Cradle Knoll Cradle Knoll
All the bloodhounds in the world touch down. Wardens come from miles around. Last night a lazy dream, footage of a full range tossing under storm, wild zydeco wind up from the south via Hurricane Gap, leaves in the air, gullies surging, foaming brick-red— Van Gogh’s hair, sickle-cut, or General Sherman’s. Grouse drum on hazy ridges. Down the road a place called Muses Mills. White-throated sparrows sing their whisper-song. All the bloodhounds in the world can’t pin it down.
May 16, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Merrill Gilfillan
funeral coffee tea funeral coffee tea
my stepmother called regarding the arrangement for my dad’s funeral she is actually my second stepmother and she wanted to do things informally in a manner that my dad would’ve liked you should understand that this stepmother is two years younger than I am and that she is very very cute well this was it the funeral banquet will be in the church hall but it won’t just be coffee tea and cookies it would be coffee tea and my dad’s favorite sandwich peanut butter and bananas what could I say? it’s true I said that that was his favorite sandwich but his favorite meal was steak and lobster and it was a dead silence on the other end of the phone
May 9, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Michael Casey
Leviticus Again Leviticus Again
“And his issue is unclean,” 15:3 He is human and so will be humbled He is flesh and so will fail He is bone and so will be broken He is blood and so will bleed He has cheated and so will be changed He has deceived and so will be drained He has mocked and so will be muddied He is hollow and so will howl He has sullied and so will sadden He is nothing and so will be nought He is pain and so will perish He is emission and so will be missed He is water and so will weep He is cavernous and so will cry He is dross and so will disgust He is a carcass and so will be cast He has soured and so will stink He is rank and so will retch He is a worm and so will writhe He is corruption and will be betrayed He came forth, and so he will fade Palestine, sixth century CE (translated from the Hebrew by Peter Cole)
May 2, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Yannai
The Drought The Drought
Dip him in the river who loves water… said the cook on the cooking show… Take the hearts of thirty ducks… and here’s the trick… You must keep them wet… the way to go… the way to go is broth… Ok… Broth of hearts of duck… I went to go buy broth stuff… a bay leaf… Oh said the grocer… With duck heart what you want is spice… Curry the thirty hearts he said… Back home… Hurrying… Ok, curry… The mailman smelled the place… Oh Ho he said… I smell blood… he opened the pot… Why if it isn’t 30 duck hearts… Of course you’re going to skewer them…? Skewers… I had to… I had to go… I ran down to the hardware depot… Skewers…? Well it’s not BBQ season… I persisted… I explained the meal… the populace… Meanwhile… customers were coming… buying out all the salt and shovels… for the blizzard… buying out all the fireworks… for the Fourth… buying out all the hammers and nails… for Hurricane Ross… Remained: some rope… I’d hang them… if I had to… It’s not thirty duck hearts is it… asked the clerk… I didn’t dare talk… To skewer the hearts of thirty duckers… he said… you need the beaks of thirty ivory-billed woodpeckers… Are those… rare?… As rare as they come, he said… Better give me 31… Ran home… the kitchen was smelling… majestic… Ok…Ok… Almost ready… The places set… Candles lit… The downstairs neighbor tuning her pipe organ… 29 special guests filed in… Please sit… May I present… In the heart of each duck… there was a glint… majestic… They said, Is that…? Yes, I said… Yes… each one swimming in sauce and broth… Oh, they said… Oh no no no… Had I…? Were they…? No, no no no no … Dip him in the river who loves water… Yes that’s the recipe I followed… That’s not the way it goes… anymore… they said… They said… each heart should be served raw… and drowning… in a sacred diamond-flavored fountain… I was so… I didn’t usually believe in impressing… But these guests!… Honestly… They were just… They were as hungry as I was… One especially kind… one offered to… to pawn the woodpecker skewers… I lied… said they were worthless… said Oh they were free… Oh just papier-mâché… Oh found a ton of them lying around… down… where the river used to be…
Apr 17, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Darcie Dennigan
‘I am not myself’ ‘I am not myself’
I’m severely everyone & it hurts if I’m sick you’ll take care of me? “Oh, yeah sure of course.”
Mar 27, 2012 / Books & the Arts / John Coletti
Azure Azure
It’s that wafer ash set next to the hardy Dutchman’s pipe that reminds me of the unlikely sight we caught on hotel cable TV: Al Schön espousing orange wines. Two decades ago, he was the school’s athlete-Platonist. And now we’re all as louche and brown around the edges as this Baronne Prevost. The Julia Child, the Rise and Shine —these rosebuds exist to ornament fulsome christenings. So it happens today that Azure is introduced toddling in a glade of bamboo topping out at a whisper on the hillside. “Azure, meet our Gray.” “Gray, Azure.”
Mar 21, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Ange Mlinko
Cicadas Cicadas
Gray rainbows in the nighttime irrigation. Immediately forgotten. Then I hear a child carry a tune in a whisper. I was dashing through those ashen rainbows immediately forgotten. You could truncate butterfly to butte and still get migration and a cumin route. But not camel. Not emu. Not Tuareg. Not a Russian garlic dome like painted clove on steppe nor geodesic ostrich egg. Totally forgotten, til the child’s moonbow tune whispered in what wagon, rickshaw, landau rattled me to a carrefour. I couldn’t tell the autumn from the drought, crescent over Quonset hut, or put language to the pulp that made me ill. Inside the mouth of the water-flow monitors, goblin goblin—robin. New World cicadas that chant in parabolas. A new address, a dryness, they stop. Focal chill.
Mar 21, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Ange Mlinko
The Suit The Suit
She said take it off slowly so I can Master when it begins; I want to watch How you work button by button through Each skillful undertaking and so he moved As if to include her but she would not touch Or help with jacket or tie, determined To solve from where he comes and also To learn the color of how he can disappear Into the sea of more and more Black. She is tired of thinking Further. This time everything off until the firmament Shows up. Upon which she puts down the compass Of her body to lie along the pressed Cloth and slip into all that dark material Each arm, wrist against each cuff to see how It is done.
Mar 14, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Sophie Cabot Black
How to Watch a Police Beating How to Watch a Police Beating
First off, there should be two sets of laws— act like an ox and try not to be nonwhite or named Becky. A hippie, with its gauche idealism still intact, is annoying and self-destroying so administrations can contain it better. It's also an enormous help that your skin is recorded like data on the surface of your body, it broadcasts a signal—that you're tripping your face off at the prom for instance. My eyes feel more Episcopalian than ever, those furry little hellions that forcefully broke up a peaceful assembly of women's rights activists. Parking violations can carry bigger fines than beating up women and you act like these people can tape you but you can't tape yourself. Perhaps if the police bombed a foreign country with lattes my friends would begin to act like themselves again. It seems to me that this is not an assemblage of rights activists at all, said the lion, but a love of replacing state violence with video game violence, great movie gore and plans to repopulate the entire province with horny people again, to participate without these detached coagulations of disoriented rage branching off Falstaff just for the heck of it. To act as banker, you have to live on interest or uncover laughter at a huge obese religious electoral reform corsage. I guess you're supposed to go through and deny each of the five senses individually.
Feb 29, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Drew Gardner