Letter From a Prisoner Letter From a Prisoner
You, who only write letters in your dreams Hello mother! your son now engraves in his heart letters to send you he would like to send you a snail loving the ground passionately he would like to print burning kisses everywhere, where your steps take you he would like to send you a snail to read your poems on the sand to gather them in a shell and send them to the sea this sea whose azure you share where she rests Hello mother! Have you received the snail? (translated from the French by Doog T. Wood)
Oct 12, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Abdallah Zrika
The Planetary Currents The Planetary Currents
We live on the third rock from the sun In our living rooms We handle the remote and touch off integrated circuits compelling content, non-integrated circuits such as the chitlin’ circuit, and disintegrated circuits such as the extended family now stretched across six continents Plus one under ice The rapid flows of global capital Put us to sleep and wake us We come on in on a wing and a come on We slide right across the ice We stop to catch up, so like a breathing tree Instead of reading about the unconscious we decide to enter it, that is, by falling asleep Dream of a document signed by CEO William K. Tasker by which we are offered a position as director of corporate communications for a company called Correct We are romantics still, who stand and/or sit in shade Looking straight down to the valley floor Vertiginous, lofty, cerebral, lazy and tight This poem may be recorded for quality assurance purposes There we encounter planets whose colors we shall not forget
Sep 27, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Kit Robinson
The Planetary Currents The Planetary Currents
We live on the third rock from the sun In our living rooms We handle the remote and touch off integrated circuits compelling content, non-integrated circuits such as the chitlin’ circuit, and disintegrated circuits such as the extended family now stretched across six continents Plus one under ice The rapid flows of global capital Put us to sleep and wake us We come on in on a wing and a come on We slide right across the ice We stop to catch up, so like a breathing tree Instead of reading about the unconscious we decide to enter it, that is, by falling asleep Dream of a document signed by CEO William K. Tasker by which we are offered a position as director of corporate communications for a company called Correct We are romantics still, who stand and/or sit in shade Looking straight down to the valley floor Vertiginous, lofty, cerebral, lazy and tight This poem may be recorded for quality assurance purposes There we encounter planets whose colors we shall not forget
Sep 27, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Kit Robinson
Tulum Tulum
in ceasing to exist gods create in air an emptiness where the light comes to settle all their monuments gather around the edge the earth underneath congeals its ancient waves see the god descending from a pediment he was supposed to induce the rain’s downfall it’s the sky today that drops into the rock to very gingerly liberate our heart and elongate the view toward the end of time same at its core to the Caribbean Sea its green water took the divine in its folds all then ends up in rumbling and murmuring all began in an identical manner (translated from the French by Eléna Rivera)
Sep 21, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Bernard Nöel
Treatment Treatment
The relationship between a handsome young broker and a lovely young curator is in trouble. Before they can marry, he must come to tolerate, then feel guarded affection for a good natured buffoon who populates dioramas with stuffed mouse couples in period dress, then for an assortment of others, some less likeable, who also take passionate interest in an activity that generates no profit
Sep 14, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Rae Armantrout
Undersong Undersong
When the bottom drops out of August when the bottom drops and the summer disc burns deep in its bed when nerves sing, blaze, and flame their circuit when the bottom of August sticks out and clouds above change shape when bodies inside spin and change shape the bottom falls and meaning peeks out with chagrin the hot skin of August no longer sending messages of summer birds no longer at rest when the winds pick up and the cool air is just behind it all the bottom of the news story reveals itself the story is cold
Aug 22, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Peter Gizzi
Yahoo! (A Lion, a Duke, the Tax-Rate Fungi) Yahoo! (A Lion, a Duke, the Tax-Rate Fungi)
If men read epic poetry in bed, And never change their Eeyore underwear, On bunny kidney they’ve unwisely fed: That’s whorehouse food, and most unwholesome fare. If lotus eaters kick spondaic asses, And love trochaic bunny ears the best, It starts a war between the lower classes And puts poetic hooey to the test. If op art poet laureates go bald, And end up haunting Fred on Scooby-Doo, It’s they who to a nunnery are hauled: They have some vinyl bunny ears for you. On Yahoo! you are only who you are, And no one there is anyone… so far.
Jul 27, 2011 / Books & the Arts / K. Silem Mohammad
Raisin Raisin
I dragged my twelve-year-old cousin to see the Broadway production of A Raisin in the Sun because the hip-hop mogul and rapping bachelor, Diddy, played the starring role. An aspiring rapper gave my cousin his last name and the occasional child support so I thought the boy would geek to see a pop hero in the flesh as Walter Lee. My wife was newly pregnant, and I was rehearsing, like Diddy swapping fictions, surrendering his manicured thug persona, for a more domestic performance. My cousin mostly yawned throughout the play. Except the moment Walter Lee’s tween son stiffened on stage, as if rapt by the sound of a roulette ball. Scene: no one breathes as Walter Lee vacillates, uncertain of obsequity or rage after Lindner offers to buy the family out of the house they’ve purchased in the all-white suburb. Walter might kneel to accept, but he senses the tension in his son’s gaze. I was thinking, for real though, what would Diddy do? “Get rich or die trying,” 50 Cent tells us. But then my father sang the country lyrics, “Don’t get above your raisin’,” when as a kid I vowed to be a bigger man than him. That oppressive fruit dropped big as a medicine ball in my lap meant to check my ego, and I imagined generations wimpling in succession like the conga marching raisins that sang Marvin’s hit song. Silly, I know. Outside the theater, my cousin told me when Diddy was two, they found his hustler dad draping a steering wheel in Central Park, a bullet in his head. I shared what I knew of dreams deferred and Marvin Gaye. (When asked if he loved his son, Marvin Sr. answered, “Let’s just say I didn’t dislike him.”) Beneath the bling of many billion diodes I walked beside the boy through Times Square as if anticipating a magic curtain that would rise, where only one of us would get to take a bow.
Jul 12, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Gregory Pardlo
Cayucos Cayucos
boats used by African emigrants to reach Spanish islands A girl asleep beneath a fishing net Sandals the color of tangerines Off the coast of Morocco A moonlit downpour, God’s skeleton Bark, dory, punt, skiff “Each with a soul full of scents” Day after day spent shaping A ball of wax into a canary Little lamp, little lamp The word “contraband” arrived In English in the 16th century via Spanish Throw your shadow overboard Proverbs, blessings scratched into wood The tar of my country better than the honey of others
Jun 28, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Eduardo C. Corral
Oreo Oreo
Miriam felt that a wolf spider was stalking our pet cricket, Oreo who lives in a small indented "crouching pit" next to the refrigerator So I followed the spider’s wanderings then put a glass jar atop slid a paper underneath & carried it out to the garden She pointed out that Oreo had halted its chirping while the wolf was on the floor then resumed when I carried it out: When the wolf peeks through the door-jamb no more baaing from the lamb
Jun 15, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Ed Sanders