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]