9th St. Laboratories

Visual Poetry by Joel Chace

2012-01-03T02:30:00.016-06:00

Joel Chace has published poetry and prose poetry in print and electronic magazines such as 6ix, The Tip of the Knife, Counterexample Poetics, OR, Country Music, and Jacket. He has published more than a dozen print and electronic collections. BlazeVox Books published his CLEANING THE MIRROR: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS, and from Paper Kite Press is MATTER NO MATTER, another full-length collection. Recently out from Country Valley Press is SCAFFOLD, the first part of an ongoing poetic sequence, "(b)its," from Meritage Press, A SCRIPT, from Otoliths Books, SHARPSBURG, from Cy Gist Press, and BLAKE'S TREE, from Blue & Yellow Dog Press

Explanation of Method

"The work I am submitting is part of a developing collection under the working title "period (s) now." After creating and/or collecting 100 pairs of sentences, I am now literally cutting up, with scissors, each sentence into its component words and punctuation marks, and then sprinkling or dropping them onto a blank sheet of paper. Once each component finds its resting place, I affix it, using good old invisible tape. My hope is that each completed page contains two sentences
(separated by over sized periods) that appear to have snowed down to rest."

Confusion's Purse
(click on images to view at original size)

Posturing

Joel Chace

Poetry by Scott Wilkerson

2011-10-25T01:34:00.000-05:00

Scott Wilkerson teaches at Columbus State University, holds an MFA in Poetry from Queens University of Charlotte, and has twice received a Lillian E. Smith Center for Creative Arts Fellowship. His books Threading Stone (2009) and the forthcoming Ars Minotaurica (2012) are both published by New Plains Press.

Pasiaphë with Baby Minotaur

after a 4^th century BC kylix

Here then are longitudes

of a certain life in parallax

adduced as monster motifs

in the spun worlds of

Etruscan clay.

That we might have been

unloved children of artistic

habituations seems this far on

somehow a churlish and

ungrateful proposition.

It is true enough that

we have had Keats enough

to thank for a vision of the poetic

drama in these arch fabulisms

of encoded space.

A cut lip to the drinking cup

is occasion for

this world to evince

the rupture of its unattended chasms,

dread cracking, riven deep into the

plate tectonics of

consciousness in blood ruin

where is hidden, from

civilized view, the misshapen

dream of our decorative loves,

mutant torpor in dark seams,

all you can ever know

or even finally need

of degenerate beauty suckling close

its sweet and ghastly truth.

Minotauric Equivocations with Squalid Referent Machine

We cannot finally discern whether the claim is an imperative “…fix problem: nomenclature” or, rather, merely an indicative: “[the] affix problem is one of nomenclature.” We feel like fools asking this, but isn’t it just true enough that removing this frightful mask of epistemic modality would make the whole

encounter easier to frame, you know, in a seminar setting?

On more than one occasion, this felt like a manifestation of our own complicity in the algorithmic view of hide-and-seek games scaled up to mythic enterprise. One argues for the aesthetics of standing around, another the polemical force of turning always left or that it is right to leave turning for those heretically agitating against moving at all, except perpendicular to some putative “given,” which we take to mean a punitive “taken.”

III

It will have been an editorial decision: plasm¹

Greek²

Labyrinth bone code³

¹ the dream of flâneur, Orphic cosmology in certain stochastic streets, unmappbly thus

² Euripides in fragmentary love keeps sparse notes; Ovid—Roman, abstruse—won’t say which

³ fissure, fracture, constitutive games or your ludic impostures, deep Lyceum of the splintering horn

for (i = 0; i < max; ++i)

maz[i] = 0;

(void) mazegen((x + 1), maz, y, x, rnd);

/ replace the 1's and 0's with appropriate chars */

for (yy = 0; yy < y; ++yy) {

for (xx = 0; xx < x; ++xx) {

i = (yy * x) + xx;

if (yy == 0 || yy == (y - 1))

maz[i] = hc;

else if (xx == 0 || xx == (x - 1))

maz[i] = vc;

else if (maz[i] == 1)

maz[i] = fc;

else if (maz[i - x] != fc && maz[i - 1] == fc

&& (maz[i + x] == 0 || (i % x) == (y - 2)))

maz[i] = vc;

else

maz[i] = hc; /* for now... */

}

return (0);

Five Minotauric Motivics

nor implaced strictly as light

node clasticity mirrored has

is a principle subsumed by plunge

and go thence from portmanteau

to double integral affect in puppetry

down through as true shadow is

some corner to complementarity of

point to point is intradisciplinarity of

what will have been born and horns of

these false sweep trysts inside

quadratic love or weeping outward

a gravity a material density

turns rigorously into

in two ways in three

lines to which is appended a

line much as dark in modulo

Displacement Theory Song,

sung by Theseus (unmappably)

in a stochastic mode

Or, rather, I should say

there are other forms

of imprisonment, that is to say,

of holding one, the Other one

in place, if indeed it is a

place holder for yet other

names and this will have been

as far as I could get without invoking

how it was that trees

reconfigured the ambiguous

moon in its discoverable phases

as looking up through cracks

in lives plunged too deeply

through concentricities of desire

Or, rather, I should say: the lyric reflex, bound thus in chains

of molecular

revolutions, conceived in the body

in some open range of credulity

I wish I had kept marked by heat and blood

better notes driven through the syntax of my head

dimpled with fissures and dislocations

the evidence of some spilling fugue

if not just around this corner,

then surely the next.

a point concealed in the vertex of an angle

your angle, I want to say, is perhaps

an architectonic of humility, but my own,

an architecture of stone piles, trace, mark

Or, rather, I should say

that failure is my signature

move in the dark.

Poetry by Jeffrey Side

2011-08-07T01:33:00.000-05:00

Jeffrey Side studied English at Liverpool University and Leeds University. From 1996 to 2000 he was the deputy editor of The Argotist literary magazine. He now edits the online version of this, The Argotist Online (www.argotistonline.co.uk), which has an ebook publishing arm called Argotist Ebooks.

He has had poetry published in various magazines such as Poetry Salzburg Review, The White Rose and Homeground; and on poetry web sites such New Hope International, Underground Window, A Little Poetry, Poethia, Nthposition, Eratio Postmodern Poetry, Ancient Heart, Blazevox, Lily, Big Bridge, Jacket, Textimagepoem, Apocryphaltext, 9th St. Laboratories, P.F.S. Post, Moria, Pirene’s Fountain, Great Works, Ken Again, Hutt, Fieralingue, The Dande Review, Raunchland, Poetry Bay and Dusie.

He has reviewed poetry for Jacket, Eyewear, The Colorado Review, New Hope International, Stride, Acumen and Shearsman..

His poetry and other publications include, Carrier of the Seed (Blazevox), Slimvol (cPress), Cyclones in High Northern Latitudes [with Jake Berry] (Lavender Ink) and Outside Voices: An Email Correspondence [email correspondence with Jake Berry] (Otoliths).

ROMAN SKY

Do you remember that walk?

That walk you called separation?

That walk you called independence?

That walk you called being stronger?

Did you really believe any of it?

Did you declare how you were

free and how

you had no machine to

control your day?

Did you try to prove

a point

while weeping into

your hands

in the desert?

And did you find someone to

make the sky like

Rome for you?

VIVIENNE DID HAVE HER OWN

Stop trials

universe neat

the disenchanted

of clothes

notebook out

at an

always when

with look

replacing but

desperation with

him knows

heartened the

promised leave

term somewhere

Greek now

doctor's sugar

of around

daughter air

driving loose

filmed permission

Acropolis identified

always but

and beautiful

most skinning

of barnacles

called causes

or conditions

time 70%

progesterone daily

the culprits

half eccentric

complicated sitting

like get

me want

the look

head eyes

of love

just mourns

each one

Honolulu baby

I COULDNíT SEE IT COMING

He wanted to be in Montana,

like he read

in that philosophy book.

But it was impossible

for him to get

away from his doldrums.

Time and again, his fate

was to remain

here, with a few pleasures.

I was happy in the fields,

not thinking

about the present.

Sometimes, I hear her

calling me,

after I begged her to stay.

SOMETIMES IT CAN TAKE A YEAR TO BE TRUE

It was inconceivable

that the horizon

could be ablated

by the paving

stones of anxiety

foisted upon the

gravelled stairway and

ceramic triangles that

we passed against.

Charlotte was a woman

of strange complexion whose

ambiance was that of

a cat trapped in

a fire escape of

its own projected delusion.

I knew her

well that spring

and June and

on that Friday

morn in blessed

dawn she was

the best thing

that ever happened

to her and

I cannot recall

my problems at

that state other

than to say

we had a

great time there.

The autumn leaves fell

by the gate and

slipped through the mist.

Time has no meaning

to fruit. Nothing bothers

them so it seems.

I found a

woman too I

heard her say

stop dreaming you

lush we are

not in May

so have a

drink on me

if you believe

in nothing he

wrote can be

heard but fleeced.

If I could just

go back to that

autumn week and all

the tables and chairs

that shone so brightly

for her glorious madness

and upbeat tortured serenity.

I'M COUNTING ON YOUR LICKING

You have chosen wisely

the wrong man.

Donít count your chickens

he hasn't.

He has married before,

and controlled

his birth.

No need for him

to change his goals.

PLASTER PIECE

The sky-blue plaster piece

you chose because I touched it,

you will always keep.

You like to spend the days with me.

The Sunday I first took you

on plastic with red button lens

you turned out well.

The air was cold, but it was shining.

And the round crowned church

held you in its circle

and calmed you at my side.

You take photos on the light.

ON THIS FATEFUL DAY AND BARREN LAND

And on this fateful day

I sought some hours,

and escaped

among

certain friendly trees.

I saw a rose upon the land,

half buried in the sand,

and held it

all day,

in the breeze.

And I made some plans

for the Golden Lanka,

and wrote a note

to a woman

and thanked her.

And in some fallen moment,

and some unknown kind

of way, I managed

to pass by

this troubled day.

Images by Rick Miskowski

2011-06-09T02:04:00.005-05:00

These images are all computer generated depicting mathematical functions

of complex number variables. When a function is iterated a large number

of times the corresponding image begins to resemble a fractal. Different

"domain coloring" techniques incorporate textual, photographic and palette

color elements.

Rick Miskowski

(click on images to view at actual size)

Hank Lazer from The Notebooks (of Being and Time)

2010-08-13T07:04:00.010-05:00

Hank Lazer has published 15 books of poetry, most recently Portions (Lavender Ink, 2009), The New Spirit (Singing Horse, 2005), Elegies & Vacations (Salt, 2004), and Days (Lavender Ink, 2002). He edits the Modern and Contemporary Poetics Series for the University of Alabama Press. His poems & essays appear in American Poetry Review, Boston Review, and Virginia Quarterly Review (which awarded him the Balch Prize in poetry). The New Spirit was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; Elegies & Vacations was nominated for the Forward Prize. Lazer has given readings and talks throughout the US and in China, the Canary Islands, Spain, Canada, Mexico, and France. Audio and video recordings – including readings from Portions and an interview for Art International Radio – can be found at Lazer’s PennSound website: http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Lazer.html. For the past four years, he has been working on a handwritten shape-writing project called the Notebooks (of Being & Time). Lazer has collaborated with jazz musicians Tom Wolfe and Chris Kozak on some jazz & poetry improvisations, with outsider artist Pak on a series of poem-paintings, and with animation artist Janeann Dill on a poetry-video installation project. Currently, Lazer is working with book-artist Steve Miller and several Cuban book artists on a fine press bilingual selection from his Notebooks project. Lazer is Associate Provost for Academic Affairs and the Executive Director of the Creative Campus initiative at the University of Alabama.

To read a recent interview with Hank Lazer click here.

Hank Lazer’s Notebooks – Project Summary

I began writing The Notebooks on October 8, 2006. Initially, I called the project The Notebooks (of Being & Time). The duration of the writing would be determined by the length of time it took me to read Heidegger’s Being & Time, and his two primary topics would also be at the heart of what I wrote. That first phase of the Notebook project took me through ten notebooks of varying sizes, page textures, and length – from an eight page notebook to an accordion notebook to a 144 page notebook.

I treated the page as a unit of composition, and thus the form of the writing would often vary radically from page to page, with each page being a new performance of the possible shapes suggested by the particular dimensions at hand. The work in the Notebooks has been driven by a vision of what each page would look like. I would see the page – black shapes on a white background, not the specific words but simply a relationship of black and white on the page – and then write words to actualize the shape as envisioned. The shape of the notebook itself is always a crucial factor in the composition. I never work from drafts. I see the page and its shaped writing, and I begin writing; I think of these compositions as improvisations. I immediately write the words to the specifications of the envisioned page.

The first phase of the Notebooks project took approximately two and a half years. After I had completed Heidegger’s Being & Time, I felt that I had not exhausted the topics of “being” and “time,” and that I was just beginning to gain a kind of facility that would allow me to explore more fully the possibilities of this shape-writing. I determined that phase two – probably another set of ten notebooks – would be linked to a reading of Heidegger’s student Emmanuel Levinas, beginning with Totality & Infinity, which carried me through Notebooks 11-14. I am currently writing in Notebook 16, as I am reading Levinas’ Otherwise Than Being. To date (July 7, 2010), I have written over 1,000 pages of the Notebooks.

There have been a few sporadic publications of early pages from the Notebooks. I have collaborated with animation/video artist Janeann Dill on a dome projection multimedia installation involving the Notebooks. (A short film extract, MAH: Moving Around Heidegger, has appeared in several international film festivals.) Pages from the Notebooks were performed as part of a multimedia improvisatory performance, Beginning, Begin Again, in November 2009, with a range of dancers, jazz musicians, poets, visual artists, and sound artists. I am currently collaborating with book artist Steve Miller and several Cuban books artists and visual artists on a small bilingual extract from the Notebooks. Two magazines have presented feature articles on the Notebooks: First Draft Vol. 16. No. 1 (Fall 2009): 8,9,15; and Jelly Bucket #1 (2009): interview, 96-102, followed by 8 pages of color photos taken by Laura Shill.

I anticipate completing the Notebook project sometime in 2011 or 2012. I have already begun thinking about ways to represent the project. One version might be a series of chapbooks/extracts for each set of ten notebooks. I have also begun assembling a thread that I have tentatively titled Extracting the Jewish Book. I think that when the Notebooks are completed, there will be many possible extractions and publications, many ways to represent the project.

—Hank Lazer

Notebook 15 - Page 1

Notebook 15 - Page 2

Notebook 15 - Page 3

Notebook 15 - Page 4

Notebook 15 - Page 5

Notebook 15 - Page 6

Notebook 15 - Page 7

Notebook 15 - Page 8

Transcription

(note: dimensions for Notebook 15: 5 ½ “ X 5 “)

(N15P7 quotation from Adin Steinsaltz, Pebbles of Wisdom;

N15P8 quotation from Thomas Meyer’s translation of Lao Tzu’s dao de jing)

N15P1

must then break

with habits &

rituals or renew

them renewing then

the rays of your

attention if you

read & then

sit instead sit

& then read & write

so that it begins to be

the light of day

you are attending to

so that this is the morning you have been seeking

f o l d i n g

N15P2

imagined the perfect

marking of time not simply

quartz calibration but a felt gradation

so that for instance the arising of happiness

was a familiar path way along the edge of the

lake your body walk ing the two brown dogs you

had then this strong sensation as if this body would

soon go away & you would be housed within an

other the trail beside the lake portal for transmigration

N15P3

finches

in big

numbers

back

to the

thistle

feeders

you must

get to

the bottom

of this

at once

N15P4

poetry written over a lifetime is

the building of another lifetime

with similarities to this one a

book that can be read from cover

to cover or dipped into somewhat randomly

a made place by virtue of its peculiar

passage of time its distinctive pacing with

which you find your voice your consciousness

merging which gives you a feeling for being

N15P5

eloquence & perhaps wisdom is what we hoped for in this longterm relationship

with a cruel mistress perhaps fated the quiet grinding dailiness of it not what we

envisioned

N15P6

place or placate or hold up the

placard or plant it

firmly on the moon

absent anything better than a child’s flag proclaiming our

team the winner we

did it & we wrote this poem too shape

placed in a world of disappearing books

wrap your hand

wrap your head

a r o u n d i t

N15P7

after that

“In other words, the feeling

of great happiness or sublimity

is not in itself of any consequence.”

(Adin Steinsaltz, Pebbles, 100)

N15P8

emerging

green first

day of spring

“be the stream of everything”

dao / meyer / 35

buy a

better

router

new from Lavender Ink

2010-04-15T01:28:00.009-05:00

CYCLONES IN HIGH NORTHERN LATITUDES
by Jeffrey Side and Jake Berry with cover and drawings by Rich Curtis

Just released from Lavender Ink. A collaborative poem by Jeffrey Side and Jake Berry. Available now at Amazon.com and Lavender Ink.

Author's comments:

Jeffrey Side

Jake and I first had the idea to collaborate on a poem in April 2008. We had no predetermined concepts or themes to conform to, preferring instead a more spontaneous “call and response” approach, whereby we would each simply respond poetically to what the other had written. For example, I would email a verse paragraph to Jake, and he would email a verse paragraph back in response.

After we felt that enough of these exchanges were ample, we joined the individual verse paragraphs together to form a seamless text. Jake then went though this text inserting line breaks in such a way as to produce new verse paragraphs that, in most instances, are an amalgam of parts of each of our original verse paragraphs—a poetic symbiosis, so to speak.

The writing of the poem was an unproblematic process. Whatever we each wrote was accepted unquestionably as part of the evolving poem; and the poem (apart from the new line breaks Jake introduced) was unedited.

The difficult part was getting it published. This was especially the case when UK publishers were approached with the book. It is difficult to get a poetry book published in the UK if one has no personal, social or professional relationship with the various publishers and editors there, in my experience at least.

For that reason, Jake and I gave up approaching UK publishers, and chose to send the poem to Bill Lavender, a US publisher, who, thankfully, saw something of value in the poem and decided to publish it. Needless to say, Jake and I are both extremely grateful to Bill for this.

Jake Berry

The process of writing the poem was fascinating in the way that all open collaborations are fascinating in that it generated a work that would have been impossible by either of the poets alone. It was written in a relatively short period of time, perhaps a few weeks. There was rarely more than a day or two between entries. It had the flow of conversation – though a conversation that produced a quasi-narrative that neither Jeff or myself anticipated. The “I” in the poem is neither one of us nor is it the sum of our combined experience. Except for a line or phrase here and there I can no longer tell who wrote what. I do recall being eager to receive Jeff's lines each day because I wanted to see where the story lead. When setting the lines out of their original email correspondence form I tried to break the lines for emphasis in the way one might pause when reading it aloud so that the natural music would be available on the page.

We didn't consider where, how, of even if the poem might be published until we felt the process had run it's course. Jeff knew of several publishers in the UK he thought might be interested. Most made excuses of the kind one learns to expect from publishers – they were overloaded with submissions – they were not looking to publish any poetry at the moment, especially long poems – and so on. I suspect most of them were probably telling the truth – though one or two responses made so little sense that it was obvious they had chosen to compose a contrivance rather than simply say they did not think the poem suitable for publication by their press.

When we queried Bill Lavender at Lavender Ink he quickly agreed to read and consider the poem and once he had the time to read it he offered to publish it. After that things moved along very smoothly and quickly. Bill suggested that we might add graphics. I immediately thought of Rich Curtis because Rich draws so well and because I knew he would respond to the poem rather than try to illustrate it – thus adding another, complimentary, dimension. Rich became another collaborator in the process. Jeff, Bill and I were very pleased with the drawings, which were delivered within days of the request, so we asked him to do the cover as well. We are all very grateful to Rich for his contribution. Once I read the book with his artwork included I found it impossible to imagine the book without it.

Ultimately, the appearance of the book was up to Bill and it is his choices for page size, layout and design that make it attractive. We are grateful to Bill for agreeing to publish the book and for the time, effort and talent he applied in bringing the pieces together and the completed book to the public. I have wanted to be among the authors at Lavender Ink for many years and I'm delighted that this particular book found its home there.

REVIEWS:

This is a modern book. A current collaboration. Jake Berry and Jeffrey Side have come together, along with the artist Rich Curtis to lead us through a journey of the stratosphere that include algorithms, the dogs of cognizance, actuary tables and a glimpse of 50 worlds passing.

The poets write, "I have difficulty believing that I, in another time and form, created them myself." Then a few pages later write, "...and I can see the clouds forming now and a storm brewing."

These storms are cyclones like the title suggests. Whirling from the marshes and up into the adrenaline of the clouds. The reader gets caught up in the earth, immigrants in an orchard shrouded by dunes.

Cyclones In High Northern Latitudes delivers on the titles suggestion of flight. As John Steinbeck wrote, "The very air here is miraculous."

Chris Mansel - author of While In Exile: The Savage Tale of Walter Seems

Depicting a waking, lucid dreamscape, the shifting interior cinema of lost love sets itself against the gathered debris of a recalled former life. Echoes of Hamsun's HUNGER congeal with Patchen's JOURNAL OF ALBION MOONLIGHT in a rich interior monologue, traipsing through the surreal landscape of memory ...

"I learned long ago
to distinguish between
strong memories and
whatever the world is ..."

Blurring the subjective/reality boundary, this is a phenomenological in-look freighted with the memories of a non-named woman, a love gone sour after a time of many kisses. Now the narrator, an outlaw on the run, hiding in cloisters, in a strange town with assumed name and face, remains sustained by these images of HER, even as the warnings indicate he is still being followed. His days reside in the "dilemma/of the broken hearted"; he begins to lose temporal perspective, a living exile from his past. He falls back to studying the indecipherable clouds ...

The collaborative narration weaves us through a shifting time-flux, a moving floor between memory-past and perception-present ... here, the outlaw is looking through a dirty Bowery window, perhaps after a day spent as an insurance clerk poring over columns of actuary tables in some vague city location ... there, we see him drinking the nepenthe of the village locals, full of his thoughts of yet a previous exiled life ... then a shifting retreat back to the actuary tables, which may hold the "traces ... of cyclones/in high northern latitudes ...

By the residue of high hope, the narrator prays that "one day you will/experience my love" - by which the shadow of longing transcends the mundanity of being a data entry clerk ...

The bold ink drawings by Rich Curtis round out this joint effort by two exemplary poets. Highly recommended reading ...

Matt Hill - author of Dropping the Walls for a Tenuous Linkage

Painting, Drawing, Poetry and Prose by Greg Evason

2010-01-09T02:14:00.013-06:00

Greg Evason lives alone in Don Mills, aka North York, the main suburb of Toronto. He writes,

"I love it here. It's quiet, even silent much of the time, and dark and cool. Spend most of my time writing novels none of which have been published as of yet but I have high hopes in this regard. When not writing novels I write poems, essays, short stories, and plays. When not writing I draw and collage and paint. Also I try to play piano everyday. My poetry and drawings and collages continue to appear in print magazines everywhere and along with my paintings increasingly online. I do a daily blog of mainly my poems as I write them called Project 51 and I have uploaded over one thousand visual pieces to an art site called Artbreak."

During

From novel in progress called THE HAPPY GOAT

Storm lake filigree. Light bash country girl. Statement intent woven glue onion glass carnation puzzle. Broken borrowed binary basket feline stays there stomach rotating wish of blast to balloon coming unglued to the glare. Constancy of form to content’s bubbles baked within an excess of silver in time to blast thought off its rocker. Climb hotel oven thump try being stack loss insight boom locale formulaic lineups in a downtown kind of vibe. Listen.

They turned meaning into a standard form to fill out.

This and that and the other thing.

Lose. Loose. A goose on fire in the puddle’s basement attire. So many people and none of them happy. I told my face which was everyman’s face to go fuck itself. I never heard from my face again. I should have saved my face. Instead I stupidly became a man without a face. Which was better by a few inches than being a man without qualities. That’s what he surmised anyhow. He called his ex-wife, “Puke.” And it made him feel very good to do so.

A man without qualities.

an out it

A with lit

ties.

He was grabbing the moon as a letter dropped down from words forming new previously hidden words and life’s a gas mask.

Q: How’d they do it?

A: They make it up.

They ake it up.

hey a it up.

he y a t up.

And they walked around the brook. Fourteen times after that. Said hello to the bump on her head. He, not him, had one too and the marks of the beast on his back and a boner the size of a loud mouthed recessive gene agent from the blued hokus pokus drum.

They ak it. They ake it up. Hey ake it. It up. They take it. They hake it. They grake it. They sake it. Hey they make it dup. They fake it. They rake it in. They are forsaking it for all others. They take it up. Then snake it. They uptake it. They flake it . They Drake Hotel it. They fuck it. They dread it. They are relaxed with it and in it.

I spot Rover.

Is pot over?

Tinkle.

Grab.

Thistle. Meaning. Rubbing hole with a pocket of space. Trace elements of. Oven. Oh ven(t). Clouds. Drank Drake Hotel on moon of glorious phone call. Sam sits. Shits. Tits and wrists: “relax them all. All of them are relaxed.” I get up. I swear there’s a 600 page novel contained in the act of standing up from the position of lying down. I’m not going to write it. Because I’ve already written it. Call it, The Day Debbie’s Ass Fell Off Of Itself. Stroke me. Stroke meaning. The testosterone injections every three weeks were toughening up not only me but my texts.

Then I took Rover.

hen too over

Then I took R. Then he spent it. He spent all the cash from the bank job and he ejaculated all over the jewels from the jewelery store heist in which his friend and sometimes partner in crime died in the middle of the job from rat poisoning. It was not a pretty picture. But the show must go on. So he kissed his dead friend and partner on the forehead and then he took off runing through hoops and blind acres of a motley crew’s negated quim. Do you have enough candy floss for to clean substantially between your teeth?

I roamed.

I am

roa d.

Lost compassion of bullet spreading teacher with stymied locational devises: Ligeti stains time with notes from his name where the “ge” stands for the face of a bloody cream ale. Lost at the corner of Eglinton and Laird. And there are many shadows. He accidentally stepped on a voice.

Do you record yourself masturbating with a salad or sandwich or saxophone? Do you ever with your wife or husband or total stranger engage in phone sax?

saxophone

sax phone

ax hone

a one

Elephants are digging my shoes from my father’s grave. And we were cordoned off by the blues notes of seven million strong.

Development (deafelement?): None of that which passes for the music of humanity works for him anymore. It all comes at him too hard as pure intrusion. That which he used to love and often could not get enough of now holds no interest for him. It took him awhile to recognize the new pattern. Any pattern needs time to become itself. Then one day he sort of suddenly realized he had not put on any music for a long time. A long time was at least six months.

It wasn’t that he hated music. It was just that he tended to feel better when it wasn’t playing.

ONE PAGE PLAYS

BANE

1. Existence is a could.

2. We will owl there in water of as it was then hero.

1. A back is glued to a fish.

2. And we’re the eyes opening swivels of purpose.

1. You know you’re the battle opening closes tones boating bravery hello sit gash elbow crust.

2. You know you have meaning up. These could be trust and small things growing. Eat?

1. Yes, and swarming black Siamese fields of borrowed death.

2. Like an explosion in my thumbs. You help find chicken?

1. Sure. No problem.

2. Don’t be smart-alecky.

1. I have not been done ever.

2. Please, please, we call this home.

1. I am butter going in.

End.

Our Kids

Mot: A slice of love.

Fat: Our kids oily shone glass quiver and one’s not really ours.

Mot: Abort the clone.

Fat: Ease an outing down a grief.

Mot: All are our heroes. They’ll film them later. One’s a hermit in a cabin in the woods. There’s a river running by in time in which once a year fully closed he bathes. And there’s a camera forever in the ceiling and a speaker too. They talk to him twenty four hours a day like torturing a dictator in his place by blasting him and his people with extremely loud bad rock music from many massive speakers placed strategically around the palace. He’s ours. Our first. A poet. They’ll make movies about his imagination.

Fat: He’s not sick. Dear world my son is sick. No, honey, I don’t believe it. What he needs is a job. What anybody needs is a job. And he’s anybody like anybody’s anybody.

Mot: Even the guys and gals locked up forever?

Fat: You know what I mean.

Mot: I do?

Fat: Yes, and that’s all a flattened frog’s for.

End.

Slow Pot

Pete: I smoke and smoked to no effect.

Steve: You’re a true bucket.

Pete: With slender openings.

Sarah: You guys are nuts.

Steve: We have nuts.

Pete: Doesn’t mean we are nuts.

Steve: The glowing embers are in my mind purple.

Pete: The slow sneeze of an effigy in my sleeping sorrow. This glue is twitching in my fingers. And I’m an orange apple.

Sarah: Both of you are mere snooze functions of my alarm clock.

Pete: Dreary does bones in lust.

Sarah: My cause is your opening flute of bygone prosecutors in an office of marked geese. Please, World, open up your mind so you can feel the glue of the bat and the diving of the brick.

Steve: You two are klutzes of spastic onions.

Pete: I know who we all are.

End.

On The Nature Of Friendship And Despair

I called my oldest and best friend and left two messages. The last message I left I left 3 days ago. I don’t know what I’m supposed to think or feel. What I do know is what I in fact think and feel. I’m thinking that him not calling me back by now is rude and there’s no way he can say he has been too busy. It’s now Easter Monday so he has had this entire long weekend to call. What I’m feeling is worried that maybe something is wrong and I am also feeling depressed because I want to talk to him and my feelings are hurt because he seems to be not showing me the respect I deserve.

Cloud hunger over the river. The river that’s never the same as it was or will be. Life’s a goat on fire. Time is shoved up inside me like a hundred or more etheric bowling balls.

The trick is to somehow stay focussed on one’s own life and work and not let another person bug you because they might be being an asshole.

The gravel of the voice is terminated by long cousins overdosing on creativity. The lonesome eagle soars high above everyone and everything except for the clouds and outer space. Inside me are a thousand drifting petunias penetrating sound.

You see we, he and I, have started to work together making music and whatnot and I feel the need to talk to him about what we did a couple of weeks ago as we have not yet talked about it and made plans for our next session. I’m afraid he’s going to end up not taking what we’re doing as seriously as I am right now. This is ironic because it was he who insisted we get together when I almost chose not to for fear I’d be too ill. As it turned out what we did which I have on CD was and is really brilliant stuff and my last voice mail to him expressed as much and I said something to the effect that we owe it to ourselves and the world to do what we do as much as possible.

I just hope something bad hasn’t happened to him or one of his loved ones.

A creative wheel I’m on.

The karmic wheel I’m off.

I could get off the first and get back on the second.

Six months must have come and gone. I don’t remember acknowledging it. But obviously I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill myself. It’s not that the depression completely lifted and went away. There’s probably going to be a quality of depression with me forever. But it’s no longer of the suicidal nature. In fact, believe it or not, I spend these days, some 9 years later, feeling more often happy than sad. Indeed, depression itself is not so much a case of being sad as it is a profound lack of energy. And it is not caused by an event outside of oneself. Depression is the manifestation of an imbalance of chemicals and so on in the brain the cause of which is unknown other than to say it, like all physical symptoms, is spiritual in origin. The best treatment for depression is plenty of bed rest and if so inclined lots of TV. And one should never tell a depressed person to pull themselves up by their bootstraps or something similar because for the depressed person things have gone way past being able to pull oneself up by one’s bootstraps and thus be instantly cured. In fact, depressed people do not have boot straps with which to pull themselves up. Their bootstraps, if they ever had any, have been lost. So, if you are a friend of a depressed person try not to say things like “Oh, c’mon, shake it off, let’s go out.” The friend of a truly depressed person should just express their love and concern and offer to help out in any way such as doing some shopping for the person or some tidying up and/or cleaning up. Offer to do things that the depressed person is having a very hard time doing. In other words, be truly helpful and try not to say stupid things. Recognize that depression is a real illness, probably the most debilitating illness that there is, and the person so afflicted is in desperate need of assistance in dealing with day to day needs such as what was just mentioned: shopping and cleaning and I would add preparing meals. Try to put yourself in the other person’s body and brain. See that the person is having a hard time moving both physically but also mentally. Try to imagine what the person must be feeling. Remember what it was like to have a really bad cold and you had loved one’s doing things for you because doing them was just too difficult for you in the sad state you were in. Being depressed is like having a cold without the sniffles and cough etc. One simply has a big dark cloud in and around one’s body and brain that is making it impossible to function like a normal human being. If you’re a friend of a depressed person realize and understand the profundity of the fact that what is recommended to the person so afflicted is not that they try to push themselves to get things done but quite the contrary that they just go to bed or to the couch and vegetate. Realize too that a great aid to vegetating is TV. TV, if the person is able to handle it, and sometimes the depressed person cannot even deal with the simulating nature of TV, is a great way to somewhat distract one’s mind away from the feeling of utter devastation that is what depression is all about. Recognize too, friend of depression, that it will pass.

ESSAY #69 “Bones on the outside; flesh on the inside.”

Rootless egg towers. Meaning’s bubbling scum. Fuck you comes scattered across the land. An essay goes up and down like a person’s mood. And we shiver like stomachs that pretend to behave properly but which don’t. This is not being written in French. I died (i.e. dived) into an emotive grave. Gravity is what the Earth creates. Levity’s for and created by the Moon. Wise people call for “Moon-pull, not Earth pull” or “levity over gravity.” The depressed person needs to observe himself and thus teach himself all about the nature of his depression. I am not a woman. Why would I presume to speak for women? That’s their job. For me, speaking to the Moon is possible. I closet ram jet snow beat lease on life category one down wind of specimin truth with development in the pausing rust of a tantalizying web of trust. She bakes her meaningful cake of zeros as the swift kick is lessened by the worst drug ever. Meaning was the splashing egg. I nose throat the groaty maximum falter of haiku versus and/or mutates with aphorisms and they each join forces to take over the planet in order to do things truly in a different and new and better way. Simply by being new, i.e. no more suits and ties and that stupid short gray hairdo and those endless double chins (really, why do we let them, those creeps, run things for us when we know from experience that ultimately they’re corrupt and as such do not and never did have our interests at heart and in their minds?). Such politicians have one thing, one word, in mind when they run for office and that one thing, one word, is: POWER! That’s all they want and they couldn’t care less about you or me. And here’s a thought: why do we pay any attention to them when they pay no attention to us? Maybe if we ignored them they’d go away. After all, a big part of their lust for power is their need to be looked at. If we stop looking at them, power would have much less appeal for them. They want fame and fortune but since they have no artistic talent they go into politics which these days demands no talent or inate ability. In fact, all that’s required of a politician these days is an ability to be an idiot. After all, it’s not those awful images presented to us on the TV news as our leaders who have the power. They’re just figureheads for the real power which is behind the scenes. The rope is dangling. All art is being burnt to a crisp. Depression begins to set it. It’s possible that his recent injection of testosterone was causing his recent depression. If this is the case it’s a very interesting case as it suggests that part of his depression in the past was caused by his body’s natural production of testosterone. The fact is, he has not felt this kind of debilitaing depression in a long time, possibly as long as his body stopped producing testosterone on its own. He draped her over his lap. He yanked her dress up over her ass so that it was exposed. As usual she was wearing no underpants. He turned the volume up on his stereo by using just his mind. Then he began to spank her. She said this was her favourite sex act and that her clitoris was too sensitive to be touched and so fucking was not something that she enjoyed. Getting spanked actually made her cum. Lost trumpet sex. Smiles of an encore in the dreaded museum soup of landlord puzzles. The ecstasy of a torn apart sentence appeased the leftover porkchop that was threatening to leap off its plate and attack him and even try to kill him. They call this, or should, super paranoia. Regular paranoia has to do with believing other people are trying to kill you. Super paranoia is the belief that not only people but things too, such as one’s house or a pork chop etc., are trying to kill you. We sweep up the bumble bees. Everyone is very tired and even sleepy. His part is to monitor the getaway phone. Slide in. Softness of her breast touched for the first time by someone else . Spine tickle. It’s important to just get words down. If later you determine they’re not good words they can be very easiliy removed. The first draft is a dump. He could not understand why he was so sleepy considering he had slept a lot. Meaning drove meaning home. I never partook in armed robbery though I broke a queen in half once by refusing to go to bed with him. In fact, now seeing myself in my mind’s eye in bed with him it strikes me as a most ridiculous image and to think such an image appealed to him and that he wanted to make such an image a reality makes me want to run as far away from humanity as possible. The writer in question was the stereotypical boring person when you met him: either dull or crazy drunk. Then stiffening. Sturdy. Mountain spit dangling like a cursed window full of the moot points of a laugh track set on “full blast” which was insanity. I do not go into classrooms anywhere and the rugged loss clumps. All clumping is a dimestore drip with occasional phrase ripping. Lean over and upon ashes of ice eyes with a yes terminal buzzing this way and that. He turned the fan onto his form. Her crotch was made with the aid of lime green bulldozers. A basement is a place where some, even many, men like to take their sons and beat them up. I lifted grace off the front porch.

MOMENT #39

what all is coming in now
a toe
another toe
yet another toe
a finger
some snow
a low blow
a no
some knowledge of good and evil
a brand new banjo
broken yellow skates
team players
destiny
rubberized bones
a festive moon
a barbed wire flotilla
a meaningful boot
trace elements of now
this moment tied up out back
grace
feline figurines
sloping foreheads
moot pints of boneless fear
back stage antics
quivering surround sound mechanics
a climbing of a steep hill
her gorgeous hair blowing in fake wind
time
lime
grime
prime
mine

After

GREG EVASON

Carter Monroe - The Spicer Series

2009-10-13T03:56:00.001-05:00

About the Spicer Series.

The name, Jack Spicer, entered my consciousness for the first time in early September, 1971. A professor at a small private crossroads college had read my initial scribblings and immediately loaned me the book, “Trout Fishing in America” by Richard Brautigan. Not having read a great deal of what might be referenced as “literature,” I was blown away by the book and even more so by the fact that a professor at the college had given it to me. I noted that the book was dedicated to Jack Spicer.

Though, I can’t recall exactly, I read the Brautigan book in either one or two days and returned it enthusiastically to the professor who then gave me “A Coney Island of the Mind.” It wasn’t long before I had exhausted the very few of these type books this person had in her collection. (She was not remotely a member of what at the time was termed “the counterculture.) So, it was on to the campus library in search of similar writers/poets. Of course, in rural NC at that time there were virtually none to be found. What I did find was W. C. Williams, Wallace Stevens, W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, and others. I’ve often wondered how my current view of poetry might have been altered had this library contained collections of Ginsberg, Corso, Kaufman, Whalen, Snyder, and others who I would read in the next 18 months.

In the fall of 1972, I decided not to return to college for my junior year. I had this glamorous notion of “taking a year off to write.” At some point, I wound up with a job in Washington D.C. My first weekend there, I walked from my meager digs to a kind of newsstand/bookstore and found “Book of Dreams” by Jack Kerouac. I was familiar with Kerouac because of an article written by John Clellon Holmes for Playboy Magazine that had been written about Kerouac’s funeral. Over the years, I’ve wondered how many people were introduced to this writer by that particular book as opposed to some of his more prominent ones.

I met a kindred spirit early in this city who knew how to negotiate The Library of Congress. During my initial visit, the first person I attempted to research was Jack Spicer. Because of his propensity to avoid publishing in what might be termed “major outlets,” the search was very difficult. I found maybe two poems before spending my time immersed in The Beats. It needs to be noted here that many of the books by said group of writers that are today in print were not so at that time. I think “Go” by John Clellon Holmes falls into that category. I read it back then in that library. I, also, read Philip Whalen, Lew Welch, and others of that ilk.

Summarily, in the fall ’73 after having received the proverbial wall of rejection slips, I returned to college and went year round in order to graduate in December, ’74. Having chosen marriage over an attempt at graduate school, I moved to the tiny town where I have remained ever since. I was over an hour away from any decent bookstore or university library and was immersed in the struggle to negotiate suburbia in order to gain economic sustenance. By 1978, I was making semi-annual trips to the Research Triangle in order to procure books and music that weren’t “Top Forty.” This continued for a period of 20 years. The first time I went I had twenty bucks. The last time, fifteen hundred.

In summer 1999, I gained internet access. While I was a late bloomer in terms of computers, I learned quickly about this most wondrous of tools. The first name I ever entered into a search engine was Jack Kerouac, the second was an old girlfriend, and the third was Jack Spicer. There was a seeming wealth of information on this man about whom a noted NC poet had once told me, “The Language Poets consider him to be a god.” The first thing I ever ordered online was “The Collected Books of Jack Spicer.” It also needs to be noted here that this marked the end of my treks to the university town bookstores. So many things were at my fingertips.

By 2006, my attitudes in regard to poetry had changed drastically and that was something that deserves no explanation here. I reread “The Collected Books” as well as the multitude of critical articles and copies of lectures that were online. At this time I began writing the poems that make up this series. My plan was to create a manuscript for purposes of submission, but outside distractions/upheavals deterred my progress to the extent that by the time the manuscript began to take on some “real” shape (if, in fact, it did) the book “My Vocabulary Killed Me” had come out and a chapbook of this nature seemed too obvious. Most of these poems have found placement, though I can’t recall exactly where other than Meat, The Wild Goose Poetry Review, and The Rusty Truck. If you are an editor reading this and your journal was omitted, please accept my apologies.

From the Provinces,

Carter Monroe August 2009-08-25

Carter Monroe lives and writes in the Provinces of Eastern North Carolina. He has hobbled around the small press for the past decade publishing poetry, fiction, essays, and reviews in multiple journals online and in print. His latest book is “The New Lost Blues – Selected Poems 1999 – 2005” Thunder Sandwich Press (2005).

The Spicer Series

Poems for Jack Spicer

The space that exists

as such

within that riff

occurring between chorus, rhythm, and melody

is the all encompassing definition.

The thing that brings us home in the end.

And, whether we get it

or not

says little in terms of vague perspective

or consciousness evaluation.

After all,

it’s just music.

I wonder

in the millisecond interim

when the over-the-counter-meds

have taken hold,

if I’m seeing this

or not.

“The thing that is left unsaid”

is what the poet told me.

And, I wonder

if this is it.

The net is ambiguous

like so much absurd reality.

To fight the overtime free kicks

forces discipline to the next level.

A cup, a glass, a bottle

become the proverbs in an inconsequential sense.

“To err is human.”

I heard on a TV show.

Yes, I know Mars is a planet.

Know it’s associated with the color red.

Know there was once a dark night fear

with black and white movies.

But, the ever present blankets were there.

Just like the pre-alcoholic shakes.

And, I wonder if that’s where the drinking began.

And, I wonder if fear makes one transcend.

III

Scorn chasing me through sallow wheat fields

killed by wind and rain.

The challenge, ever present,

scoffing at signs of real.

Where is that long term

wandering romance

that shields itself from the grave

in a happenstance fashion?

Where is that line

that finds itself gently

with no guilt or forethought.

Looming like eagles above and beyond?

What are the repercussions

that belie a relegated forecast

all the while hazing the pertinent thoughts

of a loser destined to find nothing?

They make me into this thing.

This surreptitious superfluous thing,

this thing that can’t hold onto itself

when mind and matter

get into a conjugal mode.

And, I succumb to this thing

and refuse to fight this thing.

Time being what it is

in the constant unnecessary resurfacing.

I mean.

You and Bird, man,

let the vocabulary consume

and haunt

until the ghosts became real

and nightmares

were a fucking way of life.

In objective terms,

the consideration seems obtuse,

but at night,

when the bed sheets are drawn

for a single moment,

it all makes sense.

To come to a point of seeming nonsensical relevance

is too obvious for those who kneel down.

If you don’t “hear” the words,

all is lost.

Striking gongs and explosions

are TV metaphors

lost in some exaggeration

of poignancy.

The trip was back there.

It’s not here.

Just a memory filed under “C”

for context.

And language always broods.

It broods like Miles Davis.

It broods like Mark Hartenbach.

It forever broods like Hemingway before the shot.

The assumption of narrative

is far too comfortable.

The admission of guilt

is far too real.

And I’m no one to resurrect anything.

Just a drunk with a car payment

who knows how to use a thesaurus

and how to lie.

The sway is but a mere happenstance

when the line swaggers.

The thought is so far in the distance

that to notice it would be a lie.

The hands are tied,

but not in bondage,

as you wait for the transmission

to transcribe.

A drink, yes, another drink

and the voices gain clarity

when the soul comes alive.

Is it code

or just a mass of words

needing no organization

or interpretation?

Is there muse in the mix

or just the rap of indulgence

countering the desire to punch

into the formality of “should.”

When the final breath

has led you to sleep,

do you remember.

That is the question.

“Do you remember?”

VII

Words, demons, haunting as such,

the tune of relevance

playing forthwith.

The planets castigate

those who are attuned.

The madness seeps

in a methodical surge.

Genius

Where is your retribution

Where is that reassurance

Where is the coil

that pulls one back to what is not?

“danger/death/dead/droll/feel without”

I wrote in 1974.

Prophetic it seems

as I drink myself to death

and burn all my poems.

VIII

There is a line beyond which chance becomes the norm

within hermetic seals and coiffured options.

A quote becomes embittered by the lack of effort

put forth in the semantics of inconclusive doctrines.

The need to find soliloquy in all things rendered helpless

belies a formless and ever changing cloud.

The analysts are grouped accordingly

and categorized by sterile disagreement.

What metaphors can penetrate the hymen of understanding

sanctified by its own sense of permanence

and beleaguered in a mathematic womb?

The stench provides the only separation.

One more round of misfires

becomes ever pertinent to the cause.

When the chambers are finally emptied,

the prisons are totally filled.

Coping with the substantive jurisdiction of fraud,

the eye is taken out by necessity.

Cryptic in its ambivalence,

the whale beaches himself for lack of other choices.

To find night in the meld of fixation

is an innumerable measurement

of quantum serializations

left brooding in a benign quandary.

Riffing hallucinations reoccur

within a tepid and cankerous vein

where the reparations separate color

and the blackness conquers all.

The matriculation lies passively,

alone and brooding in the next room,

waiting for a phone call

or an alarm clock

to counter the impulses

and deny the next step.

The radio surfs itself

as news, weather, sports

and three seconds of Lionel Hampton

connect in a discernable collage

making sound into something visible.

When the voice comes,

bringing the tide to a crest,

day and night will merge

and form an indistinct cloud

with silent thunder

and invisible lightening.

Words will fall like hail

and roll randomly across the page

like tumbleweeds on an imaginary plain

or hubcaps that find freedom from the wheels

And, I stand to the side

in this passive mode

that places in reserve

all forms of conceptual medium

and waits for the inner ear to clear

bringing back my ability

to tame this tightrope.

The words are too strange

at this moment

as if they were coming from an auctioneer

speaking in indecipherable tongues

to a series of random numbers

and disconnected robots.

I counter with rationalizations and ideals,

but at best it yields something

too simple to make much sense.

I argue in this netherworld,

receiving no response

not even from myself.

Objects versus things and ideas,

rhythm, space, dynamics, construction.

The potpourri of madness

takes possession of the fringe.

There is no objective correlative.

There is no such thing as poetry.

XII

Nostalgic referential negotiations

are torrentially poured aimlessly

into intelligence leaks

shielded by concocted cynicism.

The post-dagger necessities

seem all too superfluous

except when viewed from the inside

where security is altruistic.

Blamelessly, the surrogate purgatory

imprisons conquered ideas

conjured in benevolent sanctuary,

muted by a vacant afterthought.

When the rays break loose

after the explosion

the final cup of coffee

is acknowledged and revered.

XIII

approaching the edge of placid potential

the harangue is left uneasy

a palpable sense of wonderment

shadows all that seems workable

tension pushes the bellows

and time is forged within

the frame is indefinable

the meaning, inconsequential

from the stars comes the philosophy

in beams downcast and immobile

the bursting occurs

after the glass is broken

after the pieces slit my throat

Images by Megan Pinch

2009-08-27T00:38:00.008-05:00

Megan Pinch is an artist and educator currently living in Florence, Alabama. She has taught at University of North Alabama, Texas Tech University, and College of the Holy Cross. She attended graduate school at Rochester Institute of Technology and SUNY Brockport's Visual Studies Workshop, where she received her Master of Fine Arts degree. Over the past ten years, her images have been featured in numerous publications and juried gallery exhibitions. Megan has received national recognition for her art, winning several awards and grants. More of her images can be seen at www.meganpinch.com.

Artist Statement: My images are narratives about relationships. In these pieces, I attempt to harness the contrast of the whimsical and the grim of the fairy tale we call "love." Vintage wedding dresses fascinate me; and through the lens I imagine the stories of the women who wore them. Sometimes there is a fairy tale ending; sometimes not. I often use the disquiet of abandoned spaces and barren landscapes to elicit the mood in my images.

(click on the images to view in another window at full size)

Expectations

Georgia's Mask

Flew The Coop

Entangled

The Moment of Truth

Alice's Shadow

Serendipity

Return To Sender

Scarred

On With The Light

Off With The Glass

Before The Threshold

Matt Hill - excerpts from PARATAXIS

2009-05-29T01:01:00.028-05:00

During the 1990’s, Matt Hill was the editor and publisher of the fabled avant-garde Marshall Creek Press. Notable poets published included Sheila E. Murphy, John M. Bennett, Peter Ganick and Jake Berry. The complete series of the Marshall Creek chapbooks are archived in the Special Collections Libraries at UC-Santa Cruz, SUNY-Buffalo, and OSU-Columbus.

Matt has authored several chapbooks: Rouge Aurora (1994); Roxis (1995); and Triune Override Tractatus (1997). During 2007, he edited a collection of quotations (Extracts:A Field Guide for Iconoclasts) and published a book of prose poetry (The Cloud Reckoner).

Parataxis is his latest collection of prose poems and he is close to completing a collection of flash fiction vignettes: The Amplitude of Growlers. He continues to live in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California, where he has been a life-long resident.

Defrag

In an exile of promise, in the isness of nothing, I invent sweeping preoccupations – The hell with the polemics, it’s the treasure of daily chaos that cancels out the world’s loathing – Each befuddled moment a seed crystal unpacking the glaring the daring the outrageous acts of this temporal stay – And yes, it is laughter that always works as the most brazen eraser of misfortune and folly ... On this sphere where the Vulgarati gibber on, senselessly disturbing the ether, the noise of mere words ceaselessly fills the afternoon voids – Here, cattywompus is actually a form of dork ballet – In defrag mode, I no longer need to hold a candle to the mattering brightness – The edges of my presence dissolve into a despairing focus as I observe that horn o’ plenty, the one we’ve all taken for granted, and yes, the very same one that is now quite empty ...

Ur Gnomics

Isn’t it Unreason that the philosophers can’t hack? – Yet bring up the subject of Nothingness, and it all turns into a feeding frenzy – The disputing gets all tangled up in which came first, life or ontology – You mean to tell me that knowledge is only accessible when the lights are left on? – If a sequence of words may, or may not, become a sentence, then the value of anything must be beyond language – This leads to thinking that rationality is an acquired disease that only produces further ignorance ...

Since the philosophers are never satisfied, what is called philosophy might itself be pathological – That horizon out there may be an illusion, but the unexpected surely brightens what hours remain – Breath, soul, fire ... I mean, how can one even dispute that guy Heraclitus ...?

Futility on Purpose

Who is doing the talking here, always a matter of dispute, the antiphilosophers still in the saddle riding hard, the Marlboro Man swathed in counterfeit smoke, “Gittin’ old ain’t for sissies” he mumbles around a dangling cigarette (rolled), the prisoners of net price are casting off the itching questions while the Unknown eventually solves everything, these Roadrunner reruns sure help out in the shuffle of my purposeful futility ...

This ink dries before it hits the paper – The rustlings of this creaking memory, like winds full of ash and embers – Disturbance is the constitution of the world, destiny not something that submits readily to secret knowledge – In other words, this daily existence has to either equal or surpass itself ...

Strikeout

This afternoon, the sun continues to bleed the way a stone captures smoke – My heart, reconciled to your akimbo stance, beats along with the fire in your hair – My charm now in tatters, I may as well finish off the goal of achieving maximum opacity – I ask her if she is still in the groove – She slyly slurs around her wink, “Naw, just pretending ...”

At a later time, there might be the merge of hand and breast, a dagger of allure deftly poised – Briefly we might be as hungry as Melville’s cannibals, our prayers composed of wide-eyed sweating – In the search for a puzzle to go with this missing piece, everything demands the torching of this wayward flesh ...

The Sound of Light

Forgetfulness usually sets in right after sundown – Has something to do with getting situated toward the future tense – Might this not be analogous to the way time decomposes as it heightens the profane moments? – Sure it’s tempting to think it may all be over, but the petty furors indicate otherwise – By using desultory verbiage, I now seek to outlast the frozen spots in this heart of mine – Perhaps an assault on the inevitable will underwrite further longevity ...

Meanwhile, the sound of light turns the aforementioned accretions into a much bigger ash heap than the flames of love never quite anticipated – This because time’s drool has always been a family favorite – We’re talking a plethora of insignificance as this body, designed for so much wear and tear, soldiers on through the wounding thickets – Holding back on the charm acrobatics, I duly tilt on in the lizard populated afternoons ...

The Marvelous

Nothing comes close to perfection like the lips of Athena, myth being proportionate to what? – Vectors of Orpheus call out for further ekstasis – As the higher magics diffuse, revelations happen in the intervals, the proof embedded in new forms emerging ...

Portents of soothsayers scribed upon their murmuring altars – Their tranced testimonies resonate in hermetic gold, divining the limits of con-fusions as the words become uttered – Birds awaken prophecy in their restless motions, a randomweave living in preservations of smoke ...

I rub my eyes endlessly as intuition signals distant events in far space – The synaptic leaps still boggle, while sudden smiles remain the best of investments – For the modern primitive, the mind yet provides a notebook for the Marvelous ...

Where I'm At

Agreeably, preoccupations with calamity have been deleted – My daily tightrope walk over the abyss nothing more than the gestation of reprieves – Through a series of half-deaths, even pleasure is nourished in its evanescence ...

Arms akimbo before the human window, the one I stare out twenty five hours a day, each viewing a crucial experiment reserved for the non-ordinary carnage of apparitions – Muzzling the negginators has not been as effective as siphoning off their gas, their identities hung out on the line like laundry adornments – As a second nature, this poverty and the sharpening of knives have always served me well ...

Poetry by Ivan Argüelles

2009-04-11T02:18:00.007-05:00

photograph by John M. Bennett

For four decades Ivan Argüelles has developed and mastered forms of poetry exclusively his own. Rooted in sources as ancient as the Iliad, as modern as James Joyce and as contemporary as the latest rock and pop music he continues to challenge the mind and ear. He has published numerous books of short poems and has reconfigured epic poetry in the multiple volumes of Pantograph and Madonna Septet. He is retired from UC Berkeley and writes and regularly performs his work in the Bay Area and elsewhere.

INCOMPLETE CANTO
FOR ANNO DOMINI 2009

what’s the relationship between
bleach and blanch
and for that matter Blank
as in “blanche-fleur”
you was my bride in XXth century
furiously et cetera
goddamned how the troubadours
and the Etruscans on their shiny lake
a cargo of five hundred thousand
ducats and wearing velvet foolscap
the emergent picture is one of
ignorance drunken self-pity
“lussuria” jazz in the wrong hour
of days without memory sloth
in basements waking to sharp light
of conscience and dreary text
latin latin and more latin
catullus but not propertius
lucretius splitting the atom
near the corner of ellis and 59th
Bo Diddly the self made guitar
which it is being a Man
junction of time and space
“high” on roof top abracadabra
or that are perhaps fractions
from an ancient poesy “tying
her hair in a topknot” for a
divinity to manifest by the
and moreover the wellsprings
of sorrow ingratitude mockery
not understanding rightly the
Nature of things viz-a-viz
lucretius “antichissime mura”
undoing her girdle in the middle
because of the extreme heat
as lurid the pictures turn round
and round hands gritty soiled
from pornography and juxtaposed
the Seder waiting for the Stranger
anomalous pages torn from classics
to illustrate beneath the buttocks
a pillow in length the size of
memory itself agony and dreamed
over and over the divorce
papers signed in a dickensian
bureau shafts of ill-gotten
fire distributed among the heroes
philistines (i.e. Palestinians)
hauling ashore the alphabet triremes
sweating in sandstorms eating
leftovers of pig dog urine slop
who can but explain this plight
agony blinded at the millstone
in gaza question mark mysteriously
posited in her ovaries
the bunch of keys her hair her
ink-stained school books ABC
of love in 12th century ingots
plastered the junk shoved into a
just sat there staring for hours
darkness of history
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
“weaving the garments of the deities”
how sweet matter
the great greensward beneath
bunches of phlox fled
into the willow grove her feet
naked to read there
bucolics of Theocritus while
in the future wars rage
ponds fill with blood bile gore
heavens gape nuisance
to be alive amid rubble groping
here there was a
the letters no longer make sense
in the apartment a complete hush
waiting for rockets
hissing who once prayed
in the grass extended their shadows
love-making
whole afternoons consumed
in the skin read the literature
of sweat while bees knit
their intricate orient of sound
in the sleeper’s Ear

will we ever be allowed back?

01-11-09

(sort of a love poem)

today it’s gonna be different
I wont go out and shoot anyone
what a kiss can do
melt your heart in two
“love you, Valentine”
world is such a crazy place
one day it’s indigo
the next it’s running amok
I hate crowds especially
hot days make me angry
where I went wrong was loving
you and only you, Angel-Face
only a pistol can take your place
manifest destiny in a stolen car
side by side cruising to heaven
could it be love at last flight
the necromantic girl imagine
stepping on the gasoline
until death do her part
hair so easy to plait in the hand
a soft bronze glow a mechanical
piano her mind what is it
going to say to the One?
afterglow of eternal rest
between the eyes a bullet
lodges so easily a clean sweep
as they say but I won’t
do that again follow her streaks
yellow and buzz like an insect
through the luscious foliage
peering through internet infinity
where she will put next a foot
down sides darker the ravine
tumbling if just to touch
the once and only You,
Angel-Face, freckled sun spotted
downy limbed lasting grassy
folds up and over the horizon
a sailing away a fleeting dart
glancing a last like a mist
the holy intangible way it should
be and never more

03-25-09

[a small poem about]

of all the lives, a life, this
one, air of sky & clouds of in-
transigence, walking as if to discover
or uncover an afternoon, in Love
with the idea, or else nothing matters,
flowers white dogwood magnolia
oleander phlox snowballs Your face
among the flora sleeping, what
green sap runs through yr veins
what tributary of blood exclaims!
seeing you is to know everything,
then oblivion, hell the thorny Hades
of Achilles, wound is eternal as
is the poetry of it, darkness
going down from the house of Light
into the miserable basement, how
can it be recovered that moment
when brimming with life you ran
from course to course to Understand
what little, sometimes the intense
blue is Too much, we waver as if
nothing to hold, the size of it is
what cannot be explained, you will
be gone in a matter of minutes a
shadow fled off the floor, ghost
a fragment of
to remember

03-27-09

[elegy for joel pugh]
for james balfour

a lifetime, disappeared
into which quarter of the sky
the chinese invented fabulous
celestial entities powder rockets
shining other things, loosely
involved the skin undoing by one
after another the desires
looking no more for the Cave
or else getting by
mirrored in a water far away
longing, called echo by a
different name with brightly
colored skirts a paradigm of
youth like a metal in summer
hot seemingly indestructible
until one day writing backwards
come to terms with, on lawns
of evening fade the chill
of alcohol and girlfriends
who come to be in the telephone
a section of cloud limited
to memory only the rest being
an acquired “second” language
a poem, perhaps, elegiac
running the fingers over a surface
which is music or night or
because there is no word for it
who are shouting into the wall
pulverized, I am definitely
this small organism called sleep
this portion of shadow that
clings to the enormous green outside
when water suddenly manifests
with its myriad faces of myth
drowning, a lifetime
is,

01-14-09

[darkness gathering, the]
“l’edifice immense du souvenir”
m. proust

not otherwise, for the moment the slender
blades a radiance, can it be sleeping?
imagine the massive subterfuge to be
nothing but air, or its absence, remember
nothing at all but for her passing
naked through the night, then echo’s
small and plangent grass by the window
where a god forgetful of his dress
waits for the planet, plunging
through a water so immense that
whoever said it could be kenned
listening, you were almost “there”
for a whole summer maybe becoming green
silent emerging outside the fragile
shell of the self, who arbitrary
and cruel ascertained that distance was
the dominant mode, the music of madness
sounding a little metal, because,
shifts from white pale merely sheen
invisible really or blending into
the bright cloth, other side of what?
expecting to be served a childhood
in a mansion carved out of sand until
all of space, a clock ticking red
within the Ear, “I am orestes” said
repeatedly to the whirring maenads
who are come to the Hill, take me
all the thing is broken
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
after all these years a century
poised like a droplet on the edge
a moon dissolving in the morning’s
one instant of oblivion, who will
change masks slowly going from room
to room glass in hand, asked to leave
the company of strangers, alone
for what seems
you are urged to age, to lessen
the maximum security which life is
outside where a weather darkens
it is afternoon gathering
a language lesson, pronouns remote
and honorific none of which apply
you are becoming ineffable
a pointillistic backdrop
to an already impalpable montage
the excuse is worn, nobody
believes you were ever
here
can hear the immense scaffolding
coming apart in the dream
like sections of her name
you can no longer recognize “it”
what stands
what falls
the unhealed wound
how long ago that was
until death do us
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
the middle is become the end

(for jack foley)

01-23-09

(“the” secret poem)

because can never, be, reveal
nothing despite rain and forecast
cloudy, how as many the years
rolled thunder in loose heads
margined by beauty’s self,
illusion, to exchange one book
for the map of skin and the,
other, for what has never been,
who will look askance at limitless
the sea, immense below sky equally
immense and, wounded, equivocation,
fault line zooming toward orient
to poetry’s flawed mansion, how
many housed in tiers of animal
and magnet, her face, Her eyes!
flashing iridescence & excitement
(does age matter?), this ancient
thought this manifest of eld, whose
and for what shapes green manifold
garden swarms luscious love’s again-
bite until, Dreamer! riot in the
welkin, planets aflame, puzzled page
the enigma of Minerva stalking
grasses of sleep, shakes the hand
this inch of desire in what map,
longing for the, has ever sought
ages in the Eye, what hear the Muses
then in their grotto, I am to her
what marble is to the mind, she is
to me, what, Ear, music contained
the unfurled in peals of rose and
ash, how much a horizon, how little
sea-bottom, deaf as a moon unseen,
cannot dare to Touch, following
the thread of her passage crimson,
at first, then whittled to a small
magenta, red involving, trying to
read editions azure, how far
distance extends into its Space,
initials in dissolved ink, nebula,
fossil, shifting, bone, cold,
the interior of History, causeless
her voice, Singing!

02-22-09

Poetry by Tim Van Dyke

2009-01-17T00:49:00.026-06:00

Tim VanDyke's poems have appeared in Octopus Magazine, Typo, Fascicle 1 & 3, 9th. St. Laboratories, and Cannibal. Find his sound collaboration with Brian Howe here. He has an upcoming piece in the journal Muthafucka and a suite of poems, "Songs from Slow Song," will be published soon in Heartbreaker. He will also be publishing a chapbook with the Cannibal Reading Series, hopefully by the end of 2009.

(Editor's note: So that the poems might be presented in their intended format the titles below are links to PDF files of the poems. To read each poem click on its title to download the poem or open it in a browser window.)

A RIVER FOR THE TIGER OF THE RIVER

ROMANCES OF ACCIDENTAL SKIN

TREE POEM

Stories by Willie Smith

2008-12-01T02:05:00.011-06:00

Willie Smith is deeply ashamed of being human. His work celebrates this horror. His novel OEDIPUS CADET is available at amazon.com or from Black Heron Press. His story collections SOLID GAS, GO AHEAD SPIT ON ME, EXECUTION STYLE and STORIES FROM THE MICROWAVE are collector's items. More of his work can be viewed by googling "deeply ashamed of being human." Performances of his work are available at YouTube - click here.

BALLAD OF JERRY NERVAL

One day, maybe today, just picking my nose, walking past a picket fence, the slats begin to walk themselves; wobble along the periphery; rob consciousness. On the way out, catch myself coming to – eight blocks, two murders, one rape down the street.
Witness, perp, victim – take your pick. Too stunned at the moment to pick my own brain’s lute.
Regard pavement. Take my pick of the litter. Retrieve a Cricket, a Camel. Pop butt in mouth. Snick Cricket. Scrape thumb raw snicking. Hold sparks – because no fuel – to tobacco wrapped in poly-lipped paper. Leave Bud bottle with Newport drowned in it. Forget mustardy napkin, tampon, Puget Sound white fish, toothpick, Ziploc dogshit.
Have a puff. Think about it.
How do I know we just didn’t all die in a dream? The whole rape sequence no realer than epilepsy? Now the world has shrunk, we love to bray: Where does rape begin? Does murder ever cease? We meaning the media and me; all the eye of I. For aye and aye.
Ember scorches fingertip. Flip stub into gutter. Bounces off goo on newspaper scrap – fishwich tartar, kitty litter overflow, parakeet guano, common business-oriented barf?
Pick nose. Absently touch phlegm-stuck-to-index to lip. Consider turning around to walk backwards past those white pickets. Return arrow of time to undone quiver. Nibble sticky. Realize what doing. Spit.
Tampon now wears my snot. Nourishment for some eager slug. Bacteria, fungus, protozoa likewise wiggle to the table. A virus in a parasite in an amoeba inside the slug headed for the snot drools reverse transcriptase. God bless hunger!
Maybe I can uninvent the bomb. Or at least shrink the population; by, at least, one.
Pick my way home, delirious with teary logic. Sidetracked by a lamp post, unbuckle, take off, put belt to good use.
Takes a real man to whip a rapist. No real man, I take the noose exit. Kick chair out from under. Choke, jig, dangle; into afterlife blast.
Picket fence up there, too. Flutter by in absolute synch. Sink into holding slats still. Till see nothing between two thoughts. Still can’t tell if hear there. Chaos so perfect.

BUS COME

No acid test to distinguish dream from reality exists.
Dissolve to Linda Lovelace and Richard Nixon caught in Waiting For Godot. Stuck at the bus stop. Watches stopped. Jingling change. Constantly at odds with themselves. Uncertain who, deep inside Grant’s tomb, killed Cock Robin.
Linda lights a Virginia Slim. Titters, “Just to make the bus come – ya know?”
Nixon grunts, “Nobody ever does anything to make me come. The fuck stops here.” Then bitches how impossible modern times to public speak. No sooner memorize a lie than – due to information fluctuation – whole paragraphs inoperate.
Linda, blowing smoke, asks if he needs help getting anything down pat?
Nixon waves a hand at the smoke. Frowns down at the pavement. “Young lady – would you mind blowing the other way?”
“Sorry.” Linda drags, looks away from the aging sadsack. Sighs. Says to the frigid air that she herself is currently involved in memorizing a song, it being her goal in life someday to sing Happy Birthday to the President of America.
“Monroe already did that.” Nixon idly squishes an ant. “For that cocksucker Kennedy.”
“Oh, this wouldn’t be for Monroe,” Linda shoots Nixon the wide eye. “He’s dead. He was President, you know, during the Era of,” she leers, leaking smoke at Nixon’s ear, “Good Feeling. Now, I wouldn’t mind,” she sucks on the Slim, “if the President gave me a good feeling!”
“No voter,” Nixon grumbles at the tiny corpse, “ever expects anything less.”
“My trainer beat me with chains.” Linda tosses her butt. “Trapped me in a chain of events leading to the Feminists, who abused me worse yet.” Folds a stick of Wrigley’s into her mouth. “Just ‘cause I couldn’t act they ruined my career. What’s wrong with reality before the camera?”
“Couldn’t agree more.” Nixon scuffs at the corpse, mashes it into the concrete, till the ant appears never to have existed. “They threatened me with jail just because my men set up a recording studio in the wrong building.”
Linda pulls out a baloney and mayo. “Sometimes I wonder,” with her left hand she picks the gum from her teeth, sticks the wad inside her purse, “now America has stepped on the moon…” she eyes the new crescent slipping behind a Wonder Bread billboard… “is moonlight any dimmer?”
“Let me make one thing perfectly clear,” Nixon frowns reflectively at the concrete. “The trash we left on the surface was highly reflective. If anything, moonlight strengthened. Under the watch of my administration the very heavens brightened. And yet,” he winces, as Linda bites into the white trash caviar, “I was forced to resign, nearly impeached.”
“Was there any,” Linda asks with her mouth full, “sex involved?”
He shakes his head. Says never in his life did he fuck. He just likes to talk trash.
Linda gulps the half-chewed bite, licks mayo off lips, says, “But a man old as you – you must have children?”
“Done in a lab. They put me under. Extracted fluid. Shot the stuff into Pat. Sure, I had kids. But I only did it…” he appeals into her baby-browns… “for the image.”
Emotion sweeps over Linda. A cocktail of pity, greed, lust. Here stands a man in need, a man deprived, a conquest for the asking.
“I could make you come,” she whispers. “Right here. Right now. We could step across the street. Duck behind that billboard. We’d see the moon again…”
“Don’t be preposterous.” He sneers back down at the pavement. “Sex to me means nothing. My interests lie in securing power, control, leadership.”
“Haven’t you ever wondered how good sex feels?”
“Sex is no good. Period.”
“What I’m talking isn’t really sex. I think the President of America will one day testify to that under oath.”
“This a gag?”
“No. My trainer taught me to control that reflex. Through his leadership I acquired the power to swallow even the biggest.”
“I know a couple whoppers I bet you can’t swallow. How about: the insurgency is collapsing, we are winning their hearts and minds, the war will end by the end of this year.”
“Don’t be silly,” she titters. “That’s all hot air. Besides, America never lost a war; not even the Civil War; the moon is our fifty-first state. Don’t you ever masturbate?”
“I don’t speak Greek.”
“I don’t either. They beat me with chains to make me do it in the movie.”
Nixon buries his head in his hands. Sobs in frustration. He just can’t understand why the bus won’t come.
“My technique,” Linda chomps into the oozing sandwich, “is no different. Think of it as nurse-assisted masturbation. America’s gift to oral culture.”
“You are poisoning my mind!” he garbles into tear-puddled palms.
“That’s what they always say about pornography.”
“I suppose your trainer,” he glares up, “warned you about porn?”
“Chuck is a genius. America’s most artistic pimp. He could run for President, if he just wasn’t so intellectual.” Linda chucks the rump of the baloney-mayo into the gutter, belches daintily. “OK, now I’m well-fed, let’s hop across the street, take care of that little matter. Nobody’ll care, nobody’ll even see. Here, gimme your hand.”
“Explain first just one thing,” he hands her a fist. “How did blow come to mean suck?”
“Simple – in my trailer park we useta say: suck below. Hey, baby – you wanna suck below? And that got shortened to: su-below, then s’b’low, and finally how we come to know the word today: blow.”
“I often wondered,” Nixon muses. “I asked Pat once. She slipped on her cloth coat. Fell to her knees. Pressed lips; blew. She blew hard, too; till her face blued bluer than when she blew the candles out her fiftieth; cyanosis, I believe the term. Anyway, both of us shrugged, gave up. I spent the rest of the evening struggling with my income tax, and she failed once again to conceive. Thank God for that laboratory. We truly are the nation that stepped on the moon. No revisionist can take that away from me – those bootprints are forever. I guess Pat – through no fault of her own – simply blew it.”
“Don’t take it personally, Dick.”
Nixon bristles with suspicion. Halts in the middle of the road. “How do you know my name?”
“Because now I got your d-d-dick,” Linda quips, although, she’s such a lousy actress, her timing stinks, comes off in a stutter.
Nixon ignores – paranoia dulling awareness – the flub. Looks around for the Secret Service, forgetting he’s trapped inside Waiting For Godot.
“Take it easy, Dick,” she hooks an arm through his elbow, leads the rest of the way across the street, as we hear, offstage, the bus approach. “C’mon – be my friend, I might let you come in my face.”
“We don’t want…,” a befuddled Nixon thinks back to the tapes. “We don’t want to… piss in anybody’s face.”
Linda chuckles. Kicks off her heels. Edges barefoot over the gravel around behind the billboard, dragging along the dead President. “I suppose we could try.”
They slip into deep shadow. The moon dodges a smokestack.
Linda kneels. Gropes. Bobs. Dick sees himself underground. In the event, tosses over her permanent onto the sod.
“Oh my god,” I mutter waking up inside a bus, pants wet. Resigned to Nixon, vowing in heaven to vote Linda.

THE ALL NEW ADVENTURES OF DICK HEAD

The head of my dick woke up with a hangover. Splitting headache. Throat parched. Forehead turnip purple. He needed a Kentucky fried chick. Rolled over on his neck; one good eye squeezed shut, chin dug into pillow. Behind the gloom…
jumped into jeans, headed out the door. Slipped behind the wheel of his refurbished 1942 two-door Bad Karma. The oriental jalop started with a bang; headed downtown where some chicks he knew lived.
His face burned scarlet. The headache stank. He stepped on the gas. Stood on it. Hyperwarped out. Hit downtown in no time.
Slammed on the brakes. Leaped out in front of the Bashed Inn – a cheap hotel where scum accumulate. Out in the street the double-parked junker smoked.
He burst into the lobby. Raced upstairs like a gasoline fire. Kicked down the chick’s door, by way of knocking. They were friends. He had already been there once or twice. Her name was Kay or Sue or something. They got along super. Once or both times had a ball. And he knew she knew he tipped heavy.
She was fat as a lardpacked medicineball. Lay on the floor. Little guy perched on top. The head of my dick sprinted over. Zicked out stiletto. Cut down the guy’s pole; collapsed inverted-Indian-rope-trick-like.
The head gobbled the chick before any time could act. Was licking fingers when he discovered the urge to split for another piece. Hangover still throbbed. Schmalzy fatchick failed to suffice.
He shot from the room, leaving the remains to reek. Exploded back down out to the idling two-door. Down the street he tore like a run in a stocking.
Now for a class chick. Seen her a number of times. Five maybe three. Punched the lighter in. Snapped on the radio. Sat back to daydream while barreling through redlights, crashing out of the way tenpin pedestrians.
This chick more gooey and golden than a toasted marshmellow. Actually a piece of white meat, she could pass for a latte, she was that exotic. Lived out on Twilite Boulevard in the Neon District, just off Jerk Circle, around by the Halfway House. Thought it was End of the Rainbow Inn, or maybe The Lightning Arms.
Pretty arrived damn quick. Had to wait five seconds in the lot for the lighter to pop. Lit nose. Kicked way out of the smoldering wreck with overhead cams and a new paintjob. Headed into complex. Spit up in the elevator due to retarded.
Hustled up to number. Tugged off knob. Barged in.
Six guys stood in there. Axed their poles quicker than you can say “Whu?” Lay in a heap like so many cigarette butts.
The room smelled bloody, hot, frustrated. Made the head of my dick homesick. On the bed lay the mouthwatering Kentucky. All breast, drum, thigh. Skin done to a T. The giblets of her soul moist and tender as nuns marinated in some spa where the virgin sprang up once in the imagination of a nut.
This his oasis. He leaped, losing jeans as he flew. Cannonballed. She was one gone chick. Sacked before time had a chance to pass.
He burped on the pillow. Still the hangover hung. In the giddiness of it all, licked fingers to the bone. Realized that, yes, it had narrowed to the last piece. He had to place all his balls in that one aboriginal slot.
He’d met a queen once up in Ballard. Had a cousin down in Ardenwald. Cousin’s mom owned a bishoprick over out down there around by in Vader, along the edge of Outer Wyoming.
Snapped fingers, said, “Why…” gone before “not?” could materialize.
The radio in the ’42 redone heap announced the weather, but he boomed way out of the stuff before elements could gather over area discussed. “The weather is just a buncha hot air,” he thought in disgust, blazing up her driveway out by the coast of the Pleistocene.
The mom appeared as a Hindenburg of a sea cucumber, bobbing beyond the breakers.
The vintage Bad Karma jammed in the sand. The head jettisoned jeans. Rocketed nude through the windshield.
Over the combers hydroplaned. Hit the mother in two shakes of a gnat’s womb.
She was musty, maggoty; smothered in green cheese marbled with kelp. Smelled like a cross between limburger and the garlic panties of universal suffering. He ate Mum with sixty benign dynamite sticks; fuses sputtering gibberish – mother tongue to both.
Came a whale of a slurp. Grew dark. To the mother of all gulps – he flashed – the hummer of a migraine had, against the grain, split.
He turned over. Opened that one eye. Raked a skeletal hand across dimple.
Limped from bed. Hobbled for coffee; wondering where to find the change to obtain the next snootful.

Visual Poetry by Nico Vassilakis

2008-10-03T00:52:00.009-05:00

photo credit: crystal curry

Nico Vassilakis lives in Seattle. He is a curator for the Subtext Reading Series. Nico works in both textual and visual poetry. His visual poetry videos have been shown at festivals and exhibits of innovative language arts. TEXT LOSES TIME is his recent book. etc etc. Quixote, his son, is entering high school. Autumn is coming.

Nico lives in Seattle.

fixed in space bricks atop make a spine the head greater than supposes to be. distended frames collapse into
dilution weakens color bonds and cellular families disband - red pales, blue softens but black stays

ideas bloat, collisions occur
precision blurs throughout uncommitted areas

expenditure of a finite source runs round your ears
exposing light drifting off pleasurably at first

Poetry by Jack Foley and Adelle Foley

2008-06-29T13:55:00.017-05:00

Jack and Adelle Foley have been performing their poetry as duets and solo for more than two decades. They have performed throughout the U.S. as well as in France and Syria. Jack is a widely published poet, critic, and songwriter. His books include Adrift, Exiles and O Powerful Western Star: Poetry & Art In California and are available from Small Press Distribution. He has won numerous awards for his work. He also hosts a weekly radio show, Cover To Cover, at KPFA in Berkeley (available as a podcast via KPFA.org ). Their latest collaborative book Fennel In The Rain is available from Small Change Series / Word Temple Press. Jack's most recent book, The Dancer and the Dance: A Book of Distinctions, a collection of essays, is available from Red Hen Press. Adelle's Along the Bloodline, a collection of innovative haiku, was published by Pantograph Press and is available from Small Press Distribution.

ASTAIRE
by Jack Foley

previously published in The Tower Journal

To listen to a performance of this piece click here.

The thin, white
The thin, white
man dances
man dances
in a whirl
in a whirl
of taps that sound
of taps that sound
like “rat a tat”
like “rat a tat”
and “run around”
and “run around”
and “rattle rattle rattle”
and “rattle rattle rattle”
and he wears
and he wears
the elegance of evening
the elegance of evening
as his thin, white
as his thin, white
hands extend and flutter
hands extend and flutter

and he catches
and he catches

at a whirling cane
at a whirling cane
and twirls it
and twirls it
and shoots
and shoots
the troop of men who come
the troop of men who come

dancing

and they fall (what dancers fear!)
and they fall (what dancers fear!)

as this man who wears the symbol of the rich

whirls away erect
whirls away erect

and dancing

DUET

rat a tat rat a tat
rat a tat rat a tat
rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
roodle de do roodle de do
roodle de do roodle de do
whiff bam roodle de do rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
whiff bam roodle de do rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
rat a tat rat a tat
rat a tat rat a tat
biddle biddle biddle biddle
biddle biddle biddle biddle
biddle de do biddle de do hohdy hohdy hohdy rrrrrrr
biddle de do biddle de do hohdy hohdy hohdy rrrrrrr
wham!
wham!
with a quick with a quack
with a quick with a quack
rat a tat rat a tat
rat a tat rat a tat
roodle de do roodle de do
roodle de do roodle de do
roodeldy roodledy roodledy roodledy
roodeldy roodledy roodledy roodledy
roodeldy roodledy roodledy roodledy
roodeldy roodledy roodledy roodledy
rat a tat rat a tat
rat a tat rat a tat
roodle de do roodle de do
roodle de do roodle de do
take a LOOK take a LOOK rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
take a LOOK take a LOOK rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
take another kind of look
take another kind of look
take a look take a rat
take a look take a rat
take a riddle raddle rat
take a riddle raddle rat
take a look take a cat
take a look take a cat
take a reel make a take
take a reel make a take
take a tale make a rattle
take a tale make a rattle
take another kind of look!
take another kind of look!

hominy hominy hominy
hominy hominy hominy
rat a tat rat a tat
rat a tat rat a tat
roodle de do roodle de do
roodle de do roodle de do
rat a tat rat a tat
rat a tat rat a tat
roodle de do
roodle de do
do
do
do
do
rrr
rrr

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

R.I.P. CHAUNCEY BAILEY
murdered on the streets of Oakland 8/2/07
by Adelle Foley

To hear and download a performance of this piece click here.

Had to cross the street
To avoid the police cars
On my way to work

Behind yellow tape
He lay under a white tarp
His feet sticking out

Leaning on a car
An officer interviewed
An old Asian man

“Did you see someone
Approach the victim and shoot?
Which way did he run?”

I pass this corner
On my way from the BART train
Almost every day

A nice neighborhood
Friendly senior citizens
No sign of danger

Suddenly, scary
Downtown—and in broad daylight
Murderers live here

The next day, a shrine
Teddy bear, candles, flowers
“You are in our hearts”

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

Ascenseur pour l’échafaud/Elevator to the Gallows
for Robin A. Nicholas
by Jack Foley

To hear and download a performance of this piece click here.

who writes
who writes
of the sadness of lovers
of the sadness of lovers
of their
of their
loneliness when apart
loneliness when apart
Jeanne Moreau
Jeanne Moreau
in this magnificent film
in this magnificent film
wanders the night
wanders the night
streets of Paris
streets of Paris
finding
finding
nothing
nothing
her love is sincere
her love is sincere
but her punishment
but her punishment
later
later
is worse than her
is worse than her
lover’s
lover’s
Miles Davis
Miles Davis
watched the film
watched the film
with those deep deep eyes
with those deep deep eyes
and named
and named
the nothing
the nothing
she felt
she felt
as he leapt
as he leapt
beyond
beyond

the frenzy of bebop

to the pure
to the pure
sound
sound

of the heart of the world
of the heart of the world

in a woman’s
in a woman’s

longing
(longing)

Reality Is The Horse You Rode In On - Poetry by Alan May - Images by Tom Wegrzynowski

2008-04-26T02:11:00.013-05:00

Alan May's poems have appeared in The New Orleans Review, Double Room, BlazeVOX, E-ratio, 9th St.Laboratories, and others. His book Notes toward an Apocryphal Text, a collaboration with the artist Tom Wegrzynowski, was published in 2006 by Port Silver Press. You can find out more about the book here.

Tom Wegrzynowski's work is about mythology and folklore and how these ideas ultimately shape culture and effect interpretations of history. He has exhibited throughout the Southeast with recent group shows at Temple Gallery in Atlanta, Amanda Schedler Fine Art in Birmingham, and Space 301 in Mobile.

Tom is currently a full time instructor of studio and art history at the University of Alabama.

REALITY IS THE HORSE YOU RODE IN ON
(previously published in Spell – Issue 4)

Alphabet Poems for Adult Accompaniment

An inquisitive Aardvark
Approached my Aeroplane
and Asked, "Have you got
any Ants in there?"

An Archer Aimed
an Arrow
at the Apple on my head
and I said...

…Better not
pull a Burroughs.

Bleating Bedsheeps
make for poor sleep,
so I cover me sheeps
with a Blanket.

A Curious Coyote
ate some peyote
then danced
the tarantella
on a Catamount.

Carl grew tired
of the Cacophonous Codfish,
so he moved his bed
to a battleship.

The Devil
Drew Doodads
beginning
with the letter D.

A Decade in which
lazy Ducks fly Dirigibles.

The Emu
ate my English horn
which is Emblematic
of the actions
of the Emu.

Fifty Felines
circling my stilts.

Fred Found
his Fedora Floating
near the coast
of Florida.

The Guy playing
the Glockenspiel
Got angry
when I…

…Hid his tiny
Hammers.

Hello, I said
to the Heron
Hailing a cab.

Isabel Illustrated
her Idea
for building
an Ice bridge
to Istanbul.

The Jaked June bug
Danced a Jig
on the Jukebox.

Katie Kicked
the Kicking can,
just for Kicks.

The Leaping Lemurs
drove their Beemer
off to Lithuania.

Mannequins
Making Maps
to the Moon.

Niles Nickel-and-dimed
Nicole for her
Nanny goat.

The Narwhal
was careful and Never
did he Nick
my Nephew,
Nick.

The Opossum
ate my…

...Peaches
and Pelted me
with the Pitts.

The Phoenix
Phoned the doctor
about his enflamed
Pharynx.

The Quail
cooed
to the Quetzal.

Reality
is the horse
you rode
in on;

please dismount
and hop aboard
my Rickshaw.

Salacious Sirens
Sang to my Uncle Sal
last Saturday.

The Tyrannosaurus Rex
Took my Toy
Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Umberto
was Ubiquitous.

Upsy-daisy,
I said
as I hoisted
Up the daisy.

I Vaulted
with great Velocity
over the Venerable Bede.

The beached Whale
Wasted away
on his diet of Wheat germ.

Whimbrels like Whey,
Whereas my Walrus
likes Whipped cream.

The Xanthan
hitched a ride
on my Xebec.

The Yellow-
bellied sapsucker
Yelled
at my buddy,
Yeats.

The Zen master
played a Zither
at Zero hour.

Paintings by Susan S. Roberts

2008-03-05T01:35:00.014-06:00

Susan S. Roberts is a painter, musician and art instructor. She lives and works in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Her work was recently included in The Red Clay Survey, 2007, Exhibition of Contemporary Southern Art, The Huntsville Museum of Art, Huntsville, Al., and The Dept. of Art All Faculty Exhibition 2008, The Sarah Moody Gallery of Art, The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Al. Additional exhibitions include a solo show in 2007 at Glitch9 Studio, Avondale (Atlanta), Ga. and inclusion in the following group shows: The Bi-State Art Competition, The Meridian Museum of Art, Meridian, Ms., 2007, The Southern Open Biennial, Acadiana Center for the Arts, Lafayette, La., 2007, A Sense of Place, The Gertrude Herbert Institute of Art, Augusta, Ga., 2006, and The PFAC Biennial, Peninsula Fine Arts Center, Newport News, Va., 2006.

Artist Statement

My paintings and drawings are concerned with the idea of an inherent conflict existing between binaries like the beautiful and the grotesque or the internal and the external. I am particularly curious about exploring the psychological state between attraction and repulsion. The subjects in my work, amalgams of form and sensation, are a way to investigate the moment of uncertainty that occurs when the mind seeks to evaluate disparate imagery within a form. By making hybrid images that blur the edges between humans, plants and animals, I call upon my continuing interest in the beautiful and the dark side of nature as a mirror of society. I intend for my work to provide a contradiction between an intuitive attraction to color, paint or graphite, and repulsion from bizarre form. By simultaneously employing these extremes, I create subtle conflict in my work and propose a sense of playfulness or of the grotesque.

(click on the images to view at full resolution in a new window)

Luscious, 48” x 60”, acrylic on paper, 2007

Altered State, 48" x 60" acrylic on canvas 2006

Look, 7" x 9", acrylic on paper, 2007

Organic Forms, 7" x 9", acrylic, ink and graphite on sanded paper , 2006

Green Alteration, 7" x 9", acrylic and ink on mylar and paper, 2007

Inflamed, 38" x 50", acrylic and graphite on paper, 2006

Inseparable-in-Conflict, 43" x 53", graphite on paper, 2006

Live Alteration with Topo Map, 7" x 9", acrylic and ink on mylar and paper, 2006

Blend, 7" x 9", acrylic, graphite and ink on paper, 2007

Blue Suspension, 7" x 9", white ink and acrylic on paper, 2006

Burst, 48” x 60”, acrylic on paper, 2007

Cocoon, 11" x 14", graphite on paper, 2007

Drips, 48”x 48”, acrylic on canvas, 2007

Poems by Mary-Marcia Casoly

2008-01-14T02:10:00.000-06:00

photo by Joe Petolino

Mary-Marcia Casoly is the author of Run to Tenderness, published by Pantograph Press and Goldfish Press. She is an active member of Waverley Writers, a long time poetry venue in Palo Alto, CA.

The Fox in the Road

The strange teashop has been closed. Out of business long since June. Gone spendthrift, you wedge in. Lean against the nest to be. Bird to the windowsill. Rain won’t believe a drop. Child’s drawing of wind rain sun why. The post hold and hole: Weigh us. Divine us. A source of light pulled up by the grass. A faked forgery. Thoughts penned in like a moose. Amtrack running backwards karma. So, the wife and children were rescued beside the car. Ground out from underneath them like a husband trying to be a hero or a cell phone’s spontaneous combustion. Three-degree burns. Are you shivering hopelessly lost? Part of a linage without a share? What quarries our search party? Man, he said, the ground is cold. River swims farthest. First bait rises to the fish. Remarkable or unremarkable witness how self trades consciousness and always sleeps with the last word. Power point of waking. Accordion blues. Harmonica blues. Hurdy-gurdy blues. For crying out juxtaposition. Life needs breathing. A joke of a forager. Yard by yardage sale. Road vanishing while announcing itself. Robert Frost washed out on the road fixing his tire. Then this laughter, this ambition. A kiss at the fork of the road. Spark and wonder. Back in business.

Taken Loosely, Bring Forth

Rain patters outside, as in days of old, as in the long ago of arks and oak, as if without a care in the Word— bring word of mouth, take the print loosely, roll it around, take a breath and speak it out loud. Read a poem which eyes river and drought while the touch screen warms. Read a novel of all circumstances. This complex move can be made over simple. A kind of emotional asthma ensues, then lifts. Wood grain. Memory sometimes crushes against the chest cavity. Everywhere cities blink. Consider your own collection of very short reflections. Do some mental push ups. Ingenious triple plays in old tongue. Ignore terrorizations brought on by too much gentle repetitions of petting. No, don’t panic. A hushed sensibility prevails. Has Academia become the new church? Wherefore authenticity? No alarm. Bookshelves have a calming wallpapered ambiance. Sit in front of the fireplace, indicate the poems by tapping the screen. Contemplate the afternoon trade-winds, out there, from inside. Remotely select your set. Fold and unfold self, a mere paper trick. Cloudy but clearly, let me know where you are. Such an undisciplined escape seems unlikely. Emigrate as if to another country. Yes you still enter and exit as before. Open. Who does the door for, let alone you, open?

Postcard Travels

Beaches. Feathers and pubic hair. Private roads and public inroads. Rubbers and rubs. She stopped speaking of them in the past tense. She mails her post at her earliest conveyance. Summer things put out for pick up. Recycle of a closing odalisque. The meaning, my friends, is she writes into and around the vestals and reclines herself deeper than burgundy. Unerringly there are errors within. She had taken on many colors. In love she was a lost blessing, then found. All that anyone ever meant to tell is no more clear, changes in the weather. A need for water. Then a poison, she’d taken for granted was left out for the housekeeper to find. Writing as if her hands, her fingers were distant to its villages. He’d warned her, and she never—and then, passing, thus died. Who killed whom? She writes. The writing was almost love itself, almost full of evening, almost everything alone. The thrill of expectancy. The bodies were never found. Quietly the trees in the grove repeat in closing. She ties a scarf around her neck. She lets arms play across the open quilt. Depressions of stones rise. Curls. She snips the curls along her panty line. Heads appear in white laurel, troubadours of child-thought fall away. Her travels were not politically correct. All predatory fossils, tea leaves, hair clipping and pencil shaving: She will mail them at her earliest conveyance.

The Goddess of Greenwood

She drank that shot straight. She laid down her wounds. When drawn inside her, he felt the next leaf and barkwood before it came to life. She refused to loosen her root. She forgave the night for being so impressed by his mane. Stone rolls on the river’s skin. She laid him to rest. A damp moth dances in a reverse-forest. What can or can’t be touched, kneel and pray, the real litany becomes. The mask slips to be cherished without any idea of how to dress or where to look. Lynx on the prowl. Mascara turned to resolve. Color seeking no approval. She did not think she would die. She cupped a cross to her chest, erotic to some. Empty bed of impromptu, unmade. As if some flea leaped through corrective tape. She wrapped a strip of film around her head. I imagine she thought she’d tough it out, even as the coughs wracked her body. Shadow rings around her eyes, night by night. Amazing cobalt butterfly. There she was with a huge vertical net and no one to brag to about it. Proud as the mouth of Aphrodite. Devouring the raven’s spread. I call to her now for guidance, she’d at least understand I think. At the end of the line her spider.

Lady Odyssey

I’ve come to think imprisonment is not so alluring and the red canary cunt quintescent bejewels my jukebox. Pavarotti died. Though I’d never appreciated him before, suddenly no other voice carries what I feel. Something closed now open. A wide brimmed hat of summer blown. Narrow stairs spiral. Her statuesque composite of nakedness, a white figure lost in the marsh weathered by delta shorthand. What must be undone before the birth-moon comes full. How would I or anyone else know when gone too far, or not far enough. My head a minefield. Telltale signs relent. She weaves through the labyrinth. It might be ironic, but the lady who dug herself this grave, wants to return. Morning song. Evening Song. Retouch the glistening wet mound. Pull in the stays. Cycles bicycles. Buried bulbs. Plenty of silver minnows poisoned in the mirror lake due to a fear of non-native pike. This collage so in need of scraps, salvation yardage. Silk sabotage. But then again you’re too kind. Can’t say I won’t deserve any criticism you might want to heap on. Carnival cherubic. Invest in no-fault insurance. Buy me an acre of mileage. Give me a small history of stardust. Make me a delinquent slip knot. French kiss. Paper slipper. Hand me the hangdog shuffle rooftop aria. Laugh out loud gorgeous, you know when it’s offered. Pinch me in a broken language. The red canary cunt quintescent bejewels my jukebox both ways.

The Echo

belonged when I arrived, when I came
swinging on branches, a chair midair above
dashes and glasses, penetrating dots
and crosses, and every other time
of day or night. Put your arms around this
skimmer of inflection, shimmer of protection.
Movies flicker before stars over and over
burn out. Did I mention the dam
almost ready to burst? Love comes by any
name you give. Nowhere can be found unless
wants cry in the wind, surfing gulls wink high.
I did nothing, absolutely
nothing when I was ten, when I was eight
someone else cleaned my plate, everything laid
out like clothes on the bed. All the small spoils
brushed. Toothpaste cap returned, unhurried back
shelved in the medicine chest. Travel
any distance, it is worth the instant,
no longer than short. Dust sheds endlessly,
sticks like paper mâché, like a stranger’s
laugh believing himself completely
alone. That’s how once or twice I departed,
tears blurring the hazy sun’s eye. I forgot
about the other keys that fit. I forgot
about the last line. I forgot to keep
count. Now whatever else, wherever we
go, there’s a red bird on the breast, our hands
over flood water.

Goddess Your Gown

I’ve been feeling uncertain about the fitting. Smoky quartz richly contrasts pale Iris. Once a week or less: sides slit. Everything meant to be ignored and inexplicably not— with intricate openwork. Showing your lingerie is in fashion. Someone one told me, told me, what was it they told me? Old. No bulk over the bar, boys. Casablanca-like hue. Dusky light. She recalls a bamboo standing planter. Coins for the casket. Resting on her gloved hand, the oldest living bird’s dark expansive wings stretched, struggling from the leather leash to take flight. They say whatever she has in those old trunks, she’ll come back looking for one of these days. Twelve-inch heels, her body’s magnificent real estate. Peacock vessels, Meditation bells. Cocker burner, Karnak shells. Finials.
Her Unicorn urn, Gecko gongs, Amber drum. Beaded thong. I am no longer who I used to be. I carve your name here, underneath her bench. The goddess --

Force of Nature

Just because it can’t be seen right now doesn’t mean apples don’t fall from the tree when they’re ripe, cushioned by a thick layer of leaves and fur gathered close to the trunk, keeping a crisp tang and bite in wait underneath the peel. Funny the way the sharp changes the direction of the music and offers a pause, breasts chance to embrace and laugh little different than some tart sense of spontaneous effort released, hangs as sweet pungent presence that which lingers on the fingers, here, yearning for certain plunder yet to come, come, just because, let us fall for the tree. This is the force of nature.

All the Wind in the World

Nothing can prevent it or notice. How our cups clink. Oh! Not to be excluded. We span out as far as we might. A kind of outrage never minds the broom. Imagine petals as kind of wings, which will struggle up out of the ground. The bulbs are children tied down. If I buried them by turning on a single bulb or granted admission — did I rent something? What else did I receive, as if there was a breakthrough, a free for all offer or I suppose, there may have been an effort to erase those tracks. Entwined with a cobbled street and some repetitious idea. Only all the wind in the world. Go back to sleep, that’s why; so many have already left, gone, good gone. Bare limbs. It was some time after not reading tea leaves. Not knowing what belongs, blessings or redeeming tremors. Creaking bedsprings. Talk about all the missing stanzas or blind snow needing shape or scent needling the hot house rose. Dear old woman continues to wring the last drop out of the squeegee in dire need of retirement. Now, surrender us to the sun robbing the moon’s back. Frost on tropical plants. Handsome shoulders. This thought takes place —in place of rain. Someone I know reads between all the lines. Between the rocks. Glint of rings shine even if we do not wear them. When we come up on edge. Hedge our bets. Jump, as if, then there it is hidden beneath the bench. Someone, a friend of mine, recalls, it was a mummified rabbit. He just returned from Reno. A journey to winter’s end perhaps, which is not done yet. Calling an echo in front, and I walk, calling the sheer touch of nothing— the wind.

Last Last Last

A tongue without voice, nothing, an ellipsis laps upon the oldest lake. Fluids run throughout the not yet. Each and every one of us then last, until tranquilized in accident. Intimacy in peril. Speaking that familiar sepia resplendently. Sleeplessness covering the field of else: lists and filler, labor and rations, averages and stanza. An improvised daily dictate. Extravagance of dunes, sententious over-drive opens up until the pot lid slams down on Winter. A deluge, gray rain clouds flower over bare rocks and stiff clothes kerning, tempering a foggy dress. The sky indifferent to come cries. No one leaves the other way. Concorde wings one block from the sunset where he/she becomes apparition. Unwitting hooks and eyes appearing ever illusive. Take us, us, us.

THE PROSE POEMS OF MARY-MARCIA CASOLY
by Jack Foley

The world is all that is the case.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Tractatus
Thought can be of what is not the case.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations.

Mary-Marcia Casoly’s prose poems are an extraordinary instance of an artist allowing the world to impinge upon her consciousness. Whatever is there is there: “the world is all that is the case.” At the same time—eschewing both “literalism” and a bondage to “things”—she allows imagination and a deep playfulness with language to have their say as well: “Thought can be of what is not the case.” The result is an awareness that seems to be open to anything—which welcomes absolutely anything: “Poetry, watercolor and books read by the moon…The angel spreads out. This is the beach where the sun walks.” Writing of this kind by no means originates with Casoly—some kinds of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry have some of the same qualities—but there is a kind of freshness and tenderness to Casoly’s work that is like no one else’s. Everything in her kaleidoscopic chaos resonates. It is like a vision of innocence in which the author brings the reader into a situation in which, not anything but any sentence may happen: “Unicorn urn. Gecko gongs. Amber drum.” We sometimes read novels to experience the “world” the novel is presenting—and that world is often an exotic one. Yet plot, character, and narrative development all eventually restrict the novel’s world, which narrows as it moves towards self-definition. In Casoly—whose work is plotless, characterless, and non-narrative—world opens to more world: no restrictions. Once you tune in on it, her prose is not “difficult” but joyful, charming, full of sly humor—in short, poetic. “January is the skin itself, the wind, fingers that find the way forward. Amen, the wrongs of the words transparent.”

Poems by Katherine Hastings

2007-11-12T01:09:00.002-06:00

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXphoto by Jack Foley

Katherine Hastings is the author of Sidhe and Wolf Spider, both published by dPress and Lonidier Rampant, published by the Small Change Series, WordTemple Press. She founded and hosts the WordTemple Poetry Series in Santa Rosa, CA, bringing well-established poets together with poets who have not yet published a book and hosts a radio program, also called WordTemple, on Santa Rosa's NPR affiliate, KRCB 91.1 FM. For more information go to www.wordtemple.com

Tell a Story, Tell a Lie, or Get Out
-- Irish Proverb

So Love came in and he didn’t have on
a long white robe but a pair of baggy
pants maybe from the AIDS or Opera store
and a moony grin peaceful not obscene
and the first thing he did was turn off
the overhead and shove the floor lamps around
so shadows took over the room
each of them with their own quick tide
of breath and song and he said “See? We’re
all here, “not just the Donna Reed shadow or the
Father Knows Best shadow, but Lolita and Casanova and…"

She was embarrassed at the sight
of so many of them as they shot
out from under her skin in the half-
dark of her mortified desire, some of them
near fainting at a little kiss, others conspiring
to cut the feet off every Thou Shalt Not.

Love held a volume open in his hands:
Quips, confusions, riddles and poems,

I am trying to awaken you!

Translucent focus/revival
vein of silver

from that star
to your ear

cream colored button
under three fingers

(inching deeper)

blush on petal’s edge

moth-wings flying the fretbridge

(and deeper)

of desire.

Small birds flew out and played
at the back of her knees and the shadows
were merry and the shadows frowned

and the shadows turned red and began to whisper
holy, holy!/ evil doings/ red affairs red-
blood/ blood rushing/extreme danger/increased
appetite/street gangs/Satan/snooker balls/Say,
that book sure is good !

quizzes, conundrums, poems

Bet you’ll never guess the sparrows
I’ve got here.

What is sacrificed?

Perched on a pile of books
drawn to the head
the light calls the answer, calls
shame to them.

Love (or was it Lust) turned off the lamps then.
“Just for a while,” he said,
here, directly here,
you must sit and taste my –

Pearls
scattered across the floor, their string
undone.

Lady of Transformations
Ad solam dominam usque pipiabat – Catullus
(One endless solo to his only goddess – Zukofsky)

The first step in the Eleusinian mysteries
has to do with sex. There are images,
colored marbles and brown pottery
painted red

She walks out of the sleeping woodlands, air
echoing
questions of ground-shift and understory

and on into the bright night, the moon
white as lilium, unclouded
on half-opened lids, flowers
made to seduce the senses:
fragrance,
form,
color

She steps off
sails
down – wind trillium –

to the iridescent marvelous foam-line of sea

She lets it touch her –
rise, fall, re-rise –
gently
so she must walk in
rhapsodized
floating
on depthless freedom
laughing
exiled
singing

Hiding Our Love
from a poem by Emperor Wu-ti
(from a grateful dog to the baker of cookies
shaped like Scottish Terriers)

Never believe I leave you
(or that you leave me)
From any desire to go.
(Desire lives on my tongue)
Never believe I live so far away
(I only half-live while away from you)
Except from necessity.
(not my invention)
After a whole day of separation
(only in the lowly Human sense)
Still your dark fragrance clings to my skin.
(embraces my conditioned fur)
I carry your letter everywhere.
(the scent of you in poetry)
The sash of my dress wraps twice around my waist.
(invisible leash that ties)
I wish it bound the two of us together.
(loosely, sweetly, each day a different color)

Do you know that we both conceal our love
(though everyone can feel it)
Because of prior sorrow, superstitious fear?
(and let's not forget Doggy cookies are $1.50 each!)
We are two citizens of a savage era
(O Dyslectic people! Not "God!")
Schooled in disguises and in self-command,
(I lay down for you, you for me)
Hiding our aromatic, vulnerable love.
(Let us stroll, you and I, behind the blossoming buckeye)

Note: Every other line starting with the first is by Emperor Wu-ti, translated by Carolyn Kizer. Every parenthetical line is by Radar the dog. I'm responding to Kizer's poem on a line-by-line basis. Jack Foley may have originated this technique in his poem "Bukowski."

The Shape of a Girl

5 a.m. in the I-Hop lot,
a black truck painted
America’s Naughtiest,

For a Good Time Call…

*

Come Inside
pancake house radiance,
slow walk to table to chair
early edition cradled

and Lorca in New York

Right there
a pimp and his girl

She nods to the beat
overhead

For Your Love, For Your Love
I Would Give You All I Could.

Sweet moment, that nodding.

*

Random Lorca

Si el aire sopla blandamente
mi corazón tiene la forma de una niña

If the air blows softly
my heart takes the shape of a young girl

Glance up and over
Green, green and yellow in a cheek.

*
OJ from concentrate

Over a booth, a story one on one:
My man came home,
took one look at my cut hair,
slapped me across the face.
Like that.

*

What does your
foot find in the dark? Incest
is boot camp for prostitution.

*

Egg Toast

I’ve had 3 broken arms, nose broken twice, a small
fragment of bone floating in my head – gives me
migraines. My feet, bottom of my feet, have been
burned.

*

Her foot, delicate as the dazzle,
taps haiku:

You see the flower
inside, or you miss the moon –
even with her light.

The passage of night
is truthfully heaven’s work.
I gaze to distance.

My child will say
We ate well in safe, loaned rooms;
she dreamed of gardens.

*

a little ash
where her footsteps fall

a soft chorus echoes
through dawn’s thinning veil

Walking woman, woven hair
of childhood

shared hour smoothing its covers
for her solo body,
her tilted stack of dreams –

She walks in beauty –
no!
Head up
among the mirage
of fading stars

Katherine Hastings

Poems by Carl Wiener

2007-10-24T00:19:00.002-05:00

Carl Weiner is a poet and educator living in San Francisco. His books include Fifteen Poems and Niagra.

A Separate Torture

You were always a solitude and your
essential biography, I believe,
should take account of your invisible

antagonist, on the one hand,

and the chairs, sofas or beds you flung
yourself down upon in order
to regain your strength, on the other.

Speeded up, it would have looked like
a dark episode in vaudeville,
but you were really enacting your own

comprehensive form of torture:

the gift to those who invite the conflicted
world into their hearts in order
to more authentically ravage themselves.

September 2007

Mystery of Distance

I answered those who estranged me by making
immediate reference to faraway places
with my mouth and hands. I guess I was
showing them the lengths I was willing
to go—so as never to see my antagonists
again. I dressed in the multifarious lands to
appropriate the mystery of distance and
to give my enemies the chance to scream in chorus.

In a close circle around me was evidence of
love; and many precious and admirable
things. You would have said that I was
almost culpably blind, the way I persistently
suggested the voyager I was to become.

September 2007

Of Las Vegas

In the hotel garden where the palm fronds
resembled shuttlecocks, and the spray
of the lawn sprinklers revealed rainbows,

her almost accusative gaze made it clear
that she listened for innuendo in everything
that was said to her that morning,

though she chose, for reasons of her own,
not to respond out loud,
but to gravely nod instead.

I now think of her as the visible spirit of that
place, who grew in memory to signify “desert”:

not only the surrounding one of sand dunes
and flats, but even more so the verb form,

as when we speak of abandonment, or
leaving someone without intending to return.

August 2007

Essential Landscape At Galway

In the forceful current of the River Corrib’s
mouth, the isolate, sometimes elderly fishermen
stand in water up to their thighs, with more
than a little hope for a catch of trout. I see
another aspect of this country in the faces
of the old, whenever my eyes meet theirs,

and understand that the years don’t mainly serve to accredit us.

I am never too far from remembering
the prayer that has resolved in me over time:
that I must never lose what I have so vulnerably
gained, and holding my own against oblivion,
that I may keep what heart’s knowledge I have garnered,

even past the waters of Lethe itself.

October 2007

Spastic Milonga

Because I doubt I will ever come here again
I want to chance to meet you, once more.

You could not be expected to know that I would
travel this far in search of you,

that one brief encounter so long ago would
implant you forever in my mind, that I would go

so far as to come to your land more or less
in the hope of finding you again.

I know that memory distributes itself with
absurd inequality, that for me you are unforgettable

while for you I am now a stranger among millions.
(Instead of your face, I met the sad and

recognitive face of this city, the city where you live.)

July 2001

Song

Sometimes I am death in the eyes of love,
and sometimes I am love in face of death.
This can happen in the course of the very same day.

(I will gladly up and dance to Sibelius though
I hear the hollow clicks of a contradictory
metronome not too far away.)

This is the underworld where Eurydice pines
for Orpheus, and this is the world above,

as well, where Orpheus prepares to descend
and to retrieve, from Hades, his precious love.

August 2007

Carl Wiener

Joel Chace

2007-07-31T02:57:00.000-05:00

Joel Chace has published poetry and prose poetry in print and
electronic magazines such as 6ix, Tomorrow, Lost and Found Times,
Coracle, xStream, Three Candles, 2River View, Joey & the Black Boots,
Recursive Angel, and Veer. He has published more than a dozen print
and electronic collections. Forthcoming from BlazeVox Books is
CLEANING THE MIRROR: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS, and
from Paper Kite Press, MATTER NO MATTER, another full-length
collection. For many years, Chace has been Poetry Editor for the
experimental electronic magazine 5_Trope.

icon

. everything impending on the

difference between costumes

and customs // or almost

reversed // sang their children’s

rhyme but blew it like

mock-epic about a mother-accomplice

of accusative case // I mean /

wouldn’t you think that you’d

at least have clean thoughts / following

melancholy’s confinement and strength .

church rice

. dear motherfucker / wait / was that

over the top // if it’s under

the hemlocks / does it still count as

seduction // all right / as depravity /

they tried heart-colored letters / attractive /

stirring / animated gossamer // in

the end it all came down

to robbery // clues were essence / awe

spotting / fat and vanity // forgive us

this day our daily decencies .

anthracite museum

. all right now / what’s this

about autocratic rulers // characteristic

of mortality / might not be of

spinning / though somehow

the heavier head kept rising

up with the oddest livery

tatters // tier after tier after

weed // pleasure or not /

here we come // but maybe

wait to see what the next

emptiness has in mind .

little doggone

. favorite limitations / their ship

with such sick leavings /

unintentional suburban painter // found

down // most people / when they

do work during the day // operating

disruption // budget cuts affected

dire straits’ hours // confused / shy /

feet planting the sound

of democratic despair .

odyssey

. concept for a new fortune

cookie that avoids clichés

like the plague // chip-makers getting

in on the ground floor /

high-flyers getting in

for free // it’s tough if your

propaganda department fucks

up // what do they

pour into trenches these days .

twisting tail

. possessing what goes down /

what is thrown over // a way to

something other than a sign or a

guy just farting around // you might

detect a note of inefficiency /

shortness / simplicity // philosopher’s

coat // prudent intensity // hell /

rile the quality / padlock

the end .

Joel Chace

Andrew Topel

2007-06-22T23:43:00.000-05:00

to·pel
Pronunciation: 'toe-pell
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): to·pel·inzki /-p(&-)el[ki]/
Etymology: from the mind of God, from the womb of Topel, Sharon, 1977
intransitive verb : to form poetry or as if from language robed in Swahili
transitive verb
1 : to cause a deep rumble trapped in whispers
2 : to make compositions made of letters, music or thoughts (as paper, cloth, or wood)
glued on a surface of linguistic texture

an·drew
Pronunciation: 'an-(")drü
Function: noun
Usage: to name what changes shape
Etymology: And (&) from the bowels of other universes
Rew, proper name and short for renew
: a person who is sewn in ink

thoughts begin to form 1

thoughts begin to form 2

portal 11a

portal 12a

portal 13a

text sculpture 1

text sculpture 2

text sculpture 3

text sculpture 4

text sculpture 5

text sculpture 6

text sculpture 7

pain ting 8

pain ting 12

digital breakdown of the poet
diagram 1a

digital breakdown of the poet
diagram 1b

Andrew Topel

Shannon Smith

2007-05-30T01:58:00.000-05:00

(Shannon Smith is a visual artist living in Birmingham Alabama. Recently she was diagnosed with AVM - Arterio veinous malformations, a rare form of brain tumor. In Shannon's case the tumor is inoperable. The treatment for the embolism is even more painful than the tumor itself. The combination of illness and treatment has rendered her unable to work in her usual mediums, but she has been strong enough to write poetry about her experience. She is under the care of physicians at the medical center at the University of Alabama in Birmingham - a research hospital and one of the best in the country. However, if anyone reading this knows of a specialist, alternative treatment, or anything additional that might help Shannon, please contact me at: jakebridget@bellsouth.net)

TWELVE BLANKETS FOR MY BRAIN

After the surgeons have
rearranged my head,
they become concerned
about my body temperature
at eighty six degrees. It is strange,
because I do not feel cold, only empty.
Nurses bring one blanket after another
wrapping me up tightly. I feel warm
but trapped and weighted down like
swimming with my clothes and shoes on.

Two more blankets
added to the pile-
Now I am just tangled like
A fish in a fishing net not knowing which way is up
or out. My voice trapped under layers of thick cotton.
And when I reach the numeric definition of normal, I do
not feel different or normal, mostly just trapped.
Tucked in, but no bedtime story.
I picture myself escaping from the hospital;
sliding in my socks on the shiny floors,
running down the halls,
riding elevators ,
waving to other patients.
My blankets alone in a pile on the floor.

LOOKING FOR WHAT IS LEFT

The darkness is back,
hovering over this crumpled body
where waves of pain call home.
The blackness has become opaque now
Not even outlines of the everyday.

Morphine, Fetanyl, Sekanol- hello lovers.
I hide as I swallow nails.
The shutters bang against windows.
It is too late for prayer.
Lightning cracks the night sky
shattering my skull
on the zipper of scars,
one stitch at a time.

Sleep will never find me here.
The warden of pain shakes his keys
at my cage. These are not the tears of heartbreak-
much too salty, much too free.

This darkness is heavy and suffocating
like a fishing net with weights.
If I am here tomorrow,
I will go look for myself
kicking bones out of the way,
to see what is left

Shannon Smith

Poetry by John Tritica

2007-05-07T01:30:00.000-05:00

John Tritica is the co-founder, with Mary Rising Higgins, of L)Edge, a poetry circle now in its 22nd year in Albuquerque, NM. He is the translator of the Swedish poet Niklas Törnlund : All Things Measure Time (The Landlocked Press, 1992). His book How Rain Records Its Alphabet was published in 1998. Sound Remains will appear later this year from Chax Press. He teaches gifted youngsters at Wilson Middle School & engages in backyard farming & soirees.

Synaptic Expanse

1

day careens rivercode
leanward sets text tone

motions evince light
reclaim another

practice edged into keeps
the viscera intact

runs seedpoint wink proof
change ingredients

solves night torn kneels
toward open

planet skin healsite
over time scope ceiling

riverroute intern pays
toll chain turns evidence

stands change fire

2

birdsong punctuates
traffic rumble

noisetone rakes ear
drumbeat satisfies

electric surge
hint moist tinge

tasty air conducts
morning after rain

cycle vein strength
finesse as inaudible

shriek hired to work
out dayline sounding

crowds arrive together

3

an instant stretches
out in rhythm

measure rips
time sort pine

branch highkicks
windward lands

eyebrush lingo
talus tile every

reason shot
say torrents

say eddies
funnel clouds

accelerate
time thinkspace

margins’ location
squintwidth invents

open ear moistleaf
pleases sound last

tone energy vibrates

4

origin located
in subterranean swirl

celestial strum
high voltage silence

in throes of stirred elixir
beside rhythmic bends

unfurl each step measures
stride turned echoes

footfall soul tiers time
bundles habitation

by right of a body’s motion
as it appears in origin’s

nameless keeping of the beat

5

exhilaration surge
temblor shakes

contact ripens
cellular current

rhythmic curl
liminal swing

interprets each instant
draws available

silhouette candlescape
nightwind flickerseed

able in the deed

6

incessant run
alternate route

blood pressure
called footlight

pine seedling
breathe type reads

startled inclusion
messageboard bleeds

language found fleeing
sunlight glares

ubiquitous squint
site unseen

distant glimpse
immediate deed

flutelight ceiling
roused in seeing

accomplishment keeping

7

sound allures
the ear’s memory

creates around
now-sized lightning

powers electrical
outage appliance

deems stillness
flashes messagecrowds

go with synaptic
expanse lays naked

electrical wake
splayed season

rawsurge shaking

8

energy umbrellas
around the body

absorbs into orbit
capacity to renew

woundseal
scartissue stretches

children dilate
possibility’s command

handlength above
ability to seize

improves a subject’s reach

9

wayoutthere
in sound music makes

a branch blooms
text tone motion

curls a melody
repeats invitation

calls featherflight
meeting just above

the northern rim
a note quietsound

streaming pursues
the way song rings

a distant immediate reach--

10

fifteen musicians
in that room

four drummers
notwithstanding

attention to
singular

beat produced
in the solar

plexus full
into deep

listening nameless
currents presswing

the veins
in conclusive

tapwidth drumming
lyric concision

the guitar’s stealth line

11

comb entropic curse
to reverse irrelevance

contemporary sound
a vacant well

echoes drillbite
makes it strange

present glimpse
remote intimacy

cortex blitz
signals sonic

currentbreaks rhythm
swells wavetight

effort seeing

12

duration of flutter
stretches time

rhythmcatch
motion magnifies

a call to attend
wavechance local

focus tempo
stands leg-arm unfolds

handheld flutter

13

guitar stringshivers
tone slight

strum assembles
fingerpicks along

neck trims air-fire
fingers muscle

continual stretch
an eighth-inch further

along the shiver

14

left leg extends
air-point nimbus

shelter in sunrise sky
warms the shape

shade takes on
outstretched hand

light mottled across
fingernails drives

autumnal expansion

15

flamepath
quickfuel windy

infernal heat
tongue sole flickers

haloes about fingertips
psychotropic surge

stormeffect index
works visual

currency fits now

16

whistle thorn
throws off

endorphin spin
stepcycle medley

salutes ride across
instantgrill

hollows wood
forge vibrates

passion still
engagement shores

whistle thorn motion

17

fitful finesse
times beat

equals takeoff
supplies enable

arms to bowstretch
tension peaksolve

vibrates eyes
synaptic design

rides rhythmcage
shakedown travels

according to the beat

18

scopeflex process
celestial train

summons drum
handflash rhythm

section describes
movement as such

terrestrial refrain
strumscope brightens

tonescent leavens
guitarhand cycles

windsown trees

19

breathhewn weight
saver inhales

scrutiny whiff
blade secures

the plane against
swarms & baffles

skyborn breeds
wary fatigue

rapture torn
escape width

seizegap measures

20

synapse digsound
carries tempo on

rhythmic back
excavates work

setslight motion hands
into verve taste

aroma site measures
memory into sound

splash transition

21

topnote camouflage
nightbound train

electric whiff
interstices reside

thought moves in
resilience deed

delivers promise
tonelong notes peak in

tension wire motive

22

a weld buckets out
some balance

in extreme annular
rings' tempo

designs a reading
act invention

dramaglobe sends
synaptic expanse

drumhead vibrates
insistent beat

keeps a body's motion

23

flamebed sharpens
pulsemight lean

shape can’t contain
drumsurge bridge

sound extends
selection dendrites

house a nextnote
keeps beatsake

tempo strings
sharpen guitar

doubles signify
rhythm shakes

singular in its deed

24

not hierarchy
horizontal swirl

tunnels under
downriver synthesis

listening one line
to the next

treasure plucks
drumfire guitar

supports spiral
design in rhythm

tunes shuffle toll

--John Tritica

Afterwords: Tribute

I have been continually excited by the generative innovative nature of the work of Nathaniel Mackey whose virtuosity extends through poetry, fiction, and criticism, expansive in its range, and revolutionary in its scope. Last summer I was re-reading Atet A.D. (City Lights, 2001). The letter dated 6.IV.82 was on my mind for many weeks. The jazz storytelling of N., who tells but does not narrate. Here Mackey coins a number of language gems: “immanent atmosphere, spheric dilation, synaptic expanse." In a later part of the same letter he uses the equally intriguing expression “psychotropic surge” (32). He gives me the pleasure of great lyrical beauty, which maintains its relevance in the currency of innovation in poetry. Throughout this time (June/July 06) I was also reading Splay Anthem, which won the 2006 National Book Award. I am astounded by the boldness of Mackey’s work, its inventiveness that feels like some swinging combination of Amiri Baraka, Kamau Brathwaite, and Robert Duncan, but whose poetry always sounds singularly like itself. Mackey, like Duncan, provides a whole world of skills, philosophical references, and crucial texts, that, taken as a whole, can show us a new facet of the curriculum. It is with a spirit of inventiveness that I embarked upon “Synaptic Expanse.”

While writing this series, I also quote Bob Dylan from Rolling Stone (“The Genuis of Bob Dylan” September 7, 2006, p.80) in section 10 of the poem. Mackey aficionados will recognize Dylan’s use of “notwithstanding,” a word that often occurs in Mackey’s writing. This poem was generated by one of the great poets of our time. It’s as though Mackey’s work gave me permission to write “Synaptic Expanse.”

Poetry by Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino

2007-04-17T00:20:00.000-05:00

On March 17, 2007, Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino read his poetry at The Bowery Poetry Club as part of a show hosted by Mark Bloch and featuring the poet John M. Bennett. Here follow the poems Gregory read at that show.

The Galloping Man

1.

placing, a look
a gull

or, recreation, rewards or to a mind
a perfect tool

or, law. At last
if it had been the turning of a water wheel

2.

A rope, or green
standing in, closer

to hand, is lost, in arms
on seeing, early on, a hold, or, in hand

a title, a given space
or,

as upon question, or, appellation, a spur
or, so to convey

3.

in alternating causes, in states and professions
a line on end

in cloth, in measure, in anonymity and in parodies
to vary

or,
familiar. Passing fast, in jolly tapers and leagues

and in the interest of descriptions, turning back
to rote places, to notes

and floss
a certain sun, and moon and stars

4.

and out of house, a useless emulation
getting to, or, not to use

a looking outward, in secret, deciding
it is latent, and pause

and lasting into song. how does
a body know, here is a hand, and here, is a sentence

or,
what’s riding on hearts

Canteen

of one to one, is said
or

epic letters
are come to rescue said assertions

one above and one below
to the left, or

face to face
but do not be, a pair, a

parallel and unexpected giving, to
or

in belief
as late as, so, to, merits an assertion, runs

in unexpected pairs, in relations
or,

as in relations.
Say,

in relation, or alike.
And so to cease, or parry.

so, to, cease or closet or border a routine
or

length, but do not be, a pair
a parallel and unexpected giving, to

or,
in belief

The Wet Motorcycle

1.

of the wives and of the son
are sane, are vest and savage.

of the movements, and repose
are riot, and samaritan

2.

to follow kit and medal. laying by.
the eye, in evidence

is making prayer
is counting money

a giving thanks or self congratulation
a giving thanks or self congratulation

a person, a principle, who bind and loose
the parallel legs

the parallel arms
the body of straight lines

3.

the ways are few but roses
and there are caterpillars everywhere

and every thing is real and everything is illusion,
my love.

4.

at fortune, or pasture, a summons
or

roster. a melody or loot
The stilted boot and recollection, charged, delayed

A landscape of one’s own. A caper, in recruit.
And darling, openly.

Donation Street

to see, is upon you, my love
accord, of its own room

is dash or passage, a voice
unannounced, beginning, out of cups

and see, a little nearer
as of, or, to see another, an Adam

in pane, or day, or, for, to see
or,

to lie abed
on row, sleepless, and gone again, freely

a braid, as an air, or, can
inarm a gin or reach or compensation, when

a pedal
being able and intelligent, or left untied

are soon, or, in groups
in rest, in taste, or air or still, my love

a sympathetic sound, can, or great day
or,

so is always, so
a visitor, a note, a saying, a style

is lost, or, to fraternity
will have a peer, a, or marks a place

as to color, as to open, to mention and to pause
and so on

to sentence
a second eye to a face in profile

or found his posture so delightful, so, when
a flute or voice comes in a distance

and so on, to see, a sound, a turn
a visitor

being followed, to purpose
quieted, as good as settled, or waited, or come up

even,
when there is no moon in the sky

Aver

1.

in name. in aver and consent.
lantern days

being prior, being parallel, being consequent
are accessory

are loft. And lease
what is common, what is sound.

2.

in name. in whiles, a discipline.
a place in accidence.

dated. in tackles.
in loss. in miracle,

unequal days.
a jot or tittle. or,

this is a name, and, this, an apparition
written, printed in a book.

3.

origin and purpose
as past or to come, or, to engender

emulation.
is going on, is going on

unsleeping. seated
into hand. independent of standing.

this is the sound a body makes,
at rest.

4.

in expectancy, in nows and in permanence
when onlie wiles, the latter.

5.

to liberty, by which persons, to liberty, were.
or property.

any loss in reputation. the measure
so decided

the light of day.
a calendar. a card. a card or celebration.

titles. averting. the meal. the carrousel.
the ward and faculty of days.

6.

so fashioned. in rivalry or attraction
ensemble days.

an interruption. A new beginning.
this emotion is killing me.

and how, this is the sound
of an emotion that is killing me

7.

the cat has a bird on her mind.
the cat has a bird on her mind.

8.

in likeness. in agreement.
cannot be said to move. being vertical

horizontal into hand. or cannot square
being vertical, and horizontal into hand

and there is nobody else for me
there is nobody else for me

but you, my love
and I believe in everything

Catching Up

and would you could express it
with stone and bitumen

a hedge of hide and chatter
for the anonymous flip, of a coin.

and fawn,
to sing, of time and of distinctions

of cause and of case
and not to measure, the merits

in very idiosyncrasy
asserted, in room of learning and sufficiency.

the swift and stubborn and medley appointment.
the predilection, quietly, transparency

must be pronounced transparency
must be pronounced insistence

and handed on.
or did not think in terms of Sinai.

a detail of anatomy, say.
a knot in a rope.

and to be shamefully naked.
this comes in the form of an emergency.

this comes in the form of a middle voice.
this comes in the form of a pretty bride.

and this is the poetry
of having known the light of common day.

deeply. and necessarily.
readily. and necessarily.

Tops

1.

a plum or knob, to see
purposes, prior to, or, unlike a knob or fruit

a purchase, or gestalt
in time or in enumeration

the nature of a stick in sand, the nature
of a rib, stuck upright in a palette

before a spry, metaphysician
an accent, passing close, unstoppered

2.

a poem, in simple measure
can say the names of surrogate places,

can count the change in a blind man’s cup
a day, in folds, moves, asking leave to come and go

when having heard, are setting works, in geography
to days

when having heard, are breathing deeply
into cups

3.

going, is town to town, changing hands
into cups

4.

in act and in objective
another sequence, or condition, in nearness, to

spinning articles, and arrival, at once
a wish or trespass

the entrance of a man.
And as was consonant with sleep in daylight

after hurry, and pursuit, after warp and corrugation
given,

to say, the saying of a fold, this is a face
or,

this is a church, and, this is a moment
in a wheel

a father, and a son, a wife, or, inflection
recovering a no

(Thanks go to In Posse Review #13 for “Canteen” and “The Wet Motorcycle,” to The Germ #2 for “Donation Street,” to Nthposition for strophes 1 to 4 of “Aver,” to Movement One for “Catching Up,” and to Malleable Jangle #7 for “Tops.”)

New Poetry by Alan May

2007-04-01T23:18:00.000-05:00

Alan May’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The New Orleans Review, Double Room, Willow Springs, E-ratio, Kulture Vulture and others. He holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Alabama. His book Notes toward an Apocryphal Text, a collaboration with the artist Tom Wegrzynowski, was published in 2006 by Port Silver Press. You can find out more about the book here.

*

Each held his own internal each
Her own boisterous they wore
Their leather mouths the frenzied jar

*

The skirts like fields each word each body
She combed her pockets reached for drink

*

In my darkroom they hang
Photos of ragged dandelions
Their futile attempts

*

After crucifix release to assembly
Resemble torn handkerchief

*

Their wings flapping among the tulips
The mouth of the flytrap open to reveal

*

The pastor called
In the voice of 3rd

The night
On palomino flocking/ surround

*

Ad/ venture with ego/ twilight.
No parish/ sleep to bind.

*

In the sun house bougainvillea
A guitar in corner to spot by far
The left to the air aloft amidst
Candles disguised blooms

*

The spirit transplanted into fern
To outlive that will outlive

*

When sit scholar of light principled
By beyond deserve never mind
Me molecule Genghis Khan

*

Advisory committee brings
Gabopentin robed
In gowns made of flax

*

The verse consumed behemoth
As tilted the metropolis

*

Replaced your obit with omelet
Combed voice to illicit
Rode your shoulders
To the mosque

*

The muse resembled grackle
Or dirty gumdrops falling
From dime machine

*

Locking through the saw
I see starlight

*

We peeked through window
To watch Swills Guard roll out
Hammers. Floyd thought of a flag,
felt patriotic.

*

We rolled the Pope
Into cigar we smoked
Pow-wow-style.
Such a gentle man,
such fine hair.

*

Footprint lingers near river
Whose impression in our Buicks
Made the steeples bleat like lambs

*

The buttons of his eyes
Were closed we followed
That cart like dogs

Poems by Lee Ballentine

2007-03-19T02:25:00.000-05:00

Lee Ballentine's poems have been published in Abraxas, The Denver Quarterly, Exquisite Corpse, Mississippi Mud, 26 and his five books; the latest is Medusas. He is the editor of UR-VOX and of POLY which James Laughlin wrote was "pushing up into the Amazon of the new poetry."

solecipsism

my cellphone is my dog’s bark when puzzled

I talk a little louder than conceivably necessary
before the accident

I don’t exist and you I hypothecate

my dog’s bark when puzzled

recorded this conceivably necessary way of showing off
my tattoos

no substitution is my scheme, schema
of the invisible self

ringing, buzzing, can you hear me?

soliloquy
paratext

upon within
the you are by
and my
stone stopping
the pause
over instead
become, receive
around whose
worships of
possess full other
had his both
along one
axis by and
my withheld
are two complete

yet give this flask
eclipse, improve
when his
itself and unbeknown
and morphine rote
or linear scream applaud
follow has bends
with which my
distance drenched
aspirate inward
turns the opus
or wave opera
staggering this
yourself and gorgery

the cell and caul
whose strangling
no provocation brings
signal which
I cipher yet
your proofs
fast growth
plumb to their
rope portable
strained each their
piece incarnate
provident

you even
rocks, whose little
we shall set
infinite wild and
taut within
or shall
which light whom
distance drenched
by this follow, on
disnaked dialect

against french sympathy 2 

not mine said the man on the sofa
even less yours said the cadaver
driven to attend mass every hour
out of wounds received kneeling
on a steamtable cello
cushioned only by hypnosis
whose stamens press-out umbrella color
levitate aircraft wheels of snowglass reflection
of the rope, plumb where he awakens
wearing a dress shirt, opening a fan
playing musical saw on a table
against french sympathy
its woolen fringe rattling
like a copper stroke corded in lost Europe
flavors of injection, bailing out
boats that sink under his knees
another vehicle’s ball and wheel under glass
like a breast reflected in two mirrors at dawn
loud as congas announcing
an end to interstate boxing
Malaysia would fit snugly
as a submarine touches the wall
of the fallopian tube, its knees
wired for cylindrical dress, its pedestal
of angels work a scope for promotion
and viewpoints, however linear
still plumb the depths
of cordial resurrection

the fou-gou

will you make this posture?
the head folded down
the fist genuflects
the legs hold their tongue

the body is full of infinitesimals
whirlpools, spores, rain
the body is rain falling or if a groan, whose?
I stand at the gate of horn, entry the skew of it
the middle house I ascend, descend
my entry solitaire, rotation of dissenting sky
cover my head with dust of candlesight

the fou-gou is a house underground
house occipital
house of houses knowing
house of missing voices
house retrograde
I walk up, walk down axis of melancholy

dried sweat and river longing
the bed made, unmade
and graveclothes twisted
memorize that other year, other river
one mournful and tepid
one gone black in glint
of pallid distempers, distastes
quotient of light and satellite

a crenellated vision of ants
their slow rush together
walk up, walk down, melancthony
I would know if not much kept me
wait quickly
not seeing prayers smoke and dissipate
and rob dead stones of their paralyses
the sound of accidental sight
that kind of theater

voids and vomits

last night a downtown crowd picking slowly through the dynamite
middle-aged stockbrokers suits of lights divorceés hot white liveries
jostlers wearing nothing under their kilts or dressed most in black sackcloth
priests of fashionable priesthoods selecting chinese drugstore ambergris
upstairs diplomatic pouch cubanos carved knucklebones wrapped in wisps of georgian lace
outside an old poet wearing cotton gloves is whitehanding his instrument
yanking lever of truman gothic calculator

once again time of the assassins

again the lodge handshake misogyny of the 1950s
weeks of motionless winter light and photovoltaic prayers
become shells of powerless number, newspaper dead matter
war umbilicus in a link of middle death
television eye flesh-sunk like a shoe in foaming surf
made obsolete by new information and disinformation, misinformation
waiting for the correction that never comes
instead dogs come to lick the Stilton cheese and lap the wine

there are two sects of the extant faith

the first, abundance, born in a cold storage meat locker
in a leased-out north beach basement san francisco 1978
its followers pray in simpatico temples heaped-up to the rafters with all the latest gadgets
the men tattoo their upper lip en sof then cover it with luxuriant moustaches
women give over the whole sensorium
to a wisdom literature dictated by alleluia fish
after fatal accidents they reprogram themselves to pilot cadillac barges down wide canals of jeer

the other is scarcity

its apostle Procrustes intricately burlesqued
invites you to sit down with him on his iron bench
he’s wearing platform shoes and a plaid cummerbund
all those old industrial processes at work in each of his four ruminant stomachs
seen clearly through a William Beaumont opening
oxidation and transmigration

every ailment in his lexicon of diminishment
comes out of a pillar not of salt but of cruelty
every force of encryption or proximity comes out of it
every wish for death, debt, or escape
washes out of the watered height and depth of this hydraulic cruelty
the one we speak of when we open wide the clasp of the unspoken

walk through its unclosed fontanel to discuss its coming and uncoming
then cope heavily with ordinary, inexplicable day
like heaven, a place far underground whose ambiguous figures of speech
we purge often now with sweats and voids and vomits

so this is hell nor are we out of it so make the most of it

Lee Ballentine

(Lee Ballentine wishes to commend the anonymous reviewer who once characterized certain of his poems with the phrase `too many images', VOIDS AND VOMITS represents the wholehearted embracing of the label. He also wishes to acknowledge the poet Clayton Eshleman whose work suggested the phrase FOU GOU, and the always surprising William Shakespeare whose usages stimulated SOLILOQUY PARATEXT. Finally, Lee feels obliged to point out that AGAINST FRENCH SYMPATHY 2 was written at a time when thoughtful Americans were perhaps less in need of French sympathy.)