David-Baptiste Chirot’s visual & sound poetry, performance scores, essays, reviews, book covers, designs, etc.. has appeared in numerous small-press & online publications including: Wordforword, Kaurab, Black Robert, Big Bridge, Milk Magazine, Drunken Boat, Blackbox, Venereal Kittens, Maple Splits, CRASH/Atrocity Exhibtion, SOS Arte, Otoliths & NON Press. His books include: ANARKEYOLOGY (Runaway Spoon), Zero Poem (Traverse), Reverberations (8PagePress), tearerISm (singlepress/Kiro), found rubBEings (Xexoxial Editions Xerolage 32). His work has been featured in the anthologies: Word, Score, Utterance, Choreography (Writers Forum, London Editors Bob Cobbing and Lawrence Upton), Loose Watch (Invisible Books, London), LAFT Anthology (Pavement Saw), Light and Dust Mobile Anthology of Poetry (http://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/lighthom.html), Oranges Hung,
Signalism, and Spidertangle Anthology. He has participated in 350 Mail Art and Visual Poetry exhibitions in 43 countries, and most recently has had work included in “THE LAST VISPO: Visual Poetry 1998-2008” an anthology released by Fantagraphics Books.
Pages
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3/29/13
David-Baptiste Chirot
3/28/13
Xav Leplae
NIGHT CLUB POEM
(poem cont'd)
Shall we continue? Cool. This
must be ghost busters. She's
checking her phone
like a mirror—
Look at those
dance moves. Him
I mean. Or whoever.
Bending over & him—
a bandana?
Infatuated with him
? He’s pushing my table. She
is screaming at him. He's a saxophone
He is slowly like
Uh oh.
Lots of limbs.
He is stepping
my way. She is
cross-examining
him. I am
writing as
fast as I can
. . .
poem cont'
I'm done being
insecure.
I should always
write in clubs!
The candle flickers.
The hat lays
on and on and on
The hat snickers
A good thing
has a direction
> tonight's DJ is
[deleted]
Let's turn off the
albums and all get
Light and dark
splashes of
> Splashes of
green.
Do I think for
meself or is
I a copycat?
Neons purr.
Little alley-
ways in sunny coastal
villages.
I'm trying to
sleep the bottle
falls on the floor.
The legs keep
kicking cuz
everyone's 24
everyone’s 24
Wish I
could paint them
all. They lean in
like that
yeah yeah yeah
in designer jeans. They
could be saying
anything.
Night Club Poem, Splashes
of People, sweatshirts, retro
music, music of parents, boogying
down at the hips.
Doing twirls-
Guy with a set of thick black
glasses frames and
a thick black beard.
Nice.
She's leaning over
to him. She knocked
over that bottle.
She is mad at him or infatuated
Poem Cont'd
this DJ? Candles
flickering. I can
barely sit down.
The audience hates
to love this song. Everybody
knows
the words. Does everybody
know
they’re the audience?
Everybody
really
loves this
song.
I never heard it
before…No
I never heard it
before. "Time we built." So destroy
the way we won't
yuck
what happened
on the table?
Poem Cont'd
I feel slightly like
an intruder like
a voyeur of my own
self of my own
person.
Thick beats, Doing twirls—
Splashes of people
Night Club Poem Con't
Guy interrupts my groove. Accuses me of
being a narc (seriously).
right here. Writing. I don't want
to appear as if a creepy onlooker—
It doesn't matter they're
already turning on
the lights.
What's a [deleted]?
People are too [deleted].
these guys are cool.
They're not afraid
that they look dumb
Now here's a
Conga line. Who
stole the conga
line? Did all these
people? Glass
in hand.
(Conga lines came
from the Congo)
People love that
(poem cont'd)
Shall we continue? Cool. This
must be ghost busters. She's
checking her phone
like a mirror—
Look at those
dance moves. Him
I mean. Or whoever.
Bending over & him—
a bandana?
Infatuated with him
? He’s pushing my table. She
is screaming at him. He's a saxophone
He is slowly like
Uh oh.
Lots of limbs.
He is stepping
my way. She is
cross-examining
him. I am
writing as
fast as I can
. . .
poem cont'
I'm done being
insecure.
I should always
write in clubs!
The candle flickers.
The hat lays
on and on and on
The hat snickers
A good thing
has a direction
> tonight's DJ is
[deleted]
Let's turn off the
albums and all get
Light and dark
splashes of
> Splashes of
green.
Do I think for
meself or is
I a copycat?
Neons purr.
Little alley-
ways in sunny coastal
villages.
I'm trying to
sleep the bottle
falls on the floor.
The legs keep
kicking cuz
everyone's 24
everyone’s 24
Wish I
could paint them
all. They lean in
like that
yeah yeah yeah
in designer jeans. They
could be saying
anything.
Night Club Poem, Splashes
of People, sweatshirts, retro
music, music of parents, boogying
down at the hips.
Doing twirls-
Guy with a set of thick black
glasses frames and
a thick black beard.
Nice.
She's leaning over
to him. She knocked
over that bottle.
She is mad at him or infatuated
Poem Cont'd
this DJ? Candles
flickering. I can
barely sit down.
The audience hates
to love this song. Everybody
knows
the words. Does everybody
know
they’re the audience?
Everybody
really
loves this
song.
I never heard it
before…No
I never heard it
before. "Time we built." So destroy
the way we won't
yuck
what happened
on the table?
Poem Cont'd
I feel slightly like
an intruder like
a voyeur of my own
self of my own
person.
Thick beats, Doing twirls—
Splashes of people
Night Club Poem Con't
Guy interrupts my groove. Accuses me of
being a narc (seriously).
right here. Writing. I don't want
to appear as if a creepy onlooker—
It doesn't matter they're
already turning on
the lights.
What's a [deleted]?
People are too [deleted].
these guys are cool.
They're not afraid
that they look dumb
Now here's a
Conga line. Who
stole the conga
line? Did all these
people? Glass
in hand.
(Conga lines came
from the Congo)
People love that
Xav Leplae is a video-artist, image-maker, performance artist, & Riverwest Film & Video’s proprietor. His many film and video projects include “I’m Bobby”—a Romeo and Juliet film recreated in Bollywood style by street children, child laborers, and school kids. Since 2011 he has been the progenitor & one of the facilitators of Riverwest Radio; a free, live-streaming radio station in Milwaukee, WI. It is a living, breathing, community-run installation, in the storefront window.
3/27/13
Paul Vogel
Today’s date here
groaning cryoprotected
golden
calf’s
prostatitic ejaculate
open-for-business
&
hedonistic private parties
of
biblical dissipation
Paul Vogel’s poems have appeared in The Blue Canary, Burdock, and Oxford Magazine, among others. He has a chapbook; “The Empty Quarter” from Teppichfresser Press.
3/26/13
Joe Milutis
NINE
The Sorrows of Young
Werther on the 9s
Film at eleven
Is this a system?
This nownbere of quanta
This nowmere of sum-where
A Revolution 9
Followed by the pound sign
orbiting the sum
The rumor a mirror
makes of a room
and air
.
For me, it will always
be nine planets.
Pluto means a lot.
.
Toodle-loo
to loot,
luted.
.
Seeing Close Encounters
of the Third Kind,
for the third time
Reminded me of
being nine.
.
Even our poetry
is not on the metric system.
9 verges on a deci-
mega-zetta-pico-yotta
but ours is not a dead planet.
There are footlongs at the mall!
zeppometer,
harpometer,
chicometer,
grouchometer
There’s the dodecahedonism of
d and d dandies
with 12-sided dice.
Toss out six
or add another
and the world works
more or less
.
Spring is in the air
and lower, the flowers.
And further the rock
and core
This is it. the junction
of magnetic sources
Journey to the center
of the Tootsie Pop
a lick year away
where light gives way
.
9 aces
is a strange hand
When your hand
is bigger than stars
you are a wizard
a lizard incubated in
an improbable desert
a miracle composed
of shoelace and sinew
a lutograph
a seraphic line
a infinite map
en route to
nein
The Sorrows of Young
Werther on the 9s
Film at eleven
Is this a system?
This nownbere of quanta
This nowmere of sum-where
A Revolution 9
Followed by the pound sign
orbiting the sum
The rumor a mirror
makes of a room
and air
.
For me, it will always
be nine planets.
Pluto means a lot.
.
Toodle-loo
to loot,
luted.
.
Seeing Close Encounters
of the Third Kind,
for the third time
Reminded me of
being nine.
.
Even our poetry
is not on the metric system.
9 verges on a deci-
mega-zetta-pico-yotta
but ours is not a dead planet.
There are footlongs at the mall!
zeppometer,
harpometer,
chicometer,
grouchometer
There’s the dodecahedonism of
d and d dandies
with 12-sided dice.
Toss out six
or add another
and the world works
more or less
.
Spring is in the air
and lower, the flowers.
And further the rock
and core
This is it. the junction
of magnetic sources
Journey to the center
of the Tootsie Pop
a lick year away
where light gives way
.
9 aces
is a strange hand
When your hand
is bigger than stars
you are a wizard
a lizard incubated in
an improbable desert
a miracle composed
of shoelace and sinew
a lutograph
a seraphic line
a infinite map
en route to
nein
Joe Milutis is a writer, media artist, and Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts at the University of Washington-Bothell. He is the author, most recently, of Failure, A Writer's Life, a catalogue of literary monstrosities, and is currently working on various radical translation projects. www.joemilutis.com
3/25/13
Jessica Fiorini
Active Information: Notes on an Interview
I believe in the ocean of light
egg yolks or ink soma-significance
defined from continuum of conscious
this is no hologram order no linear beast
frozen light leaks in vacuum or plenum super
implicate order ripples through vacuum super
information fields order universe on file
light has to change its particles to cast shadows
implicate non-order stable but complex
even if we put more meaning in
there is still more left out
holistic thought which is unbroken
violin fantasies behind Lucha Reyes throatiness
more will come of particles and space than aged flesh
dance stamp stamp for Maria Lando there is only toil
ordering continuum shaves off unknown quality of totality
arbitrary distinction merely for the sake of thought
activity doesn’t depend on field intensity
information over mechanics you frisky experimental arrangement
mix/meld sight systems through interior homing settings
that is what for because whenever walking
compass compassion chaperone to clavichord solo
melody comprehension are the words
essential point intelligence
activities of significance
pick it up
move the wooden creak to impact a re-arranged wholeness
chance both is and isn’t
there is no individual without abstraction
certain features of this whole idea are self-existent
measure of space is matter provisional
space goes beyond the measure of space
stop brain mechanics from editing the edges
you will never do anything but inform
Jessica Fiorini is the author of two chapbooks, Sea Monster at Night and Light Suite. She resides in Brooklyn and makes games for a living.
3/22/13
Whit Griffin
The Casket That Contains All The Invisible Workmen
When it came time to come into this
incarnation, the gods knew I’d have trouble
fitting into the dominant system. They did
their best to place me where I could focus
on the work. From the 23rd of August he
began to study at midnight, and through the
winter he continued to rise at one, or at
latest two in the morning, often at twelve.
Primum Mobile; due order, appointed time.
Lentils fed the pyramid builders. Mound
builder as geo-engineer. Castles of Wisconsin.
Antique taco. Doors open on the right at
California. This is Jackson. What is it
about a trombone that makes me want to drink?
To use, or cooperate, with language? The
tone is familiar but the images are alien. The
bubble man explains his process. From the working
of the eye to the manufacture of saws. The cut
in my palm a living memento. A turn in
the sun, cloud like a pine tree. The wall
can choose where it goes, the ramp has a name.
Like G.B. Porta, my interests have caused me
to be viewed with trepidation. Galen took with
him 20,000 little cakes bearing the seal of Diana.
The best provision is piety.
When it came time to come into this
incarnation, the gods knew I’d have trouble
fitting into the dominant system. They did
their best to place me where I could focus
on the work. From the 23rd of August he
began to study at midnight, and through the
winter he continued to rise at one, or at
latest two in the morning, often at twelve.
Primum Mobile; due order, appointed time.
Lentils fed the pyramid builders. Mound
builder as geo-engineer. Castles of Wisconsin.
Antique taco. Doors open on the right at
California. This is Jackson. What is it
about a trombone that makes me want to drink?
To use, or cooperate, with language? The
tone is familiar but the images are alien. The
bubble man explains his process. From the working
of the eye to the manufacture of saws. The cut
in my palm a living memento. A turn in
the sun, cloud like a pine tree. The wall
can choose where it goes, the ramp has a name.
Like G.B. Porta, my interests have caused me
to be viewed with trepidation. Galen took with
him 20,000 little cakes bearing the seal of Diana.
The best provision is piety.
Whit Griffin is the author of Pentateuch (Skysill, 2010) and The Sixth Great Extinction (Skysill, 2012). His third collection, A Far-Shining Crystal, is forthcoming from Cultural Society. Recent poems are forthcoming in Brawling Pigeon, Boog City and LUNGFULL! Along with Andrew Hughes he edits Bright Pink Mosquito. He lives in Memphis.
3/21/13
Andy Gricevich
from THERE ARE NO UNDERGROUND STREAMS
Some really fun ghosts get out of hand and crack
the winsome citizen of glass. Another window
travels over waves, lifting a sum of them into
contrast. Things of leaves protect their interest,
flaking down the class that builds their sotto voce
from fabled animals concealed and carried, dividing
the waters from the spoils. Bandages of paradise
alternate brokerage and prairie. And here’s Captain Thought,
in perfect analogy to his original self-creation. Polis a breathing gulf.
All anxiety is forgetting us in an incessance of recall.
The repetition of birdsong and the repetition of the clock
can only come together in the past, which is why
we’re producing memory as quickly as possible
and in tune.
Some really fun ghosts get out of hand and crack
the winsome citizen of glass. Another window
travels over waves, lifting a sum of them into
contrast. Things of leaves protect their interest,
flaking down the class that builds their sotto voce
from fabled animals concealed and carried, dividing
the waters from the spoils. Bandages of paradise
alternate brokerage and prairie. And here’s Captain Thought,
in perfect analogy to his original self-creation. Polis a breathing gulf.
All anxiety is forgetting us in an incessance of recall.
The repetition of birdsong and the repetition of the clock
can only come together in the past, which is why
we’re producing memory as quickly as possible
and in tune.
Andy Gricevich lives in Madison, WI, where he edits Cannot Exist magazine, stocks produce at the food co-op, rides his bike around. With Lewis Freedman he facilitates CE's chapbook wing, as well as the ___________-Shaped Reading Series. He is uncomfortably writing this in the third person, and says "might as well" fairly often.
3/20/13
Cate Peebles
The Next Plane
I step into the party
And stand beside a glass
Jug of vodka that looks
So clean, so just, more exact
Than any icy anecdote but
I sip cloudy tap water
Instead because I enjoy how
A veil will fall on anything
And sample all the pickled
Root vegetables spread
On a clean white cloth
Arranged like conversations
From across the room
Against a pictureless brick wall
Exposed just so in corsage
Formation, smart, even bold
Until I put one in my
Mouth and realize I
Had started to pucker
My lips to shut myself up
When I spout: Language
Is a field of broken tractors—
My words adolescent
Poltergeist stuck between
The Formica table and heavenly
Dust and the woman with Cruella
DeVille hair is a humid
Aztec bride eating hearty beets
On a toothpick; she barely
Blinks and that’s about it
So I move over to the girl
From Beirut who hovers
Alone next to a giant fan
That corrugates everything
We say and blows our gauzy pink
Dresses against opaque skin
Making clear our flesh and
Bone and semi-precious sweat
Otherwise we’re the phantoms
Here and would get
Away with it but she says
She has no experience
With clear spirits
Visiting us in this dimension
Except for the small ones
Still holding on to a fan blade
Before shooting off into wherever
Animals and children
She says,
But not dark ones with
Anger and blood lust
I’m here only 10 days
To see art and then
It’s back onto another plane
I say,
I would kill
For a séance
She nods coolly
Twisting her face into
A flapping, moth-eaten napkin
With two black button eyes
And I vaporize
Never grasping
How to exit a room
I step into the party
And stand beside a glass
Jug of vodka that looks
So clean, so just, more exact
Than any icy anecdote but
I sip cloudy tap water
Instead because I enjoy how
A veil will fall on anything
And sample all the pickled
Root vegetables spread
On a clean white cloth
Arranged like conversations
From across the room
Against a pictureless brick wall
Exposed just so in corsage
Formation, smart, even bold
Until I put one in my
Mouth and realize I
Had started to pucker
My lips to shut myself up
When I spout: Language
Is a field of broken tractors—
My words adolescent
Poltergeist stuck between
The Formica table and heavenly
Dust and the woman with Cruella
DeVille hair is a humid
Aztec bride eating hearty beets
On a toothpick; she barely
Blinks and that’s about it
So I move over to the girl
From Beirut who hovers
Alone next to a giant fan
That corrugates everything
We say and blows our gauzy pink
Dresses against opaque skin
Making clear our flesh and
Bone and semi-precious sweat
Otherwise we’re the phantoms
Here and would get
Away with it but she says
She has no experience
With clear spirits
Visiting us in this dimension
Except for the small ones
Still holding on to a fan blade
Before shooting off into wherever
Animals and children
She says,
But not dark ones with
Anger and blood lust
I’m here only 10 days
To see art and then
It’s back onto another plane
I say,
I would kill
For a séance
She nods coolly
Twisting her face into
A flapping, moth-eaten napkin
With two black button eyes
And I vaporize
Never grasping
How to exit a room
Cate Peebles' poems have previously appeared in Boston Review, Cannibal, Forklift Ohio, Octopus, La Petite Zine, Lit, Tin House, Washington Square, and elsewhere. She co-edits the online poetry magazine, Fou (www.foumagazine.net), and lives in one of New York City's five boroughs.
3/19/13
Chelsea Tadeyeske
’kota
- my left hand goes numb. it curls like a claw. i put it on my list of things that need to be fixed.
- four places in my body split open and soak my costume from the inside out.
- my costume’s not my body anymore. my body is a roughly planted bundle of flowers.
- my left hand goes numb. it curls like a claw. i put it on my list of things that need to be fixed.
- four places in my body split open and soak my costume from the inside out.
- my costume’s not my body anymore. my body is a roughly planted bundle of flowers.
Chelsea Tadeyeske is author of HEELDRAGGER (plumberries press), co-author of There Exists...(plumberries press), proprietress of Pity Milk Press (pitymilkpress.wordpress.com), and co-curator of An Empty Room reading series in Milwaukee. She is currently trying to grow things in her window and teach herself the autoharp.
3/18/13
Zoe Addison
APOCALYSM
Her I spilled out on
8th street: a violent
scamper out of sight.
The evacuation then
became a plastic bag,
which tangled in a
chain link fence
when the paramedics
arrived. They said that
I was dead but reassured
that with their help
a new I would
remember along
the anatomy of
all of her iniquities.
It would be a
pliable formation, it
would sell like sex
might smell, there would be
an object underneath these
nerve endings. Their
aid was graciously
refused: that the body
is vulnerable only
suggests the curvature
of what can be
discovered by uselessness
or wanton trepidation.
Gods and all manner
of eschatology also
carve designs
in hollow places.
Her I spilled out on
8th street: a violent
scamper out of sight.
The evacuation then
became a plastic bag,
which tangled in a
chain link fence
when the paramedics
arrived. They said that
I was dead but reassured
that with their help
a new I would
remember along
the anatomy of
all of her iniquities.
It would be a
pliable formation, it
would sell like sex
might smell, there would be
an object underneath these
nerve endings. Their
aid was graciously
refused: that the body
is vulnerable only
suggests the curvature
of what can be
discovered by uselessness
or wanton trepidation.
Gods and all manner
of eschatology also
carve designs
in hollow places.
Zoe Addison is trypophobic. Her chapbooks include Cinderbox (June 2012) and Prime (January 2013). She is currently working on too many projects, but one she is particularly excited about is the construction of &c.&c.&c.&c.&c.&c.&c.&c.&c., a hypertext poetry collaboration with Cynthia Spencer.
3/15/13
Edmund Berrigan
Poem for the New Year, 2013
after Donne
The streets of Paris are a map in my mind
Of the streets of Paris my mind weathered in
I replace them with loyalties and absence
But also a presence shared now to differentiate
One mind set and replicate another.
The conditions of the previous entries no
Longer apply—sets of sadness and confusion
Replaced with different anomalies of feeling
While I rely on sensory input to motion
My advanced standing still. Landscape withers
The physical drift while matter continues
Neither created nor destroyed, but emotions
Transubstantiate from one corporeal to another,
And there, I do bring the spider love.
Edmund Berrigan is the author of two books of poetry, Disarming Matter (Owl Press, 1999) and Glad Stone Children (Farfalla, 2008), and a quasi-memoir, Can It! forthcoming from Letter Machine. He is editor of the Selected Poems of Steve Carey (Sub Press, 2009), and is co-editor with Anselm Berrigan and Alice Notley of the Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan (University of California, 2005) and the Selected Poems of Ted Berrigan (University of California, 2010). He is an editor for poetry mags Vlak and Brawling Pigeon, and is on the editorial board of Lungfull!
3/14/13
Adam Moorad
Lebanon Premium
The ballpit pooled bright rubber.
Her VHS cassette began to fizz.
His 401K juiced an oxygen tank
at a furniture liquidation in Queens.
The hair model stripped. The bear
stripped the bark off the picnic table.
Time stripped the wallpaper.
Glacier Girl shivved Wile
E. Eskimo.
The clothesline swallowed its tongue
again. The Quixotic Wanderer of Earth
took a car bomb. The moon climaxed,
the red sky about segued. It was late.
The clothesline swallowed its tongue
again. The Quixotic Wanderer of Earth
took a car bomb. The moon climaxed,
the red sky about segued. It was late.
Adam Moorad is the author of Oak Ridge (Turtleneck Press, 2012). He lives in Brooklyn.
3/13/13
Abraham Smith
from: Only Jesus Could Icefish in Summer
13.
the crows are i am home
as in i go to the rib doctor
in taos tell him pull one
i go to the duck decoy doctor
with that no laugh
or deep breath for at
least six weeks rib north of
minneapolis tell her
whittle me a wind wanderer
i go to the glassblower md
boston by way of fayetteville
tell him blow me a dip vessel
bout the size of the pineal and i
go to the big printer makers
before you homogenize the inks
in them big expense cubes i am as in
an animal under the leaves
am the leaves for all the eye
and the leaves ain't worth
thinking about since milton so
mind if i siphon a bag of
your rawest finest so
so home in crow as in yard chicken
eggs for breakfast
them yokes blood orange
they candle the heart
them kids five things
every morning
lamb duck mama to plastic waa waa lion train
15.
does not ardor dog
does beat with yours pure
two too soft bob tank apples
the hairs shook absenting
everything from a fleeing
tax o' dermal deer
that slim leaf rock boat loll
light grows old
so charged with milk so breakable
gun powder water
tank was a bucket on the second storey thank you
some things you don't touch water
cares
for you
those old plastic sack apples
psalm solo on the slip knot too
13.
the crows are i am home
as in i go to the rib doctor
in taos tell him pull one
i go to the duck decoy doctor
with that no laugh
or deep breath for at
least six weeks rib north of
minneapolis tell her
whittle me a wind wanderer
i go to the glassblower md
boston by way of fayetteville
tell him blow me a dip vessel
bout the size of the pineal and i
go to the big printer makers
before you homogenize the inks
in them big expense cubes i am as in
an animal under the leaves
am the leaves for all the eye
and the leaves ain't worth
thinking about since milton so
mind if i siphon a bag of
your rawest finest so
so home in crow as in yard chicken
eggs for breakfast
them yokes blood orange
they candle the heart
them kids five things
every morning
lamb duck mama to plastic waa waa lion train
15.
does not ardor dog
does beat with yours pure
two too soft bob tank apples
the hairs shook absenting
everything from a fleeing
tax o' dermal deer
that slim leaf rock boat loll
light grows old
so charged with milk so breakable
gun powder water
tank was a bucket on the second storey thank you
some things you don't touch water
cares
for you
those old plastic sack apples
psalm solo on the slip knot too
Abraham Smith hails from Ladysmith, Wisconsin. His poetry collections--via Action Books--are Only Jesus Could Icefish in Summer (forthcoming, 2014); Hank (2010); and Whim Man Mammon (2007). His reading highlights include stints at the Academy of American Poets' Rooftop Reading Series and Opium Magazine's Literary Death Match. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, MA, and the Alabama State Council on the Arts. Smith winters as Instructor of English at University of Alabama; Smithy summers as farmhand (Farmall tractor rider) on Hawks' Highland Farm.
3/12/13
Kari Freitag
You might not want a thing and then that not having a thing becomes your thing so I really think you should try to have a thing you think you would admire if it were some other person's thing.
To be someone you need a thing
like a consistent thing
so when you meet someone they know you because of this thing and probably knew of you because of this thing
that you have and always have when you meet everyone you meet
and when you aren't around physically but in conversation
everyone nods, like yes that is their thing and everyone agrees and does the same motion with their head or hands
another thing allowing
everyone to feel like everyone is feeling the same thing at the same time.
To be someone you need a thing
like a consistent thing
so when you meet someone they know you because of this thing and probably knew of you because of this thing
that you have and always have when you meet everyone you meet
and when you aren't around physically but in conversation
everyone nods, like yes that is their thing and everyone agrees and does the same motion with their head or hands
another thing allowing
everyone to feel like everyone is feeling the same thing at the same time.
In 2012, Kari Freitag won a Best Joke Award for a string of 'yo momma' jokes. The award itself is a beautiful oak plaque with marbled green and gold detailing. It's the best.
3/11/13
Kimberly Ann Southwick
this, and
this supreme and the words that weren’t the words to her song but to this.
this disco and the grin that a globe makes despite its square, mirror tiles.
this salt, this sea, this underwater fire, let’s get it right this time.
this five, this spitting second hand. this is where. this is when and where.
this is when i asked god whether he was the sun and the brain or only one
and he mirrored the answer back to me. this wire. this tightrope. this house
and this mirror to the house next door. this is the story of an angry woman. this is not.
this coast, this shore filled with bloated fish, ugly and pregnant,
this summer and we couldn’t swim, the tide could barely roll in and so
this lifeguard who had these big arms and this handsome face told us that
this beach was closed and we went home and i walked home and this song,
this very song, played in my headphones and it was this one. this serenade
this boardwalk this glut this noise that it doesn’t make this hot this too hot.
this supreme and the words that weren’t the words to her song but to this.
this disco and the grin that a globe makes despite its square, mirror tiles.
this salt, this sea, this underwater fire, let’s get it right this time.
this five, this spitting second hand. this is where. this is when and where.
this is when i asked god whether he was the sun and the brain or only one
and he mirrored the answer back to me. this wire. this tightrope. this house
and this mirror to the house next door. this is the story of an angry woman. this is not.
this coast, this shore filled with bloated fish, ugly and pregnant,
this summer and we couldn’t swim, the tide could barely roll in and so
this lifeguard who had these big arms and this handsome face told us that
this beach was closed and we went home and i walked home and this song,
this very song, played in my headphones and it was this one. this serenade
this boardwalk this glut this noise that it doesn’t make this hot this too hot.
Kimberly Ann Southwick founded and edits Gigantic Sequins, a literary arts journal. She lives in Philadelphia and teaches grammar and literature. Her poems have been published by Barrelhouse, Big Lucks, Word Riot, and PANK. Follow her on twitter @kimannjosouth.
3/8/13
Mike Hauser
Paul Ron Ryan Rand Romney Jingleheimer Schmidt
paul ryan ron rand ronnie ron ron romney
Multiply their draw of the Ayn Rand anytown folksy-time rage
by the Total Scooter of media savvy
this equals a supple philanthropy.
far be it from me to want to have to live with this stuff
rambling, rundown, Randian-obsessed proclivities for farm to table stuff
aside; ryanstuffs vs. bidenstuffs:
Crap, Asian carp Crap!
The packaging got wet.
Ba Ba Ba
Ba Barbara Romney
Permissions propagate some compelling-ass summons’
imperatives for folks to freely exchange
and not, like, pee freely
in their own humidors of commerce
For a randomly-generated IP address
to commit labor to the damaged goods QUICK!
Everybody laugh now
at the conjecture conjunction
of his hair and it’s part.
of previously conceived sovereign resource management
management of both the ecological and economic concerns.
they’re outraged
reaching for their wallets going rah rah ryan ron ron rand randy romney who
stole Randy Romney’s boat: a blow
for the ecological and economic concerns of this region
a blow to the outrage cultivated as well.
Wing Zone: Wing Street: Wing Kingdom: Wing Domain:
A
World of Wings
Spicey concern torqued, randomized to help you control your heat
spread your seed, out of concern, spicey concern that grows cash
so-called Trundle Bed Economies
gotten in the mood
Create jobs from history-on-mute
View these radical fundamentalist Jam Band home videos
and run this t-shirt design through your cube
before you start growing your Corporate Model.
Don’t just get preachy
to avoid snappin’ necks
in flash mob-like choreography.
Here is the embarrassing video of Paul Ryan
frantically putting plastic over the upholstery
we seem to crystalize as once-thought-redundant
desire for titanically-proportioned
overhaul of molten-cock-like much-talked-about
documentary-style moral outrage
that glazes over these wings
in spires of military funding
where the mind goes to diddle itself
in a fit of
learning the remote operation
of robotic peace-keeping technology.
paul ryan ron rand ronnie ron ron romney
Multiply their draw of the Ayn Rand anytown folksy-time rage
by the Total Scooter of media savvy
this equals a supple philanthropy.
far be it from me to want to have to live with this stuff
rambling, rundown, Randian-obsessed proclivities for farm to table stuff
aside; ryanstuffs vs. bidenstuffs:
Crap, Asian carp Crap!
The packaging got wet.
Ba Ba Ba
Ba Barbara Romney
Permissions propagate some compelling-ass summons’
imperatives for folks to freely exchange
and not, like, pee freely
in their own humidors of commerce
For a randomly-generated IP address
to commit labor to the damaged goods QUICK!
Everybody laugh now
at the conjecture conjunction
of his hair and it’s part.
of previously conceived sovereign resource management
management of both the ecological and economic concerns.
they’re outraged
reaching for their wallets going rah rah ryan ron ron rand randy romney who
stole Randy Romney’s boat: a blow
for the ecological and economic concerns of this region
a blow to the outrage cultivated as well.
Wing Zone: Wing Street: Wing Kingdom: Wing Domain:
A
World of Wings
Spicey concern torqued, randomized to help you control your heat
spread your seed, out of concern, spicey concern that grows cash
so-called Trundle Bed Economies
gotten in the mood
Create jobs from history-on-mute
View these radical fundamentalist Jam Band home videos
and run this t-shirt design through your cube
before you start growing your Corporate Model.
Don’t just get preachy
to avoid snappin’ necks
in flash mob-like choreography.
Here is the embarrassing video of Paul Ryan
frantically putting plastic over the upholstery
we seem to crystalize as once-thought-redundant
desire for titanically-proportioned
overhaul of molten-cock-like much-talked-about
documentary-style moral outrage
that glazes over these wings
in spires of military funding
where the mind goes to diddle itself
in a fit of
learning the remote operation
of robotic peace-keeping technology.
Mike Hauser lives in Milwaukee where he sometimes organizes poetry readings, other times participates in the Milwaukee Sound Choir, and still other times manages to write some poetry. Past chapbooks include Psychic Headset from Mitzvah Chaps, and Sample Blog in Issue 1 of THE EQUALIZER, an email-distributed magazine edited by Michael Schiavo.
3/7/13
John Coletti
Dukes Up
The Easter egg hunt
inherently cruel
religiously obscene
“I see one.” “Let me get one.”
tears. like that.
an epiphenomenelogical account from like organisms
teasing @ the homegrown
in a banged-up locker
that convince me, at the end of darknessses
that I want to enjoy being family-kept-spilling
I never understate
& demonstrate daily
the capital shock then “wooed
& won by wireless”
weeds I thought more beautiful tilted
like a panix’ serpent
calming
core doubts. it’s been a little rough.
pancakes at midnight
pancakes at day
Medieval reenactors
dragging
that one aria
from Turandot
around your eye. forever closed
the tingling of clean, crystal lights
then I laid back down. don’t rot: sayeth Beaker
the tendered non-capital evening so eschewed
now, I have a third wave: Starting fresh!
The Easter egg hunt
inherently cruel
religiously obscene
“I see one.” “Let me get one.”
tears. like that.
an epiphenomenelogical account from like organisms
teasing @ the homegrown
in a banged-up locker
that convince me, at the end of darknessses
that I want to enjoy being family-kept-spilling
I never understate
& demonstrate daily
the capital shock then “wooed
& won by wireless”
weeds I thought more beautiful tilted
like a panix’ serpent
calming
core doubts. it’s been a little rough.
pancakes at midnight
pancakes at day
Medieval reenactors
dragging
that one aria
from Turandot
around your eye. forever closed
the tingling of clean, crystal lights
then I laid back down. don’t rot: sayeth Beaker
the tendered non-capital evening so eschewed
now, I have a third wave: Starting fresh!
John Coletti is the author of Mum Halo (Rust Buckle Books 2010), Same Enemy Rainbow (fewer & further 2008), and Physical Kind (Yo-Yo-Labs 2005). SKASERS, a half-book with Anselm Berrigan, is forthcoming from Flowers & Cream. He recently served as editor of The Poetry Project Newsletter and co-edits Open 24 Hours Press with poet Greg Fuchs. Other recent projects include a libretto for Excelsior (Caught: The Wide Open), an opera composed by Caleb Burhans commissioned by Chicago's Fifth House Ensemble and premiering in 2013 .
3/6/13
Cynthia Spencer
Nyx
I passed a soldier here but somewhere else at the same time I looked behind me.
Rafters mound a warm identical.
I pleading flat unwelcome homeward there is a bird here near the three doors.
Unstarred lacework, finger-floss drip.
I cryptesthesia, wait for slightest ridge, then thicker on the steady red.
I passed a soldier here but somewhere else at the same time I looked behind me.
Rafters mound a warm identical.
I pleading flat unwelcome homeward there is a bird here near the three doors.
Unstarred lacework, finger-floss drip.
I cryptesthesia, wait for slightest ridge, then thicker on the steady red.
Cynthia Spencer writes and organizes readings in Milwaukee, WI. She is the author of two chapbooks, in what sequence will my parts exit (Plumberries Press, 2011) and Mercy (forthcoming, Pity Milk Press) and co-author of THERE EXISTS... (Plumberries Press, 2012) with Chelsea Tadeyeske. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Horse Less Review, Gritty Silk, Cannot Exist, Burdock Magazine, Drupe Fruits, Humble Humdrum Cotton Frock and the Shift Freedom Newsletter.
3/5/13
Weldon Gardner Hunter
You'd Think It Was
Life time humans
stumble upon
nature or of
nature. Around
nature. This
nature, the
nature, and that
nature are out hunt-
ing deer. Outdoors,
nature, bang!
Out of
5 incredible works
nature is
just 2nd.
Life time humans
stumble upon
nature or of
nature. Around
nature. This
nature, the
nature, and that
nature are out hunt-
ing deer. Outdoors,
nature, bang!
Out of
5 incredible works
nature is
just 2nd.
Weldon Gardner Hunter lives in Soviet Kerrisdale, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. His most recent book of poetry is The Stella and Pony Years, published by small ghosts press of Calgary, Alberta.
3/4/13
Robert Thomas
It’s A Still-Life
1.
“…Let’s see…Aaaahhh…Cornflakes box…Uh, an empty bag of Funions (also: the Cornflakes box is empty)…empty bag of Funions…AND a two-dollar bill…for which I paid… three dollars, in the nineties I guess…”
2.
3.
0:06
permanently barrier of funds
0:10
also recordings forty bucks isn't it
0:13
into bigger friends and i want to know i will
0:17
for which i
0:19
three dollars
0:20
in the nineties i guess
1.
“…Let’s see…Aaaahhh…Cornflakes box…Uh, an empty bag of Funions (also: the Cornflakes box is empty)…empty bag of Funions…AND a two-dollar bill…for which I paid… three dollars, in the nineties I guess…”
2.
3.
0:06
permanently barrier of funds
0:10
also recordings forty bucks isn't it
0:13
into bigger friends and i want to know i will
0:17
for which i
0:19
three dollars
0:20
in the nineties i guess
Robert Thomas’ poems have appeared in “OW”, Dodo Bird, Burdock, & a few others. He is a member of the musical group “Scrimshaw”, whose titles include “Donkey Venom”, “KUCKUK”, & “So Wonderful”.
3/1/13
Lewis Freedman
from: Residual Synonyms for the Name of God
Introduction
‘IF my cart creates a turd who speaks through a moat of filth in the human gaze… learn to cleave to it.’ These words are quoted in the name of the failures of the old interpreters whose recourse was to photograph their own acknowledgement. These allegorists’ twofold torture was just their environment softening them up to be detainees of the euphemism: ‘law.’ It’s true… that these same prisoners are the guys who arrive at the media coverage with a best-books-for-any-moment test… but without knowledge of the whole… uh, mockumentary about real event genre. How strange... that thought is more concerned with shape than material! It seems, therefore, worth some amount of time (a while?) to draw nearer to conceiving the administration of the word as the editors of representative shape…characters themselves anticipation… present-day dudes on the way to class representing… religion-of-straight… by interviewing shape discomfort in… dedication to calling each other fags in the story.
The term ‘network’ rightly used or not produces types of examples… types of examples drunk on four centuries of graves engendering each others’ decay in an underground work connexion. To our thinking we are dealing with our whole lives… devoted to the development of attempts both serious and superficial to distort a point of reference beyond recognizable failure. One is then, rightly or wrongly, surprised by the unreadability of the meagre results planed in long rows of fogged-over battle formations. Imagine a full library of books that are overdue primarily and secondarily due to an imperfect relationship between method and application. Isn’t it amazing?
If you divide the combined age of your community into seconds you can schematize thinking… but it’s a mean task. Exactly the opposite of what I think I’ve gathered, there is scarcely a page in the following pages without at least some lines expressing the productive force of individual thought deposits. Some strike uncouthly in the climax… some are custom-made chronologies, polemical to the point of barely motivated… but also we placed our own misfortunes as quiet and unassuming tracers who teach contemporary philosophy to primitive religion… so… deep shadows are to blame? One example from page 87: ‘When a person apologizes in an apologetic country, she will be treated as the material of historical method within the theme of history… she must be forgetting to be prepared in advance for the need to abandon arising shapes. ‘Papa,’ ‘Goomi’ (your parents), with their / its good and bad effects, allow you your protean faculty of adaptability. The happening decline we attended in the rickety dogma shed was shaking in the formulating lung… altering… the being against belief.’
How far out is this present writer’s wish to sip the chafe from somatic bonds and spit it under new restrictions he doesn’t understand! Four centuries of analysis… and thousands of reactive teachers grooving on their words as verdicts brought glistening from the fount of their fresh selves to pronounce a contribution that is to beee thought… that is to be the task of the children of the world… and if thou delay its real meaning… thou shalt surely die. You know it’s a genre convention, like surfers’ hair. Enlightenment is to be thought… it’s safer that way. Imagine an impressive ever-deepening awareness as long as it’s not inferior to any other. Thanks… thanks to the naked advancements of Zoroaster, Buddha, Jesus, Paul, Origen, and Augustine… we cab our way to social functions on paved roads under the Big Scribe. Heathendom and idolatry as weapons… this is a teaching used by a priestly clan to restrain a lower class, assimilated by parable at the manifold points around skin.
Why is this here? Nothing sounds quite as new and original to you as your zeal to have the foreign mark diminish your individuality. This idea repeats the emerging pattern or emerges in the repeating pattern or patterns the emerging repetition or patters on the repetition of emergence. Any way you disturb it, it will burn the living instance to play you back… your idea of the masses turning shamefacedly into theatrical time. There were, are, and will be times when biasing the spirit of the words at this Place… towards an amplified and roving immortality… can’t be overrated… though… on the whole it’s never been… it’s never been underrated… and we don’t have to put up… with this…this frame… as leading arbiter of our fate… it’s a very poor arbiter!
What does this matter? This work endeavours to effect the event by circling its preservation as having spread from its ancient sources… thinking its touch far into the omens and needs of our nowadays. With all the paranoia of a solitary vigil, we will administer the problems of writing and reading to the little mental conditions that have changed so over the last eighteen hundred years. ‘Good to-day’ the male police officer exclaimed… ‘Thanks, Happy Christmas’ replied the Minister’s wife… this is extremely fucking disturbing… and bears the character of almost the same difficulties arranged in the many hundreds of cases tackled in this here folio: an airing and classification of the known and unknown searching graves… each losing… to agitate and harass the newly risen consequences of their methods. The medical doctor, no matter how advanced, holds the space… in our society… of eternally primitive information… ditto the teacher… which is why they’re so easily seen… so easily hurt by this email… so unable to say the shifting aspect they felt lost… viewing instead… some rediscovered gemof-a ‘moment’ of existence.
Let’s remain rewinding there remotely in 19-91 a little longer while… the lucidation is kicked out for its snow-like vastness. The law of this material then… was a series of documents too large to carry around… but now is a string of language too vast to read. I’m not complaining but… Now you have to pay the slightest difference to the conceptual attention bank… it’s unconscious… I mean not conscious… what’d you call me?... did people? invent them? I mean, we have to weigh in the threat by habit, breaking up its narrative with just a thimble of the past and just a normal of the future, right? Also the local ignorance of the word must be never be lost sight of… it’s connotations are cultural standards which protect normalcy, it’s detonations are just striking events with fact estimates. For example, I say canned sardines are just one side issue… of an older generation who were more habituated to smelling like fish (canned laughter). While you say new and old can’t be divorced from the riddle…missing or not…of the surrounding world…missing or… at least the extent of its oversimplification.
Like the furious perception of a squirrel I at once saw and thought?... I liked it. Therefore the same way we human feelings longed for the super-seen sloping down towards a stupid beauty that is only not an exit… we hoped to be reprimanded for longing for the idea in the image of the super-soakerthree- thousand which culminated meaningfully in a friend. How can we learn something about three-thousand texts without reading and airing our terminal gems? Print and prison in the agitated metavariable of a repenting mind… they did not contribute their proper share of vastness into the supernatural latrine… so a side issue neglects them redirecting their attention.
I know a harp when I see a harp that must never be lost sight of. We are here as a sucky estimate unfulfilling the temporal condition of some future riddle. And yet it is the sublimest deal the body invented… to begin in words a passage means a passage means it makes sense. Why release our methods to their easy justifications… like unsorts the shortcut to a history of names abbreviated into the spokesperson of our time whose popularity types the ill-luck of anyone. A bitter youth deer weekend discarded in the alto corners still providing the investment of magic and prayer. A step detected towards the entrance to all media controversy… at its best in a long list…mirage and myth and actual shore arose afterwards around the type of song… you know.
To counter your face try to present a strange contrast between the features on one side… remote centuries’ contact will will be clear feelings on the other. Thought thought through and through some sauce in my teether. Popular names in our Literature iterating on the warping phone until their location is precise pronunciation… people saying ‘!*??# it’ to ordinary works of genius forgetting the bitter struggles they invented to become them. Later on to keep listening to the altered fix that reliance can be placed upon… by indirectly exposing them to be institutional attributes of personal crudities… crossing some ocean side by side linked by persecution and the bits it’s broken. A contest of proof in which situational and dramatic irony advances to a height in which speaking becomes an internal movement… of the burden of great change upon movement… interspersing the vogue with… like what wine is actually going on in us.
Lewis Freedman moved to Madison where he now resides and co-runs the ___________-Shaped reading series with Andy Gricevich, with whom he also edits and publishes chapbooks for cannot exist. Also, Lewis co-edits the publication of chapbooks with the multi-locatable Agnes Fox Press. Three chapbooks have been published under his name: The Third Word (What To Us [Press], 2009), Catfish Po’ Boys (Minutes Books, 2010), and SUFFERING EXCHANGE WALKS WITH AND (Minutes Books, 2011). Two more are forthcoming in 2013, Hold the Blue Orb, Baby (Well Greased) and Solitude: The Complete Games (Troll Thread), the latter a collaboration with Kevin Rydberg.