Poems written in The Sanctuary/Iowa City/11 PM by Stephen Anderson, R.C. Davis, Russell Jaffe, Justine Retz, and Eric Roalson
The red exit pointed toward
the setting sun in wide-open Texas,
something about cast-iron skillets and rubbery eggs
to stimulate an appetiteless day.
The key is not to eat too much
anxiety or you will somersault your stomach
turned out by a look or sound of
pinwheel dinosaur masks that hide the face of
fear leads to mistakes
but not well done steaks of a
different animal. So choose your zoo wisely
and run softly, little lion, run softly.
Through the tulips and lipstick and red.
I would like to tiptoe through the tulips
with Tiny Tim but he is
himself some kind of unavoidable shape.
The air in Paris is fresh.
Don't wait to eat, you must
eat the plum around the peel.
This is a recording. Eat the remainder
of something that happened when
Sam Spade would find out.
That the fedora was an inflated frisbee.
And the frisbee was made of gold.
So when I caught it it broke my middle
finger and
this is how I was tamed. I became
obtuse while discussing the nature
of polka-dot bikinis and financial liabilities.
The people on Wall Street are living it up at our expense
because they think minimum wage is enough
of a thing. So be this thing:
Walk into the fire with snake boots on.
Today is the day you finally
become the that you
becoming is exquisite.
Being is a yellow light wanting
to be laid by a gigantic red hen.
To be the egg you believe in most.
That one in the middle of the box that
is left more romantic than gym shorts and unpicked
lint from between toes manicured in
full living color and produce placement plethora
on The Price is Right.
Only if you're of the 1%, sot he rest
can drink the blood of whomever needy or poor
while the chosen take champagne showers.
And tell you to eat cake you can't afford.
Elites are telling us to eat cake
like Marie Antionette.
The yellow sun dips into the cheese fondue.
I eat heavily thereafter. Something about containers
that make me hard, succumbing to
life can submerge you
under the branches of a sycamore
tree wrecked by
the disease you call fire. I call it
the echo of the sirens calling
long distance like a javelin in the clouds.
The Greeks are having a hard time
but are used to having hard things
on rustically imposed planets like this one.
The beings with guns and metal own
your sorry ass that cries and whimpers sad.
Don't feel sorry for yourself
because it only serves to annoy us.
Hampered by the blues of my soul
I was welcomed at Uptown Bill's
by a demented hairdresser who
sang Sinatra while cutting hair with eyes closed.
Personally, I cut my own, so let me ask you:
Did you really think that you...
yes, I thought that I.
There is an answer to everything
under the sun that burns my arse and
I say arse because you make me feel so declarative.
I shout it from the rooftops in New York City
and then hear it in the canyons of Utah.
The saints settled in the Utah territory
because they ran out of fuel and
crashed into couches unknown. Teleport
the sparkly sex glands wrapped in gold lamé
and I love to lick the labels of paradise.
Poems written in The Sanctuary/Iowa City/10 PM by R.C. Davis, Russell Jaffe, Justine Retz, Eric Roalson, and Saul Schwartz
It's a smooth, cold stone I'm hearing.
The rain it makes is a cathedral.
The ceiling is open allowing
it inside.
The worm curls into a small ball.
I kick like a frustrated planet into the
cosmos. What constellations do you know?
Orion is the only one speaking
but there is a galaxy on his
belt.
Flash Gordon in spandex,
his obvious package exposed
for what it was not in the New Age
was what it was in antiquity.
Rewind. Pause. Reliable '92. An armchair
made soft with wear.
Wolves are softer
than the litany of short stops
and other seasonal transgressions.
And. Now it's time. For:
No, not Monday Night Football.
I threw the ball into the ether
but it came flying back
a silver, gelatinous
parasite, you'll always be burning and weird so
turn around and go home! You'll find
there are many ways to feed the
habit but only one way not
too Egyptian for the bartender.
To mistake them for thieves
is to carry a mouth of glass daggers--
shattered when the clock
chimed 12:00.
Choirs drinking Guinness, pray
for rain and whatever else
I feel like, amen, always, always.
The cheese had holes in it.
I crawled on factory nights into
machine shop days. Spinning lathes
the hours yarn and yawn
like myself
silver haired fox on the
hood of an abandoned car. XOXO radio,
and there you are, sitting on the trunk
of an elephant or a vegabond or a
hundred other scared giants who know
what I look like in my trembling underwear.
The ones with the holes in it
fit better than
you would ever dance alone
not at some honky tonk bar but
the base of the skull. The soapy blood
spurts, meeting the moon
halfway.
Silver spoon on the tabletop
nestled against the fork
in the lackluster spaces youth spit blood at
their friends and friends' friends alike
concentric circles in the social pond
I backstroke across the sweaty jungle
of teenage undershirts and abandoned
children. Who will take care
of our graveyard fishbowls, our weekend
warriors with feathery fins
fly only halfway before
before gravity teaches you about
what it really means to pickup speed
hits me in the face like a bug and its fluid
yellow mixing with blood
sucking vampires.
The sandman in black robes
flashes the old ladies in the park
feeding windswept pigeons
alka-seltzr--I heard it made them
feel...much...better. What makes you feel
that the rose lady is blooming with
something other than roses.
The stench in my nostrils
was cream sauce. That's how you can tell
it is fresh--vodka.
Or maybe whiskey will
drown the river of insouciance
and see there, what is that floating
in your head of beer? A lone tooth,
scraggly and yellow floats to the top,
pointing erections included
in the deluxe box set.
Monday, December 12, 2011
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
The Wee Hours
By RC Davis
A single candle burns upon its stand
The flame flickers bold in its singularity
Contents of corners remain a mystery
Sitting motionless in wingback comfort
I try not to breath too robust
For I wish to hear my thoughts
I want to catch the echoes in the abyss
Of a mind where there are no right angles
No place for them to stick, they bounce
From my lips they may escape, peculiar in the silence
I am alone in the presence of piano and sideboard
The lyre table remains silent in its deception
Furniture, does not good company make
Yet I am not truly alone
For now the moon is at the window
He presses his face against the glass and seeks me out
A voyeuristic orb, framed by jacquard and gold braid
I cannot look away, his pallor captivates
Finding me, he stabs with a radiant blade
But there is no pain, only the sensation of a gentle curiosity
I seem to bleed, a phosphorous stain expands and saturates
Spreading now, it flows out into the grass of the garden
Lighting the leaves of sentinel trees, making glowworms dance
A feathered spirit glides past in the brilliance
Its silence an example; be still
A single candle burns upon its stand
The flame flickers bold in its singularity
Contents of corners remain a mystery
Sitting motionless in wingback comfort
I try not to breath too robust
For I wish to hear my thoughts
I want to catch the echoes in the abyss
Of a mind where there are no right angles
No place for them to stick, they bounce
From my lips they may escape, peculiar in the silence
I am alone in the presence of piano and sideboard
The lyre table remains silent in its deception
Furniture, does not good company make
Yet I am not truly alone
For now the moon is at the window
He presses his face against the glass and seeks me out
A voyeuristic orb, framed by jacquard and gold braid
I cannot look away, his pallor captivates
Finding me, he stabs with a radiant blade
But there is no pain, only the sensation of a gentle curiosity
I seem to bleed, a phosphorous stain expands and saturates
Spreading now, it flows out into the grass of the garden
Lighting the leaves of sentinel trees, making glowworms dance
A feathered spirit glides past in the brilliance
Its silence an example; be still
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Exquiste Corpse poems 4/27/11
Written by R.C. Davis, Russell Jaffe, Eric Roalson, and Justine Retz at Sanctuary Pub. Punctuation has been added because, well, some lines were punctuated and some weren't that needed to be...
Special thanks to Ravel's Bolero and special apologies to Justine Retz for cutting the street corner on which the pool hall in the second poem appears, and which was beyond legible.
-Russell Jaffe
How the stones are thrown like musical notes
Geography becomes a landscape orchestra
of horns and horns alone. The way you
blow yours turns me on.
The sockets beneath your eyes
are ripe for fishing
as were your simple stockings, a condition.
It was the run that disturbed me,
it was the song that exhilarated me
but the tempo moved me
like a tree. The river. The branches and the way
I was incapable of reading the prior line.
My laundry calls me instead
of the pretty boy next door
whose windowed body was the silhouette of my god.
A candle burns my ass.
The heat is well contained,
but the frigid air is uncontrolled.
I count myself among the unthawed kind
dripping only on warm days.
The harvest is waiting in line
but Fall will come soon enough
when your laces are untied. Remember:
It's a lack of short term memory
the elephant dances down the lane
a soft so exact thump
so microtonal, so hold your keyboard hands
but I have no keyboard hands. You must
lend me yours in case I
lose my pearls at the pool hall.
Here's my life story I'm ready to admit:
I wouldn't admit too much.
The borders between two worlds
are sewn by invisible thread
made visible. It tells the truth by day but
in the oncoming dusk it will lie.
The purple reproduction machine
is Prince singing "Kiss" in falsetto?
Well? Are you afraid to count the lines on the face
face of time and be
the portrait of obtuse fantasy in the
mind of Asimov, whirling
computer chip dust. Feel the grain of
my dog, do you feel the imperfections?
I pant with a tongue of compassion.
Fire flickers, in dim candles
I pull spark plugs from my rustic imposition
and they light up the morning sky.
The eyes of the chipmunks
daft black in furry furtiveness
ye squirrels:
In their language it is "hear ye."
My eyes cannot perceive the subtitles
but my heart speaks many languages
but I can't translate any. Hello? I'll tell you why:
please do, so I can turn a deaf ear
on a dime to the rhyme with
the Miami sound machine blasting
a kind of youth. You're sweat. I'm
dry like a horned lizard in the sun.
Special thanks to Ravel's Bolero and special apologies to Justine Retz for cutting the street corner on which the pool hall in the second poem appears, and which was beyond legible.
-Russell Jaffe
How the stones are thrown like musical notes
Geography becomes a landscape orchestra
of horns and horns alone. The way you
blow yours turns me on.
The sockets beneath your eyes
are ripe for fishing
as were your simple stockings, a condition.
It was the run that disturbed me,
it was the song that exhilarated me
but the tempo moved me
like a tree. The river. The branches and the way
I was incapable of reading the prior line.
My laundry calls me instead
of the pretty boy next door
whose windowed body was the silhouette of my god.
A candle burns my ass.
The heat is well contained,
but the frigid air is uncontrolled.
I count myself among the unthawed kind
dripping only on warm days.
The harvest is waiting in line
but Fall will come soon enough
when your laces are untied. Remember:
It's a lack of short term memory
the elephant dances down the lane
a soft so exact thump
so microtonal, so hold your keyboard hands
but I have no keyboard hands. You must
lend me yours in case I
lose my pearls at the pool hall.
Here's my life story I'm ready to admit:
I wouldn't admit too much.
The borders between two worlds
are sewn by invisible thread
made visible. It tells the truth by day but
in the oncoming dusk it will lie.
The purple reproduction machine
is Prince singing "Kiss" in falsetto?
Well? Are you afraid to count the lines on the face
face of time and be
the portrait of obtuse fantasy in the
mind of Asimov, whirling
computer chip dust. Feel the grain of
my dog, do you feel the imperfections?
I pant with a tongue of compassion.
Fire flickers, in dim candles
I pull spark plugs from my rustic imposition
and they light up the morning sky.
The eyes of the chipmunks
daft black in furry furtiveness
ye squirrels:
In their language it is "hear ye."
My eyes cannot perceive the subtitles
but my heart speaks many languages
but I can't translate any. Hello? I'll tell you why:
please do, so I can turn a deaf ear
on a dime to the rhyme with
the Miami sound machine blasting
a kind of youth. You're sweat. I'm
dry like a horned lizard in the sun.
Friday, April 8, 2011
Monday, March 28, 2011
Thursday, December 30, 2010
EXQUISITED CORPSES
Written by R.C. Davis, Chris Eck, Russell Jaffe, Justine Retz, and Amanda Strzalka, 12/13/10.
Cold runs through her body.
She finds strangely comforting
the tiny charge of static unleashed.
My hair rises reaching for
electric stars like moth ash in streetlamps,
attracted to what kills it.
It moves toward its demise
and finds what it seeks:
open, blossoming like a creamy, pink sea amoeba.
This is a feeling I butter my toast with:
warmth that can feel cold,
cousin of hate who can feel love
at a family picnic with ants.
Speeding don the road
a.m. radio crackles, coffee drips
but still my brain pounds.
I add salt and sugar to dilute this type of cake
until I can't taste it anymore.
Satisfying dissipation.
Sedated and spread across the toasted crust
the roe still refuses to give in
but the youth therein are empty
for they don't believe
but could if the just wanted to,
just like Santa only brings peppermint if you believe.
And are naughty.
(sort of twisted Christmas theme...-Russell)
The doorway in my hip, the one I heard your bell from
across the alps. Cows on parade
are glass in Chicago's dark, wet teeth tonight.
The city sleeps, but I don't.
I want to walk the dark streets
but it's daytime. What can we do?
But co-mingle in our natural habitat...
a spider web of cans tied to a rented limo; A
car filled with nothing but hopes and dreams
transcends the guard rail, airborne.
The air is thin and rushes past, but pockets envelop, you float
on currents gliding between the clouds and metallic
tongues of upturned faces--we now from here glide.
Pam Grier mixed steroids into her hot cocoa.
That's how I know she can act like a bulging
rambunctious Amazon woman.
Run through the streets
echo doorway shell, avoiding traffic/
The snail meanders glittery rainbow arcs
but not the animal kind--the kind more or less like
a person, the kind you love to hate.
The guilt of judgment invades your mind.
Surrender now, hot not to internalize, how
to fall eyes and arms wide
into embracing this dark majesty, this
fear that runs our lives.
Cold runs through her body.
She finds strangely comforting
the tiny charge of static unleashed.
My hair rises reaching for
electric stars like moth ash in streetlamps,
attracted to what kills it.
It moves toward its demise
and finds what it seeks:
open, blossoming like a creamy, pink sea amoeba.
This is a feeling I butter my toast with:
warmth that can feel cold,
cousin of hate who can feel love
at a family picnic with ants.
Speeding don the road
a.m. radio crackles, coffee drips
but still my brain pounds.
I add salt and sugar to dilute this type of cake
until I can't taste it anymore.
Satisfying dissipation.
Sedated and spread across the toasted crust
the roe still refuses to give in
but the youth therein are empty
for they don't believe
but could if the just wanted to,
just like Santa only brings peppermint if you believe.
And are naughty.
(sort of twisted Christmas theme...-Russell)
The doorway in my hip, the one I heard your bell from
across the alps. Cows on parade
are glass in Chicago's dark, wet teeth tonight.
The city sleeps, but I don't.
I want to walk the dark streets
but it's daytime. What can we do?
But co-mingle in our natural habitat...
a spider web of cans tied to a rented limo; A
car filled with nothing but hopes and dreams
transcends the guard rail, airborne.
The air is thin and rushes past, but pockets envelop, you float
on currents gliding between the clouds and metallic
tongues of upturned faces--we now from here glide.
Pam Grier mixed steroids into her hot cocoa.
That's how I know she can act like a bulging
rambunctious Amazon woman.
Run through the streets
echo doorway shell, avoiding traffic/
The snail meanders glittery rainbow arcs
but not the animal kind--the kind more or less like
a person, the kind you love to hate.
The guilt of judgment invades your mind.
Surrender now, hot not to internalize, how
to fall eyes and arms wide
into embracing this dark majesty, this
fear that runs our lives.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
No Teeth
Hey class members,
I think this is a great starter journal to submit to!
http://litlist.net/noteeth
I think this is a great starter journal to submit to!
http://litlist.net/noteeth
This. Is. Awe. Some.
Look at this, everyone. It's great! I joined. I advocate that you all join, too!
http://litlist.net/
http://litlist.net/
Friday, December 3, 2010
The Fine Art of Surfacing
Great idea, Russell. I have perused and piqued my own interest in several journals. Most of my publishing experience is from the late 1990's, so tonight I dug through "the drawer," finding some evidence for my lack of proliferation in that time. I thought I'd take a few lines to honor some defunct publications from that bygone era of internet innocence. Almost every organization that ever published a poem of mine is dead. I'm pretty sure I didn't kill them, though. I do get a kick out of their magazine titles:
24:7 Magazine, Bunkum, Conspire, Gravity, Ink e-zine, Leticia Dahling!, 191919, Croyden Online, Orbital Revolution, Radio Free Topeka, New Improved Mushrooms, Indigo Pig, Papyrus, Aabye's Baby, Savoy, Thunder Sandwich, The Poet's Cut, Green Tricycle, Sky Blue Water, et al....
Of course, I'll be turning this list itself, in unabridged format, into a poem.
A few of my old haunts still exist, though! Check out A Little Poetry at http://www.alittlepoetry.com/ - they still seem to get it on (as of 2009) and you'll find some terrible examples of what the 90's did to me in their 1998 "ancient archives" section. Another great past-blast in the lit zine Children, Churches & Daddies http://scars.tv/perl/ccd.htm and yet another in The Alembic from Providence college at http://www.providence.edu/English/Alembic/ .
Interesting, the old e-zine Shadow Voices seems to have evolved into a mental illness support services center. Convenient, poetry isn't always the most effective therapy.
Cheers, see you all Tuesday.
Christopher
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Journals you like
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Exquisite Corpse poems from the last Frontiers of Poetry 2010 class--10/12/10
These exquisite corpse poems were written at Sanctuary Pub in Iowa City by Justine Retz, Eric Roalson, Stephanie Wilkinson, and Russell Jaffe:
#1
Sitting under a toadstool
sweating in the noon day sun
they pray for an alchemical rain
to a landfill idol, pariah of industrial housing
a Frankenstein--wire bed frame.
In a stark, vast room
the saxophone is the only voice
of reason, but the pipe organ is
becoming one with the merry-go-round.
A headless horseman appears;
It is better to gallop than to extrapolate
--sage advice from the mother in us all.
#2
The school house brick steamed.
A fog rises into the September air
and by October a fog drives itself to work, it
takes on a new name--a new identity.
Calling home,
ancient resonance of the choir
tires me more than the tremolo of
a pomegranate turning tangerine in the sunset.
Grapes dripping from the vine,
it is divine to sing across the web
to untapped URLs, my sweet
covered in melted brie juice.
#3
My primary refusal is to write anything about
the meaning of a rainbow over an
apocalyptic sky.
There is a fire in the chamber of tomorrow
so call today's fire chief--he's got it
in spades. The mushrooms on fire,
diamonds bounce in the bubble,
double the trouble of seduction
by introducing the TV, a remarkable
box of manipulation--a stargazer's paradise.
Tears flow openly
into the chalice of mercy.
#4
The rogue winks and moves across the bar
toward plastic spheres and D.I.Y stigmas.
The 7-Up bottles came flying, fizzing,
jasper colored beads scatter
like squirrels in the strobelight,
I convulse an adorable bravado,
an Ewok caught in a time machine--
Asteroids dance
around the coffin of silence,
the funeral home of loudness operates
oh-so-silently, spinning in darkness and
out of control.
#1
Sitting under a toadstool
sweating in the noon day sun
they pray for an alchemical rain
to a landfill idol, pariah of industrial housing
a Frankenstein--wire bed frame.
In a stark, vast room
the saxophone is the only voice
of reason, but the pipe organ is
becoming one with the merry-go-round.
A headless horseman appears;
It is better to gallop than to extrapolate
--sage advice from the mother in us all.
#2
The school house brick steamed.
A fog rises into the September air
and by October a fog drives itself to work, it
takes on a new name--a new identity.
Calling home,
ancient resonance of the choir
tires me more than the tremolo of
a pomegranate turning tangerine in the sunset.
Grapes dripping from the vine,
it is divine to sing across the web
to untapped URLs, my sweet
covered in melted brie juice.
#3
My primary refusal is to write anything about
the meaning of a rainbow over an
apocalyptic sky.
There is a fire in the chamber of tomorrow
so call today's fire chief--he's got it
in spades. The mushrooms on fire,
diamonds bounce in the bubble,
double the trouble of seduction
by introducing the TV, a remarkable
box of manipulation--a stargazer's paradise.
Tears flow openly
into the chalice of mercy.
#4
The rogue winks and moves across the bar
toward plastic spheres and D.I.Y stigmas.
The 7-Up bottles came flying, fizzing,
jasper colored beads scatter
like squirrels in the strobelight,
I convulse an adorable bravado,
an Ewok caught in a time machine--
Asteroids dance
around the coffin of silence,
the funeral home of loudness operates
oh-so-silently, spinning in darkness and
out of control.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
A question for Russell: is this the class you were telling us about (in May)? I thought you were going to teach it in November. At any rate, could you tell us the course title and time for the next class? Thanks! This is the first time I have 'returned' to this site since our class ended. Nice posts here! --Karyn
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Journals to look up
I've chosen a handful of journals I think are very interesting and worth your time to study and analyze as benchmarks of today's poetry landscape.
DIAGRAM: http://www.webdelsol.com/DIAGRAM/3_3/index.html
Octopus: http://www.octopusmagazine.com/issue05/html/main.html
horse less review: http://www.horselesspress.com/
elimae: http://www.elimae.com/
Leveler: http://www.levelerpoetry.com/
Super Arrow: http://www.superarrow.org/
The Portland Review: http://www.portlandreview.pdx.edu/
The Paris Review: http://www.theparisreview.org/
Poetry: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/index.html
The Iowa Review: http://iowareview.uiowa.edu/
Conduit: http://www.conduit.org/
MiPOesias: http://www.mipoesias.com/MIPO/Home.html
Shampoo: http://www.shampoopoetry.com/
Coconut: http://www.coconutpoetry.org/
LIT: http://litmagazine.wordpress.com/
La Petite Zine: http://www.lapetitezine.org/
ACTION YES: http://www.actionyes.org/
Black Warrior Review: http://blackwarrior.webdelsol.com/
Indiana Review: http://indianareview.org/
Hanging Loose Press: http://www.hangingloosepress.com/
Glimmer Train: http://www.glimmertrain.com/
But you don't need to be limited to these. Here’s a massive list of poetry journals, all collected and updated frequently!
http://duotrope.com/listallmarkets.aspx?page=pubtype-p&sort=title
DIAGRAM: http://www.webdelsol.com/DIAGRAM/3_3/index.html
Octopus: http://www.octopusmagazine.com/issue05/html/main.html
horse less review: http://www.horselesspress.com/
elimae: http://www.elimae.com/
Leveler: http://www.levelerpoetry.com/
Super Arrow: http://www.superarrow.org/
The Portland Review: http://www.portlandreview.pdx.edu/
The Paris Review: http://www.theparisreview.org/
Poetry: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/index.html
The Iowa Review: http://iowareview.uiowa.edu/
Conduit: http://www.conduit.org/
MiPOesias: http://www.mipoesias.com/MIPO/Home.html
Shampoo: http://www.shampoopoetry.com/
Coconut: http://www.coconutpoetry.org/
LIT: http://litmagazine.wordpress.com/
La Petite Zine: http://www.lapetitezine.org/
ACTION YES: http://www.actionyes.org/
Black Warrior Review: http://blackwarrior.webdelsol.com/
Indiana Review: http://indianareview.org/
Hanging Loose Press: http://www.hangingloosepress.com/
Glimmer Train: http://www.glimmertrain.com/
But you don't need to be limited to these. Here’s a massive list of poetry journals, all collected and updated frequently!
http://duotrope.com/listallmarkets.aspx?page=pubtype-p&sort=title
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Ars Poetica/Russell Jaffe/Sept. 14
It's day 1 of Frontiers of Poetry 2010, and here's the Ars Poetica I wrote in class:
A Toast
Raise like you would your mortal young.
In remembrance, splash stars like milk
across your chest and we'll lay down like
young beach nights and write poems about
Iowa.
There's no coast there--just the blue edges
of the map being what could be or have been,
the clouds being the earth's eyelids all the way
to your sunscreen, to the magnetic beach of
yourself,
to low tide, to whomever said that light is good
and cancels darkness' bads--they never saw
a comet tail and became a grain of sand.
So I have nothing to say, but
not for lack of gravity.
Also, here's some poems I've had published in Weird Deer and Action Yes.
A Toast
Raise like you would your mortal young.
In remembrance, splash stars like milk
across your chest and we'll lay down like
young beach nights and write poems about
Iowa.
There's no coast there--just the blue edges
of the map being what could be or have been,
the clouds being the earth's eyelids all the way
to your sunscreen, to the magnetic beach of
yourself,
to low tide, to whomever said that light is good
and cancels darkness' bads--they never saw
a comet tail and became a grain of sand.
So I have nothing to say, but
not for lack of gravity.
Also, here's some poems I've had published in Weird Deer and Action Yes.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Spill
This summer, long drawn
as if Louisiana hasn't seen enough
the floods of hurricanes and petroleum
pumping from Big Putrid pipes, underwater
where we used to think god kept hell, but
discovered that it had roots deep in the past
deeper than the sea bed of golden, blinded kings
where pings from a submarine surfacing
collapse black as a missing star, a gap in a child's smile,
the only time such a smile is utterly adorable
when you drive your car into an oil drill
if you can--fill your lungs with air--and pray.
Written by Eric Roalson, Hans Lutenegger, Karyn Hempel, and Russell Jaffe 6/30/10
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Out
My father cinched the rope,
a noose around my waist,
and lowered me into
the darkness. I could taste
my fear. It tasted first
of dark, then earth, then rot.
I swung and struck my head
and at that moment got
another then: then blood,
which spiked my mouth with iron.
Hand over hand my father
dropped me from then to then:
then water. Then wet fur,
which I hugged to my chest.
I shouted. Daddy hauled
the wet rope. I gagged, and pressed
my neighbor's missing dog
against me. I held its death
and rose up to my father.
Then light. Then hands. Then breath.
_______
"Out" by Andrew Hudgins, from American Rendering, New and Selected Poems, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, New York, 2010.
Posted by Karyn
a noose around my waist,
and lowered me into
the darkness. I could taste
my fear. It tasted first
of dark, then earth, then rot.
I swung and struck my head
and at that moment got
another then: then blood,
which spiked my mouth with iron.
Hand over hand my father
dropped me from then to then:
then water. Then wet fur,
which I hugged to my chest.
I shouted. Daddy hauled
the wet rope. I gagged, and pressed
my neighbor's missing dog
against me. I held its death
and rose up to my father.
Then light. Then hands. Then breath.
_______
"Out" by Andrew Hudgins, from American Rendering, New and Selected Poems, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, New York, 2010.
Posted by Karyn
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Baskets
The best are speckled with a color, like songs
you hum because the words are unremembered.
They say, hand me an apple though I do not
need it, then in the cold months when I need it
you will hand me an apple again. Pretend
you are sitting on the ground and a bird looks
out at you from the low part of a pine.
The color enters your basket while you look
at him. What has he said? What have you said?
What you never said is safe with another.
But how will you reach me when I am left
so far behind? I cannot weave. I cannot fly.
poem by Laura Jensen from Bad Boats,
The Ecco Press, New York, NY 1977.
Posted by Karyn
you hum because the words are unremembered.
They say, hand me an apple though I do not
need it, then in the cold months when I need it
you will hand me an apple again. Pretend
you are sitting on the ground and a bird looks
out at you from the low part of a pine.
The color enters your basket while you look
at him. What has he said? What have you said?
What you never said is safe with another.
But how will you reach me when I am left
so far behind? I cannot weave. I cannot fly.
poem by Laura Jensen from Bad Boats,
The Ecco Press, New York, NY 1977.
Posted by Karyn
Monday, April 26, 2010
WPWC Class: Check your emails!
Check your emails if you are in Write Poetry Right Now! I have to miss class Wednesday--tragedy. But we can reschedule class; particularly, I am interested in doing a Tuesday night class if we can. Please let me know what your schedule will allow. Otherwise, I'd like to push class to Friday evening or Sunday evening.-Russell
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