The Poker Wars of the Southwest Coast, Contents Page by sean s

Rewording The poker wars of the South West Coast by Lisa Pasold


Preface: Two Wars Between: the South West Coast
Prologue: The Then-insignificant Port City Will Begin Your Real "Noir"

Chapter One:
The Story's Not Only On the Outside Easily

Interlude: Forgettable Face - Leave a Wish, See You After

Chapter Two:
But your work also has a couple of pennies (which lives in a hotel laundry)

Chapter Three:
laundry will search for an every day melting trough over the robot.  Still

Interlude: Era Like No Other Woman

Chapter Four:
even a special lady just does not fit because of your talent (no husband, no kids, no home)

Chapter Five:
Do not care, and a bold determination to give up job to be true professional

Chapter Six:
"You" Leaves Behind and Neither Is: The Citadel of Poker Playing

Epilogue: Where Purposeful's Most Famous Takes a Job

Card Tricks (by Dzina after JKD & Lisa P)

After JKD's "Time These Wars..."

Lucky as a penny, now I can turn 'em
heads or tails you get your wish.
Lacta alea est when it's deadlinetime,
our time's up and I got this circle it's
pretty black & white. Looking
from the outside will cost you
and don't hope for future mes
that stick. The hourglass is cracked,
the sand is down, and I'm all business. Professional
I don't care. I'll tear you apart, defoliate
you, defy your evergreen for green.
My future secure no thanks to the
main channel. God bless my Laundry
Hotel.  I play my cards right,
there won't be no future to rectify.
No need to catch body parts with
a net, once most famous everything's
available on purpose thanks to
breakthroughs in science your eye
can see that make a pretty penny
making pretty one day. I call the
citadel Mall Noir, and all flagship
procedures lead to my Laundry Hotel,
where there's no need to check out
ghosts of architecture past, no archive
to explore, just life as a zen kitty
out of the closet. Meow!

Time These Wars... (by JKD after Lisa P)

After Lisa P's The Poker Wars of the South...

Time these wars: two at the South bar, ban the West Coast, no one is as insignificant as a port city post-hurricane, or this oil-less desert, sand and more blanks buried deep underneath. Perhaps my bones, or…

And then, she sidles in, slides up next to me on a stool just a little too tall so her toes are dangling like a neck on the line as she says, “When will I begin my real noir?”

Whose is this story? Tall tale of the blank slate, the scratched over. Reset.

She/I/you are not only on the outside, with that easily-forgettable face, place, race for the next ravine, or office. I cast a die, then leave a wish. In the after of the aftermath, solitude returns to remind us work has only a couple of pennies, the watchlist lives in a laundry hotel, and trotting out our pasts, ancient archived maps, is only her will to search for every day’s melting trough over the robot architecture caught up rebuilding.

Hold the images higher, into their solarization. This is just a still, a b&w pic of this other era. A net.

He snapped off her hands, her feet like no other woman. That is how much he wanted her to stay his “special lady”.

What of this article just does not fit?

I left, I came back because of your talent (no husband, no kids, no dust storm to remind me). Neither high as a citadel of poker playing. She was typing “Do not care” on the post-its one by one. I began fixing them to surfaces where they refused to stick. The rooms fall landscapes of leaflike squares “not” “care” do”. A bold determination to give up.

But then, she got that call again. The revervist’s reservist. A doily in a red doll dress, clown lipstick. This is crimson if ever such orange scuttled their plans. I nodded. We both knew that I/you/she could be a true professional, in a sharp-creased uniform, if only the night would give us a chance to rectify our futures. Return her limbs. Her joints. My eyes.

Dates are behind us now. I give her a jab, to check, then wave at the window where what once most famous takes a job. Her feet dangle and that last word, “noir” flutters out a crack in the glass between us.

She coulda stammered... (JKD)

*

She coulda stammered anything, but straight-arrowed me with “Is grief porous as a pin cushion?”

After Dzina’s Needle Trading Off, with help from Laura Mullen’s PieceWork (with parts from Lisa Pasold) & Rufo Quintavalle’s Gold.

Plum outta autofills, here in her harp-sign-and-signal-less labyrinth wondering—which hole to plug, which gap or griffon clawed into the gaffaw? I could not laugh dark enough to get the bile up outta here, her heralding a blind center, a hokypoke stem of a tendril choke-hold. I was watching, waiting, wandering round the gate thinking whichever one of us gets pricked— could be a rhetorical ring to pattern the trap not to speak (to), see, know, how to pin the tail on. Or sigh. Her yodle. Then a yammerin’ clamour whatchr lookn at cephalothorax? The lick of her neck, a candlestick. I got to wonderin’, what’s it take?, or, to break? Hand to trace-lace-bind, center stuff, staple, stroke. You’d a known it was me, my folded grammar, tattletale forgotten, coat in the wind, wishing for a chintz dress glitzy nightshift. Echo of who’s got the dropsy? Betcha she could take us all in that hopscotch match. This crash course six shooter hold up drawback to kick is just a mishmash of watchnknow? wouldchanow? Whodunbeenit? There, where I cut back the years, say “go to pieces”. The patched bleedwork, box leftbehind of yellows. I suppose, had she a forwarding address, past this advent advantageous calendar’s seasonal greeting, I would have been a taker. No. No no more. As she wrote it: “Seems a seams been lying in the wait, lined up ahead, flagging the signless poledancer back down under us.” Sure, I mighta responded, cause after all it seems I never could stop that automatic capitalization from defining time. And yes, lady, it really is someone else's turn. Uh-huh. So, blathering up the foam in the fountain, the vanilla or bubbly eucalyptus, round the bend, to turn then turn again to come, enfin, to a pause, a price, a plate platter onto which I give her over. And will you take care of her? Heel, hell, howl now don’ com’n back, ‘k? Y’hear? Breaks me a bone, deep as marrow exposed syntax, to know the direction that dart was heading. Nothing more to do but whine, whinny, whimper, whistle. A happy tune? Or a harp? The needle was pointing due West. Shoulda followed it.

Stake Your Turf, by JKD

After Memphis and déshabille-toi by Lisa Pasold & Schoenberg in Pieces by Johnathan Wonham (click their titles to read thier poems)

Thinking, exist, break going down to perform, low bow
which does not fire but yowl, outside triangulation
Strangu- can leave and not perform that satchel scale
which does not carry on, stitched to thinking flight
on Beale Street and again, and to gain “it’s not exactly
speech” (screech to a halt, squeal scalded arpeggio)
which dares not, ground to a—you or ya’ll yawled, say
yew, stretch up to, reach that, state your name or, say:
“demographic of departure”, a flight of stairs, 12-string,
downtown, grit or grind of the bar, sleep on it, stale, yawn
out that yarn, that tale, that good ol’ boy tune, think, stay.

Piece Work (new-ish)

It's not exactly speech, coming back here, but good and tactile. (Lisa Pasold / JKD)
The voice is mine, professed. (JKD)

Only to resuse materials given
Deep in the wings the musty black dimly lit where we each to each just a memory there
The word reuse not recognized
The failure to recognize
Spacing I can’t correct
The characters gazing off into the air or out but not at each other and never exactly off-stage never deep into the wings as if to acknowledge that marked edge of this effort
“I can’t correct” or set
Some words marks made near the present event
Set
Down would have wanted more than anything else to be honest but the static of dream and wish and memory and the desire to appear in a flattering
Only these clothes in each the feel it time and effort someone bent over
Hear the whirring machine as you slip it on wear the clacking machine the hot room fabric dust a brief lunch break and lack lack lack lack
To let the mask as the phrase goes slip
Staring off and speaking each their piece the pieces of their our their our

Not a word by Justine el-Khazen

After Alone, they are a-maze (by JKD), Everyone's having children now by Jonathan Regier, and Everyday Includes Today by Lisa Pasold.


Magnets are the maps,
world smoothed over:
things that settle beyond the GPS.

An aeroplane arrives,
and it’s all over.

Mourning and noon agree blankly.
Night and the numbers:
10, 9, 7, 8.

Blood of the children,
black and level.
Vines map the body
in thick braids and ladders
of blood,
of blood

(children included).

A bridegroom opens the door.

Alone, they are a-maze (by JKD)

After Everyone's having children now by Jonathan Regier, and Everyday Includes Today by Lisa Pasold.

A bridegroom throws open the doors:
playing in the soil, mourning noon and night,
The madcap flatterer’s leafing through the butterflies.
A cup, a paper doily, the fix-it maman
cannot quite re-stitch the happy couple back together.
You listen in closely, you can hear the whispers:
Where has she gone? And, hence, to Mexico!
We clink our glasses with everyone’s children—
or vines. And then it is we begin to agree blankly:
Finland is a fine place to be if you are finicky. Or nimble.
He will drink his exquisite coffee though the dogs bark
and not say a word about the magnets
soaking in their blood, or the hemlock she’s just plucked.
Sympathies? Whichever happens to come before 8am.
I say it will all be fine again. The world smoothed over.
Just wait or shake it a little bit.
Scraps of blown papers settle beyond the GPS.
But at 9 o'clock, when you think it’s all over, I hear him say:
I suppose I should have tagged her. An aeroplane arrives.
Will you sit a little while longer before you shimmer?

For the Best, by Amy Hollowell

After "why then, and the case not peculiar to myself," by lisa p

Flaneuse and a sex tart,
I wish for you and the snow
coming delicious and good enough
over the city.

What beautiful means and beginning well
I nearly know yet don’t
because you say just being
is for the best.

To be read, perhaps, in reverse by JKD

After Lisa Pasold's Whoops-a-daisy..., Jon Wonham's In life the rampant mind has limbs and Tall Tale of Short Hours by Amy Hollowell

Clinging onto the rampant limbs
because these were things we would not do
not see not be part of not parting
being the thing passing through or
bygone

nights not anymore
risking time and pinned-together boulevards
the intertwined life of its own mind
when the red and yellow fall
in an orange nightscape

inverted constructs rattle and sliver
unseen along the scenic drive

elsewhere cliffs and ruins of old tunnels
tell me about the centuries of battles and treaties
of a cobbled route up which someone drove us
of myths and unknowns
this was haunting if we could be there

but in this small car on this wide and vacant road
there are only elevated furrows
extended courtyards
barriers penning in a preordained timeline
telling us how what was was

you, for example, whispering
words syllables clicked consonants left underground

so when I was there, later, I could unearth
remnants because things
like cut glass, painted pottery, bronze blades,
gas masks, spittoons, an ivory comb, dictionaries
that are left adrift never came back

because there were things we would not do
anymore, to hear me listening, to be
in the enunciation or simply riding
round and round on Bay Street, arms interlinked,
until everyone would clamor awake
dawn overbright in the joyous crowding

What Was Offered by Sue Chenette

after "check this box" and "very yes very no" by Lisa Pasold; "Zerochre Zerochrome" by Sean S. and "A mite giddy on-egging" and "On" by Gvance
********
**********
Under the gift wrap, no watered silk,
********
but raploch wool,
***
wound round a doll with stone for a head.
*****
What was offered.
*******
She wove it a grass placemat,
*******
drew circles of moisture at its mouth,
********
mothered it until
**********
light pushed into the bones.
********
It taught her mineral memory --
********
a hard nut meat almost Macadamian --
********
and to keep the vertebrae perishably
***********
but tightly upright
******
daring a skating trick
**********
on the oilstained woodplank floor.

I Wanted to Tell You by Amanda Deutch

After JKD's Apparition, Sean S's Fragment 2, Lisa Pasold's On a Morning Like This Morning and a little Marguerite Duras thrown in for good measure and spice.


I Wanted to Tell You


On a Thursday
morning,
I feel the uncertainty

of phrases.
empty bottles, the sea,
an expression

I've
never seen
on anyone

but you. I
am not a blank
reproduction

of myself,
am I?
At a certain

hour, do we become
masks
of ourselves?

The voice is
mine and it
isn't.

Wary
Tender
Undressed,

our motions
implicate
the shape of the cosmos.

A morning like this one
becomes afternoon
and lasts well

into the evening,
emerges from bones
as it has been wanting to

for weeks. Words
wipe things out
replace them,

so that you can
continue
to do so.

‘So’ meaning
be
being.

I am
busy
being.

You had written
'red.'
Sometimes,

a color speaks
more
than any words.

This is driven by
chance, the harbor
and used paths.

There are many
trees speaking colors
we can't.

Hydrate
in advance?
There is little

we can do
to prepare in
advance.

Because of the
wind,
perhaps.

Let go of the past,
stand, out on street corners
simply watching faces, movements—

That’s as good as
any
preparation,

isn’t it?
My dreams
are of

kayaks that
leave me
behind.

My waking
is of noise
and clouds.

The illusion of
place,
where I am.

I've never been
able
to believe

any of this;
I don’t believe in place
or Tuesday.

And this has kept
me awake
for many years

drawing pictures
in the
night.

I'm almost aloof
about it.
Might as well be

amazed
by the colors
of illusion.


—May 15, 2009
Clinton Hill, Brooklyn

Squall by JKD

A variant and reversal of Lisa Pasold’s Snow Squall

the trick with being constant, like weather,
is to tromp downstreet watching some dog-owner instead

of being part of a Sunday carnival of bare limbs,
footprints on the frontwalk, to recognize

in frosted glass panes, a bevel of ice, standing
before the white window, the duvet pulled tight

while in the driveway (everytime, it’d bleed if it could)
the struck stone and bleeting snowplow backing up

hazel-eyed, the morning curling white
doubled-over like angels waking in snow