Elective Affinities

Trisha Low

2012-01-30T18:05:00.000-04:00

Trisha Low is theauthor of Confessions [of a variety]and Target Is Bustling And Friendly withTyler Antoine (both from Gauss PDF [www.gauss-pdf.com]). Her work has appeared,or is forthcoming from AgainstExpression: An Anthology of Conceptual Writing, Artifice magazine, amongst others. She co-curates, with friends,the Segue Reading Series in New York City.

Poetics

Understanding the differencebetween restraint and restraints, and I’m talking about poetry, okay? // 4REAL.

Affinities

Diana S. Hamilton, Cecilia K.Corrigan, Kristen Gallagher, Astrid Lorange, Holly Melgard, SteveZultanski, Josef Kaplan, Kim Rosenfield, Kathy Acker.

Poem by Trisha Low

In Confidence.

Tell your trouble to ‘Old Soloman’! He can help you! Hello. I’m sending you anenvelope -enclosed are my feelings about not feeling feelings, in which yourdaughters will find all sorts of charming novelties. Effectively, this rosedesign creates a repulsive little scab in a pattern for a lace and cornerafternoon teacloth, allowing you to complete your authentically dainty rose setin just four weeks!

UseCrochet Cotton No. 30 and an Evelyne crochet hook in six and a half, name allthe colors that you can see and try not to think about anything important or atall except I keep forgetting and then thinking about myself. Effective designfor rose teacloth: Commence with a 94 chain stitch – this is a newflow-exchange between woman man and horse, you want it long enough to coveryour face, since that skin is young and it probably won’t stop bleeding.

1^st row: Treble crochet sleeping alone into 5 chainstitches, detaching being disgusting on the inside from outside needle hookforming 2 spaces for you to blow your affective sensory load at the end of eachpage

2^nd row: Treble crochet 2 nice boys into smug selflacelets turning keeping secrets into getting so jealous you want to tearsomeone’s throat out with your bare teeth (Note: Always turn with 3 chainstitches when not otherwise stated, since he was the still point of the movingworld and you never got over it, never)

3^rdrow: Start with 3 treble crochets from your bulletproof heart creating 1space, then turn 9 chain stitches to backloop this list of home truths. Nowslip 2 lacelets from a feral blog ring to deleting all pictures of yourself,turning 2 chain stitches into 1 space to fuck me gently with a chainsaw.

4^th row: Repeat 6 treble crochets on 9 photograph dreams, turn 5 slip stitchesinto doubling your cigarette consumption to 6 treble crochets on chain stitchesfor staying in your room and sighing dizzy long sighs of dizzied longing. From6 treble stitches yarn over 4 slip stitches between I like you I love you I’llkill you - the # 1 temporarilylife changing book into two lacelets to mark the grave.

5^th row: Singing songs that make you slit yourwrists run 3 treble crochets in breaking your mirror into 2 lacelets of hackingyour limbs off and mailing them to everyone you know, then loop 1 space round I’mdying, won’t you send for me darling turning 3 treble crochets to calling everyporn agency on the planet. Stitch a space quote 4 real quote into 9 chainstitches of being a drunken mess everybody warms to.

Thiscompetes one pattern of lace when you’ve killed off enough of yourself-consciousness, so repeat from 1^st row for length required. Toturn the corner and run away like it was yesterday work rows 1 to 5 (bothinclusive) as usual so just tell the truth and god will save you.

Now turn with 9 chain stitchesand start working down side.

1^st row down side: Now continue working at 15^th row of lace patterns.Start with 9 treble crochets into 4 bars of you’re the only hope for me, thenturn 5 chain stitches through back loop into life in the margins and the gutterand the kitchen aisle. Take 1 space into 3 treble crochets yarning over yourcomfort zone otherwise known as the no-eyebrow goth gang.

2^nd row down side: Turn 5 chain stitches of blues and hymns and tormented essaysabout capital warping creative life to front loop 6 spaces of no money but lotsof RealDoll love to give, hooking 3 lacelets between withdrawal and 6 scar barsof continually stalking other people with daddy issues. If you won’t stopbathing yourself in hydrochloric acid or whatever, run 9 treble crochets tobackloop 7 spaces of has this ever worked for you before turning 9 chainstitches to place marker how I just wanna look rapeable.

3^rd row down side: 12 treble crochets to 4 spaces displaying all of my hospitalbracelets to deposit 6 chain stitches of getting ravaged by wolves which isjust fucking slutty right? Turn 5 chain stitches to front loop round it’s okay,everything will be okay to 4 lacelets that remind you ideal weight 0 poundsbefore you finish with 1 space of I’m little Miss Mary fucking Sunshine.

4^throw down side: taking 7 lacelets turn 4 chain stitches into kissing 4people and punching about 400, yarning over 5 treble stitches to 2 spaces ofturning boy-crazy, girl-panic and 3 bars of writing it all over your arms. Run 6 chain stitches to 3 treble crochetsending the row by place marking being just a supernatural girl lookin’ forsomething creepy in average America.

5^th row down side: Bind 3 lacelets of telling your family this place is a prisonand these people aren’t your friends to turn 4 chain stitches into beingoverrun with pictures of cute cats. Between touch me and don’t touch me run 1space to 3 treble crochets, yarning over you are special and I will love youforever. Now turn 4 chain stitches into remembering no one will ever feel badfor you to finally front loop 1 space of does any one have a fucking spare gun.

Find trimming to band you, layingit over the edge and slipstitch in position along the top and lower edges. Menshould be able to do this with a single articulation. Another pattern of thisdainty rose set next week! Instructions for making up a charming rose designtea cosy can be obtained by a means of a coupon.

Geoffrey Olsen

2012-01-15T21:04:00.006-04:00

Geoffrey Olsen lives in Greenpoint,Brooklyn and works at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Artin the East Village. He is the author of the chapbooks Not of Distends *Address Panicked (Minutes Books, 2011) and End Notebook (Petrichord Books; 2008).

Poetics

Trying to get a movingsense attentive to finding between---preparing to get out of sameness, sowanting a poem’s motile, burgeoning present. Hitting sound at syntax and tryingfor the messy contiguous porous presences/ listening for quiet formed of noise,in that social. Searching for the world of other beings amid this State whichgenerates so much of the oppressive political/ bodily pain of now.

Affinities

Brenda Iijima, Sueyeun Juliette Lee, JamieTownsend, Nicholas DeBoer, E. Tracy Grinnell, Filip Marinovich, Tim Trace Peterson,Lewis Freedman, Leslie Scalapino

Poems byGeoffrey Olsen

ONE SEPARATEDPLACE IN CONCRETE SPACES GIVING PUBLIC A PUBLIC TIME TOO

undergo I think Iam veering

One takes theirhands and moves them like the hands were sublime. The animal is not a source ofunconditional love.

There was a dancethat was going to start. Positioned, that person, responding with ferocity to astate of felt constant calamity.

It was that wewere only a resource.

The dance was inresponse to the closed spaces. Is it our anger to start with this?

Where do we walkto?

um so letting onethrough again. If you are an agent do you look like one?

Do you━in thequiet━feel stretched? Stretched against your better alert specter? It looks toyou for where to go.

Looking over thehock’s connective tissue, positioning you in the causal wound. This crowded place with substantialanger. The building is across the street. Do we foment our anger with thisbuilding? Does it foment it in us? ferment?

Taking the toolsthat are making them attentive.

some humanposition: this attempts to reach an influential synthesis with the circlingplant beings.

receiving signals now

thenthe current turn against which was surprising

B there, long lawns,sweating. It’s sun. Moist skin pressed against.

headwatersflush to the bank and even over it, into the grass.

B who holdsstowed attention.

B: I thinkheightened. Where leaving that to the truck caught in lighting,
transport. Somefantasy of the only remaining transport. To get to the border.

Ada:working by day though it is not enough for their rent. Part of a place.

wisp theirdominant presence.

blackened coreoutside, scorched field as part

againstagriculture

human presenceshifts into that

rejects morehuman distribution

valuing thatmaterial for it’s

not beingmaterial at all

anymore

splits between persons

figuring community is a partial

moment we streeted

densityscopes merit

catching from us a case of

fearso

that’show we feel

communeseeking out that makes

onlyfrom action

concretesquaring

NO NOT ANYTHING

Ada: i’m learningto say it

B: learningdirect? gardening?

Ada: it’s harmfulin the holistic grabbing forward

B: that swimming,division of mazed roads and the house,

Ada: notreductive to growing up there

B: in that partlythe sun, feral, passed over and away

Ada: regardingthat, it’s not like that it’s not rentable, quiet, turning over

B: you’ve giventhat up. some human thing. hurt Ada.

standing as toprovoke reveries, common

to us in spacereceptive

so vital shared

or we could waitit out. they still call the colonies. reminding we are collective and some ofthem, there fighting to have the shared space, the new possibilities forcommunity formation, gathering dew from their projects. now these planets werelifeless but the planet was not lifeless it was an entity.

the role is towait out here till they align

it’saligning

theunit given over I think in

tandem

that’s the problem, neighbor

flailinglightward

somethingin breath

sensingthe sonic contours of this cavity

thisvaccination and this extinct specimen,

thehumans laid out on concave and inner.

thearms are out at the sides with palms facing up

howto flourish

anabolic?

notjust freed of suffering metabolizing so that

the dark is no more prefigured

no it’s not death register

speedy register

over that time

specimen,who hove off shore?

lucidsample tempest

storming their space---ocean drifting over it

culling and de-limbing,

removing the fins from the sharks so they drown

Iam not that like you or unlike you

thesun that’s notion

ofbeing like tied to the

illuminatingloneliness

causemade and disembodied in the illumined responding

tosome leaves

mixingor the body of

reconfiguringpale male politician entity

protection isinaccessible figures

as accessfor violence, the system anti-immanence blackwater

beachwater, firing onthe bodies to protect & marked as such

spiteso this person acted only domesticated

and this one feral,

arbitrating theirdemocratic presence

mining

the animal andthe unemployed is not a source ofunconditional love

comingout of the ravine,

functionalundifferentiated all mood

&was luring, though the scolded,

itwas a way of not being presented

orrobot but

tobe warm

mired

Elizabeth Robinson

2012-01-02T00:10:00.001-04:00

Elizabeth Robinson’s most recentbooks of poetry are Also Known As(Apogee Press), The Orphan & itsRelations (Fence Books), and ThreeNovels (Omnidawn). WithColleen Lookingbill, she co-edits EtherDome Chapbooks, a small press thatpublishes chapbooks by previously unpublished women writers. She also co-editsInstance Press with Beth Anderson and Laura Sims. Robinson holds a Master of Divinity and an MA inethics from Pacific School of Religion, and an MA in writing from Brown University. In the Spring of 2012, she will be theHugo Fellow at the University of Montana, Missoula.

Poetics

I think of poetry as a medium for exploration, as study andsearch, and its greatest virtue lies in the way it expresses (or opens to)curiosity. But also poetry engages with passion and commitment to its ownrisky project. I don’t think that the act of writing guarantees usanything, but it has so far been the most continuously engrossing process of mylife. Poetry is, for me, spiritually heuristic as well—playing at thepoles of presence and absence, the embodied and the abstract, through faith anddoubt. Poetry is how I make home and community, so it is related, deeply,to intimacy.

Affinities

Too many to name properly! I have had a rich life in poetry communityand friendship (so I’ll go regionally). Kimberly Lyons, David Abel, Mitch Highfill, Robert Kelly, StacySzymaszek, Larry Fagin, Laura Sims, James Belflower, Sara Nolan, Craig Watson,Keith and Rosmarie Waldrop, Cole Swensen, Fanny Howe, Elizabeth Savage, BrianTeare, Michelle Taransky, JenMarie Davis, Travis Macdonald, Eric Lorberer andKelly Everding, Rachel Moritz, Juliet Patterson, G.E. Patterson, Marie Larson,Karl Gartung, Caryl Pagel, Sasha Steensen, Travis Cebula, Jenn Aglio, JenniferPhelps, Jack Collom, Anselm Hollo, Charles Alexander, Jane Sprague, SarahSuzor, Rae Armantrout, Susanne Dyckman, George Albon, Rusty Morrison, ColleenLookingbill, Beth Anderson, Avery Burns, Patricia Dienstfrey, Carol Snow, LauraMoriarty, Norma Cole, C. S. Giscombe, Jaime Robles, Todd Melicker, TiffDressen, Linda Norton, Andrew Joron, Maxine Chernoff, Gillian Conoley, PaulHoover, Beverly Dahlen, Rebecca Brown, Leonard Schwartz and ZhangEr, Lissa Wolsak, Matthew Henrikson, Devin Johnston. An insufficient list.

Poemsby Elizabeth Robinson

Night

They are or were

a brigade of hobgoblins, crooks,

paupers

who followed.

And who fed them.

And why

were their spoons

chained to the table, their

bowls ground into

the ruts of the table's surface.

I heard a story once about a man whose arm

caught in the gears of a machine. It was winter

in the north; he was in immediate danger of

freezing. So he hacked his own arm off and

escaped with his life.

Not they, the beggars, those spooks–

but an alternative, the thing embedded

in, storylike:

And on page___, it relates

how their benefactor

broke down and wept each year

on the anniversary of his narrative.

OnAdvent

Rough draft.

Infernal orientation of

the body to the Real

Body. Yes, this

way the length of

a stride is a color:

cobalt, not cobalt, cobalt, not

Draft.

To prepare.

Blood red, brown, blood red, brown

To draw from.

To draw out. A pace.

To be drawn to.

Ready the outline

on its spirit, dark

green

and light, the Real

Form of one body, god sleeping,

walking inside another.

The New Vocation

The body collectsaphorisms, as though it were a jar.

That is the world,secured so, and palely organized

according to mysteriousfunction.

I step forward from thesystem to confess

that I no longer wantto whiten

the mystery. I had once carried

a knife to cut awayarmloads of list,

wind blowing. But no more this obscurity.

Thebody was once fair and loved its excess,

a beauty ofretrieval. But in so saying, ithas

left itself behind, wan,

and partial. The speck called

real shrinks inproportion to the truth

said on it. And a willowy body can apportion

its grace to curve evenaround so small

a thing as this. Benediction or chastisement.

Thatis, function and vocation fight,

physically: I lickmyself. I apply tongue

to disappearance. Work and works.

Who was it thatmentioned the knife. The sharp

pale paint that thetongue distributes.

Function cuts away thewind, and therefore:

resurrection. And did you know the body

was dead? The real, surrounded by its works,

refers back to theclear container. This term, body,

bleached with overuse,but endlessly flexible

claims its vocation isaffect. Stored here,

riddleis cheek by jowl with question.

I recruit myself as transparent. The real

and its systems foreverabating. The mystery

arouses the blade toits calling.

Dale Smith

2011-12-26T00:00:00.005-04:00

DaleSmith is a writer now living in Toronto, Ontario. He spentmost of his life in Texas, with brief jaunts to the Middle East, the PacificNorthwest, and Northern California. Currently he teaches rhetoric and poeticsat Ryerson University. He is the author four books of poetry and prose,published by boutique presses. His poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in Best American Poetry, Bookforum, ChicagoReview, The Colorado Review, Jacket, and elsewhere. Poets Beyond the Barricade: Rhetoric, Citizenship, andDissent after 1960 (University of Alabama Press 2012) wasrecently published. His creative and scholarly work examines the intersectionsof personal and public tensions in the ongoing negotiations and clarificationsof contemporary life.

Poetics

To do what is fun. To not be bored. To look and see through writing. To writewhen not writing. To listen to what's going on. To not stick to any one formulaor method. To not get satisfied with anything. To insist on materiality. Tojudge the conceptual. To administer each task appropriately. To becontradictory. To be a public embarrassment. To act in writing. To laugh andscrew up. To loaf. To be inappropriate. To be an alert and willing participant.To know things. To talk a lot or a little. To love the moon and stars andtrees. To honor the dead. To respect the living. To share stories. To be a goodfinder.

Affinities

Jeffrey Walker, Joshua Gunn, Mark Longaker, Ed Dorn, Robert Creeley, RobertoBolaño, Kent Johnson, Hoa Nguyen, Joanne Kyger, Amiri Baraka, Diane di Prima, RobertoTejada , Alan Gilbert, Susan Briante, Robert Bertholf, Lucia Berlin, KyleSchlesinger, David Hadbawnik, Richard Owens, Farid Matuk , Stacy Blint, JeffreyPethybridge, Carolina Ebeid, Anselm Berrigan, Tom Clark, Anne Waldman, JackCollom, RJ Oehler, Kristin Prevallet, Scott Pierce....

Poems by Dale Smith

In the garden

Littleblunderers

Eat cakes in agarden

By the figurine

Of the prickgod

Hungry littlebeasties

There is snowin the hills of Oaxaca

And cedar inthe air of Bracketville

And agents inbunkers remotely

Aim stealthydrones

How is it whenthe sky flashes white?

How is it whena child evaporates?

How is it whenthe markets rattle windows in the desert?

How is it whenequities bankers piss into porcelain urinals?

How is it whencartels chop a crowd of illegals?

How is it whenSEALS invade the compound?

How is it whenthe sky flashes right

Before you die?

The stench ofburning fuel wafts

A flash of thegoods

At Bay andBloor

In an ArabSpring of protest

In occupationsof flesh and geographic

Obscenitiesscratched on boardroom maps

Economies marketlack

Of knowledgeand access, failure

As only vision

There is rapein the mind

Of the cock ofthe lord

Unquiet day

Rid the speciesof its blunders

Press the appsof dislocation

Enter the lociof forgetfulness

Loaf at theborders of thoughtfulness

Flee from thebroken imago

Exchanged inthe genome

The calculus ofdesire

In suddenmaterial

Advance ofpalpitations

In the garden

Sunlight of thereal

An explosion in Tyre

An explosion inTyre

An apology forRawagede

Stocks riselike foam in a urinal

There is adecline in symbolic efficiency

Only in that tobe symbolized

A shared beliefin the substantial

Sticks to RosieO’Donnell’s engagement

Nothing meanseverything

Matters justthe same

As digitaldispersion

Expands creditdefault

The figurativepenis in the garden

Gnomic stonydick

Pushes intomembranes

Of theimaginary

Ad siccum

A fixed air

Sterile coldformula

A point blanklogic

Nguyen Van Lem

Eyes closed

Before NguyenNgoc Loan

Voids theliving specter

Press the imageonto memory

The memorycarried

In semen andvaginal fluid

And blood andshit

Locate theproduct like a blue

Flame on theradio-operated toy

Plastic wrappedSubaru

The holidaysare for sharing

A loss insymbolic efficiency

Enchants themarket real

Like a nucleararsenal

Paraded in old SovietRussia

Where no onebelieves

What theybelieved

Anyway

I used to sleep at night

I used to sleepat night

Before Priapus

Crept from thegarden

Into theletters and lights

And blank fieldscenes

Glowing likeDamascus

Like “progressin Afghanistan”

Tumbling rupees

Lift high thecages on Falkland Road

“Breaking in”new thousands

Of Nepalesechildren

And Mumbaimarkets

Traffic theLord of Cock

Into theletters and lights

A personbecomes the product

Like Hong Kongis a “hub”

A “cleansed”land

A sub-Saharanimaginary black

Ink on blankwhite

Sterileheadlines leak the limited

Known cameraangles

In bunkers FarWest

Drone pilotsinvade

I used to sleepat night

Beforedetainees

Stripped andhumiliated

Beforeexecutive

Assassinationsin Taiz

Compelled a wayof life

In theautonomic

Press of themedulla

Oblongata

In the garden

Sunlight of thereal

Craig Santos Perez

2011-12-18T01:03:00.001-04:00

CraigSantos Perez is a Chamorro originally from Guåhan(Guam). He is the co-founder of Ala Press, co-star of the poetry album Undercurrent(Hawai'i Dub Machine, 2011), and author of two collections of poetry: fromunincorporated territory [hacha] (Tinfish Press, 2008) and from unincorporatedterritory [saina] (Omnidawn Publishing, 2010), a finalist for the LA Times BookPrize for Poetry and the winner of the 2011 PEN Center USA Literary Award forPoetry. He teaches Pacific Literature and Creative Writing in the EnglishDepartment at the University of Hawai'i, Manoa.

Poetics

Japanese poet Issa wrote haiku. African American poet Amiri Baraka writes loku.Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) poet Brandy Nalani McDougall writes poiku. Iwrite kaduku. In Chamorro, kaduku means lunatic, demented, fool, idiot, crazy,insane.

Affinities

This fall, I co-curated (with poet Brandy NalaniMcDougall) a reading series, "Native Voices," at the University ofHawai'i, Manoa (UHM). The poets we featured included well-known Pacific writersalongside talented graduate and undergraduate students poets from UHM. I have anaffinity for the work of our featured writers: Sia Figiel, No'u Revilla, TagiQolouvaki, Marie Alohalani Brown, Dan Taulapapa McMullin, David Keali'i, KaiGaspar, Terisa Siagatonu, Donovan Kuhio Colleps, Paul Robins, Uluwehi Cashman,and Imaikalani Kalahele.

Poems by Craig Santos Perez

First Apology to the Lone Ethnographer

Forgive me,

I know I’msupposed to be vanishing.

Second Apology to the LoneEthnographer

Thisis just to say

Ihave eaten

thepreserved heads

thatwere in

theglassbox

andwhich

youwere probably

saving

fortesting

Forgiveme

theywere mysterious

sosavage

andso alone

Third Apology to the Lone Ethnographer

Forgive me fortalking back;

I now know itis you I lack.

My love, myrescue, my phenomena,

lay mealongside the flora and fauna.

Down on the Sidewalk in Tumon

writingkadu-ku

poorpoet toils

sweaty touristasks

"howdo you get…"

before he'sfinished

tellhim

HAFADIE!

Sueyeun Juliette Lee

2011-12-07T12:38:00.001-04:00

Sueyeun JulietteLee grew up 3 miles from the CIA. She edits Corollary Press (www.corollarypress.org), a chapbook seriesdevoted to multi-ethnic innovative writing. She also writes poetry reviews forthe Constant Critic (www.constantcritic.com) and is acontributing editor of EOAGH. Her books include That Gorgeous Feeling (Coconut Press), Underground National (FactorySchool) and the chapbooks MentalCommitment Robots (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs), Perfect Villagers (Octopus Books),and Trespass Slightly In (CoconutPress).

Poetics

I've always been interested in Asian / Americana--thatphantasm of cultural and racial difference that gets dreamt collectivelythrough a feedback loop / global echo chamber of exchanges. This leads me tosome interesting territory--from kung fu films to science fiction topornography to the Banana Republic. I'm generally very interested in thecirculation of certain tropes claiming ethnic or identificatory stability, andI love teasing that apart. Lately, I've been working on this notion ofSpeculative Poetry--work that tries to feel the future. It proudly displayspulpish sci-fi sensibilities alongside a great love for mysticism and generalquackery. It takes itself very earnestly. Generally, I'd describe my poetics asaccretive and intuitive. Things build and build according to their ownlogic(s), sometimes quite quickly. I believe in self-expression, I believe inintuitively motivated research, I believe in being intrigued.

Affinities

Brenda Iijima, Cynthia Arrieu-King, Tisa Bryant,Julie Choffel, Douglas Kearney, Geoffrey Olsen, Craig Santos Perez,Bhanu Kapil, Nicholas DeBoer, Jamie Townsend, Renee Gladman, Tim Peterson, JohnYau, Myung Mi Kim.

Poems by SueyeunJuliette Lee

When the terrainis a body of water

This romanticism is a voracious shape between allthings in motion, reminding us to stare upwards into the negative space thatonce housed the brightest phrase. From such a vantage point, the earth’s axisintermittently debuts across uneven shores. It reminds us to hurry, to make wayacross the sliding plateaus whose multi-cresting cascade of waves signal theonslaught of an unknown delivery.

Tell me again: how is it that summer stands now forthe place where the body becomes a reservoir, a still placid, a home. Thatyours was so distantly and fragile, too. And how I ached to move towards.

Arm like a fish

I notice a small moleinside my left elbow. It looks odd to me, and I inspect it more closely. Irealize it is in fact not a mole, but something that seems to be poking veryslightly out of my skin. I pull at it, and it gives way. I keep tugging, andthe beginnings of a leaf of ivy emerge, moistly. I keep pulling, and now I havea stem and several leaves, covered in a strange wet gray matter, that I dragout of my arm. I can feel how the ivy has been twined around my muscles andveins--each tug pulls at these structures inside my body as well. I tugsharply, and inadvertently tear my arm open to the wrist. My flesh fallsloosely away like a cut fish and goes numb. Surprised, I hold my arm togetherwith my right hand. I run around the house trying to find someone to take me tothe emergency room.

The only person around isAlbert. He isn’t concerned about the state I’m in. I beg him to rush me to thehospital. He agrees on the condition that he gets to drive his car. We get intomy car, which he then promptly drives into hiscar, the entire vehicle somehow fitting in the driver’s and passenger’s seats.He reaches out of the window to steer his car, and we take off down the road.

On the highway, he asksme how I would categorize my wound. I’m incredulous and ask why. He informs methat a new policy has limited which hospitals see which patients, and he wantsto ensure I go to the right hospital for treatment. I roll my eyes and tell himI think I have a flesh wound.

We drive intoGeorgetown, and he pulls up in front of a Barnes & Noble bookstore. Hetells me to go to the bottom level of the store, which is where the hospital islocated. I run out of the car and into the store, which is eerily familiar. Irealize I have been in this space in other dreams. I take the escalator downthe stairs, holding my arm, hoping that someone can help me. On the escalator,I see how the bookshelves and café give way to a busy hospital, brightly lit,in the basement. It seems very orderly, and clean.

A manifoldbehavior

From the stereoscope, we categorize alternativekinetic potentials. These indices take on their own volitional energy and movesilently--eagerly--across the unfinished floor. Lost scent of magnoliaspermeates as we navigate through the negative blades.

What happened in the future was graphic. It stands nowwithout a traceable semblance, rather emotional in the way that we’ve come totrust anger’s initial version of events, the posture assumed in a cry. Thegreat task remains: can we distill the future down to its sheerly psychologicalcomponents, balancing unresponsive spaces with filled ones--an infiniteduration of active listening. Sky.

Bojan Louis

2011-11-30T12:19:00.001-04:00

Bojan Louis is a member of the Navajo Nation—Naakaii Dine’é; Ashiihí; Ta’neezahnii; Bilgáana—andreceived his MFA from Arizona State University. His poems haveappeared in The Kenyon Review, Platte Valley Review, and Hinchas de Poesía; fiction in Alaska Quarterly Review; book reviews in Paste and Hinchasde Poesía. Hewas recently in residency at The MacDowell Colony.

Poetics

Adaptation; Incorporation; Continuation—electricity,currents, this work—hazhó’ógo adiilił.

do it carefully

Affinities

Sherwin Bitsui; Catullus; Orlando White; TomasTranströmer; Laura Tohe; Kenneth Patchen; Simon Ortiz; Paul Siegell; JohnBerryman; Ernest Hilbert; Affa Michael Weaver; Enrique Lihn; Larry Levis;Norman Dubie; Cynthia Cruz; Mikhail Aizenberg; Christopher Robinson; AlbertoRíos; Anthony Hecht; Eric Green; Susan Sontag; Nicanor Parra; Jim Heavily;Dennis Cooper; Chris Hutchinson; Diné bahane’; Yago S. Cura; AlisonHedge Coke; Pedro Juan Gutiérrez; Hugh Martin; Frank Sherlock; CA Conrad;Cynthia Hogue; Chopin; Immortal.

Poems by Bojan Louis

Electricity

originallyappeared in TheKenyon Review.

The morning roundup’s

a current leaking to earth

without interruption or fault.

Above busted street lights the sun

buzzes to a cuffed line of deportees;

the sheriff’s imbalanced authority.

Any laborer gathered for a tear-out

agrees the pleasure of opening walls

is the view of what’s no longer behind.

The restrained motion of a body caught

within a fence run between language

is a union of shock and memory.

Grounding

originallyappeared in Hinchasde Poesía.

Crespúculo,

una serpiente de polvo

—vans of la migra—

summoned by contratistas

cobardes who anticipate

a crack, irresolute

of its path.

Sin necesidad de herramientas

curb-plucked workers

walked barefoot

through cemento frió

and floated suave

the curing surface.

Now they sit encadenado

y se preguntan

if they’ll receive water

para lavar la roca

hardening around their feet.

Currents (first)

originallyappeared in PlatteValley Review.

New sun asks:

be nothing

have nothing

—send opened

your whole being.

Only part of me

is blessed, a body exerted

after long hours, responsibility,

and need to ease tremors.

-- -

The last of March’s

welfare won’t go past

the eighteenth, hunger pains

dull month to month.

We’ve burned the final

log from February’s half-

cord; son’s school books

claimed lost are enough

to get the fire going.

-- -

My youth wasn’t warm enough

to stone prairie dogs,

skin and eat.

The drive past the flats

no longer makesinstant

noodles cheaper.

Mornings blind when throats throw

heat—stutter steps skid linoleum.

Untouched eggs feed me, forget me.

II.

Mom’s a woman with

red skin and long receipts,

an aluminum facade

of sparkle talk and sheen.

Measuring steps: easy win,

sudden guess.

Sissy boys

tear and candy don’t

take care.

-- -

There isn’t a nickel

in any cushion—

skeletal-hair remains

collect all over.

Red drips redder

than my skin,

redder than swallowed

embarrassment,

than slap—freezing feet.

-- -

A dark hall’s corner,

a damask of lines,

the call-to mom uses

telling me, I don’t add up.

I penguin walk and cross

feet. In grass I pull

my knees up;

still, the grass

grows toward me.

III.

The coin-fare for

a cross-town bus a rosary

for time on my own.

Slow approach on

the upcoming stop a heavy

let, a stiffened step

on concrete

right-angled silhouettes

the butane flame dawn.

-- -

The water’s

hot and

there’s light:

the home

encloses a

son lost

until 6:30 brings

noise of traffic

delays and brewing.

-- -

I get

little out

of this,

pays ungrateful,

I eat little—

my eyes bulge.

I don’t know

the woman

letting time slip.

JenMarie Davis

2011-11-14T23:16:00.001-04:00

JenMarie Davisis half of Fact-Simile Editions and builds books and poems from recycled andreclaimed material. She is the author of SometimeSoon Ago (Shadow Mountain, 2009) and her workhas appeared in the Handmade/Homemade exhibit, Glitterpony,Court Green, Little Red Leaves, Interim, Gargoyle andother print and online journals.

Poetics

Collection,connection, curation.

Affinities

CharlesAlexander, Eula Biss, Jenny Boully, Mary Burger, Anne Carson, Travis Cebula,Jack Collom, CA Conrad, Robert Creeley, Michelle Disler, Marcella Durand, RyanEckes, Thalia Field, Jenny Henry, Jen Hofer, Fanny Howe, Bhanu Kapil, MarieLarson, Natalie Lyalin, Patrick Lucy, Travis Macdonald, Desirae Matherly,Debrah Morkun, Hoa Nguyen, Sara Nolan, Jena Osman, Christian Peet, Andrew K.Peterson, Deborah Poe, Kristen Prevallet, Elizabeth Robinson, Elizabeth FrankieRollins, Selah Saterstrom, Frank Sherlock, Kim Gek Lin Short, Jonathan Skinner,Dale Smith, Arthur Sze, Catherine Taylor, Michelle Taransky, Brian Teare, JamieTownsend, Sara Veglahn, Suzanne Vilmain, Danielle Vogel, Rosmarie Waldrop andmany more.

Poems by JenMarie Davis

There arescientists and gurus

who are trying tomake it so

easy for you.Please just start

your researchengines.

In your very owndesigner

language,construct some galaxies.

If you must,please use your hidden

inner glitter.Phenomena

that you may findto happen have

been happeningall along with-

out you. Doesthis pain your inner

imperialist?Displacement

is speaking ofevents that are

not happening,not at all, now.

Go outside andtry to be good

company. Nestledvery close

once, you and theloneliest star

becameskywatchers. A ring of

dust settleswithin a light-year.

Maybe it willmake a planet.

Perhaps planetsare forming now.

Can they beholdin earth’s airglow

a you-shapedshadow standing quite

still in thetwilight of the bang?

Travis Macdonald

2011-10-31T12:15:00.005-03:00

TravisMacdonald is a poet, copywriter, editor andoccasional essayist. His most recent books of poetry include: Title Bout (Shadow Mountain Press 2011),BAR/koans (Erg Arts 2011), Hoop Cores (Knives, Forks andSpoons Press 2011), Sight &Sigh (Beard of Bees 2011), N7ostradamus (BlazeVoxBooks 2010), Basho's Phonebook (E-ratio2009) and The O Mission Repo [vol.1] (Fact-Simile Editions 2008). Other poetry and prose has appeared inprint, online and elsewhere. He works long hours and lives happily in the Mt.Airy area of Philadelphia with his fiancée and Fact-Simile Editions(www.fact-simile.com) co-founder JenMarie Davis.

Poetics

My poetics don’t belong to me. At least notas a personal pronoun possessive object, per se. It’s really more of a rent-to-ownarrangement. One in which I’m continuously behind on the payments. A fact thatmy poetics never lets me fully live down.

Which is to say that I hardly ever writepoems in little black notebooks these days. Instead, my poetics and I havetaken a decidedly unhealthy interest in the physical materiality of the writtenword in the digital age. With this interest in mind, we have most recentlyconcerned ourselves with exploring the possibilities of artificially imposedprocedures and treatments on the many naturally occurring, quasi-organicmanifestations of the English language that we encounter together on a dailybasis.

My poetics is sonically obsessed, lyricallypreoccupied and mechanically inclined. In pursuit of some semblance of resolutionbetween these all too often conflicting forces, it utilizes a variety oftactics and strategies commonly practiced on factory floors and inpost-industrial manufacturing environments to recreate, rearrange andrestructure pre-existing language patterns into various othernesses. Which isnot to say that my poetics is in any way strictly mechanical or impersonal. Onthe contrary, it craves human interaction to the point of fetishization. Mypoetics, you see, is overly concerned with redefining the role of the reader asan active participant in the co-creation of meaning. It is essentiallycuratorial by nature and tied up inextricably with my love ofretro-experimental bookmaking and literary object creation.

Affinities

My poetics and I are a product of too manyvaried influences, factors, affinities and friendships to list all at once. Buthere’s an abbreviated alphabetical attempt for posterity’s sake: HaroldAbramowitz, Charles Alexander, James Belflower, Ted Berrigan, Jen Bervin,Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Christian Bök, Jenny Boully, John Cage, Jack Collom,CAConrad, Joseph Cooper, Beverly Dahlen, JenMarie Davis, Nick Demske, Linh Dinh, Matthea Harvey, Jared Hayes, Anselm Hollo, PaulHoover, Ronald Johnson, Bhanu Kapil, Jennifer Karmin,Michael Leong, Jackson Mac Low, Bernadette Mayer, K. Silem Mohammad,Harryette Mullen, Michelle Naka Pierce, Mel Nichols, GeorgesPerec, Andrew Peterson, Tom Phillips, Vanessa Place, Elizabeth Robinson, FrankSherlock, Matthew Timmons, Jamie Townsend, Louis Zukofsky, etc. and so on andon…

Poemsby Travis Macdonald

093844609550582231725359408128

The possible relative position ofpractically rigid bodies, Geometry

must be castrated

and what is often more important must be

treated as a branch.

Our image after our

likeness. And let he have dominion.

Truth of geometrical propositionsinterpreted in this way since

were potted and (apparently) were

kept in a chamber in

all the earth and over

every creeping thing that creepeth on theearth.

Exact terms

be doubted.

In his own

image,

that by the truth of a geometrical

proposition in

which he castrated (and artificially)

validity for a

construction with ruler and compasses.

Thembe fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth.

Propositions in this sense,

the manipulation. Half of these twentyplants had

and,

present we

shall assume, the truth of the geometricalpropositions.

Chris Gullo

2011-10-23T18:41:00.005-03:00

ChrisGullo did stuff with theater. Did stuff withpoetry. Did stuff with serving food and selling books and paying rent. Did stuff with love and sex andfriendships and beer and punk and full moons. Did stuff with cushions andphilosophical problem-solving and the music of ordinary days. Was in a badmovie. Wrote two thirds of a novel, then stopped. Have been accused (by myselfand others) of not doing enough stuff. I can neither confirm nor deny this atthis time.

Poetics

Sometimes I’m a diarist and sometimes asurrealist. Sometimes I’m a zen minimalist or a neo-formalist or a marxistfeminist or a joker. Sometimes it’s a dumbass beatnik pastiche only its mothercould love. Sometimes I feel like I ought to evolve toward a singular method orstyle. An integrated “self.” A recognizable “brand.” Sometimes not.

Affinities

slackers, revolutionaries, mystics,bartenders, dancers, curmudgeons & lesbians.

Poemsby Chris Gullo

GAY GREEN SWASTIKA

grief is a form of madness

and madness is a form of freedom

and maybe that’s why we don’t

put seatbelts in school buses

maybe that’s why we inhale tales

of armageddon like holy poppers

green is the color of islam

and green is the color

of all american money

the color of the heart chakrah

and environmental awareness

and bile

but this is not a story about that

this is a story about ganesha

i was in this shop on south street

and they had the most beautiful ganeshas

ganesha the remover of obstacles

the mischief-maker and the bringer offertility

ganesha the treasure house of all success

the patron deity of all writers

and sages and shopkeepers

i wanted to take one home

but they all had swastikas on their palms

the clerk tried to sell me on the swastika

waxing poetic about its ancient himalayanpedigree

its swirling unchangeable majesty

blah blah blah

the nazis killed that, i tell him

along with a few people

or hadn’t he heard?

look it’s like the word “gay”

i finally say

it used to mean cheerful

but you just can’t say it today

and expect it to be heard that way

now find me a goddamn ganesha

without a goddamn swastika

green is the color of girl scout uniforms

and jealousy

and “go”

we finally found a good one

and he sits now

on my window sill between an alarm clock

and a guatemalan jewelry box full ofcondoms

he likes it there, the tubby son of shiva

accepts offerings, dispenses advice

in a voice soft as candy

and says

i am one of many

and the many are all one

and the one is none

but here we are, you and me

and green is the color

of a pitcher of margaritas

so toss the dice and hug the butcher

for we will all be meat

om shanti

shanti shanti

FLYING BACK FROM SAN ANTONIO

once i was almost in love

in almost mexico

but it died quick

broke hearts are like slasher movies

less upsetting the second third fourth time

and now i’m in the space between

dreaming of an airplane

and dreaming on an airplane

missouri is brown, chicago is shiny

out the window the shadow of a wing

drowns a house, broke hearts

are like slasher movies

i mumble your name several times

but i’m not really thinking of you

i’m merely feeling those feelings

those syllables now express

dude, this poem’s over

full stop and hazel eyes

THE SECRET VALLEY

they crunch the numbers

until they are digested

one thru seven and their correspondingcolors

they wiggle in our trash cans waiting fortravel visas

and giggle how freud got it backward

all sex is about dreams

they scream surreptitiously

about madonnas and trees

they’re present in the drips and the slipsand the feedback

the kudzu of the south

the graying slush of the north

the west coast smell of sand sweat

and suntan lotion and the

eastern must of old books on old shelves

they’re dangerous as wishing

and violent as a peace protest

a hummable tune in the executioner’s head

will clue you in to the journey

they made it to america but

america ran back to atlantis

or something like that

to reach them you must be one of the few

they radio to

call the missiles back

call them back and cry

they cry

but don’t cry

all could be forgiven

and the holy hoedown continue unabated

maybe not in san francisco

but imagine the earthquake

Andrew K. Peterson

2011-10-05T18:06:00.000-03:00

Andrew K. Peterson wrote bonjour meriwether and the rabid maps (Fact-Simile Press chapbook 2011), Museum of Thrown Objects (BlazeVox 2010), & collaborated on two chapbooks with the word ‘here’ in the title, Here Come the Groovies (w/Joseph Cooper, Livestock, Ltd., 2010), and between here and the telescopes (w/Elizabeth Guthrie, Slumgullion 2008). He edits Summer Stock journal, an imprint of Livestock Editions, and lives in Mass.

Affinities

Rae Armantrout, Tim Armentrout, Walter Benjamin, Cara Benson, Ted Berrigan, Paul Blackburn, Amina Cain, Helene Cixous, Clark Coolidge, Joseph Cooper, Robert Creeley, JenMarie Davis, Robert Grenier, John Giorno, Elizabeth Guthrie, j/j hastain, Jared Hayes, Anselm Hollo, Lisa Jarnot, Bhanu Kapil, Jennifer Karmin, Kevin Kilroy, Kenneth Koch, Joanne Kyger, Travis Macdonald, Bernadette Mayer, Harryette Mullen, Lorine Niedecker, Charles Olson, Jena Osman, Ron Padgett, Bern Porter, Jennifer Rogers, John Sakkis, Leslie Scalapino, Logan Ryan Smith, Jack Spicer, Cecilia Vicuna, Anne Waldman, Hannah Weiner, Philip Whalen, John Wieners, Louis Zukofsky, etc.

Poetics

Something about November, season’s

fire, something about Mu of

death-night, something about trees:

memorials in snow, diaries,

something something in an ocean,

something about the palm

upturned swaying gentle

in fists of rain, something ingrains.

Something about the eleventh,

til the fifteenth, plans of, something

about explosions. Systems, something

natural, something lament.

Something about blank

whitening openings in night

sky continues. Something about

repeats, continues. Something

about the rest, a want, some-

thing something about something

Poems by Andrew K. Peterson

from some deer left the yard moving day

Dear Other Person,

again fail to call when I say I might now it’s five a.m. where you sleep across an ocean so pointless to try instead drink organic caffeine free ginger tea which is not to say the reason for not calling only happens simultaneous I could’ve, but didn’t. I don’t feel I would’ve, what’s to say. I don’t mean ‘nothing’ to say only in (positive) bland sort these things happen, & when – if – they do, I hardly think cause to repeat, but things do happen like I didn’t do them

received a book in the mail with a horizontal box cut slice through the cover’s corner and first few pages (I wasn’t upset, particularly at the person – system(?) – that would have this happen – I’ve dropped books accidentally in concrete receiving rooms destroying spines and jackets and always felt horrible. On page three the slice falls between two lines of text, extending below ‘simultaneous-’, above ‘completely’. The former’s end hyphen delineates end of word, & the subsequent reading of, not for lack of space, through no word’s fault, in this case length being commensurate with representative ‘action’, conceivably could extend forth toward all spaces-times, include all actions, presences ‘within the same frequency of occurrence’ and not limited, in certain estimations of ideologies, to happen at measured moment, seem fulfilled. In returning. To left margin of next line where the word (an interesting visual/spatial phenomenon, end letters physically appear on page “before” and “below” previous letters) a reader might, through a willed playfulness, disregard certain rules, speak the word aloud, beginning its ending – “ly”, then, upwards (vocally? to approximate location) ‘higher’ – speak ‘above’ the first.; to read aloud, sound, ‘ly’, (then, with a higher falsetto): ‘simultaneous-’

the bisecting ‘cut’ appears below as it occurs as on the bland air side of this horizon’s incision line... while below, what constitutes the ‘lower’ (contradictions of concept in their ‘own’ ‘right’) limit speech-horizon limits – I prefer less physically certain ‘bottom’ water, or a part- icular … (see?) language just did what happened, above horizon line, already mentioned in the ly-simultaneous phenomena, here with ‘icular-part’. (NOTE: this occurs only in physical pen-to-paper hand-written version of this text. when typed into Word, the margins of “page” changes and so won’t occur, ‘naturally’, ‘here’. In this case, the reader is asked to indulge her imagination.)

of a particular ocean, one’s childhood and adulthood (pass) certain ‘image’ of, being ‘ocean’ one’s across now, across which, sorry I didn’t call, across. Below this line, this physical cut, in the book I’m starting reading tonight, below physical negative space of a cut – in my image-ocean, a word, “completely” – I’m not sure there’s a more accurate word for ocean – I won’t even go into. To edge of ocean I’ll go (into), but that’s not what I mean, but when I think ‘here’ of depths, one’s measures (fathoms – a distance, or, ‘to understand’ – ) how even oceanographers haven’t seen certain ocean’s floor – ‘unfathomable’ so for whales, enormity of nurse sharks giant squid, octopi, minute plankton and those creatures who live so deep they’ve never felt soft moonlight on (imagined) translucent scales; plankton so small takes invented eyes to see– through knowledge of, unfathomable depths of oceans incomplete, bottomless beds of capped or gushing oils, or now, head spinning, and here comes this word, to pick you up with, descending from the cut that in horizon takes form of formless ocean around the somewhat known, surely unknown, reefs of all our senses, is so ‘completely’ ... (below), ‘simultaneous’ (above) they’re only words for it – regardless of which side of the cut

on page five, a duller, but as sure, cut appears – a wider, whiter space

between ‘the’

and ‘vultures’

someone like a reader tries to neither deny or accept, the concept of something like a small death caps our aces: ‘what else can one accept?’ a bird cannot land on a wave, nor fly around

ripping through the veil in one sitting

AND TO THE

CONTAIN

ER) DISTORT

) ION :

I forget the first thing I said

I forget where I put my black jacket

I forget the color of your voice in its evening attire

I forget how much I earn, what I owe

I forget how long it takes

I forget how many steps it took

I forget what day it’s due

I forget how the poem went

I forget song lyrics I mouth along to

I forget what time I left

I forget the air smell of our housing block

I forget how old I am

I forget the batteries

I forget the formula

I forget the address

I forget to delete the mistake

I forget his middle name

I forget how nervous I get

I forget what I was doing

I forget how much it costs

I forget how much you’d done

I forget what I was supposed to say

I forget to say goodbye

I forget to say thank you

I forget to close the windows

Dear Other Person,

then home having not yet reproached the moon, on the radio, as everywhere, a guest & her host discuss

slightly, the room darkens – loathing having spent the day (its ‘better’ part) in an office basement emptying cabinets, separating old claim files into piles, marked “to be shredded”, or into boxes to be moved to a different file cabinet in another cage. a slight flicker. where there are footsteps, above, to the side; when I reach the word, ‘contents’ , the lights, again, subtly, though perceptively, dim, & wonder: these documenting events – significant at the time and to those involved – acknowledged and documented on stacks of fading paper, sure they would not have presumed seven years later, someone should be sifting through, who does not ‘own’, or ‘belong to’ or ‘pay for’ health insurance, though the state he lives in requires

outside the drift-way light glistens over envy, footsteps certain chatter. or water flutters. the pipes aside, the flow into the faucet. closed, the eyes release conditioning, and resulting conditions

“I was not prescient enough to anticipate something that was seen.”

hoists, then to hold on to. moves: make a dull noise. the sensual measurement of intelligence is a fog’s circumference. something’s prowling the outer rim,. shiny black. dimmer skies wash out

where the axis is, is people being different. below a painting, resting. she moved nearer the center, for the one in the cinema with the endlessly changing face is, who else, the activating spectator

Lara Durback

2011-09-24T13:42:00.006-03:00

Lara Durback publishes NoNo Press things out of entirely repurposed materials, bikes around Oakland, messes around with letterpress, serves brunch, and tries to figure out how to be compassionate in a way that doesn't insult others but then the over-thinking makes her a little mean. Her most recent thing is Garbage Research 1: Hoarders and Those Resembling Hoarders with collage artist Greg Turner. There are always things to figure out in the community. There are always new communities to make. How to make those who are different from you in some way a part of a community with you without it being fake. This is the question. And then there's stuff going on alongside this, looking at the flowers and trying to get writing done and not worry too much about paying the bills, worrying instead about how to engage more, write letters, etc.?

Poetics

Walking around and writing. writing on public transportation. writing in actual handwriting. thinking about the labor/energy that goes into anything anyone does, (and the microcosm of that can be how one circulates their writing...the materials that are used). attention to holistic ways of being. attention to how people pay attention. attention to consciousness as filter of receiving writing or anything. attention to the visual, the variation of needs due to "disability" or trauma. kindness and reciprocity and attention to activism and compassion and examined everyday life. somatics and how that can be recognized. "aboutness" in current themes of poems such as sex trafficking/pimps, electromagnetic fields, or hoarding, as the aboutness determines something of weight. the emotional-conceptual poetics as a way of determining where attention might be placed.

Affinities

Ariel Goldberg, Juliana Spahr, David Buuck, Stephanie Young, Bhanu Kapil, David Wolach, CA Conrad, Erin Morrill, Cecil Giscombe, Will Alexander, Lauren Levin, Tyrone Williams, Matt Runkle, Monica Peck, Renee Gladman, David Brazil, Sara Larsen, Kimberly Alidio

Poems by Lara Durback

Locators in a Stack of Compassion

(from the inside of ZINECHAPBOOK)

About the adjustable C-wrench

Next to the unusable-shaped pallet knife

By the brand new shirt

Next to the hand-printed price tag

In the stack of complimenting you

On top of the logo

Behind the stack of books about printing history

Next to the pica pole

In the glass case with the "DON'T TOUCH" sign

Next to the placard explaining me

We slept and tried to diagram sentences

In the cement stage

By the cavernous basement

After nails were pried from a board

During the command to stop the banging that would interrupt the conference call

In the stack of asserting myself to you

After 4 bodies slanted over 4 Powerbooks, G4s, or IPhone 4s

Despite hinge-frame assembly

Underneath the drawsheet of the tympan

Next to the designer pencils

Before you asked to leave me

We fell from the sentence where all was strategic, but had trouble finding a new strategy

By the solvent can

Near unopened packages of thread under cellophane

With a display window

Beneath the different colored masking tapes

In the stack of feeling intimidated by you

With the hand on the pallet knife covered in oil

Atop a pyramid of huge rolls of denim fabric

Against allotted work hours

While sitting on the floor of the art depot on the phone

Before calling various establishments to compare prices

Beneath the wall of fluorescent show posters

Throughout the presence of yawning bloggers

In the manner of passing rolls of fabric to one another like firemen

Under fire

Above fire

Without fire

Fireless

Under presumption of fire

Instead of wondering how to help me or you

We fell out of the sentence freely as diagonals into the underworld and smiled in order to lose

Before the cut diagram

During the cut diagram's digital conversion to Illustrator

Next to a wiggly dash or tilde that means "approximately"

On Wikipedia for definitions or on Amazon for cheapest prices

BUT ACTUALLY IN a stack of rag-based, heavy paper that is larger than your chest per sheet

With an old toothbrush grip

During rat shit in the California Job Case

Concerning blank contract printout

During rotation of the arm socket to operate a press

Into the diagnosis of me

We wave at one another from over here, bodies that forgot how to dream in the day in the main sentence

Toward a printout schedule

In spite of a wooden crate

Underneath the light table

Through hand-sketched floor plans

In a stack of unopened packages of you

In spite of the guillotine

With available VOCs into the lungs

Via OSHA-restricted automatic Vandercook

Through email renditions of how the page might be restricted

With an exclamation of "What's good? What's going good? What's feeling fun" directed at me

We learned how to dangle a little longer, perhaps even held that shape well

Without photography of the space

Despite miming the sweeping of the sidewalk outside the window

Beyond the push of a button to move a cylinder that moves without you

Inside a crank that your arm moves

In a stack of days that you thought was a week

Regarding sound cancellation headphones or nitrile gloves

In addition to tying a string on the tag

Despite the POS software

With the plunger projecting solvent directly into the rag

In place of saying the word boundary to me

We put a marble on the flat surface of the sentence, but in the diagram, it slid down the diagonal

In place of the standard parent sheet

Without a working turn

In lieu of the paper guide

Regarding gunk and sludge built up in the gear track

In a stack of compassion, like the Princess and the Pea

Below repurposed furniture

In front of the bright lights and movie camera

Subsequent to providing customer service

Inside the encryption of marketing terms

In place of an agreement with me

We went out and walked across the street because that was the place we could breathe

About commitment to the project

Without mention of a corporation

By way of 40 buckets worth of mopping

Aside exposure of the formula's skeleton

In a stack of screens on the floor, you were scrubbing and crying

Over definition of a "one-sheet"

Atop the IPhone 4 release date

In regard to tight registration

In lieu of my heart

We were sitting on the sliding board one after another, without time to calculate how to agree

Under Cc: Bcc: Cc: Bcc:

Cc: I told you so

In a stack of the culture of overwhelm

[START OVER]

Inside the chase, locked in with quoins, a mirror image of the word "WORK" in red block letters

After fastening the clamp

Over the dressing room

Behind the beater with pulp splashing

In a stack of thinking

In place of the standard parent sheet size

Without the working turn

In lieu of the paper guide

Regarding the hand that slides across the cylinder

In a stack of compassion like the Princess and the Pea

Without the standard parent sheet size

In lieu of the working turn

Regarding the paper guide

In place of the hand that slides across the cylinder

In a stack of compassion like the Princess and the Pea

We left the room to find sun and air.

From Radiant Coordinates People:

Dear Decaying Book,

Copper used as birth control, money, war machines, repair for arthritis in a bracelet. What will you look like one day?

You are another failed attempt at communication, but let’s be sweet and say that there’s no failure because we all lose at the communication game. That’s what makes it interesting.

And what if we talked without words? Some music does. My brother and I would make sounds that mimicked words in a crumbled crashing way, “Gekggo gousighk gow.” It was called Gicky I think. We only usually understood one another.

Imperfection is part of the project. Uncomfortable, like trying to tell someone something important.

It’s supposed to be clear, right? But I hold you up and you’re not.

~Lara

P.S. .. .__ __ .__ __ . __ __ __ __ __ …

__ __ .__ … …. __.__ __ __ __ __ ..__

* * For a wasteful Plexiglas book called Morse Pacific, a beautiful book that allowed me to contemplate my cat sneezing from the molten plasticky remnants that flung away as I Dremeled notches in Plexiglas sheets. Disgusting.

Stan Mir

2011-09-12T13:07:00.005-03:00

Stan Mir is the author of The Lacustrine Suite (Pavement Saw, 2011), Song & Glass (Subito, 2010), Test Patterns (JR Vansant, 2010), and Flight Patterns (JR Vansant, 2009). He lives in Philadelphia where he co-organizes the Chapter & Verse reading series and occasionally writes for his blog Best Nightmare You Get! Recently, he co-edited the Lew Welch page for the Electronic Poetry Center.

Poetics

Language is music. We must make time to listen.

Affinities

Carolina Maugeri, Brandon Som, Pam Rehm, Tisa Bryant, Brian Kim Stefans, Michael Gizzi, Jennifer Martenson, Craig Watson, Eric Baus, Ryan Eckes, Pattie McCarthy, Kevin Varrone, Emily Abendroth, Justin Audia, Julia Bloch, Sarah Dowling, Joseph Yearous-Algozin, Dmitry Golynko, William Corbett, Steve Dolph, among many more.

Poems by Stan Mir

The Mind Haunts the Dream

after Tom Mandel & Jonathan Williams

No longer pitch black at dawn

light eeks the buildings.

The Amtrak building its

own wall of light.

We are ascribed roles

not actions.

The Comcast building

sponsors the sky.

I wanted the world explained:

The tentacles are not invisible

or it’s a good day to be an

octopus, for instance.

The earth should not be

bored into. All this is true.

Does it explain the third

star from the sun?

Invasives compete with

natives. All sides grow.

The invasive tends to win.

You Might Like It. It’s Simple.

Is there such thing as a spy who survives?

He can buy himself time

listening to Pink Floyd while lying

to his wife, but there is always

the other spy who lies to

his wife & wants to be free,

not from her, but from some

regime out of control, an animal

locked in an open field, unable

to make a run for the border.

II.

Unable to make a run

for the border the spy

recites a poem to his

captors. They couldn’t

care less. Poetry is not

their thing. Oppression

is. How mundane making

people miserable must

become. It is an act

of composition, isn’t it?

Shine this light, just there,

that’s it, in the eyes.

If there’s no confession,

think of another tactic.

Go ahead, you do it.

See for yourself how

it’s done. You might

like it. It’s simple.

Still Life

poetry is still

life after all

the lines end

the sidewalk

is a line

that leads

today the sun

is real &

can barely write

listen to the

cats fight

w/o a point

& give up

until the

next time

the wind blows

the wrong

direction

it’s easy to

get upset

for some

o, think about

gravity it

helps hold

together what

sometimes

can’t be held

the lines never

end good

they shouldn’t

wake up

tennis is on

tv for you

the fridge hums

the bell chimes

the dog barks

it’s nearly

4 o’clock in

the afternoon

today we don’t

ride or walk

much we sleep

the cat scratches

the bag we

should put away

I want to go on

there’s an eraser

in front of me

Ana Božičević

2011-09-01T11:17:00.002-03:00

Ana Božičević came to New York from Croatia and wrote Stars of the Night Commute (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2009), a Lambda Literary Award in Poetry finalist. Some fresh poems and translations can be found in Fence, EOAGH, Denver Quarterly, and Octopus. Ana works & studies at The Graduate Center, CUNY, and, with Amy King, edits esque. A new chapbook, War on a Lunchbreak, is forthcoming from Belladonna*.

My poetics

I write what I must.

Elective Affinities

Wasn’t there an Isabelle Huppert movie called that? Anyway I like Huppert because when she acts, it’s not about “la Huppert.” She can be anyone. People often tell me that they read a poem of mine and it made them go write. This is basically my goal; it’s about you, not me. I also like people who make me write, like the surrealist painters Remedios Varo who is on the cover of my first book, & Leonora Carrington about whom Amy (King) has been talking and reading a lot recently. My tap root is Slavic mythology, whenever I need a hit I go to the storyteller Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić. I go to Marina Tsvetaeva, Bruno Schulz, Alexey Remizov, Leonid Andreyev – magicians. I think I struggle with poetry like a priest struggles with religion, and imagination and translation cure me. I wish I was more of a witch, really. That’s why I found our recent time at Naropa really interesting: I was stunned & amused by Vanessa Place’s conceptual thinking, which is in many ways the opposite of what I do, but one thing is the same: the passion. Paradoxically, she made me write. My affinities are fraught with conflict. The poem I’m sending for Elective Affinities is about my struggle with poetry and the world of poetry in America. I’m not going to start the long litany of all the poets in America that I love. You know who you are. Rather I want to mention my Croatian and Serbian poet-friends whom I never met but work with and translate constantly: Željko Mitić, Zvonko Karanović, Darija Žilić, and a poet I admire called Dorta Jagić. Affinities survive long distances, a good thing but also a curse. I would be curious to know which one you think is true.

A poem by Ana Božičević

The Curse

I wanted poetry to do everything for me.

Restore the me like a saint returning

trinkets at night. It was an ongoing Xmas,

bent riviera of hope&disappointment--

some one told me this was bad for any affair.

Others sang I was too clever and mean,

a snob. They cursed me with hotel curses

so every place I went to then became a hotel,

my friends just staff, for all the hurt I gave them.

I took it. Some other one was silent on how

I just wasn’t too smart. The one thing

they agreed on is I should just stop talking. I did.

I went into the wood. I walked for a long time. One dark

horseman rode by, and it was pitch-black. I walked

on in the undeveloped darkness. It crunched

like I walked on bones. In my eye

I ran marathons, rescued dogs from a fire,

made love to a trans

amphibian. Then a red horseman galloped

through and the sun shot straight up. I could see

the glitter on the blanched leaves. I walked up

to the cottage. She was inside. What do you want,

she said. To please take away this

curse. What curse, I don’t see one. It’s here,

I can feel it. It’s making me not able to talk. But

aren’t you talking to me, she said. Yes, but

that’s different. You’re supernatural. What

makes you think, she said, that you’re not?

Suddenly I felt my teeth growing in. See,

that me you wanted back never stood

a chance. But what about poetry? What does it

do? She laughed an uproar, pointing

behind the cottage. Behind the cottage

was nothing. What does this mean, I asked?

And the leaves laughed up an uproar.

Wait, what does it mean? Leaves shot higher

up into the green clouds, an uproar of leaves!

Kelly Sexton

2011-08-23T19:28:00.004-03:00

Kelly Sexton holds an MFA in Writing and Poetics from Naropa University, is the former poetry editor for Bombay Gin, and lover of asparagus. She has been published in Monkey Puzzle, Touchstone, Apothecary, Species, and other journals and zines associated with monkeys. Her recent chapbook, vodka-mountain, is available through con/crescent press.

Poetics

For me, like many poets, writing was a way to cope as a sensitive person in a hostile world. My only real goal is to show any few that can subjectively identify with the pieces that they're not alone, that they shouldn't feel bad about feeling bad, and that there's a living, breathing human they've never met cursing the beautiful sky with them.

Affinities

William S. Burroughs, Charles Bukowski, Reed Bye, Bertrand Russell, Katie Stevenson, Flannery O' Connor, Joseph Conrad, David Krump, William Stobb, Bhanu Kapil, Brenda Hillman, William Shakespeare, John Gardner, Nina Simone

Poems by Kelly Sexton

open the door

pursed eyeballs and a lip-licking fetish

dried out hands that grapple with young flesh

and a small hand in hair

and a long stare of denial

a trinket of your childhood

hard to separate

cheeks reddened with frustration

and your dead, twitching slit

on the palm of my hand

this has not been revised

i kind of liked it when you tapped your cigarette on the window and sprayed ash in my face

the wind scared it away

i brought a tape to listen to

the one we found in the parking lot

the dirty one that will fuck up the deck

“we can’t stop for food, because I’m not hungry.”

“but we can stop for drink.”

a small friend of the narcotic persuasion tripped me when we got out of the car

i kicked him in the face and smiled at you

crunching leaves over his bloodied mouth with my flip-flop

penetrating tightened flesh easily-a closed pair of scissors to a paper on carpet

my body wretches and shakes

crusts up in a pathetic attempt to clot itself

a drunk girl handed him a bottle of corona and said “here, you can have this.”

he dropped it on the pavement and said “no thank you.”

glass and beer pouring over the sidewalk

the bouncer had heard the crash and rushed to ask who had done this

“me” he said

“oh” said the bouncer (doing nothing)

the drunk girl was upset, almost crying

sitting on all fours trying to pick up the glass

“someone could get hurt.” she explained

“so.” he said “people get hurt all the time.”

her blood was now flowing over the beer soaked pavement

doctrine

the mechanisms were not firing
there was no connection to earth
the wendell berry book was long gone

the fluorescent lights let me know
i was not at home

poked awake
with small needles

i was cold
very cold

the doctor had a close shave
[you'd have to take a mach-5 to that shit twice
to get this kind of result]

they all blend now
-the doctors-
and the feeling that they're not so much there to help
as they are to avoid malpractice suits
from business suits

nurses know you're someone's child,
cover you with warm blankets,
help you to the bathroom,
bring tissues when you cry,
wipe away the blood spots

i was half a corpse
and you asked me about pot

i was your dead rat from anatomy class
that you made dance to impress a girl

if it doesn't rain...water it

i am a cocksure child on your lawn
wearing blueprints as armor

i watch your eyes wait for rain
then turn my head to the sky and shrug

there will be no interim
no days dressed in wait

i will find a bathtub
and thrash until document has dissolved

i will stand naked after wash
so you know it's safe to be human again

(no more self-victimization
no more rain dances)

i will water myself
and you will sprout

sorry i pissed on your new sweater last night

i was drunk and it was there

and besides

i didn’t piss directly

on it

it was more by it

Joseph Yearous-Algozin

2011-08-15T13:20:00.005-03:00

Joseph Yearous-Algozin is the author of The Lazarus Project: Alien Vs. Predator (TROLL THREAD) and Buried (TROLL THREAD). He is the co-editor of P-Queue and a member of the publishing collective, TROLL THREAD PRESS.

Poetics

I used to make poetry, but I stopped.

Now, I make pages.

Affinities

Holly Melgard, Divya Victor, Chris Sylvester (TROLL THREAD PRESS).

Poems by Joseph Yearous-Algozin

Fade to black: action a-z

Just as the sun enters frame, a solar storm of gigantic proportion unfolds. The eruptions shoot thousands of miles into the blackness of space. Fade to black. He walks away. Fade to black. In the background, a series of explosions punch enormous holes into the side of the mountain, showering rock everywhere. Fade to black. The camera moves in on the face of the fake Mona Lisa until all we see is her mysterious smile. Fade to black. The distant bombing continues. Fade to black. Nico disappears into the darkness. Fade to black. The sounds of a dinner banquet. Forks clanking against plates and the din of a hundred conversations. Fade to black. The crew is unisex and all parts are interchangeable for men or women. Fade to black. The time portal reads "1999". Fade to black. The sun. Clouds roll by. The camel peers down at him. Fade to black. But the fireman's eyes never waver from Brian. They look into his with complete conviction, complete acceptance, And then they don't. Fade to black. And the fire engine slips away from us, down the avenue, into the city. Fade to black. Three costumed avengers race into the night. Fade to black. Now there are two guardians of the night: Batman and Robin. Fade to black. Kobo towers imperiously above Nick. Their eyes lock. Fade to black. Before Nick can finish his line, the door slams shut behind them. Fade to black. And on that note we leave them – two figures, silhouetted against the new day. Fade to black. In a near blur, Blade draws his new sword from his back scabbard and stabs it right into camera, smashing apart the Plexiglas window. Fade to black. Milo gags Rudolph and drags him into the station. Fade to black. They shake hands and walk on. Fade to black. He laughs to himself. Fade to black. Through the roar of the waves, we hear a baby cry. Fade to black. He splits, leaving Kaylo with the body, the hand, etc. Kaylo looks around, tosses the hand, and bolts off in the other direction. Fade to black. Chev meets Eve's eyes, shakes his head: unbelievable. Fade to black. The zigzag pattern, the mortified flesh held in Alex's hand like the trophy it is. Fade to black. Push in on the crow. Watching. Waiting. Fade to black. The ferry, churning into the sunset. Fade to black. He sits in the chair by the window, waiting. Fade to black. Her jaw drops. Her eyes roll up into her head and she faints. Fade to black. Cut to quiet black - dissolve again to blue - another drop - low thud – quietness. Fade to black.

But as the crowd parts. We can make out one lone man. Staring after. What has gone. Fade to black. Jack tumbles horribly down— hits bottom, striking his head on the floor. Jack passes out. Fade to black. Each frame is an imploding building - then, one frame is a penis. Then, the imploding building again. speed up the frames, lose the sprocket holes, resume normal speed. Fade to black. The guards have a good laugh. Kable is clubbed from behind. Fade to black. Distinctive prisoner - hands cuffed behind his back, makes eye contact with Kable as he walks by. Fade to black. Castle closes the window in his fist. Fade to black. George lifts an oxygen mask to his face and breathes deep— he goes limp in his chair - eyes rolled up in his head, head cocked back to face the ceiling— bathed in sweat— the mask falls away. Fade to black. Gina pales. He's not lying. Fade to black. Simon slumps against the wall, defeated. Fade to black. An angry Ray Bones sits back. Fade to black. And the camera follows, moving into the water to reveal that, beneath the surface, there is no ship at all, only the vast empty depths of the ocean. Fade to black. Leaving our crew to stare after him. Fade to black. Silence again. Emptiness. All that remains of Starkweather is a wending bloodsmear on the floor. Fade to black. The glass webbing, bursting open from within, the facade exploding in a glittering shower of shards. Fade to black. The helicopter continues its circular pattern as the song continues. Fade to black. The sequence ends with the Bride arriving at Bill's home. Fade to black. She walks out of the shot. Fade to black. her white hand with her long fingers comes into frame and removes the beautiful, artful instrument of vengeance. Fade to black. A black felt pen comes into frame and draws a line through the name. Fade to black. She passes out. Fade to black. When he's confident her fall was fatal, he leaves the ledge. Fade to black. This is the face of satisfaction. Fade to black. Denham turns and slowly walks away from camera. Fade to black. He is Katsumoto. We will come to know him later. Fade to black. Algren collapses. Fade to black. The planet's core explodes as the Jupiter Two vanishes into hyperspace, a sudden star and then gone. Fade to black. As Creasy departs. Fade to black. Neo passes out. Fade to black. And she kisses him; it seems like it might last forever. Fade to black. Camera tilts down to a close-up of a thin stream of blood crawling across the floor. Fade to black. The sound of the wind. Fade to black.

Shane peers in confusion, then passes out. Fade to black. Milky white image that opened the film. Fade to black. Camera pulls back and up, rising high above their heads as the liquid vertical walls continue to hammer the Australian shore. Fade to black. He brings his hands to his lips and blows her a kiss. Then exits frame leaving it empty. We hear his Malibu start up and drive away. Fade to black. Klondike closes the door behind him, leaving us in the quiet, empty locker room. Fade to black. She exits frame, going back in the bathroom. We stay on the wide shot of the unconscious Butch in bed. Fade to black. And with that, the two lovebirds peel away on Grace, as the song on the boom box rises. Fade to black. Drak's clenched fist, clad in chain mail, drives straight at Will's jaw. Fade to black. The Swede has arrived. Fade to black. Jack is knocked fifteen feet into the back wall. He lies still. Fade to black. As Picard and Ruby walk towards the city hand-in-hand. Fade to black. The crippled ship turns and heads away. Fade to black. The two men dematerialize. Fade to black. As ball bearings roll back into the street. Fade to black. She smokes, letting it all sink in. She puts out her cigarette. They just stare at each other. She smiles. Fade to black. She hands him the bottle of expensive wine she's been drinking, and then grabbing Stan by the belt-buckle, pulls him casually behind her toward the pool house. Fade to black. They look at each other. Stanley turns toward the computer screens. Fade to black. As he looks out the window toward LA and pulls out Roberts' card. Fade to black. We crane up and away as the vehicle pulls out of the desert truck stop and drives off down the road. Fade to black. Louise throws the map across the front seat at Thelma and floors it. Fade to black. Hold on these two images as the music swells. Fade to black. Frank looks at her. Then relents, leaning his head back against the support and closing his eyes. Fade to black. Flynn and Ram sitting down inside the hiding place, collapsing. Ram is unconscious anyway, and Flynn's eyes soon closed. Fade to black. As we Hold on Vince's depressed face. Fade to black. The sound of police sirens get louder. Fade to black. The Pharmacist rears back. And wham! Whammm! Wham! Keeps hitting him over and over again until Wesley's eyes roll to the back of his head. Fade to black. Screenshot of a germ in a water droplet on a bud on a tree. Fade to black. He walks away and a smile creeps across Marie's face. Fade to black. And he's left alone with the shattered remains of the video camera, and a whole shit load of work ahead. Fade to black. The archer dips his spear in a bowl of purple liquid. Fade to black. Soldiers hold him down while a black hood is pulled over his head. Fade to black.

Claire Dougherty

2011-08-08T15:26:00.005-03:00

Claire Dougherty is an undergraduate student studying anthropology at Wesleyan University. She currently lives in upper Bucks County, PA.

Poetics

I am collecting. I recently shaved my head and have the hair in a jar on my kitchen table. I am trying to make sense of these archives…I have no idea what I am writing about.

Affinities

Elizabeth Willis, Betsy Sallee, Erik Anderson, Bhanu Kapil, Carlos Soto Roman, Aisha Sasha John.

Poems by Claire Dougherty

I think you probably always wanted to go that way, grinning in some jittery new high

I asked you how you were and you said high voltage, been licking batteries just to test them. I should have known, you were dancing like Britney Spears to the static on the radio and kept showing me the bracelet where you said you hid your natural glycerin. I told you glycerin is soap and you said let’s take a bath. But the bathtub was full of under ripe persimmons, and when you stepped in anyway your feet absorbed their bitterness in the warm water. With all that high voltage in your brain and bitterness in your feet, you were dancing faster and faster and faster and

In the Atlanta Airport, there is a woman with a crow on her shoulder

Looking like the sound of birds from a house with tinfoil in its windows, a house I saw on Dateline where a husband kept his wife prisoner. Inside that house are not birds, are tapes of calls; she is watching the Discovery Channel because within the tinfoil he gives her cable. The crow is inside her shoulder. She does not know this, she is potty trained she never has to clean their cage. The crow escapes bloody and shits on the front lawn. He and all the Discovered birds make their way home inside her bones outside the house. It was all on the television or in the terminal I’m not sure which. I don’t know why we’re in Atlanta.

You puked in my sink and I let it dry just to have you

Yarn held your wrists together that night. Your puke in my sink, and you just outside. I’m sitting in the library thinking about your wrists, how much I hate wrists. Just thinking about you, my veins rust shut. I am cocooned by the book air, by the smell from the sink I’ve made your stomach. I’ve knit your stomach still. Despite all of this the vomit in my sink is also rusting. Knitting is just weak knots made with sticks.

On a walk through winter, I don’t think of you

Snow makes bare land look like river, carved canyon holding still to muddy waters. On its walls are chiseled namesakes: matt’s penis. I can feel bruises red like salmon, but blackening fast in the shock of the cold. They thrash upstream.

Snow calcifies the world’s organs. Snow makes me think of calcium, of that time on my roof when I gave you head and we had to hang onto the gutter as we climbed back through the window. Powdered ice like calcium dissolved under the heat of your balls, and my bed was cold too but the sheets absorbed us before you left dry and clean.

(Sinking.)

I could stack three of me here, match my body with my own. And none of us would see anything within these canyon walls but each other. The voices of people at a distance make me think I am going crazy. Once, I saw a shadow where there was none. It wasn’t even snowing then.

Just kids

Chugging milk up nostrils, it’s soothing they’re full and walk on poles. Semen could also chug up nostrils if there was semen in milk, like that Amazonian fish that swims up urine into urine opening. Or so I would imagine.

When you (they the kids your knees) walk through the doorway I watch as though wagon thinking unsuspicious rackets into town. You’re like the Amish like that. Two sloshy knees, sludge-pots for eyes. I’m sold, or really it’s morning and I’m feeling quite colic. So I’d rather just lie here and wail.

I met this woman in a dog training class with a string-tied prosthetic. She was a nationwide walker, something American. Had gallstones for knees. I’m just wondering if you’d make it to my bed from there, all this semen excreting your legs.

The Club’s Name Was Climax

We were driving to the world’s only drive-thru strip club, which happened to be closed, and I was so angry my own bone marrow was in my eyes.

Well, the clouds really were beautiful, and I still haven’t forgiven you for that.

Jordan Lee Schnee

2011-07-28T17:34:00.005-03:00

Jordan Lee Schnee woke up on the wrong side of the bed. A breakfast of shredded words along with a liter or so of yerba mate set him right. His poetry has appeared in The Red Wheelbarrow, and Lumina. He received the “New Voice” distinction in the Fall 2010 issue of Chautauqua. Jordan Lee hails from Buenos Aires, Argentina. He cobbles together a living writing canned songs for elevators and funeral homes. His music can be found here: jordan-lee.bandcamp.com. His visual art can be found here: digitaljordanlee.blogspot.com His poetry can be found below!

Poetics

Poetry is humanity’s machine.

Poetry is a machine built to destroy.

Border destruction, melting the barriers between:

-language and thought

-image and language

-language and language

-signifier and signified

and at it’s best, the cage around thought.

Affinities

My poet friends/teachers/peers/editors/elders Barbara Helfgott Hyett, Clara Silverstein, Josh Cabrido, Mara Driscoll, and Lila Zamborian. Latin American writers who have the marrow to say “fuck you” to Cervantes especially Washington Cucurto and Nicanor Parra. The band the Mountain Goats who’s lyrics have all the right stuff.

Poems by Jordan Lee Schnee

East Village Cheese Shop

Soft and furrowed,

ripe and rinded.

In the shop below my lover’s

window. The cheeses gleamt:

leadlike hunks,

marbled/mouldy.

I met her secret.

I made her crumble.

Now she’s flown, maturing

in exotic vats,

getting that foreign hue.

Exported:

fancy

as Wensleydale as Red

Leicester.

And in new cheeseshops

she’s laid out on tables

and the workers in white

are sawing her into fleshy blocks,

pricing her by the gramme,

elbowing scraps onto the

linoleum.

Found Machines

I. Found: Martha’s Vineyard Ferry

Bring distant points

of interest within close range

with the use of this

machine.

II. Found: New York City Psychology Laboratory

Shock electrode cleaning procedure:

Wipe of majority

of gel,

running

electrode surface along

Q-tip®

III. Found: Abandoned Cement Plant Hudson, NY

Operating instructions for TY-Rock Screens

“Spouts & Hoppers”

In the erection

of feeders, feed

chutes, fines hoppers and discharge

chutes, proper room must be left for the movement

of the screen

body. The body

must not under any circumstances touch

any stationary object. The feed

chute should be approximately 6" narrower than the inside

dimension (between side plates) and as close

to the screen cloth or feed plate as possible without interfering

with the operation of

the machine.

The vibrating body is engineered

for correct weight

distribution and carefully

balanced before leaving

the factory. It is therefore important

that no chutes, spouts, hoppers, or

other objects

be attached

to the vibrating body.

For any addition that might

be necessary, the problem should be submitted to our

engineering department

for careful calculation

as to practicability and safety

before a change is made.

IV.

Found: Book of the Dead Translations on Exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum

lord of red blood

I have brought the Backbone

I have Spit upon his wounds

for him this god who seizes Souls

who Licks up corruption in the bitter lakes

I do not eat the cakes

given I Swallow

down Truth

I have seen the Splitting

of the Išd tree

the one who knows the matters

of their Bellies

Lobo Marino

Watery wolf I could catch fists

of your fury as we pound

down pavement channels.

The pneumatic gasp

of the doors; the brakes.

A calf’s blood paints the walls

shimmering letters accusative &

oily. Children riot the long-

since jammed carousel

mount the canine-mouthed horses.

Trying to go back in time?

Janna Plant

2011-07-16T11:26:00.020-03:00

Janna Plant: Poet. Essayist. Photographer. Animal.

Edits submissions for Tarpaulin Sky. Recent book is The Refinery (Blazevox).

Born in Santa Monica, raised in El Segundo, educated on Oahu, Plant is an MFA graduate from the Kerouac School.

Poetics

Interested in deep play, the limits of language's capability, and the aesth/ethics of conceptual art/writing. Also very interested in texts that simultaneously explore and perform their subject.

Affinities

Susan Schultz, Vanessa Place, Bhanu Kapil, Brenda Iijima, CA Conrad, Kathy Acker, Matias Viegener, Laura Mullen, Kass Fleisher, Michelle Naka Pierce, Eileen Myles, Richard Froude, Sara Veglahn, Gregory Howard, Thalia Field, David Buuck, Jonathan Skinner, Jack Collom, Bobbie Louise Hawkins, Bill Lluoma, Renee Gladman, Kate Durbin, Ariella Ruth, Dorothea Lasky, the list continues…

Poems by Janna Plant

(Previously appeared in Tinfish, Bombay Gin)

The Course of the Blood in the West

From what has been said it is clear that the movement of the blood is a circulation. Starting from any one chamber of the heart, it will in time return to it, but to do this it must pass through at least two sets of capillaries; if not two sets of states, as in the Eastern shore and the Midwestern plain. One set of these is connected with the aorta, and the other with the pulmonary artery, and in its circuit the blood returns to the heart twice. Leaving the left side it returns to the right, and leaving the right it returns to the left; and there is no road for it from one side of the heart to the other except through a capillary network. There is no road for Lauren. Connecticut flatline=doom. Never home. Never home. Moreover, a hitchhiker wears her heart on her sleeve. It always leaves from a ventricle through an artery, and returns to an auricle through a vein.

In what direction do the valves of the veins allow the blood to pass? Make a sentence illustrating the action of the valves. In what veins are the sentences most numerous? Why does a vein with many valves appear knotted? Valves appear knotted in the West. The blue lines contract and expand, snaking like earthworms. How may we see the dilatations of the veins opposite the valves? Where are the valves of the veins most frequently placed? Inside the body, for best effect. Or, is a sentence a vein? Is it a capillary?

If we followed the blood course steadily from one chamber of the heart, what would we find in time? Sadness. The lazy river of California, Arizona, Colorado. Through what must blood pass before returning to the chamber of the heart that it leaves? Honolulu, Hawaii.

There is then really only one circulation, but it is not uncommon to speak of two, or three, or four, even five—the flow from the left side of the heart to the right through most of the body being called the systemic or greater circulation (Diaspora), and from the right to the left through the lungs the pulmonary or lesser circulation (just “on holiday”). But since, after completing either of these alone, the blood is not again at the point from which it started (Odysseus the changed man after the journey, Ithaca and Penelope never quite enough) but is separated (out on its journey) from it by the septum of the heart, neither of these is a circulation in the proper (petticoat and pigtails) sense of the word, for a circulation implies that any object at the end of its course, is again exactly where it was at the commencement (congratulations). Cue the music.

Language is a Living and Dying Organism

“You are here,” “making selves,” “edited by” “not even past” “histories,” “conjunctions.” “Meow,” “Meow,” “Meow.” “Don’t Fuck Where You Write,” “published by Bard College.” “Seminal” “semen.” “Glug, glug,” ______“engorge” ___________. “Twinkle, twinkle, little” “spot.” “How I wonder when you’ll.”

And

“repurpose tools,” “reintegrate present into past.”

“Clinamen,” “clitoris,” “cunnilingus,” “break the code:” “right round, Baby, right round.” “Sacred geometry.” “He shoots from the hip,” “has more plasma at the poles.”

“Now entering:” “fender bender”-“penetration.” “More between the psychic and the material.” “Maslow’s plateau” “tuh-tuh-tuh-tuh-tuh-theory, unfinished.” “Feathered serpent,” “born of ruptured amniotic sac” “leaking black.”

“Learn new organs”

“Crisis=opportunity” for the “contemporary tribe”

La La La lickin’ your lollipop, and “the ice cream truck comes twice.”

“Infrastructure” “rupture:” “study the stem.”

“Metaphor itself is a paradox.”

“An animal human,” “a human animal:” See see See see See see See see.

See reciprocity. “Why the fuck not, you Monkey?”

“Perverted tourist” says, “I’m not Earth.”

“So, will you compost?”

“Rupture the logic,” “sexy agent of provocation,” using “generative language,”

“and sex is fun.” “Poets need to live where dogs die.” “That’s the place.”

“Dear Dog, I listen while you rattle.”

“Don’t die of the human,” “the carcinogenic” “paradox of persona.”

Riding the “eternity saddle” through apocalypse mist and Pepsi tickles.

“It’s America’s duty to destroy” “freedom from private property,” and “freedom from religion.” “It’s America’s duty” to agree that, “a black hoodie is the most important thing in the entire world.”

“Keep within the daily animal nature” of cave, of oil blanket. “Let each word have its prong:”

“The war in the Gulf.”

“Which Gulf?”

“I did my best to put it in language.”

“Two knowledge systems coming together,” “a synchronized” “orgasm”

“of being and doing.”

“Don’t fear the animal.”

“Don’t fear the reaper,” “Bhagavad-Gita.”

“The lake spewed from my mouth.” “Moist.” “Panties.” “Not together.”

“Please,” “a condensation of musicality:” “Wet panties.”

“Stop pointing at me when you say ‘Crazy.’”

“I use the term ‘writer’ more as a symbol.”

“Well personally, I like physical acts.”

“I bet.” “Always about the money, isn’t it?”

“Just ride” “the sentence.” “Slinky, slinky.” “Centerfold shot,” “sticky goo.”

“Meaning: Business.”

“Riders on the sentence:” “Into this house we’re born; into this world we’re—”

“Adjective. Noun. Adjective. Noun.” “Language is always abbreviation.”

“Long live the phoneme!” “Let it decay!” “Phone me.” “That’s a start!”

“If art comes out of political context”—Woolf! Woolf! Woolf!—“doesn’t political context come out of art?” Lick the rupture. It’s bleeding clean out.

“Sorry I ruined your orgy,” “forgot my mirror neurons.”

“Don’t leave home without”

“a withered body like a question mark.”

Translating Magritte (from Key of Dreams)

Juliana Spahr

2011-06-03T00:56:00.007-03:00

Photo by Tom Orange

Juliana Spahr edits with Jena Osman the book series Chain Links. She recently edited with Stephanie Young A Megaphone: Some Enactments, Some Numbers, and Some Essays about the Continued Usefulness of Crotchless-pants-and-a-machine-gun Feminism (Chain Links, 2011). She also edited with Joan Retallack Poetry and Pedagogy: the Challenge of the Contemporary (New York: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2006) and with Claudia Rankine American Women Poets in the Twenty-first Century (Wesleyan U P, 2002). She is writing with David Buuck, An Army of Lovers, a book about two friends who are writers in a time of war and ecological collapse. And she with Joshua Clover organized the 95 cent Skool, a week long something or other, last summer and is currently organizing the Durruti Free Skool for this summer. Recent books include Well Then There Now (Black Sparrow, 2011) and The Transformation (Atelos, 2007).

Poetix

I am reading.

Affinities

Aaron Vidaver, Bill Luoma, Brian Whitener, Claudia Rankine, Heriberto Yepez, James Thomas Stevens, Jen Hofer, Jena Osman, Jennifer Moxley, Joan Retallack, Joshua Clover, Jules Boykoff, Mark McMorris, Mark Nowak, Mette Moestrup, Pamela Lu, Renee Gladman, Stephanie Young, Susan Schultz.

Poem by Juliana Spahr

What does it mean to be living adjacent to others in this place, in this time? To begin to think about this question, we might begin by pondering the example of David Buuck, a human who currently lives in a nation of great privilege.

Let me begin by briefly telling a version of the story of David Buuck. David Buuck (rhymes with “kook”) was born in 1969 into a Midwestern Protestant family who resided in the middle of the Canadian shield, a part of the North American craton. He was the first of three to arrive. As a child, he won awards for his mathematical prowess. He became a skilled musician. He schooled himself in world politics and developed a particular interest in Africa. He sought assistance in his education by enrolling in various institutions such as Brown University and then again at San Francisco State University and then again at the University of California at Santa Cruz. He learned through observation and synthesis and resistance, through stroking things and then noticing the tapping, the vibrations, the pressures, the pain, the heat, and the cold, through licking so as to stimulate certain nerve endings on his tongue, through sucking in air over the bony ridges of his turbinates, through letting light pass through his cornea, through letting sound waves hit his eardrum.

But really, when it came down to it, David Buuck educated himself the way that many do, through conversation with other humans, both those face to face or email or phone moments that humans tend to have with their friends and others that are somewhat like them and tend to live within a thirty mile radius and through reading the writing of other humans, writing that David Buuck tended to learn about in those conversations with other humans and writing that he learned about from various other written sources that display information for those who go looking for it, such as blogs and websites and newspapers and newsletters, through attending movies that played within a 15 mile radius of his house, through going for long walks within a thirty mile radius of his house and noticing things on these walks, things about plants and about streets and about the economic disparities between various sorts of peoples.

There are many things that one can say about David Buuck and I will take this time to say some of them. When he danced as a child, he danced in a group but he distinguished himself by gyrating his right foot up and down and around and at the same time raising his hands in the air over his head, his head bent back, shaking back and forth, a model of abandonment. He does not eat much breakfast, frequently eating his first meal, often toast with a jam made of locally grown fruits, at 1 or 2. He has deep emotions that he keeps in his eyes and sometimes these emotions leak out and project kindness and generosity and this might cause someone near him at those moments to say, oh how I love this guy, more than anger and jealousy, although he has those other emotions also. Many years ago, he went to many a sleepover where everyone had their own sleeping bags and they all piled them on top of one another in a sort of slippery, static-y sleeping bag bacchanal, sweating, screaming, writhing and this moment felt so good to him, oh how happy he felt at this moment, and he has never been able to recapture this feeling of contained and warm and slippery thrashing with and near others and some more schooled in the psychoanalytic arts might begin their analysis of David Buuck’s sexualized relations with other humans with this feeling of loss. He has two dogs and they sleep in his bed, one of them resting a head upon his chest, at moments one or the other of any of them sighing heavily with contentment in the night. He has various utopian thoughts and a tendency to make elaborate plans that are both smart and somewhat unrealizable although sometimes, against all odds, he manages to realize a version of them and so one can at moments sometimes run into him in some parking lot or other walking backwards lecturing to a small group of people that he has somehow managed to convince to show up for a tour of some site of toxicity or other. He is a citizen of a nation more than he is a citizen of the world but like all citizens of nations, he did not choose the nation that claims him and he is a citizen of what is often a particularly bad nation that tends to bomb other nations or set up unfair financial agreements with other nations and the feelings that he has about the things this nation that claims him does often cause him to feel as if his insides are empty and yet filled with the unease and discomfort in the stomach that comes with an urge to vomit. He is overeducated and underemployed. He knows how to play “Every Woman in the World” on the piano and he is a willing piano player for sing alongs at many a party and if there is no party, he will play for his two dogs and they will howl along. He lives in a small house in north Oakland that is decorated in a sort of messy modernist style that says bachelor but not all the time, leather couch, bent plywood chair, local art, vaguely suggestive of lifestyles, on the walls, one a painting of a rabbit man holding his own fairly large penis, another of a worm whipping a boar. He often rubs one of the dog’s ears between his thumb and forefinger, saying so soft, so soft to himself as he does this. He frequently uses a tone that shows his contempt with derision when he talks about himself and his identity which he describes as white and privileged. As a child he rolled silicon models of testicles across the floor as much as he played with trucks. He reads the news regularly and the news often causes that same feeling of how his insides are empty and yet filled with the unease and discomfort in the stomach that comes with an urge to vomit. He tends to stay up late. His father was a small businessman with an interest in pelvic health that lead him to develop numerous devices, among them an artificial sphincter and two cylinders that replaced the corpora cavernosa and could be filled by hand in order to produce an erection. His high school band played “Behind Blue Eyes” at the Battle of the Bands and one of the women who attended this performance still remembers the intensity of her desire, her shivers, to give him a blanket, her blanket. His lifestyle is supported by 19.5 global acres of the Earth’s productive area. His mother was a teacher at the time of his birth but she left this job shortly after David Buuck arrived so she could devote herself to wiping his brow with a cool, moist cloth when he got his early fevers, to helping him up as he fell again and again as he learned to walk, to washing his clothes and vacuuming his room, to holding his hand as he crossed the street. His needs are modest, limited mainly to soaps scented with the gently uplifting yet cool and comforting smell of cucumber and alcohols with above average peat content and their distinctive "salty" (or "spicy") characters.

But all of this information may or may not help us understand what it means to be adjacent to others in this contemporary moment. And like all of us, David Buuck is adjacent to so many. He is adjacent to all those who live on McCall Street or on any of the streets nearby, 59th or 60th Street, Dove Street, or Whitney Street, those who are mainly female, who are mainly in the age group of 25-44, who are mainly black, and who are mainly in the category called “non-family.” And he is adjacent to those who live in the city of Oakland. And also adjacent to those who live in the cities that neighbor Oakland such as Hayward, Berkeley, and San Francisco. And then adjacent to those who reside in the state of California. And then adjacent to those states that border California such as Arizona, Nevada, and Oregon. And then he is adjacent to all those who live in what we now call the United States of America, a relatively new nation, one of great privilege, one where each of its citizens tend to use up 7.83 metric tons of oil equivalent per year. And then adjacent to those nations that border the region we now call the United States of America, those nations that we now call Canada where each of its citizens tend to use up 7.18 metric tons of oil equivalent per year and also Mexico where each of its citizens tend to use up 1.5 metric tons of oil equivalent per year. And then he is adjacent to the Pacific Ocean. And then he is adjacent to the Southern Ocean also. And then adjacent to the Atlantic Ocean. And then adjacent to the Arctic and the Indian Oceans. In this way, David Buuck is adjacent to all the humans that we know exist, even those circling slowly in some space station somewhere because the earth is of course adjacent to outer space. And what this means remains a question that David Buuck has trouble figuring out but a question that he at least is smart enough to ask.

Like all of us, the manner in which David Buuck treats those who are adjacent to him and those to whom he is adjacent is highly variable. Some he avoids when he sees them leaning up against a bar somewhere, feelings of guilt lurking. Some he bombs. Some he buys various small plastic items from and then he throws these plastic items into plastic bags and acts as if they are gone, all the while suspecting that a huge number of them are circling in the North Pacific Gyre. Some he does not. Some he feels empathy with. Some he hugs with his full body. Some he hugs with just his chest. Some he hugs. Some he immobilizes on their back with their head inclined downward as he pours water over their face and into their breathing passages. Some he lets sleep over in his house. Some he never thinks about. Some he presses his body up against. Some he reads about in the paper. Some he sells things to. Some he studies, reading book after book. Some he walks away from on all fours, two feet moving at the same time. Some he walks towards. Some he walks with. Some he washes with clear, very warm water. Some in his bed, some on a futon in the garage. Some when he meets them he holds out his right hand and grabs their right hand and then shakes it up and down. With some he is aggressive and anxious to tease. With some he plays host to a conjugative or mobilizable genetic element, most often a conjugative or mobilizable plasmid or transposon. With some he plays the role played by the male in closely related species and mounts the female that is about to lay eggs. With some he stands alongside or in front, reaching across to tease. With some he uses his right hand to stimulate additional urethral pulsations. With some he walks forward and with some he continues to stand. And as he does all this at moments he thinks about this adjacency and at other moments he does not, still no matter what he thinks about consciously he is still always forcing the words together to produce, lying close and contiguous, so near as to be touching.

But this does not let Buuck off from considering what it means to be so near as to be almost touching so many. And this constant proximity to so many leaves him in a state of constant shivering anxiety. And this shaking, this vibrating slightly and irregularly is his life work.

Barbara Henning

2011-04-30T12:17:00.005-03:00

Photo by Michah Saperstein

Barbara Henning is the author of three novels, seven books of poetry and a series of photo-poem pamphlets. Her most recent books are a collection of poetry and prose, Cities & Memory (Chax Press 2010); a novel, Thirty Miles from Rosebud (BlazeVox 2009); a book of interviews, Looking Up Harryette Mullen (Bellandonna 2011) and a collection of object-sonnets, My Autobiography (United Artists 2007). She teaches for Long Island University and for Naropa University.

Poetics

My poetic practice has shifted over the years and I'm hoping it will continue to shift. Right now I'm very interested in how poetry can interrupt and intensify prose narratives, using rhythm, repetition, collage, space and floating words. I like collecting, experimenting, re-assembling material, into prose, into lines, lyrical, not-so lyrical, political, personal, expanding on the extra-ordinary ordinary, trying to get to some kind of truth, to rethink what comes too easily, to bring what is far away close up, all the while recognizing our interrelatedness, and the power of word sound to reveal and transform.

Affinities

Kristin Prevellet, Bill Kushner, Lewis Warsh, Joanne Wasserman, Bernadette Mayer, Anne Waldman, Martine Bellen, Kim Lyons, Julie Patton, Harryette Mullen, Rachel Levitsky, Tenny Nathanson, Maureen Owen, Laynie Brown, Charles Alexander and so many other poets who are already in the Elective Affinities web.

Poems by Barbara Henning

(previously published in Cities & Memory, House Organ, Lungfull! and Jacket Magazine)

From TWIRLING, THE SPIRIT FLIES OFF LIKE A FALCON

Fragile Desert Crust

A fat pigeon puffs up his neck and chases a little dove away from the pan of water. Then he sits on the fence looking away. As she approaches, he swoops down, running and pecking at her back. Away and up and then back again, two together. In Iraq an American soldier studies wood pigeons and F-16s and writes a blog about bird watching. At the top of the telephone pole, a falcon holds a little sparrow and pecks away, pulling out its feathers and tossing them to the side, digging into its breast. Sometimes birds migrate over war zones and the fragile desert crust without casualty      oil spills           fires      toxic leaks shrapnel embedded in a child's eye. Unlocking the little brown cry of the bird. Away we bike, up, into and coasting along, the sun blazing mid sky, a fighter plane passing overhead, the sound of a train's whistle. And then the light changes, pink and cloudy, monsoon coming and going      solitary      shake      nighttime      wind      loud and clear

The Spirit Flies Off

A bird is knocking around in the palm tree out front, maybe building a nest. Sudden wind      trees blowing almost to the ground      raindrops      black sky. The Afghan country roads are lined with red poppies in full bloom. The dervishes in Bazra twirl, their long black hair unwinding. Whose wind      rolls over      beside me. In the corner of my bedroom a fly has a lease on coolness—he's coping, catching it dead. Staple a screen over the bathroom window and still one fly, two mosquitoes and one moth make their way into the house. A black fly aims for my ankle like a hypodermic torpedo. A big black beetle inside the corner of the window. I flick the screen with my finger and he rolls over on his back. When I look away, he's gone      into the cavity      the crack of night Red tulips drooping in a vase. An Afghan farmer can make $10,000 for a few kilos, an enormous amount of postcards. I never felt right with out it, Allen said when he was dying. At night a big palo verde beetle levitates over my bed like a helicopter and then he drops right beside me. I leap up and run into the kitchen to find a plastic container to capture him, but now he's nowhere to be found.      Whose wind      rolls over      beside me      twirling      the spirit flies off like a falcon, like a poppy, like a little rock wedged under my hip late at night—the beetle, definitely distraught and dead. Then into the toilet and he starts swimming.

Organ Light

I am thinner in the morning than at night. Organs don't work as well as you grow older. Still I am surprised on this sitting whipping overcast morning. The sky is grey, monsoon going on longer than usual. At night the branches are bending to the ground and a river of water appears in front of the house. Buddhism spread eastward from Afghanistan to China and eventually to Japan. Organ light into the crack of night. The sun comes out. When you are walking along the Tigris, you can see the mosques, the trees and hear the birds talking. I'm sitting on the porch in Tucson holding a clay head Allen made when he was ill. The clay is cracking and rolls of hair are breaking off. Lizards look for cool places in the cracks in the house. I run my finger down his nose into the cavity of his mouth. My neighbor comes out of his house with a plank of wood. He looks at me, I'm sorry Barbara but I need to cut this. The cavity in the sky. And then the saw starts buzzing and I think of Charles Olson as he was leaving Gloucester. Don't look back. Go forward. Early      break      lodge.      Cut      porch      sick      comes night. Afghanistan's dream of reaching the Cricket World Cup is still alive. I kneel and dig a hole and bury Allen under the orange tree.