Shuffle on My Side

depressed friends

& springtime

disappearing acts

don't say depressed friends

say friends with depression

says the TV (PC)

says Mom (kindly)

says Andy (R. A. Wilsony)

I "am" depressive

You "are" impressive

on nine or all night

adopt-a-backroad

Christmas it up

there are vias

& then there are vias

Truth or Dare

kitchen caballers

pouring vermouth

& in the fourth month

God cleared out his liquor cabinet

a mahogany bar in a suburban den

a babysitter's fantasy

someone handsome &

something neat

Whan that Aprille was so breezy

& full of clump & stick

"She took a sad song and made it sadder."

An exquisite corpse curated by fellow Stain of Poetry reader and Destroyer fan D.W. Lichtenberg, feat. Amy Glasenapp · Neale Jones · Becca Klaver · D.W. Lichtenberg · Justin McElfresh · Tess Patalano · Matt L. Rohrer

STARTING TODAY Review in Which My Ambivalence is Highlighted

STARTING TODAY: 100 POEMS FOR OBAMA'S FIRST 100 DAYS

Rachel Zucker and Arielle Greenberg, editors

University of Iowa Press, $20

The United States has a long tradition of poetry inspired by politicians and political events. My own list of favorite works in that vein includes "O Captain! My Captain!," Whitman's famous elegy to Lincoln; "Bomb," Gregory Corso's 1958 meditation on the nuclear arms race; and "On the Pulse of Morning," which Maya Angelou wrote for Bill Clinton's 1993 inauguration. But for every memorable piece of verse there are scores that read like rants or slogans—google poem and George Bush together if you want examples of either. In early 2009, Columbia College associate prof Arielle Greenberg and fellow poet Rachel Zucker were so pumped at the prospect of an Obama presidency that they recruited dozens of their peers to help them chronicle it. Each agreed to write a poem and post it online no more than a day later—a composition for each of Obama's first 100 days in office. The results, collected in Starting Today, are predictably uneven: some of the political views are naive and some of the language is needlessly cryptic. Early pieces make lots of references to new mornings, new days, and sunshine, but within a few weeks the picture is clouded by ambivalence. On day 34, Philly writer Katie Ford reminds Obama—and herself—that he's "no messiah." By day 86, Chicago poet Becca Klaver saw little reason for optimism. Lots of people were fooled into thinking Obama's election meant the world had suddenly been righted, she writes in "I Didn't Buy It." "Me, I saw a politician who pleased the senses / And I was earnest and pissed and wrong, too." Not everything in this collection connected with me, but it's interesting as a document of a turbulent time. —Mick Dumke

At Iowa, They Write Poems About Bees; At Alabama, They Write Poems About Cockroaches

Most of your dreams are boring.

A red herring. Or, a trout.

The Bible doesn't really, you know, flow.

That bar-b-que made us all out of breath.

She's trying to make it look easier than it really is. And I'm trying to make it look harder than it really is. This is the real difference between the two of us.

You don't even know what I'm talking about.

My landlord, his son, and me vs. the not-entirely dead bat.

The most engaging part of taking your pants off?

Homeopathy for dummies.

All my favorite people, I hated them the first few times we hung out.

Spare the Horses

Left my horse tied but loosely so I could walk away
without it following.

I wore a hat and said you were worth it.

What’s left to learn about lies has more to do with time than words.
Walking makes you realize lies folded in the truth.

Instinctually, I distrust all birds, even paper birds.

Never once have I wished I stayed but
I’ve worried so hard over lost

as to deny found. This isn’t something
the dark can hide. When the bite begins to bleed,

you’ve got to see it.

Last time I looked he was still behind me grazing.
He thinks I’ll return or doesn’t care.

RAINY MIDWESTERN BLUR I LOVE YOU!

shouting airport goodbyes
to cities across the concourse

FORD PROFIT: $1 BILLION

they’re inspecting the plane
at the next gate
let’s hope birds don’t strike
in the same place twice

Promises
KEPT
In Kalamazoo

nor undie bombers

CON IN NEED IS A
COP’S GOOD DEED

Only know the laws of the skies
from the earth where they rule me

this morning green tea & jesus radio
girls from my north
settling scores with the south
I read from my book
attempting same with west
before heading back east

“Where are you coming from?”
“Brooklyn? New Jersey? Chicago?
I don’t know.
I can tell you where I was last.”

life felt in flashes & sheets
on one of two screened-in balconies
an abundance of air and vistas
blood tide rolling below
stadium looming, middle-distant
This must be a town because a city has to have at least one tall building
I said and she gestured toward its behemoth bowl

*

Airport bar right across from my gate.
Why isn’t Andy here to urge me toward a piña colada, or something else gratuitous.
Something like singing If you like piña coladas. . . .
Too much. It’s too much to drink a piña colada alone at a bar at the Detroit Metro Airport.
Who do you think you are. You only like situations too big or too little for their contexts.

A woman sat down next to me chatting on her phone. When she started talking about a powerful sermon she’d heard earlier in the day I was writing about piña coladas and glanced over toward the bar. She may have taken it as a hint; she got up and left.

I’ve got the qualms. Queasyheaded. Ativan plus piña colada equals love.
It’s autoerotic. It’s biomechanical. It’s a bird, a plane.

I prefer to travel in one plane, by which I mean on the ground.
By which I probably also mean NONSTOP.

There’s a Fuddrucker’s, too. (Don’t tell Andy.)
Which is the same as I wish I could tell Andy.
What justifies a phone call? she tweeted.

Where the top of the plane meets the sky is the same color as the sky. No wonder birds get confused.
                Pink planes, I call for pink planes!

Passenger “Your Gramma” please report immediately to Gate A6.

ALABAMA BLUES

       You know I love ya
       And I don’t even
       Know your name

“Who in here’s love-hurtin?”

       Those people are predisposed to being
       Predisposed to being sinful

89.3 FM

DO YOU HAVE TORNADO MACE

for K.A.

birdsong v. tornado siren

kudzu chorus

Oh I get it, book artists feel like they
are paper

“you’re already doing the laundry
why are you offering to clean the kitchen?”

nuanced dudes
v.
Kristo “The Bear” Aardsma

COURAGE IS NOTHING MORE THAN FEAR THAT’S SAID ITS PRAYERS

            Bama poets preach between poems

and Jesus is here, dethroned
Dr. King in the swaying IKEA lanterns
  
in the north we insist
we’re not implicated
  
in the south the ghosts among
            beloved or cursed but not exorcised
  
Would You Like To Join This Group?
PRIESTS WITH A PAST
 
Like

Ask Me What I'm Thinking

(with apologies to Melix)


I took an indecent cartographer featured late
night leaked through closed curtains.

Nobody will sleep in my bed, somebody will sleep in yours.
Impatient for the lake to freeze over again. The night

ends like this, temporarily. Eternities are never nights.
Tonight, eternities ship out of the large room with all the wind

sucked out through the cracks in the walls. Everything
we do or say wants to stay with us forever and ever.

It doesn't mean anything less than asteroid attacks and I trust
your colorless way of looking at what we are given;

it makes me want to kiss and make-up. That's not what
you're thinking right now. And matches come to mind.

And I don't know if I'll be sorry I missed you but,
the feeling better not be mutual.

Don’t Ask Me What I’m Thinking

If I could take decent photographs, they’d feature early
dawn’s light leaked in through parted drapes.

Someone in bed asleep, another someone awake.
Waiting for fog to burn off the lake, the day

starts like this, stays. Moments are always morning. This morning
movement stays shipwrecked to a small room

the wind ripped through last night. Nothing
to do or say but want to go away.

It has to mean more than meteor showers that I don’t trust
the color gray or the way that look was given;

it makes me want to fight or fuck. That’s what
I’m thinking right now. And kerosene comes to mind.

And I already know I’ll be sorry I met you but,
the feeling will be mutual.

I Can't Sleep or Disappear

How about daylight, 
    how about knowing
in advance. 

I haven’t heard a voice
for weeks, not one I like,

        nothing more than bees
fashioned as rings. Finally,
        I’ve seen a starling,
    
        not sure of the fuss.
Like everyone else,
    long nails gather dirt,

cuts appear randomly on hands
that smell of black copium

which is the same as jazz and rum, 
        Charlie Hayden’s bass,
a night in Montreal. It’s also a church

without a spire.
        Treacherous, any hair
color not red or mine.  

Use jonquil and jasmine,
help me speak. Strange, 

        the tilled-dream sleep;
what I forgot,
        what I wanted it to mean.

my my utopia

my car is covered in bird crap.

please direct me to one of those liberal cities i keep hearing so much about.

since we're living in a post-gender world, you should probably go ahead and take off your dick.

who taught you the foxtrot?  the lady upstairs?

look at all that sex tape.

my stocks fell through after his gout became public knowledge.

wrap me up in a plastic robe, it's science time!  or, double-vaginaed albino rabbits for everyone!

under no circumstance are you to tell the chemical agents where we've been hole-ing up.

oh, for the love of gaia, why can't you do a better job at shutting the fuck up? 

"everything came back what?

unremarkable?"

   no thing

comes unremarkable

just unmarked

to the right

   tennis courts

to the left green gully

this is the light

I'd've requested

this is the light

I imagined this time

last year

----horizontal----

planes glinty

sky machines

again

too low thru the treetops

deep blue cloud

in shape of thought bubble

'post-rain ponderous'

Slash! Pine! Poetry! Festival!

April 23-24, 2010
Tuscaloosa and Northport, AL

In April, we sponsor The Slash Pine Poetry Festival, which brings national and regional poets together for a two-day extravaganza of poetry. The festival highlights the public and democratic nature of creative work, refusing to privilege one form or aesthetic over another, and presenting diverse voices in non-traditional, communally-accessible spaces. The festival itself spreads widely across a range of venues, emphasizing that art is intimately connected to place. The 2010 festival (as it did in 2009) will feature over 40 creative writers performing in five venues around the Tuscaloosa/Northport region.

Saturday, April 24, 2010

6:30 p.m.-9:30 p.m.: BBQ, Blues, Conversation, & Poetry

Historic Northport Depot/Black Warrior Model Railroad Society
725 25th Ave.
Northport, AL 35473

6:30 p.m.-7:30 p.m: An informal dinner of BBQ and blues music. The public is invited to come and mingle with the festival writers.

7:30 p.m-9:30 p.m:

Bruce Alford * Brock Guthrie * Becca Klaver * Kate Lorenz * J. Kirk Maynard * Theresa Pappas * Abraham Smith * Jeanie Thompson

[complete schedule]

head/desk or htmlgiantfail (a cento)

...language over body...i really don't give a fuck if you and your forehead and your paisley wall get pissed. there it is...That is a bland equation, pure ratio...i love women.  i love women writers.  but i also had a deadline to meet and the writing to think about first and foremost...i'm not ignoring gender bias, but come on...a lot of the comments here hint that certain groups of people are intentionally discriminated against. i don’t quite buy that. i’ve edited...maybe i smell, but i do believe that in general there are often a much higher % of subs from males. don’t know why that is. but then again, i honestly rarely consider gender when i am looking at words...I'd put my money on the fact that if he encountered more women who wrote language based work that spoke to him he'd be thrilled about it...Male and Female is mostly easy, but apart from that, what can you do...I understand why Affirmative Action was a good thing. I just have personal issues with it, unrelated to this blog post...everything you know has been taught. why is there any reaction looking at a list of “male” names in a journal? why do you not have the same aggressive reaction towards other patterns, red and white checkers?...I wouldn’t expect, however, a magazine like, say, Gray’s Sporting Journal (which regularly publishes poetry) to display an equal ratio, though I’m sure it would be interested in poems about women’s experiences in the areas it covers...You cannot simply infer that because there is a published ratio of 1 woman to 6 men in the issue then this means there is an editorial intention to favor men over women... i'm sorry that it's not the seventies and you ladies missed the revolution...do you think “i am proud” when you publish a woman?...I did think a bit about aesthetic diversity, and i was cognizant of gender/racial diversity but not “hung up on it at all,” whatever that means...There was actually one female contributor, but her name did not make this obvious. It also did not help matters that I used the jokey name, No Girls Allowed Press, as my publisher...but accepting work to a magazine will never be some ideal, objective, blind contest...you can take the human out of the equation, which i personally find a touch inhumane or “un-fun,” but you can’t make it ideally fair or objectively fair...Wait, aren’t you on the board of WILLA (Women in Letters & Literary Arts)? Talk about announcing VERY LOUDLY the limits of your vision/etc...i’m not sure about others, but for me it’s not a question of never being moved by women...i am a little confused here. i read through WAC and found effeminacy. gene just happens to enjoy it coming from effeminate male voices. so the issue isn’t about “gender”. is it?...I would also argue that it isn’t rocket science...50% of all people are women. Whether 50% of all the great unpublished work out there is written by women does not necessarily follow from that...We had a long discussion about female writers in general, named a heck of a lot more names than you've managed to come up with in this post, and lamented the fact that there weren't more monstrous tomes by women -- the main exceptions off the tops of our heads were those of George Eliot, Ayn Rand and Margurite Young...I’m calling bullshit on your presumption, because it falls significantly short of a rational response...all that said, for others it could conceivably be surely a bias. but i think to assume it is that bias at work is as much a fault as the other way around...

Bull's Eye Squall

Life is long enough. At 10pm

there's wind against windows

to wake you, remind air

it's a strongman with aim

like an archer. Everything's a target.

five wars

the north vs west war
the east vs south war
we need a 5th cardinal direction
and, while we're at it it, we need
a 5th season. sometime between
autumn and winter.  if you please.
oh, my veins.  oh, my unhealthy pallor.
i think our leader is wearing a wig.
she'll be post-colonial the second
she gets off this fucking colony.
we heard that she hardly ever shaves
her pits. would she need some kind
of special bathroom?  the cyanide-
dispensing cat is out-of-order (mo-fo).
wow, what an aerial assault on your values.
or, g-d bless our unexceptionalism.
i'm sorry the cat's butt got in the way
of our skype session. remember something
about a symphony of viaducts.  look how
i firmed everything up.  fucking hard.
this treatise is great for the indigenous!
someone please explain to me the tenets of.
let's just try and get through this morning.

Maps

Naturally, there are roadmaps,

waterways with ports in wait.

It’s been this way for 100 years

and people still get lost. Dissatisfied

with longevity—there’s lack,

no succor. But there’s also a ball

at a private house, with red dresses

and people who still smoke indoors;

there are room designated for it.

It’s dignified. Classic style

is what the magazines say

next to words like rogue

and promiscuity. Confused,

that’s an easy word to clear a room

or keep them coming. In whispers

or with gin it seems easier to take

things in. The dance you’ve never danced,

a book unwrote and money unmade.

Naturally, unread.

I Go On Reading Undetected

clues and keys and clippings

"a kind of blind malevolence"

underline to solve a crime

don't want to skim a thing

Flatbush Slick

keeping an eye out

for a sky closing

to dart home

clap

meteorological

clasp

sartorial

hook

snap

seam

be

Use the Bottom Bell

The dishes are stacked on the floor again because it has all the answers. The view with old moons doubled against wax, floor shine catching night light. It’s easier to sleep down here with the porcelain that with the porcupine I keep in dreams, somehow always underfoot in green rooms. There are seahorses on casters to push or float. I ask which is preferred. It’s a fair question since the faucet drip reminds me about water and I’m thirsty and I don’t know if seahorses get thirsty since they live in water and not in dreams. When I’m awake, and I am mostly awake, there’s a harp to play, tone best plucked with plastic forks. I pretend pebbles are asteroids or that I can whittle a thimble. With shoes and sheets of paper plastered to doors, I think about letting you in, slowly. It takes longer to come when called.

i guess the ribbon cutting ceremony was yesterday.

sheepishly, she radiated.   oh, come here, and really look at this socket.  that aquarium was never meant to be filled.  he hides out in the sock department.  some fish sleeping is going to go down here tonight.  stripes, meet spots.  they took me to a paramilitary meeting and there were three kinds of cookies - chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, and peanut butter.  she has never had near perfect hindsight.  every so often, he donates money to the kids whose parents are too poor to pay to have their cleft palates fixed. this structure was composed mainly of broken umbrella stands.  my power hour didn't go as expected.  she put it all in a ziplock bag.  we took our last breath twice.

My Friend

You had come back to the city.

Your hair was shorter, wine-dyed

and your manner had changed entirely.

Brassiness in the back seat.

Maybe you'd reverted to the Wilde

you were when we were kids.

Some friends you know to be in prison

because that prison has gates and guards.

Some friends you know to be in prison

because they describe the smell on the inside.

Other friends go away to prison or paradise

and you don't know where or how they are

so you conjure them grinning with green carnation

cramped in the middle of the backseat of a car.

You Are Here

no parking

brass band

los nestorianos

buffet hoods

gaudy night

late train

six percent

lighter shrine

circle dance

flood light

party crash

red sauce

welcome to the party politic

This is the seventh street in a row with no supportive banners.
The candidate asked for a rook and a loaf of strong black bread.


It might be time to start talking bail out. The intern’s right,
That accent has to be the result of some kind of shady upbringing.


We sent our best courier and a mirror curved outward to make her reflection
Appear more humane. That’s totally what we’re here for. We too were shocked




To hear that the boys upstairs admired our mad giftwrapping skills.

What Delays

Of course there is ash. There is always ash.
Wind is gentle this time of year.

Zephyr blows still.

The planets are fixed and frustrated.
Or cardinal, unpredictable. The Yod

leaves you stranded.

Don’t put your face into your hands.
There is a red sunset every night;

sun reflected in particles,

the glass at certain altitudes
is black then pink then red.

That’s when you see it,

see it so hard you go blind
as an eclipse. Isn’t there a zeppelin

or way by water? The answer

is north and no surprise. Meet me in Oslo?
I’ve always wanted to go. Anywhere—

good as home.

Blind Leading Blind

Why, when wandering the stacks for books

in Spanish to translate toward proficiency

did I choose Borges, who writes,

if I'm getting this right: Straightaway

it is inferred from the previous passage

that the central novelistic problem is causality.

All month chasing surfacey feelings

back to their source. Got in the habit

forever and ever ago. O gorgeous Borges,

it's like Andy and everyone he then read

said: The map is not the territory.

Every dotted line and its woulda coulda shoulda.

Life is not a game of Twister on the lawn

though some days I will arch my back

and reach further and further to see if it isn't.

the thrift store in outer space

wrapped scientifically
in ragdress, go deeper

send this zero outfit
into orbit

my darling little
in a puma-skinned wrislet

some mortified
some mortician

the mirror curved to make
everyone look beautiful

my martian hemline
and such a pretty pair

of venusian saddle shoes
look at the gravitational pull

this is really a no name business
for the after world order

i'm shocked that more of my friends
have never even heard of it

Ice & Ash

Students of

literature,

swim fast

to your tours

of nineteenth-

century Europe.

Splish splash,

clop clop.

Gentrification: A Love Story

I cut off all my hair so you don't have to hold on to anything while I'm puking.

What are you keeping under the bed?

Your niceness is the best thing you have going for you; which, is unfortunate as you aren't even really all that nice.

But I still wanna play bass in your cover band.

Is that a Stalinist-apologist fetus in my belly or am I just happy to finally be able to call other people "reactionary?"

The one in the basement.

I don't have any backrubs in me tonight.

You said something about an accordion and harpsichord accompaniment.

Actually, the best thing about you is your ability to swallow live goldfish whole.

Baby, relax. If I wanted pretty, I'd have married pretty.

My other lover is a social realist.

You said something about finally getting my ass off of the fucking couch.

Here's the deal: I'll stop making you listen to Bratmobile and you stop sending me links to HuffPo articles.

Do you love me enough to break a pool cue in half? To threaten my friend's cousin with it?

Sorry I killed all your houseplants.

Also, I think we can both agree to never, ever go on another carriage ride.

You said what again.

I Never Read Infinite Jest

Hardened by the slow cool

Sour from the slurp

The turret makes the castle

The rope makes the bullseye

The gravel makes the glacier

Nothing false about this petal

If we know what we know we know

Pinch to see if it bleeds

If you can't read this say "global weirding"

Two-for-one blowout in the chapel

Blog is the new scroll

(riff on some of DFW's circled dictionary words: anneal, bisque, castellated, deadeye, esker, foamflower, gnostic, hyperopia, intinction, kakemono)

I'll Never Hear the Bad News

A big star is about to fall from strategically placed type. Whether her name is Brigitte Bardot or Patti Byrd, you have loved this girl a long long long time.

The summer will set again so see it now, the genius behind primitivism. I want it to be me pouring the glass full. It’s not too far to still be here where nothing is broken, that wasn’t broken already.

A self caricature, in three panels, with emphasis on close calls. A question about history and you’re so alone in suffering that you can’t be drawn. Not once in the morning, not once in the evening.

If you’re still living when the moon is zero degrees in my sign, it’s going to be a good year. But only as an exception.

Tale of Passion, Tale of Woe

you don't love me; you love the revolution.







you don't love the revolution; you just love the image of yourself in the midst of the revolution.






you don't love the image of yourself in the midst of the revolution; you love the image of me imagining you in the midst of the revolution.







ha. i am not even thinking of you or the revolution at all anymore.






look at my awesome handbag. my new boyfriend got it for me. he's in a band.





i listen to a lot of socially irresponsible music now.

all thirteenths are unlucky, regardless of whether or not they fall on fridays

oh the things are really dying in the rose
bushes, burning with pig
wings + unicorn fat.
it's hard to exit gracefully
if you entered carrying a bomb.
even a trapdoor is useless
in the middle of an airplane.
everyone loves a hero,
but nobody loves a snitch.
try harder to mark, walk
that line.  please.
last night i felt the moon fold
in two and lodge itself down
my throat.  that's not an exaggeration,
really, for the umpteenth day
in a row, i'm terrified of turning on
my telephone.

I Took the Shortcut

And the sky let me see straight through it.

Infinity giggled, sphinxy.

It was like,

Honey, grandpa is sleeping forever.

Forever's what I must be hungry for

when I've crossed off salt & sugar & sex.

I found my craving underneath a rock,

time capsule of I want I want I want.

I swallowed it with a suicide. I went down the line,

pressed the lever for every carbonated sugar water.

I was through the roof, banned in school.

Left with

aspartame horizon, spilling in furls,

blunt in its come-ons.

Kings County Special Weather Statement Found-and-Replaced w/ Stein

...THERE BEING SUMMER HOW MANY WINDOWS RISK THIS SPECK A SPECK OF IT MAKES BLUE...

A COMBINATION OF LOW HUMIDITY LESS THAN 30 PERCENT... SUSTAINED NORTHWEST WINDS OF 10 TO 15 WITH GUSTS OF 15 TO 20 MPH AND DRY FINE FUELS HAVE LED TO AN THERE BEING SUMMER RISK OF HOW MANY WINDOWS THIS SPECK A SPECK OF IT MAKES BLUE.

THESE CONDITIONS ARE FORECAST TO PERSIST THROUGH THIS SPECK A SPECK OF IT MAKES BLUE.

RESIDENTS SHOULD KEEP VEHICLES OUT OF GRASSY AREAS AND ENSURE PROPER DISPOSAL OF ANY SMOKING MATERIALS. IT ONLY TAKES A CARELESSLY DISPOSED CIGARETTE TO IGNITE A HOW MANY WINDOWS.

IF YOU SPOT A HOW MANY WINDOWS... PLEASE REPORT IT TO AUTHORITIES IMMEDIATELY.

Unsleeping Ode

Jupiter is a morning star in the wrong direction, rotating
behind backs. Face to wall,
I sleep with cul-de-sacs,
words searched for and nearly spoke finally in my mouth.

Purple ruins bloodstreams; this light is purple.
I shovel it into my lap,
anywhere but eyelids.
Purple ruins atmosphere, ruins sleep until I’m counting

Saturn’s rings. A month of songs, May is full fettle,
fueled by flight. Why wait for a miracle
then destroy it? True,
I’m sentimental, unchangeable, untrusting, untrustworthy,

but the new moon is a chance to come round. Hang bells
in hallways, evil eye on the bedroom door,
find a way to avoid waves.
I’d shut my eyes if the dark was any different.

how to bleach an extinct animal

         inversion/translation of “how to stain a medicine donkey”


i killed the hole in the outside.
at the time and place with dinosaurs
and sapphire sparkling bird-parts
inhaling every-colored warm-bloodedness
she proclaimed that i was a nunnery
and humorless as a mass transit mandate.
somewhat sour, my ears dripped
with patented product. there wasn’t a lot
of professional heart-making being passed around.
certainly nobody thought this wasn’t the found-break.
certainly this was a bad thing as i was still dropping
secular knowledge up and down. the women in black
disapproved of my civilian life. but i was beside myself.
just like the time before this. which, now that I think about
it, wasn’t exactly the same.

Please, Remain Seated!

Cab drivers love me! But bus drivers usually do not! Whenever I stop to really think about why this is, I have many deep insights about the socio-economy of transportation!

My pet is just like me; she can spend up to, but not more than, 24 hours being all totally by herself!

The worst part about seeing a four-boobed stripper un-dressing out of her Star Trek outfit is that no one will believe you when you tell them that your poem about a four-boobed stripper un-dressing out of her Star Trek outfit is inspired by real life events!

When I was little, my mom took me to the hospital where she worked to see all the kids with brain damage! She was trying to get me to wear my helmet when I rode my bike, and, yes, it worked!

It is possible to simultaneously spend too much and too little time together!

I was writing, not drawing, in that notebook! But you insisted on titling that photograph "Sketching" because you like to get creative with our reality!

The flight attendant told all the passengers to please remain seated but then she remembered that all twenty eight members of the University of Alabama's wheelchair basketball team were on the flight! And she felt bad but there was nothing she could do about it but smile apologetically at each of them when they finally did wheel off the plane!

Facebook keeps telling me to reconnect with you, but, for some reason your profile picture has a baby in it, which, I guess, it not surprising even though you always said you were going to be a professional hitchhiker!

In the hotel room, after a poetry reading, I watched a Japanese-language program about a woman who made a prosthetic leg for an elephant who had stepped on a landmine!

The Continuing Saga of Too Much Rhyme

       iii.

I was swallowing swords when I met you,
    cataloging stings. Along with the obvious
wasp or bee, I’d pinned a referee

too fond of penalties.

That’s an exchange of stings
    like if you slap me—
be warned—I’ll press you between

glassine, cure violent wings.
Sharpness will have its offering.

Bohemian Bell Choir

a sometime inversion of, and general tweest on,
Graham Foust's "Academy Fight Song"

At the corner of the pink hour, the pink hour.

Pink again. One less pink.

Did I mutter lessening pink, pink hour

vanished? All of me--more than

my brokeass back--says hell no.

Days recede like Zen garden rakes.

Bursting illegit, I'm given away

there by a hair. Could gulp

an ohm. Could spit

fake wonder

right here. The conditional

secretes glue,

slowly dries. I gave away

telescopes in the smog.

Two Parts of a Sing Song Rhyme-y Thing in Progess

    i.

I need to be buried 
      by dangerous skin.
Your arm in my mouth,

skin I have to let in.

Unexpected yet 
      writ—we knew it—
constellating our lips.

Planets in orbit, magnets,
static touch, electric. 
    
    ii.

Practiced patience, learned wait
      is knotted figure eights,
legs tethered to lake.

The sound of weathered breaks

resurrects what is and is not ached
      free from the landlocked state.
I’ve never loved a place

without a coastline, without escape. 

Cause

maybe it was

the Cat Stevens

maybe the Stein

maybe it was

the accusation

of misery (only

that can make

me miserable)

then searching

around for it

as gum under

tabletop

tablebottom

bottomed out

Bottom with

head of ass

how many acts

to a life & can

the curtain

get stuck

its sashaying

skirts blurt

nothinglasts

foreverness

snore & encore

'morning is bro-

ken' comes on

they switch

the track fast

none of that

cornsyrupiness

(relief 'cause

it might've

made me cry)

Catalogue of First Morning Thoughts

You need loud music. Now.

Find that five-dollar bill.

Was that really last night’s dream?

Tea. Food.

Still thinks she sings, my heart needs a lap dance.

Oh, I forgot there are sheep here.

Time to run.

Have I said a word out loud this week?

Lipstick.

Why can’t I find those jeans?

God I have to pee.

Shit, I left the oven on.

Water.

I really did that?

AWP TIPS

AWP TIP #1 Ten poets, working together, can convince the motel staff to extend continental breakfast until noon.

AWP TIMP #2 If yr friend forgot to register, tell the staff you lost yr tag and get a new one (then give it to yr friend).

AWP TIP #3 Please, for the love of God, drink. But, no one is impressed with your ability to knock back five whiskey sours in under an hour. So maybe just knock back your usual three and not get sick all over the back of the cab.

AWP TIP #4 James Franco is not here.

AWP TIP #5 Wear a weird hat. People will go out of there way to introduce themselves to you.

AWP TIP #6 Yr offsite reading at a bar around eleven o'clock at night? Make sure to tell a few jokes. Everyone is too drunk to concentrate on your surreal re-appropriation of the moon.

AWP TIP #7 Stop asking me who my favorite poet is. My favorite poet is me. Or, my favorite poet is you. One of those.

AWP TIP #8 Yr toddler is smart and adorable. But maybe s/he would be more comfortable not wandering around the hotel by her/hisself?

AWP TIP #9 The "economy" motels located a mile plus from the convention center are intentionally designed to be less than three stories high because they want to cut down on "jumpers."

AWP TOP #10 Handing your manuscript out to every bookfair table that appears to publish poetry is ALWAYS a good idea.

The Danger of Reading Frank O'Hara on an 88-Degree April 7, 2010 in New York City

You can convince yourself

without a gin drop of doubt

that leaning against the rail

at the sidewalk cafe on Second Ave

with the one you love with your

fingerling potatoes garlic aioli

your champagne mignonette is doing

your homework did someone say

'danger' no this is the best damn

homework you've ever done you've

really got a handle on the material

Excerpts from Anne Carson's New Book

Finery Indeed

Finery 7, which includes my poems "I Was a Water Ballerina" and "New, Not Blue," is now available at the Birds of Lace etsy shop!

It also comes with a Bangs of Hunger CD that I have given many a spin!

Thank you, Gina Abelkop!

Daniela's Gaga Files Like What

Have you seen NaPoWriMo! Special! Guest! Daniela Olszewska's "The Gaga Files" over at Gaga Stigmata? Please read all the way down to the second-to-last item to get to my fave. Well, you should read the last one, too! I am so bossy!

There are No Close Ups

The illusion created by passing trains—one moving when parked,

one parked when moving.

Whichever direction, the next stop is for

escapists who’ve taken Dramamine instead of aspirin and
keep electric kettles in satchels with just enough of every money.

Not to worry, the stop after that is an airport

and after that, an observatory where a wall reads,
“even the stars want me to settle.”

Down, assumingly that’s how to settle,

accept suits and cemeteries as commute scenery. There’s an art to it,
looking out the same windows. Eventually mirrors are memorized landscapes.

You can’t spoil what you can’t see.

how to stain a medicine donkey

"translation" of the poem "how to spot a drug mule"

i birthed a wound in
the situation closet while dragons
with bling-bling feathers
mouth-breathed on the white noise machine.
he told me i was fuckable
and funny and that my vehicle of choice
was totally sweet. my eyes starred themselves
like viruses. there was quite a bit
of amateur robotics going down. maybe
everyone knew this was the missing link.
maybe this wasn’t a good thing as i was still lifting
nuclear secrets left and right. the men in white
approved of my special opps. but i was for, by
myself. just like the last time i needed it to be different.

Tonight is Just Like Any Other Night*

What’s not explained is the wonder, the why standing this close makes a difference.

It’s just a room like any other room.

You’re going to make me want again?
Where we touched accidentally,
I can still feel you.
My hair smells like you.

Proximity requires a radius— at least 500 miles, usually more. A minimum distance

typically enforced by coincidence.

When I say
don’t be nice to me,
I mean to say don’t lie,
don’t let me get used to it.

Let’s try opposite coastlines. I believe promises from the Poles.

I like the north and south of it. Not this…

Want want want. It’s a spell cast.
I have practiced not wanting.
I’m bored of it
but I’ve a small bed. 

Neither pursue, nor retreat. Sleep. Work. Repeat. But I can feel the planes this week,

always taking away, never wanting in



*Now go listen to The Smiths, "I Know It's Over"

"The computer has no power below"

Message chosen

for my passing

by woman

on bench

in grey hoodie

floral skirt

with plastic bags

black suitcase

arm propping her up

across from

Jacob K. Javits

Federal Building

sunset of a

spring Monday

*

I take a bench further down

Others pass, receive or reject their koans

I watch the steps of the federal building, listening

No one thinks to pay her

The computer has no power below

*

Call her whatcha like

but I just got done

handing out poems

on the Brooklyn Bridge

so who's ya old bag lady now

*

The urge to romanticize park-shouters is strong

The urge to sympathize with bag-lady balladry, stronger

The urge to believe the computer has no power below

strongest of all

how to spot a drug mule

(a helpful slideshow)


i sired a headache on
the war room-advantaged goblin
with glitzed out wings.
it was after the static maker
took off his hat and told me that i had a pretty
good sense of humor for an el
camino owner. my eyes dilated
like giftwrap. there was a whole lot
of merely wires going on. probably
no one even realized that a link was missing.
probably this was a good thing as i was carrying
a very split atom made special by the boys
upstairs. it was on, in my person.
just like the last time someone needed
a favor only i could do for them.

easter toothache

nerve-red, the miniature bunnies gnaw

on my last good grace.

yesterday, three of my friends changed

their relationship statuses on facebook.

i popped a pastel, for realz.

somewhere, someone is eating a rack

of lamb in a recently de-militarized maternity ward.

i am disgusted by the number of biblical references in my chiffarobe.

this would never have happened if i lived in poznań.

today is full of intolerable floral arrangements.

Saturday in the Park

I wasn't there

but I saw them lining up

at the gardens

patient to enter trimmed order

my street as promenade

pkwy as gateway

hot dog bike gang kid screech

the park got my friend drunk

my place a yielding couch at the edge

no bum on a bench

safer warmer but with all the sundown ache

pollen sifts through the screen & jesus

just another of last night's ghost stories

jingling dogwood snow or Xmas lights

well sirs aren't you aflutter

born again & again & again into the present

heathen in cement-bound heath

I Spent The Entire Afternoon Stuffing This Piñata

It’s not often you get to look for the right rope,

      judge the ability of this and that

to take the weight—fan blades and shower rods, the exposed duct work,
tree branches, deck slats,  bowsprit, bridge works, flag pole, traffic light…

Flex the scientific

muscle memory; don’t you figure there must be something

mathematical: So and Sos

Theory on How to Appropriately Beat Objects Open with a Bat.

String two together, the horse and the albatross,
one filled with teeth and the other with eyes.

You can’t avoid the fright or ricochet

      of plain old candy pouring from clothes lines.

Tootsie rolls are a scourge,

new and old crowns alike leap from mouths

dangling nerve pulp, clots that want to be free
of the sweet that sticks. Never to be trusted,

the marionettes, the big eyed asses

      bearing you a birthday wish.

My Body Is Separate From Your Mind

Your shirt looks like the love child of a serial killer and a mime.

I was expelled from three separate Jesuit schools.

But nobody ever suspects you of shoplifting.

I am not the kind of person who uses bookmarks.

What is the deal with you and tinted windows?

I have very fond memories of eating Thai food in Tuscaloosa.

You claim you weren’t there with me that one time, but you totally were.

I spent the entire afternoon stuffing this piñata.

You don’t know the first thing about recovering from a piranha attack.

Yes, I used to live here too.

Why don’t you go lose your cool somewhere else?

The exterminators and I are planning to meet up any minute now.

No, you’re just in love with whatever body is adjacent to yours.

I know this because my mother used to be in vaudeville.

You think that’s code for the CIA; you think everything’s code for the CIA.

Vicariously, I peel an orange for you.

You said what again.

Less Finesse, More Spank

for Tasia

less velvet, more velour

less Dom Pérignon, more Andre

less diamond, more cubic zirconia

less Twin Peaks, more Ru Paul's Drag Race

less sunlight, more Faux Glow

less sugar, more Splenda

less manchego, more Velveeta

less treadmill, more Skechers Shape-Ups

less lemon, more Manic Panic

less perfect pitch, more Auto-Tune

less grass-fed beef, more T.G.I. Friday's frozen appetizers

less cafe, more Facebook

etcetera

If You Prefer Longitude

Then sing, push up

shirt sleeves, show the seriousness

of forearms—throats

attached to fists. The lyrics are

street names since they’ve no past

or present tense. Lists of tasks, lost

in melody. East to west again;

chorus that’s a cage of tracks and trestles,

latitudes bored of warbles and bones

unwished upon, voice boxes. Who made this

monotone shoal, this sand-

pinched coastline begging

for a caterwaul? It needs a name

not bricks or bread. Don’t bother

building when you can still climb.

The Black Widow and The Blessed Damozel

The image is striking: a sultry teenager, partly veiled,
in the embrace of a bearded man—both grasping handguns.
From the fixed place of Heaven she saw time like a pulse shake fierce through all the worlds
Islamic militants persuade “black widows” that a suicide bombing
will reunite them with their dead relatives beyond the grave.
“I wish that he were come to me, for he will come”
They go on a mission fully confident that they will meet with their loved ones.
“I'll take his hand and go with him to the deep wells of light”
A burned shred of a letter in Arabic found on Abdurakhmanova’s body
promised a “meeting in Heaven.”
The blessed damozel lean'd out from the gold bar of Heaven
Meantime, Chechnya itself resembles a post-apocalyptic landscape
of refugees, feral dogs, war criminals, armed gangs and shells of buildings.
“We two will stand beside that shrine, occult, withheld, untrod”
The Czarist conquest of the Caucasus region, waged explicitly as a
Christian crusading cause, continued on and off throughout the 19th century.
“He shall fear, haply, and be dumb: Then will I lay my cheek to his, and tell about our love”
In 1859 Alexandre Dumas traveled to the Caucasus region.
He describes how his genteel hosts invited him to go hunting
—a common pastime—in pursuit of locals to kill.
“Only to be, as then awhile, for ever now together, I and he”
Russian television said virtually nothing of the appalling events through the entire day.
She ceased. The light thrilled toward her, fill'd with angels in strong level flight.
Teachers in the village remember Ms. Abdullayeva—
whose first name means “paradise” in her local Dagestani language—
as a promising student who recited poetry in local competitions.
Her eyes prayed, and she smil'd. (I saw her smile.) (I heard her tears.)


This poem culls text from the poem “The Blessed Damozel” by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and AP, Forbes, and New York Times news reports and op-eds from April 2, 2010.

This Poem Has Nothing To Do With Balloons

inversion of Plath’s Balloons

Since Easter they have died with us,
Crafty and hazy
Squared soulless-vegetables,
Giving down all the negative space,
Sitting and ribbing on the wool.

Visible earth anchors,
Taking a whisper and a snap
When loved, then pirouetting to velocity, verily nerve-free.
Fuchsia dog paw, orange bird –
Such straight suns we die with

Instead of living equipments!
Gold ceilings, black windows
And these fixed
Spreads of thick earth, green, red,
Disappointing

The head like thoughts or costly
Game hens cursing
New sky with a beak
Pampered in starless hydrogen.
My all-encompassing

Sister is destroying
Her non-balloon squeal like a monster.
Not seeming to hear
A serious colorless universe she must not puke up on this side of,
She gags,

Then stands
Forward, slight
Neglecting a universe nebulous as dehydration.
A color-filled
Shard in her giantess toe.

WILLA Goes Live!

The Women in Letters and Literary Arts (WILLA) website has officially launched! I'll be trying to keep the calendar full of readings that feature all women writers, as well as women's writing conferences/retreats/etc., so if you have any to publicize, send them my way!

More about WILLA:

WILLA (Women in Letters & Literary Arts) was founded in August 2009 to address the need for female writers of literature to engage in conversations regarding the critical reception of women's creative writing in our current culture.

The need for WILLA was made apparent by the overwhelming response to a single email written by co-founder Cate Marvin in August 2009. This email, which called for the need to create an independent forum for women writers of literature, was passed from person to person, from website to blog, with all indicating an immense enthusiasm for the ideas and call to action that Marvin had expressed in her letter. This remarkable outpouring of interest and support inspired Marvin to seek the input of poet Erin Belieu, who would then help her co-found the organization. [& more]

a nice day for a visit to the hospital!

it might be time to bail out!

that’s a nice pair of binoculars!

oh my, jerk right, motherfucker!

this baby isn’t going to birth itself!

we have so many scores left to settle!

the lamp looked odd w/o its shade!

just like a mink coat!

put it in reverse!

i’m so tired of hearing your theories about masonry!

please enjoy this monograph of a baboon eating a flamingo!

if possible, weapweap for our mutually dependent futures!

i’m cracking all up in this paper dress!

yes, that was a terrible, terrible pun!

NaPoWriMo Begins! Special Guests Coming Soon!

Daniela Olszewska, Melissa Severin, and I will be posting a poem per day in April on this blog!

*

Plus this warm-up poem by me, inspired by east coast English departments going gaga for James Franco's impending matriculation into the Yale English PhD program. (Also inspired by this.)

Dr. Franco-stein #1

Hey, James
let me get a
rip off that
Yeatsian
anti-self

Does it
rhyme with
Fates or
Sweets

Does he
really want
to talk
Keats

Rutgers English PhD NaPoWriMo

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