Tag Archives: poetry
sonnet
a sonnet for you a sonnet from me a sonnet from me a sonnet for you a sonnet for you a sonnet from me a sonnet from me a sonnet for you a sonnet for you from me a sonnet for you from me a sonnet for you a sonnet from me a sonnet for [... more ...]
Robin Ekiss, Dollhouse Survivor
Last night I went to see Robin Ekiss read from her new book of poems The Mansion Of Happiness at Mrs. Dalloway’s in Berkeley. (“The Mansion of Happiness” turns out to be the Victorian precursor to the “The Game of Life.”) The poems mine her weird upbringing by miniaturists. She explained with a reasonably straight [... more ...]
Poem & Picture: Beverly Dahlen and Laura Paulini
The ground of shadow
One wouldn't would
One want
All one wants
And then what
The light across the lake
And the eye creates space
The distance
Which is not
One
Not only
That but
All one
Wants
Matthew Zapruder: Three Poems
In the Darkness, Use Me Wisely
Today while saying one of the manythings I don’t know about painting,
I felt a sharp something like an itch
turning into a clumsy needle insatiable
for my blood. A bee sacrificed itself
for the cause of reminding me some
consider my body an intruder. My
personal imperviousness rating
plunged close to its dangerous low
attained when I woke from surgery
performed on an ankle misapprehension
winter surfaces ought to be encountered
via two exceedingly well-honed blades
had broken. It can take far too many
years to learn which instincts you
do not have. In 1998 I decided
to never be happy pursuing just part
of the body of knowledge of laws
that govern regulations for planning
imaginary structures, of which
you of all people will not be surprised
to learn are legion. Too many rulers
never fail to see it’s often best
not to allow others to do what they’re
best at. Like designing systems
for large clock behavior emulation.
Here I am giving advice again
when I should be drawing negative
space! 3:14 just passed with tiny
implacable claws. A bird Roz said
was a peacock seems to have learned
human throes. I didn’t know vanishing
had to be invented to put cities into
the fresco, I guess before importance
determined the size of the figure it
never occurred to anyone looking
at a painting was just like looking out
of your head. On vases Etruscans
left us impassive winged leopards
drawing chariots over cyclical gangbangs.
Which makes me less sure I disagree
with the painter’s wife when she said
perspective is not such a tremendous
improvement. Someone is always
translating Rilke who never said if
you look away for a moment the
moment goes right on being beautiful.
Someone is always marching with
a fabulous homemade banner
soon to be speckled with blood.
[... more ...]
Orides Fontela: Three Poems
Night
To hide (to forget)the face
to inter (to occult)
the light
to darken
love to
sleep.
To watch over what is born.
Ricardo Alberto Maldonado: Three Poems
Non Fiction
A hammer
by the iron windows.
I am a man, I argued,
for thou hast made me glad
through thy work.
I am seated.
I smashed wafers by
the arbors. I stopped there.
If everyone dies or goes
to the seeds, I will enter with a lock.
I understand I occupy
a bed.
Before the flood, I decided
to walk home
and come down with a fever.
A hammer
by the iron windows.
I am a man, I argued,
for thou hast made me glad
through thy work.
I am seated.
I smashed wafers by
the arbors. I stopped there.
If everyone dies or goes
to the seeds, I will enter with a lock.
I understand I occupy
a bed.
Before the flood, I decided
to walk home
and come down with a fever.
[... more ...]
Poetry Jukebox
This is a true story made double real by its birth in
a common sort of suffering rolling though a regular life.
Quotidian and expected.
Lest you think that this ain't true
that you may have stepped into a steaming made-up pile of surrealist goo
Or that you may be looking under a rock swarming with a re-telling of
last night's all-in-a-wink phantasm weightless and indecipherable,
This is a true story.
It's as simple as this
there was a lot of common suffering,
shit hitting the fan,
packed into fourteen months.
And then that most common urge to escape
the hot steel plate of worry
Squeezing out the juice of sleep
leaving a husk of catatonia
I found the pain of late night obsessing
could be palliated by a curious eccentricity,
with another obsession
I memorized 100 poems.
a common sort of suffering rolling though a regular life.
Quotidian and expected.
Lest you think that this ain't true
that you may have stepped into a steaming made-up pile of surrealist goo
Or that you may be looking under a rock swarming with a re-telling of
last night's all-in-a-wink phantasm weightless and indecipherable,
This is a true story.
It's as simple as this
there was a lot of common suffering,
shit hitting the fan,
packed into fourteen months.
And then that most common urge to escape
the hot steel plate of worry
Squeezing out the juice of sleep
leaving a husk of catatonia
I found the pain of late night obsessing
could be palliated by a curious eccentricity,
with another obsession
I memorized 100 poems.
[... more ...]
Joe Fletcher: Three Poems
Gloria
On the way I passed temples
and improvised ceremonies
conducted in hushed voices
in the blue shade of arches.
Cabbage heads floated
in a tub of dirty water.
A woman's skin was scuffed
by lice. We shared a cigarette
while the laughter of carpenters
splashed against the buildings
and us. I felt replenished
just watching things:
A ferry churned. A goose
marshaled her young through
a tunnel of brittle stalks.
We entered a building
time had half-eaten.
Fading graffiti insulted us.
I roused myself to partake
of the dialogue sparked with
conflict. The room stank
from a shattered olive jar.
We were yearning
in our shirts. If the nurse
wouldn't come I would
invent her and call her Gloria
and believe in her strongly.
I left to follow my telluric arc,
with my whalebone slingshot
and the flask given me
by the pilot in the bathroom
who furiously scrubbed
at a wine-stain on his collar.
Thus began the migration,
the eschewing of books, the sky
profuse with orbs and orb-streaks.
I wandered beneath their aegis,
in the company of oblong clouds
cascading behind monuments.
I had a few folkloric tokens with
which to impress the children.
The animals watched
with indifference from their
indentations. A spray of glass
winked from the road shoulder.
I muffled my radio with the tattered
coat I found. There was blood on it.
The blood was mine.
[... more ...]
On the way I passed temples
and improvised ceremonies
conducted in hushed voices
in the blue shade of arches.
Cabbage heads floated
in a tub of dirty water.
A woman's skin was scuffed
by lice. We shared a cigarette
while the laughter of carpenters
splashed against the buildings
and us. I felt replenished
just watching things:
A ferry churned. A goose
marshaled her young through
a tunnel of brittle stalks.
We entered a building
time had half-eaten.
Fading graffiti insulted us.
I roused myself to partake
of the dialogue sparked with
conflict. The room stank
from a shattered olive jar.
We were yearning
in our shirts. If the nurse
wouldn't come I would
invent her and call her Gloria
and believe in her strongly.
I left to follow my telluric arc,
with my whalebone slingshot
and the flask given me
by the pilot in the bathroom
who furiously scrubbed
at a wine-stain on his collar.
Thus began the migration,
the eschewing of books, the sky
profuse with orbs and orb-streaks.
I wandered beneath their aegis,
in the company of oblong clouds
cascading behind monuments.
I had a few folkloric tokens with
which to impress the children.
The animals watched
with indifference from their
indentations. A spray of glass
winked from the road shoulder.
I muffled my radio with the tattered
coat I found. There was blood on it.
The blood was mine.
[... more ...]
Four Poems
ODE
We ate outside you could smell the ocean
and petrol Seagulls scream
look for pieces of food or what have you
Go look for pieces the lost
body Bury that piece Clams
and their rich stomachs
at Little Neck
What kind of ode is this
She moulded human images
out of wax and spices
We eat pretend desserts
normally chocolate
but sometimes pickle cake
Poem and Picture
Daria Tavoularis. Living Room, 2007, 24 x 19 in, pen and ink on paper. Courtesy of the artist.
LIVING ROOM
In the carpet
is a story, man buys camel,
camel walks, camel walks,
and several geometric proofs.
The door is alarmed!
But the window has a
vacant sign:
upstairs room,
shelf, cabinet, lock,
fair rent.
In the living room,
an armchair where
one child sits,
seriously unappealing,
wanting
to scotchtape over every line
to save every word,
to give itself more glare.
It’s lonely for
a mother who isn’t anywhere
at home. Who accounts
for the desert with a calculator
that records amounts
in and out printing a list
that goes on, on, on,
that stops, turns a corner,
greets the isosceles
where the poker rests,
shelters the floor, meets the door,
tells the child, well
one thing’s sure.
Posted in ISSUE #2 SPRING/SUMMER 2007 Also tagged Cecily Iddings, Daria Tavoularis, Poem and Picture Leave a comment
Two Poems
I’m Lovin’ It
I speak to it, and it never talks back.
I see it disappear and change me.
But it’s always there.
I can’t remember a life without it.
My father didn’t have to tell me never to forget it.
It is understood wordlessly, like a stone wall.
It keeps me straight in this place.
In the most crowded room, nobody can come between it
and me.
It’s inside of me, purring like a pacemaker.
It’s not something you can explain on a first date.
People lie and say they don’t need it,
leaning on it even as they say “no.”
It is made by people hidden away far in the night.
How could they be nothing like me?
I am no one and it is everything.
Not of my flesh, it is my flesh.
Jennifer Burch and Kristin Capp: Poem and Picture
Our building floats
the world is round
edges are piles of darkness
we go below
fish
drying
think birds on a wire
in another city
see a room from the floor
how leaves turning up come in as we wait
[... more ...]Posted in ISSUE #1 WINTER 2007 Also tagged Jennifer Burch, Kristin Capp, Poem and Picture Leave a comment
irwin & zukofsky with fibonacci in the background