Spring Spring
Larvae harden into adults, into the complexity of distinct anatomy— windowed wings, legs like stitches—tossing off the sodden blanket of the soft body, their innocence lisping over the pig, oomphs and fizzes forming a transcript of triumphs, but what does it mean to win, out here? Spring’s raffle: who will live, who’ll become distressed and wish for a place to climb in. I’m watching the air fill with the born-again, resting on the corpse of the rotted oak. Tomorrow I’ll drag it, chain-sawed to thick tablets, into the woods. No tragedy to watch it go. The insects have broken from that burrow into warm air. Snow has melted from bark and pooled. With nowhere to turn.
Feb 17, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Paula Bohince
Rough Patch Rough Patch
You can tell, by symptoms of neglect, something of his circumstance: the chipped and buckled eaves, deflated jack-o-lantern beside the stoop, an ember under snow, or red ants swarming the sill, crossing a line of cinnamon in some far-flung military action. You can tell, by frying onions, their thick domestic weather, or the grim satisfaction with which his vacuum overlooks a plain of fur and dust. I can tell from a little just what a whole lot means. You treat me like somebody you ain't never seen. Hackle stacker, mayfly cripple, and Bloom's parachute ant crowd an ashtray—to rarify the quality of failure. Mornings, a frowzy Manx kneads his chest with claws unsheathed, thrumming with desire and contempt in equal measure. Every other weekend, he rolls out a court-appointed cot from the closet for his daughter. You can feel, with your fingertips against his metal door, vibrations from the interstate or seismic evidence of Furry Lewis, circa 1928.
Feb 3, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Devin Johnston
Sonnet of Exemplary Sentences From the Chapter Pertaining to the Nature of Pronouns in Emile Benveniste’s ‘Problems in General Linguistics’ (Paris 1966) Sonnet of Exemplary Sentences From the Chapter Pertaining to the Nature of Pronouns in Emile Benveniste’s ‘Problems in General Linguistics’ (Paris 1966)
Sonnet of Exemplary Sentences From the Chapter Pertaining to the Nature of Pronouns in Emile Benveniste's Problems in General Linguistics (Paris 1966) This time I forgive you but I shall not forgive you again. I observe that he forgives you but he will not forgive you again. Although I eat this fish I don't know its name. Spirits watch over the soul of course. I suppose and I presume. I pose and I resume. I suppose I have a horse. How in the world can you afford this house I said and she said I had a good divorce. Strangers are warned that here there is a fierce, fast dog. Whores have no business getting lost in the fog. Is it to your ears or your soul that my voice is intolerable? Whether Florinda lays a hand on his knee or his voluble, he pleads a headache and the narrator concludes, The problem is insoluble.
Jan 19, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Anne Carson
Dorothy Wordsworth Dorothy Wordsworth
Dorothy Wordsworth The daffodils can go fuck themselves. I'm tired of their crowds, yellow rantings about the spastic sun that shines and shines and shines. How are they any different from me? I, too, have a big messy head on a fragile stalk. I spin with the wind. I flower and don't apologize. There's nothing funny about good weather. Oh, spring again, the critics nod. They know the old joy, that wakeful quotidian, the dark plot of future growing things, each one labeled Narcissus nobilis or Jennifer Chang. If I died falling from a helicopter, then this would be an important poem. Then the ex-boyfriends would swim to shore declaiming their knowledge of my bulbous youth. O, Flower, one said, why aren't you meat? But I won't be another bashful shank. The tulips have their nervous joie-de-vivre, the lilacs their taunt. Fractious petals, stop interrupting my poem with boring beauty. All the boys are in the field gnawing raw bones of ambition and calling it ardor. Who the hell are they? This is a poem about war.
Jan 19, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Jennifer Chang
Little Pick Eye Little Pick Eye
Little Pick Eye turned William over like the boots his mama left in the hall. Stupid pickle gulls pulled the hair out of his head. Call him kid flower and I guess over time stiffened and plucked is how you might describe him. The main thing to remember is that it's not your fault. You didn't introduce him to the cigar. You didn't give him a hottie tottie when he got froze outa school and you aint gonna straighten him out with a crowbar now. Dogs dancing with their big old teeth, bars a shakin, neighbors scramin neighbors. You pay good money to live somewhere and then wammo, God makes it snow all over your car. Odds are bad you called for advice but advice is what you're gonna get: Work to be the bastard Live to be the bastard And then be the bastard That, or they'll take your money right out of the bank in front of your eyes and tell ya about it. Now Git. Now Git! Now Git! You didn't make it, we just gave it to you for something you did.
Jan 12, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Joshua Beckman
Man How to Listen Man How to Listen
the horizon has an edge. It is a place & we live here, under the grass, over the earth. No pomegranate tree grows under there, there where only demons bring fruit.
Dec 16, 2010 / Books & the Arts / Sarah Riggs