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

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

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

(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

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 (Northampton, Massachusettes, USA): Two Poems

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.

© Emily Pettit 2009

Andrew Lundwall (Wisconsin, USA): Three Poems

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

Eileen Tabios (California, USA): Two Synopsis Poems

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

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