Thursday, January 31, 2013

James Cervantes


Persona gets away with details from poem

Authorities say the details are enough to ensure persona's survival for a one-and-a-half to two-minute prose poem. The persona, however, has no place to hide as the details provided his only cover. Now, he glimpses his reflection in a breaking hand mirror and sees a resemblance to a tv comedian with a perpetually open, toothy mouth. His feet make a sloggy, sucking sound though there is no mud, not any more. "Excuse me,"says a mannequin. The siren meant for fires and twisters emits a feeble bleep and his blind shirt sloughs from the prestigious journal in which he'd hoped to appear.

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Volodymyr Bilyk

Noob Saibot Variety from Volodymyr Bilyk on Vimeo.


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Murray Jennings


Up and Down

I’ve been away.
I don’t mean just out of the house, down at the shops
looking for a lean lamb leg, broccoli, skim milk.
No. Out of the country. This country. O/S, as they say.
Months. Down salt mines, up and down rivers, in
cathedrals, concert halls, tapas cafes, trains underground
and overground, cold deserted rain-lashed stations
lugging the luggage up and down long vomit-stained
staircases, pubs with signs swinging outside in winter winds
and fires inside by nooks and benches, chips and Guinness,
feeding in-tune buskers with Euros and quids, up and down
steep cobbled alleys, in pain with a twisted ankle, in a jazz bar
where no-one spoke English but the music said it all, up on
a bedroom balcony with wine and cheese, looking down
on a river with an unpronounceable name, up in the morning
and down to the breakfast room, spooning muesli and fruit
into a bowl, spilling some on the shoes of a Warsaw woman
and sharing a laugh with her about the taste of leather
on the tongue. Up and down the steps at Park Guell, weary
with travel, but in love with Barcelona . . .
I’ve been away a long time and you may think I’m back
because we’re facing each other across this room
but I’m not.

I’m sorry. What did you just say?

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Felino A. Soriano


from Quartet Dialogues: Translating Introspection 



Of the reason|s we’re aggregated

though spayed in the act of interrogating rhythm

                        we

                                                            in the I’s formulated mirrors
reflectional aspects move into the corporeal
functionality,               seer                  see                   surrender
to improve extemporizations
                                                these
moments of now’s history
prophesizing

into
            windows of whole openness
                                                                                                not
engrained in the whereabouts of losing light

thus
dusk
examines
then
upon
orating with a neoteric self of explanatory frequencies

exalts

                                    burgeoning a simile of elation’s spectral disappearance:

rarity’s roaming
landing of the italicized nearness of winged

vocal-ness     the blur whispers an etched version of permanent italics


                                                                        swayed meaning
architects this/these/us

articulation of sound as



                                                                                                            ideology sans traditional
concentration on/in

mirage in abstract cultural dilemma
impersonating an oral display versus              hush of the intoxicating angles
                        ridges have formed through
isolated cauterizes and
                                                rejuvenated symptoms of

isometric
                                    syllables, trended

***

Of piano


|1|

                                    shyness serenades in the stroking of effort’s
encouraging momentum

                                                            each
                                                                                                 thence
every

                        rendition of opened
morning diction

spectating vocal implementation this

dual freedom of awake and disarming sleep              eloping against crisscrossing
imperatives
                                                involving

reaction my own
daughter involves with smile:

my mirror’s inward
flow
            walks and wo(a)nders
toward                                                                         either               sleep’s awaiting memory or

components of running this
alabaster concept intuitively revives


|2|

in listening (or in the listening of origami phrasing)
articulated choices expand in
                        explanatory motive

using predetermined luxuries as reinforced
designs
 gaining potential augmenting

                                    effort’s history
providing incessant
motivation as                           curled                                      enunciation


|3|

continued                    isolation
                                    interpretation
                                    interrelated segments of existence’s

reliable annex of sound then/speech

hand-in of-hand then/reliant on                      gauge’s rudimentary
freelancing understanding

fad ing
as the memory forgets its circus of youthful
serenading (ego then manifests as unreliable context of self’s organic tribute)

performing in the mouth of this moment’s argyle symmetry 


|4|

                        inward the calamity calms
subsequent to the outer-wall construction of
patronizing otherness
                        involving partitioned

                                                                        explanations rival to the
ornamental intuition of space’s

signature abeyance 

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Steve Dalachinsky


essential sloping green

                                   "....one must avoid history in order to be it"


1.
death comes every day/
like /  
               breath

loud  #'s 
                   elixirs      bought & sold

     antique grinders
                                       grinding teeth  /  lens
     sentencing us to......
                                          sea/land conversions
          combined it's easy to say "friend"
                 love    words even 1/2 in jest     1/2 in-
    gested                  we kiss always   
                   you harsh to me only once
                         -  a misreading of my nature
         your feelings for another allowing our friendship to be

i do not work for the dept. of agriculture
she does -  the one getting off the bus  with an arse as big as a
prospering field/
                           as far as the eye
can..........................
  kisses  always             warm
a few postcards  /     then    /  the way computers utilized  your life 
/  
                           like subways & dismay
    it happens every day    
                                          tired beauty & the ridges
forming in between
             farming the alpha  bet   &  making   the engine clean
                                             to receive the workers'
moonstained hands 
                     the signs   &  bad  music      that will follow in
your wake
                            & spout your praises          as you sleep 
   to boost sales                      raise sails                  for
their own convenience
               to supply us with little variety as this cluttered breath
of mine
                                                now             does
   breath

                             breath

                                                         breath  
how many times will we 
hear it
say it                 yet never once be able to breathe it 
                & remain                        faithful  as i am
childless?


2.
      so i sd
                             hello   white   rose
           you deserve the best
                                                being associated w/you a
brief time
                         outside this circuitous  credentialed  & heavily
policed system
                                      was a still photo  &  never
imagined  KICK.

ave c's clutter never looked cleaner
nor its pre-noon light paler
                                                                 
once i needed to change my batteries 
constantly
now all i need is to recharge them
from time to time

once i needed to be taught 
but now all i need is to learn

ah, essential sloping green
if only all our "good" eyes  could see
as well as you did.

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Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Lars Palm

                      (Anselm Hollo's eyes)
                             in memoriam

notes taken by kind permission of

on another roof looking out across the sea

the art of unlearning the lies you were told

attractions oppose

& looking left you reeling

possibilities bloom aiming at your head

of course on course or en route

existence has been known to unfold

looking through anselm hollo's eyes
looking through anselm hollo's eyes
looking through anselm hollo's eyes
looking through anselm hollo's eyes


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Thursday, January 24, 2013

Satu Kaikkonen



The Ode to My Son

Katherine Soniat

Death and Transfiguration in the Wings

arrives in stages. In this dream it bears his face,
the mouth singing that nameless old melody.
I wonder if it’s Orpheus again, if this time
he’ll trust and wait longer.

Molecular notes from a head with no body—
this man, I once knew exactly, wears the mask
of another.

Study his lips, a voice says, this sort of detachment can
break anything to pieces.

The audience, motionless, lets their faces drop.
Night-bird cries from years away—
                                                       whippoorwill,
whippoorwill. Farmhouse on a slope where for a summer
it flew near our bedroom window.

Then there’s a jerk to stage-right where I’m in the spotlight
and naked this time on a toilet—the kind with armrests
and wheels you die beside in a soiled bed.  
                                                                So, it’s me on display
before the remains of my audience. Audience with the queen, I ask,
and they sigh, what a shame. I shut my eyes to go blind—secret
cove where no one ever finds me.

And late the next day, I am transfixed in real traffic, Alpine
waltz dropping from an attic window. A boy yells, hey lady, don’t
wait for your friend in the  middle of the street. Three-quarter-time
is the mystery of a world unaccompanied.


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Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Marthe Reed


Body 17

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***

Michael Andre


Pasties:  A change of heart is a change in the brain. Remove the dead 
language, oh Lord, and we are not

baffled.  Can He not hear when He is not here, His bosom vaporous?

Sustain sustenance focal point or
Unfocused unsustained improvident

The irritation and unfocused prison of an hour until
A black blanket of prison lies over the night

And finally a day comes and it’s little better.
Prison is an unfocused hour.

The irritating cage of an unfocused hour

The bug in a box, the wing in flypaper

***


For Emily

Say Yes Tonight

Abandoning romance for the hermit’s cell
To write prayers to life, called poetry--

No?--Murdering his wife, then confined
To a cell, the poet--No?--

No poet hates taking no for the question.

All things are ruled by Fashion,
Poetry and pants, death and dance.

Ask and you’ll get a big NO




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William Bain

Algiers

Sky blue sands perhaps a line
south then various axes sienna overlay
and each zone off the main highway its own shade.
A name may inspire surprisingly color
some ordinary day of some ordinary week. Algiers.
A city to which I’ve never traveled. But if thought
is a kind of movement pre-movement a line
that could be a highway. Embodiment—think about it.
Oh to abreact the ambiguous human face on the horizon
to tell the single multiple smile.
Tamanrasset. Mali. Chad. There is magic in the architecture.
And look at the growing features of the zones.
There is a sense of freedom in being able to story in film.
Algiers is a city and a highway, perhaps a line or point.
There should be a way to let the flowing grains of sand sift through your fingers.


***

escalator

ground floor first second all the
way to the top—
that single touching glance
velleity in the ceiling
ytiellev impossible in the
tread
second floor first ground


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Monday, January 21, 2013

Jukka-Pekka Kervinen



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Russ Golata


What You Knew You Could Be
look a lizard in the eye
 …long enough…
realize its reflection
 
help you
O
..f
….f the wall
 
fear walks out the door
If only locks could hold
 
watching
................. miracles
 
SILENCE…   { heals you }
elephant gooseflesh
togetherness feels…

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Thursday, January 17, 2013

rob mclennan


King Kong Goes to Stratford

           for William Hawkins

Forget the appeal of Basque temples, foreign women,
the disappointments of Rotterdam, or the score

of Saudi-Arabian tributes; plenaries revealed during
a Carp Fair lost weekend. Success breeds imitation,

and imitation, breeds; copies overwhelm the tabloids, distract
the purity of beasts. Come witness the original! King Kong,

Lord of Stratford. Daily matinee as Lear,

he begins to comprehend his offspring,
and how best to love them.

These numbered categories of age and wisdom, vanity.
They ask: what news of home, good sir?

Your faith will bring you nowhere.

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Caleb Puckett


Reaching for the Cleaver

—It’s poetry, my son.
—What for?
—Add the word ward and then say: I would like to be a bear, gay and happy free from care,
guarding this space with my definition/ That's the life like no other, climbing trees with my
mother, dividing these patients with my definition/ Though they call me beast of rage, I've never
put things in a cage, overseeing those minors with my definition/ Or set a trap since time's
begun, or shot a human with a gun, turning the lock with my definition.
—But Mr. Cleaver…
—Well, do you recognize this episode? How about it, Eddie?
—After what?
—Add the word ward and then say: The trust company gave me the business this May.
—Does June know?
—Hush now. I’m reaching for the word cleaver, my son. We must break your lines.
—No, Ward!

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Richard Kostelanetz


2 fr. Ouroboros


typography/design: Denzel R. Russell

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Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Vernon Frazer


Shelling Night Secrets

calamari tepee wreckage
a vernacular intent beguiled

latitudes host ventricular paté 
no tentacle left unserved
to enervate the matador legends
willing their dated entries

to volley fortitude crossings 

*

at the gate left to rummage
the flicker scales its blue intent

navicular findings retribe
narwhal hostage enclosures

scrotal sasquatch enigma watchers
bear a worn umbrella’s broken heat

tossing latitude a grim spectacular

*

the carapace ode nocturne
semaphores the eagled prowess
yearning to return last nodules

to portage prince doctrine
where the shore drilled off

the seminal scent of tapping code

***


Giving Them What They Want

tablet referenda deferred
supple intonation marks pitched bales
against fetid deletion materials

wandered lonely and aloud
implacable driftwood seeking varnish

release anonymous bottle wrappers
papered under slow debris 

moving remnant polish 
amateur night to tabla markers 
reflecting current strapping
further whiplash 
leather braiding soon resumed

a rhythm agenda hidden 
whether or not the plate assumed

blood leisure noon repeated
the preferred rabble agenda crowding
mileage threaders to chart

lumbago headline barkers vend
articles of rumination illustrated

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Monday, January 14, 2013

Ann Neuser Lederer


Lizards of Warning 

Each verdant remnant 
more spotlit 
more haloed
as necrotization sets in 
the lesson of [the] candles
darkness' set point 

One day in silent January
the light already turning
still silver though, 
silent shimmer     a lone room, 
not even a chair
windows to the floor
not even a curtain
-- no blind
a prophet appeared to appear 
in an orange glow of course
a fiery chariot, speaking in tongues
speaking nothing
speaking nonsense

It was a day of waiting for something
[the] clouds had gathered ominous
in the wrong part of the sky
I in the corner practicing invisibility
before I knew it was a possibility
reading -- deciphering  the honored text

What happened next
[the] thunder 
then, years passed 
[the] seasons turned over and over 
[the] edge of the cliff was clothed 
in soft moss
not sharp   not unwelcome
[the] lizards of warning were sleeping

Far out on the pond a ripple
a sliver    a lace in the shape of a snake
it was the ducks   the geese
quiet and dozing
one bright spot of white in all that dim
turned      seemed to get ready 
to fly
but settled

It was the tame lone swan
who took no notice of its difference
accepted by the other fowl   or 
none commenting    all waiting 
for what 
[the] weather to move again
[the] night to descend
[the] crows to put the sun to rise 
or set --
Elijah to utter 
a word of wisdom.

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Saturday, January 12, 2013

John M. Bennett


Espejo del Cominiqué

“mi carta se duerme” di
jo der metiste la tos sur
la table )mesa mez tiza
que en la lluvia se es
fuma ;~;;;~;;~ ~;~ ( ;~ la
lata de creamed corn
)fíjate ,NUNCA LA
NOMBRA l l l l l
(ni esencia ,resabida ,“una
vagüedad” infrafrenética
,risa en la milpa cru
jiente de remolques
.mis papalabras re
mojadas mi recipiente
reflejo es y ronca y
RONCA “algo se muere
en la sierra”

Hasta la victoria, siempre.
- Fidel Castro

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