Seven Corners

Featured Poets Theater Scenes: Daniel Borzutzky, Duriel E. Harris, John Keene, Jacob Saenz, Leila Wilson, and Tim Yu

2012-01-26T14:32:00.004-06:00

Click Here to View the Scenes

Seven Corners AWP Off-Site Event

2012-01-19T15:48:00.004-06:00

Click to Enlarge

Featured Poet: Kass Fleisher

2011-11-09T09:42:00.000-06:00

Flight

Years later in school, Pookie heard the story of the man who flew too close to the sun. Excitedly, she raised her hand; this was one of the few times anything in school had seemed familiar to her.

—Miss Taylor! Miss Taylor! Pookie said, frantically waving her arm.

—Yes, what is it, Shawntelle?

Pookie hated her full name but Miss Taylor said nicknames were disrespectful and refused to use them. School and teachers just didn’t make any sense, most of the time.

—I saw him, Miss Taylor, I saw him.

—Saw who, Shawntelle?

—The flying man, Ickuss, I saw him.

—Now, Shawntelle, what have I told you about making up stories? His name is pronounced Ic-AR-us, and you couldn’t have seen him because he never really existed. It’s just a story, a myth.

—But I did, Miss Taylor. He never wore any clothes and lived right across the street from me in the big TV building and one day he flew out his window. . .

—Shawntelle! Miss Taylor said sternly.

— . . . all naked and flapping . . .

—Shawntelle! Stop this nonsense this instant or I’ll send you to the principal’s office again!

—But that was him, Miss Taylor, I know it was. Mama told me he was just some crazy white boy and Aunt Sarah said he was probably drunk but . . .

—Shawntelle! That will be enough. March yourself down to the office right now.

—But, Miss Taylor . . .

—Now!

—Yes, ma’am.

As she walked slowly down the hall, Pookie remembered the day she first saw the naked white man. She had been on the tiny balcony of her family’s apartment looking at the large apartment building that sat on a hill across the street. To Pookie, it was like having a nine-story multi-screened TV to watch. As the youngest, Pookie didn’t have much say in what appeared on the family TV, so she preferred to go out on the balcony and see what was happening on the other side of the sliding glass patio doors (that also doubled as the living room windows) of the apartments of her big TV building. Sometimes it was pretty boring, like when the curtains were drawn, but no one could make her change the channel.

On that particular summer afternoon, soon after her fourth birthday, Pookie had been at her usual post, standing at the balcony railing watching the sun set and the rush hour traffic crawl by. Every so often, she surveyed the ninth-story windows of the apartment building. It was hard to see

anything that high up, but the curtains were hardly ever closed on that floor so Pookie always gave them close attention.

Then she saw him. His glass doors were wide open: only a screen and railing stood between him and the open air. He was leaning on the railing, smoking a cigar, and he didn’t have any clothes on at all. Pookie had seen her brothers nude many times, so she knew the man was naked, even if he was white.

—What’cha lookin’ at, Pookie dear? Aunt Sarah asked her, as she came out onto the balcony to smoke a cigarette.

—At the naked white man.

—What? Where?

—Up there.

Aunt Sarah followed Pookie’s finger up to the ninth floor, leaned forward to get a better look, then began laughing and pointing.

—Hey, Ruth, take a look. There’s a white boy flashing the whole neighborhood!

Pookie’s mama stepped out on the balcony, took one look, snorted in disgust and grabbed Pookie’s arm.

—C’mon, that isn’t for you.

—But mama, Pookie protested, I want to stay outside.

—I won’t have you staring at naked strangers. He may be stupid, but it just isn’t polite.

Pookie turned to take one more look before she went inside, but by then the naked white man was no longer there.

Pookie saw the man several times after that, though he was never naked again until the day she saw him fly. It was rush hour again and Pookie was at her usual spot taking in the world. Her eyes methodically checked each window and then she saw him again, naked like the first time. It was difficult to tell, but this time the screen was apparently open, and the man appeared to be standing outside the railing, hanging on with his hands behind his back. Pookie looked around, but her mama and Aunt Sarah weren’t nearby and Pookie wasn’t going to say anything to change that. She turned back just in time to see the naked man stretch out his arms and dive in a slow graceful arc. At first, he seemed to drop straight down, but just before he fell out of sight, he swooped into view again and began a series of wide loops over the parking garage that sat just below the apartment building. Pookie was so excited she began to clap her hands and squeal with delight. Somehow the man heard her over the traffic noise. He looked her way and smiled. Pookie waved to the man and he waved back. Which was a mistake. His swoop began to fail and the man began beating his arms, but it was no use. He fell headfirst onto the roof of the parking garage.

Pookie screamed and her mama came running. Her mama didn’t believe her story, of course, even after the ambulance came and the fire department arrived with their ladders to take the body off the roof. But Pookie kept insisting until her mama finally sent her to her room, telling Pookie she would never be allowed out on the balcony ever, ever again.

Sitting in the principal’s office, Pookie resolved never to tell adults anything they hadn’t said first.

What’s the use, she thought. If they can’t fly, they think nobody can.

Pookie closed her eyes. She remembered the naked white man’s smile just before he fell, how the light from the setting sun made his skin shimmer like gold, how he hadn’t seemed all that upset about falling.

Pookie opened her eyes and looked around the office. The secretary was bent over a filing cabinet, so Pookie slipped out the door and headed outside. This would be a good time, she thought, to go looking for the sun.

Featured Poets: Eric Elshtain and Greg Fraser

2011-03-27T23:48:00.002-05:00

I’ve Been Called Worse by Better

one

The Bourgeois Thrill of Receiving a Fax

The army but a livid red

beside the girl the night’s censure

obscures. The freedom around the country

laces a dialogue ’twixt strictures

the population bills. A Nixon plan

approached the cottage a lot

in Haiti when the man in Fort Defiance

thus was fitted into the fires

that destroy the pride and few

occasions on the island. Spies

her lips were smiling to attempt

the standard works, a proclamation

made the same June two tweens disappeared

from Hotel Abyss. Then the war began,

surrounding them in a new divine affect,

the crows flying and upholding

the market and the movement,

a wracked condition akin to declining.

What lies beneath the saddest lists?

Empire versions of ourselves.

(ee)

two

Sink Ships

The summer America changed its name

to Hotel Abyss, the girl and you, in you,

followed the arc of night’s censure

to a cottage, it seemed, on a freedom shore.

Your dialogue, laced with Nixon, war,

and population bills, were standard works,

while innocents got fitted into fires

by sartorial troops, and spies surrounded lips.

Those rotten empire versions of yourselves,

those proclamations and saddest lists—

to what red island did they disappear?

What became of livid occasions, few

as they might have been? Now the crows’

flight seems akin to weak declension,

and conditionals flaunt themselves as new

divines. If the girl, then you, then she would,

if you were. That was the plan, at least.

The June plan. Before she shot back East.

(gf)

three

untitled lyric

Little river, clouds in the door,

who else went walking down

the day? Not socialites who sneer

at the baggage grunt, not

dustmen or the landlord sore.

Each to each in a brown cafe . . .

Such words make a little dwelling,

for I have heard long sighs,

and had to drown the sage.

Still, with time the giant senses

direct. If I trust my warden, all

afternoon in silver fields, then asters

in lieu of home, and later a host

of stars. I would shout against

a lesser bone, sing the hostess red.

In the background, garnished

platters, London fused to glass.

The sentences keep growing,

the full weight of the unforgotten.

Impossible to measure on demand.

(gf)

four

Political Speech

Little River, clouds at the door,

Who else got

Today? No better society, “virtual

Anke on luggage,” not

Garbage collection or the landlord wound.

Each cafe each heat. . .

“These things make a small apartment,

For I heard many sighs,

And had to sink the statement.”

But over time a huge sense

Directed. If I rely on my manager, all

Afternoon Money Boxes, then Asseatarym

Place at home, and then host

Stars. I was writing about

Bones less singing, red hostess.

Background, cut

Sheets melted, London on the glass.

Rates continue to grow,

The full weight of forgetfulness.

Be measured on demand.

(ee: composed using Google translator, first English to German, then German to Hebrew, then Hebrew to English, then given minor revisions)

five

Nothing’s Ever and Anachronism

I'll have half a mind for the whole thing

if only someone'd make me look like 30 cents

& do my dirty house with bad wire & glue.

“Gotta get off the schneid,” says the Padre,

“Keep yr hands in yr pants

& yr gold in the air, my son,

where the ducat crew can't reach.”

Got my melting pot in the cellar

& enough paper clips

to model my car after you, sugar—

name it something Greek

paint it the color of tea

drive it 'til the wheels burn,

maybe California

where the cabbage is orange.

I got yr stereotype all set:

brunette & all that that implies.

My logging-camp scrip

will get us in the commissary, baby,

if we can stomach the flood

& weather the tolls. Is there a farm

in your purse, mama? They got grants for those.

I found brown seeds in my wallet—let's see what grows.

(ee)

six

To an Untranslatable Poem by Eric Elshtain

I have lowered a shoulder and bulled my way in.

I have stripped you down, bulked you up. Tinkered,

toyed, toiled. I have wakened early with best intents,

ignored the brandished fist of the noonday sun,

watched dusk zip the city up in sequins.

And I am left to translate, Poem, my failure.

I have failed just like the sea, trying madly to climb ashore.

Like gray moths batting the porch lamp, seeking rapture.

I am acutely aware of ashes, the cast-off dreams of fire.

Like an only child of four or five,

I have curled inside a blanket

and ridden in the back alone . . .

Is it because the prairies seen from airplanes

are sullen de Stiles? Because high wheat serves biscuits

without a hairnet, & a pigeon dropped its business,

just this morning, on my just-bought navy blazer?

If only the elders hadn’t slaved for epochs inside their truths, Poem,

if only my brother’s hands weren’t clawed from birth.

Poem, with your thoughts like a jagged coastline,

your fly’s-eye vision, your radiant, untouchable privacy,

like sunlight trapped in trees, you have left me to curse

the Rec. Room, Chicago, early October, to wear my hair

like a screwball. You have covered my mind with semi-hard plastic

like the cowling of a boat motor, or a junior-high football helmet.

Have I sneered too long at revelation?

Have I fallen deaf to whispers from the grave?

I have fingered your blood like paint, and made a living will,

choosing to pay the earthworm not of the mortician.

And what little, Poem, I have to show: barges of fog afloat

on a river at dawn; monkeypod wood so perfect for salad bowls . . .

The spider instead achieves her work, connecting this to that

to capture passersby with the practically unseen.

And to think: just twelve days ago, you appeared

as a welcome surprise, like a box of doughnuts opened

in a small-town bank—free with coffee to holders of accounts.

Coffee. Doughnuts. Jesus, it’s half past noon,

and I’ve had no breakfast. Perhaps if I’d had some breakfast.

You know breakfast, right Poem?

Goddamned most important meal of the day.

(gf)

Featured Poet: Natalie Tomlin

2011-01-07T00:01:00.000-06:00

Don't Smoke Cigarettes by seven.corners.poetry

Oranges by seven.corners.poetry

Faces by seven.corners.poetry

© Copyright 2011 Natalie Tomlin

Featured Poet: Carina Finn

2010-11-11T22:47:00.006-06:00

dear marlon brando,

lemonade diet to lavolier a summer at the country house. daisy made a habitual chain and scuffed scalopini with the butcher’s son. boy, the barbeque – and scrapmetal cousins roughed up like a romance language in the bronx! god thanks a million planks of dockhand and a quarter-pound of hamburger for the holly hop.

dear marlon brando,

the optimists brigade to salvation. supernova flush the speedtrap victim and a hardened alchomatic to cigarette store. golddust an atomized lung to breifcase town and beam the boulevard to wanderlust.

dear marlon brando,

love said to the palladian lady break-a-brick to take the show. hunter-eyed harlequin zoom to look again. darling, all of the clowns are sad clowns. give them some cold cream! dash the dream to pile pragmatic solutions to the global phenomenon!

belle of the b-movie

belle of the b-movie from lady blogblah on Vimeo.

carina finn has a shamrock tattoo and is pursuing an mfa in poetry at the university of notre dame. her poems are forthcoming in melusine and connotation press. sometimes she writes plays and makes objects.

Featured Poet: Gene Tanta

2010-10-27T02:38:00.019-05:00

E

erring the heart beats against the heart’s place empty
enlaced in its wispy elevation
where two skeletons used to rub elbows eating
vintage etymon either
embers ending in
electric exhalation or the repeat button stuck on

eclipse the Christian name for the end of naming
evergreen et cetera
everything from A to Z enameled
emptied of its enthusiasm
estuaries eager to dry off in the low tide
ebb and ebb a plume of oil in the light dispatch

earthworm eavesdropping on all those who came before
through an eyelet to elsewhere
where enlarging edelweiss from seed
earwig history is endless
full with the eyebrows of dead heroes out of earshot
under an eyelid eyestrain eyewitness

earmarking his sepia memories with an eyelash
an exit we all eke out
while every now and again we edit
earlobe to earlobe
easy does it even in the afterlife
with very little elbowroom for drinking elderberry wine

G

gaga gaffing again war is a story about Armistice Day
goodbye-kisses do not change the channel gay
grinning war isn’t all good
grief the war over what’ll I ware I’ll ware the gravedigger
rainfall ‘gainst my skin gloss
grenade war stories headed over the hills glowing

I kiss the war grizzle who shall kiss glottis
gin I shall kiss strangers the day the war ends glistening
gut every gesundheit
in its ropy gristle gripping at the daylight
glad to spur us on from the roadside grumbling
graphic in the twilight grain

garbled vernacular with a mouthful of gravel
galumphing gleaming
grinding its teeth into the gnashing plank of an old whisky
gone with a forest gulp
gurgle Dane thoughtful brute getting up on the castle
gab all gone in the root

giddy wind go St. George in the fields dented
glad blown in his semivowel garden
some lay down to gainsay goal-tending a pair of dice
galley slaves guide
gullible go-betweens while the attic sisters rust
give of garlic in sharp warbles

ghostwriter poking in the graveyard with rounded fingers
all gemstones and grasshoppers
grainy but grammatical
griddlecake smells waft up the grapevine in cartoon
guesswork as Goofy
quite ready to govern by gunfire

gutters gasping what’s that in the dark
gangway goons or
the gate clanging on grandpa’s gander
gunman shushing the greyhound
grindstone or gunshot
galloping god no that’s just the fiber talking

Gene Tanta was born in Timisoara, Romania and lived there until 1984, when his family immigrated to the United States. Since then, he has lived in DeKalb, Iowa City, New York, Oaxaca City, Iasi, Milwaukee, and Chicago. He is a poet, visual artist, and translator of contemporary Romanian poetry. His two poetry books are Unusual Woods (BlazeVOX 2010) and Pastoral Emergency, which was selected as a semifinalist in the Cleveland State University First Book Prize in 2010. Tanta earned his MFA in Poetry from the Iowa's Writers' Workshop in 2000 and his PhD in English from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2009 with literary specialization in twentieth-century American poetry and the European avant-garde. His journal publications include: EPOCH, Ploughshares, Circumference Magazine, Exquisite Corpse, Watchword, Columbia Poetry Review, the Laurel Review and Drunken Boat. Currently, he teaches creative writing online for UC Berkeley Extension.

Poet's Note:
"E" and "G" are from Pastoral Emergency, my second book of poems. It contains 26 poems, one poem for every letter of the English alphabet. Each line of each of the 26 letter sections starts and ends with a word that starts with the section letter: exceptions made for music and idiom. These interventions in the abecedarian tradition stretch out to a sequence of 63 pages. The abecedarian grid or scaffolding or structure of two six-line stanzas per page helped me realize how the book wanted to be written: the form taught me that this book wanted to be written at the level of melody and sound rather than at the level of sense and cohesion. Unlike my first book, Unusual Woods (BlazeVOX, 2010), it came as a huge relief in the revision process of Pastoral Emergency that the logic of the abecedarian form allowed me not to concern myself with how to order the various letter-poems.

© Copyright 2010 Gene Tanta

Featured Poet: Larry Sawyer

2010-08-13T21:08:00.009-05:00


From Promontory of Liminal Field

These embarrassments
  of elocution

The worn and morose
 grooves of existence  in their
refrain 
  pockets of light

the bee-eater’s exclamation

  the sting of speech
plasticity of 


  your rapid confusions
   whereby

brute morning accordionlike

sweats

  collects as  rivers in the chest

as a pimple of amber
  encases Paleolithic flight


from promontory of
  liminal field

   in endless sessions
     the wing

extends its razor


  millions of summers ago

meanwhile incalculable exits

open each night

  the moon’s Braille curtain.






Honolulu, Indiana


                   We anthologize

    the weather, in small 

   post-nomadic   c  r   o   s     s   i n gs
 Did our forebears’ gelato?

  Were they more prone

to neither

  as long as anyone,  beneath a maze

of green leaves

    sails
barque of February or 

 soup of June

      seasons become
those who most
   patiently row.
Let us such buildings stretch

out, reach in their

  stead to the sky

for some meaning.








Still Life with Arctic Monkeys

This dream of gourmet
Cameras, where we
Bless this walking through the desert
Hand in hand with every known creature.
My reason
Batting Kafka eyelashes
Loads the ark with 
What sounds like rain.
This paper museum.
As they float inside your poem
That we should give praise
For these icebergs blue
And rejoice in their teeth
Says the Kingfisher,
Astride the Empire State building.
Preciously await faith’s unveiling.
Holding your hand inside
My kaboom and cerebral
Map. That we were witness
To that throbbing Vegas
And wrecked caviar castles.
Each little now in
That springlike yard
A piano key upon which I play
On birth’s label
What corduroy typewriter.






Blistering Dinner Party

Neither was in the neighborhood of necessity, these strung out along the shore.

The composer’s waves, his chauvinist forehead should be fair game, as were

Audrey Hepburn’s locks on TV. Both reclining on skates to emphasize the precarious

position that we inhabit inside each second, as if encased in another drawn curtain

to conceal the huge faux fur letters, the day’s signature. Unconcealed emotions, were

they left to their own devices at the blistering dinner party, predatory crocodiles of

both sexes. The film blurs and the accompanying music is so annoying we cannot

concentrate on our invisible novels.


The Color of Perfect

These waves, a metaphor for antiquity

Remarkable in their large blue

drowning in their own knowing.

Don't walk alone through this world

In a spasmodic memory think of the ocean and

remove yourself from the news.

Smell history in the waves' stagefright.

That the afternoon’s indifference

Exhausts itself in the revelry of:

Its cumulative tone

Silvered assonance.

The slow and arrogant cadence of the waves

Above death

Immune to the zodiac

The ocean exposes itself.

The ocean is its own gynecologist.

Its lyrical voice hovers somewhere just south of

Genre, oblivious yet embodying

A definition of hunger as

Yet undefined.

The ocean extends its bloody tongue to pronounce

Murder and also birth, both are

Equal to its Rococo foam.

The ocean is a swarm of always

The square root of its own illumination.

Its essence is well spent

The ocean is eating itself

Its dinner is generative.

Remarkable in their large blue

The waves have quit their employers.

After their departure

After the long lives of the public servants

Who dole out wooden words

The oceans will continue their conversation with the sun.

The ocean lives in seclusion, like

Han Shan, observing some unspoken agreement.

The ocean is our insurance, our doubt

Could we simply translate its complaint

Comprehend its angry eyes.





Learn As


It etches the ice.


what was and is.

Like the passing moment, half cuts



I search for 



warmth,
change the heart’s channels


moving.




Each 

embered conversation


Échoppe of
noon’s singularity. 





Leav 
es
in its 



throat.






Larry Sawyer's debut collection Unable to Fully California is forthcoming from

Otoliths Press. His chapbooks include Poems for Peace (Structum Press), A

Chaise Lounge in Hell (aboveground press), Tyrannosaurus Ant (mother's milk

press), which was recently included in the Yale Collection of American Literature,

and Disharmonium (Silver Wonder Press). His work was recently included in The

City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century (anthology, Cracked Slab Books,

2007) and A Writers’ Congress: Chicago Poets on Barack Obama’s Inauguration

(anthology, DePaul Humanities Center Press, 2009).  His poetry and literary reviews

have appeared in publications including Versal, Chicago Tribune, Babel Fruit, Vanitas,

Jacket, MiPoesias, The Prague Literary Review, Coconut, 88, Hunger, Argotist,

Pinstripe Fedora, Skanky Possum, Exquisite Corpse, Court Green, the Miami Sun Post,

Ygdrasil, Shampoo, Rain Taxi, Van Gogh's Ear, and elsewhere. He edits MILK Magazine

and curates the Myopic Books Poetry Series in Chicago.

© Copyright 2010 Larry Sawyer

Featured Poet: Laura Goldstein

2010-06-26T23:35:00.000-05:00

pay/phone

Put your money where your mouth is. Please. Place your jewelry on the table before you leave. I’ll give you a ring. Just before dawn, a dinosaur roared and a call rang out across the land.

Push here to be cut off immediately. When we were speaking we were disconnected inevitably because of the way that we bounce off of towers on our way down to the ground. Even if we part, I know I’ll always be in your phone.

Soon talking to you will be an emergency, on the order of red flashing lights somehow reaching out soft on the mushrooms on the forest floor. More retreat to a warmer light. No keypad close to code your cue.

The receiver is not usually thought of as a weapon but when in bed it should be just in reach and easily the heaviest thing in the room.

How the shifts in zip codes sound with your mouth wrapped around the round end of a company phone. You’re tapping out someone’s dinner reservations from your home phone on off hours. How our silverware sounds when set down.

Do you tend to short-change conversations that lose the war with the cord? And we fold into a sort of norm when unaware, talking up a storm.

A quarter of some monologue in monotone slips out of a slot called “old coins” A handful of numbers, a wealth of wires, a simple recording, a graduated tone

Featured Poet: Jason Bredle

2010-06-09T03:31:00.006-05:00

AUBADE

One doesn’t make a bowl of cereal, bowls of cereal just happen

is what I’d say if you were sitting across from me at the breakfast table

right now. And then,

if everything were to go as planned,

two bowls of Corn Flakes would appear in front of us, milked,

berried, spooned and ready to eat!

Then I’d say,

one doesn’t make a potato pancake, potato pancakes

just happen, and a plate of potato pancakes

would appear in front of us,

cooked, sauced, forked and ready to eat!

Then I’d say,

one doesn’t make honey and brown sugar sausage links,

honey and brown sugar sausage links just happen,

and a plate of sausage links

would appear in front of us, honeyed, browned, sugared

and ready to eat!

Then I’d say,

one doesn’t pour a glass of chocolate milk,

glasses of chocolate milk just happen,

and two glasses of chocolate milk would appear in front of us,

milked, chocolated, glassed and ready to drink!

Then I’d say,

one doesn’t consult the food guide pyramid to ensure

we’re getting a balanced breakfast,

and you’d cry out like a hawk

and we’d soar over our happening breakfast like two hawks soaring

over an open meadow

full of field mice and chipmunks. Then I’d say,

one doesn’t hunt, swoop down upon and capture a field mouse

or chipmunk, field mice and chipmunks just happen!

It’s been so good to see you again, you’d say,

the sun beginning its path

above the browning ridge.

Soon, winter.

Already some of our closest friends have gone south.

I miss them already, I’d say, I really do miss them already.

And that’s when you’d turn south too,

the wind taking you over the horizon,

and I’d think to myself,

if only you were sitting across from me at the breakfast table right now.

I’d say, one doesn’t make a bowl of cereal, bowls of cereal just happen.

And then, as if everything had gone as planned,

two bowls of Corn Flakes would appear in front of us,

milked, berried, spooned and ready to eat.

POEM

I’d eaten too many crackers. I couldn’t get anything done—

not even think about getting anything done.

Doing things is important, Mike says,

but I like to get things done.

I wanted to

pay ten dollars

to ride on a bus with teenagers

and have an intense spiritual relationship with a wolf.

Instead someone pushed me from behind,

placed a bag over my head

and drove me around the suburbs,

occasionally stopping

and forcing me to photograph churches, hospitals and circuses.

Whoa, I thought. Look at this baroque architecture.

This was what I’d been waiting for.

POLITICS AND RELIGION

Yesterday at the lagoon

I watched frogs mate with a Colombian guy.

He had a fascinating frog-man superior race theory.

It’s so windy here.

The sky is like an ocean.

It feels so weird.

If I had a washcloth

I’d run warm water over it.

I’d lie on a bed and place it over my eyes.

I’d take sleeping pills.

I’d begin writing a book.

I’d call it Politics and Religion.

RED CROSS

At night we’d bandage ourselves with gauze and visit restaurants

to delight others with stories of what happened:

realized we had no breaks,

confrontation with alpaca at petting zoo,

sandboarding mishap on active volcano.

Is this it, you’d ask.

But we get free food, I’d say.

And then there was the I’m filled with rage part.

And then there was the I’m filled with love part.

And then there was the I’m filled with sadness part.

And then there was the driving around part.

And then there was the confusing part,

the embarrassing part,

the part where you found yourself without pants in front of a group,

the part where you decided not to live a lie anymore,

and the part where you ask

how many meatballs I’d like for dinner,

and I say, just this once, let’s see how many I can fit into my mouth

at the same time.

DARK ENERGY

She apologized and delivered a message of tolerance

may complete one story but only begin the next. Here, she’s accidentally

killed her husband to save a stray kitten.

What does she do now?

Does she take the kitten home?

Does the moon rise above the city as she sits on a veranda

with the kitten on her lap?

Does she name the kitten Snickers?

Does she set aside a saucer of milk and cry herself to sleep?

As she cries herself to sleep, does Snickers lie under a quilt next to her?

Does Snickers lick her hands, purring?

Do you like this story?

I like to buy stupid magazines and set aside entire days to read them.

That’s funny because I like to buy smart magazines

and place them in a pile and never read them.

I like to cut them into small pieces,

arrange them on construction paper in a threatening manner

and send them to loved ones.

I love how, in your head, I hate you means I love you,

if you don’t leave I’m calling the cops means stay forever.

Here, people are kidnapped from their own homes and I don’t like this!

How I wish our tears were made of strawberries!

Do you remember her husband?

She lied next to him for hours waiting for help.

If I could only properly describe to you that night,

the way the darkness felt so heavy—

the way the silence, the way the silence felt so heavy.

And the mountains to the south dotted with light,

and the ocean to the north, the ocean to the north also dotted with light.

These poems are from Jason Bredle's collection Smiles of the Unstoppable, forthcoming fall 2010 from Magic Helicopter Press. He is also the author of Pain Fantasy (Red Morning Press, 2007), Standing in Line for the Beast (New Issues Press, 2007), and the chapbook A Twelve Step Guide (New Michigan Press 2004)

Featured Poet: James Pate

2010-05-28T23:58:00.003-05:00

[I’m on the train under the city…]

I'm on the train under the city. I'm on the speckled train. The strangers look like gardens full of glass shards. They look like graffiti from a fading silent film. I’d had this dream before. The first part was a wall. The second involved a door that stared out into a cluster of blood clots.

I was on the train, waiting. There were other parts of the dream waiting too. The strangers calculated one ride for every cloud in purgatory, one feather from every rubble, one sea for every beach. The strangers examined their cunts and then they examine their cocks. Under the lights they were naked the way rust is naked. They made sounds like cities passing over into sleep. Like subways with the brakes missing. They’d dreamt about their mouths for centuries. They swallowed over and over, to prove they had tongues. They blinked to prove they had skulls. They bit one hand among the many.

Visibility in the Catatonic Room.

We watched others play ourselves on the television. They were zombies with glue for faces or figures of glue with flat eyes. They waited for a cloud to trust in the vast blue noise. They disrobed except for their watches. When they were done with each other they drank wine and devoured cold chicken legs in the tangled and ghostly and champagne-colored sheets. I hear, among other things, your fingers with their crowns of blood. Among other things, a crown of dried air, another impulse toward frescos of shit.

[The dancing couples shifted their leaden weight…]

The dancing couples shifted their leaden figures to the leaden orchestration. Their notion of dancing remained vacant and largely universal. The purpose had been to dance until someone not themselves was either born or laid to rest. The ballroom itself contained a stupid light. An almond light. So said the blasted man with the steep angle to his voice.

Thinking in the ballroom tending toward certain aching sockets of beef. Other extractions becoming contaminated, largely due to graffiti. Still others standing near the edge of the beach waiting for the light to flicker out. One dancer who had once been laid to rest or possibly born writing in the hotel bed this ugly ugly, this steep unlit angle. Her dress wilting in the hot uneven room. Her idea starting to ache.

My favorite Thai place is bankrupt as fuck said one couple, their heads hollowed out by extractions. America played on the soundtrack. An American dance led the way. The couples waiting to be born or laid to rest reading about themselves in books with little orchestration. A ballroom with nowhere to sleep. Colors pouring from the faces. Endless boulevards extending among endless extractions.

[The dance based on the novel…]

The dance based on the novel that had long been laid to rest, its head stuffed with roses. A pink hotel by the cellophane lake, thimbles of swan. Dances from the knee joints down. Televisions filling with steeper angles of light.

One of the ballroom dancers read while his lover fucked someone in the elevator. A pair of hips in the elevator almost but not quite born. Who this someone was or is or might have been became lost in the later chapters as if the face had poured forth its pure almond light.

The Thai restaurant filled with traditional graffiti. In the night the hotel appeared to be another angular extraction filled with airy shafts. A film could have taken place in it but didn't. The hips could have thrown themselves from its windows but only a few sockets of air bothered.

One dancer realized she could only have been born. Her idea making the dance ugly ugly. The blasted man vomiting almond light. This television incomprehensibly fucked.

In later chapters two pairs of hips wandering down the boulevard under the cellophane rain. The extractions turning into nouns as the light removed them from the other lights surrounding them.

The couple writing in bed thinking about the American past and the airy beef sockets of the American present. An almond light washing away the endless boulevards as one noise after the next expires.

Those waiting to be born carrying one image and those hoping to be laid to rest possessing the other. The dancing itself partially asleep as if the orchestration surrounding it had forgotten to misplace its ugly ugly.

The elevator in which fucking had occurred thrown off the beach. A face to pour light into. Televisions flickering. The ballroom empty except for the last extraction.

[The man without air…]

The man without air used his stomach muscles to center himself in the middle of the field. He used his jaw muscles to extinguish certain ideas he had only come to understand recently. He used his skull muscles to watch films involving parades of pork moving through cities of delicate snow. He used his spine muscle to extract newer and drier shadows from a previously dribbling haze. Behind the purple curtains the 19th century withdrew. Behind the scarlet curtain Marilyn Monroe prepared frantically for the Day of the Dead Mass. Behind the coarse curtain the sea tossed about like houses falling from the sky.

On the radio voices dropped their feathers. They talked about the flakes of rust in their mouths. They discussed the rust that had gathered at the edges of the assassination. The night consisted of several sounds, many of them muffled, or banned.

Outside, the birds were shiny pulses of light. The wolves were a droning sound filled with partial meat. It was an old house with wood rotting from its extremities. Inside, an old man drank soup renowned for its many worthwhile feathers.

The meat of the room was unanswerable to anything but its own kind. The bookcase consisted of dried haunches. The droplets of mute belly were waiting to be exposed. We had gathered into the part of the dream where words melt into their original cheekbones. Part of the room overgrown.

[The film critic passed by in the back seat of…]

The film critic passed by in the back seat of a blue Pontiac at the age of six, the radio playing, with the desert all around her. She counted cacti shadows until she fell asleep. Her forehead was warm, the window cold. The film critic drank Jim Beam as he rode quickly around on his bike, searching for the right address, or a part of the town that looked familiar. A bird chirp sounding like a noise from a film set centuries ago, along the leafy outer boroughs of an empire. In the film critic’s most recent dream she made love to a high school boyfriend on a bed that was really the desert, a pink desert consisting of salt instead of sand. It burned their eyes and mouths and scraped away at their bare skin. Under their skin was a landscape of irregular beauty, like layers of stained marble. The film critic bought another postcard from the only café that remained opened in the town. A faded postcard and an empty café. In the backseat of a blue Pontiac, the radio going, on top of a hill, in Wisconsin, shadows to the left and wind coming from the right. The angular paintings by Edward G. Robinson in Scarlet Street, the naked girl forced to eat shit with a fancy spoon in Salo. The first scenes in the film unfolding during a never changing dusk. The film critic talked to her mirror, the film critic spoke with his cat.

[The film critic tosses a chunk of tuna...]

The film critic tosses a chunk of tuna to his orange and slender and expectant cat. The film critic argues with her mother while watching Klaus Kinski stride about in the rain, violet flashes of lightning in the mountains behind him. The film critic walks through one hallway after another, hearing a cellphone ring behind a distant door. The film critic dresses up as a dead Marilyn Monroe for Halloween. The film critic pours a bottle of wine over her bed while arguing with her husband over the phone, it saturates the sheets, it dribbles on the wood floor. The film critic plays a Johnny Cash CD during intercourse with the woman he met at a midnight showing of Salo. Behind them is a table with four empty cans of beer and a deck of pornographic playing cards. The film critic cuts her hair in the mirror. She cuts it short. Then shorter. From an apartment across the alley comes the sound of salsa music playing. It is 3:12 in the morning.

These selections are from a recently finished a manuscript of prose poetry called Scarlet Street that deals with film imagery (The Shinning, David Lynch, film noir, Kenneth Anger and Jack Smith). There are also two film critics, one male and one female, or one film critic who is either a man or a woman, Orlando-like, in various scenes.

Featured Poet: Daniela Olszewska

2010-05-17T17:49:00.002-05:00

CITIZEN JANE(-X) RUNS THE PARTY POLITIC

The devil’s Zamboni driver is impatient for Jane’s mouth to freeze Over again. Now there’s a slogan to make us all out of breath!

Near mid-day, Jane took a photo opportunity with her crossing guards. Also, the thumbscrew repair gals. Oh, as the crow dies…We’re pretty

Sure all primaries go like this, at least, you know, temporarily. Some confetti Lung! Our prayer modes are Jane’s for the taking. No, don’t throw away those

Towels just yet. But, maybe, bend that black licorice into backwards horseshoe?

CITIZEN JANE(-X) RUNS THE PARTY POLITIC

What we were trying to do was put on a roadside show in a brown paper bag. In retrospect. Sorry about the hoopskirts. Jane, too, found the goodfolk

Too wide-eyed to weather. but we can’t bring back the noise. Miniature Guillotines are party favors. Yes, go ahead and promote everyone to the rank

Of Spellchecker. Oh, she’d laugh if she saw what we used to write out her last-minute resume. No, nothing is especially seasonal this year. Mark our words,

Whatever’s behind Door No. 3, it’s going to be a real game-changer.

CITIZEN JANE(X) RUNS THE PARTY POLITIC

Jane dropped that secular knowledge. To hoof up and down an entire city block. This is a venial threat. We’re used to west siding it. Rumor has it there’s a lake

Somewhere abouts these parts. She tries to be gracious in the lukewarm embrace of the mob. If it helps, sheriffs hardly ever red light anymore. Read the sign.

For twenty subscriptions, we’ll watch your vehicle all night. Or, maybe give up the number of your guy down at the station. Dammned straight, that’s what it was.

Have Jane tell them that this seems like a great town for starting up a family.

from CITIZEN JANE(-X)

trinketing with the catch-ups

it picks scabs, locxxx

to borrow that for forever

shaking under plaidskirt

pixies in the vasculars

consulting new tumbleweeds

the opposite of a black hole

rehabbed by the grace of

she fixates on going to bed without

obscenely, satellite shoots

an old animal w/a head at each end

itself over and over again

Daniela Olszewska was born in Wrocław, Poland, grew up in the area known as Chicagoland, and now lives in the city of Tuscaloosa, Alabama (Roll Tide!). She is the author of four chapbooks, including The Partial Autobiography of Jane Doe (dancing girl press) and The Twelve Wives of Citizen Jane (Spooky Girlfriend Press). Daniela is the current Poetry Editor of Black Warrior Review. This summer, she will teach poetry to guests of the state via the Alabama Prison Arts & Education Project.

Featured Poet: Davis Schneiderman

2010-04-24T01:59:00.004-05:00

The Tyger

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Kubla Khan; or, A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me
That with music loud and long
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Davis Schneiderman is a multimedia artist and writer whose works include the current or forthcoming novels Drain (Triquarterly/Northwestern), Blank: a novel (Jaded Ibis), Multifesto: A Henri d¹Mescan Reader (Spuyten Duyvil), DIS (BlazeVox) and Abecedarium (Chiasmus, w/Carlos Hernandez); the co-edited collections Retaking the Universe: Williams S. Burroughs in the Age of Globalization (Pluto) and The Exquisite Corpse: Chance and Collaboration in Surrealism¹s Parlor Game (Nebraska, 2009); and the audiocollage Memorials to Future Catastrophes (Jaded Ibis). His creative work has been accepted by numerous publications including Fiction International, The Chicago Tribune, The Iowa Review, and Exquisite Corpse. He is Director of Lake Forest College Press/&NOW Books, where he edits the series The &NOW AWARDS: The Best Innovative Writing; he also directs the NEH-funded Virtual Burnham Initiative.

This is from his Un-Death of the Author series.

Featured Poet: Jessica Ponto

2010-04-14T23:30:00.009-05:00

The night you are raped

You looked at me

Featured Poet: William Allegrezza

2010-03-04T01:11:00.005-06:00

Twenty 4

the morning storm breaks
language open like
wars and wind, and we,
pulsing with clear substances,
throw arms around each other
waving our hearts before
the quick fires that rage against
the numberless waves throwing
spray before us. still, i sing
the silence, loving the orchestral
echo in the room crowed
with cool hands moving
among the dead leaves, the doors,
filled with clouds and parting.

Twenty 8

the stray gulls are silent,
but working at their circles,
they approach the cool
shadow of your body
inverted to white and deep
in the barren streets lining
the sand. our naked sickness
releases the smoke echoes
at last. rain and leaves.
and like the butterfly
frightened in sleep,
i taste solitude through
the creaking stone and
go barefoot to the altar’s ear.

Twenty 10

no one sees us in the sunset
or the mountaintops or the rain
or the twilight or the torch;
yet, when we turn our faces,
pure always and fresh like
nothingness, we breathe through
what surrounds us and listen
to coins burning and questions
being asked, and i, at least,
laugh, knowing it’s that or
silence as the earth pulls hard
on our shared voice telling us
the cape is dropped and
night is coming to a close.

Twenty 12

the birds are gone with
song, and still we stand like
masts in the wind, turning
without direction, though
certain of the pieces that
hold us centered and quiet
while around us nothing
echoes, no voices tell of
love’s voyages stretching
out eternally tall in story.
i have told you about the
sadness of wings with no
hearts and slept in your arms
when i should people day.

William Allegrezza's poems have been published internationally. His collections of poetry include Ladders in July, The Vicious Bunny Translations, Covering Over, In the Weaver's Valley, Fragile Replacements, and Collective Instant. Allegrezza is the editor of Moria and Cracked Slab Books.

Featured Poet: Jacob Saenz

2010-02-20T00:44:00.004-06:00

Bookmark Found in The Works of Walt Whitman

As usual my brother & I are glass-eyed & smiles,

talking about our desire to stop smoking pot

when I decide to pull the book off its shelf.

Before I hand it over I brush some dust

off Whitman’s hat & beard like ash,

finger through pages & find a bookmark

care of the American Cancer Society.

“How appropriate,” I say when I give it to him.

He sees the picture of girl’s face

with cheeks round as apples, eyes dark as tar

looking for a cure for cancer.

The caption under her face reads

Best Tip: Don’t Start.

He laughs, accidentally loses his hit, flips

the bookmark over & reads the fact

that smoking kills more people every year

than car crashes, AIDS, & bloody murders combined.

“If that ain’t a wake up call, I don’t know what is,”

he says as he tightly packs another bowl,

takes a deep puff & exhales

like an ancient dragon’s last breath.

within the lair

the wire the buzz of the joy-

stick in hand winds the heart

to heroic to strike first & hard

with fist or paw

nail or claw into the scaly

sleeping beast on its bed

of gold that glint off our swords

& blind us briefly

unlike those bones piled

high in corners clutching

rubies like hearts our champions

hunt the heads that hide

within the lair the dark behind

sharp teeth of greed & the grip

of a shard of power a share of

a legacy hard to let go of

[the train rumbles]

the train rumbles

as if on a road eroded

w/potholes & sewer tops

not paved even & smooth

the swerve of curves & bumps

lumps our bodies together

packed from front to back

over tracks cracked & rusted

the rush to get home trusted

to rails too old to hold the weight

of our bodies as we wait to move

beyond this standstill & will

the pols to find the funds

to keep fares fair enough

for families just trying

to make it home

Memorial Day at Coney Island

The beach is littered w/towels

& toys, girls & boys screaming

in the water & the lifeguard

whistling at those too far out.

The Marines pull up in a Hummer

(red like blood that’s shed)

& in fatigues & boots they set up

a booth to test & challenge the youth

to pull-ups: a build up of the corps

in front of a crowd chanting

numbers as one shirtless teen

struggles to reach twenty.

On the pier we sit near rows

of fishing rods that lean on rails

& the men who wait for a jerk

to work the reel & pull in a good

catch: a fish that flops on the wood

wet & white & silver in sunlight,

a fish that sells on the sly

wrapped in a black plastic bag.

The crabs caught get their legs

torn off by bare brown hands

that crack open their casing easy

as eggs so the meat shines through

the muddy shell & the steel cage

they’re placed in as we watch

& taste the two dollar beer

we bought out of a backpack,

a savings of a few bucks

from the cups sold on the walk

& just as cold to chill the sun

beating & burning our backs.

Jacob Saenz is a graduate of Columbia College Chicago where he served as an editor for the Columbia Poetry Review. His work has appeared in RHINO, Inkstains, Buffalo Carp, Paramanu Pentaquark and Poetry. He has been nominated for an Illinois Arts Council Literary Award. He works at a library.

Featured Poet: Julia Drauden

2010-01-13T11:22:00.003-06:00

Girl from prison city

locks her
doors don't go
Eastside
after dark
deadbolts
click in slide
out asks
Daddy for
mace honey
that's illegal
keychain
pepperspray
even West
turns rocks
over like words
hide-a-key
forget you
saw one eye
over her
shudder wants
a gun but
it's so unfem
Rink's sells
pink pistols
now license
alarm set
locks her
doors even in
drive East
side mural
chipped smirks
at television
renting out
old prison
mocked $40
Halloween

admission
distrusts eyes
both sides
even blue
dawn looks
barbed

X0XO, Helen Adam

I l0ve my l ve with a capital X

at the top of an hour: beginning

equals ending and alphabetic

scrambling

too many letters, not enough words

hailstones from a keystroke storm

unzip these steady

lips

L0ve is full of h les:

the difference between

O and 0 just a matter of width

the letter starved or squeezed

an Opening becomes a hole

a bracelet a c0llar

a m uth to feed

Featured Poet: Nick Demske

2009-12-16T17:13:00.004-06:00

THE BRIDGE

Now this product here should have been recalled p
Ages ago. Nothing a little duct
Tape won’t fix, right? But lo! Besight thy barometer lect
Ures, these intimate sui-soliloquies.

No animals were harmed during this poem’s composition.
However, outrageous scores of humanoid abortions at its unveiling.
This shouldn’t have happened, this. Self-fulfilling
Prophecy in the sense of chronic masturbation.

We give away the punch line in our first
Mortal utteri. What did you expect
Orate? And now, forecasted or not, the bats
Storm the belfry, the thunderheads clap, the dingle-flavored berries, uncle-climact

Ick, narcotica prissy self-gratified non-prophet:
AWE SHIT!

IN THE STACK OF EMPLOYEE SELF-EVALUATIONS

How like you these mine pre-rejection note gathereds
Unblotto auto bi ogreaphy hazards?
How like you mine glamour shots? Loosely tied robe
Peaking leprose decreprose in patrol car strobe

Twilight (cuff me officer, make Me make
no sudden movements). How like you—this discontinued Merchandise!
Slight resemblance in the sinews,
The faulty parts that will one day cease to shake.

I have been squeezing this rock for two
Decades plus, but no water. Just pus
And this gangster-rapper-thank-you-curtsey.
I had been squeezing this rock for you
Stranger, God, etc. My work has bound me thus:
Collected, selected, forgotten. And thirsty.

AS A DOG RETURNETH TO HIS VOMIT

On my mother’s grave. On all things holy.
On my first born child’s virginity. On the rebound, Nick Demske—
You smell like Lazarus returning in the form of
A cyclical argument. You smell like protesters burning Mein Kampf.

I promised myself I wouldn’t cry. I stuck a needle
In my eye and all I got was this lousy needle.
In my eye. Please continue to hold and your prayer will
Be answered in the order twas received. Well

Look who’s crawling back to the question for forgiveness,
Take a look at relentless repentance. Just one won’t hurt. I promised
Myself I’d stop writing poems. I broke that promise.
I line broke that promise. I enjambed that promise

So far up the Muse’s tuchis he still shits shards of meter. I drink from this vomit,
I’ll barf in this vomit. I poured every last drop down the sink. I promise.

HALF-FULL BEDPAN
for Valerie Laken

Generosity makes me uncom
Fortable. Their disfigurements make them collectable. I am in love with you or some
One not unlike you. Everyone and their mom
Must go. Go demagnetize your moral com

Pass, go prepay after dark, sanguine. If everybody were handicapped,
We’d treat everyone like handicapped
People. If I paid taxes,
I could write this off on my taxes.

The defendant pleads guiltier than you or I could imagine, your honor. There’s snow
In my mailbox. But it, too, will melt. Nick
Demske, you have kissed two girls in your life and one
Has since become a lesbian. The other died on impact.

Ah Life! You hander of lemons. Never foreseeing their juice
Would quench your papiris lacerations thus.

PLAY DEAD
Virginia Tech, April ‘07

Please take a moment to silence all cell
Phones for this moment of silence. Please tighten all
Shock collars, pick up all feces. Life is man’s best friend, demur
Ely waiting to be put to sleep. Behold, the perfect credit score. Behold, the super

Model citizen. I had a breakthrough in therapy today, which cost
A little extra, like all things convenient. Life is the slowest
Death. Death is the slowest

Dance of the super senior prom. Hold me close.
Woof. Nick Demske, you exclusive interview with the ghost of Kerberos,
You are stomping out a self-ignited bag of shit
You are explicitly gasted with

Flabber. Your house training’s abhorrent. Sit. Stay. Beg for one last chance.
Cash or Credit? Is this seat taken? May I have this dance?

Nick Demske lives in Racine, Wisconsin, and works there at the Racine Public Library. His self-titled manuscript was awarded the Fence Modern Poets Series award and will be published by Fence Books in fall of 2010. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Action Yes, Sawbuck, Pinstripe Fedora, West Wind Review, Weird Deer and the e-anthology narrative (dis)continuities: prose experiments by younger american writers (Recycled Karma Press, forthcoming), among other places. He helps curate the BONK! performance series in Racine and is the editor of the online forum boo: a journal of terrific things. Visit Nick sometime at his website.

© Copyright 2009 Nick Demske

Featured Poet: Katherine Browne

2009-11-13T13:30:00.005-06:00

Ghost of a Horse under the Chandelier

They are too many heads
observing the Balinese
cock fight menstrual like
disease engender lotuses
shifty theories to back
femme bending chatter

vocal or empower
as long as lungs will stand
where id heeds until us too
are silence, in the numbers
should we take to naming
our nookies Grouppersons
or they, bodies land on sexless
jelly or fish on pharaoh rocks

should we gal
around lining our rough skirt
or stay in the mirror, gal

every thingness takes a shape
masks you in or is unrecalled it’s not
things of creation
but duels of how they were

perverted
spirits are no single cult-
ure
exposed delicate
or ure
body region error

Anumodana

Yesterday we prayed on the snail
walk and saw the smallest head
trudge past its open toggling
ears on the re sin surface
that so often connected redden
hoods of your bashful shell
we rustled the twinge likening
stirring the wind’s whooshing it-
self on its face

I watched dots
of your freckles fray an echo
that looks toward the sun’s
sway inching near my many

we held tight to ourshelving
beneath palms neuron
vines trickled across
my queen wasp’s narrow
fastening oneself by the throat
again at breakfast, we wiggled gently
out of our trunks this time
laughing

A Fly of Sucking Parts

The plane
would like to be known
a strawberry

if in the plane crash dis-
patch length antennas on the azure
line

brush the reddie water
with the geom breast

stroke
caulking tongues on the mean
current horn

tittle the moth drabs
then did they divide
the stem earth
on the pleura when the plain ate
the wing

spatter
and pie

I’ll feed you

What are Pee-holes For?

Notsurehow-orwhyweneedpeeplacestottttuuube=sideholes
{splash)inwaterwe--flush========Notsurewhatpurrrpose{spray

-ing)oldbodilyfluid

||

We

all

have

to

spill/

in

*

Preface to a Poem that Will Never Come

Why can’t we replace
we’re place
where place be
cause we are placid nescience

Artist's note: "I hope the language will reflect the distortedness and discoloration of our human plank. I am after all, an artist working on a landfill."

Katherine Browne lives in Chicago, Illinois and works atop a landfill in Crestwood, Illinois.

© 2009 Katherine Browne