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]