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The Hat of NightWhy does the hat of night
fly so full of holes? --Pablo NerudaThe hat of Night has flown,
black and riffling like a holy flag
of decadence, projected from
the ship of day-- decrying light.Beneath the Captain's black,
brimmed hat, whose sutures leak
illumination, bodies as of those bedeviled
frisk between blanched monoliths
like ashes up a chimney chute--
untethered, passing tatters pleased between
the stones of dead and even dead disciples.Yes, the gate is barred, but enter in.
The Captain's yellow eyes
are on its spiking edges, where the threads
of our facades were caught.Outside, the walk is slick and flat-- cement.
A row of poplars sag, devoutly static.
Snaking steel stands
brace the dozens of piebald bikes,
all black in this wet night
beneath his hat, triumphant flown.A whiff is decadent--
loam moldering, wet leaves
in a tight, tight mat.The ruptures in Night's hat, which no
bright deity punched deliberately,
are lacerations-- human stuff-- and
his moldering odor is only the musk
of each white abscess in the broad,
black brim-- an ink wash
banded with light.copyright 2005 Sarah Bull
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The Gay Resort
He's a flagrancy of bullyboy heat,
surface combustion and light, brazier fuel;
dogging the footsteps
the flashpoint of longing
he peppers his toes with Fire Island ash.A crackle furthering from dust-dry lips
and we are all pyre-heathens;
the smelter sun is rubbing
its arson on peeling buttocks.In waywardness we become furnace-nibblers,
the discotheque is sweat and blood.
Our vacation's nearly out of gas
and every whitecap floats
an ark, tight with sizzlers,
men of Ra with blowtorch smiles
keeping the whoopee hot.copyright 2005 Christopher Barnes
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*
And the Earth leans against you
from inside, starts its turn
hand over hand --you empty each boxslowly, smoothing the sides
then once it's dark
begin to dig for airand wait for the corner
half cardboard, half taking you in
and no one home though here you areopening a door the way every star
smells from dying winds and grass
--you unpack, thinner and thinneras if the air is losing heart
bending its climb and doors
no longer by the hundreds.copyright 2005 Simon Perchik
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By Night
Whatever I see, I see
by night. A man
rides a roan horse. He moves shadowed
among myrtle trees. An impassible arroyo,
he loves. He lovesno one. I am looking up
from the bottom of a salt lake and
behind me, fire--
speckled and white. It may be the moon, but
I take in too much or too little;it is easy to be nothing
to a man
you do not know.copyright 2005 Maureen Alsop
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Punctuated Equilibrium
:;:: ; :::: ;;; ///
[,,;;..::] ///
##$$$;;,,,;,,,{{
// {{ {{ { {{{{
you can tell he beats%*&
his children from
the way he eats[{::}] >>> .....
....... ##$$$@
^his hotdog
+++
copyright 2005 Tim Waldron Semple
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Aspiration
Which maternal slap in the face,
which tree I sledded into
settled my sense of smell
into its quiet corner. Breathe in. Goodbyeto the morning coffee I drank
from the age of ten, the lavender soap
I loved, the smell of mushroom scum
at the horses' trough. Laterthe slow shutting down and everything
smelling like rice bleached to dust,
celery in a vacuum, saliva, sweat, sex,
the empty potpourri. Insteadtasting the sounds of words: oolong
and marjoram acacia mimosa,
flowers I have never seen or smelled.
I curl my useless beaky nose aroundthe vowels. They hum with intimations,
close calls. Down in the fruity soil,
without a whiff of what's ahead, ferny and mephitic--
such sherbets--the last pink exhalation.copyright 2005 Annette Basalyga
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Hitler's Mustache: One Question in Regards to Memory
There is the question of sleep in Hitler's mustache, how much or how little tilts it toward dream/narrative or dreamscape/escape or whichever thing you imagine, plus whatever thing you imagine. In this way I imagine that Hitler's mustache (at once aware of its place in the canon and hyper-sensitive to solipsism) guides its tongue into the slit of its woman mustache and combs itself like a woman masturbating. In a way it's hot. But it’s real creepy too. Like aging on the human body, like cancer tablets in powder form being sniffed off the back of a dog. This mangy mutt whines at night, sedated by a sedated owl. This owl, this previously un-spoken of owl, this real memory associated with my father, break dancing, violin lessons, Converse tennis shoes, this owl is bristling with a fake, dyed, mustache. A movement toward a new mustache that is so new, so full of scratchy owl hoots, that the hunters listening in the distance begin slopping their way through the forest and yet never arrive at the cotton bikini underwear of eighth grade girls in 1983, never find the dangling, quivering mustache, the achtung, the ache tongue, the shotgun blast in a living room when a bumbling kid shoots his best friend.*
*A child mustache may have been killed by a child mustache.
copyright 2005 Peter Davis. From his unpublished ms., Hitler's Mustache.
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After 9 Days of Cold Rain,
Anything Blooming Trampled"Still west," you wrote, "with a PO
in hell." A jolt, like the wild pear
exploding hours after Sunday snow.
White crystals, white petals. "On
the tip of the spear" you said. "Hardto unplug, wired for weeks, dreams
like war games." The green of your
words out jades the geranium. A
Jolt, your words after almost a year.
Not even the spears of pink leavesI could smell from the road as much
comfort. "Might be in your city,"
darvan, codeine,--warm as the cat
coiled in my knees. "Still west" you
wrote. Then you didn't. War dreamshang in branches. I think maybe
Jakarta, he wrote me once from there.
The geranium that should have died
spreads thru the sun room. Last year's
oak leaves hang on the branches. Thepetals I smelled from the road smashed
into mud. Pink spears gone, the tips
of the spears he wrote about dissolve.
Rain, the branches, pink lace over, I
watch for his screen name. I was overthat. The cherries are over, the nine
days of cold rain aren't, the paper
says, over yetcopyright 2005 Lyn lifshin
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My Lover Meets the Bower Bird
He nods at the silence then tries out his love song:
a sound like your callused palms rubbing in the cold.
To end he drops bottle top onto bottle shard: a chink
that stills him with wonder at the beauty of human excess.
You are formally welcomed with a flash of pink topnotchand a bow to admire his masterpiece in the making; sublime
with the melancholy of fetish love, unconsummation.
He guides your eye through his lovelorn mosaic, constellations
of plastic and foil, soft rings of back bones orbiting on
Monopoly pieces, jewel-bits of shattered windshieldfor making sunlight his own. He dismisses you with a sudden
cry at a composition of seeds loosened by the breeze.
He nudges them back into a pattern divined
then at the bower's exact centre he stations himself:
pivot-of-the-world, mad with symmetry.copyright 2005 Lucy Holt
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paper routethe peculiar compassion we were meant to feel for
the tenement residents on the other end of the neighborhood.
they rented, we owned. yet it was in their dumpsters dad
used to unload the oversized items of trash the municipal
authorities refused to remove. at the age of eight
i was initiated into the underground tunnels that
for them connected washing machine to washing machine
trash can to trash can. my first taste of
terror was the endless walk between fire doors
when both hallway lights happened to be burned out
and the winter days were dark long before the 6 o'clock
deadline. the inhabitants of those pukegreen carpets and
water stained walls - for a while i was dependent on their
generosity. in three and a half years i had lost half the clientele
before shamefacedly relinquishing the route to a younger,
more industrious neighbor. mr. johnson
and his twenty dollar christmas tips. old mrs. carbone
and the rotweiler she herself had to beat back with a
louisville slugger. mrs. galupo, judicious regional
distributor with a luxurious cadillac country squire
for the merciless bundles - who can tell me in what
unearthly halfway house they now dwell?copyright 2005 Chris Michalski
printfriendlywinter map of montreal (after jose oliver)
copyright 2005 Chris Michalski
[I am sorry, but my wfm will not manage the diacritical marks in this poem, which is therefore available only in printfriendly black on white. TK]
Two Red Sailors
Sitting here in my
rat hole apartment
looking at the painting
Jack Micheline sent me
before he diedI miss him with all my
heart, his ghost might
be sitting in the
closet for all I
knowListening to Guy Clark
singing about skinning
a Hollywood movie starAbout there ain't no
money in poetry and
that's what
sets a poet freeI realize I have no
idea what I'm doingMaybe the two red
sailors know, all
I know is I miss
Jack MichelineLike a heart attack
from GOD.copyright 2005 Catfish McDaris
printfriendlyAdrian C. Louis Blues
I met Adrian a few
years ago at Woodland
Pattern, he could read
so well, it would bring
tears to your eyesHe's probably better
than Bukowski, now he's
famous and has a movie out
called SkinsLove his book, Wild
Indians Other creatures
Bones&Juice kicks azzCeremonies of The Damned,
is hard-bitten and compassionateAdrian channels his energy
through poetry and incendiary
power, midst despair, ghost cars,
and the love for his wifeFire Water World is for
those Indians lost in cities
and for the Urban Indian SuiteJust Another Suicide Note
is for flapjacks and gritsIf I ever get the
pleasure to meet
him again, it
will be in his
Vortex Of Indian
Fevers.copyright 2005 Catfish McDaris
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Self-Portrait with Red Bird
An immaculate woman stands at the mirror of the cafe bathroom,
holding her heart in place as if it were making its final escape.
She drops her hands to reveal a thin wound of raspberry sauce
down her white shirt. She stares at herself as if she is a Frida Kahlo:
spine a crumbling pillar under the body's imperceptible quake,
head three-quarter profiled in self-distrust.
Her husband rings from their table and asks what's taking so long.
She stares at herself as she answers must you know all:
not a question. Must it always be so visible (the real question)
her insides as art. She is reminded of their marriage bed the first morning,
the same rude red like a shout. She should have shouted then in disbelief
at the red seal on her life, still warm. She should shout now
at the score down her chest concaved with age. And deeper still:
a sternum scission ribcage opening to let the red bird out.copyright 2005 Lucy Holt
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A Scene in Passing
I was dreaming of being old
whileyou were a constant ageIn this dream the country changed,
beside me.
with clicks and flutters
from spring to summer, fall to winter,
and back again,
while I sat stunned breathing months away.The leaf fell on my hand
rotted into dust
when I bent to look at it.
Where it blew through an open window,
I thought I felt a quick chill
and a snowflake,
but my hand was dry.Night and day were strobed to my sight--
it was either always day with a flash of dark
or night with a flash of light.I was dreaming of being old.
The sound of the years passing
was a mad music,
only the slow expansion
and contraction of the house
I was in
and the forming, then the falling
of the ice on the windows
was identifiable.
otherwise the sound was as gray as my hair.
As the pace slowed
I was dreaming of being old
and could not pull myself awake.copyright 2005 Michael Gullickson
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The Good Life
Now is the time for jangling guitars, nicely biting,
and the winter sky scary with a thin line of black clouds climbing,
the radio dial tuned to songs that sing so far away.
Now is the time for afternoons to close their petals
and the leaves of the most beautiful face we’ve ever known
to shine down upon us.
The schools are closed but the stores are open,
the coming night a harbor, green flags flying, trucks loaded high with cigarettes and coffee.
And the good life will find us the first time
we see ourselves past fifty, floating with saxophones.
Now is the time of great advances,
the new not holding us ransom with insults.
Now is the time for black birds in white snow,
the roots of the feed corn reaching for warmth,
the young weeds in the ditches where the groundhog works his stunned magic,
rolling his cheap cigarettes by candlelight, baking his bread in black ovens,
the sky tumbling down around factories.
And now, as cold wind rolls thin clouds over hard edges of earth,
the good life finds us the first time.copyright 2005 Andy Roberts
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The Indian in Me
It is the same old story of the American Indians
I have been told a dozen times,
of the common interbreeding and the eating of apples,
how cold is the mother of invention
and warmth the mother of soul,
how the tenor saxophone is the true voice of jazz.I stand by the open window and marvel
at the industry of birds,
the futility of tying down the names.
How, exposed to the sun,
my own skin turns a rich brown in summer
and never really fades
except with the total dying of the light.It’s a cultural thing, I think,
how we permanently stain our bodies with India ink
and learn the patterns of the electric guitar.
It’s all been done before –
on the open plains,
in the beds of the settlers, shaking with fever,
and Custer going down in defeat again and again.I’ve never really been sure of who I am,
standing at the mirror and listening for the horses’ hooves,
washing my hands in warm water and reciting
the surnames of those born before me.
Cousins, I ask,
can we meet on the banks of the river of blood
and sing an old story, a slow song of O’s?
Can we agree we are lonely,
Can we talk of the bones?copyright 2005 Andy Roberts
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CicatrixOff Frame / In FrameIn the woods, you warn of the danger,
This leaf, that shadow, this path
lacks the clear edge, the ten precise lobes,
the sharp midrib of measure.You protest you are not schooled
in woodcraft, and as you speak, the darkness
pours from your mouth to collect and pool
in the empty bowl of your hands.Stop and make a fire. Better to remain
in one place than to cast about for the perfect
sign. Rest your mind in the fire,
and imagine a way out. Discard it forever.Mourn what you have lost of yourself,
and when you are ready, begin singing.
This is how we will be found.
Not the bent twig, not the drop of blood.Watch the black bear, how he shuns
paid advice, stores fire in his fat, and survives.
Look, we are more than halfway there,
and all this time you have been leading.copyright 2005 Elizabeth Trotter
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The Trees Said
We will never let you go.
I had listened long
for something else,
but this is what I heard.
I heard myself speak
the truth in a voice of pine
and moved on.We’ll see about that,
I said to myself, believing
my words were the trees’,
but having thus spoke
and turning to go,
I split my heart in two.copyright 2005 Elizabeth Trotter
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Language is the blood of thought,--to RLC
And so the sun sets alongside two
Crows. And beside them two men
Who belong to a moonlight town.
Their eyes are rivers and sighs—as
If the past were flowing into every
Moment. And soon the birds take
Flight to finish their songs. Soon
Enough the moon’s mouth is one
Blushing serenade. The unmowed
Grass is a chorus. The tall blades
Say “Shhhhhhhh/Shhhhhhhh” over
& over. At some point, the daydream
Continues on: & out in the distance
There’s a blue tent beside the water.
Curiosity allows us to see two dark-
Haired figures scurry inside. They
Won’t emerge for a few more hours.
When they do, it’s all sticky smiles.
And the man leaves a sweaty pool
In a woman’s bellybutton and his
Tongue swims for redemption. This
Is one way that love begins. There
Are a million others. It could start
With glances meeting across some
Vast room, or with whiffs of perfume
Dangling five feet above a sidewalk.
No matter, at some point it always
Whirls through the imagination, and
When it does, you allow yourself to
Believe. And surely, that echo of
Childhood laughter can’t be too far
Removed from the tap in your feet.
Surely, we haven’t given up on King
Or Yeats or Petalesharo.* Somehow
We might yet find the heart nothing
But a thick-petaled flower wilting
Toward Jerusalem. And what to make
Of water’s reflection at your feet and
The perfect sound of snapshots falling
From your hands? And if you could
Orchestrate beauty for one day, how
Would you begin? What diseases,
Deceit, or heartache would you first
Delete? What would God / Buddha /
Allah make of a day without rescues?
And somewhere across the expanse,
Dawn is cracking out of its shell with
Another explosion.
*Petalesharo was a Pawnee Indian, mythic in stature,
who ended the Morning Star Ceremony during which
a young woman was sacrificed.copyright 2005 Todd Fuller
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