Technical Question

I am pretty sure I have asked this before...but still can't get it to work. How do you get extra spaces between words or indent the beginning of a line? I got it to work one time with the word, "ready, " by putting asterisks there and then changing the color to black, but no dice for all other words in the poem. eek!

Amanda

New: And Love? by Amanda Deutch

And Love?

I am lost in this laughter

We’ve been socked in/ uncharacteristically

laugh, it wouldn’t
see it,
it’s
simply
different rhythms

who winter in borrowed spaces
seeking burrows,
where corridors are music
and they are.

some degree of living buzzes in this room
maybe I’m getting older.

selective about what I play

******************************ready

…and for whom

cutting toward shifts listen
to

listening

weather,
come home and make a pot of tea
another life

back rooms see through faces
Yes, so very still a day

Is that true?
still a day? or anxious a day?

Correction re: our previous conversation,

speaking of the dead. these hands do get cold. but it is all temporary. lay me down beside me like my childgood. childhood. no that’s very full. that sound.
after all nothing. a column of air. the answer may be an oak tree, a maple or even a magnolia.
strong intercourse should not be furthur under
stood.
oh you unfortunate animals, how do you feel?
....instead of your breast bone?

_________

reworded from many sources, including another letter from Paul.

Tailings by Jonathan Wonham

after Heads I by BBB

Wrinkled gold is the sun
behind the chapel of money.
The world sifts through its doors
like gutter change.

I cling to my bed, fly
through the polluted dawn.
I have no home to go to
until night falls.

Wing-clipped by Jennifer K Dick

After Exhalation by Sean S

Aimless one of this self
stays therefore done knotted
burnt bride of this praised so sun-columbine
wax melted, tumbling Icarus she’ll
goad him now into the have-known
abstinence periwinkle without
which pretty metal feather, a mouth
less sown to thrice-stitched closure
but open she as down feather on
the breath of a moth, exhaling him.

exhalation by sean s

after I Say by Jonathan Regier

A moth one of itself
says thereby do not
burn this bride of the sun colored so Praise
God having never known abstinence
with itself or periwinkle within
a pretty metal feather, a mouth less so
but open I am a feather on the
breath of a moth.

I Say by Jonathan Regier

After Beverley Bie Brahic's Heads I

I say,
-------Periwinkle is beset by fraud--
-------On the other hand,
-------Having never known abstinence with itself,
-------Is limpid and warm.

I say,
-------Gold is a very pretty metal,
-------And I never saw one without feathers
-------Colored so. A moth is of itself
-------A feather of one, and thereby burns
-------Less so, Praise God, than the bird of the sun.

Marrakesh, by jkd

After Beverley Bie Brahic's Heads I

Preternatural orange is the eye
behind the glasses. And violet to the west where peacocks
preen between bushes, plush green
of gutters by sandstreets. Soon carpet
salesmen with their musical caterwauling
lure the western-garbed tourists inside

I lift from my bedroll, weak-armed,
the pale day carrying me like something departing
carved to what’s left of bulk’s skeletal
settling its invisible remains in a corner
of the remote sidewalk. Hand to wall to
tracing its own path homeward.

Itinerant Eye by Geo Vance

after J Dick’s ‘Cool Day…’ & A Deutch’s ‘An Eye…’


enormous square-like field of donuts beside
dope-crowded mind reflected in water
late-American printed day
see you through me say lines go on forever

intersection of copped houses . ransacked feels-
like thinking screwy beside all of it and nothing
reaching over me sacred cast off Paris devotees

want someofit

late-blue-refracted lollypops


°°°°°°

Cool day blinked back to here by JKD

After Amanda Deutch's Eye is wide open like day

stop
thistle-field of simple neighboring
this beside
my silence full of thinking, intersections
like copped feels
old, ransacked houses
beside this itinerant warble

handcream, band-aides, lollypops, sugar, coffee
with extra cream—
I want all of it

and nothing
but
vision

reaching me
tidal mobilised in a
refractive stumble

say me
seeing eye
over here
to lead find follow guide chase
chastise me
outside the heartland
in line with this once-forgotten America-
like day in a Paris casually
late for blue
prints
or devotées

our linear patterning
touch
sacred angle
cast off, one might say on forever,
or to the more realistic, closer spaces, you
east of a series of rivers and planes, me
across the next ocean

New: An Eye is Wide & Open Like the Day by Amanda Deutch

All (or most) words Reworded from Edwin Denby sonnets

An Eye is Wide & Open Like The Day
by Amanda Deutch


field
stop simply and
neighbor me
beside this itinerant mind
full of thinking, dope, enormous intersection
like squares, crowded streets


toothpaste, witch hazel, ice cream, cigars, soup,
doughnuts—
I don’t want any of it.

field,
all I want is you
reach to me

reach me
move like water in a
reflection

say you
see me
over here
find me, outside the heart
out of line with this American
day, casually
late, blue
printed
devoted

our lines,
we, our lines
touch
screwy angle
but the lines go on forever.

Heads I

by Beverley Bie Brahic


Periwinkle blue is the sun
behind the church. And gold to the east where leaves
sift down off trees, splash
in gutters. Soon the team
of sweepers with their musical machines.

He lifts his bedroll to his arms,
carries it like something ailing
he settles in a corner of the sidewalk
until tonight.

Lit clouds skipping stone

by JKD, After Circulars by Sawako Nakayasu

Continuous air mid-hovers

which, that, of form, in love –

since film – captured – is

A reversal of status – circle

needs no reflection, form,

morning.

Cast///Case Studies (Statistics) by JKD

After Cask Number by Lisa Pasold

Shown hazard and (not) strung between just another person this
unexpected coding tv sectioned off that jut about to
if it is the same
torture for information advantage proposition pensions
if it is the same movement
if it is the same towered palace or wherein they were operating
a procedure if it is the person other always
hung between blackbox catcalled booby trapped
a nurse walks over a look (not here) to
wait that makes this count just as significant
just as if it were Mumbai New York Kadhimain
just as if a juxtaposition jostled front page heading lined
the undereye glanced to then don’t look (t)here in
case of insurgency complacency stagnancy operations
made for the tv-book movie-optioned prequel post-
apocalyptic hyperbolic stageset complete with Dan
Rather, Michael Jackson, Mickey Mouse plush
fresh out of the co-op curious feeling another’s light
skin surface damp another sandpaper hand state for the record
name rank serial inevitable interview(er)(ee) is not
this advantage that death combination so slight
slip through the suctioned door swoosh as curious as
fine a thin line strung between if it is the same body if
it is the same memorial this bagged foot tag if it is this close so
close as to sense heat filed down between swallowed
given (en)gulf(ed) backtracking if it is just a name just state for
the give it over up now recorded (be)foreclosing out into onto
the streets could be anywhere could be now here the one that
was not just going after anyone then wear your hard hat in case
of work objects people falling 10 or 121 or 1,332
the record says it just says in numbers

NEW: Cask Number, by lisa pasold

showing. not showing. torture & standard operating procedure.
if it is the same thing.
if it is the next day.
if it is the other person.
ah, it is always the other.
a hazard strung between two winter trees, waiting for another season. a nurse walks past (do not look here)
expected unwritten body, if it is packed in ice?
that photograph or, the skin curious-feeling. another's surface. alright, remember it like that for the inevitable interview, the made-for-tv movie, the book.
"Men may say, 'But it is not death'; yet of what advantage is this?" a combination of slight and great, that gulf
a blur, smudged into the camera. waiting, tearing down, that makes
eleven.

( 'put in ( words mouths ) ) by sean s

after Sweetest Counting by JKD

John Gardner said to Raymond Carver
Glory belongs to the act of being constant to some
thing bigger than damn ego.

Raymond said, Tess' friend Emily tells me
the purple host of burst rejection slips
comprehend sore need more forbiddenly than flags.
And you're published.
So what do you know.

My sister said, You're a cold shoulder
anyway, John. Warmth doesn't write
about morality. Your moons are caught like
icepicks in bare trees, even summers,
characters arctically haloed.

H said: I'm buried.
Double-spacing yourself and stamping
for delivery to others' approval. Your poem
uncaved me a little, that hazy stairway for
toddlers reaching up the cliff at the
end of the beach, fooled a faster ink
through me than adheres to that rock
for eons, reachable by train to south of France
and a tour for walking blood from stones.

I said: Migraine is an icepick I haven't had the
pleasure. But my eyes have been jittery lately. Some
creeping through my head thing, confetti
rain, paper flame distended radio cheering. Once
more Alleluia with
my thickened ear closer to distant matter.
Decoding after a day with a walk around the block.
The dryer colder air lets my key out of
the mailbox lock more easily. Leaving
short-memoried crumbs in my footsteps on the
sidewalks, under the transparency of bare limbs,
dwindling to a crumple of clothes,
motleys, farragoes.

J said, Sunday morning couples are everywhere
in their mussed mops. I only get annoyed when
they come out Mondays! Massing in pastel doorways with
their bluegray morning arms around their coffees,
English toffees, dissertations.
I hope the new year will bring a calmer carnival,
a dunking booth would be an improvement, the
brief lash of splashes, wiping the eyes now
and again. Thank you for remembering me the
many payoffs and layers of the coatly
word, portmanteaux.

K said, Be happy
that you are distractible by grass,
dunes, sand spitting on your fingers, spending
on skin, on clothing, watching lovers kiss
in nightclubs.
Do you want to place a sum in my column?
Consider that you will vanish.
I vanish, a whisper, a bumperstickered
car pulled parallel to yours at
a red light. Then rowing apart through
the rippling fen of curbs and glass. But, I
had dreams of you. Those limbs will come
together again, at least.

My cat said, I told him, John, he was
going to pay more rent.
Now wasn't I right?

De- Cadence by JKD

after 20 Nov 2007 posts, Decadence by Nick Urban and Peacock by Brandon Shimoda

Bran ville size declination meters angelish artless craving
The meatless formation of a year, or central nervous system
Capted. Caption to get in, brighter, bit then lightened
Transcrption. Struck whale meets weathering gatherers.
When to or wind-to gargoyles wintering lush cravings: to
Scavenge the strikes, hickory less prejudicial when smoked.
Stoke to collapse, sham of arm chains roped to graced water-
Fall as voodoo whodoo swami edicts grease the penance-
Seekers. Familiar as Chen in China, Li or Leopoldine
Tensed to solarize counter-models. At which careless
Invention weathered metals mire in this eyelet, lack from
The casing meant history when they let History bound.
Been in viceroy strings picknicked peacocks. Victory to
Get so underinvolved. Involuted darkness cooled into
Silhouettes removed from the source. Neck-wrangled, the very
Stall again, grovelling columns bare sentenced declinings.

Terminal by Jonathan Wonham

after "Woolly Time" by jkd

Close down in the apple seed
Extinction in the morning wave's maw
Wipeout for the clueless kid
Final procedures at the ivory store
Radio-silence under the last rock

On the Contrary, A Reversal of Status Takes Everything Very Easily by Jonathan Regier

After Circulars, by Sawako Nakayasu

Brontology comes on. Where would you go? Do you have a brave face or a cowardly face? Would you take yourself for a swine, a lion, a parakeet, a red block the very color of a solar limbec? Would you give me the best gift you've ever gotten? What did David Porter say when lightening struck him beside an apple tree in a wet field, near to a lake that was not blue?

"Would you take from me the best gift you've ever gotten?"

Circulars by Sawako Nakayasu

After “a reversal of” by Jill Darling and “Tuesday” by Rufo Q


Grill the hamburgers over the rain.
Of course the form of heaven is lake & stone, skipping posies.

Faster water is doing just fine. Put another kick on it –
I need clouds under the lake to remember you by.

Continuous lakes enjoy ending steps.
The air mid-hovers which, that, of form, in love, is.

We – since film – captured.

Chimpanzees circle the zoo. A reversal of status needs
no reflection, form, morning.

a reversal of - by jill d.

after Sunday by Sawako Nakayasu (hi Sawako!)

grill the hamburgers of form the heaven is lake, stone, skipping, faster. Water muddy, reflected, clouds on walk(9) to remember to need you time, the lakes the leading steps, the air mid-hovers which, that, of form, in love, is need. We since film, captured. Bananas rain during moments, many the one started it, get to need you all. Chimpanzees with zoo, a reversal of status, like the rain over the grill needs quickness of reflection, form, continuous(ly) circles.

Woolly Time by jkd

After Tuesday by Rufo Q

kick back time’s all woolly
up under the lake and it's ebony
sporadic time winnowed
woolly to back up all lake
luster morning waves rainy
and it’s all ebony mouthing
sporadic clues a which way
was what so this time’s a-
rainin’ hadn’t a kickback to
less sporadic hooligans in the
shenanigans under the lack
this rock’s all woolly would
be rainy-morning waves clued
into when ways were where
ended doing’s just fine, just finales
and its ebony morning not so
windowflashed the flush of
this kicked missed musings
on the whole woolly nature of
winnowing that clue’s lake
shimmer simmer back to
time’s all muster and bravado
click hand-fed stack it all up to
this clued-in Crusoe rainy back
balked, radio-silence under the
last rock erosion of then would
be this ebony woolly lake under
time this when what was clue

Tuesday by Rufo Q

after 'Sunday' by Sawako Nakayasu

Put another chimp on the grill,

the pansies you planted in the
rock garden are doing fine,

time to kick back and enjoy
the clouds like soggy pancakes
hogging the sky
..................I once had a friend
whose head was all woolly, hadn't
a clue which way was what
................................ended
up under the lake and it's ebony
sporadic, rainy-morning waves

and then there was that lady

went awry,

..............her teeth gone, living
off her daughter's hand-fed 'nanas

NEW: Sunday by Sawako Nakayasu

A zoo with chimpanzees is all you need to get it started. One of the many moments during which it rains bananas – capture it on film, since all we need is love - in the form of – that which hovers mid-air. The steps leading up to the lake are all the time you need to remember how to walk on clouds reflected on muddy water. Faster than a skipping stone, this lake is heaven in the form of hamburgers on the grill.

Empire Glued to Their Screens by Jonathan Wonham

After "quiet kentish home" by Sean S, "Sweetest Counting" by JKD and "Poem for November" by Rufo Q.

Ours and everyone’s earthquakes may be less
for today's stopped shaking, heaped up.

My chances of survival by definition were defeated
by long-ago radios, the breath of Darwin.

Now, I'm anxious, sorest about the hazardous success
of the upstairs butcher’s shop, that den

of wildness softly pressed
to the ceiling. All ears are not asking to be convinced

as they watch the empire glued to their screens.
It's like nothing had ever burst for them

clear of the forbidden denial.

"quiet kentish home" by sean s

Ah, English. How you pilot your
ship in Asian waters. The hearth
under your mush-mouthed empire,
spelling countries as if chewing on a biscuit.

Thinking of San Francisco and watching my
nephew grow.
The wildness there is under your feet
(not over your head, child of midwestern plains),
shore saw grass, dunes, hills accreted on hills.

Darwin's waves lap even here.
If I'm there my chances of surviving
earthquakes may be less, but his
may be more.

Sweetest Counting

After Emily Dickinson's N° 67 "Success is Counted Sweetest" posted by Garrison Keillor on the Writers' Almanac for today's election (click on that link to go read and listen). A cut up process with Dickinson's poems and other words taken from political speeches and the press.

Here, far from my counted sweetest domain
Wherin to comprehend huddled need,

Not one elsewhere, but multiplicitous, flag
Glued to screens, clear of the pounding on whose forbidden

Nothing so much burst agonized and native:
A country of those who wait, nectar

Massed in some portal, all purple ears
Pressed to bluegrey morning-song.

Success is this public never succumbing,
Impatient, anxious. What’s that which requires sorest

Long-ago felled Hosts? We who took to radios,
Eye the definition so tricolour, confetti defeated, dying

Shine as if strains of Triumph! today
Can tell bright Victory! This secreting

Below our ear, awaited, closer to distant matter,
Thinned as an oboe almost tuned, to hear joy’s pure receding.

NEW: Poem for November by Rufo Q

Poem for November

Out of a migraine nightmare he wheeled
clunking mathematical equipment for an
equipage of clunking mathematical dunces
howling to mitigate denial “I find
what you have to say convincing”
with outrage and incredulity “but
am not asking to be convinced.” Lard
dripped from the ceiling through the floor
of the butcher’s shop upstairs; our den
was getting hazardous, bordering on the
uninhabitable but we were loath to give
it up, not now, not now the breath
stopping, stinking cold was heaped up
at our and everyone’s knocking shop door.

This is... by JKD

After the language in We Hide in the Night and My Understanding: A Partial List, by Amanda Deutch (Oct 9th) and the form of All those choices by George Vance (Oct 8th)

My understanding
of
opening doorways under hypnotic suggestion
not
as cool as visiting Times Square or the ring of tenderness
as
dark as erotic epics
just as
irreverent as crushed beetles
but
here the mouse more cracked up to be precious
or
timed one minute farther than the step it’d take
with
the unobserved packed onto the cityscapes
this
tale as Oppenesque as what is left
or
what she did not say when invited to speak
yes
those words might have been the second’s blink
here
between the fleck of one or the next iris-shadow
as
translucent skin sifted under Sappho’s come-hither
while
I demonstrate the separation of parts like ribs careful
as
termites under eaves because I do my understanding
is
underproven to do this as in step down hard
then
the skeletal crush would not be as simple a sound
as
this glass candy breaking
to
expose between the twelve palms of each the number
or
eventful fittings of copper dream this
is
that barren plexiglass universe you press against
too
look down 15 flights he thinks the trail is still
hot
maybe this is the time in your hand-held air give over
can’t you
wake to breath to bombarding Cyclops beyond
that
windowpane that skyscraper this collapsing gunfight
to
skip the fits the phaser start over with a new list of nots
as in
this rung is not so keen so capable of holding its own
or
my weight cascading under scythes

What's Enough by Jonathan Regier

after "Correlatives", by JKD, after "On a Sofa Somewhere Over the Atlantic", by Jonathan Wonham

- & dedicated to A. Grossman

I.

To the extent that rain is its own Metropolis,
A guard stands at the iron drawbridge of the palace.

Once he crosses, we've got no luck of crossing into it.

II.

For Galileo said:

"Rain can't ever,
A certain voice hearing, overtake running
And greet its brethren walking."

III.

Our windows here climb upward to the past,
Going back forever. Our windows are lit
From the upward rushing future.
The stars at night we call
"The Streetlights of Tomorrow".

One day our ancestors shall greet us,
Rushing strongly upward to see us.

IV.

Say the old faith:

"I believe in Universe without Void,
In the Plenum, in the Vertical lacking Emptiness,
Filled with Touch among its Creatures."

Say the new faith:

"I believe in the rain mass in the chest
Of Metropolis."

Correlatives, by JKD

After Jonathan Wonham's "On a Sofa Somewhere Over the Atlantic"

The city's yellowing words,
confusion’s timetable,
rememorating history’s
thin lessons through today’s

rain shutter. What was
propped against the doorstop
recording the minutes’
passage

Numbers drawn over expanses,
circles failing.

Touch original as wax regrets,
becoming figurines
of ourselves
or our shadow self fluctuating

between just decisions and
simple wandering:

To wonder, or to know
beneath the eaves,
whether this angle of language
is the way.

The city yellowed by scenes
of familiar words
caught up, released back
into contusions or timetables.

Pinpoint the tint of what is still.
Extensive processes at work,
undermining the organic flow
of subject-object. Correlations:

our hand can range over
surfaces, plate glass, metallic,
ticking as if to measure or show
the game’s innards

Anything that might get us here,
momentary, fleeting
as this schematic of land, that graphed
dot in time, the syllable

a sine wave sound
emitted from one voice out
into the expanse of browned
pages, this library’s outdated

timecards. Punch in, left to
go farther, as in song, a
eulogy, discombobulated
as silver fibers under night’s stethoscope.

On a Sofa Somewhere Over the Atlantic, by Jonathan Wonham

After Writing in the Light by Jennifer K Dick.

Perhaps history taught us
to mention the day’s

too thin. The rain
stops propped against
our shutters.

Shuddering welds
vibrate,
recording the minutes, the passage
of numbers and circles.

We are drawing over expanses,
failing,
but easily.

Screech.
Regret only the shadow.
Touch the original like wax
after midnight’s fluctuating.

Stay somewhere
between just and simple wondering
and knowing whether
the angled luck of language
is the way.

Did it sure consult? Sure it did.
The city's yellowing scenes
already catching familiar words

are timetables of confusion
pinpointing the tint
of what is still an extensive process at work.

Organic, your hand can range
over the subject, showing how
even a game
might get us there.

Writing in the Light, by Jennifer K Dick

after Laynie Browne's On the Multiplicitous Poetries of Lee Ann Brown & p 1 of the book Tri/via by Michelle Naka Pierce and Veronica Corpuz (Erudie Fangs/ PUB LUSH books, 2003)

Dear,

Only a day beyond your departure. Sheets washed, sofa refolded. Somewhere over the Atlantic, perhaps the history of geographical delineation. Went for a stroll, taught a class, ate lunch. Did I mention the dreamlessness? The day’s too thin to contain. Each slip a note of where the rain stops. Did you say propped against? As in doorways, or shutters? She says shudder but I still think suder, as in to weld, in French, here that is, in a book describing vibrations. I’m never sure how to record the minutes, the moments’ passage. Notebooks line the walls in digital time, this is just a series of numbers, lines and circles. We are drawing to each other over expanses, as in cabled. You may fail to remember it as I do, but any other book might just as easily suffice. The subway, a mechanical catwalk, screeches me through tunnels. I can’t touch light from original decomposition. It is like her flyleaf, thinned wax to paper rice. Will you regret that silence now? Only the platform contains this much shadow after midnight. Fluctuate between a house just, and where you are. Nothing as simple as then. Wondering between sleeps whether states might bargain, each offer better than the last, a horseshoe angled between luck’s clovering. The language is the way things cleave or are cleaved. Did he say to or was it from? I am not sure whether you will consult your OED or the oracles. Wake up. That is what I keep telling myself. The city grey as yellow leaves. Wilt and pile up, like a scene in that script, you know the one, already catching fire. To participate, project. Certainly, new meanings for familiar words explain everything, as in timetables of confusion pinpointing the tint of what it is still to be delivered. There is an extensive process at work. We are organic. Hold up your hand if you can see this. We range in terms of subject pronoun contenting, or –tion. How solicitous, she said, stepping on his toe. Even a cosmic game of telephone might not get us there.

We Hide in the Night and My Understanding: A Partial List, by Amanda Deutch

After On the Multiplicitous Poetries of Lee Ann Brown


We Hide in The Night

We hide in the night
opening doorways hypnotic
wearing Times Square
& the ring of tenderness
cities,
erotic and epic
irreverent and minute
crushed and transparent,
but here

My Understanding: A Partial List

shiprecked,
we hide the night
wearing the ring of tenderness
befallen on observed cities-
erotic and epic
irreverent and minute
crushed and transparent,
but here

of course Sappho
of course garage punk
of course Frank O’hara
of course punk neon kids

I say of course
because I do.

careful separation of parts
demonstrate another
understanding.
My understanding
is performed
by a skyscraper acrobat
in Times Square
of the twelve palms.

All those choices by George Vance

After Pasold/Regier’s Now, & Idling…

In a clammy bar smelling of horseraces across from a man
with
nothing on his hands maybe time in his somehow woke-up air
really
can’t put my finger on those empty hands
but
an undetermined quality worth staking something on
can’t really
but
my thumb upon a bright bet
now
but
another ghost to pin down simply
hand my thumbs upon

Our rented reality is a problem, by JKD

After On the Multiplicitous Poetries of Lee Ann Brown by Laynie Browne
(an exercise in filtering and revision)


Angles
simultaneous noise
hide the woods
into.
Remember?
Trillium,
“Crush”
wearing away.
Which goldenrod
registered level?
Phenomenological:
rings of
that discourse.
A path (arterial)
to or from.
Measured phonemes.
Event notions
stillbirths to negate
mere accumulation.
She does not write
because.
Linguistics, recollection
of the poem as.
Not because
before
they happen.
She.
To place to this beep.
Altercation.
Is it
a planetary structure
by means of language.
The Southern city?

On the Multiplicitous Poetries of Lee Ann Brown by Laynie Browne

On the Multiplicitous Poetries of Lee Ann Brown


Lee Ann Brown is a voracious art involver. By this I mean that her work has always been informed by her very active involvement in arts communities including film, theater, literature and just about anything else you can imagine. She has a wide curiosity, a generous ear and a unique and authentically singular interest in everything. The nature of my understanding of Lee Ann Brown’s work is as a peer and collaborator and as witness to her terrific instigation and enthusiasm for art happenings in which I’ve often had the pleasure to take part. The last time I arrived in New York we went immediately to (here’s a partial list) a trapeze extravaganza performed by an acrobat/poet. A psychedelic yogic projection dance party. A punk neon kids violin performance topped off with a concert, a high rise burrito as art feast simultaneous with Times square filmic productions of the guests. There is never one project or one agenda. There is no day without twelve plans. This is the somewhat hypnotic universe in which Brown dwells. Peopled with uncommon beauty and exquisite surprise.

Her work is informed by a variety of sources- including New York School, Beats, Language Poetry, (all of course rooted in a New York and San Francisco bi-coastal urban sensibility) and also her North Carolina roots. One reason that her work is unique is that she radiates from all of these possibilities and others. Her lineage isn’t singular. It’s Bernadette Mayer and Emily Dickinson, but also Whitman and Brainard and Elmslie, the film maker Nick Dorsky, and the playwright Richard Foreman. She is of hymns, of Allen Ginsberg and Japanese tea ceremonies (she was born in Japan). Appalachian ballads and garage punk. Frank O’Hara and of course Saapho.

I say of course because it is in her nature to be various, many places at once. She is both Steinian and traditional, irreverent and classic, proper and erotic, epic and minute.

A brief history of her so far illustrious career includes: a long history as an arts community organizer through the Poetry Project in New York city, where she curated the Monday night series, founder and editor of the press Tender Buttons (a la Gertrude Stein) which has published about one dozen titles including: Bernadette Mayer, Rosmarie Waldrop, Ann Waldman, Dodie Bellamy, Harryette Mullen, and myself among others. Her first book, Polyverse, won a New American Poetry Series Award, chosen by Charles Bernstein, published by Sun and Moon Books in 1999. And prior to that her work was greatly circulated by means of oral publication. She is terrifically known as a wonderful performer of her works which at times includes singing. She is also known for her work as poet-in-the-schools through Teachers and Writers Collaborative in NYC, both as a teacher and a writer of articles on the curriculum she has developed for teaching imaginative writing to young children.. Very recently she co-founded a new project for multidisciplinary poetry and performance, the French Broad Institute of Time and the River in Marshall, North Carolina. She is currently professor of English at St. John’s University in NYC.

It is important to note that no book by Lee Ann Brown is simply a single book. She tends to write big books which are equal to three or four books by most poets. This is true in terms of length, depth and arrangement. For instance, Polyverse is 186 pages, divided into three sections: Her Hearsay Hymnbook, Velocity City, and A Little Resistance. Each of which could be a stand alone book. And yet what we are presented with in her sweeping generative texts is a careful orchestration of parts which demonstrate a great continuity and range. The poems are relational- speaking to each other on and off of the page—just one aspect of her highly collaborative sensibility. Poet Jordan Davis writes on the arrangement of her books: “So many recent books of poems are interrupted every twenty pages by a Roman numeral, the same styles and subjects picking up where they left off — intermissions disguised as changes. . . Brown, on the other hand organizes her uncommonly long books into sections that differ from each other the way rings in a circus do: present beau hymns to the muses go here next to the N+7 operations on familiar allegiance texts, precisely observed miniatures hover in this corner, Steinian meditations make frequent flagrant rendezvous with the recognizable vulnerable world here at the end. No Roman numerals.”

A few qualities of this first book: Patrick Prichtet writes “Above all “polyverse” suggests Oppen’s “being numerous” his “shipwreck of the singular” The destruction of the monolithic and ceaselessly self-aggrandizing subject, its narcissistic craving for experience and epiphany opens the possibility for a radically new poetics.”

Poet Elaine Equi writes: “Pleasure is the subject of Lee Ann Brown's poetry. Pleasure in the craft and anti-craft of poem making. Pleasure in the vocalizing and harmonizing of voice and text--speech and writing. Giddy recombinings. Flirtatious collaborations. Irreverent anagrams. To paraphrase Lee Ann's version of her own poetic genealogy: enthusiasm is the mother ("We are the daughters of enthusiasm"), excitement the sister ("Where are my excitement sisters").” Elaine Equi

Here is a section the poem from which Equi quotes:

section 3 from “Crush”

We are the daughters of enthusiasm.
With tenderness and dancing.
With late night storming.
Excitement sisters.
Where are my excitement sisters.
At work they are all at work.
We want to talk late into the night.
We want to play tenderly with boys also.
To sleep and work on our non-paying work,
We try to unite our rent power tryst.
It is seldom these days that we meet.

Assiduous angles in a latin position.
We hide in the woods to remember
the simultaneous noise of the city,
wearing the ring of the city.

Southern butter.
Did you expect southern butter.
Our rented reality is a problem.

Trillium.
Trillium and lady slipper.
Lady Slipper is married to Jack-in-the-Pulpit
Mayapple is a name to remember.

From my own review of Polyverse, “She does not deny the narrative, but creates the “extra-narrative,” specific locations intimate interiors which insist upon their own dimensions. Her poem “Crush” ends with the statement: “I say these things not because they happen, but because many things happen.” Thus she does not deny the present, nor the recording of events, but she does negate the notion that the poem is merely an accumulation of recollections. She writes:

I believe in the alteration
of the planetary structure
by means of language
at every level of its register
from the phonemical
to that of discourse

Her second full-length collection, The Sleep That Changed Everything, was published by Wesleyan University Press in 2003.
This book is in part a re-visioning and re-versioning of hymns and ballads as source material for writing and performance. Her presentation of this work culminates in “13th Sunday In Ordinary Time” a song cycle performed by five women including Brown, and directed by her husband, the actor Tony Torn.

This 175 page book is divided into five sections: “Insufflation,” “Estivation,” “Vibratory Odes,” “Devastation,” and “Inflorescence. The book begins with a list in memoriam, including family and poetic allegiances. As per usual she writes in many forms including acrostic, ode, hymn, ballad, sonnet, list, personal add, epistle, lament, elegy, homophonic translation, dictionary entry, etc. For any poet who ever wanted a magic spellbook of possible forms to consider hers is a must-read compendium—very openly offered with unobtrusive notes at the end providing further insights into possible poetic excursions.


On the ballad form, Brown writes:

“Immensely flexible and with a very long history, the ballad has been one of the backbones (and the source forms) for innovative, hybrid American art since the time of the first European settlers.

“The ballad is, quite simply, the link between the written and the sung: it is the vehicle for children’s songs, hymns, lullabies, political anthems, folk songs, heavy metal “power ballads,” sweeping love ballads, movie soundtracks themes, and nearly every type of popular song.”

And I’d like to suggest that Brown leaves non of these forms untried.

Brown writes: “These collective human experiences, these stories, are what make ballads. I view the ballad as the ultimate field (or form) for truth-telling through appropriation.”

And as to her sources for appropriation, to name a few, Tuli Kupferberg of the Fugs, Helen Adam (a contemporary of Spicer, Jess and Duncan, a poet and artist, whose work was only recently just brought back into print by the poet Kristen Prevallet in the book: A Helen Adam Reader (National Poetry Foundation), Emily Dickinson and Will Oldham.

She writes: “We can take cues from folk ballads as stitcher of tissues of quotes from the larger culture.”

This second book represents quite a range in terms of subject content- from erotic to violent. From Epilthalaleums to cruel mother ballads. (I won’t read any of these now as I’ll play some recordings at the end of this talk_

Brown writes: “There is an extensive process at work behind the creation of a folk ballad, which I liken to the organic way in which new words are added to the dictionary. But I believe in our power as wordsmiths, as poet folk to create new words that will “take” new songs that will be sung and used and memorized and give up to be changed, the first whispers (or growls) in a cosmic game of Telephone”

Certainly Brown has created new words and new meanings for familiar words, (consider her poem “thang” a list poem of locations for coupling), new ways to recite the alphabet (as in her witch alphabet poem in Polyverse), new songs, as in the layered new versions of hymns and ballads which allow the light from original composition to radiate through her own pastiche of cultural references.

I wanted to say a word also about Brown as a collaborator. In her first book Polyverse is an entire section, “Colabs” written with poets such as Mayer, Moxley, Jarnot, Weiner and others. One project in which she has been involved is the 3:15 project- which began in 1993 by poets Dinsmore and Mayer and then opened more widely with a 1999 panel at the Naropa Institute in which Brown, along with Bernadette Mayer, Jen Hofer and Danika Dinsmore spoke about the project. For anyone unfamiliar with the project, participants, during the month of August, set their alarms for 3:15 am and wake up and write in a somewhat not quite awake state. According to Albert Flynn De Silva, publisher of Owl Books first anthology from the 3:15 experiment, “The topics of their panel included time, consciousness (altered), collaboration, community, and ritual. I wanted to know, hear, read, more. As it turned out they were planning to open the experiment up to whoever wanted to participate, and were passing around a sign-up sheet. I excitedly signed my name away for the following August when the experiment would begin again.” (For anyone interested you can go to 3:15 exp.com). This project exudes the type of communal collaborative visioning in her work. Here’s an excerpt from one of her 3:15 poems, published in the more recent anthology, between sleeps, the 3:15 experiment 1993-2005:


vibration,
missing or skipping
something that’s supposed to
happen in a house just
_________ with my lamps and beds

“scared the living daylights
out of me”
I stood on the platform
feeling the slightest
turn-on as the
mechanical hum of
the subway & the way
people were moving
vibrated ever so
fascinatingly
in my being
all different kinds of people

One of her current works in progress is a book exploring the history lore and terrain (literary, geographical and otherwise) of North Carolina. Another is a book called Philtre, Writing in the Dark, 1987-2007, forthcoming from Atelos books. This project has as a unifying concept the practice of “Writing During” meaning that each of the included texts was written during attendance at cultural events, including poetry readings, film, and a variety of other performances. Another form of collaboration. She begins with a quotation from Whitman: “You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.” Here is an excerpt from that work, written during a poetry reading by Phillip Lamantia, at Beyond Baroque in Los Angeles, February 26th, 1999.

Grackle Digression

“I buy ectoplasmic peanutbutter”


Anecdotal surrealist tonic
inside psychedelic Luxor hot dog stand
Star burst — not many left
hand in pocket
“great big fairy head”
“this paper writes me”
when we scribe the big ode
a red-faced cormorant
will shift encyclopedariums
clear-cut avataristic to
“iridescent rot”

Where is Topsy?
In the bed of the Sphinxes?


I’d like to invite all of you to take Brown’s concept of writing “during” while listening to a recording from 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time- recorded at the Bowery Poetry Club. A recording of this performance can be found at:

http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Brown.html

While you are listening you might attempt some of Brown’s Ballad experiments:

1. Make a list of misheard song lyrics and choose the best one for the title.

2. Experiment with appropriation and collage. Note down words and phrases from signs, overheard conversation, or the tabloids, and put them in a ballad form. Then sing it!






Sources:

Brown, Lee Ann Polyverse

Brown, Lee Ann, The Sleep That Changed Everything

Brown, Lee Ann, Buffalo Stance, from Writing from the New Coast, Oblek 12.

Brown, Lee Ann, “The Literary Anatomy: Teaching the Ballad— New Songs to Old Airs.” Teachers and Writers Collaborative Newsletter.

Browne, Laynie, review of Polyverse, Rhizome 2.1998

Jordan Davis: http://ww.constantcritic.com/jordan_davis/the_sleep_that_changed_...

Dinsmore, Danika and Gwendolyn Alley, Editors, between sleeps: the 3:15 experiment 1993-2005, en theos Press 2006

Elaine Equi, Boston Review, http://bostonreview.net/BR23.5/Equi.html

Patrick Pritchet, Jacket Magazine http://www.jacketmagazine.com/08/prit-rbrown.html

Exceptional, by Nick Urban

After "Exceptionally" by Jonathon Wonham

the word falls, light
as a feather, tumbling
like a river stone

the likelihood of this
moment is almost nothing
but your hand won't
let me doubt

celebrate the minor rituals; try,
when life lives in symbol but wants
symbiosis

to move in this world
is to dream on every
ligament

articulated body
makes a home among the scenes
a shoulder holds more verses
than a jot could ever glean

somewhere a shot
somewhere a flap of wings

exceptional and miraculous:
being together, under
the snow

New: Catch & Release, by JKD

Woman whose sister husbanded a woman for ten years then flew away. Light chill juniper. A yellow bedpost. The caged veneer of her, a caterpillar sprouting wings. Here to go else, a wise tractor pull once stated this would, this wood, this rude awakening in the duvet, lumped under lampshade, gathered, purred. The light of the mattress transformed. She is another. Shaped twist telling a lie straight, as if to deliberate in the staying on, measure the kept-up years, confounding stairs for shoplifters. Empty but for the Chinese contraption. But who was she enticing? That racehorse-heralded heart-thumping mirror of whispers, herself the starlings’ given penchant for dawny roads. Departure, a bright red stool and the edge, trickling open, like evergreen-berry in her mouth. Room biting, underlit. Ledge, pale grey armfuzz, the rings and her bracelets she cuffed was herself banking against the ornate dream still plush with the flush of decades ago. Hovering, the recalled collected in a mercurial basin. The horizon veered, fluttered. A farther spot came momentarily into visible gauze. Filter in the bay window, in the once-spent bedroom.

Legends of the City by Amy Hollowell

After "A winter night in Norway" by Rufo Q



The streets of Paris are paved leaf by leaf in gold
under ballerina shoes,
in the Métro a 5-euro note
on the floor.

What I’ve got like any good person by Jonathan Regier

After “Exceptionally” by JKD

1
Owing to What I’ve got like any good person,
Make haste. Owing to,

Also,
A great deal outward the dessicated field
Holding its own ribs,

And an irrigation trench under
A sodium light and dynamo.

2
Autumn weather brings
A great gift of concern for
The undying shades, which,
Being pixelated, are rising up
Into common bodies, persons,
Curtains, bedposts,
And flickering there, like
All things that wait around, like
A television screen without
The television, and in the shape
Of a leaf-like tongue of flame.

Exceptionally, by JKD

after Jon Wonham's "Exceptionally"

Exceptionally

evening comes.
the year has ended
or begins again
under a raven’s stark screech.

across the earth
so many worlds harden
into our own. my eyes close
then wake again to grey

morning, which comes
exceptionally to this town
like a man making his way
home after a long journey

only to find the address changed
the kids, the wife, the dog
have moved on. my own light
slips me away, dressed in the

unfamiliar garb of one too many
I slink past the backyard,
my leafless tree,
a buried garden.

I would call out, call back
exceptionally to someone
or you,
but I am caught crackling

in the fire of our extinguishing world,
in this exceptionally bright wave
for time. of white cement under
the cobalt sky

only this speakerphone remains.

A winter night in Norway by Rufo Q

after "Exceptionally" by Jonathan Wonham

The hills are round with snow,
in the sea a narwhal.

Exceptionally by Jonathan Wonham

After Rufo Q "Indian summer"

Exceptionally

the same man dies
who died before
and evening comes.

The year has ended
under a duvet of snow
and across the earth

so many worlds have ended
as all worlds do
that harden into ours.

NEW: Indian summer by Rufo Q

.
.
There were four geese and two in the Iowan sky,
pink at evening, an Indian summer;
the world had ended two days before
and between the lines the vivid blue was terror.
Marbled like beef the heavens
came down to deaden us like a duvet
but there was a sense of what do we do
and a sense of who is the one beside me?


............................................The men grew beards,


the women girdled their wombs in wire,
drunkards tended to roister no more
and everywhere the big sky rolled,
slowly then faster, a table-cloth slipping.
The land was mahogany for a moment,
shone, then turned the scratchy colour of earth:
clods and stalks and scarecrows
and good plants cropped for nothing.


............................................The world had ended


and the world would never end;
this year like all the others the same man died
but proved a little harder to coax out of night.
Leave me a while, he said,
leave me until your turn comes to split;
the hug of the dark is without shape,
better to find my arms in it then
than to have them now and go alone


............................................into that embrace.

The Greyhound

after Slow Ignition by JKD

The Greyhound,
Sitting with its long muzzle down,
As if sitting and sleeping.

Slow Ignition by JKD

After fire -making for by Beverley Bie Brahic (from July 28, 2008, click her title here to see orig post)

What body will rain
crave
on the roof
play of love
one steals

Oak-shy,
bark white as
stark
starlings dry as tender

Shoulders, fire, ash
night
coming to know
leaf
applies to sting

Ferns, twig, feather
circle of thirst
stripped
to stone

The outer layers
underneath
an only
spark

Indefenestration

After Never without Visions by Miranda, (from July 2008), by JKD

Broken whisper her
stutter-mouth
lock,
solidify
A syllable’s longing,
emerge from
window. View fallen
to clatter.
Teeth—cold—heat—

Not wood
or sought I
verbs—visions—vocabulary
Spark,
the edge of
past shaken consonants.
The self
breath’s wheeze

fallen
in instants
overheard
many
scratched out contexts,
bordering on
golden—plastified—crimson
a shelf life of,
I said, nothing.
By choice.

Picture
blank.
Patio—terror—alabaster
where she showed
In forming languages
held, whole,
The place of trust transpired.

NEW: Souvenir by Amanda Deutch

Souvenir
for João

A tiny
piece
of whale bone
thumbprint

sized
flat, smooth
ridged along
perimeter

ink
etches
carved
into its surface—

a sketch
of a man
with a harpoon
& a whale

with
a wound
(this piece
of scrimshaw

is evidence
of who won—
if the whale
had made it,

I wouldn’t
be holding
it’s cold bone
in

my
palm.)
a
whale with a wound

My guess
is that
both man
and whale

put
in
a valiant
effort. You

gave this to
me, insisted
I take home,
a souvenir

from
the
Azores.
I would

have
preferred
you.
but

all
along
I had
hoped

I’d find
a cold
piece
of

whalebone
drawn
upon
(scrimshaw)

and there
that first
night
in

your cabin
after whisky
and tea,
you reached

into a corner
pulled out
a box
of

treasures
you’d found
while spear fishing,
diving

in the icy
Altlantic
Ocean—
bones,

glass
bottles,
pieces
of plates.

“Here,”
you said,
“You must
take this.

Secretly,
like a child
looking at
someone

else’s toys,
I’d really
wanted it.
You gave

it to me
over a
glass of
water

and
a wicked
smile.

Now - two variations after J.Regier's Idling & Listening to Music

by lisa pasold

1.
watching the horse racing in the Clamecy bar, can't smoke anymore
but there's a ghost of the way it's s'posed to smell

and across the street a man walks out of a grocery store.

he's got nothing in his hands. which seems
like how we all feel, some mornings.

we look at all those choices on the field, the dark horses
against the impossibly green greens of the television

and we walk out with nothing. can't be helped.

just the same, this man woke up and came out
with good intentions. I mean, I know he woke up. I have

a good feeling he woke up. and I can tell
from the way he's holding his empty hands

he would stake money on any bright horse this morning.

because he and I have a quality, yet undetermined,
not so easy to pin down, even from here. but it's a quality

worth looking into. gets me to thinking that the jockey silks
might get to be the right colour, a little later on today.

2.

I'm watching the horse racing in the Clamecy bar, can't smoke here anymore but there's a ghost of the way it's supposed to smell. and across the street a man walks out of a grocery store. he's got nothing in his hands. which seems like how we all feel, some mornings. we look at all those choices on the field, the dark horses against the impossibly green greens of the television and we walk out with nothing. can't be helped. we want to choose, we want to lay down our bets, but there's something holding us back, like a bit in the mouth, pulling in a way that's not the direction we want. just the same, despite this feeling, this man woke up, as I did, and came out, with good intentions. I mean, I know he woke up, I have a good feeling that he woke up. and I can tell from the way he's holding his empty hands, he would stake money on any bright horse this morning, and yet did not. because some mornings are simply that way, and there's nothing either of us can do. you see, he and I have that quality, not so easy to pin down, even from across the street.

Idling and Listening to Music by Jonathan Regier

By Jonathan Regier, After JKD’s Returning

A man walks out of a grocery store called Ferrell’s.

Give me a second before I tell you he’s got nothing in his hands.
He’s really got nothing in his hands.

Now, I don’t know what time this man woke up in the morning,
But I know he woke up. I have a good feeling he woke up.

I have a very good feeling about it and would stake money on it,
Because I would stake my money on any bright horse this afternoon,

Because he and I have a quality, yet undetermined,
That I can’t really put my finger on.

And I think we will both be remembered in a very small way.

Gathering, by JKD

After Jonathan Regier's The Lake to the Sea

That lake, sticks of perfume, little steel chains or skulls or delicate tattoos.

Not to replace glass bongs, the state’s founded allegations about a red Buick sedan.

1995 spinning round in my head, as if I were selling doctors things I refuse to forget.

I’m just a science-fiction man, static clinics hanging on a map of Nebraskan invasion.

That snow’s planing far over an ancient sea, or perhaps within, under a glass dome.

Truck stops or dime stores, I’d order a catalogue for Katie if it’d do any good now.

Start over with the pulmonary state of motivation, my own arterial waters, a clamp.

How’d it be then, snapped flat, angry, forgetting I’m bold enough to grow a red Atlantis.

If to stop were to build houses for forever, to weather winters without any cigarettes.

True, I could never sleep out here without the rumble of engines, this stain of oil.

I say, “If it gets bad, once, as in a trinket in the bottom of a cereal box.”

You tell me to just crack the ice, check the inventory, stockpile whatever remains to recollect.

See, there’s only part of an engine in this 2-seater sedan, a sign of grace, a grey scratch on your scarification.

Perhaps this is about bats or the wings of a creature yet to define, things or time which flaps past like something I once said to you or then.

New: The Lake to the Sea

The Lake to the Sea

*

That lake, that’s the place where I went with the sticks of perfume,
Selling little skulls on delicate steel chains, also impermanent tattoos.
I didn’t sell glass bongs, as the State would allege. I have a red Buick sedan from
1995 in my head. A doctor of medicine is in the back. He’s selling me things
That I refuse to forget. He’s a science-fiction man. I’m gonna start with
The pulmonary state of motivation. It’s on a map. Nebraska hangs over
The waters, then snaps flat. I’m angry at myself for forgetting. You get told
How stupid you are, again and again. Then you’re on to something.

*

-------------------------------------------------When the doctor says,
“Stop,” I’m willing. The road runs a thousand meters along the cold Atlantic,
Then stops dead. The houses aren’t built for winter. I say to the doctor,
“Now, please go outside if you want a cigarette.”

The snow’s setting in
Planar over the ancient sea.

“We should sleep out here,”
The doctor recommends:
“You’ll run the engines if it gets bad.”

“Look, Doctor,” I say, “there’s only one engine in this sedan.”

cookie monster by sean s

reworded, with apologies, after JKD's Every Reflection Comes Back To One

Everyone comes back to
lifting cookies.

my teeth clacking on the yummy crumbs
(well okay, "munching" would be better,
maybe, a better image, not to
mention it would dovetail sonically into "yummy
crumbs" more nicely, and what is
cookie eating if not nice?
but she didn't use "munching" did she?)

right
in your larynx =
you are doing it wrong.

o cookie, chewy echo of the fire
in us all, meeting
itself under my hungry chandelier.

When I was still too little to
remember my age, dad
called me into their bedroom and
confronted my tiny person: Did you eat the cake
in the refrigerator last night?

o the holy glow of the bulb
in the kitchen night, my hands in
the icing. Thinking fast: I think it was Cookie
Monster!

It was the best lie I ever told. Sometimes
even Cookie Monster has to
settle for cake.

Every Reflection Comes Back to One

After Amanda Deutch’s Everyone Comes back in Reflection, by Jen K Dick

You open
the bed
lift the chickens
put the house
under wraps

what does it mean, to be
quiet except
my teeth clacking

bright stars or piano
keys, coasters with pink “Dylan”
and “Allison” letters
remain after they devised
a plan against getting
married,

the caseof mirrors,
small treasure

means nothing
but
a train for two

wetness not provided
maybe
a fingertip
needs
someone else’s

my hand
tours and boundaries.

That is
all
a cross country
missing
the oncoming
acrostics

year of
possible substitutions--
the frame full
of music
claws

When what I contained
right
in her larynx
makes
me
very tired:

a day still
with energy

I suspect
I am always

Right now

Think
over it, the wavelets.

When was I
two people,
listening?

You promise to tell
me a mystery novel

Is that it?

factory collections
endtables
solid thread count

Everyone
comes
back
lifting cooking
dreaming

I would go into things.

In fact,
why don’t
I call
me back

Pace through the rooms of here

I’d love
to hear
my voice

See those chandeliers

the tinkle of
glass or crystal
raised
to what

am I
referring
myself to
this voice,

or echo?

Everyone Comes Back in Reflection by Amanda Deutch

Everyone Comes Back

You open your letter
with, “I’ve just
put the chickens

to bed.
The house is
quiet except

for Leonard
Cohen and
the clacking

of keys. Dylan
and Allison are
getting married.”

In the case
of mirrors,
small

measure
means nothing,
but

to take that
train for two
days

provides
everything we
need

except maybe
a fingertip
from

someone else’s
hand
touching

our boundaries.
That is
all

that’s missing
from a cross country
train

ride.
About the
coming year, Paul

is it possible
to make
substitutions--

a week
full of
music

or a day still
with energy
and romance

I suspect
I am always
a suspect.

What else
have you
got,

Paul?
right now
I think

and it makes
me
very tired.

When I was
two people,
another me

I knew
how to spend hours
listening

to this
American music.
I even

had fun.
I’ll tell you
about it

sometime.
Now, I just want
to make seasonal pies

and stop
spending energy
on subjects.

Everyone
comes
back

to cooking things
cleaning things
lifting

things or
drinking
something.

I would go
back too. In
fact,

why don’t
you call
me

I’d love
to hear
your voice.

—Sept 12, 2008
After a letter from Paul

Returning (for RS and CV)

by JK Dick, after Laura M’s cituated

To greet the self, turn of angle in the mirror, eye, the other, the empty half of this
bed returning to reach over the angle of body missed something

like reruns or flash forwards, the flood of words itself a poem’s unknitting rumble
to the o the turned on itself slow adieu meaning hollow

if we could know scatter and distanced pace of will, provincial weeks long as months this
day’s marathon in the thump of seeding, voice or voiced

receding days, hours flat angled, unfull, this effort to say “last” to pass on “how will you
remember me?” will I echo echo caught in the woodgrain bedpost cushion

I do not know yet how to be home, to home in on each task with yawning gapes across some
tundra of our living at the end of turning again will I greet will I see

something like you now in that reflection, in this light lifting morning the voice in the throat
of the russet robin, constant distanced tremolo choking still, stiller

Aftersite, JKD

after Laura M’s cituated

To greet the self, turn of angle in the mirror, eye, the other, the empty half of this

bed returning to reach over the angle of body missed something

like reruns or flash forwards, the flood of words itself a poem’s unknitting rumble

to the o the turned on itself slow adieu meaning hollow

if we could know scatter and distanced pace of will, provincial weeks long as months this

day’s marathon in the thump of seeding, voice or voiced

receding days, hours flat angled, unfull, this effort to say “last” to pass on “how will you

remember me?” will I echo echo caught in the woodgrain bedpost cushion

I do not know yet how to be home, to home in on each task with yawning gapes across some

tundra of our living at the end of turning again will I greet will I see

something like you now in that reflection, in this light lifting morning the voice in the throat

of the russet robin, constant distanced tremolo choking still, stiller as I wait

about by sean s

after Strange Vines (an erasure) by BBB

Africa with dirty
fingernails writing villages of white
(fever eraser on a pencil sickness)
rice, sticky and
a dollop of butter. And water
vining from the tap
in a strange sink. Don't
stare when they drink, dear. And
don't write that.

cituated (for RS & after JKD after BB)

return to the o the turned on itself poem someone slowly says adieu meaning something hollows if we could know

if we could swoop and scatter of will distanced and provincial "I wanted to..." tell you weeks at best days likely

days likely flat angled full of the effort to say some last to last how you will remember me how I will echo echo

know how to be home

I will know and across some at the end of some in some turning again greet you something like you now

Strange Vines (an erasure), by bbb

after "Figs," by Amanda Deutch



Strange vines
in the sink

finally I snuck out
to the village

the men all stared at me
trying to write

about africa
with dirty fingernails

blue shared cab
white rice

mint tea moon
meaning fever

fig leaf by sean s

after Figs by Amanda Deutch, After Figs by Rufo Q

squid rice and shelled
fathoms, bilge crabs attention and a lectern
where Hegel said
haricots, harlots, if eating is
knowing, then digestion is
consuming our culture:
the bilge in your tankards,
a stumbling five-fingered
footnote, a discount, a breakdown, summation,
a fever of white sick, white
moon in the gut,
sweat of the chicken,
sweet figgernales soberly, soberly.

Cityscapes by jkd

After the last stanza of Beverley Bie Brahic's, The Giant Sequoia...

O love in the ruins, o return to floodlights, oilslicks, gated building complexes with peeling paint, their cracked windows long to look as far as scattering birds in the snow of a distant province, the herding of cattle, sheep, goats, the song of wind in poplars tall as small, roundbacked mountains. Here, no moonglow in the safety-lights on the floor of the linoleum-slick structures, glass-shine flat-angled, flat-lined as a heart terminating to guide evacuated corridors towards their nearest emergency exit. O as in an ode, as in the odd misspent tones, hearing the distant song of consciousness in a lung’s cooling, fading, puffing the body into, through breezes along roadways, intersections, blinking stoplights. Building of mirrors glassfronted stores echo. The solitude of the city arcs, tides of waste processing, crest of the self selfless in the mirage of being whole in the urban grey erasure. O to own, o to one without form and void. O to awe and the awestruck arrivals like encounters with numbers from the brochure of jumbled images once dreamt, redemption or a ticket to fulfilment creeping among the masses. Recollections: country of youth, its silent forest. Now, what is run through by a snaking interstate, what is the clank of cutlery in the all-night truck stop, what is the blocked sequence of cityscapes becoming the promised land. O to luring the next batch forward. O to a being, its profound depths, not unlike noise leaking from the overhead bins.

THE GIANT SEQUOIA SHOOTS STRAIGHT UP ONE HUNDRED METERS by beverley bie brahic

I have an idea for a book. It is a Creation Story. On the first
day the Creator looks at the void and he separates the Heavens from the Earth, and he calls the light Day and the darkness Night and he sees that it is good…


On the 7th day, however, when the Creator wakes up and looks at His Creation, right away he starts to notice the flaws: the garden—greenbelt—those two people, what do they think they’re doing down there, resting on lawn chairs?


He tears it up. He scrunches it into a ball he pitches into the hoop. Lobs at the bin. He sends a plague of something. Maybe a meteor hits it.

. . .


Now Night again, pure black. Obsidian. Patent leather. No moon, no slivery star shards, glittery as the dregs depositing their grenadines in the bowls of wine glasses left all night by the sink. The Creator prowls from room to room. He finds a torn envelope: utilities bill. Jots sth down. Maybe a list of what he has to do tomorrow.


But what is “tomorrow” now?


No moonglow safety-lights on the floor of the cabin to guide him to the nearest emergency exit. Eventually he drops off, hearing the distant song of consciousness: lung’s cooling breezes, tides of blood, waste processing. Without form and void. Tohu-bohu, he remembers from the brochure. Jumbled images of dreams. Refrigerator’s all-night truck stop. Noise leaking from the overhead bins.

after Figs by A. D.

white rice (Hegel said eating
is knowing) and blue shelled crabs
go a long way
to fathom
five fingers worth
of bilge;
a lunch of wine and squid
explains
anything

after AD, Sans accents!

C la question de si, la question de si je suis, si suis-je, si je est je est la cle de

New Visual Rewords, "Le Question" by A.D.

New: Figs, If You Really Must Know By Amanda Deutch

Figs, If You Really Must Know

some strange vines along the brick wall
cockroach in the sink
fever meaning nothing but
white rice
till finally I snuck out
took one of the blue shared cabs
to the village, tetouan
bought harira, a roasted chicken
and sweets
the men all stared at me white hungry sick
eating consuming their culture
in these hot streets with dirty fingernails
groping for sweets
shbakiya eaten by hands mint tea
moon in the night
filled with sober people
facing west
I am trying yes trying to write about africa
specifically my reception of it.

As It Is by Amanda Deutch after "After Lucian Freud" by A.H., "Drink" by L.P., "Listen to the Blue" by J.K.D., and "Fire-Making For " by B.B.B.

AS IT IS

one of those out in the wild days
wolves settle on shoulders
burrow underneath.
steal off, start fires.
sting. abbreviated landscapes
choke the memory.
brain untucked

in the aftermath of that whisky,
Bob, the bartender at Fanelli’s
mocks you, your life in heavy pours
of the sinking glass.
what’s been found slides
into your bedsheets.
body falls brazenly into now

t.v screens spill blue light
over heavy tits.
where we are
is torn from above
thick
with dirty grace in
primal folds of empty streets

Leaves by Amanda Deutch after JKD's "Splintered"

Leaves

to look at you now splintered amongst missives
caught in light
delicate as all destruction
feather on fire
you lay naked craving tin
and the ping of raindrops on the roof
outer layers scabbed with bites
braille over body
this skin soft and flammable
shedding as embers
switch to strip to patter
hand greasy
green underneath layers
bury thought in dirt
knowing which trick will provide the greatest return

Splintered

by JKD, after "fire-making for" by Beverley Bie Brahic

Knowing which trick ( leaf ) fire will apply, the string of
twig-switch to fern-feather stripped tinder spark. Lay
underneath, as stone. Cool moss’ damp cavernous body
craving tin rooftop’s ping. Raindrops patter-hand greeny
underneath : outer layers scab-soften to startled birch.
Shy shedding of self. Then white-bark, starling-scatter
whisp of voice long-settled on shoulders. Skin, translucent
as embers. This, delicate as ashes with all destruction behind.
It’s one of those knowing missives, wind rising or letters transferred, braille over which leaf applies to the sting. Here’s where light catches, but here, too, dark returns. Thought burrowed, caught.

never without visions

by miranda after burning by beverley bie brahic, spare-ness by JKD and a beautiful burning by Sue Chenette

Whisper -- edge of things -- broken -- solidify -- solidify a window view. Look we've fallen -- not fallen -- would not have fallen. She sought sparks with me. The self is nasty. Edge of things. Whisper fallen for in this instant, many instants passed. If overheard, believe me, but you scratched out the contexts of everything - i said nothing. I showed nothing. Edge edge edge out of things. I will take uninformed beginnings and form them for you -- you'll see me. You'll see me through now. You'll take me whole. 

fire-making for

by beverley bie brahic


what tricks
body will play crave
rain on the roof
patter of love

One paw steals off
all itself picks
scab of the oak

When shy birches shed
white bark
starlings settle on their shoulders

you can light fires
ashes with
that It’s one of those

out-in-the-wilds-night
coming-on-wolves
girl scout tricks eg

knowing which leaf
applies to the sting. Here’s
ferns to feather twig

circle of stones First strip
the outer layers underneath

dry as tinder It
only takes a spark

Listen to the Blue

by JKD, after Lisa P's Drink & Jill Darling's (pl)ace

We step into a box
sky
over the land mass into
a
then
rattled
as in fire
the red, the black earth of it's
sky
a query lingering
swimming in the brown murk
could be the Tiger, the Thames
brockeraged slice off
this

the spin put on things
daily
sleep
circle as reaching black
back
memory's a scorpion-tail
flick
sting of harvest winds
sky of
this masked potential,
remoriated placement
singed

drink

by lisa pasold after box of sky by A Deutch and Burning by S Chenette


nowhere is a query lingering in the aftermath of that whiskey
the ice dissolved, sludge in the mouth the next morning. the window
a box of sky, the stinking glass on the windowsill, slide of water. why
these cityscapes, abbreviated land, one of us plowing. that corner
or this, sheets untucked, some ring lost, we'll never find it,
the circle never happened, a brazenly transparent memory, our
glass empty, whispering, hangover-like. look how
we've fallen together, melted, ring or not, brokeraged for a fresh bottle.

After Lucian Freud

by Amy Hollowell, after (pl)ace by jill d. and Box of Sky by Amanda Deutch

Utopia occurs heavy with tits, spilling naked on a torn ochre couch
unstuffed. Color is full frontal
without reconfigurations of mercantile primacy.
It’s a painterly unmasking from above, implicit with sky. Dirt in its place
is where we are, thick with grace, where we have all been before
cushioned in the flesh of folds
unboxed. Body hair darkens what remains ancient in us
and unabbreviated. Shadows too are bare. From behind,
boots filled with motion reflect
the language of as it is.

(pl)ace

by jill d. after box of sky by Amamda Deutch

Box of sky a rattling textual awareness, a positive sense dismisses utopia. We have all been to this place before. Swerve. Manage every account of money and goods. An endless video of unreminded wealth (or commodity as wealth) (fetish). Only a piece of what represents sky pokes through, from behind or in front. Listen for the blue, the thin, the message that tomorrow only occurs as potential, abbreviated, masked.

NEW: Box of Sky:Skeleton Poems by Amanda Deutch

Allow me to linger in your aftermath
box of sky. a (s)kill as in nightmare and whatever else.
some say, “See me tomorrow.” Some scream, “It’ll never happen.” on the corner of Great Jones and Bowery. Incidently, nowhere is no place it was before anymore which can be quite disorienting, but some may say, “At least we have televisions in taxicabs now and so many new condominiums.” On the subway she is reading, The Secret to Positive Thinking, as she elbows me unaware of her body. To my left, a man reads, Communication in Brokerage. Glass towers shoot back a liquidized reflection. Abbreviations leave a language that once was now in the was. how words can re fathom themselves without us knowing and masks behind masks pop on in the land of selves communicating with other selves. so many screens and reconfigurations to separate us with. delineations in place of dirt. hairless beings devoid of their hairy primacy. box of sky. silent. meeting.

burning

burning
by beverley bie brahic after a beautiful burning by sue chenette


memory’s
whispered
edge
hooks
shapes

such
glowing
solidity

fallen
panoplies

we’ve fallen to panoplies of ashes

by Jill Darling after spare-ness by jkd


staggering through each
letter, breath
(anti)hero
following our own best
mistakes stumbling
over continuous
moments
plot, character, trailing
behind narratives
misunderstood

the main players,
the story
or, a valley,
an oasis of disturbed
sensation
flaking
a full array of possible
beginnings, endings
what happens at each point
sliced
like armor made of sand
an epic tale of love
wandering
recognition
presented entirely in strokes
of red, grey, translucent

spare-ness

by JKD, after a beautiful burning by Sue Chenette and Sliced by Jill Darling

of memory's burning
brazen, strung out words languageless
images coated over imagining
grass undone
a flamerushed summer
gone to brush
whispered edge of cattails
cave-shadowed murk
moss and ponds hooked to
mind or flipping fins
shimmers shaped such tricks
of refused solidity:

look – we’ve fallen to panoplies
of ashes, sought sparks
within each scratched out letter
this self’s surface passing
unrecorded
the stretched sound
strung over field to the lip of yes
slipped hands, fern blades, blush
underneath, the gaze grazed
cool against the restraint
of fumbling syllables

sliced

by jill d., after jkd's past language, this writing

spare-ness of a word stretched out
covering like grass gone
undone
over a summer

each letter scratched out
from the past (un)recorded stretch
of sound strung
over field lot august
the slip of yes
cool against the palm
of restraint