Counterexample Poetics: Assemblage of Experimental Artistry

2025-04-21T20:30:00.000-07:00

2012-01-21T09:37:00.001-08:00

Reviewof Petra Whiteley’s chapbook ‘The Liquid Metropolis’ by Dom Gabrielli

Petra Whiteley'sdefiant latest tome, The Liquid Metropolis, published by Erbacce Press, setsabout a ferocious dismantling of the persistently flourishing Social-Christiantenets. Frame by frame, poem by poem, stone by stone, look by look, in achallenging long-metrage between diary and diatribe, poetic epiphany andnovelistic dystopia, Whiteley walks the amazed reader through thepost-apocalypse metropolis of misguided affects. The gaze of leering masculineeagles, the seething anaesthetic of cowardly hatred, did not waylay her fromher task. No stone is left un-turned. This is a work of unabashed pride. Towalk with these words is to understand the meaning of standing out in the rain,resolutely outside, where the rains do not feel the same, where somethingripped from ugly becomes beautiful. From within the tree, poetry never abandonsthe reader throughout a thrilling conversation with the myths of cherishedlies. Poetry emerges victorious as mind and body, as the seconds which exceedTime, as the bare statement which kicks and shouts as it is, in silence, as thenothing that lived and breathed, even these words, even the sun, even its fire,even the unattainable, which crawls 'as a syllable on a promised tongue/forever no/thing.'

I imagine thisenterprise was not without risks and that therefore first it is our role asreaders to salute the bravery of this author, who has paid no heed to fashionnor to commodity, but to has listened to her deepest sentiment and revealedwith such harsh and beautiful invective, the bare bones of the post-capitalistpredicament. 'The clock hands/ of my practical suicide turn/the lightbackwards, no outer/limits…' Since Artaud, the necessity to un-live andun-think the colonial powers of Christian absurdities has been paramount. Herethe manual to exist outside continues, in the rain and without lying. '(God's)endless fingers of words claw suicide/into the everyday smell of my flesh andits throbbing/is the only life left.' Or better still:

'I was there, playingdead for them, the oak of silence growing
into my lungs. Wasnoise a bruise that spread whitely into me?
Yes. In that poisonedroom within the tree, I left traces of death,

lived backwards, theslow drip of birthday butchery.

So long to languageand its pain!

Breathe to break thehush of words into music,
unconstrained andunshattering.'.

Hope is for themisguided but love entertains the brave, a love you build between the slow suicidesof souls whose de-mystified sexualities can start to sing a song of muscle andbeauteous, poetic bone. Disillusions many ripped from the misfortunes ofprevious identities can be stripped in a kind of ritual post-mortem of mannersand realities. Can one say, following such adventurers in the domains of theSpirit such as Artaud that another body is possible:

'I wanted you towatch
Me die, to watch thetrees growing from my hands
Into the stark digitsof night and be the monument
Of my liquid sex. To
Witness the opiateorgasms
In my resurrection.'

What for conveniencesake we still call man or woman suffers here a keen and rigorous un-thinking.'I am the void, the pain and the whiskey lie, a sucked bone, a flute,/and asI,/you will/(desc)end softly as a barren rattle sound.' The Liquid Metropolisis a book-machine in the great tradition of radical thinking, a book for newlover-thinkers, into the hope-less beyond of the naked end of the world. Forthose who, dare I say, have never bent their knees to kneel nor sheltered theireyes from the glaring truth of society's founding lies. This is a resistancesong, a remarkable bottle hurled into the ocean of nought. To collect itsmessages is to accept that a book requires the reader to work, to pause formoments to collect one's whole intellectual history, to agree to be challenged,to be hurt, to be attacked by the anger of the author, to travel with her tothe trees and the colours which sing on the other side: 'our laughter will echolike hard rain when we finally slip away.'

We have becomeaccustomed to Whiteley's unstinting intellectual rigour, to the beauty of manyof her poems, but never has her true instinct been able to express itself withsuch uncompromising clarity and fire. The Liquid Metropolis is what the burninglibraries of 2012 will need, an at times brutal poetic pamphlet whose languageprepares the audacious for the trees which will grow from their hands, for anew laughter for the living who do not wish to postpone their desires and abdicatetheir enjoyments. 'I dream of Thames at midnight, where at least a rabbit canchoose/ the softness of one's own never ever after and push hard towards/thedawn in the city.'

-------------------

Dom Gabrielli studied literature at Edinburghand New York Universities and prepared for his doctorate in Paris and New York.Gabrielli’s passion for French literature and thought led him to begin writing,translating, and teaching. He translated widely including published works byBataille, Leiris and Jabes. In the early 1990’s, he left the academic world totravel and devote himself to writing. He has published two books to date. TheEyes of a Man (2009), his first book of poetry, and The Parallel Body (2010),which earned considerable praise. Several new books are on their way. Gabriellihas also published several individual poems and interviews, notably at LeafGarden Press, The Poetry Bay, Vox Poetica and Real Stories Gallery.

2012-01-21T09:32:00.001-08:00

In/dem/ni/fy

Ev’ry

artist

work

Scaf-

fold

for

Dis-

cus-

sion

Absence, newly angled at disturbance

Full ofobscenities are these parks filled with children

You ask if Ispeak another language

Steam rises fromyour rice and there is mist

I am curiousabout your origins

But don’t wantto hear them

I don’t want tosee your photos either

Remember me,though: cursing every light

Amplified bywater, I am thirsty

)))((( *

For Hakuin

Gaze atsomething

)))((( *

See how youcannot

keep

attention

)))((( *

thought

Insubstantial

)))((( *

Love is solidimmovable silence

)))((( *

Bobbi Lurie is the author of three poetrycollections: Grief Suite, The Book I Never Read, and Letter from the Lawn. Herwork has appeared in numerous print and on-line journals, including NewAmerican Writing, E-Ratio, Big Bridge, Otoliths and The American Poetry Review.Dancing Girl Press will be publishing her chapbook, “to be let in the backporch,” in 2012.

2012-01-21T09:28:00.001-08:00

Meniere’s

The shell in my ear

the conch that sings distraction,

distrust

reminds me I don’t know what’s out there

where’s up, where’s down

only what’s thinking,

I’m thinking, that’s how I perceive,

apperceive that sinking

into language, truth, logic is best avoided

by climbing the tree

that sprouted in the corner of my mind

when I first believed.

PhillipBarron is author of The Outspokin' Cyclist and editor of the newjournal, OccuPoetry. A southerner— of the American South and South America — he stays in northern California,where he works in the digital humanities. He previously taught philosophy atthe Chapel Hill and Greensboro campuses of the University of North Carolina.

2012-01-21T09:22:00.000-08:00

www.leonardkogan.com

2012-01-21T09:16:00.001-08:00

Pluck you

You tutor yourselfin

confessionary logicof

St. Augustine

& revelation of

temptation w/

limitless promises of

comprehension

Here I am! Hear me

& hear yourself

You study nighttimelogic of

dreams where spirit navigatesw/

faith alone

Look here! I see best w/

eyes closed

You love accordingto

earthly logic ofarousal w/

beauty’s antennaconjuring yet more beauty

Suck this! My flavor is the flavor of

love

You are unsatisfiedw/

any spectrum of

choices that fallsshort of

all the colors

… w/

anything shy of

life’s full arc from

seed to

womb

& beyond

… w/

unequal openness

… w/

somethingthat’s just sort of

love

No February flowerare you w/

fear of

her own bloom

You unfurl yourvastness under

heaven above

& before

the level gaze of

a manwho sees you

I reach across

the garden gate topluck you

but you slap my hand

& tell me thatwasting time is a sin

Compost

I am the old revolutionary going town to

town @

night past dozing guards who pretend the sounds of

my flip-flops are simply the cheerful clucking of

chickens

last I find your bedroll

& lay beside you

& sew steamydreams of

radical visions that tap into

the rootof

your desire

Please hoose:

freedom from ___________

freedom to ___________

You awake

& together we steal away

& travel the landwrecking foundations

& pushing down walls

& crushing pipes

& gnawing wires

& ruining roads

& diverting power

& halting traffic

& blowing away entire ecosystems of well-tendedaccommodation

& bleached belief

the wake of

this tempest of

liberation the bodies of

occupiers

& martyrs

& lost loversalike

will merge w/

dead hope tofertilize the land for

generations tocome

Fickle

& freckled

Breathing

& dreaming

& always becoming human you upset my applecart

& out spill oranges under

o r

t a

i f

n a

n d

g o

i n

o a too-narrow bathtub where you

& I stand toe 2

toe/

chest2

breasts

Strokes of

mischief scrubbing/revealingwhat/who is to come

Pearlsome lovemate fresh

& pink

& new

I peel you back

& bury my smile

2012-01-21T09:12:00.001-08:00

Of Complications

When we pause for a picture there are multiple

takes.Her hand cups

intomy waist,

twitching

along my hip. It feels

most like clutching

forwhat can't be

reached, knucklebones jutting

out like broken

pylons. Her hair is cordgrass

quiveringin rip

-tides. I rest my palm

on her back and wish

hers could

hush

totouch the beauty, the arch

of vertebrae bent

over an age she drinks

like wine. I instead

brush circles there, hoping to create

calm

forher—for when the world

stood on her toes

to fall in step with the

dancing.

The photograph will be false. She will be

Parkinson's in my arms,

shriveling. The truth will be

hidden in digital pigments:

I am the one being embraced.

This hip has formed bone,

hashardened against years and lost

its soft

wobbles across the yard.

Sheis an old mother.

I am supposed to be,

now,

theneighbor's baby I used to be.

She holds me still,

still—

still.

ThreeConversations I've Actually Had

1. CONVERSATION WITH DISEASE

The idea is to dissect west intopeaks I can't see but know are there, into the vast altitudes until they gulpdown the last bit of gas I have. To uncoil into the truth.

Whatdoes the truth look like?

These walls are all psychologybooks. Bricked lists of questions with right answers. These walls have alwaysbeen here. He draws out of me like a siphon the coffin of moss he wants, thehalf-hearted lacerations, scabs and big secrets: the blue-green of dreams.

What does the truth look like?

Likereturning to the womb. Like red columbine rotting into the river from which it drinks.I am loosening from form.

2. CONVERSATION WITH HOPE

When

gravitysnaps

I will cut

loose like a thread,

tilted

out

of thecords of the earth.

When

gravitysnaps

I will loosen

out of my

self and be

wreaths of

mist into mist.

When

gravitysnaps

I will find

what I've

lost

in the

weight,somewhere,

somewhere

inthere where I know it to exist.

3. CONVERSATION WITH TRUTH

Iam gone west, I am the empty

tank,ponderosa seal peeling

backlike a broken ribcage. I climb

downinto the stone

throatof the waterfall. I am the hinge

betweenhorizon and sky. The air

isparticulate, sound

pouringagape into the crash

basin.I have rotted

tothis place, come to what I've imagined:

rockedge, vastness.

Therewill be an end, finally, to the gravity

inmy heels. An end on the underside

ofthe river. I lean into the mist—

asinto casket padding, as into a lover—

butfeel it keep me on the cliff, swelling

likeinhaling, untangling

me.I uncoil

intotruth: I am not where life

breaks.This is not where I fold

intothe earth. There is a bottom to everything.

This is where scars, becomingsmooth, sink.

Family Dream

We are three shades hip

-deep in azaleas, rhododendrons

lipped around pine forest like

kisses at the shift

of mountains. We shoulder the sun, rise with honey

-bees. We form the rim of heaven.

Father is three sizes smaller, wilted in what I wish

could go back and be just a dream. Tubes into holes,holes

where eyes have sunken back, unhinged

jaw frozen open like a gate. Blood

backs up in stale puddles behind his ribs.

Three decades before

we smoked and thought nothing

of it, pulled

triggers for quail, pushed our pulses

into our throats.

Here we carry fistfuls of bloodroot

blossoms—glue to hold

together the opening

folds of dream.

The stiff, cold steel warms against the breastbone,

grain in the stock mirroring the creases

and calluses—mountains, valleys in his palm.

Brother's thumb is on the trigger, the scythe blade.

I can feel the pillow case clinging to my cheeks,

tears

the adhesive to keep it

together. I can feel laughter

in the valley, dipping

our fingers into outer

space.

Smoke is the old language I identify.

My lungs have been described as raisins

unraveling into the half-breaths I stuff them with.

I have been fated to fill like the gaps in a dream:

only with things we think could have been.

Dream is healing: my brother’s chest

cavity still

closed, father’s arteries open

wide, my lungs at

capacity.

We smoke, pull

triggers for quail, laugh our

hearts out

of our chests. I bend

to a dandelion, uproot

the stemmed cloud and it scatters

white. We fade

into the halo of honeybees,

stroke sky with black fingertips.

P.J. Williamsteaches high school English in Apex, North Carolina. He hopes to pursue an MFAin the Fall of 2012. He hopes the world doesn't end in the midst of hisstudies.

2012-01-21T09:07:00.000-08:00

Sublivian Crockagators

with squinkulous winks to Lewis Carroll andJames Joyce

Subliviancrockagators spliverously purling

Aslishand aslash into the floaming pream,

Besmirchedand besnook with crustiferous knurling

Maliferouswhackers on scabulous skirling.

Pronunciapationawrack and awrecking

Cohortingand snorting my deathwording flaggers,

Theirhooksharp harpoonage and doomful deathclutchings

Splayedbestial blather tweenst pointiful taggers.

Methoughtwith methinker, “How toothsome and dapple!”

Whilepinkskinned and blushing myselfdom did paddle

Awayfrom those bumpassly gnashful reptilians,

“Thispream seems askliver, though frumptious and flapple.”

SoI froglegged my rumpass acrost and askunder

Withquickshoving waves of Neptunic Splunder

Butlike a turtle in glueygunk stuckered and muckered

Mydelicate pinkskin felt gashingly plundered.

Thefierce crockagators swaived lumptiously loppin’,

Whenhand over jowl I ran glop to the stoppom,

Mycrapulous flabules proved snackerly vista,

Andmy snufferly thumper thrummed “bunktummy-bunkem.”

Thenthe snidger-snadge sneer of my spoilyboned brother

Camethrashedly clear through my rumpled-up cover,

Behatedbeskated we'd slung and bumpchumpered,

Thoughmost of our fisticuffed bloodwagon lumpered.

Mydreamdreaded crocks croaked agog and vermoosened.

Besides,the crustiferous knurling was loosened.

Butlong by, our sniffley and quiffley big sister,

Subliviancrockagators n'ere splivered farsooken.

ThePainting

Thepainting’s deft brush strokes sculpt

Texturesof late-day gold on green panels

Twodimensions of a kaleidoscopic prism,

Afalse facade that takes me off this wood floor

Todrift from meaning and time and find

Anotherway to stand within my mortal frame.

Leavingthe fragmentation of my calamity

Ona music quieted by its waves of light,

Therendering of a simple yellow wall

Nestledamong the faceted cityscape

Drawsme out of my crowded seclusion,

Callsme from behind its pigmented surface,

Andlike the dimming of late orange sunlight

Deflectedfrom the roof-tips into the blue horizon,

Descendsinto a coal-grey sea of knowing fish

Toponder the coast and its lapping lover,

Thesublime light still fusing its children in glass—

Thepainting drinks the space inside my eyes,

Lightof unformed image not yet corrupted

Bythe gaunt and failing spinner of the known,

Andevaporates, as its empty stillness interrupts

Thisrelentless falling for just one more moment.

Threshold

Like two golden birds perched on theselfsame tree,

intimate friends, the ego and the self dwell in the samebody.

The former eats the sweet and sour fruits of the tree oflife,

while the latter looks on in detachment.

—TheUpanishads

Itbegins, tiny hot seed of the burgeoning flower,

Themorning glory of my hemorrhage blossoms like fingers

Peelingback layers of life's pain misperceived

Blanketingmy vision with stars, velvet black birth.

Inever thought it would feel like this,

Sittingin the back row at my own funeral gathering,

Myold friend Jim sputtering over imagined sharing,

Tellingmy story to these stiff, nodding heads.

"Andthen there was the time we drove around

Inmy father’s Chevy stealing flowers from gardens,” said Jim.

Wasn’the going to tell them about the darkness and disgrace

Weunearthed in the casket-plush interior of that big Caprice?

Orwhen we, with three friends and my birthday cake

Ateit all with our bare hands, gooey, chocolate-smudged, laughing

Likeour heads were on fire, until we cried in drunken reverie

Becausewe were each secretly lonely and afraid?

Andhow we talked about death’s big doorway, whether it would be

Blackness,or blinding light in the fast funnel of racing retreat,

Ortickly tendrils of miniature scampering naked angels?

Wouldhe tell them what we said about our dreams?

Thegolden bird that had been silent for a lifetime

Nowflutters forward to share the branch with the impostor.

Theypause on the threshold, one eye forward and one back,

Leavingthe branch, the two birds one.

Robert Parrott may have beenmistakenly transmuted into this culture. Placed on the wrong planet in error?Parked diagonally in a parallel universe? He is a Stranger in a Strange Land.Robert has dedicated his energies to collecting experiences beyond even hiswildest imaginings. Touched deeply by art of various genres, amazed constantlyby the creative spark, daily experiences convince him that the universe isanything but 'random'. One thing he knows: There is absolutely nothing to fear.Ever.

2011-12-23T08:23:00.000-08:00

Punk Will Never Diet

You are the archangel of Nothing That Ever

Fell. Drop an anchor past lips and you’ll stay alive

to sing in water. Set the species to strips of light.

Let them be touched by piano hands, poem

sparse as a baby grand in the palm

set to detonate the branches of trees clenched

in fist. Stigmata watercolor tips

drain thirty days of sunset because somebody

sharpened your elbows

into knives that burn there. Set the spires

of the species into shimmering belts.

Lightning bolts teach them “I Love You” in Aramaic

and thunder. Hold tight

for self-possession. A ghost enters from

behind and slips inside you, exhale

a cherry blossom cigarette in a bomb. Call the

doctor, we’re going to learn

how to love this ‘how many milligrams’ and

‘can I take this with food’,

tell me, ‘are there side effects’ of trinity?

Your primary care physician asks you

to superimpose a figure drawing on his copy

of the Body Mass Index. You are

a 29.5 and he says, charcoal. You draw like

flames. Like flames, want the body

setting off a distant mountain range. Forest

fires give you something warm

and worth the tattoo. Your breasts are interrupted

by the sirens in the street.

We’re going to learn how to love this time.

Flowers for the night. Flowers

in her teeth. All syllables join together like her

morning. The clumsy fusion

of 6 am. This is not how bodies find each

other in quarter-light. The bones are baggage.

Drag the bag of skin from church to church.

The country home used to be a funeral home

on Menarche Road

and Reviving Ophelia, not a graveyard.

“Touch me until I can’t remember your name.”

By the time you read this, I’ll be so far away.

Somewhere, I am in here. Them.

I write for them.

Lines and Hooks

Yesterday was a bird with a beak like a stem. How beautiful her backside, shimmer as an oil spill takes to flight and gone. If gasoline rainbows could be worn in the body like accessories to the black, “I am here, will you watch me jack?” The girl with the body like a birthday candle burns lifelines back to palm. I mail her a psalm from the part-time heart that is best pinned to the clothesline. Then there is the girl you try to take to the carnival. She unpacks her chest and drops all the deaths to swim for themselves in the Chenango, the years of donating touch to anyone who asked. Grandma was the first to go. Doves should only be sold together and die in pairs. I am a blackbird who wants to be a dove but really I’m the brown eye of a dog and I’m trying to tell you something. Grandpa circled the apartment for nearly two years, fingering her sweaters until Hospice, until the 21 guns, each with a scar for a mouth like “hello.” I have a scar for a mouth like halo. The dog cowers and looks at the leash dragging her forward when she wants to just lie still. My mother’s glow swallowed itself into a hospital room I was nowhere near. Only shoulders know how to properly wear the rain. “Where did you go just now,” a lover asks. They always ask, except for when they’re not asking. Don’t ask. I mean, ask. I believe there are Gods here and they’re willing to turn around. I believe the house fire knows how to subtract in a different way. When I get root canals, I close my eyes and think of that field of infinite tenderness we dug with our eyes, gentle as the brown of dogs. I have a passport that is good for a decade and with it, I leave the Republic of Sadness on the Face of Water. The moon is a pale call girl. I am the moon. For 300$, I will place your hand on my heart. For 600$, I will place my heart on my own.

The Line is a Word

In one hand,
a lake.
Your face,
a mirror.
In another,
a lake holds
silhouetting sky.
Conduct
dredgings like
Salem potions
its imagery
into Gods.
Follow power-
lines past
the cry of grackles
to towers
that connect
disorderly conduct
of bird
and electric,
flutter and
fish leap out of lakes
in rings
on fingers
dragging light
in air
concentric
as a
Virgin Mary halo
in art to sky
an art on poem
in hand to
hands to lakes
on poem down
to recognize
hands
a trace,
stone sinking,
wind a trait,
translucent
fish or shoulder
of ghost
fishing
dredge the alchemy
of witches
mix heaven and
line break
bone break
follow rivers
of art to world
where word
is how you end
in gravel on
a good Friday
as in churches
they raise
hands
so holy
a cathedral
checks their
pulse
they should
feel it
pulse they feel
around some
other earth.
The poem is
talking to you
now through
the grackle:
Dirt is holy.
Your face
is a mirror.
You are full of lakes
and witches
and dirty
angels
mostly pages
of fingerprints
old loves
asking your
neck
to dance
and
someone stands
before you
someone
stands
inside
you
take the
mirrors out
let
the others
live.

EROS

Kind of Like Painting But I Don't Have One

It's kind of like lit. It's kind of like the flower that follows on the other end of lit. This is a way of saying that the sun starves itself out. It's pouring water glass to glass and knowing what to do with excess. This is how some people cook desire on the stove. I am positive that looters make the world a better hotel. I should know. Someone unlocked my body and trashed the place when I was out getting cigarettes to stink the day. A girl with anemia sucked the rust from the iron fence of my ribs and now she's well again. Alone is an empire I built by destroying an empire. When the hurricane built the shore, I knew it was just unraveling civilization. I have to stop writing about flowers and the waves I do not get. Those are your waves. Mine are the ones where you crawl across the floor and grade a paper, call that spring. Spring, I get motion sick. You were the blue eye of a fresco. I get motion sick. My eyes ride your breath strokes. You tell your mom about everything. Here are all the Gods you kissed and all the girls you didn't God. She understands every word because she's dead. My pulse finds yours especially when you don't have one. It knows how to hook in the night. My whole life is about that angle. I was never pretty until I rinsed through your hands. Now I am laundry. I gather the wet rag of sunlight. I draw the blue day into my spine. I collect glasses of light into dry. I collect glances of 'are you okay' into a bank account bigger than a tightrope. You drag a drink through your throat. It interrupts song. I am the mercury, bored with Fahrenheit. You are raining in the Amazon. I am dirty water. Pour me through a bra and keep the clean parts. We're going to be out here for days. My nipples are church steeples, piercing into the vein of a Starry Night. I want us to fall out of language now. Home is a bird. Let's follow it.

Assistant Professor of English at Hostos Community College, Leigh Phillips is a poet, fiction writer and memoirist published in various creative and scholarly print and online journals; author of one poetry manuscript, "Naked in the Heartbreak House" and novel in progress, "Leaving Flagstaff: An Epistolary Novel in Verse."

2011-11-07T16:22:00.000-08:00

Joel Chace haspublished poetry and prose poetry in print and
electronic magazines such as 6ix, Tomorrow, Lost and Found Times,
Coracle, xStream,Word for Word, and Jacket. He has published
more than a dozen print and electronic collections. BlazeVox Books publishedhis CLEANING THE MIRROR: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS, and from Paper Kite Press isMATTER NO MATTER, another full-length collection. Recently out from CountryValley Press is SCAFFOLD, the first part of an ongoing poetic sequence,"(b)its," from Meritage Press, A SCRIPT, from Otoliths Books,SHARPSBURG, from Cy Gist Press, and BLAKE'S TREE, from Blue & Yellow DogPress.

2011-11-04T16:52:00.000-07:00

At the planetarium

The universe pours out

in front of us so rapidly

it’s easy to think it unreal.

Gabby grabs my hand, gulps

is this really happening?

Outwardly assuring her it’s just

a show & we were not drifting

somewhere in the vastness of

time & space, the unimportance

of our smallness scares me too—

we only have what we have, nothing

more, only less; still we waste

everything created over millennia

on a scenic drive across the country.

How pointless to do anything but lay

down to watch the stars as we revolve.

Somewhere dark, questions we can’t

imagine are being formed. To know

without knowing, to just do—

migration; plants; the moon.

Caili Wilk resides in California, and grew up in Thatcher's England.

2011-10-26T18:06:00.000-07:00

Alessandra Bava is atranslator living and working in Rome. She holds an MA in American Literature.Previous or forthcoming publishing credits include Poetry Quarterly, elimae,Zouch Magazine & Miscellany, Paperblög and The Anemone Sidecar. She iscurrentIy writing the biography of a contemporary American poet.

2011-10-08T08:00:00.000-07:00

About Sheila:

Currently, I am theassistant poetry editor of So to Speak: a feminist journal of language and artand the blog editor of art and culture at sotospeakjournal.org. I am a poetryMFA candidate at George Mason University where I also teach English Compositionand am originally from California. My work can be seen on poetryinstigator.organd Gentle Strength Quarterly.

2011-10-06T18:27:00.000-07:00

j/j hastain’s body is like paper…like this book…an isbn’ed version of texture and constantly
shifting translation. It folds and can be turned in several directions. It can be read upside
down and may splinter off if pulled too hard. It begs to be pulled apart. In our bodies are beauty
inducers, j/j places speakers throughout the flesh-clothed skeleton, in crevices that often get
ignored, allowing a tongue and teeth to be placed sporadically in constructed mouth in order
to create sound. Our bodies are beauty inducers is as intimate as breathing in one’s morning or
fondling unhealed scars. It is a sensual and emotional portrayal of love, shifting gender and
relationship of what turns one on. The space and gaps j/j constructs on each page creates a
dialogue with digestion. It is a chant of the found self, due to years of searching and
transcribing. We may be locked up, drawers with rusted handles, too fragile to be opened.
Luckily, j/j whispers WD40 into the webbed/cracked/burnt places of the hidden gender, the
hidden desire, the watered down body that craves various measures of tidal waves. We are
reading the hieroglyphics beneath skin, below the moans and pressed against pulled out
orgasms. This is a breakdown, breakthrough, and break-in of bodies colliding,
communicating and growing new cells through slow-motioned language.

Reviewed by:
Aimee Herman

Queer Mojo [A Rebel Satori Imprint]

2011-10-03T17:37:00.001-07:00

Book Review for j/j hastain’s poetry book: a womb-shaped wormhole
BlazeVox BOOKS

Digest. Absorb. Swallow.
The pages in j/j hastain's a womb-shaped wormhole allow room for the reader's own body
to untwist and bathe against minimal, though wide-open language. Interruptions of images
offer up a supplemental illustration to these haunting words. An ocean smudges its weight
around dismembered gender as j/j creates a new lens into identity:
body/mind/lust/transforming of cell structure. These are chants, soliloquies, letters to
selves stuck inside of form, fragments of memories. This book searches for the animal
within a body and dialogues with its inconsistencies and constantly morphing sex. There is
science here--a projection of exclamations and explanations sewn into tightly-packed lines
which wedge the gap between remembrance and disrobing of the mind. This book is a
longing toward sound, the visual of stained body, an unraveled journey toward..."the thing
that is not designed to be solved".

Reviewed by:
Aimee Herman

2011-10-02T08:09:00.000-07:00

Phillip R.Polefrone's poems have appeared in The Broome Street Review, Yes, Poetry,Quantum Poetry Magazine, and Counterexample Poetics. His essays have beenfeatured in Mercer Street. He lives in Brooklyn, by the river.

2011-09-30T17:54:00.000-07:00

Alice Sketches

a nocturnal ripple stretched flat
across a night desert sand yellow
by day now blue and somehow
evil a tent pitched in the midst
glowing like a candle in a
manhole perhaps a woman inside
preparing a spell or a torture
ritual perhaps a mouthful of
pebbles just past her lips
perhaps a bandaged scalp

About Alyse:

I am currently the poetry editor of So to Speak: A Feminist Journal of Language and Art, based
out of George Mason University, where I am pursuing my MFA in poetry and teaching
undergraduate English. My work has appeared or is forthcoming in RHINO, Salamander, The
Minnesota Review, elimae, Moria, Dark Sky Magazine, and others.

2011-09-29T18:52:00.000-07:00

daybreak

cloaked in foil hydrofluoric acid
clover fields spoken cloudbursts
wonderbird troubled lust sanskrit love
verdant superstructure timeless paradigm
food for thought illegal dream dreamt
parasacrifice night eschewed all new
world spins backwards lionhearted
antiseptic space interrogated innocent
paid in full viral information so strange
demorphed star
rising misappropriated
no patronage pain
erased therapeutic
cavernous void rather bland bloodlet
time chimes omnivorous gutted
capital gains dressed in red frantic
lacking sustenance patrimonious lyric
sights unheard of hurtling pyrogymnastic
curdled firmament blast through past
wake-up call dissolved aspiration bent
borne ripped apart alarms universal
repressed teeth
missing perspicacious
spam deleted get
ready windy sun
buck passed bus
late raspy music
mind tuned daylight infantile
air copper plated gnostic fabulous

About Thomas:

My work has appeared in Agni, Paris Review, New York Quarterly, Southern Review, Ploughshares, and others. My first book, Time Lines, was published in 2010 by Nimbus Press.

2011-09-29T18:07:00.000-07:00

yet to be pronounced pronouns

j/j hastain lives inColorado, USA with xir beloved. j/j is the author of numerous full-length,cross-genre works such as: asymptotic lover // thermodynamic vents (BlazeVoxBooks), our bodies as beauty inducers (Rebel Satori Press), we in my Trans (JMSBooks LLC), autobiography of my gender (Moria), ulterior eden (Otoliths), rurient anarchic omnibus (Spuyten Duyvil), long past the presence of common(Say it with Stones), a womb-shaped wormhole (BlazeVox), vigorous (Eight BallPress), verges and vivisections (Knives Spoons and Forks) as well as manychapbooks and artist’s books. j/j’s writing has appeared in numerous journalsincluding Sextures, Trickhouse, Vlak, Unlikely Stories, The Offending Adam,Dear Sir, Eccolinguistics, theenk, Queerocracy Art, Plath Profiles and PANK TheQueer Issue. j/j is currently in the process of curating an Anthology of QueerNudes (Knives Spoons and Forks Press, 2013) and has helped curate (andparticipated in) two major Trans anthologies. j/j is an Elective Affinitiesparticipant, a member of Dusie kollektiv and a regular contributor to Sous LesPaves. j/j’s books have been finalists in the Kelsey Street, Grey Book Press,Switchback and Ahsahta book competitions. j/j’s manuscript extant shamanismswon the Pavement Saw poetry award. In 2011 j/j’s book we in my Trans wasnominated for the Stonewall Book Award.

2011-09-18T08:46:00.000-07:00

2011-09-08T19:17:00.000-07:00

COMMODIFICATION



no longer	 

 related  death perception		 little block


	left-brained  aware     figure geek

		overcome sphere incident majority 

wriggling		swab the puncture			yellow praise


		lapse 	dazed 	ranch 	process






built horror 				roused location		redux

	occasional breast forward

		border crossing slam skin		flat tax erect

 		bribe a riot diplomacy               fleur  breeze

	series of inconveniences				given heroic





	to contain









				pregnant brightened up

	willow nightlife lisp





							stark proximity

while mainly people 		in the government

	for celebrity 	 whoosh		voodoo is		

			so on			or was the story










































		end table			
					twist

	pulverize			allergic film

		industrial espionage				gingham


foxhole

			little ovens




aging and brutal			gapfill


			bottle neck

log jam					abnormal head rhythm
























BIRTHDAY

				dizzy wallpaper sign

	

		wrapped up			cycle


		pretty coma				commas as so pretty

		


resistance band


						lower your foot

									
							
										veranda














aqua escape



			is ambiguous





off the maps			boiled and



	snow heavy feet



				on towards sharp



		primeval teeth ever





















via moral concern

				scientific construction


	in the urban

	

								detached globally


		expressly faraway


								buzz tape fruit			


					roofless


		intolerable windowsill

									rubber hose





















upturn ground




				don't come to me



		unchanging hedge





					rainy voice



		hook						ordinary frisk





				percolated instant sea





















	with regard to






assumed pollution


						chenille egg


painted shape glass



				ex psychiatric



									of commodification




	  health hazardous


							foremost of

2011-08-27T19:34:00.001-07:00



A MYTH OF INSIGHT



Here

       there’s an impediment



---------------------though not one of speech



                           because of the silence





The care with which we create



noisily



construes the exchange





A strategy 



---------------------when identified



derives from a curious place

       a bright and eager place





An innovative implementation

creates a myth of insight

                       

                                   of expressiveness



encouraging commitment

from a beginning at the bottom

 	

which we hope leads to the beyond







An examination 



----------------------seldom being deliberate



is often lost



as we change shapes 

to hide in this place



in an act of minute tastelessness









SIGNIFIED AS A LABYRINTH



In doorways



[[[posed as parenthetical]]]



begins the labyrinth



Inclusion 



[[[as well divided]]]



depicts a form the makes sense





While meandering

              one forgoes a passage

                          into indulgence



creating passage 

for non-identity



As strange as it may seem

stranger […] have happened



o	have been said

o	have been written





An iridescent cloak reveals

an act of disappearance

portrayed in a changing light





Hence the speculation



[[[as a response to tradition]]]



running parallel



[[[with obstruction]]]



to naive newness

 as it exits 

        the parking structure







o	a painting of

o	a description of

o	a referent





The weight

    

[[[on the most sensitive of scales]]]



reads allusive

when actually applied 

as a signifier









BLURBS OF EXCLUSIVENESS



Resistant to systems of machinic functioning 

we live in thirty (30) second blurbs

        

as perspectives 

of rhizomatic proportions

               generate questions







Bundling can exceed condensing

                                  depending



and herein lies the line of inquiry







An orientation of strata

signifies the totality of a 



o	low 

o	shaky

o	pitchy 



sound of some direct inspiration







The lead 



[[[concocted of sonar]]]



is comprised of bursts



[[[bursts leaning toward the kitchy]]]



yet still have managed to acquire a following







A cross-pollination of influences

           induces sprouting



all at once



particling intentions of exclusiveness









AN AIR OF STUCKNESS



A synthesis 

references a relatively reflexive silence

as embellishment moves forward identifying coincidences





Through hyperventilation

there’s a frank disposition at our disposal



with the potential to be anthologized





An air of stuckness



[[[with the constance of necessary nourishment



                  intravenous]]]

sustains with multiple summits





Height 

o	relative to height

o	relative to sound

o	relative to stillness

o	relative to words



objective



 with the nonchalance of retention





At this point 

a modesty



[[[aroused in its tension]]] 



garners approval

earned through effortless fragility



[[[but somehow charming]]]



and its tactile illusion 









CULTIVATED FROM A SHARED INSTINCT



Once there’s a declaration of community

                   all technicality is lost 





The flux approaching peakness

                is distilled



and becomes a staple of the populous

alongside the approaching stasis

[[so much for the industrious]] 





There’s skywriting

mentioning functionality



There was skywriting

mentioning functionality





This place is a spoken place

cultivated from a shared instinct after a brief period of existential crisis

resistant to the 



o	overwhelming 

o	immediate

o	deafening 



feeling of separation 

and the occurrence of disregard





A continual collision floats overhead 

forging menace

punctuating normal usage

and swaddling for the purpose of being close-knit

Calvin Pennix lives with his wife and daughter in Mission Viejo, CA where he is completing his MFA and MA in English
at Chapman University. He is currently an instructor at Everest College, where he teaches Composition, Literature and
Algebra. Calvin’s first book of poetry is being published by Argotist Books and will be out in early 2012. He currently
has work appearing in UCity Review, A Few Lines Magazine and Unlikely 2.0.

2011-08-20T21:55:00.000-07:00

Controlled Hallucinations

Always too late for unmaking,

an image passes through my eye

writhing in memory’s digestion,

conforming its shape to temporary norms.

With it the whole body shivers.

Skin is also a photograph.

And this photo unravels

in the story of older light-shapes,

when grass colored differently

and clouds did not rush

from the frame.

If the eye is a series of rooms

with changing dimensions

how to tell if this is still the bedroom—

the walls repainted,

that reliable rectangle of sky

now a circle,

the fixed image just captured

unable to settle on its film.

XVI.

Each house is built on a hill

sloping toward a growling unseen river,

ascending toward the lowest-reaching clouds.

Surrounding the house, high walls

scrawled in half-songs,

each composed in another’s blood

and half-dreams

and other unrecognizable things.

Which view have you chosen

for the bedroom?

Which gravity will you follow?

XXII.

I dimly remember

being

water

running from the gables.

I am sorry

but

the leaves

were on fire.

Their trees

on fire.

The grass

and, within,

our buried toes

on fire.

I am sorry

but

all summer

they had pleaded

for rain

together

in one voice

and my open hands

come with a flood of caveats.

XXX.

I fell into the Grand Canyon and broke

the rose in my eye

that I’d carefully planned to see through

when encountering such obvious

illumination.

XXXI.

“I was like a tunnel. Birds fled from me.”

- Pablo Neruda

In these small, broken lines

a thirst for order,

a gathering of original elements,

a house of words to hold them,

a kind of following—

the bird ahead of me moves left

then I move left

then down

and a hope

that all flight is logical

and safe

even without fixed destination.

Even without your small, broken kiss

I am like a tunnel

confined by light.

John Sibley Williams is the author of six chapbooks, winner of the HEART Poetry Award, and finalist for the Pushcart and Rumi Poetry Prizes. He has served as Acquisitions Manager of Ooligan Press and Publicist for Three Muses Press and holds an MFA in Creative Writing and MA in Book Publishing. Some of his over 200 previous or upcoming publications include: The Evansville Review, RHINO, Rosebud, Ellipsis, Flint Hills Review, and Poetry Quarterly.

2011-08-14T12:30:00.000-07:00

Incantation

A crow curbside
its head unknown
mis-taken for
fashioned
black snow

I chant Sanskrit
prayers not of words
alone over
budded flight
downed by wind
black velveteen blood
black skin
feather: tuft of bird
wing
missing
the presence
of the previous
you present within me

The sky – I tell you
is a chute to
reign us in

Consort

I find your hair flossing my books
and read what you have marked aloud
this arbitrary paragraph
this phrase never meant to be read
in isolation
I pause to inhale
and remember the smell of your neckline and sweater
the smell of this book cracked to a page
where you have been and within this sentence
you are present, but something is off
my head shakes at its erring,
up there with - getting my socks wet
they’re wet now actually,
a cause for removal

The books are abandoned
bare flesh paddles tile to the dryer
hands sift through a drum of incomplete thoughts
I wonder if this is similar
to where you ended up
or where I'm stuck

I crawl into the cavity
that filled your chest
I am abandoned – no – I am searching
for dry ones without holes,
searching for consorts
in a padded room

I am awake as the world sleeps on,
or perhaps I slipped into another world
where the only present is I,
where everyone is milling about outside
and I took the shuttle
I apologize. I could not stay

I push the silent books
away from me,
dangle socks side by side
one will fall off while I sleep
but they are close enough

Defense of Irrational Rhythm

I see the fault
in my logic now
to think that,
since you listed off a bunch
of shit bands, you were sure
to like mine instead
because it’s better

I explain this – my dying
art of independent song construction
of lopsided refrains
interludes without a lifespan
rhapsodies, perfect
in their irregular shape

And when I hit this chord—
the lights turn on
and this note
when I sing it in conjunction
with that minor there
everything turns black
for about two seconds
and then the refrain comes back
and everyone can breathe again

You say, they’ve done studies
on all this – and concluded
that three and a half
equals a hook and that beauty
is symmetrical

But I think people
are most beautiful
when one eye is crooked
or obviously smaller
than the other
(it’s usually the left)
I prefer the lived-in look, I guess—
inhabited

Jeanine Deibel is an MFA Candidate in Poetry at NMSU where she teaches Creative Writing and works as an editor for Puerto del Sol.

2011-08-06T15:29:00.000-07:00

Down

Hotel Window

Tijuana

2011-07-25T14:26:00.000-07:00

Squatter’s Feast

Nitwit and harbinger
digging for bones turned ash long ago

among eschewed bedpans of Long Island Sound
wooing smoking Phaedras

and falling to the anchor and scythe of diabolical pinheads
spent

windexing the oracle of celebrity.
Filing away my prosthetic friends

we have gathered to gaze the Eros, every one of us
secretly though, trying to guess what medication the other is on.

We are the Orange posse
amateur surfers of the Pythagorean tidal wave.

Native rhythms, frighteningly irritating
like tarantulas spitting eggs into the ear.

Like the Nightcrawler’s sleuth tango in the blue hours
moments passing smooth like corrected stool.

The scientist’s ominous shadow
flutters in metamorphosis

against the starburst Fender
when the constipated poet laments his crybaby opera.

And oh those golden times on honey beach
where the statues have more fun than the people do

(except for the pigeon-men
living large on handouts from the fat ladies).

So now Prague or somewhere else cool in photos is waiting
for Tatiana’s embroidered letter of dissent?

Chris D'Errico was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA on February 11, 1970. He writes songs, poems and short prose, plays blues harmonica and works graveshift as an exterminator in fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada. He is the author of several poetry collections, and his writings have appeared in print journals and online magazines scattered throughout cyberspace. He shares a home with his wife, Tracy, and their two cats, Hank and Arlo. Sometimes he performs as a one-man-band with his harmonica-heavy, experimental funk/blues project: www.myspace.com/sidewalkbeggar.

2011-07-03T14:39:00.000-07:00

Winter

Viktorsha Uliyanova is an import from the old Soviet Union and is currently residing in Brooklyn, New York. Her poetry and fiction works focus on hidden politics, city panhandlers, and occasionally getting stuck in the black solar system. In addition to her writing, Uliyanova is an experimental, 35mm film photographer.

2011-07-03T14:33:00.000-07:00

Growth Term

The last sleep

of armless brothers

who dream no world of lovers,

nor sing the serpent,

nor ride the waterfall of time,

wakes the dark poet,

arms grown from royal palms,

careless as some god of myth

strewing fruit to winds.

Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director and worked as an art dealer when he couldn't earn a living in the theater. He has also been a tennis pro, a ditch digger and a salvage diver. His chapbook 'Remembrance' was published by Origami Condom Press, 'The Conquest of Somalia' was published by Cervena Barva Press, 'The Dance of Hate' was published by Calliope Nerve Media, 'Material Questions' was published by Silkworms Ink, 'Dispossessed' was published by Medulla Press and 'Mutilated Girls' is being published by Heavy Hands Ink. A collection of his poetry 'Days of Destruction' was published by Skive Press. Another collection 'Expectations' was published by Rogue Scholars press. His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway and toured colleges and outdoor performance venues. His poetry has appeared in hundreds of literary magazines. He currently lives in New York City.

2011-06-25T16:02:00.001-07:00

Surface Web

Bitter from the holy snarl

of lithium circuits running,

bearing up green placid fur

and skyscapes chucking blue

Sparing not the child wicked

lit from liquid crystal,

spoiling the rod electric

the keystrokes all remembered

Deep Web

Voice distorts to flaming vowels

the promises of youth,

behind each sliding glass of lies

a truth that’s less agrestic

Terabytes like ocean miles

the whitenoise waves sing out,

“Barren is the hi-tech frontier

so manifest and take it"

Jake Sweet is an author and poet from Cincinnati, Ohio. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in a variety of publications a list of which can be found by visiting him online at www.jakesweetwriting.tk.

2011-06-24T19:01:00.000-07:00

Unsupported Fonts

Orchid Tierney is a New Zealand writer whose work has appeared in various magazines including Brief (NZ), the Otoliths (AUS), And/Or (US) and Artocratic (US). www.orchidtierney.com.

2011-06-18T06:10:00.000-07:00

Blue is Not of This World

Since the blue of sky

Serves as the threshold

Of the Beyond

Blue thus has this solemn

Superterrestrial gravity

According to Kandinsky

Since blue is not of this world

The individual is inexorably

Drawn toward the Infinite

Blue will disembody

Whatever

Becomes caught in it

& since blue

Is the color of dreams

& geomantic dragons

It provides a climate for the surreal

As blue is the deepest gaze

That plumbs the Infinite

The Times when Light is Fresh

The times when light is fresh

& nakedness becomes a ritual

The poet-seer employs her song

In seminal moments

In the momentum of parables

In gracious saving light, downpouring

She first asks to be buried in the clouds

W/ her pages intentionally left blank

Then she asks

How infinite is the bandwidth of love?

& then she asks what it takes

To gestate a new poesis within her darkness?

By glowing images of Fate

She does find upon her altar

Old duties made of fresh smoke

She now sings melodies in the dusk

To consciously employ those twilight songs

Because she is solely the Daughter of Clouds

The Elegance of Gutters

“I refuse to be thrown under the bus Holmes”

The parameters of this status might be:

Still unlost yet palpably not solvent …

“Mostly I proceed with full-stun mojo, right …?

Hell, I might even be the last taboo standing …”

The ballast of debris provides traction

With these long audacious strides he takes

In & through the stark elegance of gutters …

“Somedays you’re the sailboat

Riding the shining waters,

& other days you’re the bird

In the plane engine”

Patches of deep blue insist upon leaking

Through his interim glooms tho …

“My only job right now is to keep riding out

The heavy surf of spiteful uncertainties …

It’s like, versions of yourself

Is all about staying in your own movie”

Born from his disheveled poems,

An elusive ascending in-stance

Tends to swallow up the excess griefs …

“You know Holmes, I smoke only the air

Of imaginary circumstances even as I unload

This quit-claimed baggage as fast as I can …”

The way the days began to knot up,

In gainsaying the accidental apertures,

In marking the unwritten dream pages …

“What we do here is metaphoric

Teardown and rebuild” he explained

Like the way kids love mud & running water,

He wanted to persist via a fresh buoyancy …

“But of course love is always a conspiracy …”

Yes, but viscerally experiencing nothingness

Prepares you to be primed for elsewhere …

“If you call it with a good eye Holmes,

The stray particles will no longer quaver …”

One spring morning, he found himself wearing

The varnish of all those years of wear & tear …

“I declined, only because it would not

Have been an honorable fight”

Therefore, in any forward texture of silence,

Poetry became what everything else wasn’t …

The Druid’s Wind

The power madness of terrestrial gods

W/ psyches so symptomatically lesioned

This Is NOT about some

Goddamn contest in

Drycleaned dialectics, believe me

Only the poetry of renunciation

Can assist those of us still listening,

Yet resistant to a profane world,

Even as this time & austere emptiness

Might be all that fate leaves us with

Any quest for the Invisible Meanings

By homage to nameless gods

Does not always require

Eating the flesh of magic pigs

Or gusts from The Druid’s Wind

Altar of Masks

Although she walks her mobile ink well

Her texts really seem to murk up the muddle

W/ her mystified poetry making it all look

So pretty

& also, where would the corresponding vision be?

Having a bi-weekly love fest with her literatees

She who would be a poetic Nefertiti

How does she not succumb to the labored overreaches?

Or is this just a dancing for the treasure of attentions?

Or a wand-dowsing for transient love perhaps?

A little mendacity never goes for a good cause

Like when it comes down to smelling a book deal

Which just might spoil the sauce

Which just might be worse than a night

Spinning around a room with the black whirlies

So, along with swinging the meat ax

One can’t get any closer to the edge

When traversing Ego’s air space

As it now compellingly becomes crucial

For her to keep the landing gear down …

“To write is an occupation”

Good poems

Serve as disturbances

Of dark anti-matter,

Kind of like corroborations

Shored w/ invisible eloquence

Or perhaps substance & symbol

Alchemized into a fine matrimony

Just buzzing sweetly along like

Horace’s poetic bees

As a fragmented revealing

By the “roguewords”

All poetry is memoir

As symbolizing = a throwing together

Dictionary bingo

Might bring forth disjunctive harmony

If these blank pages keep demanding

Their own pesky language

Either/or metaphoric montage

Or obscure fragment collage

Is essential in composing

How to Kill the Cliché

The Strange Effects of Poetry

With a choice of rooms,

I decided to sleep that night

With the Poetry

The floor of Poetry’s room was not too hard

& the poets, both dead and alive,

Provided such good surrounding solace

& sure enough, it could have been

A rough one night stand there,

With Poetry in that room,

But NO, it was just fine,

& our tryst went on for weeks,

With me on the floor,

The dead poets on the wall,

& all the various poems

Squished somewhere in between …

Raw Approximations

For Joan Stepp Smith

Caught in the reflections

Despite these headwinds,

Bucking on is what I do

These disorders maddeningly borderline

As I listen to Sounds of the Unsaid

Which inexplicably remain

My first & only gift presently

To write on, like some who wave flags

Wildly flapping away in the breeze

Scribing anecdotes of sin & daring

A forging on through the murky murk

Even if all it comes down to

Just breathing & looking at

Stacks of unopened mail in the morning

The price of the past, archived somewhere

Takes a lot of gumption to square up with

To live a life replete with slow starts & abrupt endings

By the attractive decay of future splendors

By the reckoning of time within little squares

By giving appropriate weight to intrepid smoke

Yes, one may lose the bearings, & still not go astray

Overcoming the uncertain in incremental efforts

Just as one trades the where, for the wherefore

All the while nabbing some back pages

Maybe with some intent on starting a fray

With the dithering dopes

But, hey, this just leaves you wide open too

Way too wide

Like rats jumping ship

We could be talking

Ritual slaughter here

Really, this life on the streets

Can be such a series of caroms

So, trust me on this

Please

It might be worse than trying to work out

The Prisoner’s Dilemma

As you gots to be tougher’n nails for sure

I mean, the way the days knot up on you

Your poor heart might possibly turn into

Some kind of

Salvage of echoes …

Experience Assumes Slippage

The forces that push us to delusion

Palpably so evidenced

Upon the very streets we walk

Under the vain shadows that follow

Like promises subjected to recall

Or some futile collecting of dunnages

Even with losing a mountain or two

The mixed messages trounce nuance

By the disabled ratios of bastard cuts

& stuffing that genie back in the bottle

Hey, Life has never held such promise!

Like a pen leaking all over the fingers

One seeks relief from the little outrages

When the insect storms spread contagion

& toxic seeds induce further in-toxication

Leaving behind only the relics of the interim

Under this vague ceiling of sky

Which has always had priority

Those now born into this new world

Are already ancient …

Semi-So

Obscure practices make the man

In a simulacra of metaphoric shorthand

Down to chewing

At the edges of a bloody night

A limiting of losses in the least last hours

Now thinking that only in Hollywood

Do the stars never align

2011-06-06T18:30:00.001-07:00

"Copper Painted Jax"

Beneath wilted leaves and

spindly ochre octopus arms,

the chrysanthemums

wait

with

& mask

brick-traced broken windows of

pods lined up like miniature row-homes

with

flowerpot gardens on

splintered windowsills

Around me:

shreds of leaves & skin

swim

as a rivulet of rainwater

snakes & strangles

the baked

blackened

asphalt

& the iron alloy horizon

twists

& grips

the tarred tree necks

Pines, like chopsticks, they

angle away from me

pointing south. Home.

* * *

"Empty Emily"

Silence drips down yellow walls as

the candle's wick knots,

leans, shrinks, drowns, &

your fingers slip

inside me

The terracotta pot

wobbles

then catches itself on

the bedside table

Caramelized, your eyes

glow guilty

& the bleached white sheets form mounds

between us

I trace your skeleton, scant

streaked light

slivers and slides

down

your

thighs

Hands slog through thick air,

smoke & sweat

hang

Regret

My tongue licks the last

red-stained glass

to wash down your

stale crust-

ed consciousness

Outside

a passenger door creaks, slams

closed

& metal fragments shake

to the grass

* * *

"Equilibrium"

Hard-boiled fingers

reach out, slapdash &

grab wooly lime legs.

Dirt launches, roots

dangle, leaves recoil.

Our collective static

electrifies &

ends them. Abandoned

patchwork snowscape,

crystals form on

weeping ground. April

sun exhales, warms iced

mountains, pouring

waterfalls of milk.

* * *

"Platitudes"

Crumbly oaks leave

their leaves, drop their

colors where we

walk, we rip the

constellations,

we spill their fading

light. My hair on

your undressed chest,

freckled from hailstones

& winter nights in

random arms, we

stumble slowly lower,

my twisty knotted limbs, they

wrap around you as

your lips locate

my lunar orbs,

the underbelly

I protect, my

sour mouth

agape & full,

electric fireflies

flash through me to

dissolve me, time

dissolves in

time, no

urgent need to

flee

* * *

"Moonshine"

In the wet air we

let the blades cut footprints

before us

Your

curdled lies

hang, thick and swollen

I find release in each reluctant pause

vinegar breath

that

clouds

your

sheepish grin,

It wraps

like the St. Johns

around

two million frowning palms

And

your skin,

impenetrable to light,

deflects

my attempts

to paint your creases

with moonshine

Sandra Ketcham currently lives in Orlando where she works as a full-time freelance writer and editor. Her poetry is recently published or forthcoming in Bicycle Review, Rusty Truck, Calliope Nerve, Psychic Meatloaf, and others.

2011-06-05T08:15:00.000-07:00

Hala Hoagland reviews Dom Gabrielli's The Parallel Body

2011-04-05T20:21:00.000-07:00

2010-11-23T20:05:00.000-08:00

Blip

Awful lures embalm a flotilla, rippalimony bibs, mock entrapment, and dart off camera, hanging on to dotingwerewolves. Hours slither through the teething blush, holding cosmic centaursin taut, hirsute carp buckets. Builders sign a neater clown and opine freely.Conflagrations congratulate chirping otters, slow to tainted sizzling loops,and wheedle ancillary jocks. Triadic genders lodge forelocks in the king,shudder at imaginary, brittle creamers, and plod beneath calumny. Easychocolate equates stark fungoes, capped jungles, steep tangos, wroughtthimbles, and skittish limbo. Meaner than a dopey siren, a cowling shirks itssooty croissant, angles for dermatology, thirsts aloud, and clasps buttressedsockets. Misty vinaigrette smothers the entrails, watches a glow-worm, andsmugly undulates, eliciting a long, bold whimper from a headset. Tabularrectification complete, a troubadour (salacious and unafraid) ingratiates hisgloating bustle at midnight, only to bind snoring computations. Amputees imploreproverbial wincers, find them slacking off, and gear up for the yearling,churning to bequeath. Ossified fables collect musty differentials, axe celerymoccasins, and levitate wooden posters, unmasking a stalled innuendo.Implications far from home, a seaward tenant wrists basaltic liners onto themenu, angering the mead. Boatswains wipe their well-fed stogies, drool crudeoil, muff the spinal Pop-Tart, cruise for legendary hooters, and nettle thechaplain's girdle. Life groans on, wends its main course, seems harmless,almost intransigent; butchers soil the flipper pile, scarcity the issue; barterovertakes aluminum box sites, halting the killing, slaving the baying dune.Aegean longitudes sparkle and grow, spin the grove, fall for creasingforeheads, and lust after toll-house dunce caps. Alcohol derives gratingplunder from sand-filled entrecotes, cheapening the messy donor precession.Perturbations flock to heckle the candy plate, flummoxed and careening.Wrapping primers, involved with caulking moans, slander any wanton prism,hauling drops to bleat the fried bell. Secret elders quiver at thresholdsunseen, prepare the breakthrough, and crawl for the rejection. Shooters downedand throats canvassed, a flock of churlish maggots head for parts ungowned, foolishlytending to regulative pleasures. Seas tipped, dharma rains acrylic wavelets,eyepieces, palm trees, and jowls. Earrings are set for next peak, mountingglaciers impregnate heaving, thoracic potions, and tent flaps yawn at thepercept of forgone illusions. Relaxation flows freely, aboard a blip.

Rutagavined

Derugianpenders, grinnage and gorce,

canfabble borsmitee corroden gen,

ackleeerendontal ind parubentian,

clippentiemorth.

Achempt egzeegar whieb,

esplougian enots hebad knytfind,

crogs orchendouselephlogs af pilgure,

kon whoobald emers harrudence

unt nefted,prosen quind.

Ansudal edgelssmert hafoon,

carubentialogtop hatchef tog,

eskened feemtros eldent,

merguman tegglespie.

Archankut,hegrumin stossile poths

predut cherutigavined ordine pree,

enembly unpexpant

en etstowspry,lencish dreet.

The Queasy Train

Sequesteredgimlets,

palettes ofgeranium sunrise,

and geese withfrozen hyenas

cast a sneering,almost westerly glance

at cataleptic,neural pheasants.

Simpletonsabound in unrecovered saplings,

toast a centralfin potion, and nibble at esoterica

with grave,ventral fuel marauders, hopping on

kittens made ofsynthetic cheese.

A waxen,porcelain pinafore,

sailing forgowns ungrown,

flexes itsreptilian landing gear

for everyconcubinal deluge,

holding thequeasy train hostage.

Lowered lightswink

at inundatedcart makers,

intensify theguttural twilight,

moon a floraldinghy in disarray,

and steam forbilingual backpacks,

helping thehomeless

to plates ofcharred confetti.

Canfirescent Knoose

He gobone,congibbot eet,

eincontradictous otomy elf pleavent,

odermoothingkleig,

aspirgal in itsomnitentious, blonk orimery,

canbancled twishtveery speermang cordophlatters.

Linned tro wotanolter hedgrum twagger,

ecksterarseterox uv egner speths

exgraminate acarutillion aogger meads,

arthru echiblang chane fu youtimous.

Wasping hosthinegotorague,

imbly onsejempir rost,

arcant heggleeaches pein twubble,

urned toff,owardent ag erobile.

Tuch mimeanspietels,

owered intentofluvian aisting pote,

won oon dyntkrule, wein toily gransom,

spearn weatygriem.

Dretchconbleckle phloraglam,

canfirescentknoose,

mid ermious hodgeind do penpirot crollop

if hernagleweddle andenture eim oontif,

percurrianholliporodge.

Circadian Sunset

Encapsulatedoctothorpes,

emblazoned insolid brass ingots

of ignominiouspewter potables,

flee into thequartzite hillocks

of knownderangement,

hobnobbing withthe filial fungoes

of feral phonemeworkers everywhere,

whiling away awhaler's day.

Models on a duderanch,

smeared andflexing,

pump frenetictrains for platitudes,

pleasing theroyal net society's

quasi-roboticgist machine.

Handedness hintsat stressed factions,

totingembellished warnings,

climbingglassine pillars of sterile infidelity,

caressing andgiving glued portions

to cowering,whimsical sidebars.

Sanding down agravy kit,

a papier-machebuoy bobs

serenely in thecircadian sunset,

tippling from amoose.

John Pursch lives in Tucson, Arizona. His poetry hasappeared or is forthcoming in Blue &Yellow Dog, Breadcrumb Scabs, Calliope Nerve, Camel Saloon, CarcinogenicPoetry, Clockwise Cat, Counterexample Poetics,experiential-experimental-literature, Four and Twenty, Indigo Rising Magazine,ken*again, Orion headless, Otoliths, Poetry Sz, Puffin Circus, The RainbowRose, and vox poetica. You can follow his work at http://twitter.com/johnpursch .

The Pleasure Craft’s Solitude

Oh, the long days of flimsy neckties

and whimsical beechnut stigmata.

Hoping for an unseen flotilla,

whipped along by canvas,

watery eyes ply the sky,

treasure fills the lacquered oaks,

and feet flash with flecks of girlish surprise.

Gathering steam, wavefronts

speak of boats and torn pence,

ushering out the latent yarn.

Mending a menial taint of froth,

yet another admiral’s wanderings

are wont to hear the message

in the pleasure craft’s solitude.

Daydreamers waft into clear auteurs,

knowing the snap of wooden lullabies.

Top Secret Runway Model

Saunter, precious lambchop,

beyond the Dacron lighthouse,

across the Velcro plain,

to underwear stands on any city street,

to art left for the postman,

to garbage worth gold to the governed,

to the disco beat’s retreat to acoustic and voice,

overdubbed kung fu cracks and thuds,

and a small restaurant aroma of ambiguity and cheese,

just a touch of oregano and Oreos,

with bells chiming hits of the previous century.

The Neophyte’s Last Circumstance

Endure, noble peanut.

Quiver down the maypole, total gorgon.

Canter to a beat unnoticed

by a gaggle of voltage flutes,

implying hewn sand couches.

Empty the astral xylophone

before planter poultice

purloins the unguent.

Quaff the rabid washing torus,

lest the whip and surge

of vacuous side lobes

sweep the horizon from your ken.

Banter, whimper, and haggle

with ladles and martial gongs.

Jabber, flicker, and relive

the neophyte’s last circumstance,

belying all accredited quicksand motels.

The Forest of Fontainebleau

Binding the spherical with the phonic,

holograms give way to plenty,

rapture yields to rhythm,

and warblers wobble just a bit

on the wangling weather vane.

Pointillism in life,

like reductionism in death,

gives the view screen

just a hint of gumption,

a slowing of paroxysm,

and a yearning for all that is green

in the louvered gentility.

Hearkening to the scream

of the wintering swarm,

a footfall breaks choir samples

on a rivulet of stream.

Stars slither to a beat unfelt,

plums devour the waiting salt granules,

and leaf farms warm

to the tinge of a work trowel.

A State Dinner

Snacking on hickory portents,

filthy beckonings yield

to the tatterdemalion’s oratorio.

Holding the effusive wombat at bay,

exigent tonsure sounds the tocsin,

reviles a rubicund phial of stygian spume,

and peculates a melange

of incommodious declivities.

A collier beleaguers

an equable potentate,

taking umbrage at

a winsome yeoman’s trumpery.

Plenipotentiary subalterns

inculcate the poltroon

in the ways of defalcation,

only to cozen

a brindled, arrant miscreant.

A venial, ursine welter

of uxorious sybarites

sings paeans in full panoply,

their orotund parlance

a moiety of nascent necrology.

Murrain eschews the ewer,

decries the decollete proscenium,

and substitutes

shibboleths for sobriquets.

Temerarious libertines

incite the hale gibbet

to froward philandering,

their piscatorial gasconade

enervating the disquisition.

A diva connives

to harrow the plebescite

with postprandial simpering,

but viscid viands roil

the querulous raconteur,

whose mews launder

the libidinous guffaws

of forensic harridans.

2010-11-22T19:10:00.001-08:00

can science get damp
on tuesday afternoons
while we practice our second
languages in the
dark room and
modern day robin hoods
dance in burger joints
should we let our geometry dry
or will these
over-exposed pictures of our rebellion
burn up in the atmosphere
the new flower
tattoo still bleeds a little
on her arm immortal
neverwilting

Climbed
Prefabricated rocks
Ridiculous smooth jazz
Crooning behind me
There is no Stonehenge

in the caves they've trapped you in
monsters giggle to themselves
the caves theyve got you stuck in
uttering sarahpalin
allegories about deerhunting
in the caves theyve trapped you in
half dead old men
moan yr name

when you can't read
when their fashionable hats
block yr view of the stage
when yr sent further in
on the back of a horse
all dougheyed and smiling
in the caves theyve been keeping you in
in the caves you were born in
dont worry about the rest
you can forget yr love too
in the caves full of costume
dramas about poison and treason
repeating on old televisions that
desperatley need to be smashed
gasmask pianoplayers pound cardboard keys

Dustin Holland writes and edits for Guerilla Pamphlets under the name Archey P Caane.

2010-11-22T08:15:00.000-08:00

Fire Whispers

Listen Rocks

Earth Not Equal Moon

Artists' statement + Bios:

Small Voices: images

a collaboration between Dorothee Lang and Daniela Elza

How to listen to small voices? We make noise, create things that make loud noises. All too quickly forget to listen to the very quiet, to silences, which speak to us in numerous ways. This theme encompasses both artists' work: the many ways earth/mind thinks, speaks. The invitation: Listen.

The flame entices, sparks us to create. Full of whispers, we are spurred on in our process. Ancient branches on the tree of knowledge twist this way and that. Thoughts influence our wor(l)d. Define it. Definitions drive our actions, but limit the voices and directions. Small voices whisper together. Can we get quiet enough, still enough, to attend to these voices? Can we weave these voices toward transformation, toward an ever expanding spiral of spiritual growth: participation, effort, struggle, celebration in the carefully placed stones?

A metaphor also of our collaboration, in itself a spiralling process, demanding listening. The journey is a constant discovery, re/searching, re/covering, re/fining, re/envisioning.

Bios:

Dorothee Lang is the founding editor of BluePrintReview and Daily s-Press. She is a writer, editor, web freelancer, traveller, gardener. Recent publications include elimae, PicFic, HA&L, The New Yorker (book bench), Spiral Orb and Metazen – and her first story collection: “in transit”. Dorothee holds a degree in economics and advertising, keeps a sky diary and currently is into collaborate projects of both the visual and the novel kind. She lives in the South of Germany. Her website is: http://www.blueprint21.de

Daniela Elza has released more than 140 poems into the world in more than 42 publications. Her interests lie in the gaps, rubs, and bridges between poetry, language, and philosophy. She recently completed her first full length poetry manuscript and is currently busy collaborating with fellow poets and artists, as a pleasant distraction from working on her doctorate thesis in Philosophy of Education. Daniela is the recipient of this year's Pandora's Collective Citizenship Award. She lives with her family in Vancouver. http://strangeplaces.livingcode.org/