"a poem may be devoted to giving clear meaning to one word." ~george oppen

then there's the safety in numbers...

1. apple apple., 2. night flys

for pi day

Pi
by Wislawa Szymborska

The admirable number pi:
three point one four one.
All the following digits are also initial,
five nine two because it never ends.
It can’t be comprehended six five three five at a glance.
eight nine by calculation,
seven nine or imagination,
not even three two three eight by wit, that is, by comparison
four six to anything else
two six four three in the world.
The longest snake on earth calls it quits at about forty feet.
Likewise, snakes of myth and legend, though they may hold out a bit longer.
The pageant of digits comprising the number pi
doesn’t stop at the page’s edge.
It goes on across the table, through the air,
over a wall, a leaf, a bird’s nest, clouds, straight into the sky,
through all the bottomless, bloated heavens.
Oh how brief—a mouse tail, a pigtail—is the tail of a comet!
How feeble the star’s ray, bent by bumping up against space!
While here we have two three fifteen three hundred nineteen
my phone number your shirt size the year
nineteen hundred and seventy-three the sixth floor
the number of inhabitants sixty-five cents
hip measurement two fingers a charade, a code,
in which we find hail to thee, blithe spirit, bird thou never wert
alongside ladies and gentlemen, no cause for alarm,
as well as heaven and earth shall pass away,
but not the number pi, oh no, nothing doing,
it keeps right on with its rather remarkable five,
its uncommonly fine eight,
its far from final seven,
nudging, always nudging a sluggish eternity
to continue.

detective work

crime club

"no butler, no second maid, no blood upon the stair.
no eccentric aunt, no gardener, no family friend
smiling among the bric a brac and murder.
only a suburban house with the front door open
and a dog barking at a squirrel, and the cars
passing. the corpse quite dead. the wife in florida.

consider the clues: the potato masher in a vase,
the torn photograph of a weseyan basketball team,
scattered with checks in the hall;
the unsent fan letter to shirley temple,
the hoover button on the lapel of the deceased,
the note: "to be killed this way is quite all right with me."

small wonder that the case remains unsolved,
or that the sleuth, le roux, is now incurably insane,
and sits alone in a white room in a white gown,
screaming that all the world is mad, that clues
lead nowhere, or to walls so high their tops cannot be seen;
screaming all day of war, screaming that nothing can be solved."


~weldon kees

sheet music from here.

sometimes i want nothing

more than to go from one city
to the next
live in temporary rooms always
the sound of bumping above
be absolutely contented
and never idle
in endless hotels of fleeting noises and
situations
amidst madly carpeted
madly lit hallways
eat continental breakfast
in my one aqua
dress

perform gentle
handstands in trains
headed north

to everyday duluth

at a lutefisk picnic
i would collect fish bones and fruit seeds
and signs that said ‘slow’

a gorgeous hotel, in a grand city

'i had walked across the carpeted lobby and down a long marble corridor,
passing glassed-in phonebooths and rows of tall potted plants, and
staggered into the men's room.

my eyes were stinging. everything had grown blurry as i'd made my way
through the lobby. i moved toward the sinks and the mirrors. i could no
longer see my own hands, but in the brightness i sensed the expanse of tile
and brushed metals and knew at once that i was alone.

i was squinting, i guess. i contracted every muscle in my face. as i did
this a series of droplets came out of both eyes and stayed close to my
cheeks, traveling down them, each droplet leaving a kind of track. streaks,
i suppose. for a few brief moments i could see again. the tiles and the
metals. then again the room grew blurry.

it was then i heard a faucet running. someone was there. a man was
suggesting i was crying. crying! i doubted this–told him i seriously
doubted this. i slumped down onto my knees, holding my head in both
hands. more droplets. my head felt just like a trophy, so i held it as such."

~michael earl craig

sonnet out of a hundred thousand

For acid marble's but a friandise

consuming tea and nibbling cream gateaux

the chosen fruit is hued a bright cerise

so stink the rotting skins from long ago

I styll can call to mind those hours of ease

those greedy mice leave nothing for the crow

we chill like nudists put on ice to freeze

most people like to read the words they know

The brave man cries I do not care a jot

the shark is smoked on beds of bergamot

while coming home we find the wind turned mean

You'll come to miss the peasant in his smock

I quite forgive you when you run amok

at least the metro's one place where you've been

from the online interactive version of queneau's cent mille milliards de poemes

chalk evaporation up to the mischief of angels

when the pictures came back
the last three i had taken in my dream
were all overlaid with the same
laundry-slung background
of a backyard in the nineteen thirties,
wih the foreground subjects all differing:

me on a field trip poking washed up jellyfish with a lacquered chopstick
me in a burning restaurant just as an owl snatches the white rabbit out of my arms
me tying three bells to a cat's collar so as to warn birds of its whereabouts

all clarified with the soft muddiness
of moments safely past any chance of correcting.

is this not nostalgia:
to live in the gone moment at last?



[i found this image [found on ffffound] very compelling, and so used it as a visual kind of scaffold for a poetic state.]

i know it's not spring yet, but this is too good not to share

SOR JUANA WORKS IN THE GARDEN

Time for gardening again; for poetry; for arms
up to the elbows in leftover
deluge, hands in the dirt, groping around
among the rootlets, bulbs, lost marbles, blind
snouts of worms, cat droppings, your own future
bones, whatever's down there
supercharged, a dim glint in the darkness.
When you stand on bare earth in your bare feet
and the lightning whips through you, two ways
at once, they say you are grounded,
and that's what poetry is: a hot wire.
You might as well stick a fork
in a wall socket. So don't think it's just about flowers.
Though it is, in a way.
You spent this morning among the bloodsucking
perennials, the billowing peonies,
the lilies building to outburst,
the leaves of the foxgloves gleaming like hammered
copper, the static crackling among the spiny columbines.
Scissors, portentous trowel, the wheelbarrow
yellow and inert, the grassblades
whispering like ions. You think it wasn't all working
up to something? You ought to have worn rubber
gloves. Thunder budding in the spires of lupins,
their clamps and updrafts, pollen and resurrection
unfolding from each restless nest
of petals. Your arms hum, the hair
stands up on them; just one touch and you're struck.
It's too late now, the earth splits open,
the dead rise, purblind and stumbling
in the clashing of last-day daily
sunlight, furred angels crawl
all over you like swarming bees, the maple
trees above you shed their deafening keys
to heaven, your exploding
syllables litter the lawn.

from margaret atwood's "the door."

thanks to raoul.

"beauty is the impossible which lasts" ~francis ponge

"we have everything to say...and can say nothing; that is why we begin anew each day, on the widest variety of subjects and in the greatest number of imaginable procedures. we do not set out to write a beautiful text, a beautiful page, a beautiful book. absolutely not! we simply refuse to be defeated:
1) by the beauty or fascination of nature, or even the humblest object; nor do we recognize any hierarchy among the things to be said;
2) by language; we will continue to try;
3) we have lost all desire for relative success and all taste for admitting it. we couldn't care less about the usual criteria. only lassitude stops us. the monopolization of these criteria by a few hucksters has thoroughly disinclined us from any further sermonizing on measure or excess. we know that we successively reinvent the worst mistakes of every stylistic school of every period. so much the better! we don't want to say what we think, which is probably of no interest (as is evident here). we want to be unsettled in our thinking.

the silent world is our only homeland. we make use of its possibilities according to the needs of the times."





1. apple, 2. Winding Road, 3. le parapluie, 4. Adventures In Perspective, 5. IMG_0125, 6. Anagrams Embossed Edition No. 79

'A great Parcel of Earth is every Year carried into the Sea.'

andrea's parcel journal is wonderful. the first two are out and are satisfying to take the strings off and unfold the brown paper..

in andrea's words:

'PARCEL is a non-profit online journal that publishes innovative poetry, prose, artwork, essays, and reviews. Long poems, collaborations and works from a series are especially welcome. Featured visual artists will be solicited until further notice, though feel free to send queries. Chapbook submissions will be solicited from past journal contributors only. '

here is a poem from parcel 2 by mark cunningham:

[Specimen]

I was going to tell her I never wanted to lose her, but then I lost my train of thought. If you have to go back inside three times to make sure the coffee maker is unplugged, you've forgotten something else. I tried to explain to him that it wasn't ambient if he paid attention to it, but he wouldn't listen. We exhausted all the senses: he touched his eyes and ears, I said, "What?" and he sniffed and walked away.

my first sonnet

one day not long ago i was taking a man's order at Fish. his shirt had a pattern of flying ducks on it that i liked, and i told him so. but between the moment that i gave him the compliment and the moment that he thanked me, i realized with a kind of dismay that the ducks on his shirt weren't flying. they were falling, tumbling out of the sky. he affirmed my observation by saying (as if his grin would reveal he had teeth missing, though he had all his teeth): "they're full o buckshot."

this moment inspired my sonnet. because it seemed an unlikely form for its subject, yes, but also because the form itself revealed to me my own deep and abiding hunting instincts.



sonnet full of buckshot


when a rhythm catches i will pluck
it out of thin air. hushfuls will founder
waylaid by the thunderclap, no time to duck
down. and fall through the sky's false bottom, rounder
than the theatrical notion of surprise,
the sudden and transitory expanse
triggered by duplicity in the guise
of a puddle duck, subtly enhanced
by the clarity it lends to the muddy.
i too am happy to wade hip-deep in ooze
for the chance to extract from the suddenly
soft finery of misconstrued music.

my aim is true, my intention to solder
the mat's soft yield to the wrestler's shoulder.





there you have it.

the sonnet as a form has been there all along and i have never filled it. it is like an exquisite chair i have never once sat in. i think i'm finally ready to pull all these lovely forms left behind for me out of the attic and furnish my life with them.

the fall

"there was a man who found two leaves and came indoors holding them out saying to his parents that he was a tree.

to which they said then go into the yard and do not grow in the living room as your roots may ruin the carpet.

he said i was fooling i am not a tree and he dropped the leaves.

but his parents said look it is fall." ~russell edson








photo by fallout75 on flickr.

battle hill poetry festival

guess who's reading next month at the battle hill poetry festival at the green wood cemetary in brooklyn?

you guessed it.

the picture makes it look spookier than it is. green wood is a grand and beautiful cemetary placed at the highest point in all of new york, and it is where we will all converge on the night of october the 13th, thanks to our battle hill heroine tracey mctague:



follow the link to see the impressive list of readers and find out the specifics so and if so and do everything you can so you can manage to attend.

laws of attraction

"UPON WAKING

at the far edge of earth, night
is going away. another
poem begins. slumped over

the typewriter i must get this
exactly, i want to make it
clear this morning that your

face, as it opens
from its shadow, is more
perfect than yesterday; and

that the light, as it
hesitates over the approach
of your smile, has given this

aching bed more than warmth,
more than poems; someway

a generous rose, or a very
delicate arrangement of sounds,
has come to peace in this new room."

~denis johnson










a mosaic of flickr favorites. original images here: 1. the bee, 2. She said, take me away, 3. -, 4. Sunflowers

there are delicacies in you

"there are delicacies in you
like the hearts of watches
there are wheels that turn
on the tips of rubies
& tiny intricate locks

i need your help
to contrive keys
there is so little time
even for the finest
of watches"

~earle birney

a pig's eye view of literature

click here to hear (and see!) sophie's impressive recitation (in a voice that sounds suspiciously like mine) of dorothy parker's poetic commentary on byron, shelley, and keats.

in case you would like to follow along, i've provided the words:



"Byron and Shelley and Keats
Were a trio of Lyrical treats.
The forehead of Shelley was cluttered with curls,
And Keats never was a descendant of earls,
And Byron walked out with a number of girls,
But it didn't impair the poetical feats
Of Byron and Shelley,
Of Byron and Shelley,
Of Byron and Shelley and Keats."




thanks to blabberize for the power and to photojojo for the direction.

the elephant in the room

(explanation of the idiom: illustrates a large issue with influence over a discussion that is not mentioned by the participants.)

what happens inside
the force that governs an undercurrent
is private

knowing where
not to step

as if the lining
of an earache
has been woven into the berber.

gingerly the clouds
go past on tiptoe
grey as battleships

there is no subtracting
from the leviathan air
because the giant appendage
is everything but what it is.


elephant in the room from here.

what luster wants...

is for it to be known that
even light seems to burn as a form of pressure
night insects lust after

a brightness external to the soul which both reflects its splendid reputation
and dominates it entirely

and exactly as that is what the soul wants--
to be pressed submissive between sheets
of glassine for posterity

--it also wants known the fight it puts up all that time inside the mollusc

the fixed irritation of meanings altered in different mouths
as self-cancelling
a careening list of private contraries

all rhythm-slash-talk and no plot-slash-action.

whenever we witness the river’s liftbridge unlacing for boats to pass
my dog just comes unhinged.
a half of a bridge, in her mind, as ominous and freakish as any godzilla.

what i perceive as her wanting what she knows to bridge what she doesn’t
makes her seem almost human
almost as solitary and desirous as i am no different from an oar striving toward an island.


fine rare print of a pearl oyster image from here.

"Waitressing in the Room With a Thousand Moons...

Is difficult at best. The moons desperately want to circle
something, so when a dish comes out, they dive-bomb it, bump
into each other and a dusting of moon-rock falls into the food.
We call that Parmesan. They know the plate won't be a planet.
We've been here for centuries and not once has a planet come in.
I guess they do it just-in-case. Having lived most of their
lives too close to everything, their sense of perspective is
poor. A plate of dumplings can start to look like a solar
system. Lately the moons seem to be losing hope. They're just
going through the motions and their waning is way more
convincing than their waxing. They no longer swarm around each
swirl of steam. A red smear signals Ketchup, not Mars. The food
is not very good, but people keep coming. Some come with nets to
sieve the sky for the tiniest butterfly-sized moons. Security is
good, though—no moon has ever been smuggled out. And most of the
diners look up the whole time, which makes it easy to get their
attention when we recite the specials. We, the waitstaff, are
waiting for the day when we come into the restaurant and find
the moons circling another moon. Below them, we endlessly orbit
the tables. Our leader has left us too."

this poem by matthea harvey seemed perfect for today. with only two days left at my job at picco, it's a little like working in an outer space.
i have always thought waitressing was a very special job. as a child i secretly admired waitresses and thought of them as beautiful. and i think i have definitely grown to depend on the rhythms and the rush of the restaurant world. sometimes i just wish that people appreciated us more, thought of us more highly.

and here is where "baked alaska parade" came from. where would this post be without it?

diagram 7.2

the new diagram has lots in it.

the following poem by dawn lonsinger resonates with me especially.
under the poem, she writes:
"My obsession with tanks & aquariums is undocumented, but vivid; we excavate and lift things for viewing, but they are inextricably altered in that act—the fish no longer a fish of depth, but of fluorescence and solitude; the prisoner diminished to the –er of prison. I have unfo/u/nd memories of being petted as a child, not in a perverse way, but in a caring, sheltering way. Yet, this nonetheless felt ruinous to me. This perversity became more manifest in my family's disquieting inability to tend for pets ::: novel at first, then a chore. There is domestication, leashes, and love."




we had a lot of pets too. while my stepmother was anything but nurturing, she insisted on filling every possible surface and cranny with cages and tanks. persian cats that weren't allowed outside (presumably because they were so valuable), rabbits, chameleons, parakeets, fish, a dog. as the stepchild, i was the official cleaner-upper of all of them. after all those years of cleaning catboxes and scraping the caked corners of rabbit hutches and scrubbing algae off aquarium glass, you'd think i'd become an adult who wanted nothing to do with pet care. and yet i have that same impulse, to bring home animals and give them names. be responsible for them. change their water dishes, protect them from harm. pet them.




PET


The room begs to be further inhabited, to have a sun moving in its plaster gut. At moments a decorative urge, the parrot bright and entertaining. At others—a death cry, everything so still and lasting as sandpaper, burning through to your bones with that stillness, where even you are armature, near-couch. You would not be alone. Your love would transfer directly through your hands. Someone pets the linoleum, then you. You pet your lover's head, smooth "I love you" into your child's hair like amniotic fluid, like cellophane around a dome of chopped carrots.

The Maine Coon sits on top of your refrigerator. You are fond of the unusual form following you as if it was your motor. As if an inexact circle was the shape of commitment. A shape you tend. Small box, cylinder, beak of noise, trace of liquid. How it curls in your lap, is impatient in your lap, slithers around your neck, licks your face, tracks up and down your arm, fidgets in your cupped palms, wants in. Even as its eyes swivel, cut through with an alarming precision. Even as we move, like them, constantly. We are hemmed in. The Dalmatian yanks on the leash, cuts off his own airway. Invisible in the pitch-black apartment, they still see, see nothing. A car drives by, headlights flooding their eyes, seen and seeing, saucers filled before falling into silence.

Only the fish remain at a distance, flash like memory through the tank. The basking light burns all night, as in a driveway of twenty years ago, illuminated nets echoing our hooks, mayflies amassed at the surface. A tan Chihuahua with three legs hops up the stairs. A python presses like SPAM against the glass. No one knows why the dove started to pull its feathers out, reveal its pocked skin. The frog doesn't hop. Stuttered gerbil. Shape is no promise. Our hands twist, more or less away. We live in a petting zoo. Touch everything you can get your mind on. Feel for the goat. Don't be stopped by his hyphenated eyes. Don't just touch. Trail that touch, pet—slowly, slowly. He, too, is fascinated with disparity and freedom, rolls a green ball black back and forth in the grass with his nose. Can you hear the whimpering through the packed dirt, through your bent wrists, petting? You pet the carpet where you once slept, and it curls at the edges.



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