Brooks, A Gwendolyn

2012-01-17T17:06:00.000-08:00

From a Montevidayo blogbox comment by Kent Johnson:

"Conceptualism is fine, but that Dworkin (though in this case it’s safe to say the act is by a whole group) would go so far as to put my name on something I haven’t written is really a bit too much. I don’t care what he says “the next frontier of propriety” will be. This crosses a line"

Honestly I find myself a touch surprised--or maybe dissapointed--by KJ's stance: his interest in challenging conventional notions of authorship seems to align with Dworkin's move. Or maybe not because Yasusada traffics in a wholly fake author, whereas this BlazeVox book brings the mess of messing with authoprhsip into the very moment. At any rate, this development feels to me like a logical extension.

2011-12-29T22:26:00.000-08:00

[Oops, not sure what happened but the post posted prior to arrival at an "end"]...Anyways I'm very pro Petrarch. The JG piece reminds me some of H Mullen which I very much dig, and I also think R Silliman except I think that's not something other than a hazy thought--likely just a matter of seeing largish chunks of prosepoem. I need to get back into The Alphabet!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I like how the pieces are I guess one could say kaleidoscopic and also loosely narrative/faux diaristic. Mostly, and this gets strayt back to HM, I love how the text majorly seems generated by puns and other play. It's hard to believe it was written "with a hardon." MM, or maybe it's got some of the semenic drive A Burgess says narrative needs--I might be making up the AB paraphrase; wow I feel like so much of my "knowledge" is that which I've made up rather than verified.

2011-12-29T22:13:00.000-08:00

I like this--from Typo 4: JOHANNES GÖRANSSON

My only quip is the Petrarch digs--poor Petrarch, has he had any friendly words ever since Pound decided a smackdown was necessary? I presumably exagerate, but only to express my very pro

2011-12-29T21:19:00.000-08:00

Art-trash

On Chelsey Minnis and CAConrad

Joyelle McSweeney

I have only actually read the CM part of the review, and skimmed the second part, but I overall rather enjoy what I have actually read: so few reviews "close read" enough for my taste so it's nice to see it when it occurs. I particularly dig JM's point that the punctuation of Minnis misses the mark: so punny/clever/fun/pleasing.

I Love Discursing With Women

2011-12-28T23:09:00.000-08:00

I also notice I tend to fare better when Montevidayo is in its populated by women stages--the blog is multiauthor and of course the roster for the blogcommentbox has regulars but of course some regulars go on hiatuses)--and I don't know if this is solely a quirk of mine or if--as some of me suspects--smart women are inevitably gonna make for the best discursive atmosphere: I guess I'm working from the assumption that (and again this is from my own experience and that sample is too small for macro-conclusions) it seems (can seem and the word assumption seam?) women may be less likely to display an aura of dismissiveness--or at-least the Montevidayo women. And this ain't to say I've never seen women dismiss at this site, but even the dismisiveness tends towards engagement.

Note: although I erased it, initially I posited this may link to overall trends in female socialization; and this does not make me comfortable as I lean towards thinking much female socialization is awful/damaging.

Note: I don't mean to imply I am pro conversations with women because of some general or innate docility: no-no-no, not-at-all! It's precisely for the fact of multifoliate arguing that I often find my arguments--or conversations or discursive xchanges or whathaveyou--so delightful and impressive. For those who want names, Danielle Pafunda and Ariel Greenburg and Kate Zambreno and Kate Durbin (apologies if I've botched spellings) come to mind.

2011-12-28T12:02:00.000-08:00

Ugh, I need to wean myself off Montevidayo--the blog not the city. I keep non meaning to do this and then keep on failing. And this makes sense in many ways; although it's by leaps and bounds more stressful to participate in than, for example, The French Exit or Nothing To Say and Saying It, it's also full of lovely sparks and has been great for the poetry writing me: I could be wrong--influence can be difficult to pin down--but I believe that many poems of my past year would not have been written were it not for my Montevidayo exposure. I assume this is why I continually fail to cut the cord: the cord stresses but also feeds much nutrition.

A Lovely Surprise

2011-12-12T12:07:00.000-08:00

I searched me on the internet and found this amazingly kind response to some poems of mine (here's the link: 21stcenturypoetrybychris.blogspot.com);
Tuesday, March 16, 2010

What to do now?

My favorite artist in FENCE was Adam Strauss and I looked up his work. Unfortunately, FENCE is his second publishing and I could not find much about the author. I found this bio on Softblow.com: " Adam Strauss lives in las Vegas, Nevada. He has poems out

in the current Drunken Boat, as well as forthcoming in Fence. "

I also read a few of the poems that were on this web page and this was my favorite:

Lust

Blood thinks.

Streams sings.

Rubies' regal reddenings.

Logicians think.

Singers sing.

Painters paint ravishing reddenings.

Glasses clink in an act of relief.

A philosopher falls in love with a painter's way with paint.

Blood sauce more warming than sable regals.

Writing heightens sensation presently.

We shouldn't necessarily all be writing.

It is fun doing a bad job it’s good to be doing fun.

Running a sentence on extends its sense or I'm wrong.

It is a big deal but not now.

Something else is present I'll love it later.

I've long been doing in love so I’m interested in doing lust.

I want lust to wake up at dawn and place a rose on my chest.

I hope he smells like bacon and cinnamon singing country music. "

I believe that Strauss is homosexual and that many of his poems that I have read show this. However, I found it interesting in the above poem that the only illusion to this is the word "he" in the final line. It seems strange that he would put so little attention to it because in other poems such as one named " Gay" it seems so apparent.

Posted by Chris Hernandez at 6:52 PM 0 comments On the Fence about "Fence"

As I began reading "FENCE" I was perplexed by by the abstract and absurd nature of many of the poems. They seemed to be far above my comprehension level and seemed too unique to fit into many of the previous poetry categories I have read. However, as I began to slow down and study each poem I began to appreciate the writing more. I searched for flow between poems and was unable to find any. I wanted to find out if the editors had chosen poems that flowed together or portrayed some overall message. I definitely realized some social commentary, as seen in "OverPass" by Adam Strauss. Sometimes it is apparent, as seen in Strauss' work: "Because this/ Is Los Angeles---/ Home of the world's/ Most glamorous feminism." I was able to understand Strauss' work and many other writers such as Jose Perez Beduya or Kirstin Hatch.

Chris, thank you so much for your response!

2011-11-08T15:40:00.000-08:00

In addition, the poem mentioned in the prior post below reminds me some of the works in Ronald Palmer's book Logicalogics tho not as exuberant.

2011-11-05T15:52:00.000-07:00

BRAISING A BOY

josef horáček

The above poem--which I don't include here for formatting reasons--can be found in La Petite Zine and is one I think has got a great title; braising is almost like raising! The piece very much seems to be in relation to Lara Glenum--but much more tender. My only quip is the bit that gets rather Steinean: this piece to me feels to have a root of narrative/event not microtonal manipulations (which I often encourage!) though maybe microtonal does relate to flesh breaking down into a suculent goo.

2011-10-19T10:22:00.000-07:00

From a blog-comment box post by Kate Z on her own blog:

"summer camp always seemed very mysterious to me. i wonder if i would have kissed boys (or girls) earlier if i had gone to summer camp. as it was, i think i had my first kiss when i was 16 or 17. i'm a strange one, i guess."

I was twenty three for my "first kiss"--the non mom and dad kind. Urgh, this seems in-line with heterosexual hegemony, that terrifying--no, terrifyingly natural--dynamic which I despise except I don't totally despise it because the world is heterosexual hegemony and I love the world.

Note: I use the term heterosexual hegemony because homophobia doesn't seem apt: that terms sounds like an involuntary condition--the squeal at a spider--whereas I think there is agency acted out to maintain this state.

2011-10-14T20:23:00.000-07:00

Snippets of poems from a blob currently titled Heartbreaking--which it mostly ain't:

"Recast As Anger":

Pretty people jig on a rig

Rats riff on reverence

"Luxury":
Perhaps a pat butters her. Rain
Slaps the shingles of this cottage
Like a less
Charming version of one stayed at in Dingle.
My derriere feels divine.
"Deflective":

Strum beside a flooded river.

What’s so lovely about being carried away

Eyes crack open densities.

"Notes For A Hollywood Script: The Working Class":

It’d be utterly glorious if we could queer the working-class
The heterosexual heartland myth disenfranchises its people
And gives pleasure to the very ones who aren’t them
"Blue-Collar Cock-Suckers":

Before they go down the mine-shaft
Some of them suck another one’s dick
Fuck their buddy’s apple ass
Pull their cock out of their mining chaps
So the tattooed bicep boy can lick and lick

"Working Class As(s) Myth":

Is it just me
Or is it not crazy
To say the myth
Of the working class is white

"Not Working":

The longer the myth lasts
The more the blood and guts--brightness and
Blunder--go un-noticed
So that lives revoke their livings;

"Pickup":
Package

Belonging
To a ripped hick
With a lip o’ dip--

"Parnassus Thrown To Fill That Grave"

If we go gone
The gone might
Sing us a song

"Underwritten By Privilege":

I harbor cruelties
Regarding class in
My cortex
"Myth Revision":

A wee while back I suggested
Miners are fucking in the lift down the shaft

"Courses":

As the sky turns sere, as fusillades
Fly off from merry-go-rounds,
Synapses flare into fulcrums whose every
Center fringes ecstasy, which runs
Its dendritic course into a delta

"Dear Pete Moore I Hope You Enjoy This Dedication":

Wow, modest
Feelings have
Decided
To saturate
My cellular
Make-up like
Rad eye
Liner on its way to
Music, a few
Notes, a few
Particulars

"Heterosexual Shakeup":
I by the sea

Weed as it’s adrift
By the orca
Getting too
Hot for too little protein

"Solipsistic Dialogue":

Strophe: I forget

Counter: That’s fine

Strophe: True and true

Counter: Locutions

Strophe: So where will you go

Counter: Maybe Montana maybe Moscow

Strophe: Gotcha and maybe I’ll visit

"I Love Painting":

1

It’s not a problem and any claim
To the it has is as solution.
So wouldn’t you rather sniff bubblegum?
I don’t know I would and why I wouldn’t
Assume we’d form concordance
Might be proper respect: signal I don’t
Usurp your wills; or that I won’t make us close enough
Thus where the hell am I when it’s clear I need to be
In loving relation to you; right next each other
Not some beautiful metaphysics
Which in its rest will grow more gorgeous.

"Degraded Juncture: Bright Bracelet":

It’s like butt-munchers are everywhere.
It’s like ass
Lickers are scoping each
Other from every corner.
It’s like fucking disgusting.
It’s like outdated. The straight right
Way is at this
Point so obvious
There’s no excuse.

"Love As It Becomes Agape":

Ego, mine, goes and goes
And goes, gathers into an
Imposing curl like one of the
Strands in the hairdos for that runway
Show which showed artifice
Off to a T, a tippy

"Green: A Factual Fiction":

Threaded, thrummed, tripped upon
Attar, essence of
Avatar, adjusted to the quicks and oopsies
This wonderful world
Proffers if you look away and I can’t

"Carlos Armantrout":

The truth
Burned

The ready
Negatives.

2011-10-13T21:38:00.000-07:00

From a Montevidayo blog-post:

Take the Montevidayo Movie Quiz: Are Bonnie&Clyde Straight?

Urgh, once again we get uncritical use of the term "straight" as synonym for
heterosexual; yes, the question cld be said to destabilize, but the word choice
sure don't poke holes in hegemony. I will repeat and repeat and repeat:
straight ain't a neutral term; let's spell it strayt, or be wild with compounds:
thosewhoaregoodforburning etc.

More Musings on Hetero Hegemony

2011-09-29T15:53:00.000-07:00

It is now, in the United States, in intellectual circles, a cliche to state that images of perfect women, or no, not perfect, but images of women which are high-fashion, insidiously mess with the psyches of women outside of photographs, till it can become physically/mentally destructive; in other words, the exterior can invade the interior. With this logic in mind, wldn't it make a lot of sense to wonder whether the desire to have a child/be a mother is wholly natural and may indeed be as much the result of iedology if not more emblamatic? If it was a cliche to connect lesbians and gay dudes and non-heteros to parenthood, then I agree this proposal could make less sense. Could this mother desire in fact be massively twined to media culture/the culture of capitalism? Arguably, the single mosty important subject, aside from men in popular women's fiction, is motherhood/the suggestion that without child, woman isn't fully woman. I totally get that pondering if procreating/birth is ideological, because it is a real bodily occurence which does not require "artificial" aid in the most general sense, may seem very counter-intuitive; and yah, it is.

It's always fascinating how two issues which lend lend themselves to similar logics can get insistently identified as very different. Logic, in that regard, is such an utter pain in the polemicist's ass.

Note: this wondering of mine does not validate terms like Breeder or statements which are overtly mysogynist as opposed to taking a critical stance at heterosexuality. Yes, most women are heterosexual, but I'd argue there's a difference between having that dynamic be the focus of critique (which may entail using women as representatives of heterosexuality) versus criticizing women in an un-modified way is rather not the same.

Paris Review/FS

2011-09-28T16:28:00.000-07:00

I think the poem below is rather engaging: I like how
it seems to be very much stemming from Plath; and,
I definitely am glad to see a 14-liner with end-rhyme (the unrhymed sonnet,
for me, is no sonnet at-all with the exception of some of Gwendolyn
Brooks' off-rhymed pieces) and especially that there's enclosed as opposed
to alternating rhyme.

Elms

Frederick Seidel

It sang without a sound: music that
The naive elm trees loved. They were alive.
Oh silky music no elm tree could survive.
The head low slither of a stalking cat,
Black panther darkness pouring to the kill,
Entered every elm—they drank it in.
Drank silence. Then the silence drank. Wet chin,
Hot, whiskered darkness. Every elm was ill.
What else is there to give but joy? Disease.
And trauma. Lightning, or as slow as lava.
Darkness drinking from a pool in Java,
Black panther drinking from a dream. The trees
Around the edge are elms. Below, above.
Man-eater drinking its reflection: love.

Assay/Dreck--On Its Way To A "Diamond"?

2011-09-27T23:15:00.000-07:00

I am more and more arriving at the notion that heterosexual women and homosexuals are not duh allies, as it is not particularly difficult to find stated: Will and Grace etc. I understand the desire to have connection, and there is connection; but I don’t think being allied and being connected are remotely interchangeable realities. oops, I mean, or think I mean, by no means are the terms intrinsically so.
Leap:

I find the idea that heterosexuality is a continuum to be symptomatic of negating adequately acknowledging how freakishly stable and hegemonic a phenomena it is; instead of de-stabilizing it, I get the sense that this line of discourse covers up how monstrous it is--how stable it is: the hegemonic force it possesses does not seem to be dissipating at a great rate anytime. It may be technically true, but I see no reason to privilege technical truth over the truth of socialization/ideological influence. Why privilege the ostensibly more natural? And if there’s minimal evidence for heterosexuality being unstable/a continuum, then it’s not even clear that there’s evidence for this state being natural. Perhaps stemming from Jackie Wang and her articulations of how capitalist discourse can easily subsume various ostensibly progressive/“radical” positions to the point where what looks libratory may not be, I wonder if the notion of heterosexual fluidity is kin to the American capitalist fantasia of self-determination/being what you want to be--the notion that you are in control, that you can self-define and that, then, that definition is social reality. I like utopias, but I’m not sure I like the idea of utopic projections being deemed realer replacements for daily street-corners, billboards, school-rooms, which do not seem to match-up. Or, rather, I think these utopic trajectories are lovely but something other than the matrix of socially produced power and that, therefore, grafting can become misleading.

Leap:

I would love to see more analysis of the relative powers of the culturally and/or legislatively disenfranchised . It would be insane of me to identify my gayness as the only determinant; as far as gay goes, I am hyper-enfranchised. It might seem stupid to compare two beggars who, in terms of money, are both far below the poverty line; but what if, despite them both missing limbs, one of them is really in other ways duh gorgeous whereas the other one is missing limbs and is totally yucky looking. It’s definitely no guarantee of a measurably better experience, but is there no potential for micro-improvements? Yes, one could argue that the worse-looking beggar could receive more pity, but is that assumption definitively valid? Is there such thing as so nasty-looking you can’t even obtain a good position to beg at? I’d argue that there is definitely the existence of a location hierarchy for begging.

Leap:

I think it is true that this bout of theorizing is behind the times in terms of academic discursive developments; if it seems regressive, I think that’s fair. But that view could also be symptomatic of privilege. And privilege isn’t necessarily bad; the freakiness, for me, is when it’s not consistently, thoroughly acknowledged. Though it may seem disingenuous/hypocritical, I am glad for theoretical zoom-zooms. I don’t think anything I’ve tried to express must be in strictest opposition; instead, I’d like to see statements which are rigorously dialectical. This stance/performance, of course, is very time consuming and doubles the effort involved, and so many may deem my wish too much. I certainly am inadequate in this regard!

Leap:

I am really scared smart heterosexual women will decide I had best get the F out of language-waves. I am scared that I appear to be a sophistic mysogynist. I am also appalled at this fear as I feel--at-least in my own mind (if it is my own)--that this skittering is extremely feminist.

Leap:

To state that one’s subject position has a problem is, in itself, a marker of privilege. My sense of privilege is very likely about as degraded as it gets: I am not at-all sure I believe in natural/inalienable rights; or, rather, I ‘m not sure I believe that state is other than a dream with no-where like mass wordly evidence. I like dreams, but I find climes where brute oppressive force has its ways to be a more engaging place to theorize liberation; I don‘t want that force to be elided/disguised. I do, though, want the mechanics to be identified/analyzed in hyper nuanced ways.

Leap:

I am not content with my “conclusion” regarding these gaps/aporias/elisions/contradictions ; it, to me, feels utterly incomplete---mmm, I probably mean unsatisfactory not incomplete.

Note: I am grateful to Kate Zambreno for allowing me to so actively participate within her blog Frances Farmer Is My Sister (I have opted not to italicize not to mark this production as lower on the totem than a book, but because the blog, so long as it is still actively added to, seems to me to be other than finished and bound) as it is precisely that participation which, I sense, has put me in a position to write the above mess.

Second note: Kate, my computer seems to be grumpy with your blog-comment system and so when I press preview or post or whatever exactly the two icons are the comment-space just goes blank; ok why would I assume just because I don't respond to every stage in our discourse that you wld feel ignored!
I hope all's as well as well can, currently, be for all of any of any-ya'll!

2011-09-23T15:40:00.000-07:00

I just realized the duh smmary of my most intense current intellectual interest: thinking about and trying to document heterosexual female privilege. There has of course been lots of attention paid to male hetero privilege, and I think it is high time to look at the other side of that record. I don't imagine I am proposing a brand new focus, btw; but I do believe more o' this cld be helpful and, at best, in ways which will be painful/difficult, empower hetero women. Gross the way in order to try and make more discurrsive space for lesbians I feel compelled to make sure I do hetero marketing; oh well, such is working within hegemony. And actually I believe constraints are often great at making for more creativity/more comprehensive analysis.

Scattered Bits

2011-09-22T16:02:00.000-07:00

A poem I just wrote less than a minute ago, and which took less than 7 minutes to "compose":

A kind of brail, a

Kind one, malady

Its uncanny manifestation,

Elation, sorest

Estivation, tip and

Stipulation

At the center of

A volume whose

Spine is

Thirteen inches wide,

A constant

Compress, wavering

Compass

Keeps sparks on course.

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

Every now and then I read a line of thought stating humans can become animal, or the dynamics of humans on their way to the animal: J Skinner and Delueze come to mind. I don't really get this---ok, yah, I do, but it seems a tad wonky: humans are animals! True, humans have a grossly asymetrical relation to other organisms, but we certainly are in the animal matrix! There may be a need to, rhetorically, become one, because many---most---may not agree with me that pigs and bonobos and parakeets are kin, but I'd "argue" that this becoming animal rhetoric is really just a way of tuning in to elided reality rather than actually altering it in the truthytruthtruthiest sense. Then again, I guess if one believes that they are permanently estranged from aardvarks and stoplight parrot-fish, then the becoming animal trope cld be just the logic needed.

Note: I am not even sure fish count as animals were I talking to a biologist; the above is me doing some sketchy musing, not world-class, utterly accurate articulation.

2011-09-15T15:39:00.000-07:00

I like these lines [from Evie Shockley's poem Sound Effects]:

we know how birth sounds—but

what is the sound of a birth defect?

from Unto

2011-08-28T20:38:00.000-07:00

Here, in the alembic corpse, where the cortex
Seethes, I lie and loll and metamorphose
Myself into the most supple
Pleating; and then frogs mistake me for lily pads
Which makes perfect sense:
I must, like flowers upon ponds, appear floating
And don’t you just
Love how self-aggrandizing I am----isn’t such
A stance so seductive; yes, yes, I assume
You feel the
Pull of
My words, my oozing
Reality; or is that expression on your face a formality
Meant to quell
And sends deeper unto hell by accident, by
Volition I can’t
Fathom than to call
Insane: the membrane which has failed
To understand its filtering function, has failed
To be what it is and thus can’t
Even qualify as counterfeit of some other
Dynamic but merely stands wrong, stands
Ripe to collapse into wracks,
Regrets, a slow unsteady anguish, a chafing, a chastening,
Channel and
Overflow, official and interstitial, intuition and
Architrave chiseled
Out by a patient ballsy thief sporting tits
So let’s spell out tittsy not ballsy, and anyways you
Don’t give a tosh and that’s fine
Because I have forged you for my own entertainment; I have forged
You that you may dress
In vintage Versace and ballet
Flats, trill and
Trounce upon
My witticisms which have
Grown weary
Of themselves and anything other than stilettos after five pm
If you are, as
You are, a siren whose caramel curls
Activate the activity known as seeing to some other realm of action, to the
Sublime or at-least subtlest sophistry
Like, like, like, like
Simulacrum won’t suffice nor will seraphim, philandering, patching
Up immortal portals which, well, I’m un
Able to deem relevant now or ever, but never
Is never the point.

[big Ellipsis]

I remind myself I am supposed to be haunted as I stalk through this green.

My hair swings like a hammer, but instead of sprains there are silky strays.

I do not condition my hair, nor do I believe silk to be my hair’s innate state.

Through letters the limiting course is eclipsed, then clipped and dipped in enamel.

The I extrapolates unto a totality, unto a titrate and its profile.

She wanted, desperately, to believe fear other than instinctual.

On four legs, it rose, and the rose reared up too.

From Roxane Gay's essay on The Help

2011-08-22T19:11:00.000-07:00

I very much admire the passages below; they so wonderfully don't hide inconvenient feelings, and it's so lovely to read feelings which are both tough and utterly generous:

"I think of myself as progressive and open-minded but I have biases and in reading and watching The Help, I have become painfully aware of just how biased I can be. My real problem is that The Help is written by a white woman. The screenplay is written by a white man. The movie is directed by that same white man. I know it’s wrong but in my heart, I think, “How dare they?”

Writing across race (or gender, sexuality, and disability) is complicated. Sometimes, it is downright messy. There is ample evidence that it is quite difficult to get difference right, to avoid cultural appropriation, reinscribing stereotypes, revising or minimizing history, or demeaning and trivializing difference or otherness. As writers we are always asking ourselves, “How do I get it right?” That question becomes even more critical when we try to get race right, when we try to find authentic ways of imagining and re-imagining the lives of people with different cultural backgrounds and experiences. Writing difference requires a delicate balance and I don’t know how we strike that balance.

I write across race, gender, and sexuality all the time. I would never want to be told I can’t write a story where the protagonist is a white man or a Latina lesbian or anyone who doesn’t resemble me. The joy of fiction is that in the right hands, anything is possible. I firmly believe our responsibility as writers is to challenge ourselves to write beyond what we know as much as possible. When it comes to white writers working through racial difference, though, I am conflicted, and, I am learning, far less tolerant than I should be. If I take nothing else from the book and movie in question, I know I have work to do. For that reason alone, I don’t regret engaging with these texts.

I don’t expect writers to always get difference right but I do expect writers to make a credible effort. The Help demonstrates that some writers shouldn’t try to write across race and difference. Kathryn Stockett tries to write black women but she doesn’t try hard enough. Her depictions of race are almost fetishistic unless they are downright insulting. At one point in the book, Aibileen compares her skin color to that of a cockroach, you know, the most hated insect you can think of. Aibileen says, staring at a cockroach, “He big, inch, inch an a half. He black. Blacker than me.” That’s simply bad writing but it’s an even worse way of writing difference. If white writers can’t do better than to compare a cockroach to black skin, perhaps they should leave the writing of difference in more capable hands. In The Help, Stockett doesn’t write black women. She caricatures black women, finding pieces of truth and genuine experience and distorting them to repulsive effect. She makes a very strong case for writers strictly writing what they know, not what they think they know or know nothing about."

The only quip I have is with the last sentence, which seems to counter-act the more difficult and interesting vision for art expressed in earlier moments. This could be me being merely personal: I almost never know what I'm writing----be it about me, or gay "brethren" or Lesbian sisters or women or geography.

2011-07-29T17:00:00.000-07:00

True, true: the post before this one is rather grumpy--apologies!

I'd like to build a list of contemporary lesbian poets--readers (well I assume there are none but...) please help!

2011-07-26T15:10:00.000-07:00

It is irritating to have poems accepted and then have the journal decide to shutdown and one is not notified till wayyyy late.

Too, will I ever get a response regarding my submission to a forthcoming POMO Pastoral anthology?

I wld love to be an editor but know I don't have the needed skills to cut it as one; or one who is not maddeningly disorganized.

Journals which never respond are frustrating--especially when one writes them more than once asking what's up?

That said, I admire editors: it's just some have their shit together and others seem rather bumbling.

2011-07-15T14:34:00.000-07:00

Urgh--I just wrote a terrific post and lost it; urgh.

Wee recap: how write--sing!--woman (eeky singular, I agree) without singing heterosexism. Can one? No, not one; can we; will that we always be a wee one?

Homo-hetero divide as (and in terms of need for critical recognition, more) important as male-female divide.

I, personally, think of heterosexual women as totally like men (and vice-versa) because of the heterosexual common denominator.

The male female divide is a great way to divert attention from the hetero-homo one, and to downplay feminism's frequent complictity in heterosexual hegemony. It is also a great fit with capitalism, and may be more geniunly the naturalization of marketing/Maddison avenue as much as anything else.

For straight I propose strayt! A touch didactic, a touch homosexist?: yes, that cld very well be, and the being not very well.

Straight is not neutral, it is judgmental; it is insidious because it masquerades as neutral; it is used by feminists all the time (should I give a list of examples or wld that look like cruel intention?) and I assume this is habitual/non-critical language use; and that, dear world, strikes me as utterly unfeminist.

I wonder if literary feminism--that articulated by poetry and fiction writers and hybrid aesthetics etc--is likelier to use straight than heterosexual. I'm not positive but I have a hard time imagining M Nussbaum not using heterosexual.

2011-04-10T15:44:00.000-07:00

From Claudia Keelan (via Christina Mengert's review of Missing Her at Constant Critic):

“…the insistence of self being other—it was the only word for the moment and continues to be, I believe, no matter what polarity you describe: man-woman, citizen-nation, nation-world. Any definition that does not take the Whole into consideration is an incomplete one. Radical freedom is the only whole measure—that’s what I hope to teach, to reach.”

I believe the words above (the quoted ones) are really beautifully true/ambitious/humane.

2011-04-04T11:31:00.001-07:00

From Mani Rao:

"Hard after a hunt Diana
Flirts water at Actaeon"

2011-02-28T16:08:00.000-08:00

I like this (from Terrance Hayes' Ploughshares intro to the volume he's edited):

You will find this stupendous Plath sentence: “They are panes of ice, // A vice of knives, / A piranha / Religion, drinking // Its first communion out of my live toes.” That’s hot, right? That’s what this place is all about.

A Poem I wrote Like 5 Minutes Ago

2011-02-18T16:30:00.000-08:00

I a brogue, I a
Motif
Mirrors
Votive
Candles

And you, you are
Grammatically
Correct
Cracks me up.

Katydid lungs
Keep measure
Metastasizing
Thousands of flowers
Till marigolds
Taxonomically
Belong
To collar-bones.

I a logarithm, I
An emaciated
Saturation
Summering

In the vasts
Spanning
Twixt minus
Seven and
Sixty degrees
Where marrow-numbing
Blizzardbows are brighter
Than the insides of candystripe beets.

Serbian Ballerinas Dance with Machine Guns

2011-02-05T14:43:00.000-08:00

I admire the passage below, from Jackie Wang's blog:

Some people have asked me what my opinion is on Lady Gaga and my reply has been mostly one of indifference. My criticism of Lady Gaga isn’t that she’s a “bad” feminist—it’s that she’s a capitalist hack who collects artists of color to increase her cred (gah). But I get the sense that most people who celebrate Lady Gaga for her performance artist schtick aren’t critical of capitalism. Counter-critics assert that Lady Gaga is not glorifying commodity culture but parodying it by offering herself as a “figurative mirroring or projection of consumer culture.” The problem with such an argument is that ironic derision, risk, spectacles, subversion, and transgression are all thoroughly integrated into the polymorphous techniques of capitalism and are indeed representative of its flexibility, its ever-expanding markets and its ability to appeal even to intellectuals, queers, feminists, and politicos of varying sorts. The “transgressive” tactics employed by Gaga produce what Michel Foucault might call an “incitement to discourse”—igniting blog posts, cultural criticism, theory which effectively produces the image of Gaga and generates value, meaning, and interest in her project while transgression-as-capitalist tactic remains obscured.

Tusculum Review

2011-01-18T17:37:00.001-08:00

I have a poem posted at the Tusculum Review website; please take a look: http://www2.tusculum.edu/tusculumreview/2011/01/17/adam-strauss-2/

I hope all's well!

2010-12-31T18:40:00.000-08:00

From a Montevidayo post regarding The Black Swan:

"In the comment field to a previous post Adam Strauss suggested that Nina is a lesbian, but I think that’s making her too stable."

The above response strikes me as participating--accidentally I suspect--in the well established discourse of lesbian erasure. For something to be visible there--typically--is a minimal degree of stability required, so to jump (as the comment does in the bit I didactically leave out) to emphasizing an instable sexuality seems to me to be a move in collusion with the prior mentioned erasure; or if not erasure just uninterest. Now if it was stated that the character in question--Nina--is for sure not clearly a heterosexual, then I'd be less suspicious of this comment. As may be clear, I find the notion of polysexuality--or sexuality as unstable electron-cloud etc--very problematic: it seems to afford the opportunity to bypass just how terribly rigid sexuality exists in situated circumstances happening off the page or out of the performance or frame or art-space. That said, I don't think utopical theorizing/rendering the world wonderfully aesthetic and outside conventional political restraints is bad; just very simultaneously problematic, and perhaps a great vehicle for subtle forms of heterosexual hegemony. If someone wants to go to logoslalafantabulastic land (or more like outre atmosphere)--and I often want to and do--yay--but please clearly cite counter-arguments to that stance!

2010-12-18T17:01:00.001-08:00

I need to finally write up a review of S Simonds Warsaw Bikini!

2010-12-18T16:56:00.000-08:00

A Mess Of Fry

Once upon tines.
Tinsel telescopes collapsing a soundscale.
Trips and wires.
Viruses as lookouts.
Viral arias.
Scission teetering at the top of immune to toppling.
Ripcurls rankle rapport.
Curls clue us into outré.
Outsiders snuggle.
Insiders struggle.
Interiors resemble the chambers of expensive seashells.
Lustrous undersides.
Bellies and belies.
Tropes ride meridians like cowboys hold-on to bull-bucks.
Ropes made from tropical fibers.
What does all mean?
All doesn’t.
Eggs and a scrambled game of The Dozens.
Eggs and eggs.
Ducks.
An ideogram for an egg no bird lays.
An extinct bird in a contemporary sentence.
A sentence in the manner of the 17th century writ in bird-blood.
Manners glance at mannerist paintings.
Ants crawl over thick blue strokes.
The blue changes from second to second till it’s a color there’s no English word for.

Becoming Another Species

Fish on their way to flying.
Flight concluding in crushed lungs.
Light no-one can see this surround’s so dark.
No species in the vicinity of here can hear these soundwaves.
Looking at these chipped plates helps make sense of sentience.
Fine lines which don’t matter at a distance or close-up.
Final breaths before more.
Starts without precedents.
Art with uncanny incidents.
Tar with echoing myths.
Relief and remittance interloping the other.
Flagged down.
Fags getting’ up.
Pansies storm down foregrounding a marlin being gaffed.

More A Less point

Graceless lace.

Caul wrapped around a lollypop for the heaven of it.

Calls for the heave of it.

Heaven of it a pointlessness.

Pointlessness a splendid.

A sentence from Stein sashays out of its pulpy bondage.

Sentences split from their spines.

Excision as very-very-very bloody and the bleeding cerebral.

Brain blood.

Flushed cortex.

Brainy sex.

Bloody sexuality.

Heterosexual versus homosexual S and M.

Turn as chiasmus.

Why have I singlespaced the first two pieces, and not the third one posted? Why grant greater pauses? Lace doesn't clearly link to more space!

2010-08-26T17:08:00.000-07:00

Of course "New Criticism" is not the only mode in which thoroughness can take place. However thoroughness occurs is lovely to me. Rachel Blau De Plessis is not necessarily a New Critic, and her essays tend towards the splendidly thorough! Amartya Sen (not a lit-crit for the most part, true), if anything, downplays the importance of language--and he too is soooooo thorough. I suppose all I'm arguing for is the delight I experience when people take the effort to substantiate their claims, to do the difficult work of explanation/connection, as opposed to relying almost entirely on the "gesture." I do not, as is likely implicitly clear, have much enthusiasm for innovative criticism. Yes, poem is a porous boundary, but I do not want what is more than less a poem to serve as replacement for academic/expository/argumentative prose. Manifestos (with O'Hara and Warhol as exceptions (and likely others I have not read)), grin, ought to go jumping off the nearest cliff. Funnily, I love impressionism when it comes to paintings. And I often find non-contemporary belles lettres charming.

2010-08-23T15:05:00.001-07:00

Gorannson has responded again, and it is kind and ungrouchy and I am grateful.

2010-08-23T14:41:00.000-07:00

Johannes Goransson, in a Montevidayo blog comment-box, has written a dismissal of my distrust of metaphor; I've responded and hope I don't appear too annoyed (firm, sure; agressive, I hope not) in my trying to articulate why I find his response rather inadequate. Relating to this: it seems some poets are really into dissing closely reading a text, and instead want to banish that kind of response and replace it with belles lettres; why oh why? New Criticism does not have to be retrograde; on the contrary, it can communicate a ton, and it can allow a reader to really look at the text(s) in question, whereas belles lettres may end up saying far more about the responder than the work being responded to. Too, belles lettres I think might be said to be predicated on authority (declarative syntax, minimal support with evidence for why a given claim is made) and I like essays which don't take authority for granted.

2010-08-01T14:46:00.000-07:00

Will very soon read Jonah Winters' recent Octopus poems, as they appear to have something to do with Lesbians, who I feel are massively under-covered by contemporary American poetry, and in particular--"experimental" poetry worlds.

2010-07-31T16:12:00.000-07:00

I hope the blog-comment box debate and the subsequent shutting down of Silliman's
is temporary--lasting long enough to instill the importance of being only as feisty as is needed.

2010-07-31T16:09:00.000-07:00

As when, in the thick
Of an illicit
Interaction, there's a click--
It's then that I
Start worrying:
Pulling hanks
From mannequins, appealing to
The outer district's
Most esoteric
Stances like humidity
Refracts a rainbow, raw row
Through a reticule
In whose micro-clime
There's always enough time.

2010-07-30T15:38:00.001-07:00

No luck reaching the finalist stage with Omnidawn's chapbook contest; oh well--one o' these days maybe I will make it to a shortlist!

2010-07-28T17:31:00.000-07:00

Octet of a Non-Existant Petrarchan Sonnet:

The scrawl was just that, misprision
No suture could mend, like edelweiss.
We weren't left alone with the device
Everyone's whispering about, as in a Fun
House timbre which threatens the spun-
Glass balance I perch on as doves slice
The grey air, supple with the scent of spice
But abrasive not sweet like a Cinnabun.

2010-07-26T16:43:00.000-07:00

1

In the
Interest of saving
Time, let's
Adumbrate--
Or gaze--
At our reflections in
These plates--
Sopped clean; sea-life
Nipping a corpse couldn't do any better.

2

One of the scopes
Was missing
Like a tiger
A tooth; the tooth
Is lodged under
A step
Grit dusts like
Talcum or falcon
Droppings from the pair nesting above.

2010-07-25T16:38:00.000-07:00

The way the yes
Rolls off the tongue
Of the girl in this Roller
Derby makes her horny, makes her
Mom crave an orchid--
One from Ghana--
and Riana on the radio
But the only
Plug here mirrors a tumor
Roughly the size
And shape of a fetal Macaw.

2010-07-23T16:43:00.000-07:00

Outlying--embryo on
Its way

In--inner--eruptive
Sensibility

Stemming a sight
More falling than

Water--titanium-hard--
Shimmering

Helices dissolve
Encrypting

An Organism starting to
Originate.

2010-07-23T15:47:00.001-07:00

Ok I've likely fibbed a bit: probably do have a one in ten acceptance rate; but I don't think it's one in 6, and that'd be amazing.

2010-07-22T17:49:00.000-07:00

Please if you glance at this blog--post a comment!

2010-07-22T17:45:00.000-07:00

I'm really beginning to burn out on rejections--one from Typo just a minute ago, for example.
It'd be nice if my acceptance rate could reach the 1 in ten rate! Oh well.

2010-07-17T16:01:00.000-07:00

There-there care-bear, wherever sunlight
Dapples delicious things grow and grow

You up-up, into ether
Whose general profile

Concords to titanium--
Conceptual

Art pieces on a wall in Lithuania:
Stars of a gallery famous for

An entrance all arches and no doors
Ensuring the security of inclusion.

2010-07-16T16:56:00.000-07:00

A Fragment:

I--an am in ambivalent

2010-07-16T15:59:00.000-07:00

Prose-Poem After/For Kate Zambreno

Squeak, amnesia! Kill lice with amyl nitrate! After your hair is an aftermath, allow your ass and limbs and torso to grow dirty--deeper than the deep of deep-clean. Once you're all dolled-down, walk the prettiest streets in your suburb. I assure you there'll be a huge moon out; its light will beautifully stage you--bats will whirl 'round your head, blindly and with utmost sensitivity admiring your amble.

2010-07-02T15:08:00.001-07:00

“…one adjective too many and you’re out”

Parks and parcels and pickups and pitstops and pits and arms and armoires;

Exquisite parks and radiant pickups and egregious pitstops and anorexic arms and ostentatious armoires;

Exquisitely mannered parks and radiant roaring pickups and egregious gregarious pitstops and anorexic elegant arms and ostentatious splintery armoires;

Exquisitely mannered dangerous parks and radiant roaring jaundiced pickups and egregious gregarious gorgeous pitstops and anorexic elegant allotropic arms and ostentatious splintery aromatic armoires;—

All of the above has burned. Someone has swept the ash and pips into a pile. Scoop some of the char up and mix with oil; make up your eyes.

2010-07-02T14:35:00.001-07:00

Two variants--likely influenced by Aase Berg in its use of repetition (tho that of With Deer is more emphatic, and I don't have a love of heavy-handed adjectives; what is it with her and "Evil"!? Evil landscape this, Evil that, and that, and that):

In the appall there is an atoll. Eventually there. Fine sand. White fine sand. Palm frond on sand. Sand on fronds. In the appall he dreams of apples. Air appears pixilated. Pixel apples fall on sand not white nor fine. Someone must not be there. Not someone but there is there anyways. Water temperature is rising; hotter and hotter laps the sand. Hotter and hotter rises and rises and rises; the atoll becomes closer and closer to being submerged. Picture palm fronds appearing to float or at-least sway akin some species of seaweed. Many atolls are palmless. Pick up sand; let your hand love. The subject is disappearing or already departed; what emerges in its absence or does anything? Not thing—occurrence. An appall mutates—apple dapple. Then pines needle. A pineapple sweet juice. A rosin tinted horizon—a resin-slow breath-metric.

In the appall there is an atoll. In the appall he dreams of apples. Air appears pixilated. Pixel apples fall. Water temperature is rising: hotter and hotter laps the sand. Hotter and hotter rises and rises and rises; the atoll becomes closer and closer to being submerged. The subject is disappearing; what emerges in its emerging absence? An appall mutates—apple dapple. Pines needle. A pineapple sweet juice. A rosin tinted horizon—a resin-slow breath-metric.

2010-06-30T16:28:00.001-07:00

My response on an HTML Giant thread--or whatever the word is--regarding a comment by Adam Maynard:

Wow, this seems so much more awful than the intitial focus of this thread: “I’m with justin on this one. pemulis just comes across as a vapid cunt”; how can a cunt be vapid? Why even bother with the word cunt? I think a good general rule when it comes to gendered language is if you imagine you’d get upset at someone calling your mom–or girlfriend, or grandma, or daughter or boyfriend etc–the word, then find another word.

2010-06-30T14:04:00.000-07:00

I wish I believed word equals world; but I don't--or at-least I don't believe words as poetry equal world.

I'm toying with the idea of no longer identifying as feminist, which is odd as I get annoyed reading poets who dismiss feminism: Eileen Myles, Alice Notley--those two names are on/off my tongue immediately; I'm sure there are many more. For some time now I've hoped humanism could be a synonym, but now I'm less sure, and I think humanism is where I'm more interested/faithful/hopeful.

Probably a better way to put "this" is: I don't know if the literary sphere can be feminist in any way which is seen as synonymous with the world off the page, and I'm not sure literary feminism makes enough sense as a concept, and this is almost appaling of me because so much of my feminism is rooted in the literary! I'm not, personally, thinking of literary and writing in general as synonyms; this quip/questioning applies less to expository writing; or maybe not.

Words which seem urgent to me--urgently in need of redefining and or more expansive definition: power, choice, consent.

"...her wounds came from the same source as her power":

This strikes me as a good poet-line correlative for feminism, and especially feminist heterosexuality-- as heterosexuality may be seen as an identity which massively disenfranchises women, and simultaneously heterosexual women have or are part of an immense power by being heterosexual.

Why don't I just go on a style kick on this blog--rave about the Petrarchan sonnet rhyme-scheme, Gianni Versace and his fabulous heavily beaded dresses circa 1990.

2010-06-29T18:05:00.000-07:00

I love uberunhysteric radicalism! VW's 3G's! Amartya Sen! Guy Davenport's fiction!
I like the prose/prosepoem parts of, for example, Spring and All, but find the emphatic, hyperbolic tone actually far less radical than calmness, than VW or GD. Maybe it's "like" the difference between staging shitting in public, making it a happening, a performance, as opposed to just defecating and all the while engaging in exquistely polite discourse with a dapperly dressed man wearing a monocle, acting as if there's nothing odd/amiss--as if one is not creating a spectacle.

Hyperbole is an odd beast--is Emily Dickinson hyperbolic in her re-concieving of scale, or is the rescaling radical; are hyperbole and radical almost synonyms?

[Big leap?]

I wish there was a fat un-attractive (in any generic sense) female pop-star, not generically (or close enough: hello Lady G!) good-looking person who costumes themself in ways which may not be deemed duh nice-looking. Furthermore, I wish there were at-least three performers who fit this. Fat already is mainstream, so why not make it mainstage?

2010-06-29T14:52:00.000-07:00

Not sure what binary is reversed when I--in my last post--diss a take on a part of VS's SCUM. I suppose the hypothetical (become, or became?, reality) notion that gay men are like women, and not, therefore, patriarchal. I do salute VS for recognizing that there's no automatic reason to equate gay guys to femininity/femaleness--that they can definitely be oppresive in
male-gendered ways.

Ok, here's another emerging question I have: is there power, and maleness tends to monopolize/abuse it, or is the power the maleness; put another way, does power have an inherent gender, or is it a field which any gender can embody, but which males often have far more access to. This then leads to me feeling I'm likely not imagining power in diverse enough ways--defining it too narrowly, like it is an entity which can be extricated from a real-time interaction. This then leads me to wondering about consent, but just what I'm wondering is at this very moment unclear. I hope all's well for all!

2010-06-27T17:11:00.000-07:00

A blog comment of mine finally made it into visibility at Kate Zambreno's blog! I feel a bit like I've recieved an acceptance from an editor! She has links/responses to some interesting queer-theory pieces--"The Anti-Social Turn In Queer Studies" by Jack Halberstam, and a response by Jackie Wang.

............Here's a little Halberstam snippet--itself a summary/assessment (which seems quite dubious) of Valerie Solanas:

Instead she colonizes the domain of violence and offers, helpfully, to cut men up (SCUM) in order to demolish the hegemonic order. While straight men are walking dildos, gay men or faggots embody all the worst traits of patriarchy because they are men who love other men and have no use for women. In the manifesto this is called "faggotry"...

The above strikes me as extremely homo-hating (and couldn't this be deemed very patriarchal/masculinist/normative?) and utterly status-quo enforcing: men are men and women are women and these positions are discrete and antagonistic--grossly conservative, no? So how is Solanas "demolishi[ing]" "hegemonic order"? Shooting an anorexic fag seems pretty lame to me, and Solanas seems to reverse a binary and change nothing. I should read SCUM. I can--not lol--sooooooooooooooo see VS becoming big amongst heterosex white gals; thankfully much feminism is much too smart for this so I'm likely lying.

BTW: the JH essay is INTERESTING.

Much love!

2010-06-27T16:27:00.000-07:00

Another culling:

Skies are
Skivvy. Blood-stained
Skiffs appear
Rusty. Tropical
Fat falls
Flat on the
Apex of a hill. Taste
My indefinite
Article—
The center of
A circumference—
A zero nothing goes round and round.

2010-06-26T16:03:00.000-07:00

To be culled:

Cerebral slits. I saw. This is it. It is this. Imminence. As long as. Once when there weren’t flies focal points foliated. Once wasn’t enough. Wherever you are you aren’t there. Skies are skivvy. Blood-stained skiffs appear rusty. How much for those ones. Tropical fat falls flat on the apex of a hill like a nipple during arousal. Heats and fealty fragments a tale the color of the tumor which may in the future kill me. No cancer puns please as they’re in bad taste. Taste my indefinite article then take it away and call your own. At the center of a circumference—a zero—the temperature veered from very hot to freezing such that were one to see the changes on a screen the lines would resemble a polygraph. Nothing goes round and round in a slightly skewed circle. Puns are puny compared to playfully making no joke.

2010-06-26T15:34:00.000-07:00

Lineation changes:

Herself hirsute prickle
At a square
Resembling Venice after fire and seen
Through Venetian
Blinds verily make green space. Transsexual
Patriarch puts a tough
Spin on possibility. Switches and
Whistle as slender wood
Whoops sensitive
Ass-cells sheathed in lace the mirror image of caul.

2010-06-26T15:08:00.000-07:00

Another culling:

Herself hirsute prickle
At a square
Resembling Venice after fire and seen
Through Venetian
Blinds verily
Make green space. Transsexual
Patriarch puts a tough
Spin on possibility. Switches and
Whistle as slender wood
Whoops sensitive
Ass-cells sheathed in lace
The mirror image of caul.

2010-06-25T14:44:00.000-07:00

Further prunings:

Do trips rip guts out or restate romance as theorized in the 70’s of the 16th century. Wreck this wrack. Flaps and flaps—here’s plastic not bird flying.

Oil on canvas; yes we’re talking crude. Fact— fiction—a fight over jurisdiction. Hyaline visages verify. Glossies blown by breezes smell fishy. Is this a case of fish-fume-laden breezes or breezes sensing amiss?

Now a lineated culling--with no words reordered or changed, but with dashes added:

Boogie from
Dusk to
Brunch-time—looking at
His toes—distances
Cannot always be
Traversed—I to
You and back
To we—it’s true—you
Have no reason to trust
Me—grasses catch fire—someone
Drops several pounds of salt.

And here's a chunk (in-progress?) prior to culling:

Herself defined as hirsute. History is a prickle becoming pickle. Peculiar syntaxes converge at a square resembling Venice after a massive fire and seen through venetian blinds. I tried to address the perplexities as performed by propinquities. This didn’t work the way I envisaged. Verily I make very a green space. She’s become the worst of maleness; is this purposeful or an accident she’s spent her life striving for. Transsexual patriarch puts a tough spin on the possibility of performance. Switches and switches. Whistle as slender wood whoops sensitive ass-cells. Asperity in the midst of newly sprouted asparagus piques my most favorite circuit that from eye to gut to eye. Eyeing gut I keeled over. Gluttony allowed me to regain balance. Sexy sheathed in lace the mirror image of caul. Girls call call-girls; they’re unsure whether they’re pranking or professing admiration or if the two are twined so tightly one and one is one.

2010-06-21T17:02:00.000-07:00

Here's another culling from a longer language-chunk:

How can an interstice rive? How can it not? Oil on canvas; yes we’re talking crude. Fact— fiction—a fight over jurisdiction. Hyaline visages verify. Glossies blown by breezes smell fishy. Is this a case of fish-fume-laden breezes or breezes sensing amiss?

2010-06-21T15:58:00.000-07:00

I continue to be interested in Baraka's Transbluency--interesting, to me, the way he has fags, and then he has queens, and he seems to not see these categories as part/parcel; and of course with a style which seems in conversation with O'hara, Ashbery, well, this all makes for an interesting homo-hating dynamic. Too, his poems seem to anticipate so much to come--as in work of now/thelast ten years: I see some Reginald Shepherd, for example.

Here's a recent fragment:

Pack—pick-axe. Eyes consort. Dim and dimity do each to each infinity. Fragments glitter firmamentally. Do trips rip guts out or restate romance as theorized in the 70’s of the 16th century. Wreck this wrack. Flaps and flaps—here’s plastic not bird flying. Dirt does eternity.

I'm wanting to write a la the method--if I remember rightly/and of course her method may have changed!--of Anne Marie Albiach, who has said she writes a long chunk of words, then cuts; this is what I sort of did above, except the language-chunk wasn't all that long. It is, in the above form, much shorter though. I wish I was really into writing poems via a slow, patient process.

2010-06-20T15:46:00.000-07:00

Anterior to time seconds spit and hiss.

Arcady eradicates almost formed.

Fascist breezes blow through Arcady.

Almost formed seconds sit prettier than ducks.

This sky falls; there’s no raining.

Above--is it good, or almost good; or is it ugh-ugh pretentious? How can a breeze be Fascist? Noxious illegal fumes lacing the breeze? Is the point to juxtapose Arcady with its opposite? Why though would Arcady be opposite Fascism? Fascist is such an awkward term: political party turned general metaphor--ugh-ugh. Is sincerity a prerequisite for pretentiousness? Surely sometimes.

Regarding an earlier poem/whateverness: the "local bitterns" should be going blah to, not "blah too."

2010-06-20T15:26:00.000-07:00

Below is a poem loosely inspired by Srikanth Reddy's Voyager; I'll be honest: based on what I've seen of the collection, I'm not a fan. I am, though, or at-least was, rather fond of his first book, Facts For Visitors. I'm not a fan of the single-sentence, or sentence fragment, line; enjambment rocks! I often work modes I'm less than drooling over; it's one of my most mega MOs.

I tried to tell you.
Telling you I tried to tell others.
You-all listened.
What ya’ll heard ain’t me.
There were birds; there often are.
Sometimes there are feathers blown about.
There’s rarely loose blood.
Nicked skin is common.
Someone illegally inserted glowing genes.
The expected results prove non-existent.
There’s unexpectedly radiant lymph.
This assumes the interpretive apparatuses aren’t a crock.
I dreamed of eating a lusciousness of hare and wine and blood.
I woke up tired from dreaming.

2010-06-14T16:51:00.001-07:00

With Deer Poem

My psychobabble is not worth the wisdom of Margaret Drabble.
My psychobabbler looks best in the gold light of entablature.
With Deer my My makes scrumptious bites local bitterns have gone blah too.
I am in possession of me; my me is currently Margaret Drabble’s.
A bittern shits on the page in which the font’s named.
My psychology fetishizes fonts feeling out the feeling they’re a fount.
My isn’t me; it’s its exact opposition; the place I is stated divides I.
With Deer kenosis erupts into a positive—blood a bath starving souls nourish at.

2010-06-14T15:58:00.000-07:00

Poem After/For Johannes Göransson (with edits):

With deer there are derisions.

Every time it rains hard enough the ferns bleed.

Every time it’s hard deer jump across ravines.

Blood warmth wilts the ferns.

Scarlet floods from wildlife crisp the tendrils.

Out of the body the crisping blood begets legs sans saddle.

A shivering human manages a mount.

Tongue to hallucinated hornrut a deer-filled gut hears yarrow sprout.

Ok now for some prose-notes: my Baraka on violence bit is bad--no quotation, no elaboration; and probably if I go looking for the line(s) which led me to making that statement they'll not even be there; oh well I suppose blogs aren't usually scholarship and hence I suppose I'm in no violation of what's blogwise legit but wow my blog blows! I envy many other bloggers their grace/panache/elan/I wish an eland would start blogging!

2010-06-13T16:35:00.000-07:00

Another With Deer poem:

With deer drachmas
Are glittering in aromatic light
Lusciously stirs
Leaves out of gutters
As intricate
As guts or the struts
Stringing no-one alone along
The path resistance glides the way wayfaring elides.

2010-06-13T15:01:00.000-07:00

Every blogcommentbox post I've made at Kate Zambreno's blog Francis Farmer Is My Sister has not seen the light o' day--I hope it's tech issues and not me making Kate mad.

I'm looking forward to With Deer arriving sometime hopefully soonish in my mailbox.

A portion of the Teare poem posted a few days ago is not formatted correctly. MMMMMMMMMMM, sex, religion, gayness: deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelish.

I've been recently reading Baraka's selected Transbluencies; I don't dislike it, but it doesn't get me in the gut either. When he's breakin' lines well, well I think that's swell. Some of his political theorizing seems spot-on (un-naive takes on Black Nationalism etc); other times, nope-nope: his takes on violence seem underdeveloped.

2010-06-12T16:11:00.001-07:00

The lines below are--well, what isn't clear to me: perhaps the start of a poem; or perhaps they're the start of three poems! Fistfucking grosses me out!

Fuck this fist.

Scream pink roses are badass.

Whisper the end of sex is the start of sexuality.

2010-06-12T16:04:00.000-07:00

Poem After/For Johannes Göransson:

With deer there are derisions.

Every time it rains hard enough the ferns bleed.

Every time it’s hard deer jump across ravines.

With human blood warmth wilts the ferns.

With the scarlet floods from wildlife the tendrils crisp.

Out of the body the crisping blood begets legs sans saddle.

A shivering human manages a mount.

Tongue to hallucinated hornrut a deer-filled gut hears yarrow sprout.

2010-06-10T15:36:00.000-07:00

I think the poem below is really wonderful:

Eden Tiresias

by Brian Teare Brian Teare

[apocalypsis—L. to uncover, disclose]

i. “I am the sign of the Letter, / . . .”
No seed. Flat beneath my hand:
bone. Pelvis a field, but no seed.
Because there was no punishment
like fucking, its whip burned
Adam and nothing after. Because
shine took flight like two parrots
so deep green they seemed black.
And though the field tilted and split
forth meant two ways, though
far into the garden meant I lost
love, even a god could honor that.
“Cell by cell unsexed, I will light the
female,” said the snake, and what was
I was lost. What was shine fell;
a shed skin white as water falling.
Wisdom, when did it descend
weeping into each thing? I saw
too much to know who I was:
asleep in each molecule, chaos’s
energy. I couldn’t speak of this
change, how apocalypse once
gave tongue to each new skin
between my legs, twin parishioners,
bent prayer books inside me. Dominus
was Eden in me, and the Tree
the world had imagined, except:
interior, what asked for a mind
to hew with wounds. Except memory:
jibe, jilt, jest. What was real died
as its own elegy, as Adam did not.

ii. “. . . and the designation of the division.”
Mons: venus-field held horizon by sharp
fuckless months, field lain fallow. I lost him.
I did not love. Because bitterness lit me
strung tongue to gut. Because god loved
the way the snake shook shine into the tree,
leavening air with matte magnolia leaves.
My mouth opened to ask the snake’s name.
Like his tongue from which each word went
each way the meaning bent—leading me
the way back—, I never doubted what I didn’t
change down to the syllable, molecule,
shift between dahlia and dalliance, male to
woman, behold, becoming her, became me.
The tree wept cheap greenery; the snake left
what was knowledge, what was the given
matter: until Adam found me again, I put
weeping even inside myself: I knew
I could not explain I saw the end of things
static in anxious limitless rage. It was male,
and yet Adam found me the way language
meant to uncover: gladly he lent his mouth,
his hands, husband one, and one lover,
here the church, here the steeple: knuckles knelt,
o Deus, I remember: Self and Other,
and between us every elegy, all the fallen
language that couldn’t hold its own
and wouldn’t give it back, had no flesh
except how long dust keeps our alphabets.
It came alive outside the mind, intellect.
I loved it. He could not touch me there.

iii. “I am the sign of the Letter,
and the designation of the division.”
No seed. Flat beneath my hand:
mons: venus-field held horizon by sharp
bone. Pelvis a valley but no seed:
fuckless months, field lain fallow. I lost him
because there was no punishment
I did not love. Because bitterness lit me
like fucking, its wicked burn
strung tongue to gut. Because god loved
Adam and nothing after. Because
the way the snake shook shine into the tree,
the shine took flight like two parrots,
leavening air with matte magnolia leaves
so deep green they seemed black.
My mouth opened to ask the snake’s name;
and though the field tilted and split
like his tongue from which each word went
forth meant two ways, though
each way the meaning bent—leading me
far into the garden—meant I lost
the way back, I never doubted what I didn’t
love, even a god could honor that.
“Change down to the syllable, molecule,
cell by cell unsexed, I will light the
shifts between dahlia and dalliance, male-to-
female,” said the snake, and what was
woman, behold, becoming her, became me.
“I” was lost. What was shine fell;
the tree wept cheap greenery; the snake left
a shed skin white as water falling.
What was knowledge, what was the given
wisdom, when did it descend into
matter: until Adam again found me, I put
weeping inside each thing I saw.
Weeping even inside myself: I knew
too much to know who I was;
I could not explain I saw the end of things
asleep in each molecule, chaos
static in anxious limitless rage. It was male
energy. I couldn’t speak of this
and yet Adam found me the way language
changed, how apocalypse once
meant to uncover: gladly he lent his mouth,
gave tongue to each new skin.
His hands, husband one, and one lover,
between my legs, twin parishioners,
here the church, here the steeple: knuckles knelt
bent prayer books inside me, Dominus,
o Deus, I remember: Self and Other
was Eden in me and the Tree
between us every elegy, all the falls
the world had imagined except
language, what couldn’t hold its own
interior, what asked for a mind
and wouldn’t give it back, had no flesh
to hew with wounds, no memory
except how long dust keeps our alphabets.
Jibe, jilt, jest: what was real died as
it came alive outside the mind, intellect
its own elegy, and Adam did not
love it. He could not touch me there.

2009-07-28T16:17:00.000-07:00

On The Run, From And In, Bikini

Snapping fingers to the “brain
Stem’s” amazing vase,
On which,
Amazing grace,
An apple seed’s drawn,

A man, his pet merganser
Quacking happily
By his
Side—all slide, flee—
Mispronounces love.

“Song goes,” goes crazy. The vase
With which love’s watered,
One thoughts
Sweetly pottered,
Is creamy inside.

Its exterior, speckled
Like a high-grade egg,
Reflects
Her chic-chic leg
As it “steps over

The yellow lines,” lines yellow
As fresh Grey Poupon.
I don’t
Like mustard, drone—
Rhone timbre, river

To look at not drink—till I
Make sounds which, I thought,
Cannot
Be, be begot
By these bones, this frame.

Notes: The poem above is in honor of Bloof Book's celebration of Sandra Simonds' book Warsaw Bikini; here's the link: http://www.bloofbooks.com/news.html . For my competition entry, I have started forth from Simonds' poem "Your Own Winnebago," which can be read on the Verse Daily website.

Another Brief "Take"

2009-06-22T22:23:00.001-07:00

I don't think a desire to get away from a focus on difference means, "in essence," advocating indifference! As well, going back to water, I hope that basic needs don't further create systems of distribution which make more and more of the (well, one of the) worst kinds of difference--deprivation! In other words, new distinctions made to further deny beings of what's necessary. I'm tempted to "say" that to focus on difference is a way of thinking which is still thoroughly predicated on binaristic thinking, as both binaries and differences are a divide space, not one which has conjunction as the activity.

More On Difference

2009-06-22T21:57:00.000-07:00

Maybe islands aren't the best models for difference: difference as barricades is, perhaps, more like what I'm concerned may, too easily, occur. I wonder, as basic resources, namely potable water, are going to become at the fore of all forefronts of importance (of course in many places this likely is already the central issue), whether difference as a model for understanding the world will loose some of its currency. Overall, much of what I've posted today is just a paraphrase of one strand of Amyarta Sen's book Identity and Violence, which strikes me as a really wonderful book.

Difference

2009-06-22T21:39:00.000-07:00

Some strains of academia's, seeming, emphasis on difference frustrates me; difference, by itself, strikes me as not enough, not unless the differences are put into relations--preferably positive ones (which do not fall along cleancut binaries); at its worst, is it just me or could emphasizing difference just create more islands (and not an archipelago!) which could create even more alienation than there already is. I get that there is a scaredness of liberal humanism, which has often had too many elisions to be true, but I believe the world needs to, again, seek wholeness.
Relatedly, I don't think feminism should specifically be about women, but instead the world: people, non-human animals, soil, fresh water, oceans, air. I do not mean this proposal to be an excuse to going back to ignoring women, non-whites, non-heterosexuals; they're a part of the world and so need lots of attention! Feminism, to me, is as perfect a world-view as there currently is.
Maybe the Watts Towers make a good objective corellative: the materials used to make the mosaics are fragments, smashed-up once upon a time wholenesses, but they are then reasembled into a new whole, one whose essence is a million differences.
These musings are far from perfectly expressed; please, if you happen to read this, do not take these statements as final, but rather as a start which will have to start again.
As well, I don't mean to, via the Watts Towers, sneak in phalocentrism!
I hope you, whoever you are, are doing well!

Hello

2009-06-21T14:45:00.000-07:00

So far I'm focusing on posting poems, as I'm more than a bit nervous to venture into posting prose-thoughts, tho eventually I'll have to go there! Hopefully soon! Well I will "say" this: I'm hoping to write a complete pop-novel draft over the next however many months. Ok, back, sigh, to poems; mm, maybe a few notes are "in order": I tend towards all sorts of modes at once--set-forms, measured lines, verse libre, minimalist, maximalist, overtly traditional, overtly experimental--:

Marrow

How now
My dear
Do you
Want it?

With a
Dollop
Perhaps
Of marrow?

We pull it
Straight from
The arrow
Still smoking;

Yes if
You must
Insist on
Accuracy

The arrow is
Steaming;
Are you
Dreaming

Or is that
A must buy
Bottle you see?
Wine's my specialty.

Birds

The bird is, but
What else,
A daemon,
Demonstrating
How, in some
Cases,
Flight always
Perfectly
Intersects
Devilish uplifting,
The kind
Which cons you
Into unkindness
Others might
Call unheard of,
Which you
Blithely listen to
As if it's not
You who is
Addressed,
Man well,
Manuel, Western
Wear of some
Stars, twinklings
Whose lights were
Last seen
Three decades ago,
Or one year and
Forty seven days
And five
Weeks ago
My parrot
Flew away
To live with
A gang of ones closely
Related, but with
A coral,
Ruddying to red,
Patch on the nape,
Not purple
To fortify
Your soul, you
Who sits
Here, half
Baked grain to
The right, in front
Of a state
Penitentiary,
Where the horns
Are ye-gads guards
Blare, not ones of plenty,
Long time
Not amplitude as
Some bones pass through.

Marrow

Every time someone
Handed me a square
It was marrow

Human
Horse
Cow
Duck
Dog
Buck
Pig
Elk
Pigeon

Cracking lobster knuckles
Messing up the garnish

Good wine
God win
Godwin
No-no
Or know
Good win

Nascar

Dude where's my car
Whoa far out
There are no cars

Minerals And Flowers

Dialogue between flowers and minerals
Otherwise known as watch them grow
Out some soil like some trees would do better with

Never forget the nutritive
Content you step on

Marrow

Sweet fen
Flickers at a root

Fumbles at her soul till
Here's marrow on brioche

For us to nibble while
Perhaps we

Quibble over letters
Of a disputed alphabet.

Dreamy Division

Door

Frame
Frame opening

Portal

Wentletrap
As light wanders into wind-whorled waters

Inner than marrow

Cubic

The liquid I couldn't lift

Marrow

Iron in the blood

Blood
Files

Filings

Flings

As of
The whoosh when

Soul wings

Off and
Out for

Far out

Bloodbloom

Blood roses
Iron bloods

Rust like blood-stains

Destined to
In the end
Make no
Choice

Lead
Poisoning

Abloom in blood

In the of a
In a the

Shoot

Taking the
Long way
To there where

You are
Looking
Like you

Welcome
Company.
I love when

This species sings
Exactly
This way and

Everyone.
The photographer
Ends up

Taking the tiger's
Temperature.
We are in a book;

No
We are in
A wood

Before being milled.
Cheers to you
And your fine

Cereals;
If you're wondering
Why the beer

Looks weird
It's because
It's made from millet;

You must admit
That's
Extraordinarily chic

And speak
Again
To the fen seeds

Sprout from
If you cry your
Heart out into help.

More poems

2009-06-20T22:14:00.000-07:00

Most Literate Letters

This beautiful day you've become your muscles--
Galloping across dandelions--then
Hard--harder--thighs grip your pelt's rip--till soul rolls
Right to the horizon--withers when

One looks again; and if I could I'd see
Sun glaze your withers goldsoft--but it's hard
To look at that dazzle for fear dear me
Will rip right off to a visage cartoon has starred;

I guess it's exactness has me wither
At what hardly ceases to astonish;
I take too much; I admire the giver
Who may flood--silt--soil--but not admonish;

Although it's true a withering address
May fix--the hard part's forever a mess.

Note:

1--The poem above is my first attempt at writing a Shakesperean sonnet which fits Helen Vendler's criterion, in which there must be at-least one word repeated in each stanza, and that then too is in the couplet as a "couplet tie"

Pretty Bell

The
Theologian
Rang
A bell

Made of copper
With some
Straw stuck;

Honey-colored source
Of sound
Insinuates
Cerement

Cements someone to
Their Vision
Is necessarily flighty.

Pieces

1

In the gleam of an ivory eyelet
My power animal, my giraffe,
Smelled an overwhelming
Odor of violet.

2

The author of
The serious
Drama wondered
Why didn't
Anybody laugh
As if there are
No funny parts!

3

Her newly completed sleeve
Consisting
All of hearts
Or the word for heart
In 12 or so languages
Makes her happy
So she buys
A carton of oranges at
A corner
Then 3 streets later
Realizes the fruit
Weighs a ton given
How many
More streets there are to go.

Shimmer

Human insides
Never rest;
Marrow
Always making cells
And so forth;

When it comes
Down to it
Nothing ever rests:
Electrons
Shimmer if only our

Touch weren't so far
Away--awash--
Wide open--spice-
Petal starred portal;

Beauty is mortal:
Even mountains die;
Some day seasons
As known now will
Stop working;

Will swallows still wing
Their bodies to
San Juan Capistrano?
Will humans grow wings?
No we'll be breathless;

Perhaps deathless
Will become a
Human possibility;
Death is
Necessary;

I'd be very
Pleased to meet
An orca;
I'd say 'hey Uncle Sam'
After Elizabeth
Bishop's toucan!

Getting a tan
Sipping a colada
I'd be sublime;
The palm fronds
Clack like pelicans' beaks;

A freshening of rain falls--speaks
Rainbow like the salsa
Brightening my nibbles;
Being a president
Seems like it'd be embarrassing.

Currently Untitled

At the center of a whirling--the electrons--there is a godess;
Grain-colored locks wave about like foliage; her plaits
Are almost the shape of banana leaves; eye shadow the hue of
Newly sprouted grain lines brows plucked like a lute by
The hands of an expert player; the key to life
Is learning how to play the piano and desegregating;
I cannot touch the goddess--only pray--try to partake in the whirling.

More poems

2009-06-20T15:39:00.000-07:00

After Barbara

1

A red here, a reading and its echo there,
A mood, a medieval Latin,
An official language in a land
Where most people speak vernacular.

2

There was a lietmotif;
Red leaves; red leaves; red leaves;
Ghosts stripe a transept; a girl sees;
Revelation is rarely brief.

Currently Untitled

Roman
Arches.

Romance.

In from out bright moonlight
He sees he's been burned.

Days later
Upon peeling
The patches look
Like rose petals.

After And For Nathaniel Mackey

We the
Horripilate
Echo off
Rockwall

Wag our tongues luscious with logoscat

Cuts through the fullest
Range of chains
Shackle perception.

With our flimflam
We've flabbergasted
Every gut in the city we've

Been through
Though a local
Scoffed more like barely around
No through
Makes a sense hard to argue against.

Most of the guts weren't
Strung tight enough: loose
Strings and broken bows;
Resonating chambers cracked
And in the cracks no greening.

Note:

1--This poem is by no means intended as a critique of Mackey's poems, which I love.

Brilliant Black

The Blackstone Rangers revitalized.

"Nigger can you kill?"

Narcissus
Flowers
Along the freeway
Where people go
To smoke crack.

Take that back
Quack the didactic.

I don't dig the word nigger
But adore the word hick.

"Nigger can you kill" strikes me as
Niki G's best poem.

Poems should often be bigger
Than their authors aside my fact
Authors should implicate themselves.

Note:

1--I'm pretty sure "Nigger can you kill" is not the actual title of the poem beginning with that line.

Public Space

With my clock and my rock
I go into public space.

With my face and my farce
I articulate soul
Feet and feet and feet trample

And for
Example
Sometimes

It's baby-boy's blood
Splatters his sister
Who like the anorexic she is
Can abstain from A to Z
But cannot resist
Feeling this is fucked up.

The Dozens At A Corner

Graffiti on
Facades.

Barred windows.

Rents like
You
So knowing
Would believe.

Blown petals
Of a thrown bouquet:
It should always
Look so pretty when
Someone says I'm throwing
Your stinking love away.

From afar
Or forty blocks
A carpet-trimming a-fray
Looking for all
The world like brocade

Has been blown onto a rotting bench
Where JFK once sat.

Currently Untitled

In much
American

Poetry
There is

Not enough
Explicitly

Protected
Sex.

I bend bow and
We limbo;
A we bow whack;
A we bow
Whack; a we; a bow.

True and
Truly
Unsatisfying

The way the
Answer
Always
Depends.

Inviolate
Of verve
Has the nerve

To tell me
My momma
Stinks the stank
Of the rose whose
Freshness is never spent.
That cocksucking motherfucker!

It's funny
As in Biographia Literaria
That when I try and
Wrote an unhyphenated cock-sucking
My software
Wothout my consent
Substitutes crosskicking
And yet
Motherfucker
Goes un
Red or green lined as
If it's correct.

Because One Can Be Careful With Desire

His big beautiful dick
Its archaic
Splendor slick as
I lick the
Luster
Enhanced by
The condom
Like as one looks
At their reflection in dewy rockface;
Oh those
Creepers
Are beautiful: I love
The cinnamon-colored speckles
Around the stamens.

2009-06-20T14:57:00.000-07:00

Here's another poem (a bit awkward how this one too cites hard-drugs):

Basking on
The lip of a
Shell twinkling at
a Bora-Bora tideline

Where it is not
A crime to drink
At noon and
Feel guiltless

I closely
Examine
The coral-
Colored nacre

Cool to my calves;
Maybe
Before I go float
Ensconced by

A luxurious little raft
I should smoke
A bowl topped with coke;
Maybe then I'll

Turn around and see
A whale
Breaching; a
Shadow oh shit;

It's just a nurse shark:
Harmless and big--
Beautiful.
I'm cold.

Warm sand
Stuck between my toes
Stumble-lolloping
To sunbathe on my deck

Beneath which Tropical
Fish can be seen;
Maybe I should tease 'em:
Sprinkle weed

Instead of bread
So they do that
Cute nipping at
The surface

A-shimmer through
The spaces
Between planks which
Smell good:

High-grade wood
And salt which
It's true
Can't compare

To Fleur de Sel
Which they put
On all the tables
For all meals

Next to three
Little pepper
Grinders
Grinding out

Savor from
Three countries' pepper;
The chickens
These here parts

Look fine but
Not fabulous to eat;
Thank God for
The farm which

Supplies the kitchen
Which is thankfully
Far enough away to feel no pity
Admiring the range.

First blog-post!

2009-06-20T14:27:00.000-07:00

Hello all, this is my first blog entry (I'm, lol, quite late on "the scene"); I guess I'll start with poems:

Clover

Bewitched by pretty letters lying to the populace.
This situation would be more under control were there a Situationist on the scene.
We're all under a billboard on the Sunset Strip.
The smog is chic.
Snakes in the hills shed skins and she buys a bag.
Drinking from wine-skins is long overdue as a bar trend.
The air by the door to the club is electric.
They joke about how much they like spooning.
A scholar with a nose for coke chuckles at the nasals in Navajo.
Boys blather on the radio.
Popular music is not like bands of static.
Black and blue are the in colors this season.
I wish it's my milieu which I've been writing!
Rocks are arranged intp the garden of the new Elizabeth Arden.
A couple drinks Elysian tea.
Someone swallows a Tetracycline.
Sartorial I joshes with authorial You till oops a crashed BMW.
Bob Marley won't go out of style for a while if ever as far as humans are concerned.
Time is fickle but to call it so is also a joke as what could be more constant?

I heard through
The grape-vine
My baby
Won't be mine.

Fading faster than the loveliness of a cut flower is the beauty of a Mahimahi's scales.
Often when discontent swells and swells instead of exploding it deflates.
Sincere flattery is like honey drizzles one's hearing.
Our listening is as prickling to blood-spores not the sheer-clear of serum.
Listening lacquers and as a result no-one hears anything.
Agapanthus lining the drive to the Governor's mansion stream in a storm.

Crossing
The Date-Line
I heard a
Baby looks just
like the infant Goethe
Wailing and
Wailing in the
Ear-pain of its flight.

A happening club in Rio must be tres terrific but right now I'm not up for it.
At the Lebanese restaurant on the corner they serve perfect Mojitos.
Has anyone ever made a coat out of penguin?
Tuxedos look best at the beach.

I heard through
The late-line
My baby's mine.

Generic drugs compared to brand-name are not in a relation like faux Chanel to Cocolicious.
A man named karl smirks then grins.

It's like
Man
I guess Robyn Schiff
Has already done fashion
I mean
For sakes
She's done Worth!

My dream job
Oh if only
There were more
Seasons
is to do runway's music
And cast shows.

I could never be a designer:
I'm not good at drawing
Nor cutting shapes nor
Draping nor folding.

How much do excellent condition Fortuny pleats cost?
Why am I writing about women's clothing when I'm a man?
Is writing is like cross0dressing a false analogy?
I love fashion though I myself groom and dress unimpressively or impressively badly.

I've been hearing through
The self-hate line
My body
My stance
Is so far from fine.

Do I know better than anyone else how bad I am?
Does it matter who knows or is the importance that I am?
Does one have to be witnessed to be bad?
Does one have to be caught?
Does one have to be caught to become better?
Awareness and incriminating intertwine into no rescue line.

Notes on the poem above:

1--it's stemming a bit from Joshua Clover, whose poems I don't know well, tho do occasionally read

2--I'm, despite evidence to the contrary, not a fan (at-all) of line after line of end-stopped by periods

3--Do the enjambed interludes work?