Aubade Aubade
Cell tower beacon a red boutonniere-- Sanankoroba on the hook w/ Senanque-- & flourishing thru this gunite, perishing world: a freesia fitted w/ aerofoils that turn in the wind & turn the wind to kilowatt-hours to power the flower forth--
Oct 14, 2009 / Books & the Arts / Andrew Zawacki
The Provenance of Beauty: A South Bronx Travelogue (Excerpt) The Provenance of Beauty: A South Bronx Travelogue (Excerpt)
If I sat next to you, spoke only to you, you would feel the warmth of my breath. As our shoulders touched you would shift, and I would know your movement as response. This is a world and we are in it. And still, as if this matters, I worry that you can't see me; I worry that you will go on without me in mind--even as our shoulders continue to touch, even as you carry my voice in your ear. At times I've wished for a structure to lean on, a landmark that's larger than the life around us, something that would govern us all. Maybe I want this because we almost had it. In truth, I was almost our Capital City. Did you know the longest total solar eclipse that will occur in the 21st century was experienced most fully this summer in Shanghai, in a city. China's most populated city. For six minutes and thirty-nine seconds, as the moon passed directly between the earth and the sun, for all those bodies all was darkness. I know how that feels. But daylight is the great extravagance. In the end I know this is true--even if I fall again and again into my private realities--because despite everything I am built out of lives.
Oct 14, 2009 / Books & the Arts / Claudia Rankine
Thin Shangdu Thin Shangdu
The millipede of furious minds who concocts all steel sternumed glass, imagines the heart of what they make, all ruse & rooms of ruby ventricled chandeliers. Along the rear of this vertical frontier: tents & oil spilt ponds, a jungle of bloomers hangs on tiers of stocking string. An opera singer, once in tiger's masque, keens which echoes deep in the well of his welder's mask. A young boy dreams of mums.
Oct 7, 2009 / Books & the Arts / Cathy Park Hong
Narragansett Narragansett
The complete sentence narrates a satisfying process. It closes and opens like a clam. I take a knife to the sentence and start my evening at the raw bar. It is hard work, and the sentences would prefer to be in the ocean. I would rather be a patron of this establishment. Someone over my shoulder Would rather know I am going to continue to put up with his stuff. It is not a wide receiver, his stuff. It is his development, Which is gradual. It involves testing me. Sometimes These tests take the form of imperatives. Drive onto the boat! The boat would rather be en route to Maine. It is an ambitious ferry. My knife wishes to whittle patterns Into the enormous picnic table. Art does not narrate.
Sep 23, 2009 / Books & the Arts / Jordan Davis
Trade Deficit Trade Deficit
Do you have any friends, the darkness asks, and for a moment you're surprised: you expected salt, maybe, or terror. China has some wisdom to offer on this point: Learn how to make a lot of things that are basically useless and also a few things that matter, then flood the markets. The trick is that once the markets are flooded, you must create new markets. Darkness does this all the time, knocking at your door: Do you have any mercy, it asks, any weapons, any sugar, any stone.
Sep 9, 2009 / Books & the Arts / G.C. Waldrep
“We must count…” “We must count…”
We must count in Babylon. Surely in Babylon we must count, count the days and the dead, the chambers of the palace, its stones, its steps, its flaring lamps, must count the clouds, the petals of the flowers, the hours, we must count the hours as they pass so slowly for the young, so swiftly for the withered masters of this place, ardent assassins of speech hidden away. Surely in Babylon we must count the gardens tended, the towers raised by slaves in this city soon to be dust, count the days and the dead. Must we count the dust?
Aug 26, 2009 / Books & the Arts / Michael Palmer
Doppler Elegy Doppler Elegy
A flowering no one attends The enterprise known variously as waking, April, or Bats are disappearing like color into function. I wanted to open In a new window the eyes of a friend by force if necessary. Amber light is a useless phrase but will have to do what painting did Dense smoke from the burning wells for our parents. Ben there is a man at the door who says I've made small changes he found your notebook throughout in red. The recurring dream contrived in places Of waning significance it resembles the hand after a difficult passage opening, a key word in the early Blue of rippled glass atonal circles. They phased us out across the backward capitals like paper money Or is that two words
Jul 29, 2009 / Books & the Arts / Ben Lerner
Ghost Poem Ghost Poem
The story begins Waiting for the trick When after life Death ends The night goes on The sick sea As much as possible Comes to me In the form of But not alive In the words from But not dead We wed or end Swallowed by Sick with And again
Jul 15, 2009 / Books & the Arts / Laura Moriarty
Ground Control Ground Control
Hollowed-out bones are more buoyant, like the stray dog wagging its tail while following us back to the car. You asked if we could keep it; I said that whatever gets buried eventually climbs out of its hole, and just because something can float doesn't mean it can swim. So I'll hold this snackpack close to my chest as we head toward open water, especially now that meals have been discontinued on most long-distance flights, but people still want to fly.
Jun 23, 2009 / Books & the Arts / Alan Gilbert
On a Monday On a Monday
On a Monday eternity finally begins and the day that follows is scarcely named, and the other is the dark, the done. On that day are extinguished all whispers and the face we loved dissolves in mist-- hope becomes hopeless: no one is coming. Eternity knows nothing of our habits, indifferent to red and the softest blue, it prefers gray, smoke, ashes. You scratch a name and a date on a piece of marble and it rubs them out with a careless shoulder, not even a pinch of bitterness left behind. Yet see, I cling to Mondays and I give the next your name; in total darkness I write with the tip of my cigarette: here have I lived. (Translated from the Spanish by Mark Weiss)
Jun 10, 2009 / Books & the Arts / Eliseo Diego