February 2008
20 posts
Goofball Poetics
“The meaning of every word comes from context and whereas context is created by other words, meaning can never be fixed but you can cross a stream on loose, slippery rocks without getting wet by keeping a strong, forward momentum.”
-Dean Young from his poem “True/False” (a list of 100 true/false statements)
“The quality of whimsy is not strained. It falleth from Ashbery...
SAY YOUR PRAYERS AND PICK YOUR BATTLESHIP...
Troy from Halflife by Meghan O’Rourke We had a drink and got in bed. That’s when the boat in my mouth set sail, my fingers drifting in the shallows of your buzz cut. And in the sound of your eye a skiff coasted— boarding it I found all the bric-a-brac of your attic gloom, the knives from that other island trip, the poison suckleroot lifted from God-knows-where. O all your...
The Whiskers - Roses
NEW SINCERITY
Love Note to Self and Others by Matt Hart I swear to tell the truth, but I’m lost without a fiction. Something about a prophet in the belly of a fish. Or was it a fit of disobedience, a dalliance with an oyster? When you arrive for dinner, I take off your muzzle, but you refuse to rocket. I, of course, can’t help it, so sayeth, very plainly, a lot of architects’ names and...
CHANGE POSITIONS
DAY by Patrick Lucy The petticoat fit, Michelle swam across her daughter and lifted suspenders too high for her son to complain. Outside, a receipt printed itself too loudly and for too long and was thrown out anyway. It had been a day. The lines on the road to work giving way to the fruit pulled from the disposal at night. The normal amount of salt, which is too much. Ditto with hellos, said...
DJ Sega - Rod Lee / Change Positions
O B A M A
Pop by Barack Obama, 1981 Sitting in his seat, a seat broad and broken In, sprinkled with ashes, Pop switches channels, takes another Shot of Seagrams, neat, and asks What to do with me, a green young man Who fails to consider the Flim and flam of the world, since Things have been easy for me; I stare hard at his face, a stare That deflects off his brow; I’m sure he’s unaware of his Dark, watery...
Hood Headlinaz - ‘Bama Getting Money
LOCATION-AWARENESS
The Idea of Order at Key West by Wallace Stevens She sang beyond the genius of the sea. The water never formed to mind or voice, Like a body wholly body, fluttering Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry, That was not ours although we understood, Inhuman, of the veritable ocean. The sea was not a mask. No more was she. The song and water were not...
Big Ria - Knucklehead
THE AIR THEY HANG IN
by Patrick Lucy The horse’s reigns, short hair, saddle strap. Winter air coalesces, clouds around a phrase, sees it as far as it will go- long enough to draw honest-to-god analogies. But that’s it. Hear the birds, how they’ve started? Note the surgical air of pine needles… Build a very real fire, boil water, dry the socks, warm the body. Let it go. Start again as...
