Featured Poet: Paul Cunningham

from "The House of the Tree of Sores"
 

A kitchen: where bombs and explosions are constantly cooked up

where zombified Swedish Chef fits large and small hands

(a spoiling milk in the West) continually spills

onto Miss Misshandlade & Miss Misstanke

Nothing spills on Miss Indiana because her body is “normal”

Normal is a good thing, you should look more normal,

the mockmilk whispers.

Pour batter into prepared bowl

a bowl is a shed is a shedding

is a clean shed or a shed of fakes?

a should snusk a snusk shed?

identisk, translation’s tisk tisk

translation, needle in a höstack

a whole stack, a sales rack

a hate-stack, bombar dem

bombard them, feja or fejka?

Brush a grill gate with spring tension adjuster

Add 20 #7 x 7/8” flat-head screws

Add ¾ cup of decorative bolts

Preheat oven to 375’ F

Use a slotted spoon to churn headboard

Use a slotted spoon to mix the sweet

Add 2 side frames, Add 4 adjustable shelves

Add a layer of caramelized connection sleeve

melon, knocksharps the skull

kitchen offers a mallet, a gavel, a kavel

dough-rolling a skulle, dough-rolling a should

feja skola och fejka skola?

translation, a fruit contains a secret mjölk

clayed over by peel, inte gråta över spilld mjölk?

peel-removal; glöd-core; våld-core

suga sockret, suger socker

More boomashootns, the mockmilk whispers

puppetland, with its gun-shaped hand

home of damaged dream-appliances

microwave-safe, fits in the bowl of all sinks

puppetstringchoked sinkhole

sings a green song a salad mean song

veggie stalks tangled up in an armature wire

a stringy ooze out of mockmilk mouth utters

Copyright © 2014 Paul Cunningham

Featured Poet: Gabriel Gudding

Gabriel Gudding is the author of two books, A Defense of Poetry (Pitt Poetry Series,2002) and rhode island notebook (Dalkey Archive Press, 2008), the latter being a book he wrote entirely in his car during 25 roundtrips on the highways between Providence, RI and Normal, IL. The book is a mixed-genre work chronicling the play of sorrow in the driver’s life and a nation’s march to war. A resident of Normal, Illinois since 2002, he teaches Literature and Creative Writing at Illinois State University. He is a trained mediator for the university and practices Vipassana meditation in the tradition of Sayagyi U Ba Khin. His work appears in such venues as New American Writing, LIT, Fence, American Poetry Review, Sentence, Jacket, and in such anthologies as Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present (Scribner, 2003). He serves on the Board of Directors for the internationalist magazine _Mandorla: New Writing from the Americans/ Nueva Escritura de las Américas_. He has begun two creative writing programs in prisons and maintains a blog, Conchology. And oh yeah: "Gudding" rhymes with pudding.




MINNESOTA [first appeared in NEW AMERICAN WRITING]


And without your brief umbrella
when I was wild
I was young, and the lakes I had been to
and the lake I had been in
were petrol blue in the evening
and stray smells of straw were on them

and nearby the maple docks
the attention of the carnivores
was bound in the gooses

all these living things
on the lake home
when I was a child, I was
wild upon it, the tennis court by the lake
strange how the animals
enjoyed their wings

some of the small live things were swollen
others tiny, some were windy

there was a squirrel who was windy
none had umbrellas
and for a while when I was 12
my parents did love the lakes, and all of us
and themselves






NO, POPSICKLE [first appeared in Court Green]

for Kerry Mahan Griner


No, popsickle: stay.
Don’t be eaten. Remain in the freezer, the
super market, lodge in the long
far-traveling fridge truck—Be convoyed: indeed
be conveyed for a Dakota
a Missouri—but when the truck arrive
at its depository
—or store—at the end of what hot bridge in the dim forenoon,
stay, little bulb of colored cold,
far in your cozy no-no.
I say chill, be a child, popsickle, refuse.





AN DITCH [first appeared in LIT]


They have leftht uth a lone at latht
There are logth and thtarth to thtub our toeth and catch too at our eyeth:
Thith ditch ith gloriouth.

Look at them! The night’s jars, the thtrange daubing wellth of light:
You over me then like a thtar!, our legth twining
below our grointh.
Your deep fish. My hand-ache. My handth walk
into the China of your boobieth.

Making love in thith ditch
ith gloriouth!




BILLY COLLINS


The small beads of grease
riding the soup-sheen
are all I have.

I would suck them up
and forget the soup.
They are orange as kerosene

as if they spilled from a farm house
deep in the soup.
Maybe I will put my eye down
close to the grease waves
and try to see the fields

and the distant churchyard
in the chicken noodle.

I will wave to the farm girl
waiting for her mama, and think
what a lank silo of seed

will meet her
in those fields.



DEAR EAGLES [first appeared in The Canary]


I am bored by beagles those happy dogs
so indelibly at gates. They’re unlike
the nation’s eagles who bang on gelid gusts
above our fields and shining logs. I am
not, thus, bored by yóu—all
your pleasures gentried, such epaulets
and fuss—and never over are the clawed towings
of fish with your angled feathers, no: Dó call me
an eagle lover, then. You are possibles.

Yet too you that once that were some symbols
of this nation that dealt some blows: you are not now
—nor are you ever always will be again—
ethicals,

your country’s over. And though you’re here still,
you will surely go.

For I have seen few snowmen outlast the snows.

Sincerely,

Gabriel Gudding



LITERARY NARCISSISM AND THE MANUFACTURE OF SCANDAL

1. A Literary Narcissist’s behavior will not only tolerate but encourage attacks on himself so long as it can translate his own self-fascination into more news of himself.

2. Just as the Narcissist will use argument, catastrophe, disputation to attract attention, certain people will be willing to dispute the Narcissist in order to participate in the economy of attention. Others will dispute the Narcissist because they are so profoundly appalled by his/her behavior. Either way, the economy of attention is fueled.

3. The Narcissist needs Catastrophe. The more internal crises of shame the Narcissist endures and fails to heed, the more s/he will need to create external Catastrophes. A chief and signal way a Narcissist might attract attention is to start fights: Narcissists will gravitate toward satire and caricature as a means of creating argument. The Narcissist will attempt to construe strife with health: These arguments need to happen, etc.

4. The Narcissist IS fascinating -- but not for the reasons the Narcissist thinks. S/he is fascinating because the energy s/he will expend in micromanaging the self image is so profoundly exceptional. People just sort of stand there slack-jawed wondering if this person has a life. The Narcissist however will mistranslate the fascination of others as admiration.

5. Poetry communities will tolerate narcissism so long as it is translated into a Social Energy which others can use to strengthen and promote their projects.

6. Narcissism and alcoholism. Alcoholism is a systematic way to push down socially regulating emotions like shame, guilt, and embarrassment at ones own self-aggrandizing behavior. The suppression of these emotions is never successful, even in the most energetic of self-aggrandizers, and they will periodically burst upward into brief displays of remorse and convictions to change. These brief spouts of regulatory behavior are sometimes shared publicly and sometimes privately among confidants. These displays however can often easily be re-used by the Narcissist as a way of showing his/her authenticity and emotional fealty to the community.

7. The Narcissist is aware of the economy of disgust surrounding his/her behavior. S/he becomes more and more sensitive to this and consequently begins to demand private declarations of loyalty from those people whom s/he knows consider themselves friends -- even if they have said nothing publicly against the Narcissist.

8. The Narcissist, aware of this disgust, will create a personal mythos in which s/he will be justified and exonerated by the rewards of literary history. The stronger the disgust of others, the greater the energy used to maintain the mythos of exoneration by history.

9. Narcissists are only interested in community so long as it pays dividends to their energy: they will support it if it feeds them.

10. The narcissist may outright demand in private that you pay him publicly with praise. Then he or she will publicly repay you with a communal mention.

11. In their attempt to cause others to adopt their self-fascination, Narcissists will become increasingly paranoiac, constantly searching the environment and community for news of themselves, for fealty or disloyalty.

12. The Literary Narcissist begins purposefully to conflate criticism of his social behavior into an indication of his/her literary worth. That is to say, the Narcissist will try to show that the reason others despise or are disgusted by him is in fact because he or she is a Rebel, a true Literary Revolutionist -- and that the statements of disgust others publicly make at his behavior is merely an indication of (a) their necessary denial of the work because they are threatened by it, or (b) their jealousy of the work.

13. There comes a point -- and the point may come early -- where the community thinks to itself teapot and the Narcissist still hears tempest. The truly insular narcissist (aka "the boor") will be met more and more with shunning, ignoring and silence. This will wrest the narcissist from his insularity -- such that he will begin another project designed to create Genuine Interest instead of mere scandalous attention. This project, like a new comet's head, will be followed by a long tail of manufactured scandal so as to call attention to its presence in the literary sky.


Copyright  © Gabriel Gudding

Featured Poet: Garin Cycholl

Garin Cycholl teaches writing and literature at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he also works as co-editor of Near South, a journal of experimental poetry, fiction, and drama. His recent work will appear this spring with Admit2 and Keep Going. He is author of Nightbirds (moria books 2006), and Blue Mound to 161, a book-length poem on geological and historical displacements in Southern Illinois (Pavement Saw Press 2005).




AM

nostalgia is his-
t’ry eating itself—
contortions for
the camera’s ear,
the boys down
the hall singing,

America’s a
dead horse an
abandoned drive-
in an auto parts
store with dusty
inventory a hot
dog stand with
a silent partner

he worries—
he thinks, I’m
a fat man in a
tight suit he
says into his
lapel, “another
five years of
fucking plan”

modulation—not
a direct line, but
one that winds
through place

they said that series was fixed

“and if they hadn’t
known his head be-
fore, they certainly
did when it rolled
out of the piñata”






Three poems for Rita Figueroa

“two by knockout”

1
your hands are two bags
of Quikrete, loose
money and clenched
rags sing
it! we
live in a
slow time, you
said ring the
bell and


2
toe to toes curled
and cinched against
knuckle negative
Aphrodite three
steps down a
rope “oh, to
be with my baby
down in Nelson
Algren’s fuck
shack,” you
sang bones
in the corner


3
a loose jaw gathers
no what? five
bucks against
that I
would like to
be called Caesar,
get off the bus
at Western light
my pipe with
fifty-dollar
bills watch
Grant’s head
explode in
blue flame


Song for Meriwether Lewis

dead by his own hand (probably)

Farewell, old knife, now that you’ve come home! I’ve stabbed plenty. Farewell my Boise, my Tennessee. My mashed potatoes. Where’s that old dog? Crime does not simply happen. Like a triangle, crime must have three sides or elements to be complete. Ability, desire, and opportunity. Farewell, my fingers, frozen to my belt and axe. The horses I’ve eaten. Farewell to the samples collected along rivers, in emptied streambeds. Farewell, serious lieutenants, dead in the snow. You can say you found me dead on this picnic table, jaw full of bison. Bulbs plucked and eaten raw. Call security immediately. A man gave me some good advice once. He said, “Take the camera out of your ass, son. We’ve got to snap some pictures of these cliffs.” But now it’s farewell. Farewell, my Mobridge, my Platte. Indian girl pulling her hair loose in rough strands. Where’s that old dog? Ability, desire, opportunity. Remove any one of these elements and the triangle can't be formed and the crime will not occur. The boys already upriver, wondering how many more steps that horse’ll take. Clark and I left to dreams of eating chicken from a cardboard tub by the interstate. Farewell, to you, too, f-stop, silver baths, and things that go “click.” The gray waters of Astoria piled against the sky. Where’s that old dog? Call security immediately. Campfires and whiskey rebellions. Pocket pistols and Improvised Philadelphia. Farewell, opportunity. Farewell, desire. Farewell, ability. Farewell, old knife, stuck firmly in my back!

Featured Poet: Kristy Bowen

Kristy Bowen’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Diagram, Milk Magazine, Swink, Rhino, and Another Chicago Magazine. She is the author of a number of handmade chapbooks, which are available at her website, as well as a full length book, the fever almanac, due out from Ghost Road Press this fall. She edits the electronic zine, wicked alice and runs dancing girl press, which publishes work by women poets. Be sure to check out her blog, too.

Editor's Note: Kristy Bowen and fellow Seven Corners alum Kristy Odelius will be reading at Myopic Books book on Sunday, March 19. Don't miss it.



erythrophobia

Sometimes, it was all red. The dash light, my dress, the fire alarm of my mouth. Even my hair makes a sound like that now. Before you know it, I’m the patron saint of disaster. Of car crashes and open hydrants. The vowels gone round and sloppy in my mouth as candy. For luck, I carry three tiny vermillion birds in the bottom of my purse. A cross in the crux of my crimson bra. In the furnace of my lungs, sometimes there’s a hissing, a swirl, like a sink emptying. I am careful not to riot.


girls against boys

When she makes an o of her mouth,
the forsythia behind her head bursts into flame.
Singes clotheslines full of blue gingham
pinafores and yellow flowered sheets.
When she bends at the waist, she can make an o
of her body. A birdcall. A tiny pink sequin.
Can make up names for the baby teeth
beneath her dresser. Lydia. Amelia.
Their tiny lion tin. Can define the pinwheel
of her arms falling through dark.

The trellis by the steps slicks in the rain
and all night he calls for his extra rib,
his good heart’s hinge. Sad, sad.
No one can sleep with it. The world
is all checked cotton and charm bracelets now.
I can move my mouth in a whisper.
Could give you the instructions,
if we found the proper word.

 

from the hysteria notebooks: a gothic

I. Catherine, for a moment, was motionless with horror.

Our story indicates the parlor door
remain closed, the lace at her wrist
worn, and slightly rent. Granted,
there are bones in the body science

hasn’t even discovered yet: this,
the one at her throat that tightens
when the white dress takes flight
from the window, or the slivers
in the ear discerning motion.

A woman in the corner is counting spools
of thread while a man in a black coat watches.

The light falls to ruin.


He had then proceeded to throw suspicion upon the girl, saying that he had heard from Frau K. that she took no interest in any other thing but sexual matters, and that she used to read Mantegazza’s Physiology of Love and books of that sort in their house on the lake. It was most likely, he had added, that she had been over excited by such reading and had merely “fancied” the whole scene she had described.

I. Attitudes Passionelles

When he touched her, violets on her tongue,
and afterward, in the folds of her bed linen.

Landscape plays a greater role than one would think.

The dark moors, the moon. How can we but forgive this girl,
dear reader; her dresses unravel us. Or him, his penchant
for the distraught. Now, we are moving

through dark rooms, the rustle of skirts, held breath.
Something must have been here in the moments before,
the thread that, alas, saves us dissappearing round the corner.


II. Rest Cure


Hippocrates first proposed that hysteria was caused by a wandering uterus. He believed that the uterus could dislodge itself in the body and wander around the female body attaching itself to other organs. He explained that the various symptoms of hysteria, such as nervousness, depression, and hysterical fits were caused by the uterus’s interactions with the other organs in the body.

You see, the woman in the attic is nothing

more than the axis on which our heroine turns—

countryside, silver locket, cover of snow.

A bread knife has more to do with it than how

many saints she could name in one breath.

Here, an illustration.

Take away the books. The sharpened point
of a compass, its circle widening. We are apt
to fear the body, the sentences scrawled beneath
the teacup’s pale lip. Each tendon a wire,
jumping at the proximity of silks.

The villain is you father. The villain is your doctor..
The villian is your mother, ten years gone
and wearing white. Once they’ve taken
away the paintbox, you can stop pretending.

Those darling, fragile reds.

Poet's note: “from the hysteria notebooks: a gothic” is from the errata series, my chapbook of Victorian genre-bending pieces.

Featured Poet: Michael O'Leary

Michael O'Leary is the founding editor of LVNG magazine and the co-director of Flood Editions. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in fracture mechanics at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

ONE DAY
for Stephanie Tipton

In the morning of the last day
of summer when the air is sharp
with coolish winds from Canada
and swallows dip along the hedge
at sinusoidal intervals
abandoning the last pliant tips
of little bluestem for the pale
vectors of nowhere, you know
it is not the laminar flow
of their vanishing nor their smooth
bellies that makes them beautiful.
Noon is now and the afternoon
a temptation, an afterthought
of pure abstraction, albeit
Jesuitic. But evening comes
like a stately lawn where a great
silver ball gently rolls to a stop.
In time the hollyhocks grow long,
in time the sunflower is beaten
down by the heat of its own
colossus and the last blossom
of the day is all but subsumed
by the supple granulation
of a very ancient wound.


THE CHILLS

The street quite still.
Down the long corridor

a light, several doors
and a single pine.

Conversations on
the wires are quiet,

sequestered from here
to there, ear to ear.

The most intimate
jokes get lost sometimes,

even simple questions
go unanswered.

Quiet's like that.
Magnificent crystals

of ice spider
across the creaking panes.


FALLS OF THE OHIO

It was calm like bedtime
with water falling off the dam
in tiny castellations.

Flakes of limestone lay about
the base of massive piers raising
the truss above the river.

Water thunders from the turbine.
Two trash pickers sift through driftwood
for a lucky find.

And high above the sluice
a sparrow swoops down to catch
a fleck of dirty water

before resuming his little song
among the stalks of marshgrass dried
and split like last year's palms.


Copyright © 2006 Michael O'Leary

Featured Poet: William Allegrezza, Part 2

Editor's Note: This is the sequel to last week's posting. With all the talk of electronic poetry and its possibilities floating around listservs and the blogosphere, etc., William Allegrezza was generous enough to allow the following poems to be posted on Seven Corners. Enjoy! Be sure to check out William's blog and his online journal, moria. Also, these poems were meant for a white background which has caused some formatting/font difficulties in Blogger.

Copyright © 2006 William Allegrezza and Seven Corners

Featured Poet: William Allegrezza, Part 1

William Allegrezza teaches and writes from his base in Chicago. His poems, articles, and reviews have been published in several countries, including the U.S., Holland, Finland, the Czech Republic, and Australia, and are available in many online journals. Also, he is the editor of moria, a journal dedicated to experimental poetry and poetics, and the editor-in-chief of Cracked Slab Books. His e-book/books include Covering Over, The Vicious Bunny Translations, Lingo, Temporal Nomads, and Ladders in July.

seeking hades again

though some dream leap i find myself watching

cars people
 villages  trees  life
    aid    juries
love

and somewhere below a bell cord
is being pulled and shadows
         are gathering
   before a pit
   where i should
   be seeking answers.

it aches grease

the journey begins when
you leave stormy waters
and give up hold of the shore

“i have no longing
to be trapped under
clouds in storm”

still divided
        waiting
  for something to
  clutch as the helm
  goes wild
  and lightning
  flashes on peaks
  turned white

in trusting the drift
one must be prepared for
destruction at sea.

heart’s lake


to be distracted through so many days the
hour as if not even alive
“stories of innocence violated pile up”
and cause the ultimate questions

our survival relies on such
situations

i would rename these deeds to make them disappear
but i cannot force myself
  to turn eyes
  from flame even though
  i go blind.

law


we watch the wind
tear us to shreds
 nowhere does a
 man listen

in compromise they
fired the shots at me

 the legality of it
 is humorous

in replacing the tide
they knew where to find you.

Copyright © 2006 William Allegrezza

Featured Poet: Robert Archambeau

Robert Archambeau is a poet and professor who resides in Highland Park, Illinois, north of Chicago. His first full-length collection of poems, Home and Variations, was published by Salt in 2004. Wild Honey Press also published two chapbooks: Citation Suite, poems, and Another Ireland, an essay on experimental Irish poetry, in 1997. Robert teaches at Lake Forest College and is the mastermind behind Samizdat Blog.

Léon Theremin

Called Léon, a Leonardo
Léon Theremin, 1896-1993
St. Petersburg and Paris, New York and Butyrka

Called Léon, a Leonardo: wireless, his métier,
Called Léon, not Lev Sergeyevich, not Termen in gay Paris.
The sharashka Leonardo, without the Medici,
Without a Ferdinando, but once this: RCA.

*Or stop, and try another way. From the beginning—

So came the Revolution,
his dreams were more than méchanique:

See, they play like Russian peasants with clumsy saws and tree-trunks,
They scrape their deadwood violins.
So came the Revolution (his patrón). And he'd explain:
See the conductor. You'll play like that.

The conductor simply moves his hands.

*Moscow, the great conductor plays:

I brought my apparatus and set it up in his large office in the Kremlin. He was not yet there because he was in a meeting. I waited with Fotiva, his secretary, who was a good pianist, a graduate of the conservatory. She said that a little piano would be brought into the office, and that she would accompany me on the music that I would play. So we prepared, and about an hour and a half later Vladimir Ilyich Lenin came with those people with whom he had been in conference in the Kremlin. He was very gracious; I was very pleased to meet him, and then I showed him the signaling system of my instrument, which I played by moving my hands in the air, and which was called at that time the Thereminvox. I played. Then they applauded, even Vladimir Ilyich, who had been watching very attentively. I'd played Glinka's "Skylark", which he loved very much, and Vladimir Ilyich said, after all this applause, that I should show him, and he would try to play it himself. He stood up, moved to the instrument, stretched his hands out, left and right: right to the pitch and left to the volume. I took his hands from behind and helped him. He started to play "Skylark." He had a very good ear…


*And then.

Paris, Varèse: He's Theremin, and plays
The Thereminovox. Was Terminvoska at the Institute, and then

The Heterophonic Box. But now, for all of vrai Paris,
for tout le monde de la rive gauche, he'd play.

There were no handles and no keyboard.
He waved his hands. Like that.

Conductor to the future,
Avant-aristocrat.

And no patrón.

*And stop. Digress at Europe's wonder,

D.E. Ravalico, Prodigi e Misteri delle Radio-Onde, Bompiani, Milano, 1934:

A small metal rod protrudes from the top of the music stand, from which there is another metal coil extending on the side. On the music stand itself, which is connected to the power supply for illumination, rests the music score. The conductor moves near and, having set off a switch, begins to wave his arms, as if conducting. Immediately, sounds begin flowing out from a speaker pointed in the direction of the audience. I certainly hope that the reader doesn’t think, even for a minute, that I would let any farfetched fantasies flow from my pen. It’s actually the invention, realized very practically, of a Russian technician, Léon Theremin. He lives in America…

*

In New York, he sees the future, Americain, he'd make it real:
A wireless orchestra plays Carnegie Hall.

A studio at RCA, the Rhythmicon, its bells.
In New York, they see him working. They see they'd make it sell.

He works, they pay,
his new patróns. Einstein comes to see.

Elsewhere, a conductor simply moves his hands.

*Moscow to Siberia, Termen from Theremin, returned.

Arrived, the locomotive paws the track,
Deep-chested, bellowing. Its whistle plays

No “Skylark,”
And Termin's back from old New York —

Not by his choice.
(A New York night, the KGB,

they take him by the hands.
Like that).

The train conductor slams the boxcar door
And waves them off.

No one guides his burly hands,
And this conductor's dreams are méchanique.

*

So came Butyrka, where the future's built
From souls of broken men. And then

For coal, so came Kolyma, sent there, with Tupolev.
A great conductor squats in Moscow,

Orders gulags,
Orders praise.

So came the inner exile.
The great conductor’d guide his hands —

This steel patrón,
this Kremlin mountaineer —

And move them, left and right.
He made a very good ear:

A bug of this nature was embedded in a wooden plaque,
Given by schoolchildren to the American ambassador,

Where it hung in his office until detected, decades on.
*And decades on.

Once he'd dreamed a future, dreamed avant,
A wireless orchestra played Carnegie Hall.

He hadn't dreamed in years.
They'd let me leave, and use a room.

The university. The officials did not consider music
A science, and everything was dismantled.

Dismantled, he. And decades on.
The great conductors laid the old thing down.

He dreamed no future, no more dreamed avant.

*And stop.

They take his hands.
They guide him to the podium

They help him stand.
Awards.

After the end, and California, 1991. No conductor
Planned this future (Americans: they saw and made it sell).

He is very gracious. They are very pleased.
He smiles from beyond his dream. Like that.

*Or try another way—

Called Léon, a Leondardo: wireless, his métier,
Called Léon, not Lev Sergeyevich, not Termen in gay Paris.
The sharashka Leonardo, without the Medici,
Without a Ferdinando, but once this: RCA.

Copyright © 2006 Robert Archambeau and Seven Corners

Featured Poet: Kristy Odelius

Kristy Odelius Photo by: Joel Blair

Kristy O is a poet and Assistant Professor of English at North Park University. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Chicago Review, Notre Dame Review, ACM, and diagram. She loves her cat and wide warm water.

(3)

The virgins of Chicago

work nights at "Federal Screw
Products." They like welding,
sweating and wearing
gray aprons.

"I can't feel anything,"
I sigh as the elevator rises.
The meta-galaxy slips
like a ring on my finger,
a parenthesis squeezing the night
in towards morning.

They rest in the caliper,
thinking about tree
trunks, project their
cool measure, summon
the helicopter.

The sky pales, a weird ochre.
All yellow, I'm flying an octave
below the shareholders. It's
always the same. I remember
their names. I can't see their faces,
I can't read their folders.

Poet's Note: "The virgins of Chicago" is part of a longer series of poems all with the same title--"The virgins of Chicago."


A Breath Catalogue

Allegedly, breath
clocks downward,

edged from gasoline
hovering into jackets, jars.

Knock lower? Make noise?

O pantworthy quests
roaming small
towers, tell us!

Utterance. Vow. Wind.
XXX. Your yellow
zones, alledgedly.

Breath.

Poet's Note: "A Breath Catalogue" is an abecedarian which represents my love of writing in form, my affection for rules and restrictions of all kinds. It's also a very different treatment of "breath."

No Breath Found

no thought no breath no eyes no heart no breath in the bellows no body beside you no breath of fresh air for manufacturer phillip inman the day is empty no one needs you seven are squatters in two different worlds hog’s breath is better than no breath at all and when I beheld lo the sinews and the flesh came up upon them and the skin covered them above but there was no breath in them as far as I can see there is little real justification for what we do here there was no breath left in him red heart yarn red hot no breath strips provide a clean mouth feeling on-the-go tao of breath no dog breath unfortunately no one can really smell their own breath whale calves do not exhibit bad breath because they have no need to feed themselves and don’t have to dive deeply thanks no it doesn’t hurt to breathe just sore to lay on or touch sneezing coughing wheezing nose itching no match for breath sorry breath is not in the dictionary cough? no yes no yes yes copius sputum? no yes no yes possible pallor? no no yes no no shortness of breath difficult labored breathing

Thoughts of Falling, Pollen, Pare

after Sappho

When champion-bred
leaves lie splayed
like minimum wage
sin, when sleep,
a raincoat czar,
spreads its liquid
hands thin, I'll say
not on: your life, your daddy's knee, a new knife blade.

Try, swim the brackish margin
between holy and hole, the ocean's
backstitched locomotion loosely
recites "no, there's no such
night in prosaic blood" nodding
its great nose toward the
mollusky dance-floor.

And if honey leaks from
eyes bent to breezes,
eyes like peach
pits, fragrant and useless
let the blooming dreamers
spring
over their shadows
toward the gray scrimmage

the czar disappears into
the rain's rumpled plumage
my heart's gong-bruised knees
buckling through branches.

It's bee-spit
that blows me
I admit
and you
away.

"It's curtains, ars poetica"

Is this why I stand at my oeil-de-boeuf,
blowing sugar bubbles at that guy
in the snazzy black hood?

Nipples and waffles rustle
a mean last week, ruffle

the constellations oar-locked
along our shower curtain.

A falling,
my heart,
a crocus stalls
at dawn.

Street noise adjusts
its head, tumbled
among the oak leaves.

At home in the bushes, thimble-
berries fill, advance a plump sortie.

O thermostat!
Preside like a priest
over our mouths,
dreaming.

Somewhere, an offhanded window
winks from a sea-drowned cabin.

On the dock, faded paint
suggests "submerged rock."

Underwater, you there, you hear?

Editor's Note: "Thoughts of Falling, Pollen, Pare" and "It's Curtains, ars poetica" were previously published in Chicago Review 50:2/3/4 Winter 2004/5. They are reprinted here with the author's permission.

Editor's Note: Some projective elements of these poems have been lost to left alignment. If anyone can tell me how to format text more precisely in Blogger, the information would be appreciated.

All work copyright © 2006 Kristy Odelius and Seven Corners