
we fear the wind
--it stings our eyes
with broken
monuments—

in the city of snow we shelter
in frozen breath—

in the salt city
we live inside our wounds
--we wait for the tongue
of our heavy god—

© Kelley White 2009

Jason Bredle (Chicago, USA): Three Poems

2009-05-18T07:29:00.000-04:00

THE CONSTIPATION SWEATER

What if all of my interactions with others are a figment of my imagination
and I’m actually completely insane
is kind of an unsettling thought I had one day
so I wrote to you
lately I’ve been struggling with reality
and put reality in quotes
to emphasize the struggle
but I didn’t think struggle was the right sentiment
so I looked in a thesaurus but couldn’t find a better word
but did find give the old college try
and tried
to understand what that really means, the old college try,
but I don’t know if college was really real for me
or if all of my interactions with others were a figment of my imagination
and I was completely insane
is what you would’ve heard from me that day
if I hadn’t thrown the note away before giving it to you
because I was afraid you’d think I was completely insane
is something you should never say
to the meat department staff at your neighborhood Dominick’s
because they’ll think you’re completely insane
except for the really old guy who can’t hear anything,
he’ll keep yelling
what, what
and you’ll end up in a situation where you’re yelling all this to him
and others around you will think you’re completely insane
and the point here
is to keep this insanity thing
kind of on the down low
because you’ve spent time in the hospital
and you don’t want
to spend time in the hospital
because it’s so lonely and the gowns are so uncomfortable and the food
is so average
but mostly it’s so lonely,
the way nurses interrupt your sleep at night to replace your IV,
the way nurses wake you in the morning to take your blood,
the way the morning lasts forever and the hospital staff
places you in front of cartoons as if that's enough to get you through the day
but it’s completely maddening
and I’m so sorry for everything I’ve ever done that’s hurt you
because I didn’t mean to
is what I wanted to say that night
I returned from the hospital
and we ate dinner together
and watched Primer for the fifth time
but instead I asked if the nurse
who joked about taking my temperature rectally was flirting with me,
I washed the dishes and wrote The Constipation Sweater, about a sweater
you can wear that helps facilitate defecation.

PHOENIX VERSUS THE FLYING CHICKEN

If all this is happening on an infinite number of parallel membranes
and my life exists separately within each of those parallel membranes
then perhaps some of those existences
occasionally transcend membranes
through some type of telekinetic wormhole
and find their way
into my dreams
and I’ve actually been violently chopped in some of those existences
or my cats are not alive in some of those existences
or I died in a gruesome airline disaster above Mexico City
in March 2006
in some of those existences
which before that time I’d feared was my death dream
and after that time
decided was about how my girlfriend can sleep through anything
is something most people don’t imagine
other people are thinking
as they whip through Dominick’s
on their way home from work each night—
most people are rocking out to Yes’s Owner of a Lonely Heart,
buying tampons and peanut butter cups—
is something I hope to communicate to other me’s
who’ve never had this thought
on all those parallel membranes out there
is another example of something I should really try
to keep on the down low because others may interpret it as insane
is a thought I had one night as I whipped through Dominick’s
rocking out to Owner of a Lonely Heart, buying tampons and pbc’s
but the more intense part of the thought I had was
what if everyone in this place is having this exact same thought
and it’s what Trevor Rabin was thinking
when he wrote Owner of a Lonely Heart
and what if all the other me’s
on all those parallel membranes have already dreamt what I’m thinking
but it didn’t make any fucking sense to them
because those me’s strayed from the me who’s here
in Dominick’s right now
due to decisions they made I wish I’d made
that guided their lives to completely different places
where they have tampons and peanut butter cups but they’ve never heard
of Dominick’s
because they only have Penny Saver’s wherever they are
and they spend their days with refugees from war torn regions,
educating them
or nursing them back to good health
and they wonder
if those they educate or nurse back to good health ever wonder
if all this is happening on an infinite number of parallel membranes
and their lives exist separately within each of those parallel membranes
then perhaps some of those existences
occasionally transcend membranes
through some type of telekinetic wormhole
and find their way into their dreams
because it might explain
the meaning of the dream they had Dominick versus the tampon cup
the same way it might explain the meaning of my dream
phoenix versus the flying chicken.

THE NIGHT OF THE JAGUAR

Let’s say this emerges centuries from now in some type of post-apocalyptic
Dumont Dunes hellscape,
people are either going to be blasting around
from membrane to membrane impressed with my forward thinking
or not blasting around from membrane to membrane
amazed by my total insanity
and I expect the latter
is what most people at this point expect me to say to someone
at my neighborhood Dominick’s
because I don’t do very well
with keeping this insanity thing on the down low
but it’s not something most people expect me
to say to the pudding
at my neighborhood Dominick’s
and the reason I think the latter is because come on,
if you’re living in some type of post-apocalyptic Dumont Dunes hellscape
logic would dictate that earth has regressed
from where it is now
unless the educational divide has become so extreme
that the highly educated have wormholed their way
to more tolerable parallel membranes
and left this post-apocalyptic Dumont Dunes hellscape to those of us
who enjoy tearing into a good piece of meat with our hands
and pleading to our faithful squadron to
bring us the head
of Orpheus the Mighty
for the Night of the Jaguar is upon us
and blood will surely flow
red like the river Hades through this long ago forsaken hellscape
in which case
descendents, I salute thee!
is something we’ve all thought about at some point
as we whipped through Dominick’s on our way home from work at night,
but how many of us have outlined
everything we have in common with the jaguar
on the back of our grocery lists
in the hope that we might be revered
in the chance this future outcome happens?
Here’s mine:
We are both solitary, stalk-and-ambush predators.
We are both opportunistic in prey selection.
We both bite directly through the skull of our prey.
We both enjoy swimming.
We both range from Paraguay to México.
We are both compact and well-muscled, with robust heads and powerful jaws.
We both reach sexual maturity at three to four years of age.
We both practice aggression avoidance behavior.
We are both the national animal of Guyana.
Of course it’d be ridiculous for me to want to be worshipped for this type
of forward thinking
but I think revered would be nice
but I don’t know, in this scenario there’s probably not
a lot of reading going on
but instead a lot of heat and blood and dunes
and filth and false idolatry
but the good news is if someone does read this,
I’m not going to seem totally insane
because the Night of the Jaguar is upon us, my brethren,
and blood is about to flow red like the river Hades, red like the river Hades
as you go forth and bring me the head of Orpheus the Mighty!

© Jason Bredle 2009

Jean Vengua (California, USA): Three Prose Poems

2009-05-18T07:24:00.003-04:00

#1

what do you think. half sleepy, once again on the other side of pain, ad nauseum, etc. she thinks about the angry blooms. how they emerge with such force, and with a little careful coaxing they give up black pollen. upended like that. turning volatile inside out, she can’t figure it. wants to sew it up tight with a needle and thread; wants a beginning and an end. she has a body and expects it to tell tales. a tale of a prehensile tail. well what does it have to say for itself? from which joint or talon or lip or tongue issues word? half a word. half a moan, then, in exchange for some tender strokes.

#2
a blossoming non-pain along the elbow, even to the shoulder. pain of short shrift and some dribbles of light, and there among the curved rafters under the breasts. soft containment, the flesh thinning with age. sometimes turning the tongue on a word. nipples that are concise, small territories, templed; and these, once dark, that have paled and lost their boundaries. shift shift click. the knee dreams of fluffy pews. the back of the neck dreaming of ice. the tongue dreaming of ribs. stretch marks pay tributary to the navel, a locked door, both sides. where once there was a vortex of blood, there are a few paths narrowing to a stop.

#3
she feels old. can’t understand she’s beautiful, even naked, plastered in signs and executed like once-perfect britney. “nudity is not a crime.” even when perfectly wet or close up, each hair is an aging fold, a suzanne, or a polly jean in the tub. the aesthetics speak imperfect and fleshy nouns. English wants to be precise. to be indirect is the best prescription. (sigh) i can’t stand these colors. the colors of autumn are electric collars for your gender. this muscle is a girdle that contains all erotics; although your erotics are not my erotics, we may meet in the middle (joined at the navel, so to speak). look: language falls down around my ankles, so revealing.

© Jean Vengua 2009

Adam Fieled (Philly, USA): from Apparition Poems

2009-05-18T07:21:00.003-04:00

#1340

Arms folded over chest
(as the man on the four of
Swords), she paints inside
a box-like carven space,
(dank edges only seen on
the outside), light filters in
from small square windows,
I hover over her, I’m this
that she wants, but what
she needs is to once again
feel what avalanches can’t
reach this head so full of
color, ribbons, blueness.

#1342

What’s in what eyes?
What I see in hers is
mixed greenish silence,
somewhat garish, it’s
past girlish (not much),
but I can’t touch her
flesh (set to self-destruct),
anymore than she can
understand the book
her cunt is, that no one
reads directly, or speaks
of, there’s no love other
than “could be,” but I
think of her throat cut—
that’s her slice of smut.

© Adam Fieled 2010

Paul Siegell (Philly, Pa): Six Poems

2009-05-11T07:14:00.002-04:00

*ANSWER: A NEW ERA*

the road otherworldly, “anyone else wanna see themselves
******on tv?”
the road otherworldly, crisis leadership and a discount on
******decisions when we’d really rather pay full price
the road otherworldly, sometimes everything in the salad
******tastes like produce grown on another planet

pick up a couple even tho they might be slightly troublesome

the road otherworldly, truckers who haul hazardous cargo
the road otherworldly, hurried the urine shot through urethra
the road otherworldly, to be gradually gravitating toward
******“Nothing. What’s new with you?”

from the rooftops we watch for the meteors of metaphor

the road otherworldly, Abraham, Alabama, iIn my tears for
*****America: today just needs to get on with it and let us
*********go already
the road otherworldly, poem Obama, Optimus Prime, Obama
******on Mount Olympus: (shepherd a breathtaking backfire?)
*all the hopes for Obama bohemia—
the road otherworldly, my coworker just sneezed

*SCENE AT DUNG GATE*

With prayers left in the crevices, tour-guided Americans lean against
stone, lick vanilla, speak of Wailing Wall and how incredible.

Bareback on a beast, a Palestinian boy plods up, shows off for the brand named,
whacks his donkey’s neck with a stick, quick, made from black irrigation tubing.

“—Whoa!” go the Americans.

Smirks. Goes around the corner.

Tzit tzit dangling, yarmulke’d yeshiva boys carry planks of wood
into the Old City for Lag B’Omer bonfires. Picnic festive and family full.

Little, they use the wall, masonry a few feet high, to slide the planks and rest.
Ice cream Americans smile, say Shalom, giggle with and get outta their way.

Returned, boy-with-burden meets boys-with-firewood and the Holy Land
comes out of camouflage.

Each in each other’s way. Language is used. Grips on the planks of wood
change, tighten, raise, as does the irrigation tube—

“—Yeladim!” detonates down from an apartment window above.
“—Yeladim! Yeladim!” a barrel chest yells. Yeladim means children.

*it is its self to be*

out of an avid gale, a hurricane of shape-shifting persuasion, the line

“of being born a trumpet” steers its sharps into the audience of dance

moves & their domain names: am I not the notes being played as well?

no ordinary hit a-the old http://, such weight of wakeful conversation:

out of the clarion lift, in the calisthenics of the scenery, wide breaths

[esc] toward something

*weird about the way*

the greatest quiet
exists

betwixt the visual elixir
of emeralds

in Esmeralda’s ears.

related searches
in the avocado daylight

find the too

amongst the vacancies
of design

in a sold-out crowd
of cats wearing wheels.

but even then,

walking into the cough
of a Bono wannabe

’s got nothing
on the emptiest of inboxes.

*05.24.08 – JamontheRiver – Festival Pier, PA*
(—Thank You, Drew G!)

we pull up like a rickshaw
of firecrackers

he slips off his sunglasses, squeezes
drops in his eyes

fuses taunt the ticket-takers

ripped for Grimace, the Biscuits, the Flaming Lips

another
head
happening

dyslexics, diggers

out for the apple, falafel, seven bucks for a beer

audition obedient, starry-eyed

three girls with eyeliner
smirk, slink into their brainstorm-mindset headlands

tympanic membranes escalated, bug-eyed

a guy with earlobes stretched by eyelets: expanders,
the kind you can see through, pockets his lighter

speaker-pumped chest thumps

a security guard with bright orange plastic plugs
shielding him from the deafening—

we pull up like a rickshaw of firecrackers, eardrums
triumphant, irradiated

and raging

*toast: is this a joke?*
(—for M. Mayers)

in the event
of an attack

against the United States

or

the possibility
of

you-gotta-be-kidding-me

nuclear war,

feel free,
my fellow heads,

and get bombed

[…]

before dead.

Joseph Bradshaw (Portland, Oregon): Two Poems

2009-05-11T07:08:00.000-04:00

IN THE TERMINAL

“the Roman god of borders, Terminus taught us our limits but also showed us the unknown”
—Kathleen Peterson

In the terminal
shadows cast block
unyellowed light.

A room opens
to rooms, smaller
to larger, stucco

chipped, conceals
a swimming baby within
these walls, a

bird flown in through absent
chimney rustles
in the black that

separation
of heard and known.
In the terminal, stepping

from the house
we have written we are
in the house, we cross it

out with a dash placed
between us as if
to connect, as if

a house was there—
here
the T stands alone, separates

He stands, alone.
In the terminal, I
see him walking as

if crossing a bridge, nothing
stands between to hold
past to will.

THE BALLAD OF WEDNESDAY, A SPIDER
for Spicer

Wednesday
windy, eddies
before Thanksgiving.

A spider crawling
out the door
receives goodbye

the same as I
8 legs Wednesday
four Friday. Less

windy the sea-
shore in landlock
states: Shut the door

on a spider
Wednesday
the song goes:

Shut the door
or the words
we receive

a legless Goodbye
in this wedding
of Wednesday

a spider:
The saying of,
not the spoken of

Wednesday
Windy, eddies
before Thanksgiving

is hereby wedded
to a storm
a storm I said

The door is shut.
There isn’t a door.
Shut the door.

By Sunday
we won’t have any
need for that jar.

© Joseph Bradshaw 2009

K. Silem Mohammad (Oregon): Four Poems

2009-05-04T07:59:00.003-04:00

GLAM BACKPACK

light me up
I got glam in my backpack

an inside-out cake
the c replaced with a k

cocked-up cock-
happy coachman

control … stimmung…
kill y’all

like an albino cobra
licking your arm nub

like a little old
cream box juice dog

the type of dog it is
le hot-dog

HOW SONGBIRDS DEAL WITH LARGE AMOUNTS OF SERIAL INFORMATION

I am the hardstyle pimp
I can barely read what people are saying
I have to decipher between tones
so I deem this a tonal study … or something

I’ve detected among Wyoming kidney damage lawsuit lawyers
the first threadbare reality sex to invade a tonal shift
a shift that’s swift and rather abrupt and I would contend
that no one here cares what you have to say

I bulked a tonal radiance through the used panties
uttering restrained and barefoot big real tits to myself, my god! looking about
I accompanied many marble dicks on tits bearing coffins
led by a tonal thing with a convenient head made of wax

a distant seven-shot metaphysical object terminating in a tonal hand
was not very hard-to-get-looking
having between its inorganic teeth a not-so-lonely chosen object
everybody knows you snort coke off of

Brian Eno and I would like some milk from the milkman’s wife’s tits
and big round chocolate rumps which were not such
as a tonal man would accumulate and preserve
not a tonal silence of centuries, but a tonal working sea … fuck you

umm, the neighbor wife in “more” gorgeous nylon panties
actually sings her tits off for once
they snuck a tonal spot on the grass outside for I had tested them
and overthrew the keynotes of the tits and the successors-in-spirit

a northwest flood of incomparable corruption
banished the upright jerking-off neo-rapture of go-go proportions
alas! however ultramodern I am of this
could it be that a big girl’s blouse covers up a pair of tits of greater than normal size

as for my tits they may perhaps fail of the fidelity they coach me
a growth of charming grass funnier than my head
their camps did fail because there was no grass
of no capital in which a tonal apartment can be so hired

I’M TIRED OF EATING LUNCH WITH CHICKS EVERY DAY (Signature, Event, Roast Beef)

hey, bitch, give me some roast beef
screw you, sexist

bitches who can’t read for context are of no concern to me
you can’t define men without making them separate from structuralist “hairy chasms”

which is really another way of making the claim that a signifier is haunted
by sustainable earth-friendly Tofurkey

for me the way to avoid the abyss
is to pursue a rhetorical low-fat food source

or go to Alaska
writing itself struggles over and over to go here

academic methodologism and paradigm-enforcement is just
far healthier for you than, say, Fresca

Dracula must be a werewolf though Canada for example
never learned how to get down on her knees eating Americans

the generation above getting in morphine and using guns and all that
the way history is conventionally about book proposals

they meet some son of a bitch who studied knife-fighting
they send his soul to psychoanalysis

I’m running with the “theory bitch” moniker
(is Madonna old enough to have a festschrift?)

whatever
what’s completely missing is a circular puzzle with no end

and really just leaving out
the beef and seeing how it comes out

UNTITLED

“exactly who are you and why is it
you have brought this wood here?”
Ray gestured at the pile of wood

he’s a maniac, maaaniac on the floor sexual
he would live fast and hard and burn
himself up then folks would say goddam
like you can discourage him
just by punching him in the face

broken hymen of a priest in disguise
with a pregnant girlfriend
Buddy had taken pictures of
them pulling down their jeans

she was a white woman of some “smoky days”
“soiled hands” and
“vacant”
“smell of steaks”
Calgary where dinosaurs left mystery

“persists to throb in my head”
is iambic tetrameter
not pentameter

is everything fricking untitled

oh yeah right who’s going
to worship a rock she replied
I love this job

Lars Palm (Sweden): pieces of lanzarote

2009-05-04T07:48:00.002-04:00

turned out it's
a bar where the cab
drivers go for a
beer or two between
fares

.............

(bosnia/lanzarote)

jajce, yaiza
both towns
pronounced
almost exactly
the same
way by
the locals at
hand

.............

(note on informal employment)

in arrecife, as in las palmas, as probably in santa cruz de tenerife, as possibly all over the archipelago (& maybe elsewhere in the world) some of the homeless serve as half-official parking guides/attendants. for which they get a couple of euro from the drivers using the service. they divide the streets between them, usually downtown side-streets, & work from seven or so in the morning until nine or ten at night. the only criteria are that you be reasonably sane & sober during working hours

.............

most flies in town maintain
a deeply intimate relation
ship with poeple's feet

is there a weather fore
cast to be gained from
that? rain? of what?

or does it tell us more
about the flies & their
current fetish? now

seriously flies. in public?

..............

a house that
speaks. a beach
that moved. a
sun that plays
hide-&-seek, &
guitar

.............

pigeon
perched on
the back of

a chair waiting
to be
photographed

2

shutterbug
pigeon returning
to the chair

across the table
for another
photo

..............

(another kind of playground)

& in the middle
of rambla medular
in downtown arrecife
there is a temporary out
doors gym

..............

(poema de arrecife)

this apparently abandoned
ancient black dog turning
grey takes up guard behind
my stool at the bus station
bar first sitting then laying
down just looking around
& occasionally up at me as
if i could take him out of here

................

but who shall
tolerate who?

that is

who is in fact
superior to the other?

.............

(architecture)

would be easy building a house here. the basics are: white facade. no more than two floors. doors & window frames may have other colours, although the darker spectrum of greens seems to be the preferred one

.............

a house
burning on
the hillside
in a little
village called
la asomada
leaving the
village
significantly
smaller

..........

then with
out warning
the torrent
came &
flushed
the streets
& as
it appears
the minds
of
some of
the people
& the
stray dogs
splash
with every
step they
take

Chris McCabe (London, UK): Two Poems

2009-04-06T07:53:00.001-04:00

THE MANNEQUINS

The Mannequins were premature –
Their suits too big –
Sport sacks catnapped shoulders –
And so they shared time –
Across wristwatches like grass –
Grasshoppers in a milk-dish –
While cameras grazed red bricks –
Swans at ease –
So the Mannequins took art careers –
Ice-cream vans carouselled in funny mirrors –
Began at a Gallery called –
WELCOME TO THE CRYPT –
As before, they arrived early –
To read over their notes –
And drink enough coffee –

MAGPIES

GUINNESS is a kind of meat
a sustenance

that stains us
(with excess)

the Teddy slick
of oil & cream

in 1 magpie’s tail –
it was not your heart

You said

that stirred beyond
the myth for this

– these –

killerwhale birds

© Chris McCabe 2009

Aidan Thompson (New York, USA): from Kind in Glass

2009-04-06T07:37:00.003-04:00

From: Kind in Glass

4.
The confidence of the photograph entices
narratives that linger on a line of pine trees and
the arrangement of poppies bordering a path.
Will taking a walk in your illusion help table my
uncertainty or cradle waking for good? Or
should I follow the eye dashing across the
valley, traveling the whole range of light and
shadow until it depletes itself of facts and
climbs over the hill? This won’t prevent the
messenger from getting lost or dent the slope of
change tendriling the surface of chaos.
Nonetheless, I study the map as if having the
whole picture in one’s hands will contain
getting older. Time can never be fully embraced
or understood but rambling farmland, deceived
by cold stretches of weather, produces
character-building endurance, assuaging attacks
of precipitation, settling you in the loam, which
helps in the end. The tailbone compresses when
plowing furrows, while cross-fertilization colors
dreams and expands the range of creation,
although yellow is brash and obdurate with its
lemon taste and shrill of canary. I’d get up on an
orange crate and beat my chest, but the truth of
the matter is fruits have cleverly manipulated us
into spreading their genes. Malevich’s Black
Square and Red Square has a way of
representing pigment that both minimizes and
amplifies, which is something like frogs never
hopping exactly the same distance or the same
way every time. We need the unpredictable or
we wouldn’t be able to create. Of course, I’d
never kiss a toad no matter how princely. Man
with a Hat with its dislocated eyes, ears, and
lips is not rational or calculable, and the dawn—
blaring bluebirds and crows, trumpeting irises
and lilacs, offering their parts to bugs—has
always been immeasurable. Deep down we’re
all concerned with leaving copies of ourselves.

5.
We considered reason to be a laser beam
hacking away at doubt, but it turned out to be
the mind chasing its tail, yoking intuition into
sleep. Habit forms a relation between the worm
and its word that is as thin as lips, but then, the
wildness of an apple maturing on a tree, braced
against temperature’s ambiguity, is a hard act to
follow, especially when there are unceasing
variables circulating in the breeze. Routine
challenges because words do what they want,
and if we are alive, we will insist insistence is
better than repetition, never using the same
emphasis twice. Language is troublesome and
sometimes etymology, grammar, and meaning
struggle into a boat like shipwrecked mariners
to save themselves from furious killer whales.
Or is this a simple case of personification? “The
dew is all over us,” exclaimed the purple
morning glory with a yellow smile. Words are
little gloves for picking thoughts. She looks like
a sunflower tracing the sun, yet how can one
stand open mouthed considering the desert of
life when Arkansas has the country’s most
dazzling waterfalls? Questions absorb heat, act
as a motif repeating the familiar until someone
says, “I looked into that at one time but found
you could go too far.” He needed a short
humorous poem to fill the gap between truths
because meaning, like God, is dead. “Nothing”
makes itself felt in the flight between Arizona
and Alabama, but traveling from ennui to anger
made us aware of the subtleties in which life is
actually lived. Finally we could relish in the
sound of a key turning and the clip-clop of
hooves galloping to the gate. Mules on narrow
paths climb buttes stratified with russet and
lavender. It is quiet, not even a swallow song,
only stones humming with the sun on the edge
of a horizon. Once mystery arrives, it has a
negative capability to shine courage under
rocks. Or was it their ability to sit on the brink
that allowed them to feel a brush of a kiss in the
dark?

6.
A table means steadiness, even though
cascading fruit in the foreground teases my
original perception, convincing logic to take a
nap, or is this irony spinning in the corner? I fry
eggs and cry over my shoulder because the
cantankerous verb snorts and the all-sound
music of the future bursts forth on buildings
made of glass, taking America by form. Hang
on to your waist and laugh because revisions
shake and the equilateral triangle is stronger
than the box. Paradox is one way of fighting the
unpredictable. Then again, don’t we have the
world by a tale? I try to be a stylish person with
coifed pink hair, while the rosy rose in my right
hand droops with withered beauty. That's what
we do—one generation showing the other that
movement exists. Caught between the tilt of the
head and the crossing of arms over the chest, I
follow eyes following the arm following the
chalk across the board. Certainly you see what
is right. A guru holding a wineglass raises a
pinkie in the air and students write this down.
Carrying handfuls of liquid gives a knowing of
nowness, while resting on one's laurels in the
yard drops habit into a whole lot of nothing. Or
am I over investing in vastness and doubt? I
know the savagery of a tiger bursting into
flames can destroy expectations, but how else
can we contrast venal with vernal and the day to
delight in? Rambling in forests leads one to the
enjoyment of things as they come. It was a set
of whispers that had Bilbo tooting his own horn
in the fog, proving that the locus of meaning
resides in off-stage commotion, interrupting the
main action in the sun. I couldn't wrap my
illusions around pinnacle-like plots, so I jumped
into the sounding hole of his guitar, which had
me do-si-doing on epiphany's hat. I jostle and
overlap looking for the T-square and the
architect's table, but stasis has no
correspondence to satisfaction, even when we
carry it out the door.

© Aidan Thompson 2009

Cara Benson (New York, USA): from perhaps the festivities are what they seem

2009-03-30T07:20:00.002-04:00

i wear a television set on my head. i tuck myself into the moving. holly leaves mingle with evergreen beside the flat. stop. everyone talking. and red sharps of fall bear the plaintive if only. telephone polls crucify the viewshed tilting toward the banks. clumps and tickles in the bog. what bridge will field the efforts to cross. i can hear you now. there is nowhere to look but gray. this will change. and change back. the morning is a summit to speechlessness. my squeaky voice can’t manage its files and outrage simultaneously. might as well pose under the smokestack while reading a text of refusal. i’m dry as a torn kite and not much better than the paper it came on.

...

like never to know which you specific you the universal royal deflecting-I you. hero you. glance over the shoulder mirror check. to whom it may or not. no ceiling fan in the forest but a bed of pine needles. floor rustles off trail cones dropping light rain breaking through what was that. turn to look hurry. but don’t. won’t can’t. whose these or thous. or are. running along easily tripping as if polyvectorally untethered falling face first into the broken argument. houses the logs the unsubstantiated shelter. oh forgiven. i will tell you about a haunting. how the moon comes in and what was committed. there’s no child now. out in the lake. donations have dried up & up. it’s broadcast daily the snow behind the image.

© Cara Benson 2009

harrykstammer (Los Angeles, USA): "Rub Ribs"

2009-03-30T07:18:00.000-04:00

RUB RIBS

right (street) side less

join'd next "tap

it" foot left tape

(tape'd) glass

symbolic, order (ly) situate

broken step'd grass

high place'd

4x6 feet apart and front tire

turned "what?"

chair leg attached

unconscious what

(no)

up tire grass (april) tires

will be next

turn turn or

truck around (track dug)

crows eucalyptus

step sidewalk dirt (glass)

smirnoff broken

around turn (ing)

"next will be, it?"

back'd sandy "tow foot step" ribs

blink (ing) 'scious constant aware

eucalyptus nest'd foot

shoe step down

(not) "one syllable"

next bar

(less)

handle bar swing

(ing)

beat beaten

derivative

button (light) change

"blinks, blinking"

(the spectator) reach

"had, seem, too"

(ly) walking dirt (other)

street to

arm elbow in

(up) move

(ing)

© harrykstammer 2009

Jordan Stempleman (Kansas, USA): from Awfully

2009-03-23T07:38:00.001-04:00

from Afully

1.

I am Jim.
I am terribly worried

in the unease
of fact. I often

find myself thinking,
minus breathing, minus temperature,

minus, in addition,
or perfectly involved, there

we all grew,
there, all still grows.

I often feel
left out. I know,

sure, after time,
it’s only a matter

of time before
I, or someone else

lays down blanket
by the bush, and

calls out, hey,
fatboy, you’re still growing—

you still grow
and gain, happily or

tearfully as you
must—so she wept,

so we weep
for you, as surely

as you noticed
us, we too notice

you. It’s difficult,
I know. I’m Jim,

Jim can’t control
himself. This is why

Marie began quoting
from Boyle’s General History

of Air, then
she truly cried enough

for all things
solid, and all things

skinned. And fatboy
was no longer there.

2.

It was then,
when I first met

Marie, and she
loved how often, truly

often, I’d exclaim
goddamnit after I thought

things weren’t going
my way, that she

knew how Jim
was just being Jim.

I’m so scared
of all known anger,

any unreasonable way
of response, but she

isn’t. Marie loves
what may happen next.

I love Marie.
This is not according

to plan. This
is by no means

to avoid suffering.
This is what happens

when many times
continue to add up

and go well
for a long time.

I’d read somewhere,
there’s such a thing

as cloth calendars.
Though, I’ve never seen

a cloth calendar
before in my life,

and I’m thinking,
these soft, well-built calendars

are just right
for living. They do

what Marie sometimes
does with memories: freezes

the impossibly heavy
things that they are

into flexible, visual
encounters, that are right,

right for keeping.
I just get angry

with my memories
since they don’t do

what I want
or smell at all

how they did
when time was waiting

to claim them.
I once read, somewhere,

all self importance
comes from our memories,

and so, yes,
I became terrified, then

angry, so angry.
I began to imagine

a world without
the Greeks, or anyone

who so wanted
original realities to remember

their former lives.
What? But my childhood,

overcoming death, this
attitude I have, this

woman I’ll soon
forget. I’m so insensitive

to my wondering
of where we’ve been,

I tell Marie.
She knows. She knows.

3.

In random order
there was being hired

by associates, birth,
unusual intensity, and another

sun going down.
I said to Marie,

it is impossible
to tell which form

got to me
first. I truly believe

though, quietly, since
I don’t yet truly

believe, that intensity,
some very unusual intensity

is to blame.
She then got up

from her chair,
opened up the door,

the front door,
walked out, then closed

the door, then
waited a few minutes

before coming back
in and sitting down.

I can’t believe
how you’ve changed, really

changed, she said.
While I was gone,

tell me, what
did you settle for?

Change, I said.
And the impersonal way

I can be
with myself, really impersonal.

Then some imagining,
then more and more

of my quiet.
There is nothing I

can think of
like the panic, my

panic, that grows
so fondly in quiet.

4.

Very few people
know me as Jim.

It’s so puzzling.
Often, when I’m out

eating somewhere, or
shopping with Marie, someone

will approach me
and say, hey buddy,

whendyoustop returning mycalls?
I don’t make calls,

I tell them.
My name’s Jim, not

whatever you said.
Which comes out wrong

all the time,
so then I smile

embarrassingly, more embarrassingly
than I mean to

to make up
for being a stranger.

Marie keeps insisting
this makes things worse,

perhaps by pretending,
just pretending a little,

for a moment,
that I knew them,

or wanted to,
I could make friends

with some person
that has lost someone

they really hope
to find. But awkwardness

is so standard
in such a simple

life. In strangeness,
alone, or with Marie,

I feel fine.
But when I’m mistaken

for someone’s life
that I took nothing

from, or gave
nothing to, I’m stranded

to remember who
I might possibly be.

© Jordan Stempleman 2009

Kristen Orser (Chicago, USA): (well enough for a mood)

2009-03-23T07:36:00.001-04:00

(well enough for a mood)

Proof:

1. a light snow has fallen everywhere.
2. breathing is not difficult.
3. Thought is fern-like—

February (!) on a knoll is a standing lie. Is shaken
from center to circumference.

Much whispering and (bitter) fruit: Four stillborn—

(blue color in our spleen)

If I appear to be tiptoed, keep only my head:

A large neon red heart
on the side of a castle.

This is an image and also an identical question: Will it rain?

It's already heavy with autumn. Overseas, the polars are an artifice,
there are women who resemble violins and think, in orange color,
about how many times they wanted to have sex but didn't have sex.

When my blood is cold, I think about how I would look at someone
if I had paddled across the ocean to meet them.

(something to have suspicion of)

In the beginning of history, the longer necked women agreed to desire rain. But the myth of the self and, worse, the myth of the sleeping self, cut desire short.

Blue fire: Think a woman's face
Likely daybreak: Bones
Winter : As a symmetrical vocabulary

The frightened sky eats the heads off men—All women become left handed. In this possible moment, the alphabet and the volcano cannot disguise the new

question—What is in the distance?

(wish. often slow)

Sudden impulse is surprise, is—

A seizure brings considerable stillness,
never the romantic fireworks or skin
turning to stone.

In the distance— You! I am accumulating
as the sky loops and arrives

at the time when the daisy slicer has an asthma attack and the child grows a useless wing. I skip a period. I consider changing into a tree, some kind of revolt against the guilt of a double, the many times I've called someone mine.

(to tend arrival)

My not-period is not subjective—The whole day is east, waiting for a detailed subject taking the shape of a fetus. The root, according to the seed, chooses the hour of everyone waking up as the hour to dream a question:

Me is only a disguise?

(I disguise you for me and hold, disappear—)

In the practice of ripening, I pull out my eyes (gradually with me—gradually, gradually) and show you the third and innermost layer of tissue.

(No, I haven't bled this month and yesterday was parallel,
but we acted for tomorrow. For—The space between our
two coasts, traced by our circling toes in the air, is the space
we seek to obtain.)

(finishing foot)

If atmosphere carries,
the layer of the flower will keep our malignant heads in motion:

It's the lower part of me that thinks it's a boy,
but I am a pear. I consider a similar question:

What (who?) is the pursuant?

The lost swan forgets its own body and withdraws into soft porcelain. It isn't until spring when someone arrives to disappoint the sitting lily. To ask a dense question about infinity.

© Kristen Orser 2009

Naomi Buck Palagi (Indiana, USA): Four Poems

2009-03-16T07:21:00.000-04:00

WE ALL FALL DOWN

Midnight, Mississippi

hwy 49 going south
or north sets a ole house
is / was

walls fell down
one by one or all at once but
the roof
took off somewheres

just a platform a things
easy overstuffed maroon chair ridiculous
skinny bed in the corner an dull
bench
pull cattycorner to the ole upright
ole piano

beyond it you see the sky
like you do in the delta

road curves gentle there
and not but a single tree

never did see it in the moonlight

FLIGHT

bound
and determined to travel
bound her tresses, her breasts
bound to marry
bound books
bound, like a yellow hound, to her lover great leaps
and bounds such progress
was bound to change her

bound by oath, by ropes, by duty
with love
unbind
his feet
which have fallen to her she is bound
to do what she can goodwill abounds it

binds her

to this earth this rope this meaty
universe on a string
she is bound and determined
to

travel

ODE TO OH TINA

okay, to start with, we don’t need
another hero. we don’t need to know the way
home. all we want, all we want…
her arms
her skin
that dress all we want is tina, oh that passion
voice of husky love and grit did i mention
we don’t need all we want is

rain

on the window pane

i’m private
look at the muscle baring her arms, her teeth all we need
all we want
that hero
private home dancing
on the window
pain

how can we
thunder
thunder dome and window pane
tell me do you remember all that
grit and salt the way home slit into dress

bare teeth bared arms and all all we want is
open

and thundered

TANTRUM WORDS AIN’T NUTHIN

`at las’ silver roof tantrum she thowed ain’t nuthin
ain’t nuthin but nuthin
break `at vacant holler a hers
smother damn pilla’ break `at holler
she a tantrum i ain’ aimin a fix
damn roof ain’t broke ain’t nuthin i ain’t aimin at
ain’t nuthin but nuthin

silver voice holler til she fixed she ain’t aimin a vacate
she a vagrant but ain’t nuthin silver

done tole her tantrum ain’t nuthin
ain’t no roof o’ her head ain’t no atlas tell her future ain’t no silver
for sale just a pilla settin in `at vacant head

break it, baby, holler `at tantrum go stuff `at extry pilla
best `at roof be vacant next time she fixin a holler
best `at atlas be ready an silver

tantrum ain’t nuthin but a roof ready a break

© Naomi Buck Palagi 2008

Emily Pettit (Massachusettes,USA): Five Poems

2009-03-16T07:18:00.002-04:00

A HIGHLY COMPLICATED DISASTER

I think a bad thought and I am left wondering

if hope should ever be saved and if one was to

save it, then would one need to hide it?

And where would one hide it, if one had to

do so? Say there are ten thousand dead crickets

to deal with, go far away or don't.

Who could have known you could have

done that sort of damage without making

any noise. Your eye thinks light only travels

in straight lines. Burst these reports.

Forgiveness exists in the face of what isn't fair.

Now if you please, use your eyelashes to run

a dotted line through the sky. Compromise

quietly and practice (radio silence) when anyone asks

about your involvement. The crickets were cheap.

They were silent. Okay light, wave that dark way.

Leaf cracking, I can't walk home without startling

a rabbit and I slam the door so quietly shut.

HOW TO START A FIRE WITHOUT STICKS

Get up. Get up and pretend your head isn't full

of tiny broken sticks. It will be worth it to walk

through the door such a complicated mess,

crazy to such purpose. One way to torture a person

who is sleep deprived is to pretend the house is on

fire. Look very serious and say Fire! Fire! Fire!

Look very serious and say Water! Water! Water!

Look very serious and say You built a better body

of water. Yes you did. Where did you find such a

stunning embankment? Pretend you put out the fire

with the better body of water. Pretend you are

a medium to large marine mammal. I will be

a fly on the wall dressed as a person, a person who

has complicated ideas about what constitutes a wall.

No doubt I'm a little faded, dejected, incognito,

noncommittal. I only do practical things.

A BOOT AND A SCORPION

I can't imagine what you must think of me.

Or perhaps I can. Perhaps as a pomegranate.

Or as a sparrow, but a kind that cannot fly.

A fog that is made up. A crest or ridge.

For example, the border of a bone.

To be still to come. A boot and a scorpion,

they meet in the shower. An outline

of the number eight, formed with two loops

and one continuous line. Yesterday's noon

we all forgot. Collapsing into surf

when close to shore or hitting rocks.

I'm awake, I think. Maybe as a bookend.

I've thought about you in many ways

neither grammatical or while wearing gloves.

SOMETHING THAT MARKS A WING

The sketch of the woodpile was never found.
This made us uneasy and we began to weep.
Within a week we were wanting like lost geese.

This is harder than silk. This is harder than the bottom.
If only we knew how to embroider.
Maybe that would help, help like details.

We like small things. We are good with small things.
We stack them and sign them and tuck them in at night.
When they run away it breaks our hearts.

It's true, we have hearts, like pine needles, we have thousands.
They are very busy, the winds treat them not so well.
This is an impasse. This is probably where we are.

Did anyone have the foresight to protect against this trouble?
This wasn't included in the scope. To tame it someone will have to sew
Shut its eyelids. Wooden eyelids. Iron eyelids.

A canyon with steep walls can only be entered readily
From the upstream direction. This is the opposite of what is usual
Or what was previously said.

Pretend there aren't hundreds of different light bulbs you can buy.
There are no light bulbs. Thinking about aircraft instruments
And anything that blocks the passage of light

Sight or air, is like building a bridge. The gods are showing harm.
The gods are hammering and kissing. When they do this
It looks like a horse. The extra large architecture

Might be a problem. More innovation from the stone.
This feeling is both constant and intermittent.
Sleep is a symptom. To get deeper into it

We will need to examine the external factors
The conditions that surround people. A sudden strong wind is real enough.
Enough to knock us down. That's enough.

A hoarse raspy kraaa, a harsh crr-eek, clear whistles and bursts
Of warbled notes, a fast series of tseee sounds descending in pitch
The song ends as a trill. We don't know what this means

But that does not detract from our pleasure or displeasure.
The condition of the noise spread the news like a context.
Anything from which something may be learned

We love like night falling over and over again.
Damn these recurring flow patterns. We curse
These models of resource. We love them, like exaltation.

This is joy. What is able to be heard by the human ear
Is responsible for so much. Little carries this much
Alone. Without looking describe these scientific experiments.

Describe a plant in which growth stops
Because its growing point is damaged.
Like when hail hits, we can do this.

We recommend the pursuit of special knowledge
As the central goal of life, though it is typically
Depicted under the governance of forces of which we are not aware.

Hopefully we can balance on what we do know.
There is no critical path. Water is important.
The head always had something to do with the skull.

THE NEW TECHNOLOGY

If it feels like a brick just hit your head
whatever it is, it's got to hurt.

The leaves on my roof are like some sort of creep.
To be wanted momentarily by a wandering eye

is no great flattery. It's flat flummery.
Settle down. Your empty space sorrow

can't stop boxing with the local squirrels.
Who hasn't been snuffed? Even the hermit has.

The water is nice. Are you cold?
Back at my house it is cold and I am aware

that shadows help artists represent objects
more realistically. Nature is so involved

in this sort of deception.
You look my way like the rain

daring me to hold it. I should like to think
lucky stamps go places.

How many states were there?
It appears some are out of service.

I watched you from a distance.
The distance was a meter.

Dust is the reality but I'm always saying sand.
There are many ways to apologize, though

the nose nearly touching the hands in a low bow
will not solve reports that there are problems

with the new technology. Feeling like a log I lay
by the bank of a river. Together this thing awakes

to hold us.

© Emily Pettit 2009

Andrew Lundwall (Wisconsin, USA): Three Poems

2009-03-09T07:46:00.001-04:00

BAUBLES

footsteps the color of spur in dawn arcades
a technology of hush a nothing to look for
drinkable crests of twilight manes of dagger
stuttering turrets sloshing a mile-high snow
the dots each crane would hoist and ripple
or thrusts resilient bouquet of yellow smoke
threatened eyelids videotape stripping lots
or thinking drink and her transparent brooch
a mutable connection derailed by sideways sighs
lets so much in a little an oblivion of trinkets

IMPULSIVE POEM

a net out ahead two-a-piece wheezing
adderall funspokes belabored & bedraggled
a mystical head given a mystery occasion
of cardboard wingtips paint by numbers
plant anything that each breath should
hinge on kleptomania but it's given
murmurs of missing a tremulous kleenex
leopard print multi-faceted eyelids
drag dregs of cigarette up & away
it's an all-time rumour a gospel
duped bellydeep & good as thick

SHEER CHERRY

look no hands a buzz a silo what's collapsing
tunnels of fun ferns are set are swell & pines
throb elusive traipsing pillows of cloud elongated
melodious if she had a pin yet everywhere there's
a password stoned honey being called alive under
hunched shoulders of blue is sheer cherry conjuring

© Andrew Lundwall 2009

Christian Nicholas (Philadelphia, USA):

2009-03-09T07:44:00.000-04:00

I COULDN’T THINK OF ANY OTHER WAY TO TELL YOU

Today, for once, the average
man on the street is happy
& I, for once, can’t blame him.
Or her — for once she’s a man too.

We can try to remember
to regender later
when tomorrow isn’t October
because for once, tomorrow is October.

Let us begin by dispatching
at once. Or in any case
as soon as I discover
whether the man on the sidewalk—
the man in front of me—
is a mover & a shaker or oblivious.
Nevermind I will push him into the street.

There, man.
Be like me.
Be saved or damned

IT MEANS LIKE IT SAYS

Overage? Is that how you spell it?
I’d pronounce it like French. Of-air-raj.
That makes twice in two days

I’ve mistaken suicide for masturbation.
I’ll be waiting beneath your window this evening
to see if you’ll attempt the Holy Threepeat.

I know it sounds like I’m talking about
something other than what I’m talking about
but this is as close as I get these days.

We make do. We get by.
We call a smoke, a light, a smile a sacrifice
and you — what do you call it? Motherfucker

dead these two days two times already.
How do you propose to resurrect anything
when you won’t even do yourself
in.

CURRICULUM VITA

My customer service skills are unquestionable
if not unshakeable. Threaten my life
& I will fold. In half the time it takes them
to draw & quarter me, the world will be
as flat as a pancake on a map
of the world , circa 1999. The last time
I earned my keep, as opposed to
my living. As opposed as I am
to this line of inquiry I will not object
publicly. I can only hope that the truth
will reveal itself, like a naked fat girl
in the window on three consecutive nights.

© Christian Nicholas 2009

Eileen Tabios (California, USA): Two Poems

2009-03-02T06:53:00.001-05:00

SYNOPSIS #1

There are keys to everything, even handcuffs. Why remember Catullus for his scurrilous invective? I am at my loneliest, the postcard says, when I see a mirror and you are not raising a hand to wipe away my tears. I recall the rain in Burgundy, its warmth washing the slate path towards Anne Gros’ winery. His first love unexpectedly sits at the next table and, after ten years, both smile without rancor. The t-shirt pronounces its wearer to be a VIRGIN! (but that’s become such a 20th century sentiment). He disappears into a gnat at the rim of my vision as I wonder whether sweat can be dishonest. Otherwise, falling would not hurt? Right under your nose, a trip wire leers as it hides in the shimmer of heat. “Billy is deaf,” I oil her hackles. What is an artist without a desecrated battleground? I was cruel to a young lady from the barrio, labeling her “Maid.” She folds into sadness—that he would not think to consider her in another way. The bottle became empty, and another day gave way. The fire erupted like a poem. She is a redhead but dandruff remains white. As he strides down the path, stones clatter from his tread. Under his left eye, he has a scar that people never see but recall in memory. Once, a famous painter whispered, “When you see the glass, you do not see its transparency.”

SYNOPSIS #2

My gift of chocolate in pink cellophane failed to make the blonde smile. The rain in Spain flattens against my windowpane. I consider the bill in front of me: its unfamiliarity. The passer-by wears a hat crocheted from pink lace and white string. The bus drives by with a side panel advising, be once, be always, just be. He disappears into a gnat at the rim of my vision as I wonder whether sweat can be dishonest. She might as well plant fragile shoots in watery paddies under a glaring sun. Right under your nose a trip wire leers as it hides in the shimmer of heat. Your intellect is a scratchy wool coat, I think as I consider the tunnel’s capped teeth. No matter how often California regurgitates into the sea, they continue to build houses on top of faultlines, even when they contain nurseries with pastel wallpaper. I remember cool breezes coiling their milky skeins around pine tress. He is relieved at her smile. The afternoon sliced his face delicately with the edge of a half-opened curtain that allowed the sun to pass. I tasted lemon and butter in the wine. The wind blows and the poem-in-progress flies away: His tan jodhpurs are encased in black riding boots. When she will be excavated in a hundred years, her bones will have outlined a fetal position. I sense a city bleeding beyond the window: feel Manila’s infamously red sunset.

The “Synopsis” poems are from a series “DECADE” which remixes lines from a series “LIFE SENTENCES” whose poems were written over a decade ago. “LIFE SENTENCES” was the author’s first prose poetry work.

© Eileen Tabios 2009

Rufo Quintavalle (France): Three Poems

2009-03-02T06:51:00.001-05:00

LETTER FROM ICELAND

I. Earthquake

Peace, the sun, a whimbrel on the grass
and under this the thing that nags
and shakes the house, and makes you write:
Peace, the sun, a whimbrel.

II. Hot tub

I’m sitting in the hot tub in the rain and the rain
is coming down sideways
so my chest and face are getting cold
while my fundament heats from underneath
like
one
of
those
long
thin
things
in
deep
sea
vents
that mine a difference in heat for life;
it seems that that there is and not that there is not
is down, in no small part, to them
so I open a beer and sit in the hot tub in the rain.

III. Keldur

I don’t understand anything: why I came into
this body, this life;
my wife says I think too much,
that I have too much free time,
but I wouldn’t want less, and besides,
I’d hardly call it free.
Up the road there is what was a house
and now is a building on a farm;
before the house there was nothing,
and around the farm there is nothing still.

IV. The monks

Like sperm come too late to an egg the monks
arrived in their coracles, wriggled, prayed
on the coast a while, then passed; they left no trace.

V. Sanctity

You put out to sea and nine times in ten
it’s suicide; otherwise sanctity.

FREI WERDEN IST DER HIMMEL

The days are staying hot into the night
and the drag queens are fighting in the corner bar;
some flagrantly so or choose flagrantly
to work their way out of it
but hasn't everyone on this street been born
into a life not their own?
It's nothing to be ashamed of, Jesus
was and took thirty years to wriggle out of his;
what is is if you never do
or never make peace with the lie.
At five o'clock the rubbish truck comes,
on Thursdays the dustman sweeps the street.
The city, which endlessly starts again,
belongs to the drag queens in the corner bar.

MOSES AND AARON

Walking back with a loping gait
from the prize-winning head-cheese shop
the afternoon spoke to me
like God in the bush did to Moses;
thing was whereas Moses understood
so well he couldn’t explain what he heard
I was garrulous, kind of morning
after chirpy but hadn’t a clue
what the day was saying.
Or rather the clues were everywhere:
the houses said build but the clouds
festinalenting across the sun melt,
and while a woman’s calves, that thickened
like fish do then disappeared whispered follow,
the gravid pellets forming in my gut
since lunch said home, James, fuck the horses.
The afternoon, a Wednesday, was colder
than it should have been; what’s a man to do?

You talk and talk
but there is so much
in the way
of words
these days
it might make
more sense
to say
less.

© Rufo Quintavalle 2009

Kent Johnson (Illinois, USA): Two Poems

2009-02-23T06:27:00.001-05:00

BAGHDAD

Oh, little crown of iron forged to likeness of imam’s face,
what are you doing in this circle of flaming inspector’s and bakers?

And little burnt dinner all set to be eaten
(and crispy girl all dressed with scarf for school),
what are you doing near this shovel for dung-digging,
hissing like ice-cubes in ruins of little museum?

And little shell of bank on which flakes of assets fall,
can’t I still withdraw my bonds for baby?

Good night moon.
Good night socks and good night cuckoo clocks.

Good night little bedpans and a trough where once there was an inn
(urn of dashed pride),
what are you doing beside little wheelbarrow
beside some fried chickens?

And you, ridiculous wheels spinning on mailman’s truck,
truck with ashes of letter from crispy girl all dressed with scarf for school,
why do you seem like American experimental poets going nowhere
on little exercise bikes?

Good night barbells and ballet dancer’s shoes
under plastered ceilings of Saddam Music Hall.

Good night bladder of Helen Vendler and a jar from Tennessee.
(though what are these doing here in Baghdad?)

Good night blackened ibis and some keys.
Good night, good night.

(And little mosque popped open like a can, which same as factory of
flypaper has blown outward, covering the shape of man with it (with
mosque): He stumbles up Martyr’s Promenade. What does it matter
who is speaking, he murmurs and mutters, head a little bit on fire.
Good night to you too.)

Good night moon.
Good night poor people who shall inherit the moon.

Good night first editions of Das Kapital, Novum Organum,
The Symbolic Affinities between Poetry Blogs and Oil Wells,
and the Koran.

Good night nobody.

Good night Mr. Kent, for now you must
soon wake up and rub your eyes and know that you are dead.

from Homage to the Last Avant-Garde, (Shearsman, UK)

[GAZA] EXCEEDS ITS OBJECT

I want to be in the class of people who did…the thing that met the aesthetic of the moment.
Douglas Feith, Under-Secretary of Defense, as quoted in the New Yorker

Come off it, Tha’lab, you faker, you kadhib,
yes, very funny, but for goodness sake,
just put back those purple bowels in your tummy—
you’ll be late for work!

Make haste, Safia, you little scamp, you pig-tailed qasida,
put that fat flap of scalp back on your crown—
now’s not the hour for teenage pranks,
it’s time to go to school!

Ah, quit moaning Miss Al-Sayab, you muwashshara,
we know that fetus hanging from your bottom is a rubber trick—
we’re not stupid, you know, so cease being crass,
and get ye to market!

Cut the crap, Nizar, you iltizam,
pick that torso up and put it back on your dancing spine—
we know that old box and mirror trick,
now get thee to prayers!

Hey, Rashid, you al-nahda,
we know you love the special effects of Hollywood movies,
but it’s not safe to make yourself into a geyser of fire—
and anyway, you’re supposed to be accompanying the inspectors!

Say there, little Samih, you shirnur,
six-month-olds aren’t supposed to be able to fly—
so get down from those power lines and gather
your legs and head on the ground here, you naughty child!

Listen, Tawfiq, you tafila,
OK, so you’re a sorry-assed academic with a Ba’ath mustache,
but put your brains back into your head, you can’t fool us by calling in sick—
it’s time for class and your students are ablaze!

Yo bro, my main man Bashad, you tradiyyat,
you’re as if dead and white as marble, but there’s not a scratch on your body—
quit fucking around, the mosque is rubble,
make the siren light flash and spin on your ambulance!

Greetings Ahmad, you badi-kamriyyat,
put your face back and also that water pipe hose thing back into your belly—
yeah, boo hoo, so your kid died of dysentery…
Suck it up! The price is worth it!
Now pick up that basket of sweet fruits and gum!

Good morning, Mrs. al-Jurjani, you madin,
author of four essays on postmodern currents in American poetry,
what are you howling and wailing like that for, hitting your skull
against the flagstones like a mechanical hammer?
A horse is a horse, and if a horse is dead, a horse is dead—
More so, you are naked, which is unbecoming of a lady your age and standing.
Like Hamlet, your emotion is unconvincing, for it exceeds its object.
Therefore, we beseech thee: Show some gratitude, and put a plug in it.

© Kent Johnson 2008/2009

Daniel Borzutzky (Chicago, USA): Two Poems

2009-02-23T06:24:00.000-05:00

ONE SIZE FITS ALL

See that immigrant freezing beneath the bridge: he needs a blanket.

See that Torah scroll from the 16th century: it sprawls on the floor like a deadbeat; the Jews need to wrap it in a schmatte.

The problem, you see, is “exposure.”

The poet forgot to shake off his penis and pee dripped on the manuscript that he submitted to the 2007 University of Iowa Poetry Prize.

The literary scholar took off his tie and lectured the class on the post-humanoid implications of the virtual cocktail.

He put a pistol on his desk and told the students he was going to kill himself if they didn’t do their homework.

Everything in his “worldview” was exposed.

The data-entry specialist imagined new forms for the senior administrator who was only a temporary carcass, an anti-poem: a budding literary movement that communed with master works by committing suicide while reading them.

The temporary carcass of the bureaucrat, dry as Vietnamese Jerky, called out for “gravy” as it “peppered” the eloquent field of syntax.

Abrupt exposure to ordinary language may result in seriously compromised intelligence, implied the carcass as he lipped the trembling lily which hid the police officer, who said: if you look at me one more time I’m going to zap you with my Taser gun.

Abrupt exposure to gateway bureaucracy may result in apocalyptic equivocation, implied the carcass as he dreamed of nomadic man-eaters with a language all their own.

I liked the former “Language Poet” for the speech act he attached to the back of my book, which reminded me of Charles Olson on human growth hormones.

The problem, said the critic, remains one of imagination and its insistence on the distinction between thought and action.

“I let him touch my wooden leg,” she said, “and when I unscrewed it I was stuck legless in the hay.”

Which is to say that the detachable penis is was and has always been compatible with family values.

“He was a seriously hardworking boy with a fetish for glass eyes and wooden legs,” she said, “and I really really loved him.”

The poetry era reached its nadir as the housing market plummeted, said the professor, as he repeated for the umpteenth time the anecdote about the boy who met an underwater woman as old as the hills.

“Does Poetry live here,” he asked. “Poetry lives here,” she replied, “but he will chop you up and kill you, and then he’ll cook you and eat you.”

My ideal reader has neither a name, a body, nor an online profile.

Which is not to say that I am not concerned with customer satisfaction.

Dear Reader, Because we value your input, please take a moment of your busy time to answer the following question, which will greatly assist us in our mission to produce cultural artifacts that will further meet your aesthetic and spiritual needs.

Which of these statements most accurately reflect your feelings about the writing you have just read:

a) This is a splendid poem, distinguished by the clarity of its thought, the force of its argument, and the eloquence of its expression.

b) This poem is conceptually vapid, artistically shallow, and contributes nothing to the world of letters. It is little more than a collection of bad sentences and poorly formed ideas.

c) I like this poem, but I wouldn’t spend money to read more poems like it.

d) When I read this poem, I feel frustrated and annoyed.

e) When I read this poem, I feel nothing.

BUDGET CUTS PREVENT ME FROM WRITING POETRY

You say I wish to create a universe that is an insane asylum

But I am only one American and the planets are all on Quaaludes

And the baby is in the bassinet and the eggs are in their baskets

And the semen are in their testicles and Hamlet is a faceless robot who is president of the rotary

And the myth where I am dying from abuse of language

Is ascending and descending at the same time

I’d tear myself to shreds to prevent you from calling me a poet

Or even an anti-poet for I am the apropos of nothing

And I am the check this box for all of the above

And I am a smudged-out image of Joan of Arc praying in a toxic rainstorm

And I am in myself more than I know myself

And me and I are the ideal couple

And as we seduce each other we think of Kim Jong-Il making love to a Swedish prostitute in a barbed-wire cage

And we think of vital organs for sale on eBay

And we refuse to Google ourselves because we do not want to know what the world thinks of the binary system we have become

And we think of monads and visual simulacra

And Daffy Duck is a gigantic tarantula crawling through the famished roads of ambiguity, where a bearded man with bulging pockets asks if I’m a poet

I vomit a poem onto a stack of bloody cows and win a Pushcart Prize

And for a split second nothing stays the same until we flail into the simile of history.

© Daniel Borzutzky 2009

Gabriel Gudding (Illinois, USA) and Adam Fieled (Editor, Philly, USA): Waxing Hot

2009-02-16T07:11:00.002-05:00

AF: You write, in Rhode Island Notebook, that "most literature is delusional, pretty, petty, and false." It seems like the composition of R.I.N. might have been a concerted, specific attempt to write something realistic, gritty, pertinent and true. Something, in other words, that transcends the artificiality of most literature. Is there a grain of truth to this?

GG: Maybe. Most poetry is a kind of verbal costume. An ideational schmaltz. An emotional uniform. A mental getup. This is just as true for avant garde and post-avant work as it is for mainstream stuff. Though I don't think the costumed life or the costumed mind is peculiar to poetry, necessarily, as a genre, it's no secret poetry tends more toward stylization than other modes. Poetry is the country music of literature. Given to schmaltz, nostalgia, over extension, socio-emotional reactivity, and alienation from material reality. The flipside is the hipster reaction to this: flaff, whathaveyou, langpo, N/Oulipian generativity (hipster maximalist masculinist compulsive text generation), irony as a modal approximation of self-awareness, and a conflation of experiment in form with soi-disant radical politics (the result being merely a more extravagant quietism). Our capacity for delusion is almost total.

AF: OK. I’m curious to what extent these kind of thoughts might have directed the composition of R.I.N. You include heaping gobs of concrete particulars: times, distances, amounts of gas, temperatures, highway and town names. Do you feel that these details “naturalize” the book somehow, give it stable/solid/palpably non-delusional roots?

GG: Good question. Not sure if they're less delusional but I can say they are less stylized. Maybe they do something not often done in poetry. These are the local details of your average person's world, least ways of my world. I wanted to include that stuff. Just the attempt to write the in-between, overlooked, peripheral -- as a part of the greater truths, larger narratives, and more overt emotionality of most poetry. Not sure if these elements naturalize the book, but my hope is the sum total makes for a book that does not much move via typical poetry modalities. There is that huge long section around page 90 or so where I wrote down ALL the signs I saw from Ohio through Indiana and into Illinois. Horrifying. We *READ* all that stuff: it affects us. It moves us. It makes us. We need to become aware of that. I feel it needs to be in our literature. It is an important part of our disgusting history. I really do conceive of the book as a history. My daughter Clio was named for the muse of history. The book is dedicated to her.

AF: It is interesting that you allude to history, because the book not only documents itself via concrete, particular travel details, but via an engagement with the history of poetry. I think one of the most interesting aspects of this are the pastiche-poems included, which take on Gerard Manley Hopkins. It seems like you were taking Hopkins’ purity and religiosity and “humorizing” them, not in a malicious or sardonic way, but playfully and tenderly. How do you think that, in the context of RIN, poetry history intersects with “our disgusting history”? In other words, you deal, in RIN, with several different kinds of history. I take "our disgusting history" as a reference to the ugliness of American highways: of roads, paved surfaces, road-signs. Your engagement with Hopkins is a nod to a different kind of history, a cultural one. Your book then becomes a kind of textual site where different histories intersect. What would you imagine to be the cumulative effect of these colliding histories? How did you envision these histories coming together, both for yourself as you were writing and for the reader? Was there an intended cumulative effect, something you were trying to show and/or demonstrate?

GG: There was a hoped for cumulative effect. But much was arrived at, discovered, in the writing. And the book became in one sense oppositional to the idea that the imagination is a refuge. We are told by poets for the last two hundred twenty years there is some kind of glorious refuge in imagination, imagination is this transcendent, palliative kingdom: the safety and order in the supreme fiction, the imagination as oasis, a good poem as a Wallace Stevens' Memorial vacation get-away, and that this capacity of fantasy is some kind of "palace of wisdom." This is complete bunk. Absolute delusion. It's the intellectual equivalent of tourism: the knowing, willful engagement in the delusive economy of deflected escape. It makes sense that Stevens constitutes the pinnacle of this romantic ideal -- as his poetics is strongly related to the rise of modern tourism. Where Stevens thought he was speaking of the nature of mind and imagination and its relation to reality, he was in fact writing deeply classicist and racist poetry. This book stakes an oppositional poetics to Stevens, Ginsberg, Spicer, Ashbery, siding with Loy, Lola Ridge, Rakosi, Niedecker. I wanted to write the kitsch, the radio, the a-magical, the quotidia of civic life, the road sign -- things normally kept from poetry -- as a means of reminding myself how much stuff we IGNORE in order to pretend to touch the real or the supreme – or “the mind,” as if the mind were this Ashberian numinous burning collagic machine of lyricism.

AF: This question, of what is real, and may be realistically portrayed in literature, can lead in many different directions. What I'm curious about is how it ties in for you with the idea of privilege. In lots of schmaltzy poetry, we see a privileged, patriarchal figure having some kind of epiphany. However, in fighting against this attitude, in willfully structuring your poem so that ephemeral elements (road-signs, McDonald's, radio) take a prominent position, can it be argued that you are enacting a different form of the same privileged status? That is, do you find yourself to be in the position of telling the reader "what's really real"? Was an effort made to efface or subsume the (male) ego and its drive to direct, control, dominate?

GG: It’s a fair question. Sure, that could be argued. Anything can be argued. But the book is not a case for the real, the true; it’s not even, to my mind, a comment on “the poetic.” What it is, for me, in its largest dimension, is the story of a family falling apart and a nation going insane. Those are mysteries. Ridiculously huge and never-ending conundra. I don’t know how a nation goes insane. And though I know how a family falls apart, the WAY that is does so is a deep, terrifying mystery. At an ethical level, though, it’s a book about suffering and how to endure it – and in fact how to flourish in it. At an aesthetic level, it is textured by what Bakhtin calls "primary speech genres" (road signs, radio utterances, bumper stickers, the makeshift reality of internal mental dialogue, embarrassing first draft crap), the book is perforce built on speech realities that fall outside what Bakhtin calls official speech. It is overtly badly stylized (poorly realized) speech. But nowhere does it touch on the nature of the real. It’s just proffering the other things often left out of a book, a history, a politics, an organized “life”: buildings the size of dust motes, blurry towns smeared into a chain of ramps and roadside islands. It says nothing about the way these things exist, just that they might. The towns we see from the road might exist. The people in the Hardees might exist. The rest stops might exist. The jerk in the adjacent car might. Your hands on the steering wheel might too. A way out of my sorrow might exist. A way out of literature might exist.

But at bottom the book (for me) is about the navigation of sorrow: how to anchor instead of grasp; how to sail instead of let go. I have no idea what it is for someone else. For my daughter Clio, I had hoped it would be a history, a partial history of what was happening to her family during a time of great sorrow.

AF: Partly I think it’s the affectivity of the book that makes it so compelling. Without easing into sentimentality, it tells a real, heart-rending story in a narrative that’s not always strictly linear, but that is traceable. However, the trend in the academy now is all towards New Historicism: tying literature in to larger historical patterns that dictate the behavior and production habits of authors, albeit sometimes unconsciously, or subconsciously. If, where this book is concerned, you had to New Historicize yourself, how would you do it? Can you tie the affectivity of a “time of great sorrow” into a prevalent, comprehensible Zeitgeist?

GG: First, thank you for seeing the affective nature of it in that light. It’s heartening to know you’ve read it so well. Second, I see New Historicism as a literary *reception* movement coming to vogue in the late '80s and rising out of inter- and intra-disciplinary concerns about how to read (and write critically about) literature. I do not see it as a movement much affecting *production* concerns. So, the book is a history -- which is not to say it was affected particularly by current trends in literary historiography.

But I see more what you're asking now -- and I wouldn't call what you're asking me to do particularly "new historicism." Seeing the connections between "personal troubles" and "public issues" is precisely what C. Wright Mills, the great renegade sociologist, calls having a useful "sociological imagination." It's just good sociology. The book's appositions of national narratives and personal ones implicitly make this connection -- sometimes uncannily. For instance, the day the driver's family decides on "divorce" is the day the US begins the invasion of Iraq. It's a coincidence, yes, but it's clear that the larger socio-emotional climate affects a family's weather. What a horrifying time in our history.

AF: Dovetailing with this, I’d like to bring up the larger issue of historicity, as it applies to your (and all of our) endeavors. How important do you think it is for poets in our day and age to develop, hone, and maintain a historical sense, both as regards their own reading and their literary production? To state this more clearly: is it worthwhile to regard ourselves as players in a potentially historical drama, or do you believe it more productive to (I’m paraphrasing Joyce) awake from the nightmare of history?

GG: I guess my answer depends on what you mean by "historical sense." I have a few friends, as well as a few former friends, who believe, despite their obscurity and in some cases because of their fame, that they are writing for the ages, who think history will exonerate them or uphold them, who feel their current lack of recognition will eventually be transmuted by play of decades into a trans-temporal audience or who feel their present recognition is logical and was inevitable. That's delusional. But both constitute a common pose, a frequent tactic, and a conventional gambit -- the former especially I'd guess commonly seen among non-bourgeois writers. Bourdieu addresses this well in The Field of Cultural Production. It's either delusion, on the one hand, or an expedient of aesthetic politics, on the other.

But if you mean is it a good idea to just try to have a relatively global sense of what's been written and why it's been written, then yes I think that's wise.

AF: Can you parlay your “global sense” into a précis of where you think poetry is going in 2008? Is “post-avant”, in all its amorphousness, a viable entity and a worthy successor to L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry, or do you feel there are other currents currently existent that could lead experimental (or even mainstream) poetry down new, unexplored vistas?

GG: It's an interesting question. But I wonder about its intent. You seem to be suggesting that having a "global sense" about what's been written and what's being written necessarily implies having a market sense about what's the Next Hip Thing. Maybe I’m putting words in your mouth. Likely I have. In any case I feel that trying to know or trying to control the direction of the field is part of what Bourdieu calls the production of a collective misrecognition--a belief in "literature." This manufactured "cusp" or foreguard is the site upon which the struggle for the monopoly of symbolic power concentrates. It's not a matter of direction (where the field is going); it's a matter of the illusion of direction created by continual literary rebranding (done in interviews, blog posts, anthologies, reviews, manifestoes, movements, etc).

I mean, basically there have been over the past 150 years a limited range of techniques that just keep getting relabeled and rebranded: collage becomes "cut up" becomes "flarf" or "flirph" or whatever it's called now; disjunctive anacoluthon becomes what William James called "automatic writing" and Stein takes that into cubist dada which is then rebranded via a different set of theoretical apparatuses (Frankfurt School) as L=A=N....; a hodgepodge of sleep-based techniques and collaborative aleatoric methods morph (thank goodness) with oppositional leftist politics into surrealism which then meld with the rightist political quietism of late modernism into deep image and ...?

This is a market. Markets need a predictive mindset. If "art" and "writing" cannot divest itself of this fascination with symbolic exchange-value in favor of a use-value, it will continue to be just another inverted extension of the economic system.

Too, markets need a projected null point that serves to mask the manufacture of collective misrecognition: the new; imagination; the originary; celebrity and celebration.

Is it possible to write and to think about writing in ways that do not create and maintain hierarchies of artistic domination and power? Is it possible to write without belief in a universe of celebrants and believers? Is it okay to write without thinking oneself a potential
object of celebration? And after having written, is it possible not to vie for status as a consecrated writer or as a writer who displays his own performative disinterest in the field of production?

AF: You seem to be commenting, with a somewhat negative slant, on the phenomenon of literature as a market-place, a zone of commodities, advertisements, and perpetuated illusions. You have also pointed out a kind of fallaciousness in the rationale of your friends and ex-friends that shun the spotlight, but dare to believe that their work might have lasting value. Do you see a contradiction here? In other words, if the literary market-place is not a desirable locale, and if obscurity is also not a desirable locale, is there a happy medium or a third realm that you find preferable, or that could balance the two?

GG: Adam, not to be obtuse, but I'm not sure what you mean by "viable." Or even what is meant by "post avant." The imaginary gestalt Silliman labeled "post avant" is I think a multipurpose fiction about which little can be said and a lot can be asserted. And that's the term's power. It's what Uwe Poerksen calls a plastic word: florid in connotation, imprecise in denotation.

But even if I did know what a post avant movement was, I probably wouldn't be qualified to answer your question about where it's going. I am not a believer in the dream of literature or the salutary originary power of the imagination or the notion that new stuff is best stuff: it's all new stuff. We just choose to fetishize some of it. Whether one movement follows another successfully is really of little interest to me. Whether writing is useful -- is to my mind a more salient question. So I don't see a third realm possible. There are no possible realms.

As to whether I think of my more ardent poet friends or acquaintances as "fallacious": no. I don't think of people caught within the dream of literature fallacious. I just think they are following the logic of the game they find themselves in. Part of that logic is belief -- believing in the religion of literature -- and part of that is the pretense not to believe. Performative indifference is part of an avant garde (or, as it's called now, "post avant") symbolic economy, just as the dream of what you call "lasting value" is part of a more established symbolic/financial economy of letters. And the machine has to turn: margin to center; acoustic to electric; Alan to Golding; outlaw to classic. The two different non-desirable-locales, as you call them, depend on each other. Sure you can find a viable third realm if you believe in Santa Claus. And lots of people do -- and one can make the flock move this way or that way: there are lots of tactics and strategies for planting one's brand. Take your pick. One can form a group, a "movement" -- or go it alone and play the transgressor, the outlaw, the shaman, versions of the sacred heretic: all of these things work. They each have their tactical logic. None of it matters.

I was speaking of a kind of manufactured cusp, a fabricated verbal frontier that we are encouraged to accept as real and even necessary. So, that third realm you speak of is always the next big thing: it is the cusp, the bubble, the next wave. Your question was "where [I] think poetry is going...," specifically whether the term post avant is a "viable... and worthy successor" to langpo. It's the same impulse relabeled. Langpo was not itself a viable and worthy successor to confessionalism, nor it to modernism, nor it to the Victorian era, nor it to the literature of post-1848 American democratic nationalism.

But then again, I don't believe time exists either. So take the previous for what it's worth to you.

Instead of where post avant poetry is going, I find myself these days wondering about why the Flarf movement is so white. Why "post avant" poetries are so white. Why is the Chicago innovative writing scene so white? Why for instance is there so little crossover between the scene surrounding the Palabra Pura reading series in Chicago and the experimental scene (Myopic series or Series A or Danny's Tavern). Why has there historically been so few women in the European and North and Latin American avant garde poetry scenes? Why is the spoken word scene at Nuyorican so much more ethnically and culturally diverse than the St Mark's crowd and why is the spoken word scene in Chicago whiter than white? Why did so few "experimental" poets write anti-war poems? How are some so sycophantic: why do they need an iterative white transgressive hero, a Ginsberg, a Spicer, a Berrigan, an Ashbery? or a white masculinely safe heroine, Stein, Moore, Bishop. Why do people keep reading the same writers over and over, even when they're ridiculously boring and shticky and predictable (Ashbery) or they know their poems by heart already? Why do so few study the anthropology and/or sociology of literary scenes?

AF: I agree that white hegemony within the poetry world is, in and of itself, an "undesirable locale," if we want to posit a state-of-affairs as a kind of place. How do you visualize a bridge being made, that might enable a multi-cultural element to be added to the present scenario (sorry for the buzz-word, couldn't resist)? Do you have any strategies that might enable the poetry world to broaden its cultural scope? You teach at ISU; do you buy in to the "think globally act locally" approach, and are there approaches you take in the context of your classroom that reflect an interest in manifestations of diversity, cultural heterogeneity, and the deflection of an assumed, white male canon?

GG: I guess I don't know that I have any answers beyond the obvious, which I offer at the risk of sounding like any of the following is easy: make on the one hand a pointed self-examination (as best as one is able to actually do that) about motives and influences and biases in order to uncover where I might be denying myself some really amazing work; study the sociology and anthropology of literature to better grow beyond the neoromantic fetish of authorship and the modernist fetish of text; and reach outward and into other writing cultures. I think we make/join/encourage hegemonies/big.samenesses because of our incessant habit of valuation. By which I mean we often seem to need/want things to be the same, or enough the same, so that we can better evaluate what surrounds us (or at least exercise/display our discerning taste) rather than constantly dealing with things/situations that defy/challenge our perceptual categories. And so those are some outward-directed practices that will help. But it’s important not to stop there. It’s important to understand that our very affect has broadranging political effects. Cultivate affiliative mindstates. Be willing not to be cool. By which I mean, notice and resist the play of power in the field of cultural production, understanding that hipness is merely a performative resistance that is itself a tactic, often marked by sarcasm, used to acquire cultural capital. Cultivate an interpersonal responsiveness and then retain that capacity to be surprised. Easy, right?

I think a really fruitful way of doing the above is to develop a loving heart. A loving heart is an open heart. An open heart catalyzes a flourishing, courageous mind. I do think Emerson is right when he says in "Friendship” that "our intellectual and active powers increase with our affection.

© Gabriel Gudding/Adam Fieled 2009

Daniela Olszewska (Chicago, USA): from Citizen Jane

2009-02-09T07:38:00.002-05:00

JANE refuses to keep things
classy. She swings that hellish
hand basket of hers toandfro
like a dank demonette.

Orphaned and alkalized, we can
only stand her in increments.
And even then, sorely. A bag
of pseudo-genes with scarlet-ish

tail, JANE is treasonably feasible.
It is clear that she suffers
from delusions of personality.
A maladjusted grandeur.

Hands stylishly gunpowdered,
JANE is burgeoning intolerably –
All full on addendum.
All full on according to plan.

..........................

JANE frequently lets loose –
throws operatic tantrums
on the road with our mobile
yellowcake factories.

She splits the genome in half.
A jading of anchors.
She splits the phalanx in thirds.
A real piece of land, mine.

JANE lassoes. JANE ricochets.
She compromises the integrity
of structures. Concretely.
With a little help from

your more radical elements.

.........................

With a face like that.
In a time like this.
JANE sits in a tree.
A fruit-bearing one.

She affixes herself.
Sedulously gemstoned.
And camo-clad, she peels
the skin off her nose.

Spitefully. Thinks to herself
that she is not so much
a people person as she is
a person person.

A serious liability,
covering for a twist
of green and brown
grooved grenade.

.....................

In the midst of dressing up
to go messing up
the magistrate’s new curtains,

JANE takes to the notion
that the inside of her toaster
is miked. She’d consult her pet

genie, but he is miked too.
Wired to heads that can store
more than the traditional three

seconds worth. JANE resolves
to take distance. Thus she takes
haste with ignition and several cans of.

..............................

JANE ducks down.
JANE gooses up.

She pretends to play
dead. Under a dumpster

twenty limbic miles
south of Dodge,

JANE asphyxiates
her codecracker parts.

A need to be forcibly
forgotten: JANE wraps up in

her lucky pilot-like jacket
trimmed in two of the best

animals her god
-father, the Kaliningrad

zookeeper willed her upon
his death bedlam.

......................

JANE is this month’s
designated example.
We love but don’t
like her for it.

Aluminum-banded
and wielding hand
-made hatchets,
we rig JANE’s head up

with proper sedation
helmet. We barbwire
igloos over JANE’s
hexagram-heavy chest.

We siphon off the bad blood.
Because home is where the heart is.
And JANE’s heart is in need
of some serious moving.

Some serious beating clean.

........................

We bombsheltered JANE off.
An overwashed brain.
With two too many.
teeth, JANE cannot
tessellate in red
(in any color)
until she starts calling us
daily just to check in.
Until she starts explaining things
in terms of volts.
In terms of proffering
gracefully.

....................

JANE has come to love echelon.
To appreciate minefield.
JANE archives the –cides.
Atlases the pogroms.
Things being as they are
nowadays. JANE’s advantage
is plaque-able, is trebly Plutonian.
JANE pares the universe down
to a manageable eight.
She is always aiming to please.
Well-trained in good –manship,
she lives in panoptic view.
JANE fulminates, but calmly.
Her heart beats but legibly.
Is not blushing. In thigh high
chambers, JANE is all perfect
timing, ablaze with gametes.

© Daniela Olszewska 2009

Ada Limon (NYC, USA): Three Poems

2009-02-09T07:35:00.000-05:00

LEAVING FOR LEAVING’S SAKE

Packing the car as if they were punctuating
an old song with too-loud drumbeats,
she thought the word suitcase seemed
old-fashioned and she was not of this era.
She was her mother's mother, her kissing
mouth turned into a tight twist of, We're
moving too slowly, we're losing.
He slammed the trunk with a final cymbal
crash and she folded into the sound, the song
they made boiled up its own lyrics, said,
Bring me the road, bring me the thick-black
of nothing, let me swallow the asphalt,
eat that yellow line until it splits me in two.

ROADKILL

White car. Woman who looks like
the librarian from elementary school.
Dead squirrel. Rogue redwood. Glare
of every big bad sunrise's pressure
to keep alive. Stick-shift. Radio.
This is called what? Living. A little
unkind invitation to meet an end-point,
to push through this small town's
generated hum and see someone else's
gas station, someone else's dead squirrel
and name it, found.

THE EQUATION FOR EMPTINESS

She rests her head on the window wet
with breath and fog just outside
the Harris Ranch on Interstate 5.
She remembers her mother's head
hanging low in her hands at a
rest stop around here somewhere,
her face having lost its scaffolding
of Okay, we're all okay, and fallen.
Peel of wind, she pictures the velocity
equation. One must have speed
and direction to calculate anything.
What do we push through? And where to?
In her brain's engine too many past
tenses drag their heavy feet in black
tunnels, slow the globe's spin.
She wants to be empty, the night
before it's broken by an owl's screech,
that one moment at dawn at some
roadside Red Lion Inn where you
forget where you are, and how far
you've come to get there, your mind
gone white-hot clean before thousands
of wet hands, the fat lip at the reservoir,
the closet floor, the dead cat, the dead,
come in and enter with the blinds pulled
back. She thinks she could go farther
faster without the drag of what she carries;
nothing but her body's own quiet
insistence to accelerate.

© Ada Limon 2009

Sarah Birl (Philly, USA): Five Poems

2008-12-15T06:59:00.000-05:00

HARPOONING

you touch the lighthouse darely
as it tether-tarps your memory-taffy.
to the side faux whalebones converse
and I want to scrimshaw my love
into the very marrow of you.
behind us, the sea does not grant me
this wish and so I photograph their alibis.
the keeper’s shop is locked but still I climb
inside kissing the splinters I have hidden
within my mouth.

SIPPING THE HOURS

I sip the hours. Burn my tongue
realizing that jewel in the tree is you,
a luminous bird breathing my away
in a shimmer and a haunt.

My distance from you is a wishing well.
My distance from you is a comet swift-dipping
conundrums from the constellations.

The stars detect mirrorly our island parts.
Our mirrors are the wings of our song
and the melody spelunks and trapezes
again and again.

APERTURE

It is the glass chariot’s murmur.
It is the grave careening silence.
It is the marauder-cauldron of my heart
screaming poise, swallowing fecundity.

THE CINCH

closer perplexed we, closer.
we two furls.
clue-set betting the betless.

the room, the face that is again.

in all this talk, we sketch and fret
ribbons of dominos, spools of find

somewhere kites kythe despite
our curveless raveling.

closer perplexed we. closer.

INSTANCE

A poem in my vein
burst and landed
inside the balloon
of your detour. It
splintered cringing
the sign.

© Sarah Birl 2008

David Prater (Netherlands/Australia): "A821.4"

2008-12-15T06:58:00.001-05:00

A821.4

that place where we all someday hope to die
or rot at least (our skins like autumn leaves

in solidarity with those whose fame exceeds
our own (no matter now this system lets us

obscure the vain & support the humbled the
catalogue that protects that gives each of us

some space in which to rest canonised alone
awaiting some three miracles a beatification

in that heavenly curriculum (of ars poetica,
each brailled punchcard returned by hand to

its vacuum-sealed drawer (the airs condition
interpret you (guard against that lonely dew

© David Prater 2008

Jason Zuzga (Philly, USA): Four Poems

2008-12-08T06:42:00.000-05:00

LAST DROP

Cross pixilated ditches, cross hazard roar.
Where you wing a ball against a brick
Wall and get someone else. The chalk
Sloughs to score coastal terrace, points
Run cross concrete, like water,
Like heel of blue paint. Lie
Seeding among reeds and beer glass thimbles.
Lost you field in waves of dissolve
Contra same. Be lick of flame
To log. Be licked by flame-warmed dog.
Here be calm store of holiday nuts.
Here be jarred soups with low salt.
Is warm. Is just so calamity.
Time bites words that spot time's purl.
Caught in back flip, arm to small back's stretch.
Swing in held still and faces
Of cartoon cats. Knife comma stick.
Shine in march pants, shot
Deer leaping through
Dusk's bruise of suffice.
Oh glide of blade.
Oh weeping ice.

DETRAINING

We lug our lovelorn tubes
In sacks of blown glass,
taffied plastics, barges
Crimped by nailed-on tires.
Do we ask love once. If.
Again. To skin the seal in two.

A seal holds form to sea.
Hold smooth—held sealed—
Hold still—unfurl coyote tone and tack
It still so as to form a place
Beheld. Now look:
To the left there is aught to see.
And on the right there is nothing at all.

Do we ask the piper's ass if it do love
To lug for us. Do we love each ass in heat,
Each odd-toed ungulate and whelping seal,
The length of each rat's tail. Oh yes.
Ask love if we do press our pants together fast.
If we do sing true tones to plants.
If we do this here. And if we do this there.
And back. And then. If we
can then behold ourselves
Beheld. The dawn shears fear
To shaped form's tool.
Stent releasing dawn to day,
Placed just so in vein.
And yet. And then.
We wake on lawn and tween to peer.
To sky beheld. In green.

BLOOD TROUBLE

Dust in raindrops are atomic babies.
They build a city in my heart.
They harness the power of carbohydrate.
There is an electric biscuit in the rain.
There is an attic where he waits.
Chisel a heart, a city of power.
Fasten the hinges to the crystal dogs.
Hind legs chug chug churn.
There are babies on the train.
Attics glisten open to a pine dream.
Lenses reveal texture, pools of gathered babies.
There are attics birthing in the babies
Hind legs chug chug churn.

AN ARC

Gorgonians chipper in the tide
Weigh on your brain
I'll pull you through the scuba war
The green cloud of concern
The starfishes affixed to your face
And your screen and your mask bright orangepink
Saltine impatiens burp out birds
When you kick them
And the bird in your hand can twist into
A model of democracy, two wings with a funny face
That I could push into your skin like a stilled drill
[One time I found a dead bird with a maggot in its eye socket]
Okay but I won't. The buddy system intact,
I fasten magnets
To your oxygen kitchen
to allow your legs to wave their rubber fins
The water blinds with thick green life
Any huge self-propelled birds
Meters away and closing in
The lavish pencilfish roll by fast
If time gets plugged shut, if the future
When you kick it
meters away
begins to purr before it arrives
on the back of the starfish's
lost leg
million feet working
together with collaborative suction
buddy system appears
intact and growing
a brain-like thing

© Jason Zuzga 2008

Lars Palm (Sweden): Eight Poems

2008-12-01T07:03:00.000-05:00

(the great somewhere-or-other novel)

fork, he said. then he explained how to use one. she left

(paint)

a big burly man & a bigger burlier woman are leaning out of my third floor flat painting the outside window-frames talking about how people handle the somewhat organized chaos on the street below. another big burly man is on a mobile lift in the
inner yard

(confused it)
faces grow out of the walls. yes. this is a third-rate horror movie disguised as a panda. pandering to their dust. lusting for disgusting things in life. back to the wall. & the featureless face it grows. repeating give my remains to broadway so many times he forgets to mispronunce it. then growing features to sell to some national newspaper

(wake up screaming)
for some reason known only to themselves four teenage kids have gone to a cabin way out in the woods with the stated ambition to drink themselves stupid. one of them sees a man in a hockey-goalkeepers mask lurking behind the trees. he goes to tell the others & they are paralyzed with fear & do weird things for about an hour. then the man removes the mask. the kids are relieved to see he has no face

(witch trial & (t)error)

trees spawning dark matter don't matter much anymore. any more moorings to cast off? are we talking about a revolution? something about the number of them per minute. the hour stretches into seconds. served by deadpan cops along with the summons & the rubber bullets. shedding your mortal coil. coining another phrase for excavating any number of cavities. caving in through the door. before. & after climbing that tree

(small treatise on the habits of balls)
for Jonathan

bouncing. paris was closed cold dark & rainy. more annoying than romantic. another jumper writing notes on how to fly dogs out of the islands. entry blocked by elephants. their drivers say nobody here even heard of mutual aid. or wolves. rolling. the navy base is quiet. a little too quiet. let's riot. & possibly general health. or cathcart. if he ever got himself promoted. not with a bang. but with fangs bared. barred the door. flying over fences. fending off airplanes. he fancies himself the bane of all things winged. & rosie rings. a ring of roses. hoses pose as toasters. causing a small diplomatic brouhaha. all but forgotten three days later. when finally the ball is set rolling. bouncing all over the square. where had it been made of metal instead of leather. perish the thought. though the thought was tougher than that. just sat down on the ball & said diddly squat. hurting when squeezed or kicked. swear by your nearly extinct balls. calls back immediately. rosie says she rang a bell. bell calls from his resting place saying not to disturb him. he will get back to work when he feels like it. in the meantime do what you will with the roses. or go to paris in the spring. & spring that trap. now clap. one hand

(winning taipei)

a helping hand brings you closer to a secret goal. a joyful reunion awaits your arrival. a new friendship will help cast a spell of enchantment. a secret goal is in sight. hang in there. a visit with friends will prove an enjoyable occasion. accept the next proposition you hear. all the little things will add to a happy journey. an unexpected gift will add to your pleasure. another's expression of appreciation will delight you. be patient & the answer will be revealed. bouncy ball is the source of all goodness & light. concern for a friend's happiness will enhance your own. know yourself so that you might understand others. meet a new challenge with calm assurance. memorable moments will make your trip delightful. new experiences & new friends will enrich your life. stay calm, cool & collected, & all things will fall into place. strange new experiences will add to your joy of living. that fleeting thought is worth pursuing. the concern of others will make your trip a delight. through the eyes of love all things will take on a new meaning. travel with a light heart & happy expectations. unexpected offer deserves serious consideration. unseen forces are working in your favor. unusual offer will enhance your future. welcome the chance to learn about others. what you do with sincerity pays the greatest reward. whatever you do, make it fun. wherever you go, there you are. within you lies the power for good - use it. you will attend a party where strange customs prevail. you will relax in the lap of luxury. your trust in a friend will prove well-founded

(a king's alibi)
for Amy

a machine played back the story. mother phoned father to me. enchanted the little kettle dripped hints of home-ground coffee. a cornershop spirit. an old minstrel show. warm featherbed & hope chest. a glimpse into the black. cigar so historical. set upon the anteroom shelf the words keenly followed. a crew telling in-jokes to themselves. the tailor divining milk from its coat pocket. that was the day a battery box suspended quiet. history told as an eminent doctor above water. napkin-folded boats find purpose at sea

make a miraculous bluebird. make wine to toast the tender empty church echoing bats. cage the dog's bark. veer into stampbook etiquette of peace. photograph a functional razor where unarmed people approach the hovering trees. sing songs of memos on tender tendons. break from citizenry & become the land you've always meant. lip-sync history along with the world. brighten the woman on the curb. report before sundown

they live as if within a large city nestled in a valley. husband mows & wife vacuums. they stretched each other to influence. they were like moving in. she broke every crayon in the box. household acts boiled over the likelihood of work. your signature loving you stings paying a piper's penalty. bulletproof people who classify ketchup as a vegetable with or without faith. you cannot believe the wind last night. made of water & light an iceberg floats into you. a patchwork seamstress watches her flower garden. i eat the neighbor's mountain side. i steal lines only to ask if there was ever a question. i have lived on the rooftop in internal weather. sun on top. i'm also taking your small house. shocked that one day i fall asleep the crowd never acts on its own theme. giraffes feed on leaves from my upper branches. streets report back to me. like snakes we shed guns

another freedom learning only the lights of asylums. city-born flies bark & reach toward the rafters. mosquitoes & night moths fill government

a capsized girl holding court. neighbors on a fence rumble. ramblings of old men seated on stoops. they discovered color returned. he dons his work-worn cape. resists a person who has false teeth & makes a certain hour. he was a bee in summer & in the wake of your buzzing bridge. played a sleepy harmonica that pushed puddles to deeper lakes. a peony eats its neighboring cow. after dinner teak wood fell for cork. lightning drowns veined wooden frames. fat berries ripened brought back from dust fields. peasants dance stomping tile flowering with sin & perfection. bourbon-doused dusk. every twig snapped. vipers in the grass heard their sleekness between thin blades. wars rained upon the fields. wine-stains or silk vest. background cow smiles loudly. silver night spreading westward. toad on an old country road exit. creek babbles brook-like. disappearance messing with directions on the drive back. sleepy gravel road pours forth evening breeze

some of these poems were first published (sometimes in slightly different form) in revista encuentro virtual & on Amy King's blog

© Lars Palm 2008

Eileen Tabios (California, USA): Three Poems

2008-11-17T06:58:00.003-05:00

GRACE REDDENS
(after Christian Hawkey’s “Thistles for Finches”)

In the passage of a blink
a howl descended
as grace bubbled up—

A trash can
kicked down the stairs:
music and laughter

because el cubo de la basura was painted
as red as your lipstick
as red as flamenco

I recognize the helplessness
of those who must dance
and those who can only witness—

Flounces transcended
the polyester reality of her skirt
As well, oh pale limbs

revealing a ziggurat
tattooed on an inner thigh
on an area where inscription must have been desperate
with hurt

FLOODED THROUGH
(after Christian Hawkey’s “He Spoke and, Speaking, Realized He Could Speak”)

1)
A room emptied
of all but curtains

despite expensive velvet
despite no rips

A room empty
amidst its curtains—

Well, except for
that useless light

and the body drowning
in it as a hand writes

2)
As a hand writes,
In Iranian mythology,
the cypress formed
the vegetal metaphor
for fire, for flame

“and reminded men
of the paradise he had lost”*

(Paraphrasing and quoting in No. 2 from a randomly-opened page, P. 86, from The Olive Harvest, a memoir by Carol Drinkwater (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2004)

PAINTING DANCE
(after Christian Hawkey’s “Spring Fever”)

… wind permanently delayed
ignores my open mouth.
Instead, blue triangles kick up
zero ash, dancing with red squares

Sequins wait for
flamboyance
without knowing the outcome of
“Matte vs Glass”

© Eileen Tabios 2008

Didi Menendez (Illinois, USA): Two Poems

2008-11-10T07:15:00.002-05:00

SALTPETER

You say you are from Bellevue
although I know you really came
from Bedlam. The CIA confirmed
this. The squirrels ate all my papers
so you can't prove me wrong.
I used to share a drink with
Toulouse-Lautrec but then I
contracted syphilis and they
sent me away to the same island
with Napoleon Bonaparte.
He was such a bugger.
He used to spit when he spoke.
It was very hard to get back
on the horse when you need
to keep wiping your eyes.
Did you know my sister
was ironing her skirt last
time saw her? Don't tell?
You have a sister too?
Did you see that game last night?
DiMaggio was at his best. Wouldn't
you say the same? You are going
to have to speak louder. I am deaf
in my left ear. I went into shell shock
while in Saigon. Van Gogh lost
his ear in Viet Nam too.
He was my bunk buddy.

Lets sit down a spell.

Do you play cards? There is a good
game going on right now in the next
room. Every Tuesday. I used to play
the stock market but lost it all in 1929.
The fall was brilliant.
Did you know that right before you hit
the pavement you see everything
very clear so very clear and it feels
like everything will remain like this forever
and then everything goes black.

What about that cafeteria food. Be careful
with the jello. They put saltpeter in it.
Shh. Quiet. Quiet. You don't want anyone
hearing us do you? Stick with me kid.
I haven't had an erection since the crucifixion.
Sometimes I scratch my balls
as if they are still there.

UNTYING KNOTS

I am a specialist in triviality
and untying knots.

I became a perfectionist
on tying my shoes at the
age of three just so I could
untie them.

In eighth grade Rosa
became zealous with
Johnson & Johnson
baby powder. She'd
take showers before
being dropped off
every morning at
St. Peter and Paul
Catholic School
by the Roads in
Miami, Florida 1973.

I needed to tell you
the exact details of the
date, time, denomination,
and location because I
mentioned earlier I was
a specialist in triviality
and untying knots.

Betty took the bus with
us to school. Her hair
was dyed blond because
her mother owned the
beauty salon off Calle Ocho.
This is important to know
because Betty had her hair
chopped ala Ziggy Stardust
when everyone was
feathering theirs.

I forgot to mention
that we are all Cuban
boys and girls whose
parents all left because
of the Revolution between
1959 and 1966.
Betty once said
to us while Rosa
was not around
that Rosa was
powdered up because
she wanted to be white.

As these words
escaped her strawberry
glossed lips
three nuns walked
past the flag pole,
three girls held their right
hand to their heart,
a pigeon landed on the
asphalt and cooed, my father
walked past the school
yard carrying my lunch
in a paper bag, boys turned
their head to the street
as a green Impala drove by,
the American flag made
sounds against the wind.

I looked down at my feet
and pulled up my navy
blue socks and noticed
the laces on my black
and white oxford shoes
had become untied.

© Didi Menendez 2008

Christopher Rizzo (New York, USA): Three Poems

2008-11-10T07:12:00.000-05:00

HEY JOE

for Joe Massey

How one hearting
says in awe
instance brightly
dashed what Springs—

to know no
wrong move into
words rushes sunning
spot on in

place what
language isn't of

value where
one loves where

one lights
loves right on
time

ANXIETY CHANCE

for Jess Mynes

Waking up to
ache turns out
what kind

kind of
day
to breathe to

carry on and
carry
on like this
too

AS IN SAID

How breaks to subject
things thick with room
under sleep wall for
that happened with me
feel slit and for light makes in
verticals material happen
no luck painting on a picture
even you go
to careful see step
along with the rests
to do just this

*

Always a picture sticks
stones and words cripple
to work doubt out
leave you saw that hang back at always
light another one
how chalk up hulk meant
worked up and seem to move seen
ochre ochre ochre
kernel sound stone tone
speaks and myths
amusement confuse profusely
chaos every potential
sound out of

*

Type and ink absorbs to him
cobbles they together
how public this typos and relate
a blow such wording
touchstones happen and set as willed
treeing but arise do
where lit blades through
in zone a morn
adhesions bodily dally sketch
shone and try hone
no ideas but in acting on things
no spall but in clay says
stints come together stays breathe
into it intuit

© Christopher Rizzo 2008

Paul Siegell (Philly, USA): Three Poems

2008-11-03T06:32:00.000-05:00

*11.17.05 – Galactic – TLA, PA*
(—most I've ever seen Fisher dance)

word moves
tour words
words with eyes open and mouths about to:

direction words:
start here, head down, turn left—hup,
two miles and a u-turn, retrace, turn right—
grocery list words:
pick this up, and this, o and don’t forget this:

put a “re” before “new”
after a space add “orleans”
and, crushed, you’ve got memorial words
constructive words—the t-shirt words
of a saxophonists in a quintet
from a mending delta city—

jazz-funk yeah-word fusions, song-
building, song-storming rock and
crowds of words
true word wings and roll word concerts
word tickets to word parties
eventful words and all the words attending
cute-girl words, stunning loveliness word
eyelashes, applause for word rhythms and bold
word drumming, beat-controlling time words
bouncing towering-wow words—
that moly is holy wow words—

with knowledge of not enough words:
you’ve gotta allow the wows—

and where do all these words come from?

useless words! instrumental-only words!
words pict outta the crowd:

there’re bands I love that never sing a word.

*06.22.07 – Wilco – Count Basie Theatre, NJ*

all for the show of audience,

a lyricist serves his language as if pulling down a building
from the small city block of bar tap architecture. a fluid,

inebriating pour.

like an ashtray anthem, lest we’ve penned some other medicine,
drinking smoke swims overhead in the night’s aquarium of air.

charged by an avant-guitar, listen-licked by the lyricist,

Wilco tension crescendos rendezvous with introspective
fluorescence

and whip the attendance of epileptic starfish into flight—

but what are the chords to when the kick drum shakes the serifs
off the alphabet in my eyesight?

if you look close enough, chord constellations take great pains—
while as wise as time, the audible dance of a drummer at drums

handshakes all the letters a pick uses, from string to string,
to spell a scale in the taxicab of a measure.

*06.28.07 – Ryan Adams & the Cardinals – F at the TLA, PA*
(—for the sold-out, short-show disappointed)

a fan-thrown
rose

bemoans
stage front

as roadies
tear down

to boos

© Paul Siegell 2008

Laura Goldstein (Chicago, USA): A Creature...

2008-11-03T06:28:00.001-05:00

A CREATURE THAT HAD LIFE IN IT BUT NO LONGER HAS LIFE IN IT

daft habits jolt into damped laps you can say “don’t worry about it” several many times and at the end of what’s this an episode fractured season realized into sub pieces we’ll then see that but the telling truth of now begs you, new friend, for some other advice

relax into civilization. money ekes out the pores: cleaning it kills it. I thought that I would write you but you’re already written. I thought that I could fight you but I’m actually smitten. i thought that I was right in the place where I’m sittin but actually I’m already off on a mission

flowers unearthed strewn in and around the empty fire time and time in time out again
eventual crumble toward the end of something’s life span not visible but sensed
why denote or demarcate an aspect that evokes questioning on grounds of difference
it was in the 80s when these questions began to solidify and then steps backwards

not as handy handled in the lap need seat tabletop new idea of starting some line, horizontal approaching goes beneath and passes on a way not moving but proceeding we are then vision or experience tricks in a way that shows both present and future though different to both be true

and go to the bottom as a creature whose life is not worth saving (robinson crusoe) about a bucket or a truck of coins could now be considered a truckload of corrected manuscripts
corrected by the finest editors, copied by the cunningest manifestors, manifested by the most brilliant businessmen working in the literary world today

I think that when you can sense that someone should just not be in your space or is bringing negative energy into your life then just cut them out of it. there’s this seminar on actually not forgiving people. it can be best to just go with your instincts, gravitate away from those people but then know that people will be moving away from you too

some previously ignored suggestion. helter directional. More about triangles that function as arrows into and outside of this poem. Boiled water that’s cooling at a rate about a seeping that is telling. And no more assumptions about what stays and what goes ok

however, upon second thoughts, I decided to take it away. Just in case (robinson crusoe again) about the money again and this time it is money, not coins. Dusk hulks out there with a new name that lingers inside an older connotation I’ll web onto a mat of cool repose in order to find some will power oh here it is just convenience

an arrodissement of the head around the deft heft of having fucked up. I’m singing out loud without realizing it. there are four people around me (I’m the fifth) looking at me though I can’t hear myself. number one: camouflaged first person narrative, number two: neon-inspired withdrawal of light and (consequently) color, number three: androgyny in hound’s tooth, number four: tired fireworks finally uninspired. five. right? only that.

like flitting wood grain finally exposed or brick by brick window and dream are almost the same word in that language like door and doubt or door and duel almost a lightning fest of forget it on your way out or go ahead and use pressure on people and see what happens

the whole embarrass yourself thing I feel is really passé I mean in terms of social rules I feel that we should learn to give each other a bit more room to fuck up and it should be ok although it’s hard I guess to remember all that you should have learned about yourself and other people when someone just pisses you off

I’m mixing purple with more red. I’m waiting on a certain few things to happen. Imagination is not patience. Go and rough up the day there will be more sticking points. Shine up by rubbing down. All the remembering or all the keep yourself on target it’s all the talk in a way that makes you seem like

And then yes the one about being unable to perform in fact in this one I quit before the day was over, gave up on them, and they were young. In fact, one of them lives across the street in the housing project. But if they won’t listen, that’s it. but by and by there is the progression, the ones, many in a row about being able to carry too much. I mean, not being able

Not relying on how it sounds in the context of what it should sound like in order to be a certain thing rather what can be there despite what it sounds like. And not so much a separation between the contexts more and more risk in terms of social rules and pissing people off or at least proposing something that would dethrone a few.

I sure do hope you catch me at my most beautiful
one level is red, the other green: calibrate
assimilate, estimate, mediate, all the products
I ate, to date, I shouldn’t disregard tell-tale
signs but it’s too late

Quite. Lie. Hood. Raft. Rabbit. Raft rabbit. Albeit. Vice. Knot. Know. Landed. Seeded. Tell (n). bench. Search (yourself). Vie. Viscous. Couscous. Pen. Pose. Out. Or fuel most light pressed get watt age press earn our of wit get neglected bring ten red ones to town

© Laura Goldstein 2008

Jeff Hilson (UK): from Bird bird

2008-10-27T07:23:00.000-04:00

From Bird bird

HIMANTOPUS HIMANTOPUS (black-winged stilt)

Everyone’s poems have birds in even mine. The jays are real workers at their job, he said, and fatter than any jays I ever saw before. The birds are batting by. Thank you we had a lovely view of (the baroness, the baroness) everyone’s poems. I want to be simply the best we have too, and slow like the baroness, obscure and slow and carrying chips. So this one’s about me and unexpectedly long. A startling drop from branch to branch. Those birds she said are startling. Tomorrow is Sunday and I am spotless and rose. Dear joe, a blackbird. Jim’s dead too. Everyone’s poems have birds in even mine.

FRINGILLA MONTIFRINGILLA (brambling)

Everyone’s poems have birds in except mine. Bastone! The rods split into two. In my dream I dreamed I was reading my poems as badly as this I’m glad it was just a dream. In a dark wood my piaggio did tumble down more than any other tree. Then they’re rubbish, the dells filled with dew again. Those happy days after the legions left. Rifiuti! Pale villagers them be in their homes who want for berries. I have seen the rest of the hedge and are all rhubarb. Two countrymen discussing grapes, two librans, the pines the pines. Rugiada, little girl, I don’t know which is touched more my vag or my heart.

PETRONIA PETRONIA (rock sparrow)

What will be my wild end, heads or tails. In the old days most of these small brown things did nominate larkin round and round. I want to be remembered fingers first. This strain, its allies, I confess. A little swollen through the volva I suspected the reverse below the surface but not “my old name.” Not in other words watchful of how ‘hence’ unfolds (yeah, in the area!), there were always, variously, spaces I could have gone for – from the cap but the cap was free; from the apex as if it were only one cap inside another; from the report that it was, which is “as it were,” a cup and not a cap. Caps and cups, cups or caps, this bird does not this little note require.

PORZANA PORZANA (spotted crake)

“We are hard to flush like cous-cous and small buttons. But when the distant throbbing of the coast drops in we must flush down, quickly, into the ditch. Now the ditch dominates. It’s darker here and colder than on the earth, the cous-cous is quiet and the small buttons, ha-ha, it just all looks dark and cous-cous sized.” And he breaks off slowly in a rail-voice. “Nothing demands close attention in itself.” First the moorhen then the bee spends less time in, the bee who has walked through like a weather bird a storm bird a rain bird. His left-hand name, my word-book, is a sign of land.

CICONIA CICONIA (white stork)

The landowner is coming now and harley is between beds. Harley come be found with shirley quickly. Come into the wilder-bed come from the form we fell in mixed up and the pheasant’s eye for nothing from the bright bikes lighting up the pissy-bed. We watched them as the lights came on but it was only an analogy the lighting of the pissy-beds, and they went out of old fields turned into golf-courses. It was ordinary shirley it was ordinary and so so everlasting. The white stork’s carriage arrived it came for nothing the poem was over and it was the end of spring. Spring involves plants in bulk. This is not a recipe.

LAGOPUS LAGOPUS (red grouse)

I struggle with the birds of the air but gaps are allowed with grouse everywhere in this crude survey. I mean it must be fed up my big red eyebrow. Lately a gate or pasture untended, sparser, unintended, I simply don’t know what I’m doing. I guess building it up rich, which the burry-man is too, but loading is just plain wilkinson, quick & vital. On the he heath our art hardly grows but see-see too the shoots of the she heath. With all this debris it’s filling up. “Crescent illae, crescent amores.” A.D. Hope is a cunt. Drinks occur. The turning bird is driven over. That it then fell, that it was finished ending in a leaflet sucker its got hips too.

© Jeff Hilson 2008

Andrew Lundwall (Beloit, Wisconsin, USA): Four Poems

2008-10-27T07:21:00.000-04:00

RESURRECTION

those lips that smoke together
giggle at 4 am like porcelain
of it felt like years'd passed

chopping block was it the moon's
a woman entertains life this way
hear there are milky cloud noises

hear there is recur prolong each missing
with oval slip of kisses stirring up feel
which surged into my eyes for you again

RIVERSIDE

shallow faces paint this way go by
eavesdropping the largest erection yet
under penalty of checkered tablecloth
imprisoned by rainbows soft chewy nougat
milling about smoking dopest dope
being called fucked each hour inches by
flesh glaciers peach fuzzy incredible
strips like puzzles skinnydips off riverside
with buxom pupils whiskified abysmal

EYELASHES

moans on phone snuffed rationality her torso unspooling
beneath magenta sheets of doubtencrusted lust
rolling winedribbled r's of distant camerafugues
a fugitive cyclone of shattered spastic sunflowers

because lay awake is law of those indebted
because noise of kisses over shoulder past
because memory juice leaks what could might be
because floorboards creak a melancholy possible

BUG

stars after
rain feet
on street
television creeps
cramped cargo
stapled to chest
like an insect
like an ever

© Andrew Lundwall 2008

Jordan Stempleman (Kansas, USA): Three Poems

2008-10-20T08:36:00.000-04:00

FRIDAY

Some sun spots, the old ones, sound of
defeated clouds. Too violent,
they’re finally told. Too piled in for the sunset
to see the midwinter turn away
medicated, unscented, however they prefer
to turn away. This is a near obsession
of the present, self-stored, hoping much later
to say what it is. I have no idea what’s to become
of the terrible places that never once
thought of themselves as terrible places.
The deal of the animate was to keep moving
in the stratum of take your pick, then time
to time the leaving. Once with one arm shorter
than the other, oaf of perfect nose. I like
that you heard me. It seems that you heard me.

SATURDAY

I am facing the fanciful yellow of how I pan out.
A common dream: I am thinking eyeholes, if provided
mixed reactions to pre-summer light, and late summer light,
couldn’t do any more with what they’re asked to wipe away
before morning, even if real eyeballs were bounced
from a dark velvet bag straight into my head.
I am preceded by a sign, near-wooden
that begins, dash-dash, apple, yuck, faraway,
faraway, nasty, come here.
Behind the capability of a new design, there’s a raggedy
drift, this is true, from such a place that forgets
I am the terrible host, and I am lazy and allowed to stare
in a descending pitch at all who arrive late
and are willing to live.
Do I, take you, to love all the symptoms of the earth,
even as we lose our long hours and relative loves?
It’s about time we dig. I’m coming to
as slowly as I began.

SUNDAY

I have one cold dish of something
that wouldn’t be caught dead in pants.
And the gray, I remind myself, is the business
of the subtle forgetting, of where you lead,
without thinking, I’m stretching it
now, really, it’s in the narrowing flail
that makes the good technique. Dope.
Why, as a basis, isn’t there a moment
or one moment to go?
I will care to occur for as long as I’m doubled
over, see the size of this, playing along with the that
that I won’t ever see. But the zoo, come on,
sigh. I mean the species, nothing but,
that refuse our attention.

© Jordan Stempleman 2008

Kathleen Rooney & Elisa Gabbert (Chicago, USA): Two Poems

2008-10-20T08:34:00.002-04:00

CROSSHAIRS ARE SOMETIMES MISPLACED OR ROTATED

One step past permanent delete, I bereave
the whole synthetic thing & so what if
a barren moonscape "presents." Then crashes.
If complete giving over to belief fills anyone's
false eyelashes w/ frenetic gladness, if I cast
my subconscious wishes in the trash,
who will notice my five-year plan imploding,
so ashen unto itself & off-loading its expectations.
I forget the gist of the incantation. Pushing the pull,
I'll never get in that way. Any club, diamond, or
spade is a tool for ace investigators, cracking
the case right out of the dossier. It's so cliché,
but the blonde cigarette girl wants to teach me how
to learn. Her inner wrist is like thistledown.
So much information, so little requited yearning.
Only a musical child grows up to be a whistler.
I can't believe what I used to miss never left, though
the ghost assures me & the abyss echoes on: I never
left. Now that I know I'm not alone I want to be
& the dark seems darker, the days rained out.

THE WARHOLIZER

Becoming even more weird than you are attractive
is another popular approach to getting on TV.
I'm so terrible at games. I couldn't think of
at least one way in which serial killers are
just like serial commas & serial monogamy.
Your first fifteen minutes of fame are a way of
letting the universe know how bad you want it.
I looked pretty good? Or I felt good about what
I had left in the dust of "the other Connecticut."
I'm not searching for Miss America here. I'm
collecting data on answers to "Where are you from?"
"How come?" and "How desperate does one
finally become?" In sum, life is less a journey
& more a candelabrum containing a too-short candle.

© Kathleen Rooney/Elisa Gabbert 2008

Jerome Rothenberg (USA): Four Landscapes

2008-10-13T08:03:00.000-04:00

FOUR LANDSCAPES
Europa, on the Train

1
three who go across a bridge.
how often.
three who go across an auto route.
some fall & find the sessions sweet.
& some in silence at the last frontier.
a sudden racket.
bells in moscow mark the start of sleep.
a cause is lost.
an arm is open.
arm in arm.

2
clouds in the sky.
a swiss franc in the hand.
a brick that breaks in pieces.
a snail that rushes in.
today becomes tomorrow.
a wind upsets a wind.
they find a time for driving.
someone arrives in time.

3
girl with a bow in hair
& flowered dress:
remarkable.
the mother struggles up a hill
where no one finds her.
Saturday with ruffled sleeves.

4
the shadow of a cloud
is on the field.

the horses race inside the shadow.

half a field away
a burning tree.

© Jerome Rothenberg 2008

Brooklyn Copeland (US/UK): from Borrowed House

2008-10-13T08:00:00.001-04:00

From BORROWED HOUSE

MILD AND ALOOF AS A DOVE

Our first mornings feel tricky, the tip
of a dusty tongue wetting a dusty upper lip.

The creeping sun is noncommittal.

Over decades, the mice in the attic have built
dresses from scraps of bandage, bandanas.
A dead farmhand's dressings.

You find me sorting through half-filled
dance cards, imagining a devout girl,
fair of face, fat of thigh.

Your reassurance is as mild and aloof as a dove:
that girl is long dead, you say.

Furthermore, look at her

junk: clearly she'd condone us.

THEY REMAIN WHERE BREATH LEFT THEM

These people were packrats. Really, we're the ones

haunting the house, traipsing half-naked, drink-handed,

every warped floorboard announcing our belligerence.

O, the things they hung on the walls!
And the things they shoved under beds!
And the beds they stored under stairs!
And the stairs they made into scenes, into starscape!

The carpet is still sandy with their dander,
flakes of spittle from their chatter. Just imagine!

They remain where breath left them.
Even on the way out, there's no accounting for taste.

Look hard at their expressions:
you and I are too conceited, incapable of expressing

such grand scale completion.

© Brooklyn Copeland 2008

Leonard Gontarek (Philly, USA): Five Poems

2008-10-06T08:03:00.000-04:00

AUTUMN SONOTA

Jackson Pollock was afloat in his life

with a view of burning cruise ships,

which was the world, if that makes sense,

and I understand if it doesn’t.

I think of Pollock when I am walking the edge

of a field in autumn imprinted with shadows

of leaves, and lit leaves among the dark aspects.

I connect the calm to Pollock,

strangely, you might think.

Pollock once sat in a field with an elixir,

after selling his soul to the devil.

A mixture of whiskey and dusk.

It looked like the glass was frothing,

but it was ordinary mist.

Recently I looked a Pollock painting,

which, always sacred to me,

looked like a bunch of paint piled on a canvas.

One of the saddest afternoons.

TOWARD DARK

The birdsong is repartee, curt

and haunting.

The world calls me momma.

A woman, fleur-de-lis

stockings, sails past.

She’s beautiful, I suggest

to the man at the end of the bench.

Buddy, you wouldn’t know a beautiful woman

if one came up to you and bit you on the ass.

I think I would.

Jesus Saves. Of course,

then, Jesus kills too.

It rains on lush trees

and small breaks in sky. Hard.

APRIL

You introduced me to ouzo.

If you sprinkled a few drops

of water in the clear liquor,

it turned smoky. Remember?

Afterward we were drunk enough to make love.

A gray day with white and pink blossoms in the trees.

LANDSCAPE WITH LANTERN

It turned cool again tonight.

The first of Spring fast approaches.

I remember a man hammering a nail

through a piece of tin. It must have been zero out.

I didn’t ask him why he was doing that.

The stars come out like soft white bulbs.

I have nothing. I know it’s not true,

but that’s how it seems.

I am a blind man in a Zen story,

without even a lantern.

You don’t know what I’m talking about,

see what I mean.

APPRENTICESHIP

See how the rain & screens form a way to you.

It is not just that the way is lit by brilliant maples.

It is more than that. In the reserve of dark,

we are happy to be pained by love & mysteries,

so meaning may elude us. Oblivion, blissfully so.

All night long. God fingers us, all night long.

Cars skirl the wet streets. Brilliant red cars.

Leaves don’t so much fall, as

are dumped into wet needles.

Difficult to tell dream from the other thing,

Inhabit this world when I damn well feel like it.

Compassion is not a requirement. Mystery makes

matters worse & my shadow is small, affectionate,

wiry, smells like wet hair.

© Leonard Gontarek 2008

harrykstammer (Los Angeles, USA): "Stilling Shaking..."

2008-10-06T08:01:00.001-04:00

“STILLING SHAKING, I AM”

seven o’clock

take (s) place missing

“but a need”

none finger up

(little less grasp)

around (round) still

horizontal reverse

revise (sion)

“shaking, finger tip, uh”

ring (ing) no

(thing) this “one

ah, I’ve what?”

shadow none push finger

push numbers

push (faith like)

nothing

“it’s not ringing!”

location every

infest (rat) blocking

(rats) until it’s

shaking still (ness)

over blank (et)

cross arms (ed)

“it’s ringing now, now”

anti (emetic) view’d

property (s) syncline

ghost (white like)

effect ‘logarithm

shake’d inducing “now,

ring back to”

back eight o’clock

role buckle light

boots “anyone calling,

reason” willing (ness)

‘visable

knees (kneeling) head

feet “even there”

stop blink (again)

push’t wait

finger shake vertical

head turn (d)

© harrykstammer 2008

Adam Fieled (Editor, Philly USA): from "Chimes"

2008-07-14T11:05:00.004-04:00

#51

Our dinner with the enchantress had the feel of a covert operation. We snuck out when no one was looking. It was a brisk night in early autumn; all light had vanished as we pulled into the parking lot of a Friday’s-type joint. By this time, I had been allotted the role of father to my father; I was to oversee his actions, approve them, endure his impetuosity and confer forbearance on his enterprise. She was there; a slight, pretty lady in her early thirties. Her mouth, I noticed immediately, never closed; not because she was talking, but because she was perpetually startled, innocently shocked by everything. Just as I was overseeing Dad, he was overseeing her; manipulating her innocence into compliance, overwhelming her insecurities with certitude. He sat in the booth next to her, rather than across from her, and his hands weaved a determined path over all her pliant skin. He was playing to win.

#52

Now all pretences of normalcy and calm were dropped. Once I had conferred my (suddenly papal) blessing, my father’s dynamism was terrific. We would move, he and I, into a new house with the enchantress and her two kids. Before I knew it the thing was arranged; a new house was waiting, of the same design, and right around the corner from the old one. The enchantress left her husband and my dad left his wife and their baby. This cyclone of activity insured that Dad and the enchantress never really got to know each other. The enchantress and I barely spoke at all. She was not bright; her lure was all physical. She was afraid of me like she was afraid of everything else. Dad held me to my paternal role. He professed to need me and I rationalized everything. Festive had given way to festering.

#53

In the new house I had two small rooms: a bedroom and a “playroom” that I used for music. I had a Les Paul and insomnia and I would pace and play with no amp into the wee hours. It became known at Cheltenham that I was a guitar player and soon older kids were interested in me. Before long I was in a band. The other guys were older and had cars. I was a freshman and looked even younger. Yet I became more or less the leader. We had to pick songs that we could sing: Smithereens, After Midnight (the real, fast version, not the beer commercial), but I had to convince them I could sing Whipping Post. As with Ted, I became the Quixote, mad musical scientist. This was my first band but I knew instinctively our time together wouldn’t be long. I learned that not everyone who plays has any real commitment to playing; some just do it to be cool, or because it’s there, or to feel special. So I decided to give them only half of me; that’s what I did.

#54

A sense of things not being right manifested in the new house immediately. I had nothing to say to the enchantress or her children; they had nothing to say to me. Dad’s gaiety became shrill and forced. I had no good advice for him; he had given me a role I could not begin to fulfill. Within six weeks, the enchantress and her children were gone, back to the husband and father they had abandoned. Dad and I were alone in a creepy house, a shadow of the one we had so lately left. Dad’s reaction to this stunning failure was to ape superiority; that though everything had gone wrong it was not his responsibility. Others had let him down. He had always been flinty; he became flintier. I was overwhelmed by the feeling of having been involved in a spectacular mess; I felt and shared Dad’s criminality, which he himself had (to and for himself) abjured. I bore the burdens that he would not.

#55

Ted and I went to see Dead Again in Jenkintown. Continuance had been broken; we were in high school and had no classes together and did not see each other every weekend. Dad picked us up from the theater and tried to establish some of the old master/slave rapport with Ted. It didn’t work; Ted played along, but the charm of the festive house had been overtaken by general creepiness and the feeling wasn’t the same. Once we were home for the night I could see that Ted wanted to leave. There were ghosts and echoes here but not like Mill Road; these were ghosts created by lust, inconsideration, precipitance, and madness. Dad’s new thing was to posit the whole experience as having been “no big deal”; he had no notion that others had been forced to experience anguish, on his behalf and at his behest.

#56

Dad had a brother who was not significant, to him or me. He would show up for short periods of time: six months here, a year there, and then disappear again. However, he came to the new house with a prophecy. He had been to a psychic; the psychic had guessed my name, and predicted that I would soon reject Dad forever, and that if he wanted to salvage anything, he had better hurry up. It took a lot of nerve for my uncle to say this with both Dad and I sitting right there, but he did. Dad shrugged; I said it was bullshit; but it hit too close to home, and I made quick to leave the kitchen. I went down to my room and turned on the radio; I heard Great Gig in the Sky, at the exact moment where a voice says, if you can hear me say whisper, you’re dying. It was New Year’s Eve, 1991.

These poems can be purchased in book form from Blazevox.

They can also be listened to on PennSound.

The book can be read in its entirety on Issuu.

c Adam Fieled 2008

Mark Lamoureux (Astoria, New York, USA): Two Poems

2008-06-17T08:35:00.005-04:00

THE MADEIRA DRINKERS

Will get to
it quit asking &
shake the box
until glass swan
breaks jaws unhinged
like an orchid
resplendent in shirt
jacket tie hat
face pants Stinking
Benjamin no Ben
rocking the pocket
square where good
old fashioned red
nepotism below deck
under water un-
understood taller
blasted Bridge Mix
chess timer heart
in tall glass
overtime adagio
closed mouth
open face Monte
Christo in over
affect nape
of onion salt
sock garter Gyro
Plate has some
fucking hair on
its vestigial gills
or tar liquorice
record sleeve smell
& film just
like a real
girl’s tears on
a hot plate cassette
deck disaster
like a real French
King like in
a movie with
real milk real
flowers fake
moustache lost in
the pirate cove
the model lighthouse
on the little Lake
Geneva green racing
striped like
mini golf balls

SCRIMSHAW TANGO

A porcelain cleft roves
Over gravel, the blasted

Tower injects the void
With names—ask me

To author you: said narrative
Resolution a bait &

Switch letterpressing—although
Irreversible, I forgot

What I was doing, untied
& gagged—the annihilator

Shoots a full stop upon
The pretty strophe

Languid, from paper
Bloom to paper bloom—

Better still a nameless text
With no ankles suspended

O’er an openmouthed receiver
For the wet apparitions

I make a seeded form
I make a pneumatic mausoleum—

Was all skin &
Phonemes, all skin &

Tight like a pineapple
Rolled over dimples

O Man Ray who paints f-
Holes, lens tucked

Into a rift & burst like
Wedding-glass—give over

The many subject positions
Subject to gravity as

A still & hairless face is
Parsing code

From a nameless flame.

© Mark Lamoureux 2008

Robert Archambeau (Lake Forest, Illinois, USA): Letter to Albert Goldbarth

2008-06-10T07:41:00.001-04:00

LETTER TO ALBERT GOLDBARTH

(remixing and writing-through Budget Travel through Space and Time)

I ate your book, Albert,
or should I say:
I ate your book the way the snake
in your poem ate its mouse:
first, the slow survey of rich terrain,
then somehow
without an indication of speed
or even movement (it was easy:
I was stretched out on the couch)
I gulped the living thing
down whole. But that’s not right.
Your book’s no mouse, but
something supple and absorptive,
something setting out to take it all,
like the topless dancer who took your pal
for all his tens and twenties, all his fives and ones,
who, playful, took his quarters and his dimes.
I think I came across the book in Mexico,
when I lived in a village so small I always thought
a rain of more than an hour would wash it
into the jungle totally, with its one telephone,
its butcher knife, its five flutes
and handful of silt. I don’t know why I was there,
or if it even happened,
or if it only happened in the book I’d swallowed whole.
I don’t know why my hunger took me there,
unless it had to do with how the words I’d been born into
weren’t enough,
and I’d come because I wanted more inside me,
more digestion stones, like what an owl has, and more
for them to go to pulverizing work on.
I ate your book, Albert.
But that’s not right:
I write inside the belly of a snake.

© Robert Archambeau 2008

Reb Livingston (Reston, Virginia, USA): Five Poems

2008-06-03T07:12:00.003-04:00

THE FIRST CHRONICLE OF MARRIAGE

When the afflicted meadow prevailed, but the vestal cottage did not, when the thinking thingamabob existed, but the hypnotic tomato did not, when mental somersaults reigned, but snickering laments did not, when blindness was obligatory, but trinkets were not, when shepherding and mewing bellowed, when kitchens had mancatchers — I was the grandmother of middling gourds, Ancestress of the beaten squash, I was the mama and papa of pumpkins, the cousin of misused zucchini.

THE SECOND CHRONICLE OF MARRIAGE

The mates in the meadow stitched barley, the mates in meadow polished loins, stitched their loins to polished barley, counted fish in the squeamish, ate fish from the squeamish as one eats a sparkling loin. One day, as slumber came, they commanded the holy measurements before the Fishyman, his correct name lost. The allotment of Shepherd was decreed double; the allotment of Shepherd with Damsel in sundress was decreed triple; the allotment of Apron was donated to charity, in loving precedent; yet the allotment of Gigolo, though suffering from grande swagger, was decreed quadruple.

THE FOURTH CHRONICLE OF MARRIAGE

At that juncture a bridal festival was unleashed in Tabernacleville; a bridal festival unleashed upon the meadow. Shepherd said, "Come, Gigolo, let us go, let us dabble in daughters, let us go and get tuggered." The god Shameman attended the bridal festival; his wife, loyal Harpy, attended the bridal festival, and I, their beloved daughter, Damsel, attended this primal bridal festival. In Tabernacleville, the creditors rattled, seven debtors took their daughters from the brothels, hassled and pedaled, to baffle and compete for the Shepherds' ironing down the path to Apron. Many came to Tabernacleville, the space where the bridal festival unleashed, to fondle and fiddle. Many bartered for us fond dangled fiddles.

THE FIFTH CHRONICLE OF MARRIAGE

With Gigolo, for both were first-rate dandies, Shepherd too strode the teeming meadow to slip and tweak at the gate of Tabernacleville. They searched for the absurdest instrument, plucked many hooded rows. Gigolo deduced us second string, interloped his bow into each shallow body, then speculated with the Shepherd. In this gruesome meadow, in the tasting, Shepherd fancied me; in my gruesome meltdown in Tabernacleville, Gigolo traded his kingdom for this checked out vessel.

THE NINTH CHRONICLE OF MARRIAGE

The mental somersaults multiplied, pumpkins mangled, tomatoes massacred. Sultana spoke to Damsel: "Hark, his blissed fish is sweat and marred and his tongue keen as sprite; he gobbles all meals and considers you snack. He will attend more festivals and gawk and slip and wolf and pluck; he is Shepherd and Fishyman's bartered image, nurtured by Apron and Harpy, monstrosities of your image. He's the seepage in your hearth, the slackage of your pull, the leakage down your thigh, the rotting sausage plugging your psyche . . . My kindred, my echo, my spit and damage, you are not obligated to mindless affection. Damsel replied to Sultana: "We cannot deflect this cyclone, only scribble him down."

© Reb Livingston 2008

Garin Cycholl (Chicago, USA): from Hostile Witness

2008-05-27T07:21:00.001-04:00

RANDOLPH & FIELD O,
the mold’s insistent embrace
of the concrete—it makes me
hot!—its respirations against
these caves, their hard, secret
histories of curtain and frost—“an
architecture of impermanence”
split open and ailing with light,
like the stone buildings were
pulled up out of the lake, cement
still sweating glaciers; is that a
church bell or nostalgia for six
o’clock ringing against western
sky, now petrified over the

CONGRESS HOTEL

the city encrusts itself on the eye—
not “limestone in its communion
with water,” but urban caves, an
architecture made of dusk, glass
reflecting the city’s shadow and
inside, bemused molds and the
weedy stink of summer—“a
common Mediterranean fantasy
of stone and water”

* * *

(this is the yr of Jackie

Chevrolet skin covering the men’s
threats—crack open the radio and
history’s dust-stung residue bleeds
into the middle night or peel the
men’s sweat back over their muscles
cramped over seats

the Chevy is a cave
the Underworld turns
around these men their
eyes make sterile numbers;
Joe McCarney turns his straw
hat in the green night their eyes

full of blood, they’ve seen
closed things—what they
believe about the country
could fit into a paper sack
or a concrete wall they
see future wars, their eyes make
not bloated animals but string
corpses along a cigar store
calendar “roaming the freeways
for half the night—where else
would they go to rehearse the
end of history—the meaning of
freeways, they’d always known”

(the fist in time)
we’ve got the Italians in the car—
prairie Venice, the streets running
with river water, lower Randolph, a
great cave of history the mold
swallows you

did Zale even see the punch coming?

* * *

your passenger is asleep whistling
some tune between snoring “is that
Dixie?” you ask in America,
you travel alone great birds appear
along the weedy edge, violence
crouching in the spilled headlight 2
hrs. outside Chicago and you want to
wake him but— too late now passing
Wilmington and Bainbridge still an
hr. to the all-night fill-up at Bloomington,
Springfield by sunrise, work by nine

“blood in its peaceful rage”

* * *

look, friend (he
expld) it’s not
like I’m trying to
screw your wife
or anything—I
just need you to tell
me how to get west
and you keep sending
me to Joliet; if I’d
wanted to go south,
I’d ‘ve gone to
Cairo to Memphis
to Jackson to New
Orleans

he sd, America
is a road is a broken
chair is a jail cell is a
fault line

a corruptible geography
pre-Cambrian plates over
a fucking river that won’t
stay in place roads
stretched over faultlines

“nothing in writing
is easier than
to raise the
dead”

* * *

the map, coffee spilt and corrupted—
not by the mapmakers, who put made-
up towns in Louisiana and Kansas
to protect their copyrights—but by
the compass itself; to go west, you
must go south—we must descend—
Bill knew it—corruption finds its own
level, like water; try cutting the weather
out of the land—mold sealed in the
walls, the prairie spreads by fire

* * *

see how he belongs to the cutting
block, to the wallow of trembling
muscle and mess does the butcher
shape or chop, his hands do violence
or sculpt? define the carcass’s form or
dissolve its anatomy? the animal’s
body coming apart, like the boxer’s
in jabs and hooks—doing as much
violence to himself as the man
circling him? likewise, how does
the geography leave its print on the
land? does it define or segment, give
names or sever names from their places?
a national road should name things

(where does that road go, tell
me—California or Texas? “a

sense of birthright and usable history”
our voices are not stand-ins for his’
try but are cut from the rock of time
itself—a certain meaning to these
eviscerated beasts

* * *

Nixon sd, “this is a
nation of laws” but
see decades of bad
lawyering Nixon’s
four (Rehnquist, Powell,
Blackmun, and Berger)
dissenting in Furman v.
Georgia—see keeping
the vote down and can
we construct a system?

and June 1972, Lester
Maddox on the courthouse
steps: “it’s a dark day in this
country—rape, murder, and
anarchy—reentry to the
jungle life” eye for an
eye “embedded in the
American psyche”

* * *

you can write your History
of Cockfighting in Chicago
(write it in the dust) but it isn’t
going to exhaust the game,
(this man was always
talking) Fuck you,
I explnd—what’s more
Chicago than a room of
screaming men, stirred
up by blood whether
it’s between their knuckles,
or in their eyes?—you’d
drive 200 miles to see it—
Bullshit, he sd—nobody’s
gonna buy that, my friend, a
roomful of screaming men,
of fighting chickens, of
blood a new dark age
blooms only once a lifetime

* * *

the bonfire rots soil
in its own time—
woodshed the color
of birdshit and each
kicked-open toadstool
a threat or THE CHICKEN
INDUSTRY IN AMERICA—
each bird skinned and cooled,
plasticked and shelved

(“the cumulative violence done to birds in this land”

* * *

the governor’s song:
eating light, I emerge from the ground—
I hardly recognize my own son, my
legacy is corruption I’ve forgotten
more names than I know, the backshelf
pharmaceuticals, the things given with a
wink—was that the Illinois Central or a
tornado? I descend in a Kankakee
minute; you get homesick for the mold,
but who are the prosecutors of the
world? every childhood has its recalled
storm, its horse’s nightmare eye, the
run to the cellar (sadly, most of ours be-
long to Dorothy—the hired hands racing
the black cloud, the witch turning on her
bicycle) the prairie can’t hold it—

the leaf mold on courthouse steps
the shredding of paper
the ripple of rising water
the ignition switched off and
the car running down into midnight

© Garin Cycholl 2008

Juliet Cook (Ohio, USA): Three Poems

2008-05-27T07:16:00.000-04:00

MASS PRODUCTION

1.

You can also get a tub of that size
filled with tiny debutantes. Not even talking
Cool Whip tub. Talking bigger, more durable
plastic with bright label affixed,
haphazardly stuffed with little wannabe queens,
fresh from the assembly line. That new car smell,
that pink approximation of bendable legs
under flammable dance dress. Molten plastic core.
Interchangeable whores with poseable tiaras.

2.

The screw is rotated by a motor, feeding pellets
up the screw’s grooves. The depth of the screw decreases
towards the end of the screw nearest the mold,
compressing the heated plastic. As the screw rotates,
the pellets are moved forward in the screw
and they undergo extreme pressure and friction
which generates most of the heat needed
to melt the pellets. Heaters on either side of the screw
assist in the heating and temperature control.

3.

You can also get a plastic whip, that new car friction,
pink grooves haphazardly stuffed with Cool Whip.
Of course some of them aren’t even good enough for the back seat.
The list of defects includes: blister, burn marks, color streaks,
silver streaks,
delamination, embedded contaminants, stringiness, voids, warping,
weld lines, and splay marks. Her legs won’t bend back any farther
and the nozzle hasn’t even shot its load. Little wannabe whores
should bleach their assholes, the inverse of the product’s shape.
Compress the heated plastic, scream like a size queen, burst into
flame.

LIKE

Like a frankensteined representation of a woman cobbled from the
disconnected parts of other kinds of women stitched together with coarse
black thread (like too bad for smooth embroidery floss) embalmed with a
cocktail of blood, black mold, black cherry vodka, black cherry Faygo,
and rat poison.

Like my effluence is deadly. Like sickly sweet green pellets sizzling
through another bent spoon.

Like no matter what I say, my echo says, ˜askance” and then I say,
˜let’s dance” and then we trip all over each other in a confusion
of hobbled foxtrot, ribald rumba, and randomly bedazzled chicken
nuggets. Like do you wanna growl, do you wanna grind, or do you wanna cluck?

Like squeeze my ˜rubber duckie” like it’s a ˜stress ball” and
then fling it into the ˜abyss”, aiming for the motherlode of fake
feathers and the biggest carnival prize. A ring around a duck equals
an armful of plush bear. A very extraneous bear that I would only
pretend to be smitten with if we were still in something like the
˜courting” stage. The ˜heavy petting” phase.

As it is, we’re in something like the sewer water zone and so I say
my name is Rubber Product, Burning Rubber Product and then I screech
away, but it’s a sloshy kind of screeching. Like heavy petting a
beheaded bird. Like spooning a black cherry to a sewer rat.

I’m most likely exaggerating, but who could blame me with all these
toxins in my bloodstream. Like lip plumping lip gloss applied to the
wrong body part. Like lip plumping lip gloss applied to the nth degree.
Like assisted listening devices at high volume tuned to the shrieking
frequency of my donut hole issues. Like a yappy little alien terrier
with boneless wings.

PROJECTILE VOMIT

pink primulas wither when terrorized, when strangled by sausage casing
like greasy snake skin discarded but still oozing
like piss rubber doll tubing

on seething kneelers, protective pads and oven mitts burned through
to the skin; flesh is sizzling; the word deflesh
flares and sputters on a faulty neon sign

when the hot pink boils itself down into a dark ally
a dark alley, a back room of discontinued flavors
of Jell-O molds quivering

rancid animal stomach churns into laffy taffy strings
and nodules and anal beads and hair balls and hack
that hair pie, that squirming hagfish,

that busted jug of spoiled milk dousing messy tuna melt
mayo splattered bathing suit for dog paddling
through the vat of hot cooking grease:

a bubbling and blistering donut hole, a crackling pig, exposed
chitterlings, glutinous spaghetti straps
slipping off bloody shoulders

© Juliet Cook 2008

Steve Halle (Palatine, Illinois, USA): from Elegiac Stanzas

2008-05-15T06:41:00.002-04:00

elegiac stanzas for m.r.

in fall on a lake a turnover a man with fake plastic watering can a lake a scum comes to turnover unseat the stability of a thermocline and a teeth live in lakes but in summer teeth go sleeping and dorsal fin on a surface unsharked in fall on a lake leaves sink to rot and the wind has teeth the meaning: to lurk a life spawn bloat die and wash ashore a man waters leaves unwithered somewhere fire near a lake an M house a landmark somewhere we can turn over a gascan a gascap something I've forgotten in fall a time of forgetting the aging man my fall if you know a lake certain places sunken ships and cars structure and superstructure a hide a lake grave the smell of fish washed ashore and decay an aging man thinks of turnover and gasoline he waters himself he is thinking of growing larger an aging lucid man uses gasfire to speak his fire himself flesh the message he sends and no lake enough water no lake of fire or human powermad leviathan enough to douse can say chain enough to stop the spread of firewords he speaks with a silenced mouth beside a lake a man in turnover he is fire the message he burns

elegiac stanzas for k.c.

a whistle is bell enough to Donne wheelsteel pestles memories & fleshes a bellwether herds of yellow an island yard to which i'm sailing altho purple of the plum trees lose leaves in red whether watercolor in dinghy wind but don't fight it rain in the face it stings don't fight to stay ahead of whether oars aside for Sisyphean challenge to find the most infinitesimal Russian doll a rock reaches the nadir of all whirlpools or dinghy contained by brained container ship holding the roots of memory hostaged rake ahead of leaves and flame-retardant chem ahead of wildfires conductor smokestack engineer laboratory lightning he sees his burden before premonition scintilla among words raked together in memoriam a name mouthy kid an essesnce upon the axis of his own growth in naming windy eye beasted hurricane sylvan wye a slave to whorls of task a question exclaims its own answer we found it don't fight is Traneing In proving where we cannot believe

elegiac stanzas for r.r.

paraphrasing Eliot: the irony is to be born kicking, drooling & shitting into a barren world. o eyes i hear with, ears i see with. is it not better? measure life in windows fifteen thousand one hundred forty five go by each flecked with drop spots particle particular where water had been but is no longer. two hundred fifty seven per pane average backed by winter fog. wheel & electric rail & Adolf the fury of approach furious even in stopping. metal-metal. weather strip. aboard-abort. it's overheated in here. ads. faces. words. phones ring but none answer, none speak. the route respirates (in-out, back-forth) its own infinity into graffiti, the unmanicured middle of a vacant lawn, weedy lot. time spelled backward is emit. heat, radiation, vapor. your building differs or i enter through a different door. you are the you i thought of you as being but something else simultaneously. head-sprung you i chucklestudy the absurdity of perverse o'er-urinal propositions. o the philistines mad to create! even to create the potential circumstances of creation. to create a game by which the circumstances are enacted in a ledger of probabilities one of which being a simulacrum of the intended creation. even a premonition of a second self. to hold: the center of the pendulum. the Strict Master w/ scythe keeps time in ears i see he claps they grow the train in rushes by as we hit the tunnels' stairs a misser in harvest time. i hear you; you're you & other. against the backlit city we dance arms enlocked, unsmiling. followed by the fool. Route 12 a road to Unicorporated Count(r)y seat of the Lethean imagination. fishbrains: newborn every ten seconds--achtung! the chess pieces too hot to finger. No One removes his cloak. curtain. drape over the mirror. sweated bangs hide the forehead forgets. the sun again the sun. eternity is three-handed: a card game beyond trump a mutation beyond holding a watch you cannot afford. i take my imagery from the Swiss from the dawn in a solemn dance away towards the dark lands while the rain cleanses cheeks

elegiac stanzas for a.r-g.

the pendulous chubby-white knee meat is a swing-year-old five in repetition amidships the blued plastic childflesh makes the upstroke of wind in recollection a rust-year-old time in saddle-gold the shoe while new in dismount learns the pleasure of gravity's grassjolt via the earth mechanism (1.ooomph.!) Exeunt and here insert a Shakespeare "" likely Lear again alas poor Yorick the Cutlass rumble is my skull scene spelled homophonically in the intersection over where plasticine angels chortled i was almost lost never in Denver! the terminal repeats a simple is not a phrase an apple of a simple to be LeBaroned in tow the child's simple too safety if not reverie to be backrevered one light seat to fancy must be forwarded in the paths' past impressions of a rickshaw glider glaze slide concussion a harmonic immolation of steel-steel to shatter traffic patterns my glass perfect crumple to peel in aftermath memoryskin orange of my sinus i've seen the other angel her sinews terrible-charitable lust cheek under halo i beseech & heal sirened away I See You Exeunt i knew him Horatio

elegiac stanzas for j.r.

Dear Lodi,
palomino in terms of bull by the balls and Arabian by means of its snow leopardine tail frozen in a sculpted mid-gallop when the horse's suffering ceases its cathartic valuation out comes the gun tubes out of her arms new tubes NOW to dull pain of coming dullard "Goodbye" i say over the rainbow your suffering no longer panolplied by the coloring of this aging man punished a sculptor whose talents are weak who ceases exploration in his creation but never ceases carving a space in the world in which to die picking out clothes casket plot affairs in order no different from the underporched dog who limped off arthritic to face things as he must alone a composer no longer finding justice among the notes admires Cage for the wrong reasons admonishes silences with noise unpacks bags and sets off for Bozeman in need of O Marie! I'm coming for you! a mountain view in lieu of carbuncles wrinkles corpuscles etched via marcottage, Élan vital, signed then titled "Crepuscles in Bronze"
Goodbye,
Idaho

© Steve Halle 2008

Kelvin Corcoran (Cheltenham, UK): from Madeleine's Letter to Bunting

2008-05-08T06:16:00.001-04:00

Day 1

The year goes out in a high wind,
sunlight steps across the floor in stripes
and various animals come around for food.

The sea charges petrol blue and lucid,
the whole garden dancing at night
unparades me cat and black sleep owl.

I can see the red hibiscus in darkness,
I read your poem Letter to Bunting,
the start of the dream, in amazement.

Day 2

Sun lights the end of the year
the wind has dropped to nothing
Benazir Bhutto has been shot.

We dug experimental holes around the house,
broke a spade and hoe on buried rock
planted songlines, a lemon tree and shrubs.

Sixty Kenyans incinerated in a church
I climbed into the eucalyptus, swinging
through the world like a bug on a blade of grass.

The sea all around on three sides glows,
I grasped the springy boughs in my useless arms
I smelt good and hung on against sense.

This tree has such a colour,
is it blonde cinnamon, and the etymology?
- she might sweep me up if I fall.

At your age I thought I had a plan,
I did not, or it was the wrong plan;
it was not to be fifty and exhausted up a tree

Speaking the only three words I have
to the local children bemused,
arms numb - Eucalyptus, if I fall, save me.

Day 3

Took the tallest branches out,
hit the supply cable on the way down,
same sun, same sea and dizzying view.

Face covered in scented sawdust
dancing the ladder tiptoe around the trunk,
no power, no light, no heating, no food.

Five cats and a dog came to be fed,
smoke drifted into the empty harbour
a bowl of smoke from the olive harvest.

Raked out the weeds and undergrowth
around the new shrubs, found a snakeskin;
how the roots take I don’t know.

Anchored to rocks, strong white fingers
cling to the underground life,
only the radio news is fatal.

Later, after eating in Agios Nicholaos,
a fishing boat dressed in Christmas lights
would look good out on the water.

Day 4

High wind roaring all night,
read until 3 a.m. - woke to broken sun,
the whole village in its morning dance.

The sea turned a metallic grey
white riders outward bound,
a sound like understanding just born.

My lemon tree looks bonny in the breeze,
we walked over terraces, olive trees
flickering green and white, to see neighbours.

Dionysus has been sighted
all along this coast, the rocks speak
the rivers run his name.

Away cold brother of white thought,
what season sits on your back
over mountains covered in spring.

She went away one night, left
the children whispering at the door,
her eyes empty, her mind leaping.

And at that, the bright green shoots
pierced our feet and hands to tap tap,
Dionysus rising answers - I want to.

Day 5

Madeleine, my unabashed girl, I’m saying this to you,
because of your poem - Letter to Bunting;
you already have the trick of writing from the body,
of not explaining that you are you and not you in the poem
but trust to the shape and weight of words as you go;
there’s no passport for the journey you might take,
just breathing each beat, a young woman breathing
says - snake I want to be bit a little.

Day 6

Has the making of a halcyon day,
the kingfisher safe front holds
what blue the sea has taken on,
as barely tidal music surrounds us;
we sat and played stare-cat with the dogs,
the sunlight dreams an early spring
like the first morning of a new life.

Last night we went to the harbour at midnight,
fireworks explode, children singing St Basil
to bless the houses of the living;
the priest and the policeman danced together
and the old year tipped into the new,
quick fire shooting across black water
binding the time to set us free.

We could launch the ship of lights
out into the Neolithic darkness,
learn the many conditions of the sea
and sail south around Cape Matepan;
a risen world in that first moment lifts
the candid islands of lyric and rock and sky
from the Aegean heart of all our making.

Day 7

Between etymon and Eucharist
gum-tree, I am stuck up a,
to get a text from you on Euro Star.

Saw the fire damage around Paradesia,
hills folded in ash, hills shadowing hills,
miles of it like burnt black hair.

At 30,000 feet out of my tree I
smack into an endless England,
the tendentious politics of a small island.

Beneficial in destroying the miasma
of malarias districts, I swing
wrapped around the trunk.

© Kelvin Corcoran 2008

Laura Goldstein (Chicago, USA): from "primetime static"

2008-05-01T06:25:00.003-04:00

We’re all having problems with our joints, Hamlet. Either they’re out of sync with some movements or we just need some time to set it right. What is this “second sight”? Multi-tasking in the dark night as sparks of life reach out of the set of all things. Oh to be alone, though. Oh, that head bone. Tossed around in the midst of missed connections, shrunken to the size of a tugboat, love finds a real place to start over instead of having to replenish its members every episode. One large hum of the evening channel in the interstitial zone, new huge muse makes a home a home, that’s the real news.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Why have a favorite pair of underwear? It must be because so many girls have sex in their bras. Could be the story of their own morning before they met up to disclose. It’s a small round window out onto our own lives, right? When are you going to stop reading those terrible novels, Emma? They’ve led you to want things that you don’t deserve. Your poison, dear? Not in the ear, not where you think. But to give you your own sick as ink in place of where you don’t speak. Your room is imbued with deep shit in the spring before spring even starts happening.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Consider: mixed signals might be more meaningful than ones meted out under control:
a rose is a rose is a rose I suppose but what if it smells like shit? A record of how all activities on board attract each member, couples disengage as multiples intertwine, combine with time, preserve a natural self, in this case mine. Then there’s this other show that creates a character that eventually creates the show again. A scene re-enacted a few seasons ahead of where it first aired, when it was really happening. And at the same time, others are called to a bench I’d much rather sit here and watch, obviously.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

But is trash on TV that knows it’s trash on TV still trash on TV or is it a social service deep in spring these things help to spread the love around. Bring all the love by boat to another continent. Pack the love in tight. If there’s too much love it might have to be thrown overboard. There’s a great show about that, a show about a hero so it just goes to show we’re really on our way if we can at least say that, ok?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Raw footage before it’s deciphered for viewers: think of it as a river that’s entering your home. A river in the middle of the ocean, warmer, a tide that sweeps attention across a shore. Watching a trio test out their charms is a warning that sits in the back of a mind on a couch somewhere in the city. In the middle of the night orifices swell to circles the size of eyes, charred heart and hushed chorus of the lonely house of a wife suddenly on the outside. We’re involved until the end of the episode thinking it could be:

Stomach flu
Some food
Sadness
Spring

Should she just suck it up? She screams, “well, what’s making me sick, Kierkegaard?"

© Laura Goldstein 2008

Lars Palm (Sweden): from "Footnote Poems"

2008-04-23T07:31:00.000-04:00

#1

perhaps because movements are so easily founded by people who do nothing. or because moments are so easily found by people who know something else. moments move to the side while some of the people begin. & while others cease. not to exist but to be existentialists. for reasons they themselves find unclear. at least when they try to lay them out. on a table in muddy shade. meanwhile back at the parole-board bored officers vandalize offices & are sentenced to any number of years without parole. that's how things go say the people who do nothing. as if they ever wrote a song with no less than two harmonica solos. or spoke to a dead french poet called jacques. or jack as they would have it. but perhaps because they just the other day founded a movement in someone's left arm they are content with doing nothing. except sit back to watch the arms race. which one will win remains to be seen wearing black trousers & a red t-shirt getting into a nondescript dark car

#2

a boy hid it in his school desk, the only object in that classroom painted blue. a girl hid under the blackboard, the only object in that classroom painted green. a teacher hid behind the pulpit, the only object in that old-fashioned classroom painted red. a same-sex couple painted a closet black & hid in that. that started a movement of painting & hiding in that school. before long most spaces where you could hide & most objects you could paint were occupied & colourful. the first boy took something out of his desk & looked baffled. a principal crashes in through the door looking agitated, mouth moving without producing any words. the principal's face changes expression, now confused. the principal exits quickly heading down the now deserted hallway. a telephone conversation ensues. the school is sealed. a whitewash follows a few hours later

#3

she was not the author of the black notebook she gave to him, even as she called it "mine" before adding, "now it is yours." but then authorship is an increasingly shapeless ship. a small aside for sure. maybe found in that notebook. he would know for he probably read it. she would know for she probably had some part in its making. i would be expected to know for i'm writing these notes. eileen would know for the beginnings are hers. so "mine" or "yours". shall we mine the possibilities? or just say "ours"? or even question the very notion of "ownership"? wouldn't that be fun? ownership as theft. of course. the old anarchist idea. probably stolen from some earlier anti-authoritarian movement. what did for example the diggers have to say about ownership? people before money? what will people after money say? in other words who can claim ownership (theft) to that idea? & what has that to do with her giving him a black notebook? whether she really could call it hers it was well received. & strengthened a bond between them. maybe because of its content. maybe in the simple act of giving. maybe because they both like black notebooks. maybe because m/s authorship just left harbour heading south-west with a cargo of, you guessed it, black notebooks

#4

except that, she understood with that first nibble: she will spend the rest of her suddenly over-long life aching to taste again that poem she swallowed out of existence. in that form. & maybe she asks herself, or someone else's self, if she finds another poem to nibble: how would she react to that? would the taste of that poem be pleasing to her? but maybe she doesn't ask herself, or someone else's self, that. maybe she pours herself a glass of wine & submerges herself in a song. & maybe she thinks about how that combination tastes. & maybe she sets out to turn that combined taste into a poem. & maybe that poem tastes interesting. but she will leave it up to a neighbour who just entered, suspecting nothing, to be the judge of that. for that neighbour just happens to be a sommelier & a drummer

#5

except that, pride is necessary to locate the eye within spaces lacking discernible parameters. because of that, pride is very proud to finally be useful. full of life a young woman skips. wait, there, could that be a parameter? & could the eye be nearby? except that, spaces discern a direction. a couple of miles, then to the left just after an oddly shaped tree. & if necessary we will hang a sign on it. the spaces nod & make thoughtful faces. the eye locates you. a big black hairy dog puts his nose to the ground. then suddenly he lifts his leg to a lamp-post. directions continue. the director tries to locate an angle, a way into the scene, thinking the part will improve the whole. except that, the need arises to locate the eye to facilitate cutting. this bread is often used with soup. this soup is easier to cook without pride. yo! a parameter. what next?

© Lars Palm 2008

Andrew Lundwall (Rockford, Illinois, USA): from "Gardening at Night"

2008-04-15T07:31:00.001-04:00

RUMPUS ROOM

the moon slices like ivory
through our window we see it
deceptive breaths
shredding yesterday's bills

injured that look
down the stairs
descending slowly
it hurts to watch

it's not even funny
we're incarcerated
in eternity's rumpus room
no one's speaking

THREE SLICES OF MOON

nothing personal but i'd rather distance you - cursive all up there in my face like a blizzard of bees each letter pimped out - geography this

*

three nuns at the bar last night raised mug this bud's for you - the jukebox jester played a wicked accordion for the occasion

*

a dark cloud - was it a rorshach test or blood spatter you tell me - my game is 3D - infatuated passengers grin

SENSES

if it rains for real
decorate it this time
laurel it and let it
drop like a stone
so safe on the other side
so convenient to be

EUCHARISTIC

congregate like the washington monument
bright hydrants shapes of being awake
recurring still supplied memory we’ll hook
up thoughts dispensing fleshes steadily
like yellow lips decompressing a map
hard twists of night radically lilt
to know long returns clad in black robes
by an absence like a lifer'd found the egg

10:15 SATURDAY NIGHT

struggled up from sleep
from the glow that fires her fingers
sweet consequential sweat aloof
like lonesome in snow globe

thought that if i'd told
or if you'd stayed still
long enough if being anyone
is being everywhere else but

you've shrouded yrself in silence
excused myself from room to smoke
distracted bored long drags tilted
to find her something in my stacks

BC

lost in the raging sound
a face is splintered
through the club
and its web of smoke
all eyes die here
at their feet the ladies
shiny north pole they swirl
to stun the masses stupid
at the edge of the world
renee especially
i walk through you
your legs suit me
where i wish to move
through your eyes
offer a bouquet
to shadows
to love

© Andrew Lundwall 2008

Chris McCabe (London, UK): from "The True History of the Working Class"

2008-04-10T07:01:00.001-04:00

MARCH 26, 2008

Last week we went to see The Fall at the Astoria -
a warehouse of drunkenness, experience, harsh bass
that breaks apart Paolozzi's mosaics inside Tottenham
Court Rd station, a place where people meet to make
sensation mean something real to them - soon to be sold
to commercial developers - another turreted outpost
beneath the omphalos of CENTREPOINT. In the crowd
was Frank Skinner & the drummer from The Horrors.
In that tensile thrum before they came on stage,
the sense that something special is going to happen only once
like this - at our feet a stash of Red Stripe cans - we stood
on the top tier looking down at the moshpit & stage.

A man in a leather jacket & jeans, shaved head,
seething an undercurrent of repressed violence
and dissatisfaction - skin pitted through acne
and alcohol like a kind of hairy red lemon - tells us
he's called Des & starts talking at us. He says
The Fall could only happen in England, where
else would people pay to see a drunk take the stage,
offend us all & then leave when he's had enough?
He pours warm Guinness into a plastic cup
as he talks, makes clear to us he's from south
London & shows us his badge to prove he's
a Brentford fan. He says he doesn't know why
he comes to support them, he fuckin hates
Mark E. Smith, miserable bastard that he is.
Then quotes his favourite Fall lyric: "Hey there
Fuckface! Hey there Fuckface!". And sure enough
thirty or so minutes into the set Des throws his
plastic glass to the floor & walks toward the dark
stairwell to leave, the value of his ticket is to stay
true to the occasion - it's what Mark E. Smith
still might decide do at any minute himself.

I wonder if Des is the kind of person The Guardian
was talking about as 'minority working class',
the kind that should be spoken of with more respect
and helped along in some way. Des
is not lacking in basic intelligence but smells
of dinners only taken at drink's convenience,
survives to threaten & assumes he can enter & possess
anyone's living space. Staring at my wife's cleavage
as he talked, his eyes seemed to salivate.

And what do The Fall say of this : the moshpit
mixed with lads of fifteen & bald men in their forties,
as Mark E. Smith unlplugs his band's guitars,
ups the amp levels, leaves the stage. He strikes
me later as the first autodestructive artist in popular
culture, Gustav Metzger on meths & Tennants Extra,
a grouchy mumbling munchkin gurning & seething
as any 50-year old man who fees his life has come to nothing.
Neckless, arthritic, pissed, he swerves any attempt
at live perfection. Sarah said it was like watching
Faustus on stage with Lucifer in the wings too scared
to enter. As he built it up, let it come apart again,
destroying & creating just once, like this, for us -
a fin-de-siecle schoolboy on detention in his own attic
forever writing out the lines: Blind man, have mercy on me.

MARCH 22, 2008

I read an article in The Guardian a few days ago
in which the jouralist wanted to defend the 'working class'
and probed: "would we talk of any other minority group
like this?". The assumed 'we' of his readership speaks,
I suppose, for his press. I had breakfast in the Family
Café in Dagenham - a Sunrise Scramble (eggs, tomato,
mushrooms, buttered toast) - and the newspapers
fanned free on the tables were The Sun and The Star.
The 'we' he assumed spoke for what he supposed
to be true. And his press. Red tops, tomato sauce
bottles that congeal then crust the plastic spouts.
How can being interested in how the world works
presuppose a condition of non-working class?

MARCH 20, 2008

When I was very young Thatcher was a thing that happened
to may parents' faces when they watched the television -
it showed itself like gritty food with sounds of She & Her & It.

When I was very young I could tell when it was windy
by how quickly the clouds moved.

MARCH 23, 2008

Easter morning snow on blood-red terrace -
O Christ, the flocks, so white - it sticks

MARCH 27, 2008

This is how terraces are made : burn down
the Fairy Tale forest. Imagine a one-off binge
on gingerbread. Draw the curtains. Shut the door.

Clone.

© Chris McCabe 2008

Christopher Goodrich (New Jersey, USA): Two Poems

2008-04-03T06:54:00.001-04:00

IN THE EVENT OF AN EMERGENCY

When the oxygen masks drop,
I will apply one first to my own mouth,
as we were instructed, make sure
I am still alive, before helping you
with yours. In this moment,
according to the government,
I am most important.
This admission is the only way
to ensure your survival. If you need
assistance, you must acknowledge
that I will always come first.
Your life may depend upon it.

THE STATE OF OUR ART, 2007

Upon the anticipated arrival
of the new journal
in which I appear, I slowly savor
my own poem, maybe two,
three times (I even read
my biography) before shelving it,
satisfied that my existence
exists. Like the author
who enters the bookstore
to find himself on the shelf
without noticing his neighbors;
I often look into the eyes of strangers
I pass on the highway
not to see who shares the road,
but more and more,
to see if I am seen.

© Christopher Goodrich 2008

Mary Biddinger (Akron, Ohio, USA): Three Poems

2008-03-27T06:58:00.000-04:00

ENLIGHTENMENT

One day you’re busy peeling the leaves
from a stalk of broccoli, then the next
slicing your garments with a jackknife,
as if you could choose another place
to wear a halo. Every new loaf of bread
is as unsatisfying as the last, pocked
with holes that collapse as soon as you
insert your fingers. Sometimes I wonder
why I wonder. It’s easy to close your eyes
and relive the disappointment all over
again, the last gift unwrapped and it’s not
the shotgun you asked for, but instead

a quivering garden rake painted green
to match someone else’s eyes. It’s isn’t
the collected works of George Herbert,
two rusty harmonicas, or just enough
Quickrete to make a summer in rural
Oklahoma magical. She promised you
in her particleboard cubicle that smelled
like lemon air freshener: Every day
is a gift. There was no way that you

could have foreseen my steel-toe boot
and a handful of her teeth waging war
like those movies other people’s fathers
watched with the blinds drawn. Really,
you are happy I know my way around
a baseball bat. This is what you have
always loved about me the most. Not
the way I hate scones, or see in the dark.
You will not have to worry about
leeches when you sink to the bottom
of this river. Every windmill you ever
wanted to burn to the ground is here.

WHERE WE WENT FROM HERE

You tried to wear it like a beard
that didn’t fit. You ransacked the pastry

case, said you were picking out a new
whore, even if she was ringed in almonds

and drunker than a ladyfinger could be.
We were under unusual circumstances.

The floors were never quite strong enough
to hold us, but we used them anyway.

It sounded like you said, Put your harm
around me, baby. That was before

our pinstripes outgrew us, trailed off onto
the bedspread and out the window.

It’s nothing that either of us predicted.
I could count all the times it didn’t

happen, like retention ponds you speed
past on the highway, knowing you’ll never

dive in, or fill your thermos with the murk.
How can you count what isn’t in pieces?

You asked for the key to my pajamas
so you could lose it, and beg for another.

HALF KEROSENE, HALF HAMMER

He can drive a hatchback straight
through a blizzard, wears wool
like a farm kid, even if his mother

never stitched him into underwear
in November. He’ll unbutton
your shirt while he levels the wet

plaster on your dining room wall,
slip his tongue into your mouth
while talking on the phone, not

missing a word. The kind of man
who’ll tarp your car before
the sleet starts, wake at midnight

to plug the engine block heater in,
surprise you with cold fingers.
The man you’d always recognize

from across a field, even at dusk,
or through a blindfold. Your hand
is half the size of his. He’s half

kerosene, half hammer. Tore a room
to bare studs when he was fourteen,
same day he tasted his first Budweiser.

His favorite animal was always
predatory and quick, even if he
was never the first out of the gate.

You expect him to rise out of every
snow bank, bet twenty dollars he’ll
push your Volvo all the way home.

© Mary Biddinger 2008

Tony Trigilio (Chicago, USA): Two Poems

2008-03-19T08:23:00.002-04:00

SEEING THE DEAD

The oldest son of the family that lived next to the farm in Harborcreek, from the diabetes or the drinking. My mother’s next-door-neighbor Natasia -- whom we all called “Nastazeet” because that’s the only way my grandmother could pronounce it -- some infection Nasta picked up in the hospital. The obituaries were boring but my parents went to wakes, diligent and regular like installment payments. The surprise heart attack, the brother-in-law of someone who worked with my dad at the factory. I knew that guy from the shop; I have to see him. The cancer of the second cousin of my father’s first wife, the long illness of the woman who managed the supermarket where my mother worked before I was born -- she didn’t move from her couch those last couple years -- the quiet in-his-sleep of my parents’ former across-the-street neighbor when they lived on West 25th before their house burned down and they moved where I was born. I asked my father why he paid attention. You get older and the people you know -- you want to see them one last time. All the time, these wakes, the berserk obituary pages, drafty spars blowing through the window when the days got shorter. My father coming into the living room wearing a suit, sometimes a fedora -- really the only times I ever saw him wearing a tie -- the business in his eyes. We’ll be back in a couple hours. Your mother and I are going to see the dead. His gray knuckles readjust his tie.

FIRST SHIFT, CONTINENTAL RUBBER WORKS

He came home slick with it,
back from work before his English
lessons. A squall in the kitchen,
something seared. Knowledge of stink
even when the window was cracked.
Smokestack couple blocks away
going all the time, an angel chewing
its own folly, rock-hard in the cold,
oiled and ripened too long in the sun.
Rubber hoses, bicycle and car tires,
skinny ones on Model-Ts sticking
the mud until they knobbed
something solid. Rubber insulation

for Samuel Morse’s submarine cable,
New York Harbor, between the Battery
and Governor’s Island. Cracks
in the wire he patched with rubber,
Morse rowing along the channel --
the word slung into dashes and dots
from potter’s clay, black dust, and spittle.
Damp stagecoach passengers needed
waterproof clothing, their hands reached
for gloves: Samuel Morse unsealed the jar,
anointed himself. A one-eyed Jack
in a lightning storm, his glass insulators
along the railroad line to Baltimore.
He tapped the words What hath God
wrought! along a wire wrapped in cloth
protected by two flat glass plates
rattled like saucepans in the wind,

pickling the air. He hung his clothes
in cellarways, my grandfather,
had to wear them again tomorrow.
His tantrum of rubber,
sap spinning the spokes of his eyes.
A wounded tree secretes it like butter.

© Tony Trigilio 2008

Rosanna Lee (NYC, USA): Two Poems

2008-03-09T17:33:00.006-04:00

SHOOT THE FREAK

The Cyclone rattled its last rat a tat tat
Roller coaster shudder two decades ago.
The skeleton still stands as testament to a bygone
Jewish, New York era.
The construction crane demolished the
The last, wiry matchstick remains.
Because at night, it swayed and made
A sing song noise that made them
Think it would crash one night and kill someone.
The last ligaments brushed away!

Today no one goes to see the freak show. The bearded lady
and somnambulist have shaved and awoken.
The Siamese twins are severed and killed.
Cut the baby in half and the real parent will speak up.
The Wisdom of Solomon is the new freak show.
It's the real parents screaming cut them, kill one, and leave
Me a normal baby for chistsakes!

Even the circus died. No one's amazed anymore.
The Norwegian trapeze artists and gypsies keep
up this desperate legacy of their sad parents.
The ringmaster parodies himself in mocking bravado.
The elephants stink and are crusty and march in unending circles
with beautiful, glittering ladies who do not seem to exist
even though they're straddling beasts.
Professor Sascha talks to the animals with a long whip, magic!
But the white horses leaping really are so beautiful, tame and wild.
The big tent droops; the crystal ball dulls to wood.

One night a child goes to the circus carnival for the last time.
He fingers the illusion and all the players congeal into waxy ice.
Feather Woman in mid-flip above the net, tiger tamer with his head
in the mad kitty's jaws, the clown mid-tumble with his
Shiny shoes on the dusty ground.

BOBBY

they lined the bridges for you,

the rusty depots, the
parched earth – they stood
packed together, lining
the locomotives parallel tracks

they stood stalwart for you
awed, stupefied, not
too many tears in the
dust, there was just
too much dust

and your train chugged without a sound
to what sane and sacred end was left
one day we'll grow up, Bobby.

Is it as the Buddhists say, Bobby? And bits
of you are dispersed in sunflower seeds
and dandelion roots – or are you
with the Christians and St. Peter?

We laid lilacs for Lincoln and
for you Bobby, we laid down
everything and just never
picked it back up.

© Rosanna Lee 2008

Mary Walker Graham (Boston, USA): Three Poems

2008-03-03T08:10:00.000-05:00

[THE STORY’S IN THE BROKEN SHELLS]

The story's in the broken shells, the fissures
of the rocks. The water left those cracks.
And it was the sea that rocked; that sang
its story of self or selves. I said,
You see me? And it did:
the sea saw.

I'm lying. It was a river
that ran nearest us, and all that night
I dreamt of alkali, dissolve.
That's why I say the sea, I like the salt.

THEN & NOW

I couldn't be more or less than I was then,
could I? But like a person, thought I could.

Standing beside the picnic table—
beside myself—mimicked hands, hello, and mouth.

Said yessir, pleasesir, thankyou—I watched
the boats go south. I waved goodbye, dutifully. I bore

the empty wine bottle to the basket, shoo-ing flies.
But all day he'd been leaning—mast and pole—

he had us cleaning the underside of the belly,
all along the bulwark and the bow. I had tools then,

didn't I? Steel wool, toothbrush, tar. Once
I tarred a roof, rewired a house. I was small;

I could fit into crevices. But only like a person.
I was a child: rest and enervation. I could as easily

lie down now in rows of soybeans, as against
the plaid flannel of your shirt, smelling of gasoline.

ON THE BANKS OF THE RIVER IN WINTER

So many Marys grieving by the river
that I have to cover my ears
to shut out the sobbing and hear,

as if for the first time,
the long low sound of the water
and the train just beginning

to round the bend and blow
its way through the dark tunnel.
How many times I've sat

in summer: considered the chicory,
drawn the blue bridge flung
from bank to bank, or wondered

the names of the red flowers,
their throats like trumpets.
How many times I've not

given in to the weeping:
I can almost see her—the one
who lifts the Potomac mud

to her face and smears,
as if it were a balm and not
the original problem,

or the one with the bucket of fish:
she should return them but that would mean
letting them slip, silver and whole,

finally cast out. I'd rather
let them wander in the maples,
cold and insistent and crying.

I should swim somehow—wait
for spring; I've been waving
to that other a long time,

the one who wears the red
and not the blue scarf.

© Mary Walker Graham 2008

Larissa Shmailo (NYC, USA): Four Poems

2008-02-19T09:36:00.002-05:00

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MAGDALENE

1. I saw you first, writing in the sand.
I couldn't hear you: they were cursing me,
Throwing stones, screaming
Bitch Cunt Whore Bitch Cunt Whore.

I couldn't hear you.
You were quiet and
Papa was holding me, whispering in my ear,
Telling me I was a man's woman,
A natural born whore,
And Mama smiled and turned her head,
Paid the mortgage on my back,
And spit on me: You parasite, she hissed,
You little bitch: You made Papa bad.

So I ran, ran, ran for my life
In any direction I could
Like a dead leaf I rode the wind
I didn't know that
You were the cloud that would carry me
Didn't feel
Your wind beneath my veins
Didn't hear
The birds I followed with my eyes.
I flew without breath,
Running for my life.

2. I couldn't hear you;
You were so quiet,
I still don't know why.
And the pimp's voice was soft,
Hissing in my ear, telling me
I was damned if I didn't
And the tricks were leering, saying
I was damned if I did, but
Do me baby, just do me now.
And their women, their thin, cold women,
Just told me I was damned.

3. I saw you first, writing in the sand,
Even as I ran for my life.
The mob turned to you, saying
Rabbi, should we kill her?

And you laughed.
And I saw the word you had written in the brown sand
And your hand writing twice just in case I didn't see
And I saw the word as I fell to the soft sand,
The word of beginning, the word in your hand
And I took the word, and wrote it all over,
And I laughed and I wrote and was free.

4. Stations

I was there, I saw your face
When you fell for the third time,
When the cross dragged you under,
When they nailed you at last.

I was there, I saw your face
When the pain of betrayal
Would have made any man
Sell his soul to be dead.

I was there, I saw your face,
When you cried to the heavens,
Eloi, eloi, lama sabachtani.
And the heavens split open
For the grace of despair,
For that prayer of despair,
For the gift of despair.

5. The Second Coming

It's time for the second coming, boy:
I just called to say
That the boys are back in town,
And I'm with them
And we're ready to rock,
Ready to rumble,
Ready to roll.

I know I've been quiet
But I've been thinking about you, no one else.
I guess I've been shy, haven't spoken my mind.
They told me not to:
Told me it wasn't nice for a girl.
Told me not to climb the mountain,
Not to teach in church,
Not to drop the cross.
But like you say, fuck 'em:
I don't care what people say.
So come see about me:
I can stay out late tonight.

I want to come with you,
Be your biker chick, your angel,
Your new cross, a true cross
A cross with breasts.

I will soothe your Armageddon, your Jihad
I will be your avenging angel,
I will be on your side this time,
For you are my vehicle, baby,
And the kingdom of heaven
Is mine on your wheels.
Let me be your cross.

The soul of a woman was created below;
Now you know why.

This time, next time, now:
Raise an army for you
Harrow Hell and
Find some roughnecks
To kick down the walls of your tomb.

Listen: Hell hath no fury
Like a woman whose man has been
Gone a long time.

I will not let you be crucified again.

OSCILLATION

Cellular grandfather, pity me: once it was understood
how things were done, how the boiling ferns invited the
glaciers to come, how the dinosaurs asked to die. Os-
cillation: The world was born in swing and sway, and I,
fasting slowly, am not random nor mad, but large, and
more precise than you. My blood makes air and cells;
my moon subtends the sky; my tides squeeze life out of
rock. All my night journeys find a sun; I leave orchards
and olives behind.

HE FOLLOWS HER

He follows her with his voice; she sees him with her skin,
and drinks him with her hands, in the storm touch which
will crush his chest against her breast. The poppies pour

their juice in the red rain which will crack, in time, all o-
ther things. She drinks him with her hands. He follows
with her breast. She sees him with his chest, in this bo-

dy not her own, but which, in the night, is hers. Like the
heat that swells all things, she sings the night with him.
He follows her with his voice; she sees him with her skin

THE OTHER SUICIDE BOMBERS

It’s not the ops tempo it’s the boys

have financial problems they think about looking

at those rigs in Basra. Noncoms got body armor we don't

get suicide prevention teams this ain't Nam & only

189 under 25 did it & less than a thousand tried

what do you want: there are stressors and

the guns are there.

© Larissa Shmailo 2008

Matina Stamatakis (Albany, NY, USA): "Naked (for Mona Mur)"

2008-01-24T07:06:00.000-05:00

NAKED (for Mona Mur)

soft planchette askew mine eye

which corners this triangle

with an open palm? these dowsing

boards & trompe l’oeil ?

your body: arches swirl around a dark

alphabet— I have witnessed the grand

eclipse of constants: eddying ellipses

I hold dizzy the nude blur

will eye eventually purge the visible &

release the invisible from your mouth

of three slopes ?

have we bespoken the gauze-silhouette

that touch of brow so gentle it belongs

in the scriptures to claim the sacred-kept

but for you there is no fragment of sleep

in the palimpsest for you I am

but a channel— amateur palmist

soured by revelation

in the eye of your colossus-root

I have taken-in & kept

at a distance

© Matina Stamatakis 2007

Melissa Severin (Chicago, USA): Poem Explaining...

2007-12-29T08:54:00.000-05:00

POEM EXPLAINING WHY I DO NOT FORGET

There’s a pattern to this: targets
overflow with arrows, a flood in need
of fields, a mouth wide, black and full of steam,

a coffee cup without coffee, an oil slick
confined to puddles under streetlights, the future
ice cubes still water in the tap.

Here’s a hint: take the eclipse
and anniversaries—divide by three—
steal salt from blood,

somewhere there are tonsils to scavenge
and mason jars buried in front yards,
full of doldrums, beat back

bells that chime better names for old lovers,
use the card catalog and consult a surgeon
who’s taken a shot, one who’s been stabbed. At least once

practice being suffocated by stars,
wear a snake as a charm
bracelet and break thin ice; swim underneath.

The solution’s mortared in crowned molars,
in the full tone of drop-D, songs without words
to sing, a look when no one’s looking,

Ouija boards and wish bones. For clarity,
look at a wrist, the pulse twitch
of veins, vibrations, rivers

dammed by skin. Could it be more obvious?
It’s in the hand, the palm of the hand,
hands were made for this:
hold on.

© Melissa Severin 2007

Lina Ramona Vitkauskas (Chicago, USA): Two Poems

2007-12-27T08:28:00.000-05:00

YOU ARE THIS IF I AM THIS
After Scalapino's That They Were At The Beach

Chewing a mum, the morning pollution
adding myself to the photograph,
trancing through the algorithm
of Klimt's ingrown hair;

the velocity of monuments,
of caterpillar sunshine,
each brave larynx, each sole
near the breath; don't hurt yourself;

a phoenix in sickness, a carbiou
placed inside the leaking alibi,
my furious curls clenching
the postulates of traffic, of night.
you are this if I am this,
a validated wasp, a pattern of
canteloupe fire. each layer of
modern compression that death drinks,
leveling the pendulum like medication.

with Roman candle and green bean laurel
girls weep at the moment of preservation
chattering, do you ever feel
as if you just fell down a well?
I added myself to this photograph,
a plastic soul, a patient,
and to all of the violet water
at the window
rising for no one.

IMAGINE YOU ARE A GIFT TO BE GIVEN

1.
the shock of your vanilla carbon;
eggs in a cough as a Bosc

2.
corrupt monitors with Naval
Hospital damage poisoned you

3.
a puzzle, an asteroid, laughing
about Dennis Quaid in cars

4.
I decomposed. My mother stuck
her fingernails into my occciptal lobe
in the dark to soothe me.

5.
ammonia stone of clean woman.

© Lina Ramona Vitkauskas 2007

Larry Sawyer (Chicago, USA): Four Poems

2007-12-19T07:54:00.000-05:00

DANCING OFF THE EDGES OF OUR LIVES

We notice ordinary things like flower pots
filled with sighs and closets dripping
monsters. Is it time yet to depart
from the cloistered probability
that our study of cognac has yielded no
transparencies other than what we
imagined? Here in the future our
wings are mere footnotes
ancanthus medallion, ribbon of sky,
facts smile from posterior gardens.
There is a spy called wonder who watches our
habits. There is a virtue to the geometry of
sleep for a friend is a ruddered thing requiring
citations and phosphorescent rooms.

ANOTHER BALLAD OF MAPS AND GLOBES

Inbetween our faith incontinent
wheezes like a newly invented
instrument upon which we play
the hills from here to there.
Pretty tombstones like teeth
and not like teeth chew the
moon looking down upon this mess,
humans racing to and fro without alibis.
Capsized in the desert they will find us
crouching in the gutters of time
explorers of the inner side of nowhere.

RHINOCEROS CONFETTI

As if there was a man who wore the
mask of a man and that man
noticed behind the mask that there
were shadows covering the earth
like semesters. The man realized he
had a lot to learn. So he studied the
tongues of the shadows as they
spoke a language he'd never heard.
At night they sang the most
intricately embroidered songs.

Perhaps there was a refrigerator in the
sky that he rode to forget himself,
this man who exhaled librarians.
Day and night he read the
silence, cutting his throat with
syllogisms. Butterflies burst forth from his
calamari as he ate it. He noted these
details lazily and continued with his
reverent stroking of the sun.

WAY TO PAMELA ANDERSON

Dare we not say you are gauche
gazing out from between the bars of the television screen
betwixt lip jobs Pamela Anderson pouts
the beach beneath her feet
all the world her magazine, she coos
trying to suddenly remember her line
as the sun licks the horizon a final time and descends
“Way to Pamela, Pamela Anderson!” someone
on the beach shouts. Pamela Anderson cannot
figure out if it’s condescension she’s
hearing or sarcasm. She raises an arm
and waves back yelling jubilantly,
“Thank you, anonymous beach person!”

© Larry Sawyer 2007

Andrew Lundwall (Rockford, Illinois, USA): Three Prose Poems from Pinocchio

2007-12-10T08:44:00.000-05:00

#1

i found the empty life lasting beyond waiting being filled (going over) - you hear my voice in your queue of heading - you operated yourselves with the fear hidden on the floor of space like being slept - a robber down my stolen book where page divides early childhood with a sulky song - crimes beyond colours go disgust-exciting to educate me who is sadly not long - fire-place-stained life span you is older the evening maintained - here-smiling the miracle notion around fires of gutter dancing and alive you hear my voice - do you hear my voice with glacial friendliness because it does not believe everyone nowadays - i have felt the sea's sad fact that there is room for improvement - pinocchio's cliff of the silver screen coming to contact you screaming to you - there are works for you surplus on the black pavement of space - notion fires on in the angle of a closed book - i have felt friendship pools invested in plowing appreciation - transience laughing to dance my voice in the tail of the sun it sees the red and black color of possible screw longitudinally

#2

gepetto sunset master lied about his childhood - cave eyes stood imploringly - secret hands plot false voluptuousness make something right risking violation - masks bonily fray the shadow of voice - scratching minutes - say pattern the night when goodbyes wither - o her mouth silently names broken eyes misaligned - tongue ends gathered green stains of forget utensils do the signs

#3

the sunflowers all bloomed silverly - discover angel eyes lamenting trees inside voice - deep broke song trees - trembling hands' clairvoyant blues - breathless sharp red fare of information - dreamless little eclipse of bleak oak face confined to carpentry named thanks for fuel approached extreme of recreated childhood - his moonlike bleeding tongue works that last time following the say seed through speechless grief - sighs no refuge for wooden sickness

© Andrew Lundwall 2007

Steve Halle (Palatine, Illinois, USA): Three Prose Poems

2007-11-19T09:02:00.000-05:00

#1

dear dangerfeld,
remember this riddle: in an opera box, Genius and Tyranny compete with constant elbows and jostles. the audience enraptured by distracting commotion misses the simple melody of dramas. by interwoven discourse, dinosaurs. the short arms flagellate an imperfection. a mixture of metallic materials contained in a matrix of zinc. perfect creatures and an extinction of teeth. remembrancing in a pac-man world i know the location of all the ghosts. yet still misstep. a failure to position my yellow orb in space and time. nowadays, memory is so first-person shooter. i see what i see but lurkers inhabit a finite beyond. like an infancy. no one remembers the self they create until they remember period. what if i created a beast of myself? o the pains of personhood! in the darkroom, i'm enamored of the moment before the chemicals bring forth image. then later the bubbles of a picture as it burns. in the infrared, i hear voices of the maestro. if the opera fails to satisfy, sleep. yet be forewarned, the fight goes on and despite a sharp rise in merchandise sales for the third quarter, Genius is well behind. when you awake, you will feel between scream and song. suspended like swung semiotics.
fevered and forgotten,
seria

#2

lustthrust as lastgasp of genial weather aflame to falling out bobby pins her hair is not flame-retardent. the heirs to a succession of depression dinkdrift along, caught in eddies the ditties in rivers of convolution. what said differs from what did in painful change and falling hipswell and sore and naming. she of no name not Arabella. if a spring comes after, it will be of declaring and declaratives. leaves and snow are white noise unheard. a leaf hits a lake wave the rushcrush an if makes sense it's not so for softening. underneath depression: lichens a lake a surface blind to flux nevertheless o Saussure declares of depth: deep fulfillment does no more than clarify our deepest longings. an assignation is thrill assigned to guilt in unlit fires the hermitage burns. a woman by my blue or her black knows or conscious of her aspect a leaf flutters away undecided wind a tree leaf aflame thinks "tongue-of-the-mind" awhirl in flutterflux autumn yields to the flavor of falling gone winter gone barren no buds beyond what beauty gone balded.

#3

myspace is aself athwart its own purgatorio. in dormancy transparency a her augmentations. silkspun in black expensive those unshy pithy about bulges. or labial trims. tree analogous to phases: root of imagniation, trunk of reality suspended betwixt, braches and leaves of a false consequenced real. shelter from the inclemency of season or barbarity of others. in a time of flame, all is pendulous. a season screams and Damoclesian. before a fifteen minutes. what does she think of how I think she thinks I view her? perceiving the leaves smells a whisper of burning. a falls is no nosegay not hinting at betrothal. not even in catching. now is the time to play Doctor. male enhancement a victor more than nature allows. what lies beyond or what crazy buds a throbbing star what darkness we follow what into cocooning discovery. on a possible other side a digital shell buzzes. self atop self a god-making god runs amuck. click upon click a pile. a sour smell crumbs on a sweatshirt.

© Steve Halle 2007

Timothy Yu (Chicago/Toronto, USA/Canada): Four Poems

2007-11-14T08:20:00.000-05:00

9/1/07
to Helene

There’s a green dustcover over every place
That seems worth going back to, pilled
By thinking, candy-apple tart.
You’ve just begun your trip around
The map of where you are when some
Remembered patchwork drops on top of it,
Catching every hook with an eye
That glances homeward. Don’t tell us how
You’ve always wanted this to be
Your starring role. Cast
Off your energetic plush
And wrap one callback finger
Around each ornament.
That’s when you’ll really know
How wishes rise like buried
Grains of rice or breadloaf
Juttings into marked-off space,
Nodding spring-loaded heads along
To this defeated beat.

9/3/07
to Soham

Brown down, past half-spent dollars, went
like ever-feather-loving doorbells. Aren’t
you going to get that? Look up for
your next homefront girl. If every
giggle was a gaggle of fleece, we’d
never know how to tie off our own
open mouths. Now I am hailing
a taxi at every dead-end street
corner, playing “Here Comes the Guy”
on my stupid box. You don’t
like it? That’s a shame. It’s meant
to be repeated every thirteen days
on a bareback island shore.
Shorten up those reins. Cover
every eye with wax. Wilt
greens and blues over unbearable
heat. The greatest bandbox
hits of 1885 are back
to haunt our driving rain.
Can’t you hear them between
the bars of this browning
breadstick cage? I can.

TEEN STUCK IN MOVIE THEATER BATHROOM ESCAPES THROUGH CEILING
to Hossannah

It was an ordinary day.
Firefighters were lounging
with coffee and tape measures.
The condiment table was fully
stocked. Then the door
closed. Through the wall I could hear
Harry and Hermione with Bruce
Willis at the site
of another building explosion. Or
were they calling my name?
Nowhere to go
but up, I guess. My fingers
wrapped the ledge like a sausage.
I pulled like rowing
and became a hero.

PRINTERS’ BALL BROKEN UP BY POLICE
to Jen

They enter wearing poem-proof vests.
Each is armed with a Poetry Magazine
totebag. In close formation
they swarm the free tables for copies of Make
and Stop Smiling. The chorus
of pixies falls silent. Smokers
are escorted to the loading dock.
No more free half-hot dogs with everything
for you, I'm afraid. We flee
wearing nothing but hard hats and suspenders.
But still the door won't
close. Disperse, they say, disperse,
like clouds in a cloudless sky.

© Timothy Yu 2007

"Waxing Hot," Poetics Dialogue: Barry Schwabsky (London, UK), Adam Fieled (Editor, Philly USA)

2007-10-23T07:05:00.001-04:00

AF: Could you go into some detail as to what exactly you learned from Harold Bloom, what you retained from your interactions with him, and how it has led you to schematize art & poetics for/to yourself?

BS: Well, that was a long time ago—circa 1979-80. At the time, Bloom was teaching two seminars, one on Freud and one on Wallace Stevens. I believe his book on Stevens was just about to come out. It was striking that he read Freud as a literary text while reading Stevens in a somewhat psychoanalytic way. For him, the turns of thought that Freud called “defenses” were synonymous with the turns of language Bloom liked to call “tropes.” While I had read Stevens a bit before, I wasn’t deeply familiar with his work, having come to modernist poetry through Williams and Pound (to whom Bloom was not sympathetic). So the fact that Bloom “gave” Stevens to me is already something very important. But his seminar was amazing. I’ve never experienced anything like it. Basically he would walk in each week with a massive pile of notes. He’d sit and start speaking from the notes but he hardly ever seemed to get past the first page of them, because he would start digging so deep into the matter at hand in what seemed a completely spontaneous manner. And just in order to follow Bloom’s train of thought in this monologue, you had to think so hard! Yet if you did, it was coherent. But eventually, he would get to a place where it was really difficult to follow him any more—the effort was too exhausting, maybe. And somehow just at that point Bloom would turn it around and pose it as a question to the class. And we would just sit there, stunned. How could you deal with such an elusive question? There would be some moments of silence, until one student or another ventured a response. The rest of us would be flummoxed—the response was even more incomprehensible than the question! But then Bloom would say, “So what you mean is that…” and would give a summary of what the students had just said, which would turn out to be something absolutely brilliant, and you would think, “Ah, that’s amazing!” while feeling like one of those little cartoon “genius” light bulbs had switched on above your head. And from there Bloom would take off on another intellectual excursion for twenty minutes or so, until something similar would happen all over again. I’ve never felt so intellectually challenged and stimulated, unless maybe by Paul de Man.

Now you have to remember that this was well before Bloom started emphasizing the idea of the canon of great books. He was working with the notion of influence, which in my view was a way of revising the idea of “tradition” such as you find it in Eliot for instance—a way of insisting on the idea of conflict or at least ambivalence between one work, one poet, and another, in contradiction to a more idealizing view of tradition. And this was tremendously important. I just happened to read an essay from 1982 by the art historian Linda Nochlin, in which she disputes “the premise that there is in fact an ongoing an continuous stream of great art with which the artist can be fused” and which she says is “that same tradition that Harold Bloom has recourse to in his formulation of the great (male) writer,” but in fact, in those days at least, Bloom was saying exactly the opposite! Anyway, there was somewhere in there an idea that impressed me very much, which was that a canonical author—by virtue of his poetic strength—was always in reality a heretical author, and that canons are formed by casting a veil over this conflictuality that never really goes away. So that a great poet is not only radical and in conflict with tradition but because of this also serves to bring out what was already radical in his or her precursors. In retrospect, maybe this wasn’t exactly what Bloom wanted to get across but this is what I got out of it.

On the other hand, there was a melodrama to all this that in the long run I found a bit overwhelming and unrealistic. There was too much about power and anxiety, not enough about the eroticism of language. He’s a moralist where I’m more of an aesthete. So his thought came to seem one-sided to me. But his passion for poetry was such a generous one that I value even his “wrong” ideas!

AF: I find this binary, aestheticism versus morality, intriguing, instructive, and omnipresent in serious art. Look at post-modern poetry: most of it (whether of the "Language" school or of other semi-related sub-movements, even Flarf) cuts against the grain of epiphanic poetry, the backbone of English Romanticism that Bloom so treasures. In the "epiphanic" model, the poet finds (often) an Other, usually in nature, that surfeits his/her consciousness until a transcendental state is achieved, and the poet then extrapolates a moral lesson (though this is more true of first Gen English Romanticism than second, with WW being exemplar.) Yet Lang-Po is ultimately just as much about morality as English Romanticism: only, the paradigm changes. Here, the poet subsumes the Self, the "I", and demonstrates that text is just text (and much ideology has been pirated from post-structuralism), that pretending that text is more than text is morally unsound (and that we then know that text cannot open a transparent window onto anything except its own “textuality”), and that the politics of the epiphanic "I" represent a kind of despotism, rather than a democratic undertaking. Yet, the eroticism you missed in Bloom is also (for me) missing in most (though not all) Language poetry. Common ground shared by Harold Bloom and Lang-Po: who would've guessed? Yet, I have to ask: what is lost, both in theory and in practice, when eroticism is lost? Pound, Picasso, so many others demonstrated a "phallocentric" orientation: in our PC world, we can amend this to Eros-orientation, what have you; how much of art's generative power is lost when the groin, the loins are taken out (in the sense that art may be preoccupied by straightforward eroticism or even just the Sontagian erotics of the creative process itself, or what we might even, with reservations, call "Beauty")?

BS: I don’t see the drawing of a moral lesson as typical of good Romantic poetry. Its morality does not reside there. The epiphanic moment you speak of is one in which the Self is momentarily broken open. In that sense, Language poetry could be seen as one big epiphany, without the lead-up or the trail off—a steady-state transcendence of subjectivity. Well, I told you I found some reason in Bloom’s notion that we are still working out the consequences of Romanticism. In any case, I don’t see the work of Lyn Hejinian or Ron Silliman or Barrett Watten or some others associated with Language poetry as being disembodied text—at least when the work is at its best. Its language is very physical, very present, very engaged with the senses. To me—and I’ve said this before, at a reading of hers here in London that I organized—Lyn’s writing in particular is pure pleasure. Something like what Roland Barthes called the text of bliss. What could be sexier than that? It’s not erotic in the traditional sense of a love lyric—unlike a lot of my own poetry, by the way—but it is charged with eros in a different way, and I respond to it viscerally. Lately I’ve been reading The Grand Piano, the serialized “experiment in collective autobiography” by ten of the Bay Area Language poets, which is now up to its third of ten projected installments, and so far it seems to be mostly about libido.

Even though what I do is very different, all that writing was tremendously important to me—a huge challenge, not to avoid being morally unsound, but to avoid writing badly! I remember reading Ketjak shortly after it was published—I’m not even sure how I got to know about it—and it was just so obvious that this was the thing that somehow had to be dealt with, the next great thing after Ashbery. And it was in my way, sure—so high you can’t get over it, so low you can’t get over it—exactly the same feeling I’d had when I saw (I can’t even say “read”) “Clepsydra” for the first time. “What do you do with this?” Well, you don’t try to repeat it, that’s for sure. It does seem to disqualify certain possibilities, sure—it makes them unattractive. But that’s what might eventually give you the pleasure of discovering new possibilities, right? Anyway, I guess I’m very romantic in my view of Language poetry. They maybe thought they were critiquing the construction of subjectivity and “the voice,” and probably they succeeded in doing so, but in the process, but in the process they ended up getting at a kind of collective subjectivity, a collective voice. Silliman, to me, is comparable to Whitman. The difference is that while Whitman declared, “I contain multitudes”—and he really did—Silliman contains them without bothering to say so.

AF: Well, it will help to remember, as we carry this conversation forward, that we are of different generations. I was born in the mid 1970s (’76, to be exact), and my introduction to poetry came, as it often does for American teenagers, through the Beats: Ginsberg, Corso, Kerouac. These are poets (and/or poet-novelists) who value the same things Shelley and Keats (if not Wordsworth and Coleridge) valued; spontaneity, personal expression and poetry expressive of the Self (or a multiplicity of Selves, as in Whitman), the notion of an individualistic poet, a "wilderness voice", taking a stand against a repressive cultural milieu (though that stance is much more pronounced in Shelley than in Keats, and Wordsworth started that way but later, according to Shelley and others, "sold out".) By the time I started seriously investigating Language poetry, and this happened through Anne Waldman (oddly enough), I had already written and read a lot of poetry. I had my own ideas about what a poem could/could not do, and though these ideas were tinged with naivete, some of them have stuck. The fact is that I don't get the "pure pleasure" you speak of from Hejinian, or most other Language poets. I find them (not always, but often) pretty boring. I know the Barthes text you're quoting from, and I actually wrote and published an essay quoting "The Pleasure of the Text." It happened to be about Rae Armantrout, one poet who others group under the Language aegis (I think mistakenly), and who I do get pure pleasure from. If I remember correctly, the text of bliss is one that threatens you, "brings to a crisis (your) relationship with language," but the crisis we get from Lang-Po has been around for thirty years now, and perhaps it isn't much of a crisis anymore. I feel a very compelling compulsion to look for the new, what hasn't been done. That's both in my writing and in my reading. I'm looking for a "buzz." I don't get it from Lang-Po (and I've only seen bits and pieces of Ketjak, though I know other classic Lang-Po texts, Progress, My Life, etc., very well). You resisted this when I first brought it up, but I have to reiterate that I think following the precepts which dictated Lang-Po, the most salient branch of post-modern art in poetry, would be a mistake. Do you have pronounced ideas as to what could effectively follow Lang-Po?

BS: Obviously we just disagree about the value of Language poetry, and although of course I’ve read the Beats—how could I not, Allen Ginsberg is my homeboy!—their work was never in any way formative for me. Still, I can’t tell you how surprised I was when a reviewer of my book Opera referred to me as a “post-Language poet.” It really made me look at myself with new eyes, because it’s certainly not a term I’d ever have thought of applying to myself. I’m not actually trying to write the next thing after Language poetry! Nor do I put a name to what it is I am writing. Honestly, I think it is mostly just traditional lyric poetry—as long as your idea of the tradition consists mostly of Sir Thomas Wyatt, Pierre Reverdy, Paul Celan, and Jack Spicer. You know, you can’t necessarily decide what you should do and then execute that decision. Some people can, but not me. For me, it’s not a question of what I should write or even what I could write—but of what I can write. I recognize that my capacities and aptitudes are fairly limited. There are all kinds of things I like to read but are part of an endeavor that I know it’s not in me in contribute anything substantial to. To some extent these limitations are almost physiological: I’ve got a nervous disposition, I’m easily bored, so it doesn’t work for me to try and do anything in too systematic a way—it’s got to be something more mercurial. And then there are questions of what you might call self-image that reinforce this. There are a lot of people out there who are trying to be professional poets. I don’t think they really are that exactly—in most cases it would be more accurate to say that they are professional poetry teachers. But in any case, they need to have a certain track record, they need to publish a certain amount and so on. And I think it makes more sense for those people to do project-oriented works than it does for me, so I kind of steer clear of their territory. I believe in a division of labor! It’s all worth doing, but that doesn’t mean that I have to do all of it. I cultivate an idea of myself as an amateur, so I like pushing the idea that I will write poetry without a plan or schedule, that it will be something I dip into periodically—like a dilettante! Why not? (Anyway, it’s hard enough for me to do that with the writing I have to work at systematically, my art criticism.) I admit that this is really a sort of vanity, not very different from my notion that since I don’t work in an office, I will never dress in any clothes that anybody would ever be likely to wear to the office—that way no one will ever mistake me for an office worker. Likewise, no one should ever mistake my poetry for that of a creative writing professor. Ridiculous, I know, but there you go.

AF: Well, no, actually I think that's pretty reasonable. Poetry has become all tied up with academia, which isn't necessarily a positive development, nor is the idea of "professionalism" with regards to poetry all that pertinent. Your profession is what you make money from, right? No one (or almost no one) makes substantial money from poetry. So, the idea of having a "poetry career," or being a "professional poet," seems slightly daft. I'm speaking from the "inside" here; I'm a PhD candidate with an MFA under my belt as well. What happens in these programs is that a certain kind of spontaneity-inhibiting pseudo-discipline is taught, where every line has to have a rational purpose, every poem must neatly fit under a certain rubric (which changes wildly from program to program), everything must be justified. Poets stop taking risks and start writing to satisfy a "meat market": small presses, journals (online and print), reading series, etc. I can't at all claim immunity to this process; it's just something that happens. My own way of fighting back is by writing poems that deliberately transgress the seemingly set-in-stone boundaries of poetic decorum. I have made a conscious decision, for example, to write a lot (and directly) about sex and sexual politics (and not from the vantage point of a PC academic feminist, to be sure). I mean the kind we hear about when Mick Jagger sings "Under My Thumb", or when Updike's Rabbit Angstrom deals with his wife (and this is not to be taken for misogyny either, as is often the case; the issue is the psychic struggle to the death between men and women, or between lovers in general). Post-avant poets, I've found, are very squeamish, and rather than try to appease them, I'd like to make them vomit! So I deliberately transgress and I take the heat for it as well. To bring up an earlier point, I get a buzz from poems that transgress, and do so with intelligence and style. I have the capability to churn out as much safe "product" as I want to. The point is that I don't want to. I want to bring back direct treatment (sans Lang-Po obfuscatory techniques) of sex, and if I say "I" again....no! God forbid! Here's something: we all know the mythology surrounding poets in/around among painters in history: Apollinaire/Jacob/Picasso, or Ashbery/O'Hara/Larry Rivers, etc. It seems that this kind of frutiful connection is absent from our post-avant world. Do you agree? Has the art world become segregated, and if so how and why?

BS: I’m squeamish too. I could never have been a doctor. Maybe that’s why I took up writing—an activity that deals with blood only in fancy. I don’t have anything against poets finding harbor in the universities. I can’t say it’s not a positive development if it has given more poets a way to keep going and keep producing. Most of the contemporary poetry I like is written by people who teach. But that’s just not where I ended up.

But as far as poets and art, maybe there’s less of a disconnect than it might seem. The editor of Artforum, Tim Griffin, is a poet, though he seems to keep that a little sub rosa. Likewise another of my favorite writers there, Frances Richard. I’m in awe of her work. These are people who are, I suppose, somewhere in between my generation and your generation, but in any case, they’re young enough to make me think that the connection is still there. But remember that the relation between the two arts has changed because so much art is now so permeated by language—or even just is made of language. So these arts impinge on each other’s territory now in uncomfortable ways. Gris could illustrate a book by Reverdy, but how could Lawrence Weiner illustrate a poet’s book? Words illustrating other words? An intriguing idea, but hard to see how you’d pull it off. More reasonably, the poet would just transform into the artist, as happened with Ian Hamilton Finlay, or else the artist into the poet, as occurred more recently in the case of Kenny Goldsmith.

Of course, assuming there is the “segregation” you speak, there could be more practical reasons as well: The dispersal of the poets around the country due to their becoming part of academia, as we’ve discussed, while art scene remains focused on a few urban centers; the rise in the art market that has vaulted at least the better-known artists into a completely different economic stratum than almost any poet—things like that mean that artists and poets may simply cross paths less than they once did.

AF: That's fascinating, and it brings up another salient point: who determines now what poetry is or is not? If I want to call Bruce Nauman a poet, is there anyone who could give me a reasonable reason not to? How about Barbara Kruger? Ed Ruscha? If a genre is, as Fowler says, more of a family than a classification (with fluid boundaries), would some kinds of intercourse between painters (and/or conceptual artists) and poets be incestuous? I have a nagging sense of disappointment about this issue. In some ways I really would like it to be 1955 or 1915 again in NYC or Paris. I mean, you would think that Silliman and Nauman would have a lot to talk about, right, even if they couldn't collaborate? Don't the best movements always go across all (or most of) the disciplines? The threads tying conceptual art to post-avant poetry seem thin indeed. Again, po-mo art seems a lot rougher, a lot more direct, "in your face", than the kind of poetry we're dealing with, that tends towards abstraction and (often) obfuscation. Would Nauman be happy at this point, to be called a poet? Or are these designations superfluous?

BS: I don’t suppose Nauman or Kruger or Ruscha would be particularly interested in being called a poet, although they all use language brilliantly—Ruscha’s in particular seems rather “poetic” to me, but that’s probably not a qualification for being a poet! I’m sure they’re all pretty well satisfied with the designation “artist.” Maybe one reason is that as a category, “art” has become a lot less determinate than “poetry.” Poetry does at minimum have to be language, right? Whereas art really can be just anything at all—language, video projection, oil on canvas, dead cow, live horse, walking, whatever. Personally, I’m satisfied with just working on language, but that scope means a lot to some people.

Silliman and Nauman probably would have a lot to talk about, except I don’t think Nauman talks about a lot with almost anybody. By reputation, he’s a pretty taciturn, pretty close-to-the-chest kind of guy. Silliman spoke somewhere about having been influenced by Philip Glass in writing Ketjak—which seems pretty obvious once it’s pointed out—so he might have a lot to talk about with Chuck Close, whose work, especially early on, was pretty connected with that of Glass (of whom he made a famous portrait). I can see Flarf as connected in spirit with a lot of recent figurative art. But it’s hard to think about it in terms of a period style, partly because even within any one art, there are so many different, seemingly contradictory things going on at any one time. Probably the underlying connections will become more obvious as the present recedes into history.

Maybe more than with artists, I think poets might have a lot to talk about with musicians. On the other hand I also wonder why even seemingly almost innately unpopular forms of music are still nonetheless so much more popular than poetry. For instance, I went to hear the re-formed Slint the other night. I read that their Spiderland album has sold 50,000 copies since it was released in 1991. That’s not much for a rock record, I guess, but it would be an enormous amount for a book of poetry. And yet honestly, I can’t see why anyone who could get into that record couldn’t get into any advanced form of poetry. I just don’t see the difference really. One is no more or less esoteric than the other. What do you think?

AF: I think people are just more willing to take a chance with music. I'm not familiar with the group you've mentioned, but I assume they're "avant", i.e. "out there". Even the most esoteric forms of ambient, electronic, and other branches of avant-garde music have more appeal for masses of people than poetry. It's always hard to tell how and why cultural mores form, but my hunch is that people become attached to music because it's so rampant in our society (in a way it wasn't in 1907 or 1807). Previous cultures didn't have recorded music or recorded music devices, or entertainment devices that invariably have a musical component (i.e. TV commercials ubiquitously feature music, etc.). A child born in the US or the UK will be hearing music every day. In Wordsworth's day, people told stories to amuse each other. Now, we switch on a TV, and there's music, or a radio, and there's music. Poetry is much harder to come by in quotidian life. So people accustom themselves to music from a very early age, rather than people telling stories (though obviously parents do still tell their children stories) or people reading aloud from books, and where once books were ubiquitous, music is now. That doesn't make it better or degrade poetry as an art form. It does mean that if you go into poetry, you better be sure no money and a limited audience doesn't bother you. Does it bother you, or do you have enough invested in your art criticism that poetry seems like a "side project", something done more or less for pleasure?

BS: From www.allmusic.com: “Though largely overlooked during their relatively brief lifespan, Slint grew to become one of the most influential and far-reaching bands to emerge from the American underground rock community of the 1980s; innovative and iconoclastic, the group's deft, extremist manipulations of volume, tempo, and structure cast them as clear progenitors of the post-rock movement which blossomed during the following decade.” Check them out.

Anyway, I disagree that poetry is hard to come by in daily life. I mean, you could say that art music is rare in daily life, but jingles aren’t, and background music isn’t, and forms of manufactured pop music that are maybe one-third of the way from jingles and background music to something I would actually think of listening to aren’t—but we accept those as music, of a sort. Well, by the same token advertising slogans are poetry, of a sort. (Lew Welch: “Raid kills bugs dead!”) There are all kinds of artful uses of language in our daily lives. But I admit you’re right insofar as this art of language is detached from any intimacy with the book as a medium. Régis Debray recently wrote that just as the ground of symbolic authority had once shifted from “God told me” to “I read it,” it’s now shifted from “I read it” to “I saw it on TV.”

If I have a complaint about all this, it’s not because I personally crave a large readership. Really. I don’t need to be popular. But I think it would be interesting—enlivening—if some form of poetry were. Like most poets, I guess, I would like to be more popular among my fellow poets, mainly. That’s what will determine whether the work has staying power. It is done for pleasure—or at least that sort of “negative pleasure” that is the relief of an overwhelming necessity—but hardly a side project. Rather, the ground.

© Barry Schwabsky, Adam Fieled 2007

Lars Palm (Sweden): (biotech,) say (what?)

2007-10-17T09:39:00.000-04:00

1
& we were so much older then

& the city stretches its limits

& yawns

& went forth to say

& when they returned

2
both of you really believed that

belly dancer my arse

brutally beaten aardvarks chuckle

breathe slowly the spring night air

being small enough some sages skip

3
circambulating whatever's closest

closings or closures or

could have nicked his glasses

charles who?

chocolate covered cereal killer

4
drunk drivers dream deflation

death discovers latino music

didn't they do that last time?

drove back across the plains

dimwit nation once again

5
entering the room with a flash

ever the one to think elvis

even after that evening

endings come in threes or fours

earthquakes what for?

6
forward or onward or wayward

flinching back from these

five times i saw him hit the kid

for now these houses stand back

falling over a blind mans cane

7
going down to the harbour

gilded splinters should be carefully

gongs disturb his sheep

greek grows obese olives

grown out of the car

8
having gone hiding

holier than thou or even her

hot wheels turn cartwheels

how do you intend to?

horses went out of fashion

9
invitation to be dinner

invasion for tax evasion

invented a berry

in the interest in raising the interest

if you talk with lemons

10
jesters sing to save their necks

juggling a thousand stories she goes

jokes like politicians or truth-tellers

just a bit too much biography

john wayne where art thou?

11
listening to the rain

long gone are the years of no

like when you use another

living like a donut

look at that house being

12
may we have a witness?

more than before

measuring the clock-tower

mates with the ship

minute details must detain

13
neither here

nor there

no way it shouldn't be done

newly painted faces & shoes

nearer my dog to thee

14
on the wing or the hoof or the roof

octopus missing until now

oh & there's the

opponent hiding in the corn

other animals may be around

15
pushing the door open you find

positively 4th wheelbarrow

palm-leaves sweeping streets

possums avoid cop cars

pink plastic rollerskates

16
robbed by violins

rats said the mouse-trap

ran the whole distance before

raising raisins requires rain

red stains on the sidewalk

17
steeleyes span dry riverbeds

so many things not named

swiftly she stands up

simply gather around the ball & see

some others may have

18
they were already gone when

that's when the new chef

the ship rolled so wildly

too many loose things to tie

to think that they

19
utilitarianism

u-turns may yet be

under the ground they went berserk

uncharacteristic twists of tongue

up up & away

20
willfully spinning on the freeway

wringing these things out of his skin

what if not that?

whales would love to cause chaos if only they

would have gone the other way

© Lars Palm 2007

Hugh Behm-Steinberg (California, USA): Four Prose Poems

2007-08-20T12:24:00.000-04:00

JUNE 3

In the movie everything splits in two, fortresses, autos, apartment buildings, neighbors, deals, and for everything there is someone between who grays. And there is this kid and he hates his father, who’s a vampire, because all he wants to be is a vampire too, only with better teeth and flashier tracksuits. And there is another kid, also hating his father, who finds another father, and this first father is not a bad man he gets to hang out with a woman who used to a doctor and another woman who used to be an owl. Lots of explosions, and the idea that if you can write precisely what you want with magic chalk you can mend what was torn from you.

JUNE 9

When I’m a kid I’ll be water, I’ll be watched closely. When I’m seen I’ll change your mind. When I do chores I’ll be diligent. I won’t live in an empire. When I’m handsome I’m trying not to be imperial I won’t let myself be folded upon myself. I’m not a suit. I won’t let myself be a suit. When I’m a grown up I’ll be a kid and no one will watch me, when I’m a grown up I’ll watch myself. I’ll be water only different I’ll do chores and I won’t be them. Won’t be chores, won’t be laundry, won’t let my clothes be my costume, won’t let my clothes be my uniform, won’t live in an empire, I’ll be handsome like a statute but I won’t be legal anymore.

JULY 4

When I was dead the king of the dead challenged me. The most beautiful poem and you’ll go to heaven. Because I was dead I had all the time in the world, everything I ever said sat in my mind like a book, I could read my own mind like a book. But when I looked down into hell I saw Paul Celan, Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, and if they were there then I knew the king of death hated poetry, and I was fucked either way, so I kept my mouth shut. The king said what’s the most beautiful poem and I said nothing, and he said silence is most beautiful, but I wrote it first, so it’s a tie, which means you only get to live, and say hi to John Cage for me.

JULY 27

I’m seldom sparrowlike, the mud bothers me, don’t peck so much no more. The warm air lifts but it won’t even argue with me. I’m fond of my clothes, the hairs on my arms, my arms, my thumbs. I like to hum more than sing, I only know how to whistle one note, I’m not fooling anybody. This is the part where I’m supposed to turn, and if I was a sparrow I could do so very quickly and without thinking, it would be routine, you’d have to be really focused to remember it happened at all. This would be the part where instinct took over, the worm got what’s coming, but it’s sunny, and I’m not, I sit on a bench and watch, more patient than I look.

© Hugh Behm-Steinberg 2007

Marco Giovenale (Rome, Italy): from "first platform 2"

2007-08-15T17:49:00.000-04:00

§ 0.2

it was at cape breton isle.
he is one of major b-fiddlers exporters.

mosaic isle. gravel. say:
surrender, say: board nothing, üre :00:4.

he boasts nothing. he puts cut
hands on the hob. he lights furs.

see a group of nuns praying.
intriguing, intriguing. fake exit.

in back lane pink pool of bones.
no clone dwarf with rifle waiting.

peaches. & the original tapestry theory.
quilt mud art always begins

as a crooked violin-flute duo
in august - which is voodoo winter

§ 0.2

two years minus | another year waste area |
informational master goofy coffee sipping maiden

they they furl nasa gonfalon. current. beware
of ticketmaster.ca | hoops of stones and unmanned rockets
available through the month.

jamaica leader in spain and algebra mafia
led tin corporate sponsorship brochure.
soda fills both sides of the timecoder left

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: centers/ issues/ rêveries/
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: peeps/ peeks/ ices/ depots/
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: hacks/ views/ wee dew corn rifle
shooting beyond the lines. warned. the lightning strikes
all the children bows on the ground.
then x: nothing in the box. the mender came and go. he grew diaphanous.

you saw him. | better. | you know it.

§ 0.2

four circles. cup of glass crumbs.
baked seal-faced nyman silk.

catch the promo. it was just here. didn't you
see any lunch? the four famous black rabbits

laughed at the color statements by georg.
prune pig sewage n { archives suck.

undress handspun gut fiber x/200
-- private request. | a. b. | { mimic the manner of connexion.

© Marco Giovenale 2007

Dan Hoy (NYC, USA): "The Electroplating of all my Friends"

2007-07-29T19:53:00.000-04:00

THE ELECTROPLATING OF ALL MY FRIENDS

I told them not to drink from the lake.
I said, "Not all things aqueous are equal,"

but the dissolved metal ions were too small to see
and they knew nothing of reagents

or parameters, voltage or amperage,
temperature, residence times, or purity of bath solutions.

They were thirsty.

Then the clouds rolled in, bristling with electric current—
and with a flash

all my ferrous and non-ferrous friends
solidified from the inside out

into brass & bronze, cadmium & copper,
chromium, gold, iron, lead, nickel, platinum, silver, tin,

& zinc. They fell
like giant cathodic statues, electropositive and lifeless.

Except for the lone friend
subsisting on aluminum, whom I loved

with all my C-22/titanium-7 heart, now isolated
in metallurgical horror

as organic electrolytes rained down upon her.
Then she too fell over.

A microsecond later
I felt a mechasynaptic surge

as my comlink called for an immediate satellite strike
on the lake's coordinates.

I had an estimated 0.6 minutes to grieve.
It was not my decision.

© Dan Hoy 2007

Rosanna Lee (NYC, USA): Two Poems

2007-07-27T10:50:00.000-04:00

LOBSTER

Sir, you are obscene!

Your plated, besmattled shards
enclose the meat of human
delicacy, ripped apart, smothered
in cups of oily lard and slurp.
Your neck, perhaps or that round
swinging fan of an ass, $18.95 entree.
Some VDA ridden sailor hoisted
this oversized, obscene insect,
with his antennae flailing pathetically about
and the lodged furry creature caught in its neck
flapped out like the buzz of the insane,
and this sailor see, he was a
very, very hungry! So, alas - crash
against the jetty just like the
Grecian octoputhie and his life gave out
into the last cringes and epilepsies
like those huge black summer ants,
he heaved his last obscene breath,
and the sailor -
He made love to the dead lobster.
He stuck himself messily inside the
encased filaments of short haired flesh
and he feasted and hollered and
shrank in awe of this beauteous prospect,
“Oh, lobster come back to life, I love you!”

APPENDAGES

The first time in my life,
I see them as appendages,
the first time they've been
too big.

As a little girl, lying in bed in the dark,
I would stare at the little budding anthills,
pointy torpedoes, I would imagine them one
day as mountains.

Now, I understand how dangerous it is to
have that life force strapped to you,
hanging from your heart.

In the Grapes of Wrath, she gave that old
starving man her breast after her blue baby
had been buried, such life!

A death spy located at the side, growing,
aching, throbbing. Keep it a secret from
mother.

I've looked at the films, they look like
bleach spilled on seaweed under a microscope:
singing, sing, sing
for me, it'll be fine.

© Rosanna Lee 2007

Kristy Bowen (Chicago, USA): Three Poems

2007-07-23T09:53:00.000-04:00

EXPERIMENT IN MINIATURE

As always, I'm devastated by that shade
of blue. The hint of hotel rooms
and anything French. Tend to fall
for the short notes, the staccato.
This seasick vibrato, like the girl
that opened her mouth so wide
you could hear the wind inside.
Her wreckage of trees and wheel spokes.
One dance card, then another.

No one loves a brushfire, or worse,
a dirty blonde. The grotto with a thousand
bones rinsed so clean it was erotic.
You might carry them home in your pockets
like birds with tiny marbles for eyes,
newspaper where their wings should be.
Might cut their tongues out.
might name them for your own.

AT THE HOTEL ANDROMEDA

we walk up the stairs, walk down.
Put too much sugar in the coffee.

Button, unbutton.
It's all very hush, hush.

Like the beginning of a play
where we take out the dishes,

put them away, or the death scene
where the scenery tears at the edges.

He coaxes us with cokes and marbles.
The penny voyeur, his marionette,

the hot pink hibiscus of her mouth.
Shows me a drawing of a house.

Then a house with birds.
A dovecote, a broken key.

I take out the stars then put them away.

CLASSIFICATIONS

Not the bird, but merely the picture of a bird,
and I’m all wound, all wound.

Pensive, pale, pirouetting
in sequins and feathers.
Losing my passport on the train
and inventing my name.

Your seance gives me the shakes,
little eggs quivering carnivorous
in my palm.

I’m a shipwreck in a bottle,
full steam. The part of the painting
where the painting has been taken away.

The balcony. The woman in the boat.
All I know about mathematics:

that it makes a pretty bride, makes a pretty mess.

© Kristy Bowen 2007

Melissa Severin (Chicago, USA): "Myth to Meteor"

2007-07-10T09:46:00.000-04:00

MYTH TO METEOR

Gestated in the thigh, born twice, rose once

from the head of Zeus. I bit my way out,

through eight great plates, skull bones a catapult.

Indulge me, my heartstrings forged from harpsichords;

this is a myth I keep

rebuilding with dog’s teeth and concrete.

Solicit the backhoe,

dig timing with a slingshot.

Pick a solar system to sift. It’s not the same past

as my future; we’re making me a swarm of meteors,

a shield of shooting stars that want

electricity from another planet,

that distant arc of orbit, hung from scepters and spinning

all around. A profanation.

How can we come so close and not collide?

Chard deNiord (Vermont, USA): Three Poems

2007-06-07T09:05:00.000-04:00

CLUB EREBUS

Death is the mother of beauty.
Wallace Stevens

They emerged from a door that wasn’t a door
and floated across the room to the stage
which they ascended and began to sway
and bend and turn with only their g strings on.
I sat at the bar drinking gin and smoking
a cigar, watching them work beneath
the lights, accept the funds of happy men
who took great care in folding their bills
like miniature towels inside the belts
around their thighs that went k’ching,
k’ching, until a ring of bills adorned
their thighs and the music stopped
for a moment, long enough for them
to disappear into the dark of the high
stone door at the end of the stage
where they waved good bye, good bye
and then were gone beneath the world
like the ghosts they were, to rest for a while,
the longest time, before returning live
to die again as they had before.

NOR EVER WOULD BE, SADLY, WOULD BE

Memory is almost enough if you’re in solitary
or intensive care in which case the past merges
with the present in such a way that time passes
imperceptibly as thought itself causing you to lose
yourself in various versions of what only partly happened
so that you’re here and not here at the same time,
both real and virtual, adding recall to supposition
and vice versa in the mercy of waiting somewhere,
as if the Higher Power were cognizant from the start
that pre-humans were destined to become human
that moment they became aware that they were remembering,
remembering, and it wasn’t enough, and as an addendum
to this thought, that nothing was enough, nor ever would be,
would be. A wind blows across the earth like a page:
More, More, Whatever It Is. See how it passes away-
girders and all-in the flames you can only see on the screen
of your lids, not so towering but persistent, licking.
The single stroke that Lily made comes close,
her simple, untalented mark that was enough for then,
and now, which is all anyone can hope for at the end
of a war, which is always, at least so far. So far.

MEMOIR

I willed the knife to hit the mark and it did
sometimes at the point, and stuck. Practice led
to skill until my eyes were covered with a handker-
chief and my beloved straddled a wheel
for all to see as I threw at her but hit
the space between her legs, beside her head,
beneath her arms. This was it, all
or nothing: my life and hers in a perfect art
where every night she was reprieved for having
lived, and I was kissed as she was freed
as part of the act that traveled the country and built
my fame as the man who misses with perfect aim.

© Chard deNiord 2007

Kristy Odelius (Chicago, USA): Three Poems

2007-06-04T19:43:00.000-04:00

THE VIRGINS OF CHICAGO

The gold lunette just beyond the glass,
the cord, the snag, my lariat mind.
With magazines, we let fly like
magdalenes sweeping the stairs. Cassocks
frame damp faces behind the weather.

Slowly through a permissive sky,
an incident, a scar—stars disarticulate
from mud-spattered sails. The billowing
rings in a cell phone ditty, outfitted,
cheeked, sleeping their clarity. Mediums
slung across beds—daughters, madams,
divas feeling it—the Sapphic elastic.

Precursor to this disarming blue
dawn, red in the bent light of fever-
flower gossip. They wake up walking,
the virgins of Chicago, the rhetoric
in their step says fuck the folio.

THE VIRGINS OF CHICAGO

Where businessmen like to stand
in their underwear, late-night
kites cascade between the heads
of tourists. Each alone and gentle,
uniquely sad, oh that disappointing
brunch on the esplanade.

Instead, I window the Hyatt.
In my drawing a woman
stands kabuki-neat, holding
a cell phone, poised in red
on a man-hole cover.

The virgins chant:

“Manhole covers of the world
Pink anemones and a pagoda
Endlessly above the sewer.”

Attention urban planners!

The virgins sit where
no one else sits.

EQUIVALENTS

*

We knew, and it
always feels good
to know something.

We could die—a silver
laugh, a photograph, or
at the end of your knee.

*

They said there’s
a resemblance, clouds
in the ice, a force
in our boots.

On the porch love
is implicitly forged.
Today, to mimic its
drift is to see.

*

It was moving the whole time,
as if to hold you from the light.

I held your head
in the snow as if
to tell you a form.

*

Five fingers, how do they
glow? Sick like honey
in the scientific field—
your hand, and what it knows.

© Kristy Odelius 2007

Lina Ramona Vitkauskas (Chicago, USA): Three Poems

2007-05-15T09:02:00.000-04:00

A LIST OF WILD FOODS

Wistful shame of being,
I throw myself into the sun
of the gold rush, a glottal stop
in an arthropod's mouth.

What curvature I had in cars,
opposing hearts tangled
& cordial corrections
but you come away
with free, clutching me
in front of the grill
a naked tournament
of truth & thighs.

Is this all we are,
parallel & verdegris
melting potential of fauna?
For jilted lovers
& lace tubers have never
been our scene, someone's game,
wild in sum & mind.

GROUNDLESS PUPURA

The whole honey veil
of being born, the patent
asp killed by candid netting,
please give me rust &
summer beets &
winter spinach &
convulsing, calm
diagrams in garland.

One day, the pretty
diametrics will best
her best machine. Her
fallen silk in the algae pool.

He joins her at the screaming
wall. She has become a bridle.
Leather piercing his annex,
sweet unblonde interception.

Oiled lace on wanton
flesh his organism, hers,
a feverish puncture
and his blind kind
inner archeologist, quixotic
sensual waters,
a morning innoculation.

She acorn, she anemone,
aching for the answer
in chords of deviant bells.
After his kiss,
what is the crime
without the weapon of love?

VIOLET SMOKE

Morning's murder,
our fire brains
winged. A green apron
aims for diametric evenings,
luminous the nails of my.
We perishable,
cradled chaos,
we coal error,
we pleasantries.

Beneath counsel
corners, we draw quiet,
save the stones
of our heads
gelled & loving
(still to come).

What aches most:
your birch rhythm
and what accident
voice my small hands
stopped senseless.
Your cunieform
above the banks
waves of sense.

Light passes
through the bony
turnstile, welcome
to color and devastation

© Lina Ramona Vitkauskas 2007

Barry Schwabsky (London, UK): Four Poems

2007-05-10T11:02:00.000-04:00

NIGHT OF THE PEACOCKS

Just in from the stars
and already my soul birds
taking black literally
shriek past sudden cinders of attention

break the seal of breathing light
she paints by flicking her eyelashes

escaped peacocks
watching our free movies in the street.

BIBLICAL WOMAN

One eye milk, the other eye honey.

POETRY FELL IN LOVE WITH YOU FOR A REASON

Waking up nights: spare rooms crowded with heat
and the rain outside: sudden music for dull garden leaves
remember who’s missing? and in the lightning of a smile
years of long kissing: a fantasy
sequentially yours: but even though you feel chosen

you are chosen: invisible difference
lasts long (this book smells like Murakami)
to an eye full of pauses: oily sky and goodbye.

FALSE POSITIVES

Again you close the door
a freezing whisper
and the room disappears

gulls fly past the pages
your eyes disguised
yet bid me enter.

*

For once I died right
your host assimilating birds
a restless voice dims

backed off finding time
as if it were given me
to write it.

*

The great gray sea
the love engine chopped like mad
stand here totally reversed

but used to the filth of heat
this sky travels fast
knowing anyone else but you.

© Barry Schwabsky 2007

Waxing Hot: Poetics Dialogue: Robert Archambeau (Illinois, USA), Adam Fieled (Editor, Philly, USA)

2007-05-01T09:17:00.000-04:00

AF: Let’s address single poems vs. long, conceptual, book-length poems. The trend in post-avant seems to be towards the latter; I prefer the former. Where do you stand?

RA: You’re probably right about the trend toward book-length works in post-avant writing. I have nothing like, you know, actual data to work with, but that’s never stood in my way before, so let’s roll with the assumption that there is a trend toward book-length poems. I suspect you’re right for two reasons: an institutional one and another that has to do with the large-scale history of poetics. You really can’t underestimate the influence of that massive institutional edifice, the MFA program, on poetry nowadays. One of the things many people are encouraged to do in such programs is to write series of linked poems. I understand why: it’s a way to get students to stretch out beyond the short lyric, to explore a form or a topic, and to understand the architecture of a book. So that’s the institutional reason. The other reason is that our poetics have evolved to a point where we aren’t really asking for a very rigorous coordination of parts into a whole. That is, you no longer have to write with the kind of obsessive-compulsive disorder level of attention to how your book-length project adds up to a whole in order to think of it as a single project. Milton would have died a little to think that a part of Paradise Lost had only an oblique connection to the unified whole, for example. But in our time (and I don’t mean this as a judgment, but as an observation) there is a strong sense that the truly sophisticated work eschews classical decorum, or even the kind of hidden unity behind a façade of fragments that we find in a poem like Eliot’s Waste Land. Some of this comes from the triumph of deconstruction and post-structuralism: after Derrida and company showed us all the fissures and disunities in the texts we’d thought of as whole, the goals of the Big Unified Work seemed less viable. And when Deleuze and Guattari described the rhizome as the form of our time, they authorized a lot of works in which various parts connected with each other somewhat haphazardly. So we see a lot of book-length poems where the bar for textual unity has been set fairly low. You can call it a book-length work if a lot of the parts only sort of connect. In a way, you could say what’s changed hasn’t been a matter of substance so much as it has been a matter of labeling. I mean, Wallace Stevens presented his first book, Harmonium, as a collection of individual poems. But those poems have enough by way of thematic and stylistic overlap that, had he been able to anachronistically appropriate Deleuze and Guattari’s language and called it a single, rhizomatic whole, no one now would bat an eye. Anyway, this movement toward big works that are really collections of linked fragments isn’t as new as we’d like to think. The roots of it go back at least as far as Poe’s essay “The Poetic Principle,” in which he argues that the unified long poem isn’t really possible.

But I notice that I haven’t answered your question, which didn’t call for a long, pedantic ramble, but a statement about my own preferences. Do I prefer the book-length work or the collection of individual poems? I don’t think I can answer that in the abstract. Certainly some of my favorite poets work in long forms: John Matthias still seems to me like the great contemporary master of the long poem, and I love his work. Then again, Mairead Byrne (to pull one example from the air) writes these tiny little poems that I think are fantastic.

I suppose a question behind your question is this: should we try to judge a poem on its own terms (“Hey! Look at this haiku — see how it does exactly what a haiku does!”) or should we try to judge a poem against some larger standard (“A haiku? That sentimental seventies orientalist drivel has no place in the post-avant era! Balderdash! I condemn these offensive lines!”). Let me throw that question back atcha, Adam. I’m interested in what you have to say: I’ve been asked to come up with some remarks for a panel on evaluative criticism next month, and have been waffling about which way to jump on the issue.

AF: I have mixed feelings about it. I also have to be careful— I don’t want to just justify my own habits and inclinations. There are two basic forms I’m addressing— the long poem, as exemplified by Rachel Blau DuPlessis’ Drafts, and the collection of short poems that conform to a central thematic or formal rubric. At the moment, I’m thinking of Chris McCabe’s Hutton Inquiry. I love Drafts, I love Chris’s book too, but I can’t help a feeling of disappointment with the less accomplished variants (I will not name names) of these texts. Where’s the adventure? Where’s the variety? In a strange way, I think it’s just a kind of marketing scheme; publishers in post-avant are more likely to pick up a manuscript that has a kind of superficial cohesion. Somehow, aesthetic stasis has come to signify consistency; dullness becomes a stand-in for solidity. I like the loose connection of a distinctive voice— O’Hara, Ashbery, Creeley. Or like a number of your fellow Chicagoans, including you— I call you all, and you might want to kill me for this, the Chicago Eliotics (formality when its good, tight, and productive, as I believe Eliot at his best was)— Allegrezza, Elshtain, Halle, Muench, Bianchi, Sawyer, throw Lundwall and Stempleman in there for the hell of it. Steve (Halle) writes loosely connected manuscripts, Bill too, etc, etc. What I don’t like is MA or MFA programs where kids feel that to create a manuscript they have to be massively pretentious or write the same poem sixty times. My own MFA program was pretty loose that way; I’m grateful. I’m not a Centrist, but I appreciate the way someone like Gerry Stern gives every poem a lot of energy and attention. Michael Waters is like that too, Paula McLain. Centrists generally believe more in single poems. They are less overtly ambitious, less conceptually ambitious, but often have superior craft skills. And post-avantists sneer at craft the same way Centrists sneer at concepts and they’re both wrong, or half-right. So, I’m a single poem person. I do write serially, but I have no intention of writing a series of fifty or sixty. Do Berrigan’s sonnets each have a particular identity? Certainly not the way Keats’ do, or even Edna Millay’s. When your shtick is indeterminacy, you had better work double hard to be memorable, or you wind up right in post-avant’s scrap-heap. I think single poems, and the single poem approach, winds up producing more memorable poetry than the other approach.

Here’s something to follow-up on what you said— post-structuralism engendered a massive critique of poetic representation, and textuality in general, right? We learned that words, being more or less arbitrary, are not to be trusted. I’m starting to feel ready to trust language again; how ‘bout you? Can or should we make another bold stab at transparency?

RA: Transparency, eh? The funny thing is, there’s been a tradition of transparent, neo-Augustan poetry in this country, but it has been, for the most part, a fairly submerged tradition. I’m not talking about the kind of backyard epiphanic lyric tradition that we find everywhere. I’m talking about a more essayistic, thesis-driven kind of poetry, the sort of thing written by, say, James McMichael and Laton Carter. I wrote a piece about them, and Ken Fields, for the Notre Dame Review not long ago. To avoid repeating myself, I’ll just mention that anyone who wants to check it out can find it online here:

http://www.nd.edu/~ndr/issues/ndr23/Robert%20Archambeau/Archambeau-review.pdf

For me, poetry is rarely at its best when it moves to extremes of transparency or indeterminacy. Since I’ve already invoked the ghost of Wallace Stevens, I may as well mention his famous line about these issues: “The poem must resist the intelligence / Almost successfully." In a paragraph I love, Reginald Shepherd name-checks most of the big thinkers on this issue (and uses a lot of language from Sartre’s “Why Write?” too). Check it out:

T. S. Eliot said that the poet must be as intelligent as possible; Wallace Stevens said that the poem must resist the intelligence almost successfully. It is in the play between the intelligence of language and the resistance to intelligence of language as an object that poetry occurs. What matters is not what a poem can say, a preoccupation Harold Bloom shares with the multiculturalists he so despises, but what a poem can do. I look to poetry for what only poems can do, or what poems can do best–to alienate language from its alienation of use (the phrase is Adorno’s), to treat language as an end-in-itself rather than a mere means: to communication, expression, or even truth. This moment of apprehending language as an in-itself and a for-itself provides both a model of the possibility and a palpable instance, however fleeting its recognition, of what Kant calls the realm of ends, the possibility of being-for-itself, of non-alienated existence. To imagine language as something which one simply “uses,” either well or badly, is to imagine a world which is simply a collection of objects of use. Poetry leads us away from this instrumental reason.

The language poetry tradition has been deeply invested in the idea that poetic language ought to avoid mere meaning, in order to avoid being mere a commodity or a mere utility. There’s this sense that if you say something clearly, you’re complicit in a world that sees everything as a means to an end, and nothing as valuable in itself. On the other hand, people like James McMichael and Laton Carter are all about clear statement, often as a means of understanding and controlling the self, trying to keep from being a pawn of passions and urges (including, I suppose, the passions and urges planted in us by the culture industry so deplored by the language poetry tradition). It’s possible that these very different alternative traditions are working toward goals that are more similar than they seem. And there are other ways of working toward such goals: Shepherd, for instance, is neither so opaque as language poetry nor so essayistic and transparent as McMichael and Carter. I suppose he occupies a space closer to my own most immediate sympathies.

As for the “Chicago Eliotics” — aw, gosh. I’m not at all sure there’s anything like a school of poetry here in the Big Onion, but there’s certainly something percolating. We’ll probably be able to make more sense of it when Bianchi and Allegrezza’s new anthology, The City Visible comes out next month. They’ve put together a big collection that pulls together work by poets who’ve been reading around town at a group of Chicago venues that have become oases of interesting poetry (Danny’s Tavern, Myopic Books, Series A at the Hyde Park Art Center, the Discrete Series at the Elastic Arts Center, others too). Then again, all of this is happening at a time when geography seems to matter less than it once did. You’re in Philly, for example, but looking at P.F.S. Post I see you’re totally plugged in to what’s happening back here…

AF: I’m not familiar with McMichael or Carter, but I take your point. The problem with the meaningful-language-as-instant-commodity argument is that it doesn’t (for my money) hold up to reason. In this case, context is more important than substance, i.e. if you put a poem in a journal or a book, it becomes a commodity anyway, owing to its contextual placement. It would seem like the only way to be a good Marxist-in-poetry would be to stop publishing, or, better yet, stop writing. Anything in the public domain is a commodity to one extent or another; that goes for Duchamp, and Warhol, and Koons, and all the lang-po people as well. I don’t think discussion of degrees is that important; a lang-po poem being 50% commodity, an epiphanic ode being 90% commodity, etc. If you want to move language too far from meaning, you’ll find that you can’t do it; you can’t take away its status as a commodity either, unless you burn it. Furthermore, you wind up writing nonsense, and being as arbitrary and capricious as the precious Neo-Classicists that Wordsworth rebelled against. I mean, what do we want from poetry? I like your idea of moving away from extremes, which, given the climate of post-avant in 2007, is actually a pretty extreme idea. How many post-avantists care about balance, harmony, grace, and beauty? How many younger post-avantists could actually admit that they want to write beautiful poetry? What was standard for centuries is now anathema. As Dylan sang, “what’s good is bad, what’s bad is good”. I don’t think moving towards the beautiful means moving towards the center, either—Bill and Simone’s work both attest to that. Simone has given us a prime lesson in how to be sexy without being sappy. Bill’s work, beyond being conceptually sound, entertains. Ray’s does too, in its polyvocal, acidic punch. I would talk about your stuff too, if I didn’t think I’d embarrass you…

I’m not sure I agree with Shepherd’s paragraph, thoughtful though it is. He uses terms from Sartre’s Being and Nothingness (in-itself and for-itself), and I’d say misuses them; he’s talking about poems, but Sartre’s idea of the for-itself specifically refers to human consciousness, the part of us that can self-reflect, bounded by temporal and spatial restraints. A poet can self-reflect; a poem itself may represent this process but cannot, obviously, literally self-reflect. I like the idea, self-evident though it is, that poetic language is not instrumental, and should not be expected to be instrumental; but Shepherd doesn’t seem to leave any room for mystery. He seems to know what a poem should do, and I definitely don’t know what a poem should do, and I’m not sure I want to know. I think melding epistemology to poetics is probably a bad idea. Don’t you think all good poetry has a kind of ineffable X-factor going for it? Isn’t good poetry a mystery, to a greater or lesser extent, even though good poetry means a lot of different things to a lot of different people?

RA: I hear you about commodification. Some people have gone to extremes to keep their work from being chewed up by the culture industry, but in the end real purity (which I’m not so sure is even desirable — words like “purity” make me nervous) doesn’t seem very possible. I mean, think of the people who’ve gone to extremes in trying to avoid being chewed up by the culture industry. There’s a real irony to the fate of the Dada crowd, for example. They started out trying to short-circuit the whole gallery and museum system, doing things like presenting mass-produced objects as art and displaying their work next to axes that could be used by viewers to destroy works they didn’t like. Fast-forward several decades, and the National Gallery of Art is reverently presenting their work. Anyone coming at the exhibit with an axe would be hustled out the door and into a squad car in no time. Or think of Jeremy Prynne, for many years England’s most deliberately obscure poet (in every sense of that word): for a long time he chose to publish in the most weird little, non-commercial venues, and stayed off the reading and lecture circuits, too. Now you can order up his poems on Amazon.com, he’s being talked about for some of the big prizes, and he’s a star in China, where one of his recent books sold 50,000 copies. In the end, the big cultural institutions devour whatever they want. I suppose we might ask whether the institutions are changed in the process. I think there’s something to this. Certainly the boundaries between “mainstream” and “otherstream” seem more fluid than they used to.

As the idea of an “Ineffable X factor” in poetry, I suppose I have divided feelings. On the one hand, I’ve never liked the Romantic notion that “we murder to dissect,” that “our meddling intellect / Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things” and all that Wordsworthian jive (I say this as a guy who loves much of Wordsworth). When I was teaching in Europe, one of the things I got really enthusiastic about was structural narratology, an approach to literature that comes out of linguistics, and seeks to define and describe the properties of literature with something like a scientific precision. I learned an awful lot from that very rational way of thinking. Then again, there are so many different ways for a poem to succeed or fail, any attempt to define a single set of criteria for what counts as a good poem is probably doomed. So in the literal sense of the word “ineffable” (“unspeakable”) what makes good poetry good remains ineffable.

Or do you mean that good poetry is mysterious in that it resists paraphrase, or points toward the unknowable or unspeakable? A lot of people are intrigued by that notion, and there are some poems I’d consider “great” that come out of that tradition (some of Celan’s poems, for example). But there are other poets who aren’t mysterious in this sense, and write remarkable works. Recently I had the good fortune to spend a few days hanging out with Albert Goldbarth, whose poems are talky and full of explanations and conclusions. Goldbarth’s not mysterious in the Celan sense, but at his best I think he’s produced work of truly enduring value.

AF: I think the greatest mystery in poetry is that good poetry (whatever that might happen to be to/for any individual subject) appears natural, effortless, organic. Coleridge was always talking about the organic, an organic sensibility, balance, harmony, and the like; you can get this balance from the poetry itself or its conceptual basis; but why would we read anything if it didn’t, on some level, please us? I think a primary difference between post-avant poetics and Centrist poetics is that post-avantists enjoy being challenged. They want confrontation, conflict, dissonance; they are not put off by having to read texts a number of times; they can apply themselves patiently to a text, and, as Roland Barthes said, help generate the texts they are reading. The mystery is not in a Romantic genius talking to us from a lofty perch, but in the interrelation between the text-as-object and an individual subject; the text creates its own phenomenological ecstasy, half in-itself, half in the reading subject. We participate in our own enlightenment; we generate our own epiphanies; we collaborate with the text, and, if it is good, it will meet us halfway. I don’t think this process can ever be fully defined. The closest I’ve ever seen is Roland Barthes’ “The Pleasures of the Text”. He describes it as a kind of lovemaking— a perverse, transgressive roll in the hay. Sex, of course, is a mystery too; why are we attracted to one person and not another? Why does this person make us flip, and this person turn us off? Textual pleasure is the same way; identifiable, but essentially a mystery. The canon, that shriveled entity, can be seen as a kind of bordello….and we are, all of us, regardless of sex, always about as randy as a sailor. We are building bordellos of our own…but I digress.

RA: The canon as bordello? Hey: I gotta go. The Norton Anthology of English Literature just started looking a whole lot more interesting…

© Robert Archambeau and Adam Fieled 2007

Gabriel Gudding (Illinois, USA): One Poem, One Translation

2007-04-13T10:15:00.000-04:00

MY BUTTOCKS

“your buttocks”
— Wallace Stevens

I am very interested in my buttocks,
because it is the part of my body I most infrequently see.

You might argue that if I were really interested in my buttocks
I would use mirrors and look at it more often.

But I reject that theory.
I am at once plainly interested in my buttocks,
at the same time that I look at it about once a year.

I am frankly uninterested in the buttocks of other people.
If I had but one buttocks to look at, I would prefer it be mine.
Don’t construe that as evidence that I look at my buttocks but more than once a year. Because I don’t.

Indeed I would prefer it if other people didn’t have buttocks.
Better two groins than one buttocks — one in front, one in back.
That way we could have our choice of groins to look at.
We could also choose to use one groin over another, either during sex
or using the bathroom. This would cut down on repair bills and maintenance costs
for our groins (urinary infections, prostate things, flaming birth canals,
yeast issues): two groins, no buttocks. Perhaps a sewer-tube that could extend down to either foot, and at the moment of defecation we remove the shoe and give a good kick, flinging the ball of excrement away from us. Bathrooms
would have to have backboards.

All of us hermaphrodites who shit from our feet. We would have banished anal sex to our heels. Which brings me to another concern: the new anus that is now in one of our feet: would that anus be near our toes or near the heel, or on the top of the foot?
My concern is this: If the anus were in the instep, would
it not leave little pucker marks in our footprints?

No, I don’t like buttocks. Despite rumors to the contrary.
Contrary, there’s a word. I oppose the word contrary.

© Gabriel Gudding 2002, from A Defense of Poetry

TO ROOSEVELT

It is with the voice of the Bible, or the verse of Walt Whitman
that I advance upon you now, Hunter!
You are primitive and modern, sensible and complicated,
with something of Washington and a dash of Nimrod.
You are the United States,
you are the future invader
of all that’s innocent in America and its Indian blood,
blood that still says Jesus Christ and speaks in Spanish.

You are a superb and strapping specimen of your people;
you are cultured and capable; you oppose Tolstoy.
You are a horse-whisperer, an assassinator of tigers,
you are Alexander-Nebuchadnezzer.
(You are a Professor of Energy
as the whackjobs among us now say.)

You think that life is a fire,
that progress is eruption
and into whatever bones you shoot,
you hit the future.

No.

The United States is powerful and huge.
And when it shakes itself a deep temblor
runs down the enormous vertebrae of the Andes.
If it yells, its voice is like the ripping boom of the lion.
It is just as Hugo said to Grant: “The stars are yours.”
(Glinting wanly, it raises itself, the Argentine sun,
and the star of Chile rises too…) You are rich --
you join the cult of Hercules with the cult of Mammon;
and illuminating the way of easy conquest,
“Freedom” has found its torch in New York.

But our America, which has had poets
from the ancient times of Netzahualcoyotl,
which has kept walking in the footprints of the great Bacchus
(who had learned the Panic alphabet at one glance);
which has consulted the stars, which has known Atlantis,
(whose name comes down drumming to us in Plato),
which has lived since the old times on the very light of this world,
on the life of its fire, its perfume, its love,
the America of the great Moctezuma, of the Inca,
our America smelling of Christopher Columbus,
our Catholic America, our Spanish America,
the America in which the noble Cuauhtemoc said:
“I am in no bed of roses”: that same America
which tumbles in the hurricanes and lives for Love,
it lives, you men of Saxon eyes and Barbarian souls.
And it dreams. And it loves, and it vibrates; and she is the daughter of the Sun!
Be very careful. Long live this Spanish America!
The Spanish Lion has loosed a thousand cubs today: they are at large, Roosevelt,
and if you are to snag us, outlunged and awed,
in your claws of iron, you must become God himself,
the alarming Rifleman and the hardened Hunter.

And though you count on everything, you lack the one thing needed:
God.

--Rubén Darío, 1904 translated by Gabriel Gudding,
forthcoming in Poems for the Millennium, v. 3.

[The great Nicaraguan poet, Félix Rubén García Sarmiento (1867-1916), who called himself Rubén Darío, was born in Metapa, Nicaragua, in a city that now bears the name Darío. Considered one of the leaders and proponents of the Modernismo movement, Darío completely changed the landscape of Spanish language poetry. A journalist and diplomat, he is now one of the most widely read of Spanish-language poets. This poem, “A Roosevelt,” was written in response to US President Theodore Roosevelt’s invasion of Panama in 1903 after Roosevelt fomented a coup in Panama City so that he could annex the Panamanian isthmus for the purposes of building the canal. Roosevelt’s coup and the invasion of Panama was excoriated around the world and at home. Richard Olney, in 1903, former US Attorney General and Secretary of State, said of Roosevelt’s act, “For the first time in my life I have had to confess I am ashamed of my country.”

-- Rubén Darío, translated by Gabriel Gudding, forthcoming in Poems for the Millennium, v. 3.

harry k stammer (Los Angeles, USA): Five Poems

2007-04-10T12:43:00.000-04:00

EVEN PRIMARY

"boiling down on our
heads" to 'alyzed 'ates digested and
yelling (un) admit'd often connection
"the dogs have been barking all morning, though."
"humidity bleeds from the sky to
the street" two sides (dry) wet foot
window mirror leashed (un) less
"breath in" prior push't button 'bitrary 'semblance
'appears "drops of sweat rolling" face
substituted (mytho) one signed board left'd
hand'd 'abling assert 'timism held
"you ugly slut, I'm still the sexy
bum, you didn't" (marx) in full
dragged about debate subjected striking those
dirty hot 'gel barely able
wipes away (right) cheeks "pork cooking, somewhere"

"EH, EH EH EH, EHHH"

imitated
'stituted window
watching below street go
second (intervals warrant)
exchange (ofthe)
unconsciously door handle lift
"every one, that's
here, it's how its"
'tained and
awareness shifts (toe heel)
pointed (not)
at eyeballs placed (re)
compose't
"but, dissolves alone"
reduced persistent process
(stop'd)
"read, 'lyzed it,
narrative, narrative"
running across the street
window plaster
newspaper magazine (writing
about it)
'terranean (un) fragment'd
"I" curtained this that
sill resting
"although, (freer) in that
sense activity object
directed recomposed as
big bag crushed
cans crush
crush now 30
seconds passing handles gripped

BLAST (ONLY)

reach'd you tranqued
"at the back" cave'd
in fisted mensch (much)
index finger "hole in, hole up,
hole" (s) blast only (once) dogface
'man seeks a poison (ing) gingers
working sidewalk course tripes "left my
shirt back there" pulltonout
spraying concrete'd layers roll off't
back head "cinched, up" knocked wall
"eat shit, as well as" vomited
bad chicken hand wipe lips
chin (rubbing neck) "montage wasn't it"
not this wall walking
slow building 'cumference
"night in the city" re (step)
bile's stepping unconcious 'blems 'hering
'high' only two steps more glyphs but

USELESS BEGINNING

"what's the personality?"
confusion
living greatest
during the door opens
proximity
.0005 millimeter
obstacle hand down
hands screen 'work nothing
exposed inference
leg over
left pulled in
toes stuck hooked wrapped
paper hat firmly
attached "the personality?"
real (useless) flat
out back sidewalk
(passion) plus long
nails "you wouldn't
wonder any
more," stucture round'd
hat & tie it's
negative (colder)
falls balance linked
"slept ok last night"
rats running full
speed (exteriors taken)
"say?" car
door opens step
step step 'bility
longer
nothing (camera view)
criteria unsteady "or
again" pushed picked
up out "what?"

DE (EROTICIZED)

'tion hand pushing up leaning
over "you here?" such division
fragmented sand handful entry odd door
opens(s) "hi, you want a blowjob?"
yesterday (times) compact (ed) 'osits
noiselessly 'ference 'tricate gets up
and looks around focused view (small)
rat out/in garage doors closing slam
shut (rat in/out) "how, then change the
streets?" attention boiling butane lighter
water/spoons practicality 'less "ends it" newer
former leaves over laid no pile
"the same" opposes 'ference 'oticized finger'd
up/around pushed "here, I am."
ending squared window (look) it's I/me
lowering elbow face down jacket reeks

© harry k stammer 2007

Simone Muench (Chicago, USA): Three Prose Poems

2007-03-13T12:51:00.000-04:00

(an apiary): kristy o

Like aqua eyeliner and Baudelaire, we drink in strange trades, skålling over your chest of bees. What would you choose—red meat or Coco Chanel? gentle violence or violent tenderness? When salsa dancing with Keats’ alias we bloomed gold thighs, pink sadnesses. At your bedroom window, I lean out of refuge, into moth wings. Our black eyes, transparent sting. You said, hello, blank-eyed, zero in! Our home base, a distant cabana, an archipelago; our family secrets, a fenestra, honeycomb riddled by jimsonweed. Sad fictions born of red letter afflictions and the redivivus of arthritic cypress. The light gonged, confirming my senses were leaving me, and you became a foehn, whispering through veils of glamorous biblical women, loaded up on blossom.

(beetle-beauty): lauren l

Through fossils of grapefruit, your words full of climacteric Kafka sadness. Night moths rest in your carnelian desert. There I found your fire-tossed hair, your jade green horns, and bowed beauty-down. Your father left you a blanket by the mustard-colored wall between a cigar and a scream. The house lost beyond a pepper tree. The curtains, like carapaces, and a mad rushing descent as if to name—strange things narrated—an object that long, shedding its horizon, a Chalcosoma caucasus from the image of your frame.

(a train track): mary b

Train track flutter girl; coriander lips and ale during Prohibition. That empty mouth like a bottle on a man’s neck. Marabou soft, doe's muzzle on a pomegranate split open, ultraviolet. You might have to rid yourself of all boys, mostly rapscallions. How they feel under hands: red fish, big branches caught in your rain-rinsed hair, river tresses. For your thigh, a thread of nine carat bone. While the crossbuck sign danger-flashed its bells, citronella girls smoked Parliaments with a felon; your neckline, a kerosene swoon.

© Simone Muench 2007

Anselm Berrigan (NYC, USA): Eight poems from Have a Good One

2007-03-08T09:25:00.000-05:00

Have A Good One

The promise of a hard-won exuberance
brought you near. The need to be
around the most people doing
something was a fucking magnet. From
running races to making copies to
delivering packages promotion became
a recognizable cycle, if always
with a clear ceiling or escape hatch.
The latter you design, though awareness
of authority in that regard can be
transient. It’s a cheap shot. Honesty
in the making. But do the parts get to
be themselves while part of the whole
thing? And if they’re only themselves
like I’m only my habits and kindnesses
measuring contact before moving
forward we’re done. You’ll call me.
I tend to screen. Technology’s
beauty made shapely by the choice.
Bits of it, I mean. Shape is for the birds.

Have A Good One

Choose your own adventure
lacked possibility. Try
coming home to your
wildlife books sold off
by adult creep types
after enduring Boulder’s
second grade. You’re hopelessly
out of touch with the culture
you use by looking at. You
can be culture, but not
accused of it. Dream giant
cockroach in the wall
dreams but more often
pull endless string
from the mouth.

Have a Good One

Give me your taxable
contours. The caveman
did. The rain in stride
zoned us to passable
educations reflective
after a time. Our guts
for once don't make
a break for it. Their
deadly attacks merely
entertain inside upon
request: nature feigns
oversight. I'll break
the law for an exo-
skeleton panelist of
woe. Give it back.

Have a Good One

Off the record he’s a piece of shit. Time
management I don’t buy. Just tell me
what’s happened. Whatever it’s going
to be is what I need to know.

Have A Good One

I don't name animals.
I don't steal their forms.
The water sprayer does not
stalk my automatic rage.
Barbarian camps circa 235
A.D. are hardly worthy of
condemnation five hundred
years later. Goodbye health
plan. Goodbye semi-motivated
halflife of an identity.

Have A Good One

My mission tonight is to
not get so drunk I can't properly
introduce. It's surprisingly easy,
because I'm thinking about experience.

Have A Good One

Burying the duck crumble
with beer, while it pretends
to the elucidation of principles.
The shaver sucks face.
Scotch shirt proudly wrinkled.
Parisian sidewalk stains &
their lack of warmth. Remember
lava flowing freely all
around us, stains with
warmth? I've had a
great life. But I ain't
going out like that.

Have A Good One

It's become harder and harder
not to take responsibility. For
all of it. Every bastion of
disrepair, every qualified public
apology for ill-tongued remarks.
Every pasture of redespair, every
made up resume of a sorry. Its
been harder not to undergo surgery
or plead for indifference from the
feds. Don’t you see them seeing you?
Remember when them seeing us was
what we wanted? And yet I was in high
school: The President's Daddy
was the President.

© Anselm Berrigan 2007

Jordan Stempleman (Iowa, USA): Four Poems

2007-02-27T07:50:00.000-05:00

GIVENS

I accept, combinations of unlikely
to unanswered, I accept the darkness
of triumph as apart, I accept the numinous
risings gone once convinced, and the collapsing
recline of a cold, lost balloon.

I accept, the lowly surgeon who’s taken
with the worker’s old work, I accept a second matter
that stares long after the first, I accept
the untimely hero bored before ruin, and the son
asked to cut his father’s last hair.

I accept, what is and what weakens to reprove,
I accept all the rooms filled with gods
obsessed and alone, I accept the nearest to fire
or the closeness of hope, and the plan to end
saying, I will say it once more.

OLD PARTS

There is now one good ear left.
The last one to go, was too heavy
on the cotton and not the common
sense. There is no longer any dis-
illusionment about what will give
up next. The mugs are now filled
with boiling white tea. The stapler
is used while squinting towards the
light. Gloves, although lined with
rabbit, weigh down these hands, so
they often rest there, long overdue,
dangling and down by my side

PIQUANTE

And I’ve fallen off a stool
which means, I wasn’t meant to reach
so far out first thing in the morning.
To be sitting there. To have a very important center
that regrows each day with minimal
water, minimal outings. What a difference it is
to be between the unwritten and the unsaid.
There’s a cookbook I’m skeptical about
so I’ve left it in the drawer for months
now, where I know it keeps on serving
the same dish, day after day, without pictures
to account for all it’s done, without an organism
to break down starch, and sugar, and taste.

WE WERE BROUGHT INTO A STRAINING SHAPE

there are little runts
and blunted
comments, middle names

for everyone, the slightest
impression embossed
on a handkerchief

squeals for one better
truth to try and imagine
one better truth,

exhibitions in the sense
they pour, nervous
as donors are we all

© Jordan Stempleman 2007

Raymond Bianchi (Chicago, USA): Seven Poems

2007-02-23T09:52:00.000-05:00

SPLENDID PHOTOGRAPHS

splendid photographs by Leni Riefenstahl, the most ravishing book of photographs published anywhere. Leni is a nice looking woman and did not let anyone get in her way.

Winners are winners and losers are losers that is reality.

Deep in the mountains of the southern Bolivia about eight thousand aloof godlike Inka emblems of physical perfection with large, well‑shaped, polleras, expressive faces, and muscular bodies are wrenched walking in broken rocks blood mixed with dust.

Their hands are bent with imperishable beauty.

Donald Rumsfeld is more metallic and healthier‑looking with a side salad. il forte vento bracing with salt and broken bones.

deceit in America
allow people to sit in their
own urine and die of asphyxiation.

Galileo Galilei will do more to increase our strength;

Crusades “Deus Lo Volt “
Le piogge sono frequenti soprattutto
the engines of creation digging

the foundation for your pool and your tennis court oath.

PERVERTED

“Costly Cult of cloves” Dante’s inferno, Canto XXiX

Extras include an interview with Polanski, a Beer Garden the oddest examples of a celebrity interview I have ever seen. In between his off color comments

Polanski swings a baseball bat and swings for the fences

Saddam Hussein was too valued a target to be caught in a mere bolthole and too rare a beast to be holed up with rats. General Ricardo Sanchez announced Saddam's capture to the world reporters learnt the deposed Iraqi dictator had been sprung from a sinister-sounding "spider hole". An online unofficial US Marine Corps dictionary defines spider hole as "an enemy fighting hole” always the sinister is well hidden",

Some say we are alive in form to become more loving and to grow spiritually, to achieve Nirvana in the here and now. I agree. I looked at what the reductionists had produced, it saw that nothing uniquely artistic had survived. Collectively, the leading members of the art world had decided that art has no content, that it has no special media or techniques, and that the artist has no crucial role in the process. Art became a statement of nothingness. The summary conclusion was announced, infamously, by Marcel Duchamp. Asked to submit something for display in 1917, Duchamp sent a urinal. Duchamp of course knew the history of art.

Boots rotted in the trenches

COMMERCIAL

commercial enterprise with formal institutions.

Compare and contrast two dominant domains in contemporary society: commerce and government which are governed by what are called economics and morality.

The artist takes significant experiences and thoughts as raw material and creates a physical embodiment for them. Each artist makes independent judgments about which of his experiences and thoughts are significant. He has awesome power to exalt the senses, the intellects, and the passions of those who experience it. Those individuals who over the centuries accept art's calling developed it into a vehicle that called upon the highest insights of the human creative vision and painted nudes and large breasts on cave ceilings.

The names that evoke in us a sense of greatness - Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, Rembrandt, Vermeer. Their achievements created the status of the artist as not merely a visionary or a craftsman, but as a special individual in whom both vision and craft are integrated and heightened. The art world's symptoms of decline part of the intellectual world's slipping into a sense that progress, beauty, optimism,

A sense of decline increasing naturalism of the century led, to a feeling of being alone without guidance in an, empty room. The spread of liberalism and free markets caused their opponents on the political left, members of the artistic avant garde, to see political developments as a series of deep disappointments. And the technological revolutions spurred by the combination of science and capitalism led many to project a future in which mankind would be dehumanized or destroyed by the very machines that were supposed to improve their lives.

VACANT

An intellectual’s world is a sense of disquiet a anxiety. Artists respond, exploring in their works the implications of a world in which reason, order, certainty, dignity, and optimism seemed to have disappeared. The works that are the iconic pieces of twentieth century art express the minds of the great names that created them. Modern art is Pablo Picasso's fractured world populated by vacant-eyed, disjointed beings. Edward Hopper's “nighthawks” and women in bland, worn settings. It is the death dance of Jackson Pollock. It is Salvador Dali's soft world in which the distinction between subjective dream states and objective reality is obliterated. It is Andy Warhol's smirking trivialization and mechanical reproductions. It is a reality that is captured presciently in Edvard Munch's The Scream, the horror of being a cipher in a world of hideously swirling near-formless forms. The twentieth-century world was the story of fresh packaging and garbage, tons of garage.

Postmodern world is filled with numbness, Stepford wives, beeping of digital things, smells that are akin to Pine Sol and avoidance of pain.

Horror is not allowed.

SIGNIFICANT

Advances incorporate planning processes- elimination of error
basic to all life. the planned advance small dominant
new knowledge required errors must advance is large
research and invention, the elimination of
justifiable public utilization of more deceit to increase our strength.
Deceit clowns in technology ancient confusion magic and science.
communications laymen Magic depends on progress.

ELLIPTICAL
For Johannes Kepler

The "educated" public and the media have not adequately understood this profound difference between magic and science. This important failure in our educational system is one source of the lack of general appreciation of the power of deceit as a source of strength. A more general understanding of the power of science would bolster our faith that open societies continue to be fittest to survive.

Deceit is necessary for the processes of trial and the elimination of error,

Johannes Kepler’s beautiful description of the mechanism of progress in science. Try to understand what happens to each of these secret processes a project we can shed some light on how the peacetime military was able to justly acquire its reputation for resistance to novelty.

Kepler’s language means receptivity to the unexpected conjecture.

There is the tradition of the young outsider challenging conventional wisdom. Such a victory is almost impossible in a hierarchical structure like the Catholic Church or the American corporation how else do you explain the growth of the internet or Protestantism.

The usual way a new idea can be heard is for it to be sold first outside the hierarchy but usually prophets are burned alive as much today as in the 12th century.

Impediments to the elimination of errors will determine the pace of progress in science as they do in many other matters. Many are comfortable with the Gestapo or the Cheka as long as they are not going
to the gulag,

ignorance is comfortable.

JUNGLE

“se quella con ch’io parlo non si secca”
Dante Inferno, Canto XXXII verse 135

Fitness to survive and to reproduce is the law of the international jungle. The strength of the weapon of deceit has been tested and proven in battle and in imitation.

Technology developed most vigorously in the industrial revolution, and those places, Western Europe and America, where the greatest deceit existed. Lies, Lies, Lies.

Peter the Great brought lies to Russia.

Clowns and surprise are clearly essential weapons of business and that even countries like the U.S have made frequent efforts to use deceit as a weapon.

This poem is concerned with the impact of deceit culture, rewards are dependent on superiors. Reward through love has been remarkably successful in stimulating independent thinking.

However, in assessing deceit a clown policy those who "get ahead" in the culture of clowns understand its uses for personal advancement. Knowledge is power, and for many insiders access to classified information is the chief source of their power. It is not surprising that clowns see the publication of technological information as endangering national security.

© Raymond Bianchi 2007