Featured Poet: Adam Fieled

Adam Fieled is a poet and Ph.D. candidate from Temple University in Philadelphia. Adam edits the blog-journal P.F.S. Post, which publishes contemporary poetry and art. He also maintains Stoning the Devil, a blog on which he publishes thoughts on literature, art, politics and other cultural bits. He recently released a spoken-word auido cd called Virtual Pinball-Madame Psychosis. He visits Chicago this week and reads at Myopic Books (1564 N. Milwaukee Ave.) on Sunday, December 17 at 7 pm.

My History

I had a life in Egypt
as a prince
my father now
was
my servant
then
in Rome
me
and my friend Chris
molested
children,
which is why
we
can’t get laid
now
then
early
in this century
I
emigrated
to New York,
where
I worked
for
the mob
who
eventually
killed me,
and
now
here
I am.

Pigs and Planes

I don’t believe in poetry.
It’s a slant that wavers
around different patches
of sky, or mud chucked
on slats of a sty. Or it
could be the pig, or the
plane, farmer or pilot,
pork-chop industrialist, air-
traffic controller. The one
thing it isn’t is itself.
To say poetry is poetry
is a rank offence, post-
misdemeanor, sub-felony,
the sort of sin credulous
people pray against. Pigs
you can believe in, & sties.
Planes you can believe in, & skies.
I don’t believe in poetry.

Window Sketch

Might trees, fore grounded
against red bricks, in March,
be expectant? Curtains,
tapered & tied. Behind,
a chair’s outlines. I’m as
settled in here as I’ll ever be.

Settled in here, I’ll never see
that chair’s insides. I’m as
tapered & tied as that blind.
Be expectant, curtains,
against red bricks in March;
mighty trees, fore grounded.

On reading Chris McCabe & then Keats

must be something in England,
makes hearts beat….stay beating,
through the daily melee…humorously..
knowing about dragons, sapphires, shit
stains, everything else….double-decker
metaphors we don’t get (as in create/
understand) in the States,
ham-fisted burger-beered belly-flopped

On Jazz

Physical beauty, Formal Rigor of God—
spiritual beauty, Economy of God—
Natural Will, Transcendent Will,
Facile Will in all its’ dismal “there-ness”—

Piano broken chords breaking down space
like watching bits of paper collect,
contained in a 12-bar blues; root
notes you tend to lean on,
or maybe a honking minor third,
a harmonic multi-colored sharp…

Follow your compulsion into flurries,
clusters of connecting phrases,
then a pause to sanctify as the progression
resolves after lingering on the fifth
for the appointed time—
pentatonics mainly w/ some suspensions,
sheets of sound, trademark leaps,
like watching a rainbow erupt
out of the placid bowels of street-lakes,
sparrows in the gutters,
Eliot-esque alienation syncopated
impossibly high & mighty…

Repeat the repetition now into major scale—
Ionian gold, major-third suspensions again,
almost midnight for tremulous trees,
also hipsters, flights of birds, rabbis
in the wilderness as blues ends; here’s a quicker
quirkier jarring bit to cut
your teeth on…

Base bottom notes natural like ferns,
ride the ride cymbal like musical fellatio,
roll w/ rolls & kick-drum ejaculations,
what Hart Crane heard in bridges,
only blues (so bridge seldom comes),
stasis achieved nicely replicates movements,
bowel, kidney, heart-beat, daring snare of lip-ness,
thickness, quickness,
get it all out for all of us into the brick-laden city,
mutter of exhausted midnight buses
as vibrato notes shiver, miniature
solos on the toms creates energy
of emptiness among the weird abundance,
concluding w/ roll on the snare, now bass
also investigates metaphysical space,
not so much implacable as inexhaustible
eruptions; spring of autumn,
autumn of spring…

Seasons of balance, compromise,
away from extremes; Middle Path exteriorized,
oh piano on a minor seventh which bespeaks
longing for a more ethereal world,
elegiac as the last apple of October, eaten
by a Halloween camp-fire, beyond blues
of Earth into cadence, dying fall of pure moon,
ravaged, torn from the throat of persistence,
mute existence destroyed completely
and on fire, a universe of fingers & mouths,
looking down the tide of Death into eternity,
square-shouldered & erect,
freezing into whims of Ultimate “there-ness”,
beyond ordinary notions of quotidian abyss
in one long sitting pow-wow peace-pipe corn-cob
wholesome dinner of Voidness,
but insinuated only to drive away singularity….

Jazz is plural,
they give you a space, show you its’ contours,
allow you to move around & drown
if you want over hilltops of remorse, created
by Love or dolorous longing & especially
Central Parks of the soul & intellectual Bordello
life cut & pasting its’ bleak outline over rooftops
& bluebirds—

©Copyright 2006 Adam Fieled.

Featured Poet: Garrett Brown

Garrett J. Brown was born in Baltimore. His poems have recently appeared in the American Poetry Journal, Urbanite Baltimore, the Ledge and has a poem forthcoming in Natural Bridge. In 2000, he won a Creative Writing Fellowship from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he graduated with his MFA in Creative Writing. His book-length manuscript, Manna Sifting, was runner-up in the 2003 Maryland Emerging Voices competition and he recently won the Poetry Center of Chicago’s 2005 Juried Reading Contest (www.poetrycenter.org), judged by Jorie Graham. He is currently teaching writing at University of Illinois at Chicago, where he is pursuing his PhD. Garrett’s chapbook, Panning the Sky, was published in 2003 and is available from Pudding House Publications (www.puddinghouse.com).

Opposition

August 27, 2003

Metaphor is the frayed thread that connects what we desire with what merely exists.

Tony Rothman

Even before squinting through a telescope,

Percival Lowell revealed what he was hoping

to see: exquisite web of channels, evidence

of a vast Venice etched into the rusty disk

of Mars. Did he dream of green-skinned gondoliers

smoothly rowing from pier to alien pier,

soothing their linear canali with Martian song?

Skeptical scientists knew Lowell was wrong;

what we wish to see prevents us from seeing

what is.

Don’t we all wish to draft perfect

lines, envision a complete Cathedral

instead of quarrying the awkward

facts, imperfect stones resisting

the symmetry of the church wall?

Tonight, closer than it will ever be,

I watch the planet from my window and shed

Lowell’s imagined world for the frayed thread

of metaphor. Iron rusting on the surface, the same

element that warms the pigment in our veins: Mars,

a speck of blood in the cold, impenetrable night.

(Originally appeared on the website of the Poetry Center of Chicago; Juried Reading Winner 2005)

Constellation

Receding hairline, your rented room

in the wooded hills beyond light

pollution and suburbia, your penchant

for slender women with large eyes

and small breasts, talent for language

betrayed by a lazy palate and erratic

handwriting, your quiet disposition

that reminds the self-confident

they too have uncomfortable dreams—

all reduced to pinpricks.

The Giant washed ashore,

his lover’s arrow embedded

in his tree-trunk neck, eyes

fish-lipped into hollows,

seaweed beard. Her hands

molded his flesh, snowball-like,

into white hot spheres, fixed him

how she wanted to remember:

clothed in a lion’s skin,

chased by a scorpion.

Your waitress has small eyes, leaves salsa,

a large basket of chips. Excessive, you think,

as you eat alone, flipping through phone-sex ads

in a free weekly. Invisible points, too, hold weight,

these dark matters you refuse to acknowledge,

even in measured safety. You can’t remember

why Scorpio rises as Orion sets. The Giant

reduced to a belt. Dried mythology gives seed

to words, their stories sloughed—narcissism,

panic, aphrodisiac, pandemonium and mercury.

(Originally appeared in the American Poetry Journal, Winter/Spring 2006)

Lost Anecdote from the Pages of Vasari

Spring cleaning in Baltimore always involved

a yellow bucket sloshing with soapy water

and a rag recognized as the tattered remains

of my father’s bowling shirt, circa 1973.

I would be sent to the front of the house

on the first warm day of shorts

and no socks to wipe the marble steps.

It was also springtime, I would learn years later,

when Michelangelo would visit Carrara and lay

his head on recently quarried blocks. I wiped away

city grime, crushed berries, the dried paste

of bird mess. The stonecutters claim he listened

for cobwebbed whispers, ran his thick fingers

over mineral veins swirled within rock. I was

always amazed at how the marble would hold

the imprint of a leaf dropped in autumn and pressed

into a smudge by a winter of rain. If the tale is true

and the statues did indeed call out to be released

from their stone, imagine the Florentine

walking down East Pratt Street, hundreds of fat cherubs

trapped in the stoops, crying out to the Master as we sit

on their heads, resting cans of beer on their rumps.

(Originally appeared in Pif Magazine, May 2001)

Pyx

That smaller vessel of gold, or silver-gilt, in which the Eucharist is commonly carried to the sick.

- The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XII

At one time a cup suspended

by a chain above the alter,

pulling eyes upward as though

it could condense the dust of Christ

from a cloud of incense. I don’t

believe in saints, but keep Christopher

taped to the windshield as I drive

to the nursing home. A priest will

keep it tucked in a silk pouch hung

around his neck, the weight becoming

a sacred heart that sits against

his own.

If you had a slice

of god’s flesh – thin,

pungent with the fish

the Galileans

caught, the fish that hell

could not digest – what

jewel box would you deem

fit to contain it?

To me it resembles

the disk of tobacco my brother

kept tucked in the back pocket

of his favorite pair of blue jeans,

a circle relic imbedded

in the fabric. It’s always strange,

to see it tossed on my vinyl

passenger seat, as though the Ark

of the Covenant were strapped with

a load of beach towels to the roof

of a burgundy station wagon;

children in the backseat singing

as the sun tints red to their cheeks,

coconut lotion, the sand dunes

spilling onto the road, dust grains

on highway blacktop shimmering.

(Originally appeared in the chapbook, Panning the Sky, 2003)

On Cross Street

At this three-story restaurant the sun-

dried tomatoes are soft on the teeth,

and the windows overlook long trenches

of rowhomes where parents still spank

their children and keep opened cans

of condensed milk in the fridge. I forgot

we lived on this street, back when love was

watching seagulls pick through the garbage.

You wanted something real, my lung on the table,

unfolded like a wet towel, cork particles

in the wine. Below us, gardens furrow

the thin yards between cracked slabs

of pavement. Cucumber kidneys hang

from the fences, a plastic Blessed Mother

spreads her arms over a purple eggplant heart.

(Originally appeared in the chapbook, Panning the Sky, 2003)

Copyright 2006 Garrett Brown

Featured Poet: Andrew Lundwall

Andrew Lundwall is the managing editor of the electronic literary journal melancholia's tremulous dreadlocks. He currently lives in his home state of Wisconsin after residing for three years in the Washington D.C. metropolitan region. Recent work can be found in Ocho, Otoliths and PFS Post .

erasure of phil ochs’ song chords of fame

I found him by the stage last night

He was breathing his last breath

A bottle of wine and a cigarette

Was all that he had left

"I can see you make the music

'Cause you carry a guitar

God help the troubadour

Who tries to be a star"

        So play the chords of love, my friend

        Play the chords of pain

        If you want to keep your song,

        Don't, don't, don't, don't play the chords of fame

I seen my share of hustlers

As they try to take the world

When they find their melody

They're surrounded by the girls

But it all fade s so quickly

Like a sunny summer day

Reporters ask you questions

They write down what you say

        So play the chords of love, my friend

        Play the chords of pain

        If you want to keep your song,

        Don't, don't, don't, don't play the chords of fame

They'll rob you of your innocence

They will put you up for sale

The more that you will find success

The more that you will fail

the dyslexic ballet

the soul rumbles

under its nonsensical sheets

to go or not to to stay as scarred

and skinny fright legs burst its sockets

tangled in alchemical masturbation

to make the other thing spiritual flow

to make another massachusetts left of the dial

necking in an abandoned cadillac

like spider-veined comets

as sacred mushrooms of wanting

spray static tonight sucking

signal curtains for the dyslexic ballet

screwed-in kiss

what machine 

with screwed-in kiss 

that vulgarity’s torch

should raise a hand 

of all the static 

to you i could bring 

my caravan

erasure of merle haggard’s song the bottle let me down

Tonight the bottle let me down,

And left your memory come around;

The one true friend I thought I'd found,

Tonight the bottle let me down.

Each night I leave the bar room when it's over,

Not feeling any pain at closing time;

But tonight your memory found me much too sober,

I couldn't drink enough to keep you off my mind.

Tonight the bottle let me down,

And left your memory come around;

The one true friend I thought I'd found,

Tonight the bottle let me down.

--- Instrumental ---

I've always had a bottle I could turn to,

And lately I've been turnin' every day;

But the wine don't take effect the way it used to,

And I'm hurtin' in an old familiar ways.

Tonight the bottle let me down,

And left your memory come around;

The one true friend I thought I'd found,

Tonight the bottle let me down.

Tonight the bottle let me down...

I been around, I've had my share

And I really can't complain

But I wonder who I left behind

The other side of fame

(Raspberry beret)
Tell me
Where have all the raspberry women gone? (And if it was warm she)
(Wouldn't wear much more)
(Raspberry beret)

I thin

Copyright 2006 Andrew Lundwall

Featured Poet: Brandi Homan

Brandi Homan is editor-in-chief of Switchback Books. Her chapbook, Two Kinds of Arson, is forthcoming from dancing girl press in January 2007. Brandi's work has appeared in, or is forthcoming from, magazines like Salt Hill, North American Review, Fugue, CutBank, Natural Bridge, and others. She writes professionally in advertising while working toward her MFA at Columbia College Chicago.

Why I'll Never Play the Cello

It’s not because I have small fingers,
pointy elbows. Or because I like to let my nails
grow long, cacophonous. I’m simply not meant
for the litany of your spruce chrysalid. Too vast,
you carmine cask, perilous barrel. If skimmed
right, I might splinter, fission into diatonic
atoms, loose chords. The circumference
of my arms too distant to be halved
by the likes of you, a secant slicing
my very circle, a knife through the body
of a pear. I’ve only played pizzicato, clumsy
with tenor in a Winn-Dixie jug band.
Some fingers defy pinning monarchs
to mounting board. They refuse calluses,
split seams, rip triplets open with a hook.
Maybe, if you were a seesaw, my hips
could bear the bass and treble, the up-
and-down, the cry and sing that ferment
in the bellies of whole notes. Or a motorcycle
between my knees, pure glissando, electric
meow. Zero to eighty in the breadth of a grace note.
Nothing but wind between here and heaven.
No, a cello is different. Burlesque. Merlot
salted with crosses and cadenza,
you’re raw, rubicund. Heady
groans extorted from andante for the price
of vine. Purfling tortured with burgundy,
twisted into our own private adagio cut
from suede cocoons, the unraveling of silkworms.
These ways are easier: motorcycle, seesaw, pizzicato.
I’ve no room for you, cello, in this sarabande
of bleeding fingers. Feet firmly on the ground,
knees vibrato with prayer, and already, my head
somewhere beyond bouquets and butterflies alike.

(previously published in Barrelhouse)

Like the Devil

He holds on to life with his teeth,
dangles it by the nape.
Tastes with the fury of cayenne
and says hush-hush-hush
with his hands as he drinks
wine from me like an open spoon.
He can tell magenta from maroon.
He grins like the devil,
all jump-start and red bell
pepper. Stitches me together
as if my cunt is a wound,
his tongue, copacetic.
I mend, sprout wings,
and scream things.
A firebird possessed
of the power to fly,
he shuts his eyes,
and wills it so.
Off he goes.
Grunt and scruff, this
spitfire. This hellcat.
A scrapper who turns the screws
of my truss rod, straightens
my back. Names the stars
of my knees with one eye
closed, opens my gates,
faces the bull.
Olé! He’s muy caliente.
Itch, bitch, and boil,
he celebrates supine
and sublime. Pins
the tail on the donkey
every time, this toreador.
A necromantic lynx who
swallows whole but plays
legato, in tune.
He follows me out of rooms.
Hush-hush-hush.
It will be all right.
He who holds on to life with his teeth
will never go hungry.
Faster, pussycat.
Kill! Kill!

(previously published in Fugue)

Copyright 2006 Brandi Homan

Featured Poet: Mark Tardi

Mark Tardi grew up a mile away from Midway Airport in Chicago, IL. At any early age he learned that the defeaning roar of the planes overhead was a great way to leverage natural pauses in phone conversations.

His first book Euclid Shudders was a finalist for the 2002 National Poetry Series. More recently, two chapbooks have appeared: Airport music from Bronze Skull Press (where some of these poems appeared), and Part First-----Chopin's Feet from g o n g. Poems and reviews can be found in Antennae, Aufgabe, Bird Dog, Boog City, the Review of Contemporary Fiction, and other periodicals.

They were entire functions, quasi doubly periodic, q-series, mock theta

And they were the future behaved at infinity


open air rooms, inescapable
starboard

Vitamin D deficient


A bad year for scarves,
broken symmetries, those thin potato soups


which were the beginning


And they were blue almonds or heavy hydrogen

very much a jump in the dark
buried and buried again


Your plastic itinerary, a loss cone
lying in wait


***


Second letter on the same day:

Best to end these confidences. It’s not that I’m superstitious, but
that I’m not. Some people like to go to church, and some people
like cherries. A corpse won’t change any of that. The usual whisper
and splash, soup and a pair of shoes.


***

That streets are sewn together.

Nose bleed en route.

Tray to beam.


That steak weapons.

To your desolate without.

Private fire trucks.


It’s an insurance job.

Softball without gloves.

A leg laugh.

***



The Calumet Record, October 1907:

12 died in the neighborhood of the blast furnace;
3 were electrocuted;
1 died in a dynamite accident;
3 fell from a high place;
4 were struck by a falling object;
4 were killed by hot metal in the Bessemer department;
3 were crushed to death;
1 was suffocated by gas;
1 was thrown from a high place by the wind;
1 was scorched to death by a hot slag;
10 were killed by railroad cars or locomotives.

***

Still no solution, so how about an old joke:

2 plus 2 equals 5 for sufficiently large values of 2.

Maybe you’re right that the infinite resembles a wound, but “unperturbed kernels radiant and inevitable?”

Yes, I know counting is not proving. So I’m left reaching.
If you’re dead, do let me know.

***

Yes, ruthless
so much a square mile

pickled hands and cutworm

Yes, clean geometries
successed,

warned with corners

A stuffed
zero in an armchair

poorly equipped for the cold

Your algebra nearly fainted, salt-blue

The question of specific gravity

baths filling, flagpoles
casting shadows,

your father’s negative age

five years ago

***


5 out of 4 people have trouble with fractions.
The entireness of simple touch. All those
lost landscapes.

Your dead body looks like rain;

Mine, rotted planks for pavement, standing
water, vinegar, another flu out of season

Don’t ask how we went, by what sudden leap
or what unforeseen modulation. This zero with
so many ciphers.

It was impossible to watch:


To undress and dress again.
The chest a harpsichord.



Copyright 2006 Mark Tardi