IN MEMORIAM for Denise Franco by Valyntina Grenier

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GOODBYE SONG

Don’t plague the butterfly
blessing the lemon bush
it’s like pushing a ballerina off balance
or stealing a bushel-full of tangelos
working to be ripe.

As intent as breath
cancer takes us
from the ones we love.

Truth waits for us to discover
Justice has her eyes covered.
Chaos harbors the scales.

Hectares of ash move out with the waves.
Heart travels through Chaos,
from life to peace,
freedom from fight
from fear.

On the day you die a roadrunner steaks across the road. We rent a canoe and laugh too hard as we remember how to row.  We set out for some place to say a prayer and a sandy shoal to rest and picnic. I think of Giovanni and  Nicholo in matching life jackets and bucket hats on the empty bench between us. We discover a halcyon cove where the birds loll on marooned branches. I place my hands over my chest stare up into the sky and weep. Jane recites her poem

Blue Nude

Please take this shy Spanish girl
whom they say you resemble
and ride with her,  here are the field poppies
damaged by night, here your blue slumber, your horse.
Take this prayer, which you must surrender
in order to understand, as in moments when you are reduced
to the truth.  When you are ready,
the beasts will be there.  Let silence go through your heart,
the mild horse your blue one
already stirring toward morning, where it will be white.

While she recites I think of you in your final hours. I hear Chris Cornell singing “all night thing.” A lone heron watches us row back to the dock.

I pledge to see you, dear one. I will repeat you, your brilliance, the mode of your brow. Countless gestures impart understanding. Like a child fighting sleep we move towards closure. I will shrink into a bawl then open as you flower through time, loving, ardent, with the capacity of your spirit to give.

Denise Marie Franco b. December 18th 1967 d. March 13th 2013.  In Denise’s words,

“On this Thanksgiving 2012, I give thanks for the wonderful life I have lived and the wonderful life I continue to live.  I am blessed to have two wonderful children, and a wonderful man who light my world and fill my life with love on a daily basis.  I am blessed to have a wonderful supportive family, and amazing supportive friends. Friends I consider like family!  Friends I’ve known most my life (you know who you are) , and ones I’ve met in recent years, all who add substance and peace and love to my world.
Thank You… because I feel very fortunate!”

The slideshow is composed of photographs taken by Denise. “Blue Nude” is from Jane Miller’s Many Junipers, Heartbeats.  The image above is of a poem I wrote several years ago. Brian Watson found it among Denise’s papers and read it at her memorial celebration in Malibu California at the Nicholas Canyon Chumash Village.

GAIL EASTERLING’S Fear of Fear

listen here: FEAR OF FEAR by GAIL EASTERLING

READ MORE OF GAIL’S POEMS HERE

from JAKE LEVINE’S Collage Of All 348 Of My Failed Loves Combined Into One Meditation Loosely Located In Gate’s Pass Concerning A Sunset And Its Vague Relationship To My Relationships But Also Dreams And An Angel For Mayakovsky’s Immortal Soul

LISTEN: from Collage […] Soul by JAKE LEVINE

Read the text here!

BTW I’ll be taking requests- So, if there is some writing from here or published else where you would like to hear a recording of let me know by commenting on the piece you would like to hear or commenting here or if you are a contributor who would like to send me a breif recording of your contribution (3min or less) email me a voice file!

HAPPY SATURDAY+V

CHECK OUT SPIRAL ORB 5

SPIRAL ORB is an experiment in permaculture poetics, juxtaposition, interrelationships, and intertextuality—a cross-pollination. The opening poem composts fragments from each of the pieces in Spiral Orb. Standing also as the table of contents, each line is embedded with a hyperlink to its original piece. Once at each piece, you will find links to the other pieces.  Spiral Orb Five is a special issue on A Poetic Inventory of Saguaro National Park.

Listen to my poem VERDIN Auriparus Flaviceps HERE

READ the text on Spiral Orb

Trickhouse Live September 18 at Casa Libre 7-9 p.m.

HI, I’ll be presenting for Trickhouse Live at Casa Libre W/ Deanne Stillman Tuesday, September 18 7-9 p.m. $5 Suggested Donation

Trick House Live is an integrative arts series that brings together people working with words, images, sounds, videos, and a variety of performances. The series serves as a venue for visiting artists to interact with local artists and for the borders between genres and mediums to be permeable. Trickhouse Live is a physical world extension of the online cross-genre arts journal, Trickhouse.org which is based in Tucson.

Deanne Stillman is the award-winning author of Mustang, a Los Angeles Times Best Book of 2008, and the cult classic Twentynine Palms, a Los Angeles Times Best Book of 2001 which Hunter Thompson called “A strange and brilliant story by an important American writer.” Her latest book, Desert Reckoning, is based on her acclaimed Rolling Stone article, “The Great Mojave Manhunt.” She is a member of the core faculty at the UC Riverside-Palm Desert Low Residency MFA Creative Writing Program and currently divides her time between Tucson, AZ and Los Angeles, CA.

I make poems and visual art. You can view a portfolio of my visual art at valyntinagrenier.com. I hosts Back Room Live, and blog at Harriet Homemaker and Life Long Press. The photo was taken by Richard Siken at LIVE @ LIV, thanks Richard!

VOICE MEMO LOVES A YOU TUBE STAR ! You by Charles Bane Jr !

MP3: YOU by Charles Bane Jr  WATCH THE VIDEO HERE

GENTLENESS by Wendy Burk

THANK YOU WENDY Happy Day +V

mp3: GENTLENESS by Wendy Burk   TEXT

HOLIDAY MONDAY

THANK YOU for your friendship and your poems…   Love, V

mp3: The Disorientation of Sweet Violence by HARMONY HOLIDAY   TEXT

! DUNCAN ! REYES ! TWO POEMS FOR YOUR LISTENING PLEASURE

click to hear: [ASKING] by Barbara Jane Reyes from Poeta en San Francisco

click to hear: THE SONG OF THE BORDERGUARD by Robert Duncan 

I’ll be back next month with more favorites- ANY REQUESTS…

Happy Saturday +V

[THIS GENRE OF LIPS] by Lisa Bowden

This genre of lips

Yeses with fingers‹-unblousing, undressing

Skin, her truss. No need

For flight here, except

Air wrapped in irridescent

Feathers. Or, a verb’s splendid long

Bone all lit up for

This new, unbuttoned birdology. Tiny

Chances, coins tossed: a

Firmament above, arousing

Power below. Let

It come.

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Lisa Bowden

THE BOAT by Lisa Cole

THE BOAT
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The half-eaten pomegranate
is losing its color, turning brown on the plate.
This piece of fruit– of course–is only a metaphor
for the tired heart: the portal to a whole new underworld
full of ghosts dressed in rainbow colors.

I remember the crook of your arm,
an erotic place in which I longed to live forever.

Your skin is the water, I am the boat–
washed clean, finally.

m

Lisa Cole

EMPATHIC ATTUNEMENT by Valyntina Grenier

click to hear: EMPATHIC ATTUNEMENT by Valyntina Grenier

EMPATHIC ATTUNEMENT

I LOVE YOUR BRAIN

Here. Will you take this stone
and make a wish, then give it to the miller.
She’ll make you a page
while I sleep so the robot
can change me. I’ll wish for ice cream.

ICE CREAM

Surrounded by these columns, each heart-shaped capitol crowned w/ a brain,
I’d like to give you this tiny robot.
Hold it like a river stone,
here, in the palm of your hand, while I light the page.
Here’s to watching the sky change w/ my love, the miller!

“I’ll STAND BY YOU” SANG THE MILLER

waiting in line for a scoop of ice-cream.
She hid a love note on a page
of our notepad for me to find. Her brain
suits my heart like a precious stone
in its circle of rose. I hope she’ll forgive me this robot.

DEAR DA VINCI ROBOT

Thank you for helping the miller,
her Quern-stone
was blocking our path to the ice-cream
parlor. Origami brain-
I’m so glad you answered our page.

PAGE

Thank you for being brave enough to use a robot
to remove the endometriosis and organs that pained me, that seized my brain,
my spirit, the heart of the miller.
Now we can argue about ice-cream,
a simple scoop vs. blended w/ toppings on a cold stone.

DEAR DR STONE

Thank you for wondering. I feel as light as a page
descending in air. I feel hope. Eating ice-cream
can bring about joy. I stopped for some on my way to the miller.
It helped ease my brain.

“Ice-cream,” I sang at the cornerstone,
“Brain and Heart–” right here on the front page:
“Robot surgeon grants a wish,” for my love, Jane Miller!

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WHAT IF I SAID by Priyesha K. Nair

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WHAT IF I SAID
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Stealing glances and trying to

look deep enough

Love speaks in its own

strange ways

Afraid that I might wake up

and break this dream

I tried drowning myself

into absence

but you – you are present all the time

And now I roam with a poem

stuck in my chest

it doesn’t let me breathe

but I can’t pen it down either

Three words that I need to say

and maybe you need to hear

m

m

PHOTOBOOTH, NORTHAMPTON by Donna Fleischer

PHOTOBOOTH, NORTHAMPTON

If some long unborn friend looks at photos in pity, we say, sure we were happy, but it was not in the wind. – Muriel Rukeyser, Tree of DaysM

every year
we come here
to picture
our existence,
as women, as lovers
M
back at home
adorn refrigerator
with the miniature
black-and-white prayer strips
goofball poses, kisses
M
and, my favorites –
the two of us
side by side, head to head
looking plainly out
at this world
without a mirror

M

M

SUDDEN SOUNDS by Marisa Prietto

SUDDEN SOUNDS

Shirked and non-plussed,
stalked and apprehended,
I suspended disbelief,
and identified abandon.

We have run
hot and cold
and underground
in conversation
to elegant frequencies of the supermind.
In one fragile second,
of a stupid barbequeue

a crack in my flimsy patria
opens up a
soft, crushing tear

you fit into, with such momentary abandon,

While I wait, for
some witless fury to engage
late silence over fall, over winter,
on an unmanned planet,
populated with my lesser instincts.

Frigid and untapped,
destroyed and then rescued,
I am trying to avoid the garbage
barely contained within these decent homes, these fields and flowers and debris and human waste and denims and ghettos and endless streets without names upon names upon names i am

calling, later, out to you:

Just stay, and stare!
as two different countries come by, playing two different musics
the sudden sounds tear up the streetside silence between us,
by erroneous and irrational response.

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Marisa Prietto

ARCHITECT by Lisa Bowden

ARCHITECT,

boatwind your cloud

to my ear

so I can hear

your breath

move

grass-like

across

the field

of my palm,

constellate

your blindingly

invisible

self

inside

my throat

so remembering

is breathing

the sky unbuilt‹

M

M

YOU by Charles Bane Jr

YOU

I came upon you

when I was a child

and kept the memory

close, through every

feverish year.  My hair

was silk from corn; yours,

black as the birds upon the snow

I fed the winter long. I opened books

at night and looked at barest

trees and wished for Spring. I watched

for leaves birthing like the stars. I made

poems, and saved the lights I found

waiting in my marrow. One day I would tell

you of the music I heard between its honey-

combs and followed til words rested

on a page. You would understand. You

would hold the glass and pour my amber

work until it filled you to a brim.

You would say, this flames the trees

and you are the harvester of my soul.

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FELT by Richard Cruwys Brown translation by Anne Styron Leonard

FELT

It’s all in the hand,
mmmthe touch,
light fingers
along Merino fibers.

Feel a way into hair,
a caress,
not more,   not less,
before the motion begins
mmmmmthe gentle meeting.

Hand to wool,
mmmfinger to fleece,
until a skin begins.

It can’t,
mmmit won’t   be hurried.

Notice the moment
mmmwhen tension begins.
Apply with love.

Luxury enters
mmmthe slow wool of time.
Tangling scales of hair
mmmhave their way.

Bond, bond the fibers
until agitation begins to meld,
stroking
mmmbut not insistent.

Then deep pressure
of knowing hands
fulls into fabric.

Rubbing firms up the bond:
tightens together,
shrinks to integrity,
mmmtoughens,
locks into permanence.
m

m

FIELTRO

Está todo en la mano,
vmmmmmmm el tacto,
los dedos ligeros
a lo largo de las fibras de Merino.

Siente de una manera en el pelo,
una caricia,
no más          no menos,
antes de que el movimento comienzé
mmmmmla reunion apacible.

Mano en las lanas,
mmmdedo a velión,
hast que la piel comienze.

No puede,
mmmno será         apresurado.

Note el momento
mmmcuando la tensión comienze.
Apliqúese con amor.

El lujo entra
mmmlas lanas lentas del tiempo.
Enredando escalas de pelo
mmmtienen su manera.

Enlaza, enlaza las fibras,
hasta que la agitación comience pegar,
el frotar ligeramente
mmmpero no insistente.

Entonces presión profunda
de las manos sabias
espesa en tela.

frotando pone firme el enlace:
mmmaprieta junto,
contrae a la integridad,
mmmendurece,
asegura en permanencia.

LUMINARIA by Jan Steckel

LUMINARIA

Trick-or-treaters trailed down Gourmet Ghetto,
begging till restaurants ran out of candy
and gave them napoleons and brioches instead.

You were sweeter than Snickers,
more delicious than Milky Ways.
Your love was better than Tootsie Rolls.

Angelica, dressed like Tinkerbell, smiled shyly
when asked what she was. I heard her soft voice
for the first time: “A Princess.”

Miraculous sound, no more beautiful
than the flutelike tone of your voice in my ear,
or the burnt golden orange of your hair

when you stood in the slanting sun,
talking happily of the weed you didn?t pull
that grew into a pumpkin.

Later that night, your wraithlike body
moon-bathed pale,
naked in your own back yard.
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WITHOUT A BED by Katherine Chatel

WITHOUT A BED
For Ryan who was Dana

One night we slept side by side
on a cat pissed floor
in an apartment with no windows
and a bathroom down the hall
with no toilet paper.

We shared a sweater as a blanket
slept close for warmth
on our island surrounded
by urine-soaked newspapers
and stacks of orange crusted dishes.

Even in that room
I fell asleep
to the question
what would happen
if I leaned over to kiss you?

When we woke up
I went downstairs
to the Chinese-donut shop
to see what time it was
whether it was light enough for morning.

m

FORECLOSED MINDS by Hal Bogotch

FORECLOSED MINDS

Press words out
through cardiac tissue
dip into the well of compassion

wine stain plume
spreading indifference
almost as if

a hand crank
could be attached
to virtual electronic wanderlust

bank on it
know the truth
in the negative balance

ply the Pennsylvania Dutch
for secrets
of mixing mechanical metaphors

I tried to learn the steps
before I forgot myself
and danced.

Sunday Love Songs ! feat. SMOOTH TOAD !

click to hear: ASK THE RIVER by Smooth Toad recorded a few days ago in  G. P. Skratz’s living room by SMOOTH TOAD:  Hal Hughes, vocal & guitar; Bob Ernst, country harp; G. P. Skratz, guitar.

ASK THE RIVER
(words & music by Hal Hughes)

If you don’t know
Why the moon hides its glow Behind the clouds
It’s just because
It’s up there all alone

If you don’t know
Why the willow weeps all day It’s just because
There’s no one there
To wipe its tears away

Bridge:
If you should ask the river
Why it flows unto the sea
You’d understand why I keep
Running back to you
Now don’t you see

When I’m alone
There is only one way home My love, it’s true
That winding road
That calls me back to you

 

click to hear: LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI by Smooth Toad This SMOOTH TOAD performance features G. P. Skratz on vocal & guitar, Hal Hughes on fiddle, & Bob Ernst on percussion.

This is my setting of John Keats’s “La Belle Dame sans Merci.” I made a few edits here & there & tweaked a few lines:  eg he has, “And there she lulled me asleep, / And there I dreamed, Ah Woe Betide! / The latest dream I ever dreamt / On the cold hill side.”  Really, Johnny?  “The latest dream I ever dreamt”?  Happily, I’m able to cover for him here in the 21st century… G.P. Skratz

LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI

O what can ail thee, Knight at arms,

Alone & palely loitering?

The sedge has withered from the Lake

& no birds sing!

m

I see a lily on thy brow

With anguish moist & fever dew,

& on thy cheeks a fading rose

Fast withereth too.

*

I met a Lady in the Meads,

Full beautiful, a faery’s child,

Her hair was long, her foot light

& her eyes were wild.

m

She found me roots of relish sweet,

& honey wild, & manna dew,

& sure in language strange, she said

“I love thee true.”

m

She took me to her elfin grot

& there she wept & sighed full sore,

& there I shut her wild wild eyes

With kisses four.

m

& there she lulléd me asleep,

& there I dreamed, Ah Woe betide!

The dream that beat my beating heart

Beneath the cold hill side.

m

I saw pale Kings, pale Princes too,

Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;

They cried, “La belle dame sans merci

Thee hath in thrall!”

m

I saw their starved lips in the gloam

With horrid warning gapéd wide,

& I awoke, & found me here

On the cold hill side.

m

Alone & loitering

& palely loitering

& no birds sing

& no birds sing

SMOOTH TOAD is@ MySpace

SATURDAY READING ! Pablo Neruda’s POETRY !

click to hear: Pablo Neruda’s POETRY English translation

The text is from poemhunter.com.

Happy Saturday +V.

MIDNIGHT SNACK by Vida Felsenfeld

MIDNIGHT SNACK

A slice of silver moon
sitting on a Desert Rose dessert
dish,
waits for you
on the kitchen
table.
(There are some stars
in the cookie jar
to sprinkle on
top).

Use the gold-plated
fancy fork
I stole
from King Solomon’s
dinnerware
drawer.

Dab your lips
on the lily-white
linen napkin
imported
from some snowy
peak
in the Himalayas.

Run your fingers
over the placemat
I found
in the back alley
of the Musee d’Orsay–
a Van Gogh canvass,
blank and blessed.

Caress your hands
around the rocket-red
tea cup
I borrowed
from the Tang
Dynasty,
and pour
a shot
of sugar
into the Earl Grey Tea,
scored from
the Queen Mother’s
medicine cabinet.

Now look out your window.
The rest of the moon
will be your candle
to eat by.

I love you.
Enjoy.

AFTER E.E. CUMMINGS by Lisa Cole

after e.e. cummings

the small hands of the rain
compose a love song in the key of C:
it is the same thing—again, again—
roses, the body, & other red-colored things
mmmm(my heart, your heart)

i know i cannot have you
as the moon has the sea
but perhaps I will hold you
like ghosts & wind—

an all new song

CACTUS by G.P. Skratz

CACTUS

i love these cacti:

twisted thoughts spiking

the vast open mind of the desert

cactus skeleton

cigarette skeleton

sunset skeleton

fast crow flies

out of my skull

MICHAEL PALMER

Internet Dating

O vast endless field of
World Wide Loneliness.

You reveal the mystery of your soul
with a list of your hobbies
and favorite TV shows.

Enhancing this
with a photograph of yourself
mmmencased in a billowy parka
on top of a snow covered peak.
Or sitting on a couch
your shirt unbuttoned
a hole or two
mmmyour feet resting on a fluffy carpet.
You smile on cue.

Last but not least:
you give
the income you desire in the Other.

Bravely, you put it all “out there”
for the world to view.
You hope someone will notice.
Someone
anyone, anyone
but you.

m

m

ZAC SAWDEY

ReMix

So I hit this ride,
right on the street.
It’s the Music.
Music right in your face.
And I can’t stop moving.
I can’t stop feeling.
And I am up.
I am high.
And I ache with life.
And I am not taking notice of the autocracy
And it’s coming hard and it’s going hard.
I don’t have to be someone else,
not these days,
so watch yourself,
because it’s time for more time,
and this is your town.

m

DEBBY ROSENFELD

Loving People

Loving people means sometimes messing up.
We try to tailor our words to lead to joy.
Like the game of telephone,
sometimes the message is changed en-route,
devastating instead of lifting up.

Loving children means trying to keep things smooth.
Bumpy life is in-between,
challenging our outcomes in real time.
Infusing positive energy doesn’t always fix things.
We ruminate.

There is a lesson in the bumps, if
we can sift through the rocks to find it.
Sometimes we learn about forgiveness,
acceptance, moving on, or alternate routes.
Sometimes we hunker down in the dark,
waiting for moods to pass, fearing they never will.

But loving people also means sometimes getting it right.
Floating on a cloud of euphoria when we see them smile,
hugging them and feeling safe from every angle.

Loving children means laughing when they laugh.
Playing with their hair while reading funny stories.
Creating moments that linger on their minds
when we think they’re sleeping.

There is a lesson in the happiness too, if we can
catch our reflection for a moment and look inside.
At those moments we see our capacity for fullness,
our innate abilities to give and to receive—
fill and be filled.

Loving people means sometimes messing up,
sometimes getting it right. Most of all,
it means journeying through life with a reason…

…a reason to care enough to keep on trying.

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G.P. SKRATZ

Here’s a Valentine piece I translated way back in 1974.  It became my biggest hit at poetry readings & resulted in a video taped performance of it that was shown at the San Francisco Museum of Art in 1979.  In 1997, the composer/guitarist, Andy Dinsmoor & I recorded the mp3:  I’m delighted with it & think you will be too.

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Kurt Schwitters did his own English translation of his, “An Anna Blume.”  Mine is better.  For one thing, he extends his “thou thee thy” riff (as he does in the German) to include “I love thy.”  Well, there’s more tolerance for rank silliness in the German tradition than there is in the American one (at least in the wake of what Bennett Cerf called “The Golden Nashery of Ogden Trashery”).  I center my poem on the genuine statement, “I love you,” no fucking around, messing with archaic declensions there!  Also:  he translates her name: “Anna Blossom.”  O, come ON!  Anyway, like I say, mine is better!

m

click to hear: TO ANNA BLUME translated by G.P. Skratz, composer/guitarist, Andy Dinsmoor

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TO ANNA BLUME

O mistress of my 27 senses, I love you!

–Thou thee thy thine, I you, you me–We?

That belongs (by the way) somewhere else.

Who are you, room of countless women?  You are–aren’t you?–

People say you’re–let them talk, the bastards, they don’t know

how the church tower stands.

You put your hat on your feet & wander off on your

hands, on your hands you wander off.

Hello, your red dress with white folds.  Red

I love Anna Blume, red I love you!–Thou thee thy

thine, I you, you me–

We?

That belongs (by the way) in the cold fire.

Red bloom, red Anna Blume, how do they say it?

Readers:  answer this question & win a prize:

1.  Anna Blume has a bird.

2.  Anna Blume is red.

3.  What color is the bird?

Blue is the color of your golden hair.

Red is the call of your green birds.

You plain maid in your everyday dress, you lovely green

beast, I love you!  Thou thee thy thine, I you, you me–

We?

That belongs (by the way) in the coal chest.

Anna Blume!  Anna, a-n-n-a, I trickle your name.

Your name drips like soft cattle droppings.

Do you know it, Anna, do you know it already?

One can read you backward, & you, you most magnificent

of all, you are the same from back or front:  “a-n-n-a.”

Cattle-droppings trickle stroking my back.

Anna Blume, you dripping beast, I love you!

–translated from the German of Kurt Schwitters

TO THE NEW YEAR by W.S. MERWIN

To the New Year

With what stillness at last
you appear in the valley
your first sunlight reaching down
to touch the tips of a few
high leaves that do not stir
as though they had not noticed
and did not know you at all
then the voice of a dove calls
from far away in itself
to the hush of the morning

so this is the sound of you
here and now whether or not
anyone hears it this is
where we have come with our age
our knowledge such as it is
and our hopes such as they are
invisible before us
untouched and still possible

http://poetry.arizona.edu/promotion/2011/01/poetry-times-tragedy

TREVOR CALVERT

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M

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With rain, asphalt’s scent punches hard. Out there, isolated, one crawls toward earthen clutch, swaying high grass too sharp for language. When I say “one” fold in to me. When you read “is” I mean “to leap.” Wind, implacable metaphor, insists against all, love, so we must keep close. O where may the untouchable rest? What place hope in this palace of the real? We’ve grown so swift even thrice-great Hermes cannot slip our velocity. Light peels image from thing, demands pixels from trees.
Our old magic is condensed to avarice,
bondage and longing, to a slavish gaze.

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JOSEPH ZACCARDI

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m

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DEFIANCE

When writing about the wants of the heart

and the defects of the mind, words often confuse

the end of one day with the beginning of another.

RICHARD CRUWYS BROWN

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Ricky’s Visit

Sorry this and sorry that
he stands out there
on the stoop

MELANIE STOFF MAIER

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Flying Low, D.C., 2009

I have Mother’s Day lunch at the Hay Adams
in a pastel room filled with light.
Outside the White House roses line the iron fence.

TOMMYE BLOUNT

M
M
M
This Place—Mine for Now—

looked like some place
belonging to someone else
when I woke up—it seemed—
with another’s eyes,
having no memory of where I placed

ARICKA M. FOREMAN

M
m
m
audubon answers instead

no wonder I cowered when I caught
those two round black eyes staring from stairwell

the night in constant flux of waiting and not
of answering and not at all. I asked for the reminder—

It’s SATURDAY NIGHT ! ÁVILA ! FRAILE ! BALLARD ! THIBODEAUX ! curated by GUILLERMO PARRA!

Years ago, Stephen Malkmus sang: “Can you treat it like an oil well / When it’s underground, out of sight?” I think of these lines now in relation to the writers I have the pleasure to present here. The texts by these two poets and two fiction writers operate explicitly within underground or experimental aesthetics, attuned to their place within a rich tradition of countercultural expression.

I have chosen these writers because their work inspires me. But I also like the idea of having their texts share the same digital space. I’m hoping the juxtaposition of poetry and fiction will be as enjoyable to the reader as it is for me. I am also very conscious of creating a possibility for interaction between American and Venezuelan experimental writers.

The two poets have provided sequences of texts that can be read as single works, with each poem being the equivalent of a chapter or episode. I have translated the two short stories included here from the Spanish originals. In the short stories, the reader will find imagery and situations that can only be fully appreciated through the lens of poetry.

Carlos Ávila’s short story “The Antichrist” is a rewritten (radically edited) version of a text included in his first book. The young narrator manages to keep his wits during an extreme situation, thanks partly to an invocation of the anarchic spirit of the Sex Pistols. Ávila’s direct, plain prose sustains beautifully evoked images that startle us.

Micah Ballard’s sequence “Let Us Wake Rifles” opens with an invocation of poetic ancestry, so as to lead us through a gallery of visions imbued with elegance and charm. Ballard’s language is a classical slang, as though the phantoms he conjures were at ease and thinking out loud. (“I learned to mix the languages / & do it in code”)

Dayana Fraile’s short story masterfully narrates an encounter between two generations late one evening at a bus stop in Caracas. Her prose is attuned to the minor details that can bring people together, how friendship can spring from misunderstanding. The story is also a fascinating glimpse at the way subcultures evolve as their participants age. The reader will note a vulnerability that her characters might not be ready to acknowledge until they meet.

Sunnylyn Thibodeaux offers a sequence called “As Water Sounds,” which comments on our contemporary landscape of permanent crises. But the poet doesn’t merely lament or critique this unfortunate situation. Rather, she assumes an approach to language that reveals a complete faith in the magic of poetry (that is, song) to heal and reconstruct. “The Silent Spaces of Utopia Parkway,” indeed.

Guillermo Parra (Cambridge, MA, 1970) lives in Durham, NC, where he writes the blog Venepoetics. He has published two books of poetry, Caracas Notebook (Cy Gist Press, 2006) and Phantasmal Repeats (Petrichord Books, 2009). His poems, essays and translations have appeared in 6×6, Fascicle and Papel Literario, among others. He is currently translating the complete works of Venezuelan poet José Antonio Ramos Sucre (1890-1930).

MICAH BALLARD

Let Us Wake Rifles

M

M

POOLS OF OLYMPIA

Those who pass through us

cannot be touched

I raise my hand & allow another

SUNNYLYN THIBODEAUX

As Water Sounds

As Water SoundsM

M

M

The Silent Spaces Of Utopia Parkway

I am stuck on valiance & images

that may find another life

those of cautious advances & withdrawals

trembling at infinity

SHELLY TAYLOR

Our vintage forest has come down:  cedar purer than
fir in his eye.  I flock modest for luck reasons,

ANDREW SHUTA

XO\\XO

help me / hysterical / googling cancer
an ad for fuckbook / two girls

ZACH BUSCHER

ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we are floating in space

in fulfilling civic duty you avert the right
to remain vehement in the style you size my jaw

STEPHANIE BALZER

from faster, faster

When he became an American citizen a black man from Chad renamed himself “Samuel” after Samuel Smith. Now he’s avoiding eating sugar to lose weight. Overheard: considering all the places money goes we should put rock stars on our bills, not Presidents. Put Mick Jagger on the $20. But we want to think of money as clean and so we do.

JOSH GARCIA

What Happens When You Turn Around

Where you are headed gets closer.
The world behind you has vanished and everything you thought
you saw has changed.

Joellen Craft

You will open, you will flap loose

You’re made to keep dirt out,
keep clean the queen pillowtop
hurtling toward our room,
but you fail. Maybe you split

G.P. SKRATZ

MY LIFE AS A DAVID BROMIGE FICTION

In the late 70s, David & I would often run into each other at San Francisco poetry parties where alcohol was consumed, pot was smoked & someone would always set a typewriter up with a blank piece of paper in hopes of fostering collaboration, usually long & rambling exercises in gibberish.

One night, David & I huddled by the typewriter in a more minimal mood, typing the following two collabs:

THE EDGE

Most tightrope walkers don’t die
from falling.

WHO WOULDN’T BE DEPRESSED?

There you are in the 12th century,
& there’s 8 more centuries to go,

at least.

JAKE LEVINE

Collage Of All 348 Of My Failed Loves Combined Into One Meditation Loosely Located In Gate’s Pass Concerning A Sunset And Its Vague Relationship To My Relationships But Also Dreams And An Angel
For Mayakovsky’s Immortal Soul

1
At night when my lover is warm in bed I take out a pen
from our little nightstand and begin a portrait. First I sketch
the contours of my lover’s body, from line to line to line
her skin gets into mine and I become paralyzed with proximity.
Trembling, I start over

sketching her across a moving blue valley. O.K
so it could either be a field or a large lake. She’s picking flowers
and apples from the one eyed midget’s orchard. She’s growing
older and beautiful, like an escalator blanketed in roses
she delivers my body up to our bed and raises her head
just high enough for my arm to fit in, her hair the sweetest
aborted abortion, and I thank her mother for choosing her hair tickles
on my nose (although I see how it could’ve gone otherwise and can’t
say that I wouldn’t be thanking another mother for another her).

Quickly, her hair and the midget’s face escort me into sleep.
We all collide in a dream. All of my blood paints the debris.

I am thinking beasts do the same. I am thinking about God
and popular sitcoms. God, God and popular sitcoms in a pool
of my blood, can you imagine, I am also thinking about black coffee
and cold work, but because I have yet to think, I am living in a deep sleep.

dawn lonsinger

gray matter

sky smattered, hair
peppered with time,
unflushed photos,
damp clay, smog

what breaches

the surface, ocean
sliced into slivers,
cortex folded in
like challah

concrete seems
a perjury but its cakey
die-hardism lures
storms to move through

density, undo us

with cafeteria, dull nickel,
bark, the rhinoceros
by the watering hole—
majestic antediluvian jaw

MARISA PRIETTO

Coal Minds

Return nothing and nothing is happening.

We are invariably in love, with people, undeniably invented, by cats.

It’s not hard, but it’s true.

Eleven days and eight hours,

I’m hoping it will make me smarter, acting like nothing happened to the

smell of summer night, the bricks and then the red and then the fugue and then the fighting,

Fighting, right?

For esteem, for someone younger, smarterprettier, we are all in doubt

but,

it’s too hot, in my esteem, to think.

Your turn, now.

Give me some furtive gutless compliment.

I’ve been doing it all wrong,

collecting rain drops on one side of my tongue, while the rest smacks on,

not knowing that the other half is tasting,

in the guttural drawl

of conversation

the honey of an abandoned mind

as if it were coal,

for

something.

AMIR RABIYAH

Beirut Achilles

his new leather shoes broke open the back of his heel

Franci Washburn

Still Present

In Memory of Marlon Evans

In the rain drenched brown of the earth, still I see your face

Dripping sweat after your run up Tumamoc.

Frances Sjoberg

Recitation for Marlon Evans

from his self-introduction in Red Ink

Taking a poem from beginning to end

With a story in between

Joe O’Connell

Marlon was my best friend for many years. Among the qualities I appreciated during those years were his honesty and generosity. He would talk, then grow silent and think, then talk some more—as if an invisible string were slowly drawing the truth out of him.

BHANU KAPIL

IMMIGRANT:

a set of notes* before “Schizophrene.”  Never coming.  Not wanting something in return.  Tepid.  Immigrant, immigrant, why are you so scared to get in trouble?  Calling me up.  Spitting down the phone like that.  Then hangin’ up.

1.  An immigrant flares at the periphery of a long time comin’s vision.

Ryan Bartlett

FATTY IN FRAME
(For Mr. Arbuckle)

Fatty’s
face begins
to freeze

John Kusper

CELESTIAL SUBWAY (SILENT SYMPHONY)

Lit by the synaptic flicker of a nervous lantern

Void imbued by an osmosis of shadow into light.

Alisa Heinzman

IN YARDS

1.
The light withdrawn to the fence base. A shadow the shape of your yellow chair. There is no chair but you reach both ways in your yellow shirt and pretend to swim the backstroke.