Poem I've Just Read--Dug

I just read, at the poetry journal Octopus, the poem "Hymn to Death" by Robert Fernandez.  It's fairly lengthy, and makes good use of its length.  Many of the line-breaks capitalize on the energy that can ensue from adroitly working this facet of prosody; at times, in the opening, I get a William Carlos Williams sense of the line, though that's a bit misleading as Williams had more than one sense.  These ones of RH recall Williams poem with the horse carrying its load and the nostrils jetting breath-fog like the twin jets of a car.  I am not usually much attracted to art whose explicit subject is death--especially when death becomes more like a trope or metaphor than the actual biological dynamic--but this poem has plenty of energy present, and plenty of literal death in the form of, frequently, sumptuously sensual non-human animal details, so I'm liking it.  And I am obsessed with marrow, and the poem ends entering marrow, so this makes me happy.  My only quip is the part that goes into something like choral refrain; I think the permutation meets narrative meditation macro-structure works better.    

More Samples From Ossuary

Would skin and bones
Crowding

Bone-crunching be better?

We fry

Skinny

Girls for bait
Baskets at this fish shack
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::;

  
[This one has a title]: As Water Warms More Jelly Fish Threaten “Red Tuna”

 Love is not the future;
Love is the eviscerating
Heat of the present.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

I’m smart but dumb.
At the thought of knows how
My cortex goes numb.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

I’m a tourist walking
Vernacular streets.   
When I’m most
Clueless yet desirous
Crossing
Cerberus is wheezing:
Willing and squeezing
That I may get by.
But of course if I could see
My confidence clearly
I’d almost want to die.
I’m the head agent
For secret agency.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Skies are an impossibility of letters. Wavy locks. Optics. Coptic phrase stitched into the border of a hanky. No more panky at the bank. Satisfactory Action! Activation necessitates savage ken. Doll why didya do that.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Where has
My jubilance gone.
Other than what I know
What’s wrong.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

...and oink just
Done through
With the pinky pink
Bolt unfurling satin Straight
Jacking any normal
Woman’s sense here’s a jacket.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Gourds are stuffed with
Freshly slaughtered goblins.
The fun stuff evades
Like pounds of flesh.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

The birds are stranded. Everything can be done to help. This affords little hope. How hard does it have to become before there’s generous action.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Like any good
Tom she can tell
A nearby hot mama

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Cracking bubbles, smacking
Gums, tender
Attempts at
Smiling, frying off
Fear, to see what clarity
Ensues once world’s...

















































































 

Timidity

I really want to write an essay--assay--whose subject (no, topic) is White Supremacism/Supremacists, but don't yet feel such an attempt could tenably be in public because my position is extremely distant (it is bell hooks who has massively aided me in my changed, more accurate understanding) from standard notions of what constitutes this wretched phenomenon/a.  But I should probably rethink what I mean by public (discursive/written) spaces: one which is not White might be simultaneously freaked out and heartened to see my stance. 
 

More of Not Enough

Here are some snippets of some--have composed so many more, so the some is no sum--poems I've written in the past seven or so months; I'd provide the entireties but it seems most publishers count blog postings as grounds for disqualifying for their stages.  It's unlikely most of these pieces will find those stages, so my careerist concern is likely unnecessary:

from a section of a manuscript I will likely title Ossuary, which will probably be the title for the whole array:

Note--titles are missing

World, worldly obsession
Threatens
To turn my purls into a pearl
Handled scoop
With which you dish my cream.
It hurts badly and
I’m not allowed to scream
Or I am but
Not if my master’s
Me. Could this be?
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

So that there’s beauty
We must put her to bed.
Sleep sweetest dreams.
If you feel chains
Graze your ankles
Roll over.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::;;

Let’s shake our asses
In the Jism Dooms Room;
The Room Dooms Jism;
Girl Juice
Gets you more 
Than can marry to merry.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

I bleached my backdoor and common
Sense calls me an asshole.

Friday night
Cherry pie.

To stay safe
No cream
Pastor ain’t approved.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Brand the burn.

Hot sauce
For one.

Hottest box.

Pepper breath fogs
Windshield.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

All the trees
Are cinnamon.
Perhaps high seas
Are more of them swaying.

Currents carry meats
Killers mince.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Corn grows. Hormones
Escalate. There are too
Many of these babies.
There can never be
Too many babies.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

...These lovely ethical
Beliefs are imprisoning
Me, unable to see
The full turn of emotive degrees
I value. I am
Damnably stagnant. I need to
Uproot. If I stay
Here any longer
I’m liable
To lose all sight of sugars
All the while suckling NutraSweet.