Lauren Bender - [of course I can look like a young boy]

of course I can look like a young boy
dear political poem,
I never really got into history

Mine eyes watching a man blow himself up
as you say,
a field full of shoes between us
a revolving bookcase between us
his flesh slides down the front of the TV, obscuring Janet Jackson’s sunbursting forth
in some less civilized countries the dead are dismembered by their family
left vulgar to vultures or was it all a mirage?

I would make a good soldier
please find enclosed my scores from Minesweeper,
which would be higher if I didn’t have to
cover my windows all day long
and then go to the factory
Dear ARMY, please send 8 x 10 to my 5-year old
her first sexual fantasy involved neon TRON and empathy between men

let’s just make light of it
he’ll just have to start spinning a little earlier tomorrow
let’s just gesture it down under the motion sensor
photons between us
inappropriate gnashing of teeth between us


[from Rock Heals]

Brian Howe - That Man Is Not Your Ladder

Is he after your money?
Have the man violently bounce
Your choice of 2 heights
Use the top three feet or so of your ladder
Safety shoes on hard surfaces/or have a man foot the
Climbing angle to say, only 45° instead of 75.5°
This homework still may not guarantee your ladder can pass

Do not climb onto the ladder from the side
Don’t compromise your balance by extending
your reach beyond
My heart goes out to the unfortunate man in
The places where trails do not exist are not well marked
Make sure your shoes aren't slippery
Heal the man on the floor and

With plenty of room for you and your youngster, you
May be more than happy to have a stay-at-home man
This man was not speaking for me
He does not know ME, my ... a lot of validity to it
As much as women do not want to
You gotta push 'em off your leg all the time

Criticism: I have lots of male friends who would never
Answer: Your friend doesn't find you attractive, or he's
Do not climb onto the ladder from the side
Don’t compromise your balance by extending
your reach beyond
My heart goes out to the unfortunate man in
The world beneath your tread?
Note: Your health and life are at stake when you use any ladder


[from Octopus Magazine]

Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal - Shine

I shine on
the voices
that speak from
my TV.

I shine on
their fat lies
and lower
the volume.

I shine on
and tune out
the evil
of two lessers.



[from Shampoo Poetry]

Gina Franco - The Box

What did you learn from the dead?

To turn cold in stages to stage

bleed an invisible instant goddamn

bleeding to heart to get off your

chest to neck and stomach

blow it right out of the hole hard to piss off how does it go

how does it go goes stone stone deaf to so cold so

so we heard them last night shriek at each other the bejeezus though nobody hours heard the shots, you?

Past tense of shoot also called scattergun also a shot of clear liquid

an injection to interject. You?

Oh I gave it a shot resolved my greatest desire

is mean means to go

home a marked entry an engraved—no cloned—entry to how do

you sleep how do you recognize me now I'll

do to you do to you shotgun I mean hotshot I will I'll do it I'm sick

of you yeah yeah then go 'head I'm serious asshole like you

care to miscalculate the command of the exit wound to miss

fire also revolve, er, volver, also

called ghost word yeah gimme you faker you way to take

off—shit (past tense of shoot)—

go now I'm in sight.



[from Fence]

Cynthia Sailers - Teaching Laura Mulvey

in contact with the proper ladies
to seduce them with our thoughts
so that they may waver in their
underlying narrative-----their condition
to perform with reality
to believe in science: the innocence of design
running between the picture and the calmy sleep
pretending to be older than oppression
if the self is before our very eyes
an authenticity where else multiplied,
where else swimming to be plural
whether or not we find comfort in models
wanting to eat, not eating, then eating a lot
or find the false accusation of race
or absence of race
so that you may “call me a buttress of reason,”
a subject reading then pulling back
to wards the want of my own 19th c hysteria
call me a cynic, but something is there
in the yellow wallpaper and she would want
to write a narrative to say
her dystopia was fixed, gripping the wind,
the small towns torn out of books
or an accidental hideout away from view
to find the others so same and different
but not to modernize the other-----sky


something a constructivist can’t spoil
something empowered by the exercise
of Emily Dickinson
something none of us could bother
to implement a fascism a revolution
an official prize claim
to be an indigenous woman
to be identical to the others
to have all your bees in your bonnet
also called phantasma
or the better half
we were not yet formed, we were an
awful eyesore in some abstract place
& “we continue to make things worse”


with pulpy novels of lesbians
trying to get at material we can’t live
without--------------------visual images
of savoir faire fall back
into the pristine, back to readme
borne collateral for Hollywood cinema
like being deified like being incredibly gorgeous
so that he is currently stupefied
so that he is psychologically romanced
so that you have to define desire as a pronouncement
like virgin mule hair
to give my dignity some space to wander
the hallways, value the faculty that encompass us
up into an obsolete


[from Shampoo Poetry]

Chet Wiener - A Brand New Dance

Carrying a table for your
Later again you can’t tell
Everything develops who’ll try
Harder it was a whisk
A culvert a camel in the mirror

With a ring marked to mumble
The friction discover in dollars
Colors raspberry reaction trilling
By the doll off or over
Passes as the pressure

The waive of its dibs
Felt my knee question blade
To glide past the rock choosing
Ripple over rip or rift together
On the air and free


[from The Brooklyn Rail]

Mairead Byrne - Downtown Crossing

A cup of coffee can be a mother.
A cigarette can be a mother.
A blanket can be a mother.
A wool cap can be a mother.
A coat can be a mother.
A booth can be a mother.
A warm grating can be a mother.
You can be your own mother.

[from Fieralingue]

Matt Henriksen - When Lights Go Out at the Wooden Nipple

The woman asks “Are there any virtuous sailors in the room tonight?”
A man with a neon halo says no, smashes the halo on his scalp
With his cap.
“Off to sea wit ye, den. Ar, ar,” she says.
He is gone. The room, still as a cigar
That’s been out for hours. Smells of dog.
The woman’s leg is broken: glass on stage,
Shattered in the shape of a necklace.
Lays her throat
On the beer-dew crystal rainbow, sings herself
To sleep, becoming red river.
A piano,
With nobody in it, plays. A one-eared dog
Comes through the curtains, licks the woman’s thigh.
The dog smells like saltwater, speaks: Thus
Has spoken. The woman would get up,
Make herself a drink, but she’s forgotten
Who she was: That’s the nature and the nonsense
Of being blood. She hopes the dog didn’t
Say that. But she’s riding the tide. She’s in it
For the dough: the bread of her body whitening.
The dog is just another way of saying
“I’m sorry,
Didn’t know who he was speaking to,” or “God
Help us if we remember this when we’re dead.”


[from Shampoo Poetry]

Cole Swensen - Two Poems

The Hand Etched in Glass


We knew this was coming. We always thought they were flying. But, no, it's light alone. It's morning and the light is streaming in. Blinding, you think, and put your hand up to your eyes. And stayed. We're all part window. There's someone coming in through the french window, but you don't notice him; you notice the window.





The Hand Photographed


Here we tend toward particulars, though they remain black & white and/or the black before the door, the white, slipping out. They're more angular than their portraits would have led you to believe you could live here too - we're not as poor as we look. Photographs have a way of implying that it was a little cold that day, or that we live like pets in the laps of everyone who wanted something else.


[from Double Room]

Amy King - I'm the Man Who Loves You

The beer has warmed to us.
Like a bear grovels for leftovers,
we are used to blood
in our veins, and other amenities.

Why does every sentence
between us
condemn loneliness?

Even in the womb,
we take note of beings
ushered past.

Love has always been
the woman in the lake.
She is her own sister,
the buoyancy of heartbreak.

Lately, I have had to trick
myself to read
with the promise of a book.

But mostly, I am taken
by the sense
of a blue suede dress
that shrinks to fit you.


[from Coconut]

Laurel Snyder - Paper Dolls

This is the shape of some words,
but not just.

This resembles the story
of a girl, but not just.

This is called
making it daily.

Go ahead. Take scissors,
and with a snip, make a girl.

Might as well make many.
They'll all look alike,

but some will hold fewer hands
than others.

You'll see what I mean,
but not just.

Make a flurry
of paper bits that won't

seem to end, and what else
might you have made?


[from Drunken Boat]

Fanny Howe - Banking

He was a cold-hearted Saxon
whose sex was as busy as a farm
and left the room warm
with the scent of hounds

Believe me, he could have had it with anyone—
man or woman—but he wanted to be good

These are the dangerous ones


[from AGNI 33 & 56]

Joyelle McSweeney - The Cock and Kettle

The ceiling sags,
water in a sock.
Lift it over the levee and into the next duchy.

Outside the lunchspot, the rooster swings
with brackets to its comb and tail.
It creaks and crows.
The trees go one way, the car another.

Minnowing around, meowing,
carombing in the bathtub down
into the next apartment.

On the mattress, the man swims
printed with ferns.


[from The Konundrum Engine Literary Review]

Lisa Cooper - Dose

Einstein, after Edison, pulled
the 20th century through its sleeve
& out into a new range of motion.
hello. long nights under
an incandescent bulb
while the message center &
humidifier draw enough juice
to light a small 19th century
village. on this station,
the up & up, we are clear
about the desire to kiss with no
superstitious icons of the saints
turned upside or right side
in any way to confuse
a general audience. hello.
would you like to see
what’s behind door #1.
every minute marks the turn
of scores of centuries. we got
the pope. we got the pope in jubilee
marking an atonement
for wrong beliefs & harmful
actions. the church vindicated
Galileo. a minor invention
every week or so. hello. we got
the pope. we got children
straining at the edge of quiet.
we got to check in daily.
after the 90s
what do you call it.


[from Spork Magazine]

Robert Gibbons - Ode to New York City [excerpt]

The Sky Transformed

Need for gaiety when the first day of the weekend is spent,
unexpectedly, in a kind of silent
mourning at Ground Zero,
& the meager language
we muster remains
mostly internal,
visceral.
So the next day get up early to take the Staten Island Ferry,
not to get anywhere, because it's free,
& Baudelaire praised contemplation
of a ship, especially one in motion,
as mysterious & infinite.
With Ellis Island in the near distance, where my father said they changed
our name from Fitzgibbons,
we are poor immigrants among all the passengers,
looking over our shoulders reminding us again
of the disaster down there,
where the Towers were,
as much from the hole in the sky
as the one in the ground.
It's difficult to pull oneself up out of mourning into gaiety in one fell swoop.
I could have used the dream where my Soul became visible
to my daughter only
so that I had to look through her eyes
on the bus where my Soul was a rectangular piece of glass
hovering in the air
in the aisle
& pressed within it was a rose, Eros.
So, of course, we head to Gotham Book Mart on 47^th St.
where we know we'll find gems
like a cheap copy of Apollinaire's erotic writings,
& Baudelaire's Intimate Journals.
There's nothing like French wit to help bring one up: "She was as red as a beet,
her bosom was shaking, but she was at a loss for words."
"I am sick of France; chiefly because everyone is like Voltaire."
Frank O'Hara joins us, too,
when his Selected Poems opens all by itself
to "Poem Read at Joan Mitchell's," when we're already on our way
to 83^rd Street to meet Barney Rosset,
the legend, who published Lawrence & Miller & Olson.
But not before tramping through the desert of wealth in the Upper Sixties & Seventies making me thirsty, making me wish out loud for a Champagne bar
like the one that rescued me
from my hangover after the Rauschenberg show at the Whitney,
when all of a sudden this little gelatto place on 73^rd & Madison turns
into none other, (words in fine print,)
than a Champagne bar. Ah! Via Quadronno!
We share a glass of Gavi de Gavi for $13.50, which does the trick, getting us out of the residential desert
into the art world between 83^rd & 84^th where Janos Gat greets us at his gallery
with a glass of red wine telling us Barney & Astrid
are in the other room ready to greet us with smiles & handshakes & photographs from the war in the 40's & a story
about Joan Mitchell when Barney lived with her
in the south of France & recognized it was time,
that her work had gotten to a point
where they could go home to New York
with Pollock & de Kooning, Motherwell & Kline,
but responded she couldn't, her oeuvre too large & vast to move.
Barney offered to carry it all all
by himself
on the lone condition she marry him.
A few years later, after their formal relationship ended,
O'Hara wrote his wonderful poem, ironically one he would have made as long
as friendship could last if he could have written a poem that long.
Choko came by with her cell phone, effusive ebullience, & exotic look.
The young publisher, Scott Korb, as thrilled
to meet the legend as I was as thrilled to meet the legend,
went out with us afterward for a bottle of Cahors,
the "Black Wine of France," where we shared
stories of coming to writing,
our trip to Cannes, his living in Ireland,
the link between intelligence & consciousness,
intuition & the unconscious, the reiteration of his mission
to publish what is earnest & honest over cynical & ironic
reminding me of my distaste for Voltaire.
We parted in front of Nicola's on 84th with a firm handshake,
a willingness to face the events of today
with a language of risk & metamorphosis,
& one unforgettable image recalled from that morning
of the row of pollarded sycamores on 43^rd with branches reaching into the sky transformed into the grieving hands of Grünewald.

[from Slow Trains]

Drew Gardner - Watch Crystal Lucidrous Practice

watch crystal ludicrous practice
that's where the birds drink their water

the flames seen through the wall's cracks
traffic gurgles, things

you never want to be
looking in the wrong direction
expecting

I left a bunch of
unsaid things to rot

smashed peaches--
turn off the radio

underneath the flood
the acceptance is on fire

soon to be born
overcast answer
wearing it
the hell out of town

[from Tool a Magazine]

Edmund Berrigan - Pastures of Plenty

I want you to understand
that I don’t know why I’m here.
I was born in another country
with which I now have no association.
I was raised in a New York City
that has been wiped away by economics.
Much of my immediate family has
been removed from this life,
& much of my sense of experience
of this life has been removed with them,
making all of us new people.
I have let much of my sense of self
be informed by an art that is little used
& undervalued. I have sacrificed many
social relationships to these experiences,
which are inextricably linked, because
I come from a family of poets. The life
& values of a poet are antithetical to the
political landscape of the country
I live in, & no political machination
that I may inhabit remotely serves
the causes for which I live, though
I am bound to this land by knowledge of it.
I continue in poetry & song
because the experiences of my senses
are wholly held in these continuous
& inexplicable drives, their reason
& mine never idle or held to law or language.


[from Lungfull! magazine]

Sarah Rosenthal - Sonnet

If joints

swell and limbs

wither, if you've been

rejected before

the cup arrived,

if a left

is made, if bedlam

comes from

Bethlehem—


buildings will weep for lost siblings.

kohl-circled eyes will stare above dusty cheeks.

the river water will resemble river water

but only under a certain sun.

a softened body will learn to tell time.


[from Blazevox]

Barry Schwabsky - Confession Without Confession

I don't see the hour of seeing you.
But pupils polished dark on cold sun
and bare life. Your eyes

or mine? Fixed by sublime attention (planets
gazing at stars) the beautiful
grows nearer. Fractions

of glass where your planets gazing at the moon
find their own sequel: sunken
landscape. Sugar tossed in a lake.


[from nthposition]

Catherine Daly - Two Poems

Slave

"How could a bitch-kitten like Toni
hold Val in thrall?"
This Side of Love

Accessory,
name bracelet,
extravagant anklet,
secondary

to the prime
suspect, the captivating
crime.

She keeps me on a leash so tight,
I can't breathe.

Supercilious,
ridiculous, Moanin' Low,

what do you deserve?
Haven't you humiliated

yourself
enough? What does it mean
to be punished?



Scarlet

A tomato is a fruit
dressed in red, a nightshade,
a love apple, but

a woman in a red dress is
the reader's digest condensed book of love,

a lover intoxicated by her listener
wielding the absolute warm gun,

a red pen
deleting.


[from No Tell Motel]

Sarah Manguso - Reverence

Love not the rider but the old rider,
the ghost in the saddle: Obey that ghost.
A good horse runs even at the shadow of the whip.
But we are not good horses.
We bolt. We stand still in bad weather.
We rely on things we know are unreliable,
it feels so good just to rely.
We are relied on.
But I do not know who knows that bad secret.
I do not see who sits astride my back,
who cuts my flank so lovingly on our way to the dark mountain.


[from Ploughshares]

Charles Bernstein - The Ballad of the Girlie Man

The truth is hidden in a veil of tears
The scabs of the mourners grow thick with fear
A democracy once proposed
Is slimmed and grimed again
By men with brute design
Who prefer hate to rime

Complexity's a four-letter word
For those who count by nots and haves
Who revile the facts of Darwin
To worship the truth according to Halliburton

The truth is hidden in a veil of tears
The scabs of the mourners grow thick with fear

Thugs from hell have taken freedom's store
The rich get richer, the poor die quicker
& the only god that sanctions that
Is no god at all but rhetorical crap

So be a girly man
& take a gurly stand
Sing a gurly song
& dance with a girly sarong

Poetry will never win the war on terror
But neither will error abetted by error

We girly men are not afraid
Of uncertainty or reason or interdependence
We think before we fight, then think some more
Proclaim our faith in listening, in art, in compromise

So be a girly man
& sing this gurly song
Sissies & proud
That we would never lie our way to war

The girly men killed christ
So the platinum DVD says
The Jews & blacks & gays
Are still standing in the way

We're sorry we killed your god
A long, long time ago
But each dead solider in Iraq
Kills the god inside, the god that's still not dead.

The truth is hidden in a veil of tears
The scabs of the mourners grow thick with fear

So be a girly man
& sing a gurly song
Take a gurly stand
& dance with a girly sarong

Thugs from hell have taken freedom's store
The rich get richer, the poor die quicker
& the only god that sanctions that
Is no god at all but rhetorical crap

So be a girly man
& sing this gurly song
Sissies & proud
That we would never lie our way to war

The scabs of the mourners grow thick with fear
The truth is hidden in a veil of tears


[from Milk Magazine]

Lisa Jarnot - Additional Ode

For the specialness of daylight
and the color of the sky
for the evidence of mammal forms
and all ferrets and the night,
for the fireflies distracted
made of crayons and the rain,
for the days of working workingness
and a facileness of themes,
for the finlandtude of spirits
that are fierce beside the cats,
for the rampant forms that are the cats,
made of warm flesh lined with fur,
for the solace that is warm fur flesh
that is everything alright
for the eventide of everything,
for the this and then and them.


[from MiPO]

John Ashbery - At North Farm

Somewhere someone is traveling furiously toward you,
At incredible speed, traveling day and night,
Through blizzards and desert heat, across torrents,
through narrow passes.
But will he know where to find you,
Recognize you when he sees you,
Give you the thing he has for you?

Hardly anything grows here,
Yet the granaries are bursting with meal,
The sacks of meal piled to the rafters.
The streams run with sweetness, fattening fish;
Birds darken the sky. Is it enough
That the dish of milk is set out at night,
That we think of him sometimes,
Sometimes and always, with mixed feelings?


[from Dia Center]

Mary Koncel - Two Poems

When the Babies Read The Book of the Dead


We can’t stop them. We say, "Babies, don't turn the page." But they try to sound out every word, gum each corner until it’s soft and sticky. We say, “Babies, look here—Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, a monarch butterfly wafting over a bed of red and white petunias.” The babies ignore us. They huddle together, drool across the cover. They like the pictures best—trees, man and shaggy dog together, the long, rocky trek against time. We try to distract the babies, tickle their round cherry chins, but they’re relentless. Their fingers, eyes, mouths, every bit of them so little but relentless. Sometimes we think the babies might not be ours. We could ask them, but we’re afraid. The babies don’t sleep at night. We hear them rocking upstairs beneath the crib, the book held between them like another prayer. We don’t know who to call.



When the Babies Discover Torque


We tell them over and over. “Babies, go to bed. Babies, wash your hands. Babies, don’t drink and drive.” They never listen. Inside the garage, soft heads bumping under the car hood like moths against a light bulb, they pass the tools between them. We decide to sing some nursery rhymes, remind them who they really are. “This little baby’s eating spark plugs, this little baby’s ripping out hoses, and this little baby’s thumping tie rods—whomp, whomp, whomp.” We think we should try to save them, but we’re not sure from what. Torque? The sultry lure of silicone grease and deep tread rubber? Between the heavy purr and rev of engine, in the sweet, low garble of baby talk, we hear them tell us something. “Blow it out your ass.” We step outside, close the door between us.


[from Tarpaulin Sky]

Reb Livingston - The Skirmish

for TB

A crimson string bikini is a cruel flag
to raise to an older sister,
the stubby sister,
who always prided herself busty
in a family of tall slender women.
Once, months before, she carelessly said,
"You may be taller than me,
but I'll always have bigger breasts."
So wave your double D's on your 14-year-old frame.
Cheer your victory of long legs and bountiful bosoms.
Your sister has already formulated her next attack,
"In 40 years you'll be sitting on a bus,
your breasts sagging against your knees.
You'll be trying to avoid conversation
with the man with hoagie breath
while I'll be in Paris
in my slight, but still-tight bouncy frame,
getting laid."


[from Unpleasant Event Schedule]

Ron Padgett - Medical Crush

Or heck
why not just, just
go over and tell her
how you feel,
you have a temperature
of 98.6 degrees F
and a pulse rate of
175 and blood
pressure at whoosh
whoosh whoosh oh way
too high the cuff
is going to explode!
—or get up and go
home and cry your
heart out and be
a hopeless wimp
for all I care.


[from Shampoo Poetry]

Heidi Lynn Staples - Take Care Fake Bear Torque Cake

Take Care Fake Bear Torque Cake


My brother says it's great I like what am I
doing. Though. Focus. Get Practical. It's a hobby. So, I don't
speak to him for awhile. He keeps calling, please,

the message, he wants to read some of my work.
I'm writing things like "Take Care Fake Bear Torque Cake."
I give it to him. Wait several weeks. He says it's great

I like what I'm doing. So, I say he can take care fake bear
torque cake off. He doesn't know take care fake bear
torque cake. He's a piece of take care fake bear

torque cake. I call him this and a lot of other things, even
when no one's around to listen. It gets so
bad, I can't stop recalling how mercilessly he take care

fake bear torque caked me. How he played cruel take
care fake bear torque cakes on me. How can I ever
find it in my take care fake bear torque cake to

take care fake bear torque cake him? Could I hold
a long-standing take care fake bear torque cake against
him, as long as I live? He is my big brother.

I do take care fake bear torque cake up to him.
I do take care fake bear torque cake him very much.
I do have to take care fake bear torque cake

how hard he works, how busy he is, 60+ hours a week
managing video stores, two kids in college, mortgage.
In the free-time he finds when I go for a visit he watches

take care fake bear torque cake ass sitcoms. He makes jokes
with his wife about how take care fake bear torque cake
swimsuit models are. He points at the t.v. He whistles.

She's not take care fake bear torque caking. I get the feeling
there's not a lot of take care fake bear torque cake happening.
Of course, they've been married a long time.

All couples have their take care fake bear torque cakes.
He got take care fake bear torque caked early. No college.
While I went on to study at the take care fake bear

torque cake level. Sometimes that feels weird. His house,
with a take care fake bear torque cake overlooking
a take care fake bear torque cake, is huge and lovely.

It's great. Getting out on the lake. Going
wherever. Storming around and around in aimless
high speed take care fake bear torque cakes across acres and acres

of deep dark take care fake bear torque cake. He loves it.


[from [from Unpleasant Event Schedule]]

Bob Hicok - Reparations

REPARATIONS


A group of people look into the well. I lean over too,
we stare at each other upside down. There's a man
mannequin in the water. One of the people says
we should rescue him with a spear gun and rope, another
that we should ask a woman mannequin to make the first
feel lonely and capable of flight. But what if he's gay,
someone asks. I remind them of the oppressive condition
in which our hero lives, being, not even wood,
but a plastic designed to keep clothes from snagging.
As is often the case, we soon resent his misery,
lean back in the short grass and talk of angora sweaters
we've loved, of the expression mannequins perfect,
the one that says, my smile, I owe my smile to this shade
of burgundy. When I wake, the man mannequin
stands above me, dripping, his smooth crotch shining
in moonlight. It occurs to me we may have ruined
his privacy, and I want to sing him a song that says
how sorry I am, but the only sounds that come to mind
are of two cars smashing on the highway, and I wake
the man beside me, and we run head first at each other
to sing this song.

[from Octopus Magazine #5]

Matthea Harvey - Two Poems

YOU'RE MISS READING

Engine: 


All bright thought lay in future thought.
The coin was in the puddin hid.

Cod from the machine will not do,
said the dramaturg-turned-nutritionist.

Only the upper echelons could afford to be
nonchalant about it. They were, as in, oh.

It was the first time a lost Jocelyn
& a found Jocelyn had turned out

to be not one & the same.
The trial continued.

You're Miss Reading, aren't you?
                                                    Yes.
& you still refuse to name
the cake in question?

                                                  Earlier in the hearing, I considered
                                                  relenting, but now that you put it
                                                  that way--yes.

 

POEM INCLUDING THE SEVEN WONDERS OF THE WORLD

The hologram hostas swung softly
in their macrame swing. If only

Alice would stop hitting her head
on the ceiling, but a body

Will Up. It was like croquet, really,
the way some ideas went through:

love triangle instead of lust-
isoceles, Mama flashing a mirror

so we'd find our way home.
Another shift of the kaleidscope

& a little girl is hunting
marbles beneath the trees &

Chairman Mao, so lean and mistrustful
is studying the plans for his heli-car.

The thing is, of course, where to land.


[from La Petite Zine]

Brian Clements - Forgiven in Providence

Forgiven in Providence

“Keep reading,” she said. “Your voice pleases the violets and that story is full of vertebrate colors, which makes the ficus think of what it could have been.”

Just to see the chestnut of her mouth keep leaping from her lungs like that, I kept reading.

“Read another story,” she said. “Read one with little pieces of vignettes fallen from dogma, which is supposed to uncork something unexpected, like a life.”

“In April,” I began, “the ceremony begins with yellow if you live far enough south...”

She sighed. “Oh, that one... You know, I paid to see a fight, and, by God, I’m going to see a fight. What you’ve become is a crude excuse for license.”

And on it went like a marriage.



Forgiven in Providence, Part II

Each day it all sounds more and more like vaudeville. Dancing with the chickens, serenading the dining room table, role-playing scenarios where I am the bean and the computer is the giant.

But none of that compares to the mystery of doubt when you have the bad taste to live in a lover’s house. She takes the silence of the masses as an unalloyed chime from the bell tower.

Since we are stumbling toward a seed anyway, and since the title already forgave us, why not start an emergency? But if you point at a woman you attack her, because fingers are the devil, and because beneath all theory a plot is crying for mercy.



Forgiven in Providence, Part III

 "Why don’t you cut up your anatomy,” she asked, “and reassemble it as a twisted zombie composer?”

 And if she’d been kidding I might have considered it.

 Once, the purpose of prayer was to guess. Then it was just tradition.



Forgiven in Providence, Part IV

I wanted to tell her a story, so I started in on the one about the chestnut of her mouth.

“Make like hydrogen,” she said. “Split.”

“But it’s changed,” I promised. “Now it’s all about how—after democracy didn’t free us, and the vaccine didn’t save us, and the garbage man turned out to be just a work around—we bought a new car.”

“I want to hear,” she pined, “about my noble childhood, and the religious fervor of bees. About the practice of the glider pilot and his fear.”

“A sonata is the window,” she continued, “the wind. You are just a guess. The lines the lake makes in its going away is not too normal an emotion. Tell me something wrong, something insignificant, like a poem...”

And I guess we’d had about enough talking at the point.  There are too many things about people that can’t be prevented by sheepskin. Unfortunately, that’s when I started singing.


[from Slope]