alice

I need the poetry submissions narrowed to 30 and the prose down to 20 in about a week. Now's the time to ask me for help. I'm unemployed and unforgiving.

Why the Universe is a Cold Hard Place (and other tales)

The sun died in the apple orchard because there was a worm in it. If it wasn't for the chewy center all would have been absolved. After the feast, there was another feast in mourning. We ate all night. In the morning it was dark and the trees were leafless and rigid and to touch was like shivering and nobody cried at all.

You can now read my old story on juked

Though you've probably read it before. The Apocalypse of John.

Juked Took an Old Story of Mine

woo hoo.

Poem written at work...a line a day

This room is a dying ship, which means
in simple terms, a structure
standing in for music.

There are almonds on the ground
in place of gravel.

We eat what ends between our toes
forgetting the importance of respiration.

The hull is sore.
Our mouths are ragged.
Eighth notes standing in.

Holiday Schmoliday

I'm gonna kick my mistletoe
up your candied ass.

"Truthiness" is named Word of the Year

Read about it in the Seattle PI.

Guerilla Poetics

Guerilla Poetics. I have mixed feelings about stuff like this. Feels a little like guerilla advertising to me. Not that I'm against guerilla advertising, but if you're advertising your advertising, no? I don't know. Maybe not. I'm probably being ridiculous. It just sounds like advertising and it yanks out the thirteen-year-old-girl in me. Anyway. I'm sure Will's seen this already. He's seen everything. He's probably even shown it to be before. I should eat something.

absent

check out a new online journal absent

a lot of neat work & poems from fellow greener Nicholas Perrin (whom I don't actaully know, but whose name i recognize from slightly west, confirmed in the biographical note as producer of cross cultural poetics for the last two years)

Kari Edwards is Dead

Died yesterday. Announced on Silliman. We published her.
...

I miss the Pushcart deadline. Again.

I am the worst fucking editor ever. I barely have any responsibilities at all. Why don't I have a calendar? Why don't I know when the damn deadline is? Why would the deadline be at the end of the month? How stupid would that possibly be? Why don't I have artwork done? Why do we still not have business cards? T-shirts? Or patches of some kind?

Does anyone need help reading submissions?
We're supposed to put out an issue soon.

streaming video

at UBU: UBU-FILM.

no more downloads!

failures: my new folder

i've created a new folder on my desktop called failures and in it i put all the files i've started and quit on because i got bored.


here is the starting of a story:

My friend destroys my friend. I fluff the bowl ears. I wait next to the television. It's shirtless teenagers. Ninth grade. Outside, dirt road, busy highway, clouds, my friend covered in mud, possessions in piles. Last night, perpendicular rain, I suppose, and we hid in the shed, enjoying the sharp smell of tools and steel racks, and later, when the tapping became hollow, we ventured out beside the highway and pelted passing cars with paint balls and toilet paper. I was transient and waterless. My friends were friends, or employees, and in each of us, the mission, or reasonable facsimile, a set of stairs, a picnic table.


here is the starting of another story:

Someone said, there's a place on the gulf where the desert merges with the sea. I am there, and wet. I feed myself. Do I have a wife? A car? I have a job. I have a television and many video games. I have a water filter.

The water is hard.

My domestic partner leaves me a message. This grocery store has been modified. Wood flooring, earth tones, black aprons. The food, no fresher.

I am driving my car. I am not an algorithm.

Analysis of each rule's frequency of occurrence, among individuals, in the three samples revealed highly significant differentiation for twenty-eight rules.

I receive a ticket for speeding.

At home, something is flickering.


here are two poem from a series of "love poems":

You fruit you will empty the beautiful dark emptiness
you will save the sacrificial penguins
you will plummet
so “Let them wear scarves!”
or “Abandon the museum!”
but don’t beware or be wary or wait whitely
for woe is no band-aid
like the Parthenon & strange or not
i won’t be gone in a minute.



2

i’m followed by fruit by earth by tentacles
or tedium, green plants & prairie dogs
our lonely raccoon scaling the lonely dumpster
& sporting his ontological t-shirt
a dream against a dream against the sun
a germ against the plan for fifteen plums
against nature against the sea against the sea
mis-waived or mis-saved or underscored
the letter i wrote i wrote un-wrote
O face O finger O feature
O shiny teeth little nose dimpled chin
tumble your tendrils, my pet
& arm what armchairs arm at the zoo.


Here are three memoirs:

One

My best friend chases his brother down Hwy 99 brandishing a large kitchen knife. His belly flops over his striped boxers, his only clothing, his luscious breasts (and they are luscious), brown nipples pert, flap like a flag on a windy day, his bare feet trod heedlessly over gravel and broken glass. No cars honk or stop, so Justin and I chase him down and ask him what people will think about a fat guy in boxers chasing his brother with a kitchen knife down a major highway in broad daylight. He doesn’t have a good answer so we go back to his house and watch cartoons.

Two

My best friend’s brother’s friend stops by to watch the basketball game. We admire his new car. He says that he took it from the car lot around the corner. Nobody asks him to leave. The Sonics win.

Three

My best friend tells me that he would like to pursue a career in law enforcement.


I don't know why I posted this stuff. I think I was sad that dimlab had been so lonely for so long. Anyway, those were the more recent failures (there are many more). Now I'm going to write something good. Maybe.

Or maybe I'll watch TV. I could watch Con Air. It is a terrible movie but is on TV right now.

Relationship Poem 2: Keychain

Your spine is dorsal,
like cala lillies,
in the morning.

Shark-toothed, when you
bite my thighs,
when you break the skin.

I was wondering how to
walk through doors

without you?

If our room
would always be this
fish-bowl prison.

Our mouths only opening
bottles and lies.

we have arrived

in v-town, just accross the river from p-town! we have a loft! it is all very exciting!

will & s.

Relationship Poem 1: Mechanical Pencil

I held you once
in the abrasive glow
of flourescent lights.

And we made a language
together
of lead and loops.

O, were I again a finger
upon such subtle ridges!

Combing your point across
oblivious whiteness, and

words like sugar on the
brittle tips of us

breaking into nothing.

i enjoyed

reading this post on WCW over at Samizdat

a note

hi all,

just a note: as something of an exercise (& to keep me going on the novella i started a very long time ago) i will be posting one chapter a week, give or take, as i go through the editing process at amputations which now also appears at the bottom of the sidebar. I'd appreciate any comments ya'll might have as i try to edit/finish writing the damned thing.

will

Oooh! Fall is here and that means the scarves are sliding out of trees and around our necks like...no not like snakes! Like scarves that slide out of trees and around our necks!

And there is the strangler!

As Project Runway seems to have run it's way out of ideas (oh that was poor), the Amish inspired spread in Harpers Bazaar makes me press my fingertips over a scandalized giggle in conservative glee. Oh for colorless garments, so slender, so shapeless. Oh for pinafores and bonnets that cover our shameful hair.

A prayer for the forty-year-old woman in a tennis skirt and teeny-bopper tank before me in the grocery store, telling her eight-year-old daughter to take back the pink-lip-gloss and come back with the peach.

ab

Well, I hate to use anything that detracts from the pure literary beast of our journal, but since we have artwork on the site, and, while I know everyone else is doing it and I hate to be like everyone else (except when I want desperately to be like everyone else), what if I could get a brilliant bandband like, say, growing, to contribute some ambient sound to our beautiful little rag. Hmm? What do you think?

PS: I'm also working on post card and t-shirt designs. Eventually I'll post those up to see what you think.

Read about robots

over at Juked.

thuglife

the legend meanders

a l i c e b l u e f o u r

alice blue four is up! check out poems from Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Jon Leon, Jennifer Firestone, Crag Hill, Della Watson, WB Keckler, William Allegrezza, Kristy Bowen, Louis E. Bourgeois, Edward Smallfield, & Miriam Pirone!

check out prose from Sara Levine, David Gianatasio, Kristen Iskandrian, Greg Mulcahy, Colleen Frakes, & Benjamin Buchholz!

David Meiklejohn's "Plots"

When I was younger, there were books I finished and wanted to carry with me till I died showing person after person till I found another kid who'd clutch it to their chest and carry it around with them till they died showing person after person. It's one of those. Effing Press. Effing awesome.

Zukofsky's "A"

I just started it. I'm about halfway through 8. I was really into it until 8. Communist Propoganda is not my favorite. But I look forward to 12, which is supposedly long, and all about his father.

I also saw this movie, Oldboy. Very good. And very disturbing. I think I spent ten minutes afterwards trying to process, and not cry, and not throw up. A challenging movie, I guess I would say. Challenged the way I looked at certain things, at least. I would recommend it.

That's about it.

i'm eating ice cream

& thinking about MY BUTTOCKS via miporadio.

Stephen Fry on Language

Not the best "A Bit of Fry and Laurie" sketch, but pertinent. I think you'll enjoy. I used to stay up late and sneak downstairs to watch this, Millenium, and Politically Incorrect. That is what Sarah was like as a child.Watch.

youtube yo!

watch this video yo!

stephen dixon interview

at failbetter. actual interview here.

this is my favorite part:

"Maybe I should elaborate, though often my elaborations end up as complications. But here goes. To show the range of my methods, I'll give examples. in the low 90's in June, in New York City, I finished a novel and started another. I'd write a first draft of each chapter in one day, though some took two days. I did about 30 of them in a month and a half. The thirtieth, we'll say, wouldn't content itself as a short chapter and became a short novel, Abortions, which I wrote the first draft of and then the final one. I sent it to Henry Holt and Co., who'd published Interstate and The Stories of Stephen Dixon, and they took it. Then, because I can be perverse in my methodology in this way, I started writing the final draft of the 29 other first-draft chapters, we'll say, and called the novel 30. But I started writing the novel in the opposite chronological order I'd written the first drafts in. No. 29 became chapter one, "Shortcut." 28 became [chapter] two, "Popovers." You get the picture. Working backwards, I came to 15, or so, and that started growing too, like Abortions, and became another short novel, Evangeline. Since the character in all of these was named Gould, I decided to send Holt Evangeline, bridge the two books with the title Gould, and add a subtitle: "A Novel in Two Novels." Holt liked the idea and published the book. Meanwhile, I was working my way back till I came to the final chapter (first draft), which became the final final-draft chapter. But I wasn't finished yet. I then wrote the final draft of the second part of 30, finished it in final-draft form, and wrote the first draft of the second chapter in the second part of 30, which was going to be called—this second part—Ends. So you see that I used two different methods, if not more, in writing 30: lots of first drafts at first and then writing the final drafts all in a row; and with Ends, first and then final draft of each chapter before I went on to the second. 30 became an enormous novel and is as good a work as I've ever done."

Good-ing and what-not...

So I had every intention of doing this essay thing, as well as all the finalizing of poetry stuff for the final showdown...but this house-sitting gig is taking up more of my time then I would have liked.

Ultimately I feel like the Gudding essay fails. I still feel like it reads more like a book report "this is what this person thinks and this is what that person thinks." Can't really disagree with the thesis that most of the poets from the 60's became more personal in their approach to poetry (with the exception perhaps of the Pacific Northwest Set...and even they pulled away some from nature and narrative). Also can't really disagree with the fact that a lot of poets have/do believe that there is some sort of "otherness" speaking through them.


However that has never been something that I have felt.

And while I do think that poetry continues to be personal, I also think that there has been a recent push towards skill, theory, and language. It's not enough to speak of your own experience. It must be interesting in terms of language and approach as well.

This is basically my thesis.
And my own personal approach in writing. I feel like we speak towards a common experience by speaking of personal experience. That as poets we must write in an interesting way in order to be successful, in order to have people want to read it, and to be able to feel the experience as concordant with their own.

I believe that often times we read poetry, and personal experience less because we want to see what other people's lives are like, than we actually want to see that their lives and experiences are like our own. That we are, in fact, not alone. That we are a part of something bigger than ourselves. (I mean this as my experience, and why I like to read poetry...and while I could never say for certain for other people, I still believe this is true for other people whether they recognize it or not).

I have written this without the aid of my notes so this may be general, and some of my assertions about Gudding's essay may be off. But it still expresses what I think.

That's all folks. Time to go run some stairs and punch a big red cushion.

Le Petit Good-ing

I finished Gudding's essay and found myself taking notes along the way. I figure, once I collect my thoughts and make sense of my opinions, I'll struggle through a "verbalizing" of said conclusions here.

First impression, however...a little incomplete...

Coolest websites ever.

How Stuff Works

National Geographic For Kids

new journals out

check out the new elimae w/ yours truly & a number of more talented writers. also check out the new coconut w/ the likes of lyn hejinian, noah eli gordon, joshua marie wilkinson, jennifer moxley, matt hart, robyn art, & a gaggle of other dyno-mite poets.

epic

too lazy to do anything else today, sad that work begins tomorrow, but cheered up by this epic. click on the epic link & watch for an exploding piano!

More on the Evergreen front

We're about halfway through the second issue of Wholphin; it features an unaired sitcom pilot directed by Bob Odenkirk in which the love (sex) interest is an Evergreen Graduate who didn't know the Holocaust had happened and is outraged by her garbled facts. The episode was funny, but, at the same time, it didn't feel so good when someone else was making fun of us. Wish I could say I learned my lesson, but. I probably didn't.

the vacation at its end, i relax

here are the books i bought while in NH:

Zukofsky's A (been thinking about buying it for a long time then came across it...)

Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury (to replace the copy stolen by my mother, hardback & still brilliant)

Steinbeck's Travels with Charley

& a little chapbook, seemingly self-published by Alex Crangle entitled Emotion is a Robotic Piano Playing the Twelve Tones of You. i found this little book at the Plymouth book exchange in a small college town for three dollars. i assume alex crangle is a student there. i like it alright. he, after all, writes such poems as: "An Epic Space Poem: Part 1 or; From Your Seat in the Dirigible, A Million Miles Up" and "Long Legged Anthropods Probably Crawl On Me In My Sleep" and "The Centipedes Are Getting Downright Arrogant". Here is an example of Crangle's skillz:

The Guardsman 40,000 Is

The Guardsman 40,000 is now
a bald tire in the dirt surrounded
by last year's brown leaves and the cracked
vacuum chambers of old street lights
now fallen, their filaments hanging out like
thin mercury tongues in a broken bed of glass
and dust. I have to be careful, my shoes
are somehwere in Vermont and the twine keeping
the paperback books on my feet is unwinding
quietly, cut by rocks and giant emerging pythons
of deep, established roots. The black-
market book merchant sells Thomas Mann and Jean
Genet from suspended trenchcoat wings, promoting
the modern thought I use to wander this new rhodo-
dendron forest. But I fear
these fraying thoughts
will only hold for so
long. I'll never

see the rubber
walls of this
prison.


anyways, in some of the poems there is a randomness that entrances me, tho also, sadly, at least for me, an admiration for bukowski...

just getting into Matt Hart's Who's Who Vivid & enjoying it. it is fun, easy going stuff, & heartfelt. i particularly like the first poem, the poem that appears in alice blue 1. a lot of it relies on the juxtaposition of images, as though the connecting lines have been cut free, & perhaps a little surrealism, but tamed.

still thinking about Jim Goar's Whole Milk, from Effing Press. I like it more & more.

evergreen alumni compilation 2006!

just recieved the alumni news letter & rather than the pleas for money i've come to expect, i found a compilation cd containing, perhaps, the best dance song ever recorded. track 7, coraxio's "consumer sex". it is also the most terrible dance song i've ever heard. it is brilliant. check your mailbox greener grads, before it's too late.

Schuyler, Beckman, & What to Expect When You're Expecting

Introduce Joshua Beckman with a Schuyler poem? Sure. Why not? Even more fortuitous since right before the reading I had been looking that Diary of James Schuyler (which looks quite interesting and I may go back for)...and his collected works. Oh James! How I love thee...

And Beckman read and we laughed at such wonderful lines as "Bad raccoon in a good world..." But I yawned a lot. And sat next to two books by authors "Staples," and "Starbuck" and felt like I might be watching a commercial for how to sell a poet.

And then I bought World Jelly and Whole Milk, and may go back for Plots...since it came so highly recommended. And the diary of James Schuyler. Hold off on his collected works (at the criminal price of 32 bucks) until I can afford to spend 32 bucks on one book...

Open Books was welcoming as always...but I find the audiences at these readings always a little disappointing. For some reason, 19 year old hipster kids with limp mohawks seems too easy.

Wish you were here.

sitting in phoenix airport

w/ many books in my bag, the stars of which are Mulligan Stew, Lunar Follies, & Who's Who Vivid (Matt Hart, the first poem of which appeared in alice blue one. nice to see the name in print as tho it were a real thing (& indeed it is a real thing). Lunar Follies, another Sorrentino book is pretty tight, very short fictional art reviews, calling to mind some of Millicent's art history stories tho more compact. Mulligan Stew continues to impress w/ lines such as this one: "The sky has a flawless blue, a faultless blue, that blue that has about it somewhere a touch yellow, or perhaps pristine white, a subtlety that seems mixed with the pale azure that makes it, perhaps, even paler." or this paragraph: "He fought against the tenderness that welled up in him. Can love exist here? Love? Ha! Ha! He spilled his drink, and thought, bitterly, I spill my life as I spill this drink. Fool! Yet he couldn't bring himself to walk over to her."

anyways, leaving soon. laters yo.

interesting stuff

write poems via the erasure method at wave books or visit bear parade & read matthew rohrer.

also, i found alice notley's disobedience at half price books in scottsdale. otherwise, their poetry was nothing to shake a stick at...

new poetry online!

a l i c e    b l u e   has trampled out into the middle of spring, & i'm sure this has distracted most readers of poetry & prose... but, if you have the wherewithall to keep reading, tarpaulin sky has dynamite new issue. & so does ACTION YES w/ new work from Catherine Wagner (some of those "everyone in the room is a representive of the world at large" poems she read at Open Books) & Zachary Schomburg (check out Scary, or No Scary) & for further reading, check out Typo 8 & the poem entitled Scary, No Scary.

nba playoffs

been watching the playoffs from a distance & w/o the sonics in, i've watched a little of the old footage on youtube, & in doing so, came across this funny shawn kemp dunk video. any guess as to what language the music is in...german? (this may only be funny to me).

alice blue three

stark & w/o bells at www.alicebluereview.org

this should have been the winter issue

sarah & i were talking

about poetry this morning and it brought up this entry from limetree (where, by the way, a somewhat interesting discussion about flarf continues [it started, I think on minor american] in regards to a poem that can be found here).

all of that aside, this earlier post comparing a Billy Collins lyric poem & Jennifer Moxley lyric poem is still quite interesting, & seeing the poems side by side, both using similar strategies etc... just curious what you fellow dimlabbers think of the analysis etc...

check out this lesbian poem generator!

Fans of Cort Day...

Joshua Corey says check out Geoffrey Nutter, and then talks about some other stuff.

check this out

Gilbert Sorrentino 1927-2006

a little here

&

here

...

box to private     my armed instant
pushed sabotage wound     acquires braggarts
buttresses gigantic turrets
oh great     w/o the pair i
protect trailer blue
exempt behind ballads &
wired killing jelly     i adapt!
w/ sheep that inflate empty lands
despot animals & charisma
the decided alarms of eyes
my cough capture factory reopens
& men that never shake
remain unseen     the war vigorous
w/ boorish death     spitfire
events we simulate     the record
in my kill-drink-tunnel
grass & platings     neglect & shepherds
airplanes attacking tundra
dissimulated canaries     my
yellow satellite
& an army of well-dressed galas
on zero summer cruise
generate wars & sea recovery
for considered men who restrict
positronic boy repair or
scandal     my voice that drags     screens
w/ intrusive benevolent red
we prefer regulation
for my iridium rope opera
& men who peel risks     hands
the school vampire paradigm
don't disembark     my behavior is
a skull wire intern
w/o lamentation     one random pledge
removed     my circumspect malady

hmm...

sarah & i wrote the following poem sometime ago. the idea was that we could only use words with the vowel "a" or the vowel "e". no word could use both, & extra points were given to high quantities of words w/ two or more "e"s or "a"s, such as "adamant," "peerless," or "veneers." this, of course, is not nearly as restrictive as anything millicent would write but...it was a fun exercise.

Bereft bank teller, my blatant armada
that preempts chaps & braggarts &
halts tall, peerless & pell-mell. Eschew
these exempt ballads, vagrant laggards,
heedless canards that span the spartan
phalanx. Adapt! sheep that swell vacant
lands & canvass adamant sleepers, eye
alarms, & men that never see war. Stal-
wart heresy cheers these events. We
cheer grass & dented veneers. Slapdash
ramparts & reddened shepherds. Carnal
reverends & secret vassals. Pretend egret
& canary. Scan level fresh and well-
dressed—demented army between thwart
& gala. Engender effete wars & esteemed
men. Repress scandal, my drawl, canvas
sheets. We prefer men of settlement. Men
that carry green bananas & sandals. Men
that peel hazards & hands when they land
garb temples. The fracas settles banal
regret. A ballast, haphazard, repelled,
seedy warrant, my malady a leery vertex.



i just finished reading "Lyric Poetry After Auschwitz" by Kent Johnson, "Red Juice" by Hoa Nguyen (amber i'll be sending you a copy), & "World Jelly" by Tony Tost, all from Effing Press. all enjoyable reads.

i also just finished "Letters to Wendy's" by Joe Wenderoth (this i took on my secret manager trip to seattle & read on the airplane). also a terrific book, analyzing human life, as it does, in all its joys & traumas, in relation to fast food & pornography, but in a good way...

laters

R.I.P. Maren Katelena de Vries May 6th, 2006

she jumped from the
Aurora Bridge
to end her suffering because
she could not except failure in herself
I have not seen her in years
Elementary School was so long ago
she was one of my best friends then
it hurts me now as if she was still my best friend.
It's over for her now,
but memories of her will still live on.
I will always remember.

About a Friend

About A Friend

She throws herself back into her past
Her bruises show that people don't change,
Her head is bruised from the stairs

Her daddy killed her baby

Her period, a month late
He kicked her stomach to the point
of an unexpected period: heavy and disturbing, bleeding,

Her daddy killed her baby

She fought back - she made him bleed
but her body is still bruised
Her emotions are still broken

Her daddy killed her baby

Why did she go back?
How could her foster parents let her?
She has no answers

Her daddy killed her baby

He used to rape her everyday
until she was 15
Yet she went back

Her daddy killed her baby
Her daddy killed her baby
Her daddy killed her baby

lyric spaceship or "human drones follow each other in a stiff motion" for biz

& i become myself
i bring the laughter
the average natal pod of unknown methods
in the company of people who change the research
& share like occasional motels
or starships that earn great returns of squares
& break the ball of unperfect chaos
the model     radically reduced
by belltowers or bumblebees of human misery
that bring closer a population of dye
my starship of tact of coast
starship that lobs belltowers
of satisfied burdens     my starship     now legal
w/ perceptible dad costume
when donned does not function
only negotiates for square operations
& swims the worlds you carry w/ meow
or town table of tragedy do
i of the prose pawn
of the yawl of the knack ploy
the hayrack natal of toys
of the halo crate
of the of i
of the prototype of simple ones
of the toy of the lull of the ploy of already
of the sofa of the unperfect
of stiff people of movement of human hating
which cuts it
you do not laugh or square
& the bumblebees realize
& relocate again
their pictures of tiles arranged
so i cut her song charms
in the enterprise of it
to become the pursuit
& station-wagons or starships have my unperfect ball
not technicolor or square     not me

random poem

Mirrored tile images arrange and
disarranged in fashions unknown,
Society becomes the target - the mimicked fortune.
Tiles twist & break to form an unperfect sphere-
marbled pattern chaos that satisfies as a community.
Human drones follow each other in a stiff motion.
In order to feel accepted they have disowned individuality.
They've traded themselves for copy-cat picture perfection.
People realize and yet the drones march on.

when you have too much time on your hands

listen to the transgressive poet. a few laughs guaranteed.

stapler and balmy

the morning done

I am a broken spring
and out of staples

consider the handicap

or the missing hour

a lack of bundling occurs

lapse in connection

the sun turning off
for a cumulous disaster

Silence (www.dayofsilence.org)

No words can escape... the only noise is laughter or sighs
and conversations in my head
Who knew the mind had so much to say that it never ends because the words aren't outloud
and the computer hums
and the sound of fingers tapping echo in the room
because no voice escapes
nothing.
afterall,
silence is loud.

arizona is a new kind of hell

but we are here, after many a misadventure concerning faulty trailers, crazed truckers w/ pancreatitus, & various & sundry travellers w/ u-haul horror stories.

we are at peter piper pizza eating pizza & watching the cavs demolish the wizards. this is the only place nearby w/ internet access.

it is ninety five degrees. there are palm trees & cacti. every third car is a hummer.

laters,

will & sarah

hmmm...

Raveled mockery in forms of confusion -
the silence is in disaray
cause still the forfront, still neccessary
even if only one is willing

"Las Meninas" & Donald Rumsfeld

a post about "Las Meninas" that you might find halfway interesting is here. I only mention it because of Millicent's story in alice blue.

Also, the recent poetry of Donald Rumsfeld here & here.

should we force others to join this thing

been thinking about asking other people to post poetry related stuff every now & then. justin burnside? carl? other people we like? i don't know...what do you'll think...

What the Letter "Q" Equals

the point of the universe exists
in this algebraic equation

I mean: the "q" doesn't matter

its all starlight like
punctured construction paper

anyway,

punctured is what going away
feels like

try it
do you see what I mean?

there is an exact mathematical equation
for the way that I'm feeling

though it will not be simple or beautiful yet
it is something perfect and true

read the new

elimae. lot's of great stuff from greg mulcahy, james lewelling, joshua marie wilkinson, ellen kennedy, & others.

I've lost my mind

We plead insanity of the dissociating crimes
The man with the wooden leg cringes at our existence
but, only dirty dishes clog the sink
and the peanut butter cracker crunch grows old
of their slander and libel
creaking doorhindge hangs over the silence
translucent symbols delicately carved into the wooden box
and the yogurt dances
Judges of the inferior tickle the pencils & attempt to address the issue at hand
of the women who was unconciously aware

Pom2 6 is available

here, featuring yours truly & some real poets...

...

"Forget the girl! Get the seal!"

i learned two new words & other stuff

detournement & parataxis (the first came from this blog entry, the second from a game of hangman w/ sarah while waiting for our delayed flight in phoenix yesterday)


also, my sister wrote the following poem on her blog:

the weird


The OPT of the thought of Shi was joke to the led chare,
which is blue, paving stone
which cries the timid emotion of the summer
thy out of afflictions of the good of the refuse of Thy of the ewes
fell the piled up ewes
Shi from the welkin from the end from traction from the ballot box
from the oats that the unequal nut of the chi points out?
There the forest of the sun of the hire of the dye was stopped the
banquet which the ascending stags tail and sees hello reversed the
acclamation of the joke and the fabrics of the OPT
of the thought of Joyce Shi of the led grape,
blue of the stags hello, fitted hundredth of Shi recalls dittoes thy
loose the hulas,

the misusages scrabbled in the sharpies,

thy Gitano Shi cries too well the oats
Your of the framework of the ewes of
Ebola dissimulated with the cheerio of the led, blue west of the joke
and,
fitted


what i think: this is brilliant & reads like a disjointed children's story, particularly the repititions of "of the" which connect numerous disparate images. for example: "There the forest of the sun of the hire of the dye was stopped" or "thy out of afflictions of the good of the refuse of Thy of the ewes". & so, as i read, i detect a subtle flow of emotion beneath the language while enjoying the surprise of new word combinations. who wouldn't smile at "the framework of the ewes" or "Ebola dissimulated with the cheerio" or " the misusages scrabbled in the sharpies" or "sees hello reversed" or "loose the hulas" or "which cries the timid emotion of the summer". i have the feeling of reading another language, teetering on the point of meaning, but, w/ all overt meaning removed, only possibility remains. i'm reminded of reading Tender Buttons & the loops, both in rhythmic sound & in the language itself as words are imbued with a sort of "negative capability" (i may be using this term incorrectly). but here, in "the wierd", i read more possibility in words than i generally do, as their ability to mean is stretched.

i just reread that & it sounds like bs but that's how i feel

Should I call you Dr. Marvin? (a What about Bob? found poem)

It's a beautiful family.



The simplist way to put it. I have problems.

Talk about moving.
Talk about wierd.

Fingernail sensitivity.


What if my heart stops beating?

Are you married?

Those who like Neil Diamond and those who don't.

Baby step around the office. That's a month.


I'll be back.

conversation of the undiscovered apartment*

It was like a wisp and a morning and a glass of wine. As if there could have been. More than. Over this. See. The linoleum isn't yellow and I can tell. Other people have lived here. But the lamp gives a yellow glow and we need the lamp more than we need the dust bunnies or the neighbors. Though we don't live in this kitchen anymore. It was the blender that got in the way. And the toaster oven wasn't nearly the efficient heater they said it would be. And either way, it's imaginary and my bed is floating and the lake and I'm still cold.



* copied from our submission from Viola Lee

a new thingy

You cupped my breast and turned away


I like bow ties and bicycles

it was never so much about cobblestone

if you really loved me, you'd pick up that penny

el mar, thalassa, sea

you see the blue wall

we are kept from our deepest thoughts
by each other

when I wake up I want to dream of you

when I wake up I want to go snorkeling
you'll play dress up

this is our luckless organ
made of alleyways

Going Away Fiesta

I'm saying the party will be Friday, April 14th...start at 6pm? I'll make dinner and then maybe we can shanty it up? Maybe a last game of scrabble?

I also say that we try to hit the Joshua Maria Wilkinson reading at Open Books the night before. 7:30pm. Let me know.

against national poetry month

what bernstein says...

fabula poetics?

in this essay.

poem using needlessly complicated process

thru smut
you punk blanch
you bleaching punter
you have the sea
the coiled bus you then mast
the sham huntings of harp of flight
of bestemming yon lingam
the ear toneless
that strikes nervously thru
he’s your weak fiat
has sierras
bed hens
that the toe kennels keck
without the objectified
levitate
the estuary of her male handholds
the follow-up dog of hunting villains
& suture from outside
from cahoots from cunning
under oath it falls up
sows cold & ugly fingers
& without the leaves diapered
or crimpled
enfeebles that crummy arch
from her debugged moats
handholds thicken the entity
that then thread your undermine

*a note on process: i generally used the process discussed here (after the poem) with some minor changes. i collaged a little w/ my pre- & post-translated text when i felt word choice benefitted & i translated the original text through two cycles using french, dutch, & portugese, going back to english twice. i removed all linebreaks before translation then added line breaks to the final text as i saw fit. the poem i started with was something i wrote in highschool called saturday afternoon, the text of which is:

saturday afternoon

they sat on a park bench
cooled by a thin mist
she ran her hands through her hair
nervously stroking her wool coat
he stared at his feet
aimlessly kicking red-gold leaves
back and forth
he took her hand
and stared off at passing cars
her hand felt cold and clammy
her fingers thin and lifeless
like crumpled leaves.

the sprinkles
began to thicken into a drizzle
the sun invisible
behind a thick band of gray clouds

new favorite mp3's at PENNsound

christian bok's motorized razors

john cage's lecture on nothing as read by jerome rothenberg

also, for millicent, check out this 2002 word palindrome story

a dozen poems

Your breast looks nothing like that light fixture.

The leaves in the wind etc… Don’t pee backwards.

That robot has the spinning disease.

Hang your stapler from that tree as an example to the others.

Our toaster could take us to planet x.

Buy more things. It’s my job.

Diet soda is for liars.

I want to explode a stuffed squirrel.

Our clothing is made of strings.

I could eat 5000 cows, & not be sated.

We could dance on a gerbil.

Your bird is a slut.

Will's Poetry Assignment

Okay Will. Here's my damned assignment.


All’s left     in leaves-
aligned.    An alumnus     lull-like contract,
annulled on signing.  Contrasts
annealed by long-term repetition,
axioms both loaned    and stale.   We

made vast plans,
anxious strategies contingent on nothing
in pens, in piles, in variables, in
imitation of our own loaming;     gasps,
of curls, of camels,      a delicate
vanishing.

- S. Burgess

good readings

at Open Books

Sunday 3/26, 3:30 pm, Rae Armantrout
Thursday 4/13, 7:30 pm, Joshua Marie Wilkinson
Thurday 4/20, 7:30 pm, Joshua Clover

we should all go to some of these...

thoughts on fiction

here

And Then the Guy Said He Had Only One Left Arm

It was boar head
for dinner & mushy lickin' good.
That's why he slurred so bad in
his parking lot pamphlet gibberish.

"Give it to me like a one minute photo booth."

"This isn't no five finger discount."
"How cum," you said.

"The legs won't open properly."
"That's what the jack is for."

"I only have one left arm."

But it didn't matter & he waved
mechanically anyway.



*dedicated to all those who know my work best. just 'cause you wouldn't expect anything less.

i think this is kind of funny:

the ancient league

and also this:

strindberg and helium

pretty cool

so you ended up pretty cool.
upholding what bent me most
& a deadly habit. just mouth-
wash & annihilation you said.
promise me more holes & be-
moan our yellow grievance.
oppress w/ a few powerful fam-
ilies whose children flag docu-
ments to the oligarchy. while
love codes software simulators
before circling & recircling. fin-
ally overwhelmed w/ ciphers.
the pollination will love me
more than you ever did & even
after the encrypted landscapes
flower & you toss off love e-
mails to alaska, our forest of
asphalt, i will vacuum the hall-
way until our shed creeps lowly.

silliman likes narrative poetry!

Silliman explores the joy of narrative. A must read for S (his march 2nd post). Also, for the poet he discusses, read this.

Fifty-seven MFA students cry out, "I don't know what to like anymore!"

nucleus poem

what delight does
yr nucleus thrash
do yr laborers seize
slaughter & waste
as remedy for indo-
lence & zeal I mere-
ly speculate if you
identify suicide as
therapy for dullness
& absurdity what
sense does yr petri-
fied revelation furn-
ish to the traffic a-
round you the bud-
ding vegetation the
inching flowers the
fleeting birds the
diminishing grasses
the muttering poor
the sporadic droplets
laden with awkward
stillness yr bias fixes
with puzzling enig-
mas & proficiencies
no one will ever ident-
ify your beliefs be-
cause you advocate
tongues & philosophy

HELMETS, for Sarah

helmets to protect my investments
extra padding, your traffic cone, a tank kit
love & the inevitable
martian memos for mom
entertainers at the metropolis & all
the thematic cheese-
shaped huzzahs that trample bundles of cash

another poem (let me know what you think)

While the west whisks by, blurred and blushing,
we wait for what we can’t manufacture, the
moon, the tides,
norepinephrine, the watch.

Nobody worries over pie-tins and
porch-lights, broken keels, struggles with helmets;

we press greasy faces to flowing glass,
gasping like rheumatic fevers “why
no sparrow,     mother?
why still mistake?”

ae poem

leap vessel!
enthrall my effervescent challenge
the majesty!
& search drapes & deserts
abstract letters that swell by hand
& center the ashen artery
death!
a well-dressed parable
each day
drags & keels
as the sea flashes
masked desks & parallel spreadsheets
databases that eat spleen!
& skewer tea
then
present separate beers each week
at relevant staff meetings

love

love is a complicated multi-turret system
w/ many primary sensor suites &
target acquisition systems or
target designation systems
really w/ four subsystems &
laser rangefinders / spot trackers / target designators
it resembles a barrel set on its side
colloquially referred to as the "Super Bug"
& sometimes the "Rhino"
(for its prodigious nose)
but love vacations in
Cordova, Spain—the Andalusian Caliphate
love tells schoolchildren about the Wright Brothers & Ibn Firnas
“we thought he was certainly mad & feared for his life”
considerably, as if a bird
& love lounges at the mall w/ many stylish teenagers
& space traveling advertisers while
love codes software simulators
& assigns missions to Canada
for microbrews, erotic dancing, & biplanes
love throttles through turbulence
to de-cloud the systematic undressing of open
air malls in Kansas
love loves love
but lamination can only save the faithful
while love labors internationally
& abandoned now w/ computer princesses,
jet planes, & tax burdens,
what mule will displace love’s tawny gap?
while hiding in the Ozarks
will love know the cloak & dagger maneuvers?
the clandestine accounts of silly torpedoes?
& isolated in the stratosphere w/ threescore enemies
or doppler radar tracking each feint & shimmy
will love puddle again?
as we investigate these precise robots

read this poem:

My Software Mission, by Maged Zaher

skiff poem

you have a skiff. you, skiff. that’s a verdict of history. you have a skiff. it’s not your skiff, you have. just two short centuries. not my skiff, anymore. any. living standards to undreamed heights. let’s talk about pre-capitalist skiffs. let’s talk about. a skiff about to talk about political yolk. skiff of feudal eggs. skiff no longer wracked by famine & recurrent plague. skiff of unspeakable poverty. not another skiff. not another. you have my skiff. dear. not another. you have my skiff dear. can do no more. not my skiff. can do no. you have it, dear. not my skiff. let’s talk about market price, dear. you, skiff of mine. tell me, skiff. you, skiff of mine.

read this:

Joyelle McSweeney review of Drew Gardner's Petroleum Hat.

poem e

a trip to stolid pond. astronomy. no one’s afraid of bird flu. i laugh a last flurry. his hut still waits on tourists who think “this” is invasion. i scan & nothing can harm a man who shrugs as winds adapt. i shoot a million photos of night sky as ticking broadcasts alarm. i join a rush of owls & a million washouts amass. that's a lot of ammunition, I say as i stoop into my plot. i study this small shack, doubt our bombing provisions. an odd arrow spouts crimson & calls a tornado to dismay this data of brutal augur. looming storm, you scowl at my invalid faith. i point to a shotgun & a proviso of stylish indians across the river. i build it all, halt as i solicit an icon for our only portico. i panic our marquis who will unbind us of this task & pit us against imps in a cock fight. a swift spoil chops, possibly, or a firing row prolonging. i log how my pallid skin harks again. you study in calm activity, of tourists crying about lost wood, bowls that swap a glossy pond & job formation. an arbitrary dig will bully doctors & boots. our skirmish haunts bits of old spartan custom. i ask who’ll join my backyard tonight, as I dig tombs for ribs that fail to contract as airbags contract on highways. who can bury our trio and sing hymns to vacant lodgings in solitary oklahoma? i can curry and distract. i can pass on & sow profits. i can.

read this:

Jessica Clark bloggin at In These Times

robot poem

Attention:

You diet robots, you robots in food systems, you robots who detect anti-personnel land mines in Tokyo, you robots of hazard & judgment.

Attention:

Robots that ‘live’ on the bottom of the ocean, robots that hit birds hit by climate, motion / position / status robots, diet / nutrition / consumption robots.”

Attention:

Senate robot wars & those gearing up for robot wars.

O port of the war on terrorism, department’s broad agency, purchaser of designer brief-cases & LEGO robot kits.

Can scientists help win the war against bio-invasion?

Attention:

Diet war robots who make automatons who make gripper robots & hands for robots.

Where are the personal robots? the zero gravity boots?

O robots, you diets & wars, you robot colonies on the moon who manipulate and control robots in this time of war, you ragtag group of misfit robots, you simple story of a boy & his robot dog battling evil.

Attention:

You robot theological society who wrote about robots & commander robot’s capture.

You mission robot leaders discovering deadly enemies—enemies who seek to change robot goal structures.

& you mobile autonomous robot software, engineer of human / robot interactions, creator of synergistic cyber-forces.

Attention:

Robot destruction is at hand.

With weapons of precise destruction.

With pioneer pilot robots.

You, developer of robot vehicles, & LEGOnauts, will cease.

Intentional self-destruction is illegal in the robot destruction derby.

Robot, robot.

You treasonous bunny.

“They separated it using a knife or a sword and each took one piece and cherished it.”

product development says, “great success.” red & yellow signs. bunny rabbits. child-hordes. a feel-good story w/ marketers hand-in-hand, their cherub cheeks puffed azure, a sky like sky like commercial, & so many children w/ wristwatch calculators figuring sales tax & chore burdens—such talents taught lovingly in elementary school. O love, i need you & your spiral catalog. i need your dewdrop eyes pulling tears from my pores. i need your orange fleece vest & its dewy warmth to hold me through this wintry quarter.

everyone should read

this: lime tree & this: vert

“the empty parking spot will bring sadness to everyone”

& suburban teenagers will take all the fashionable poetry to the supermarket in black jeeps & w/ their parents’ watches, they will revolutionize disaffection. i am only commercialized as i appropriate ethical t-shirts & support our burgeoning economy. so many newspapers & the closest thing to war is independent music. i’m independent. i’m no corporate pawn. i balloon at your insinuation. protest is better than the prom & i have fifteen kittens, one for each country i will visit after graduation. i will wrap them as gifts but not cruelly & w/ such fine hair it is no wonder i can’t strangle even myself w/out some caustic remark. O marginal people. don’t forget to be grateful for everything you know.