Bonnie Jean's Tried-and-True Word Mills

Auto-Interview; Present Tense

2011-05-05T11:43:00.002-07:00

"Well," the woman says once she's reached the curb, and then takes a moment to gather her hair, much of which has slipped inside her collar, and lay it gently behind her shoulders. Loreen sees that while she is not exactly beautiful, either, she is a good deal prettier than Loreen herself, with a long nose and full, wide lips. Something about her eyes looks familiar—the shape of the eyes and also the way she holds them a little wider than most people do. "I wasn't sure you'd hear me over the traffic and the wind," she says, pronouncing "wind" with an extra little "h" sound that Loreen associates with old movies. It is windy, but Loreen hadn't noticed until this woman made the pronouncement. It feels as if the woman has made it so.

"Oh. Oh gosh,” the woman says in a way that plucks Loreen’s gaze away from her eyes and the soft atmosphere of bangs above them and makes her realize the words spoken come out of the her mouth, just like everyone else’s. And then in a tone that sounds alarmingly like pity, "you don't remember me." Not pity, she decides, watching the woman bite the inside of her cheek and stare at a spot above Loreen’s head. She seems hurt. Loreen can't stand the thought of hurting this woman who'd jogged across the street in such a familiar, trusting way. This woman who manages to appear both vulnerable and sophisticated.

In a gesture uncharacteristic to her, Loreen places a hand lightly on the woman's forearm. "Of course I remember you. How are you? Where were you headed just now?" Every fragment of the woman returns to the moment, every feature slides smartly back into place, and a tremor of happiness traces through Loreen.

Persona

2011-03-14T17:44:00.014-07:00

In sick today; I watched Ingmar Bergman's Persona.

Blur must recede--then sharpness

remains our faces cataclysmic.

You see in me a stalwart river's end:

in you I see the dam breaking open.

We're both sick with all this water

at last of its purifying rites and docile

only when laid on shards of glass.

Lay us down, sky, your giant cowl--

your mad burrowing clouds

break us open with their softness.

2010-11-10T23:57:00.010-07:00

I wrote this one year ago, for the University of Arizona Poetry Center's e-Newsletter:

READING ZEMBORAIN AND ALCALÁ

On Mauve Sea-Orchids & Some Maritime Disasters this Century

The more we read the more we are trained to expect specific things: what was your last experience reading a poem that was center-justified? My guess is you were reading a greeting card. Here’s an aphorism: Good poems meet our expectations; great poems upset our expectations. Though I call it an aphorism to cover my back, I think I believe that one. It feels good to be shaken up; it feels significant to have expectations blown out of the water.

Lila Zemborain’s Mauve Sea-Orchids is center-justified. It is made up of three long poems whose titles are not the least bit afraid of beauty or the lyric: “la orquídea y el moscardón/orchid and bumble-bee” “los pétalos furiosos/the furious petals,” “malvas orquídeas del mar/mauve sea-orchids.” It is also written in a tone so hard to pin down I don’t even know where to begin. It doesn’t convert well to one or two-page excerpts for easy digestion. It is best experienced at once so that its strangeness can wash over the reader. The declarative mood is a near constant. You are told that there are such things as loveglands, and yes, yes they emit the smell of baking bread. It is scientific and sensual; sensual and scientific. This book marries those terms in a way I cannot in this format. (Scisensual. Sensuatific. Still I keep trying.) And it makes me want to misuse adjectives. Mauve Sea-Orchids is pedantic in a good way. Soporific in a good way. Written entirely in the present tense, Mauve Sea-Orchids narrates constant activity of minutia; reading this book feels like watching a nature documentary that takes place inside an organic body and slowed down just a second or two so that the movements of its simulated natural world become trance-like.

Mauve Sea-Orchids is translated by Rosa Alcalá. Soon after reading Orchids I ordered Alcalá’s out-of-print chapbook, Some Maritime Disasters this Century (Belladonna*, 2003) from an online used bookstore. This chapbook dates back to when Belladonna* was primarily a reading series. Its materials are humble but its design is beautiful. A woodcut image of a ship’s sails pop out from the corner, tiny rust-colored waves enveloping them. “Some Maritime Disaters this Century” remains one of my favorite titles in the world. The poems are spare but densely populated with giants of political, poetic, and philosophical history (Rumi, Levi-Satrauss, Derrida, Garcia Lorca, Langston Hughes…).

After reading Alcalá, I can see why she was drawn to the work of Zemborain. Alcalá uses line breaks to play with meaning in a way that is strangely akin to the many meanings made by Zemborain’s near run-on line structure. Zemborain loves the semicolon. The semi-colon connects ideas softly: it correlates rather than mirrors ideas. I imagine Alcalá saw possibilities in that. And I imagine the rangy tones in Mauve Sea-Orchids allowed her to capitalize on the grammatical possibilities of translation. Nor are Alcalá’s poems voiced by a single speaker. They have a collectivity that is trance-like in the same way Zemborain’s scientific-sensual marriages are trance-like:

…I am  

the memory 

of milk You  

would not 

recognize me

After the heat 

Of sugar  

Mills I shine 

White  

Little ghost 

Sifted star  

(from “Polvo”).   

It also moves on a level of minutia and in a way that feels slowed-down:   

you voice hands 

over knees  

and beg 

vacancy  

your body 

folded as much 

inward 

as outward  

sways its 

need  

…my dis/focus 

tills   

(from “This Way of Talking”).   

Zemborain:   

The landscape superimposes its figures over  

the sordid reading of facts; bluntly,   

Alcalá:   

Texts on horse medicine 

And a girl on a Vespa  

Cross the Roman Bridge  

I cannot wait for the meeting of these two minds!

Some books I recommend...

2010-10-28T13:39:00.027-07:00

As Halloween Approaches

A Good and Happy Child by Justin Evans. 2007.

Halloweenish Features: Demonology. Mysticism. Psychological drama.The uncanny. Coming of age?

This truly chilling story unfolds as a man discusses his childhood with his therapist, adroitly moving between two time frames. Was he haunted/possessed by a demon as a child or is the demon a metaphor for other trauma?

Pilgrim by Timothy Findley. 1999.

Halloweenish Features: Immortal, moody man. Burning mental institution. daVinci as an asshole. The uncanny. Jung and the Collective Subconscious.

This is an astoundingly ambitious book. It's the least Halloweenish of this bunch, but it is moody and eerie and mystical. And scary smart.

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. 1859.

Halloweenish Features: Madwoman/misused eccentric. Mistaken identities. Count Fosco and his creepy love of white mice. Isolated, decaying country estate. Burning church.

Even better than Jane Eyre and Rebecca, I promise. Fosco is as unforgettable a villain as Cruella Deville.

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale. 2009.

Halloweenish Features: True crime, mystery, scary early scientific theories like phrenology and physiognomy.

Everything we take for granted about forensic science and detective work, both in real life and in fiction, are traced meticulously back to the Road Hill murder case. How did Summerscale write something so painstakingly informative yet so thrilling?

Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger. 2010.

Halloweenish Features: Eerie twins. Haunted London flat. Highgate Cemetary. OCD. Harshly reviewed novel nonetheless well-liked by me.

Julia. Valentina. Elspeth. Great names, no? You might find the ghost story here annoying, but there are some really great characters in this novel--hard-to-like characters that you end up liking despite yourself are the best, aren't they? Oh and there are some cool details about the history of Highgate Cemetery, conveyed through Robert, a graduate student writing his thesis on the topic.

Falling Angels by Tracy Chevalier. 2002.

Halloweenish Features: Highgate Cemetery. Discontented Edwardian Women. Precocious children.

Only a medium on the halloweenish scale, but about half of this novel takes place in Highgate Cemetary. Its historical scope includes the Women's Suffrage Movement and Victorian customs of mourning made fashionable by Queen Victoria. It's moody and voice-y (it is narrated in the voice several characters, young and old, male and female). I recommend absolutely everything by Chevalier but absolutely nothing Amazon says you'll like if you like Chevalier.

The Latest Listenlight

2010-08-26T12:31:00.003-07:00

Click here to read Listenlight, featuring

* Francis Raven
* JP Dancing Bear
* Krystal Languell
* Adam Fieled
* Amy King
* Bonnie Jean Michalski
* Nancy Huth
* Paul Maziar
* Marthe Reed
* Michael Rothenberg
* Justin Evans

2010-03-14T18:27:00.003-07:00

gopog.org

I will read with Joanna Fuhrman on March 20, 2010 at 7pm at the Drawing Studio, 33 S. Sixth Avenue, Tucson, Arizona.

2010-01-19T12:58:00.004-07:00

Brandon Shimoda, along with Akilah Oliver and Philip Jenks, read at the Poetry Center on Thursday night.

Read reviews of their works here.

FTR Aquamarine

2009-10-29T12:36:00.002-07:00

m e x i c o c i t y nos. 2, 3, 4, & 5

2009-09-04T10:51:00.003-07:00

MacawMacaw Press's latest project: m e x i c o c i t y by Dawn Pendergast

2009-08-20T08:13:00.010-07:00

The masculinity of the mural

standing on a Watermelon

MacawMacaw's most recent publication is m e x i c o c i t y by Dawn Pendergast. m e x i c o c i t y was made especially for the Reduce, Recycle, Reuse, Reimagine exhibit at the University of Arizona Poetry Center.

Dawn Pendergast lives in Milledgeville, Georgia, two hours from Atlanta. She holds two masters degrees, one from NYU and one from the University of Arizona. Her poems are published online in various journals including Little Red Leaves, Coconut, Alice Blue, Dusie, and Intercapillary/Space, and she blogs at whatbirdsgiveup.com. Her poems have been selected by Dan Beachy-Quick for an Academy of American Poets Prize and by Olga Broumas for the Will Inman Award.

Matthea Harvey & The Miró Quartet

2009-07-21T15:17:00.005-07:00

The sketches start out simple, but soon

one girl proposes a glass voicebox

strung with glass chimes, another petitions

for porthole pupils, a fringe of glass

lashes on each eyelid’s hinge, another

imagines a mouth made of powdered

glass and crinkle enamel, and off they go.

Happy Birthday, Sean!

2009-07-02T13:11:00.000-07:00

“Sean Randolph as Tom Sawyer” or
“Fine Fury and Frantic Gesticulation”

schoolmaster exacting a nothing revenge

although no dignitaries of left pink hair

scholars' exercises (a nursed religious all)

not delightful of lightest pleasures [how]

sweet etc. and not dark-complexioned

own lightning-pointed hope

speech—"eloquent" and number-referred—

as now determined over lower possession

how sign-painter's exactly avenged nap—

rusty and nightmare-destructive—

only listened (proud human!)

.sad entire attention…now rag about note.

a tangle of boughs

2009-05-20T14:21:00.001-07:00

are them and nearly grumbling

let us each baby on using its gloss heart

short us the way a window lies unusual glad

or bless an old kettle that he shows

who are fine and used to good singing

and thinks everyone goes a noticed lady

among trees, new-cut to give life's

end, one for each genuine bit of how

until a thing as genuine as fear

gone up a garden of hesitant striding

every buy-out a bill of give-up

heigh-ho shall go treading,

at night, a glad glad lading

grumbling until the next thing is grown

2009-02-07T17:01:00.002-07:00

"do you come here often?" by joe balaz

apocryphaltext Vol. 3

How to Attach a Door to a Door Hole

2009-01-28T22:14:00.002-07:00

I started changing my life. A DIY project I could really follow through. I was a grackle for a million years and I flew down from my grackle nest and there was a drill bit to drill the pilot holes. A gate edge I perched on some new thing entirely flecked with chiseled matter and level as the frame. I hammered into the perch a rune to mark a position for quarter-inch screws. I scraped into it a mysterious misnomer and drilled pilot holes and begged a carte postale to make me known, the alignment of my credit due. I feigned indifference to the sweating brow. Screwed up tight. Made feckless alignment good. God gave me this brow. On it sweats a golden age. I will take this city and make it smooth and round. What city? Must have been a map error. There are no rules for how you choose the numbered bolts. Out here there is so little but ground and empty cellar and many leagues to any sober mind. The meter clumpy. The earth spongy. Having these things texturized helps the feet to guide the wobbling torso. Door edge. Gut strings. Door bolt. Dinosaur flashes of a deep deep brave. The alignment of the pilot holes, the same height both sides, the grackle nest, the rune, the drill bit centered on the screw.

Barely Buried Treasure

2008-11-04T15:24:00.014-07:00

I pick a millionth knick-knack.
Hair. Put it on da blade-shelf.
I back up slowly slippers.

Less ninety degrees,
draped in knees. Pointed
toward the nor'eastern dour.

I invite you over make
a slipcover for your head.
Big big fleurs all tiny ties.

Grandiose. Two dry
powders and a cheerful pot.
Listless cat. Not a breach.

Go on plucky'll do it.
Keep it stopping leaks.
Keep yer stockins sleek.

I grant you a bright dollop
and on it sprinkle of dill.
We hove here like its picnic.

You're so sure I cooked it
out of a box. I'm still missing
you curing my showboat.

Many exact grapefruits
hollowed out. Paneled objects
striking I blend om in.

Edge: a Reading Series of Emerging and Younger Writers

2008-05-09T12:42:00.002-07:00

May 20th, 2008 at Casa Libre en la Solana

2008-04-30T17:03:00.001-07:00

2008-03-20T11:57:00.002-07:00

Mauve Sea-Orchids/Malvas orquídeas mel mar

2008-03-14T16:28:00.010-07:00

Few books are this arresting both in content and physicality. The facing-page Spanish translations of these center-justified poems convey a complete balance of instinct and intellect. The scientific becomes lyric and the lyric becomes scientific in a way that points toward a sense of beauty that readers have been taught to mistrust. These poems engage language as a stimulus so that reading becomes an act of substantive beauty.

Samosa Rap

2008-01-23T13:23:00.000-07:00

If Uncle Says It So:

It shuffled off the wretched style
moved apace crevasse and dropping in
cravat its shirt front simpering
and crepuscular. It was a waffled wall
a widow maker, set of stones
both bolder and formerly basalt
akin to it: columnular: the twin engines of a benedict.

Whence: to a Clandestine Orchard

Us might aggregate if
exposed between two
wide big klieg lights under
where us frequently kiss
is us lagomorphs soft
big-up ears us fragment ears
wrap sandy-soft is cinema

a poem in couplets by Andrew Feldhacker

2008-01-21T22:28:00.000-07:00

Now that you mention it, it occurs to me
that my soap is peppermint-

scented. Could it be that I am everfresh?
I'll leave this up to you.

In keeping with my aversion
to cinematic genius, I think I'm going to pass

on that movie. So, please, by all means,
lambast at length. As

for David-Dorian, it's easy to see
why he's 'America's best-loved Tai Chi instructor':

whether it's parting the horse's mane,
crane spreads wings, or brush-knee-and-push,

his inner-balance and grace of form
are... actually kind of hard to keep up with at first.

I followed along for about half-an-hour.
Then I watched 'Hero', and went to bed.

So I'll be giving David another go in a little bit
here, and will give you a full account of my Chi,

post-Tai.
What's the scoop with you?

APOCRYPHALTEXT Vol. 2. No. 2 & 3

2008-01-11T10:58:00.000-07:00

The new issue of APOCRYPHALTEXT is online now.

It features:

Mandalas

2007-12-18T16:04:00.000-07:00

I left and left him sitting so still as to suggest sitting still.

2007-12-17T18:56:00.001-07:00

I left and left him sitting so still as to suggest sitting still.
The emotion behind the particular pose chosen stayed mulled
and the brevity of response to this was truly altruistic.
Laconically burdened and of such a parting word. I’m still sure,
and whosoever bends lightly to will catch the scent, primeval.
Such tokens contained in a single measure of liquid, others
remaining faint tunes. It comes out this way: taste, sound, tasty
tune: “Do take care to close the valve, being mindful of measure.”
And in being mindful, keep words to a clip but repetition staccato.

It wore you shrewd for it

2007-12-07T16:19:00.000-07:00

Several months ago I maneuvered a smallish all-terrain vehicle into his kenning and having taken a keen look, he agreed to something tactical. It was days before the rest of the troupe said anything at all, and once I was caught shivering in a way that was entirely pleasant to behold yet funny in the circumstance. When I built some things out of paper, I almost always signed his name to them. He had a few projects himself that were brightly hewn. Whether he had them approved by a higher power is irrelevant. I had full access to his complete line of implodable gadgetry, and that has been enough for at least the coziest evening hours. There are horizontal window displays to consider, as well as navigating the masses. However, with just an ounce combined of both our wits, it continues to appease all negligible phyla. Here stands the freshest of fellowships: let one thing make peace with its neighbor, and mostly those objects within one’s purview will berry.

GlitterPony#4

2007-11-30T17:17:00.000-07:00

www.glitterponymag.com

poems from:

Christopher Stackhouse
Robert Ostrom
Philip Byron Oakes
Amanda Nadelberg
Andrew Morgan
Bonnie Jean Michalski
Karyna McGlynn
Paul Klinger
Yvette Johnson
Scott Hartwich
Jonathan Doherty
Ryan Daley
Dawn Corrigan
Sara Blaylock
Joseph Bienvenu
Joshua Bolton
Sean Burke

Allegory of the Hippo

2007-11-20T21:33:00.001-07:00

Such a variety of hippies that an untutored observer
might be blinded by love, might be blinded by the bright
life of every different one. Some drew out their long hair
and lived in it, nesting. Some drew from the soil
something oily and locomotive. Some were dizzy
and making ever larger circles. It was chaos, it was
dangerous for children who didn't have the bright soul flower
to guide them inward. Rumors spread
of their ferverent purple tubors, of their disdain
for flight school, optical systems, and privacy.
According to local peevishmen, their total body weight
exceeded all measure and was mostly bionic.
What kind of hippies were these? Once,
hippies lived in the great river in the Savannah.
It was chaos, it was dangerous for children, until each day dimmed
and hair and dirty hands grew pacified by the moon.
The banks were calm then. Each night they made a stew
of river water and roots, and the children
lined up for their share, satisfied that wildness
like all else will pass from the world congealed,
as it were, outside of the purveyor's vision of poverty.
The littlest rustling raised an ill-timed awareness of
a perfectly baked sweet potato, left behind on the banks to
lure the untrussed in a gumbo. Along the banks of the great
green, greasy Limpopo river where a gnash was whiting,
where all comers would be servered, the hippies paged
through waterlogged volumes, reliving their mythic transmigration,
their strange happenstance. Before there were safety muglets,
there were whited sepulchres and a long, slow, hotly disputed
foreign border leading them home
to the sickle moon, where hippies are shadow rabbits
reaching painfully with servered hands, reaching paper-thin
for a small bit of tinder that is just like them. This process of likeness--
long fibers on a mesh screen-first bathed, then colored and taughtened
with five metal combs. The community was striated. Those
pacified by the moon remained so. The rest--stringy,
starlight, sepia, and acid--became photographs
and an era ended.

by Wendy Burk, Anna Fulford, and Bonnie Jean Michalski

2007-11-06T11:27:00.001-07:00

You are None Less, I am Prone to Blur.
for K.S.

You shush about that very creamy room. Never
Spackled a day in your life. Have you?
You rigid yourself to fit the window frame.
You pretend to have no arms.
You should jump in, stop me if I am unkind.
I barely know you enough. After some twenty years!
If your life could take place in the twilit south.
Many there might fancy your clip-clopping way.
You’d mauve every so slightly in the moist sun
and find a radio station just the right speed
for thinking. Do you prefer an era of music
to the others? I hope a slender pace would enliven you,
not leave you more fatigued. Stop trying to read maps.
Regionalism is an amorphous spatiality. Just think
what a dry heat might have done to you!
It is not without concern that I steer you
this way from the rust belt.

2007-11-06T11:19:00.000-07:00

Pearls with a Double Clasp

by Wendy Burk

Don't underestimate the clearing.

It's all about the human figure making contact

with the small circle of light.

Those wide eyes...I thought you were

human...but you didn't blink.

I want you to know: as long

as you are alive at this latitude Orion will

be with you winter nights.

So give her the necklace:

no one knows

and no one knows

and no one knows.

Dear Erin,

2007-11-06T11:13:00.000-07:00

I am a cauldron. Not a pot.

Sincerely, The Cauldron-Pot

goatlike

2007-11-06T11:09:00.003-07:00

Had you the eyes of a goat,

they would be almond, half-green, half-

yellow, an almond

shape to them. Were you

less as you are, cat-like, a brush

head, sad, sad, un-

goatlike.

-Robert Creeley

2007-10-18T11:53:00.000-07:00

and then I woke up and took a leak in the fridge.

2007-10-02T20:59:00.002-07:00

for Jamison

I woke up with the glossiest Farah Fawcett head
the wispiest and
baby hairs glowing.
I feared the weed whacker how it could belop my stylish top.

The kohlrabi in the crisper drawer, its bunchy root hairs
a far far cry I shook
my tendrils grown
brunette in deepest purple crowns, vegetable browns.

I opened the door to behold the sun beholding my hair.
I hurried the walkway
down to the jeweler
what have they this side of trend in adornments for the head.

What have they that can (I asked the spectacles that meant the man)
apply a certain
immutable play,
a gentle liminal brevity about my hair of truth?

2007-09-17T12:19:00.000-07:00

This one I dedicate to Ana Caban.

2007-09-13T15:43:00.000-07:00

I am on it this time, only one toe trembling. Lurching

back to push stretch into stretchy [. . .] Movement defined by

being defensive. Keeps all the ligaments in equal mean. You

could assume this of me, my height and weight the natural

concordance. I see all dimensions [. . .] flattened. I like it this way

so keep it from rolling away. Into that other mind, beaming.

Sunday Morning for BJ and Anna: Dialogue Poems and Pancakes

2007-09-02T13:07:00.001-07:00

The scene is set Western where the high boy waits on his high horse normative, and moaning for a real lady. Listen, Lady. (as she steps from the train) It’s a cruel mood I’m in and no mistaken. My eye sight might be mortared on your mid parts but my mind is quick as any and You look to me too nice to roll around too nice to roll around in. Look here, there’s a nice room in the inn, and I suggest you wait a while lest some ruffian Let some rough hand head you off and drive out East. You oughtta wait, you oughtta wait right here for the next bound Eastbound train, just turn tail right here. Turn your tail round and right this right here. I hear this here Jacob’s inn has the softest mattresses around. You might want. You might want to roll around, and lace trimmin’ lace on each and every pillow.

Exeunt in Mauve

of an over over-ex
ertion in the garden to

day. Timony and his pet
onions waiting to be cheered,

finally softens but little.
A little dour a mum personage,

aged nineteen and a volume
poorly. Up and check

on her bright stage
pulled across. Each stair

softened to the lame leg,
petunias simply back

drop. Shall read to them
to grow a feeling. Over

each beaded strand
insisting on a visitation.

Aglow. Drawing out
the library its warm lit

face. Faces Timony once
to warrant him be ready.

Even if ye not be of a mind to Tarot, read these by Anna and BJ

2007-08-21T16:04:00.001-07:00

O Empress, What Primal Spark?
(this poem forthcoming in Fairy Tale Review)

Belief in an I a primal giver of griefs,
fever of gifts and giving yet. Grafts a shiver
if ever I like Demeter like taken away got back
barren and a barren land backed into.
Grows and grows fallacy in abundance skirt
gathering a silverer of prim rose up
rose-rose tuft I said what to it and it un-risen
why her symbol is
unleavened. I baked it from an invented
receipt. I bought it for the house to look
nicer than. I laid it just across
and lay in it and was kidnapped. Just
as planned I failed to lay it
womblike, failed just to womb.
One death to it then found my
self aloft, puissant and ruling over it in anger.
And some She can rear back in just the form
to untime me. I stay uniform
and you are near ready to be born, high
Magician of the really real. The unusual real.
The sensual all things of the proven realm under
stood as Primal, as the first and likeliest genitive.

XXI The Universe

It was Orphic, equally
responsible and all star-
ry day shards.
Stubborn. It was
refusing any parent-
age. Star-
monster at play. No
one would ob-
ject, it was

certain.
Sentient, she was

a sentient
being damn it!
Not just snaky
leg and sort of slut-
ty on the ex-
terior. Struggle-
d with her main
form. Born reptil-
ian, somewhere
learned to walk

this way.
Coiled

loosely on the orb,
it was tell-
ing her circular, it was
afraid of the scissor-
pince-ers,

not for her.
Or both

a sheep rais-
ing tribe spun tight-
ly both egg both
wool both work-
ing equally hard for
power. Why not
just take an eye
out?

A POEM IN PARTS

2007-08-20T16:07:00.000-07:00

i.

I farm the most minutes between
holding everything in and held.
I break the season with this:
a limited number of days and the odd ones
cached for stimulation. Truck, truck.
Signaling for a deposit, here, and friendly.
It is now I’m asking for something: ask,
ask as a temporary immobility, a tattoo
affixed. As in a fixed-on gaze, bumbling. Bulbs
perennially. And here is where it begins
to be over: lift, lift. Am missing you soon.

ii.

I truck in parts for the floorshow.
Two parts with an axle-wagon in between,
A flat part for the feather-waggles.
I saw my grandmother lighting up.
Went far out of the way and sprayed her
with the objective lens. The Turning Leaf.
Never claimed to lie for her. Never wanted
her refund, her simulated motor skills.
Even when we tried to hand-me down,
Something went awry, something static
went along with the main bulk and shivered
everyone along the, just the backs of their knees.

iii.

Not the second time shin-leaning
and disc-like. Can slice through bone
to leave it roomier. I felt it was in the proper tone:
caveat as subtle as honey is a real meal. Just enough
yet hadn’t seen just her in days and mindful
a certain entreaty slipping through me.
Cannot answer for everyone; hadn’t yet
asked myself and now this crisp white
is a good half-way gone hints of grapefruit
and still the exact same relation to gall.
If you felt it there, then so did I feel it erring. Not
every single night we get to redouble the optics.

iv.

Doubled, doubled, and like a frond let
Down slowly on the flouncing. He was limbed
orangu, orange and tan and marked
Very peculiar around the ears. If it took
seven sets of termites, seven days to build
up the ruins, so might he look, constrained.
What I said to him might as well have never
It was undesirable, that urge toward aggression,
Not a real sense of anger you know, only next
The next thing I was going to and how it put me
Patterned, helical, never make it out.

v.

Fondly at first and finally a full rotation
beyond patience. Things done with firm intentions
and then undone all in the negative think-loop.
He desires the roundest things and she
has desires of multi-tubing all things a direct line
to her receiving station. It won’t sustain in this way
won’t. And it will make us all tired. I pitched this
way plus that that I might see it through. I left small bits
around the room that look and feel loving. I leave
and always near come back. Fresh for the next next.

(BJM odds, AF evens)

Two Poems, Zero Titles.

2007-07-28T12:12:00.000-07:00

At all times the very ground
only to find an emotion
that moment, fix
to an ordinary life
how the hair curls round
the ear. Fixating on
loving many people without
pauses between, discord
writing verse, a woman
a while ago. All who
settle in. Self-aware,
of a fashion, having
an ordinary life, passing
judgment does not will
genius to die. A find
I am of the same stuff,
humility, Remedios,
Emmylou, humble and
placed so I admire vaguely
a bargaining self such
in the pauses between.

Under that mire of hair she
kept proving. I tossed a line
and she tossed it back, swam in,
her butt keeping buoyancy checked,
I realized. Then I insisted
it wasn’t the shoreline of
café culture. Just she wanted
to rest her feet. Doesn’t even
like coffee. Would I chivvy.
Renting bikes was no option.
On foot we were evened,
but her pack held more rations.
Asking was hard. I asked.
She held out a brandy truffle.
I wintered under the short share,
turned in my least concern. I
care for the scaffolding, rib
the underpinning, stanchion, stay.

Anna Fulford and I Occasionally write Occasional Poems

2007-07-12T12:50:00.000-07:00

Parachute for Scooter On Commuting
-dedicated to Supryia Ray

I whatever
in the red sea summit
made your heart parachute parachute
Made your heart crib, the pirate and heart,
I was the heart which is old, and you still to maintain.
You in the family courtyard.
In the family noose, the institute.
Weather-vane was in the Green

Forgiveness.
No matter who noose
who seamount, Peru's machine.
I felt cheerful. I had the scope
The cover (basket)gives up (swing).
You are that good child,
you are drawn on the rack.
Your rib of blessing and,
,and the law Bestia

I Rose. just epidemion.
I crib. Goes pirate.
Was Rose in the Commuting yard.
I have the field but not the contracts. contracts.
Any argument (makes) garment (Clinton).
Reaches high tide. Further dirty mark.
The cover (basket) stops (swing).
step of dirt

On the occasion of a Six-Foot Tall Man

in the Baptismal Font

who was tall in the beginning
and was tall when he managed
his Belly Flop Safe Word was God
and he was not a parrot-teacher
as all words were made by him and on him head
shorn no horns but shone out of darkness
a light foot despite a lanky height
and the mid day light partly understood

and arranged for a squelching sound
in his shoes as he circled round the sacristy,
as he buttered his wit for the slow simmer
of prayer words what not to make the crowd chitter
after such a scene in the baptismal font,

the scene that was seen, which was

merely a dumb-show, no argument of folly.

Anna Fulford and I recall a horrific poolside cockroach massacre

2007-07-09T15:58:00.000-07:00

Tig in May-

A waterbeetle, a hot brick. I thought
you might become heroic if I let my eyes
stay right on it. Saw you welding it to the heart
shaped cement, Sawn you working it with a burnt
foot paddy-padding up the catwalks. Gumshoe feline
with a roach hook, scatter action haymaker.
The option here is laugh or not laugh. Loitering
in and out the window, lanky as a pully whistle
grim as a nut punch moniker. Eyed it, Red-
Brown and not a wholesome critter.
Three inches worth of insect
is a shiver-giver, not funny at all.

Many Thanks,
Anna and Georgia

Dear Mrs. G. & Mrs. A.,

Let me swing you round my half
of this brew ha harm when it was
the medium-sized rasper and only one
could make it keep their shell.
Mine was a magenta flower-print
and I planned to keep it on. That one
clattered in a most standard armor
and not flattering at all. Despite
the hide-your-tummy halter.
T'was ochre and ribbled and too
too organic. Shirting blind
to the must-do's of stewardship,
no help the onlook-two lolly-giggling such
I had to act brash, read: smash.
Records true my low-most appendages
were pidgeons without they have
exoskeletal umbrage. But that ring mail
clean cracked, made peace
with the quartz confetti
and despite one last flaccid try
was already mind-out to the sewers.

Let it be known,
Trigger May

Poem Prompting Prompts Poems

2007-07-09T12:42:00.000-07:00

Relatetionship
by Sean T. Randolph
(Bonnie Jean ex#1)

Dear,
Dull, ill temptered, wontix ex-boyfriend.

You cannot cheat music
Like your honed lead arm cheated
Dawn.

Your leader is dull too
And Dawn's popsys
is not sufficient
not to launch at least.

I chose to write this on a
Mosque postcard
when the other febee would not
adequately create the matter.

-Dawn
P.S. Stop these teeth

And our next prompt:

1) Pick a word; visit www.thesaurus.com and choose a synonym for that word. Now you have your title.

2) Every stanza must have 7 C's and 2 X's. Stanzas can be of any length but your poem must have at least three stanzas.

3) Include in your poem: a fruit, a(n) (in)famous criminal, the name of one your your family members, and a song title,

4) You must have one end-rhymed set of lines, and the rhyming words must be of a wallstreet journal-esque lexical set (ex: quota).

here I go:

Long Way Labyrinthine

Your patria potestas is a Robinhood exact.
Come rain, come brainshine. Citation CIX:
I held riches twice and wanted none.

Suspended in your standard waxwing flocking call,
the botanicals say: this is how sound travels
from California, from Connecticut, from the fixed coast.
Love is calling love back home. The feathered ear persists.

Maid Marian: I held you in esteem, during even
your briefest executive careers. May Day
for the simplest scriptwriter, faintest autocrat.
Ballad Scholars' content-based analysis revealing
your current-most influence index careering.

Family picnic calls for at least six casseroles,
coolers of Jollygood to pipe the pips.
Expected to glut when the spread contains
cream of chicken soup enough to flood a project.
Take it, Robin, when all eyes are on the balloon toss.
Crockery and all. Redistribution is the name of the game.

here Anna go:

Bravery, Backbone, Kidney Sauce

What kind of pig-canny makes cerebrum all in parts,
In separate bunches? Pugnacious lobe,
Pie eating lobe. Pax Romana. What your mother told you
Not to risk. No exceptional mettle in there.
Even so, or accordingly, or therefore
Your hypothalamus is angry. Almond size
You climb each

Suicide rung with your ass hanging into space
But they still won’t let you in. Face and Face and Face:
They treat you like a rookie. Still really tough exterior
Leather pomegranate husk. And then some Barbara
Part of your brain circumvents you brutally. You have to make
The chicken wing fist. You have to start a rumor.
For example,

Fascicle pamphlet number 7
Has you picking lice out of a tattoo, but not for sanitary.
Even as they epidemic all around you. Dirty Bird, You vector,
Hooker, carcass stacker. Occupation: Meat Inspector. Warehouse
Grunt. No rebel Wolfe Tone. Tony Toni Tone. Just You
Pustule. Flex Your stomacher. Exhibit it.
I thought so.

and now, Sean:

Sermonize

Gabe C. kept no index
this seemed to have no adverse effects
until the excess of taxlessness
broke his belt at recess
and cashews couldn’t have caught

his lunchbox
his contraband
and this dusty winter will survive
whether he or I, like lynx
will live off of dates
the thicket of criminal air, where
carnivorous fangs fall pleading

for this sermon
fox-like and low on numbers
when sex could not please
laughter will do
and his cold rehearsal
crunching aluminum cans
the crackling junkyard sedan
terribly coarse penetrating voices

This dusty criminal sermon will not stand.

A Bulwark Against

2007-07-06T14:32:00.007-07:00

or read it on EOAGH.

This cumulative match-and-trace become brand
new, fold-fold fate toy and bent over flexural
until the last one was resembling a true totem

grimly passing with a too-tonal battery of
the bright ones in the splash for enough a time

slips out the back gate and is never heard. By and by

her wake-and-braid is unmade by lunchtime
and is only one-half your fault you’re doubting
the reference, even, between this and sister’s juju

worn as an anklet, savvy; worn around the neck, none.
You’ll have it off by sundown, and the clouds to mark us
just one step outside the compound as downfelled.

Who to Distract a Nation

2007-07-02T22:19:00.000-07:00

The message, in the summer of that year, in the season of war

and an illicit birds-nesting expedition tall white Letters

only a few recognized among them a Professor, a Lord,

four young men from a nearby town and a lass known only as becoming

one of them clambered into sometimes wrongly called

a nasty shock, graffiti on the plinth, all ran for their lives

on the premise that it might have been a witch complete

but for a name, as was writ on the obelisk, Popular Interest

was an intensified token to whomever it readily asked Who

sold the information chalked all over the region Who

acted as a conduit appearing at local Who was sister to Who had become

marginally involved have resurrected their file,

a spokesman said, angling toward an organized Think Tank

pores over all what kinds of incurred bafflement

followed up without many offers, without whereabouts of help

Don't look, Dad, it's a Three-Way Collab!

2007-07-02T13:45:00.001-07:00

Baby Knorg

2007-07-02T13:27:00.000-07:00

Who put Bella in the wych-elm?

2007-06-28T13:36:00.000-07:00

Hum out your trapezeries
this maid is more at peace
re-earthed in primacy of lore
ungorged and unjostled if
simple carnations, a simpler
incarnation, your tale
simplest coined. Press into
the wych-elm only if
a want to see your own
unhanded remains her
hair her unhurried
frame. Even by Socratic
approach the wary wain-
scoting shushed
and slid in place, a creased
garment ensconced
espionage in history’s
most lurid hand. Which
munitions this winter
under new jurisdiction
her foreign asylum
brings minerals a case-
ment to tower these affairs in
the local most branch the

executive head.

Abbreviated Systems and Components

2007-06-27T21:23:00.001-07:00

Sonorous and
sabertoothed it
waits on an awe
to be punctilious
princely even
humble of work
then the minute
is let out some
thing nicely rewitted
the differentials
spitshine words
abandoned to an arduous
twenty-some not
not inspireless nor
virtuoso mammals
likely a win you discuss
mascot types
with your dietician
only some ballast
among those untugged
easier even a once
summoned shirt
twining so if
you stuttering it
fluffed you back
ing even the sly chapters
a buffer 'tween
you and a list
up up foibler
visibly and with some tact

Congratulations, Dathon: you passed your
Dissertation Proposal Defense Exam!

Poem Prompt for Anna: Get Thee to the Internets!

2007-06-27T09:31:00.000-07:00

1) Start with one interesting [polysyllabic] word.

2) Go to www.thesaurus.com and type in your word.

3) choose ten words from the resulting list of synonyms (or antonyms). Choose words with sounds you like but also think of deviating slightly from the word’s most common meaning.

4) Double that list by making a sound association for each word. This could be a real or invented word, a phrase, a name, etc.

5) Make three pairs out of those words that you find particularly amusing or unlikely. Do a google™ search for each of those pairs, and poke around in the results, jotting down anything interesting.

5) Good Lord, by now you should have enough material to craft yourself a poem. Craft away, ye sabertoothed Referees!

Draft 1 of my prompt poem

Klang Valley’s maiden attempt
a palatial symphony in A minor
a rather uninspiring performance
that by sheer length alone persevered

the palace was rendered symphonic
despite twenty pigeon holes in the south gable
and persevered by sheer size alone
dummying the church, the duty-free market

twenty pigeon holes in the south gable
and inside, girls having discussions
the church clergy dumbfounded
by the witch stones predicting rain

sidelong discussions about the girls
the ebullient Sir Walton whetting appetites
reining in premonitions of witch stoning
TV crews to investigate the waters

Sir Walton, appealing to the wheat farmers
who were these organic, vegetarian types?
Invigorating the watery TV crew
to exchange partners with frequency

The spartan organic vegetable market
and the new county mascot, the platypus
partnered with the frequently shortchanged
porpoise, a new anti-paranormal regime

and the new county mascot, the platypus
was Klang Valley’s maiden attempt
to repurpose its anti-paranormal regime
its preference for the a rather awe inspiring

They are a Colorist

2007-06-25T16:26:00.000-07:00

Swiftly and before you could know it
orange hues, creeping a real live look
while somewhere between sheep
and bleeting sheep, they’ve found you
thinking all wilds of things when
thoughts runnel off parlored.
There is a skill to this lifting,
others always pausing, clocked
to the newest phrasal tinge.
Even in the grotesqueries, you
are thought on, each and every
system incorporating you evenly,
and it is not a necessary grace.
The moon, abandonment,
and other off-limit tropes appearing
as laps to you and an ear to tuck behind,
the world promising you toasts
and stipends and your children,
plentiful, their intelligences to the floor
and scaring the pets away. There
you are to scoop them up, your ensemble
in flame-tones. Not orange. Tangerine.
Found greedily in most intermezzos,
we are allowed to tire of you. We tire of you
because we are allowed. Rest, knowing
you are known. Rest because rest
tends toward powdered values. Silver the dish
where you’re paid, plaid the bag
you fold you wares. Some are stayed just
by the fullness of the apothecary they supply
in native plants: dusty purple, creamy yellow,
the perfect shade of pink to read by.

Your Versatile Table as a First Impression

2007-06-20T10:20:00.001-07:00

A simulation of party food preparation reveals gaps in cool colors
and a preference for alternating carbohydrates, stacked.
One tries to choose unpredictable platter shapes,
to arrange things intuitively toward their necessary serving devices.
An all finger food spread suggests insubstantiality, regardless
of actual caloric value, portends a main dish.
Too many utensil-necessary dishes detract from socializing.
One hovers on these nodes of buffet construction, mindful of fruit,
which, though finger-accessible, requires at least a napkin. Also,
remembering names of others' significant others. The social elements
come on suddenly, are best unrehearsed. There is a margin of error
and one can rest easy in foretold reciprocal graciousness,
allowing others to blunder without consequence, save an offer
of a refreshed drink, alternative condiments.

2007-06-19T16:21:00.000-07:00

After revisiting, for grant purposes, all the POG flyers I designed, I decided to retroactively add myself to the Karla Kelsey flyer. It's a pretty flyer, and I was happy with my reading.

http://chax.org/2007/04/bonnie-jean-michalski-and-karla-kelsey.html

Closer

2007-06-18T11:35:00.001-07:00

The locking parts of a mammal, how like Christ
it moves, afloat and fairly weathered,
despite the weather, icy. Viral hands,

chancy hands. Toward the even girth,
wearing the clock into carpet-like.
Its circling, then, bears of the bear cult,

verbs of the everyday cult. Hest out
of your welling envy; clock each time,
breathing out, you imp. Christ,

his last set playing itself out,
the yaks only listening to. Locking
withers to ice parts, troving in virile calm.

The cult toasts its lasting disciplinarian.
It mends Christ his interlocking hands.
A branch in meagerly affairs, the worst, even.

Who mends the rail; this disciple and that
man toasting one god his chance luck. Lastly,
an affair proves handy to a couple what floats closer.

poem for Paul

2007-06-15T11:39:00.001-07:00

It’s a wonder these Eastwood blockbusters.
And it’s always the gore is set down nicely,

primed with shrock as we sit nicely,
spillproof technology for our soda or juice.

He plays the sidearm as if stage combat
were widening construction. His payout

is his long stare, his witsy parting words,
his slow origami affectation.

Friday rolls out and it’s back to the projection box.
We’re feeling sassy and maybe a bit demanding.

Work us asunder with this next one, we say.
Make us daft with your special lights. We trust the Key Grip.

Anagram Headline Prompt, Take III

2007-06-14T10:53:00.000-07:00

The Last Silver Koala and The Knorg

If you let go this timepiece
can’t save you, no match
for the Knorg. Timely
enough its make

can’t match you save
reverence for Dogma,
enough made of it
in grave event. Maiden

of Dogma referencing
all six of us lessened,
made gravelly. Eventually,
cent for fern, fern for cent

and all six of us lesser
a count of ourselves as dissidents
fern for cent, cent for fern.
This household

can’t count itself descendents
of those smilvered houses
nor all of this household
who might just let this go.

These smilvered households
wilt the scented ferns—
those who have let go.
Let see you fevered amongst

the will to furnish cents,
pocketed with ferns uncented, ‘til
seen with you against feverish
hiring, the youngest for sainthood,

pocketing, like ferns. Senseless.
There is no time machine
hired to make youth for sainthood.
Hold tight, all you, this timepiece;

time will only machine
for the Knorg. Proves timely,
such tight holding of a time piece,
lo if you let go this timepiece.

Hoa Nguyen's Writing Exercize 60: Another Collage Poem

2007-06-13T16:14:00.000-07:00

Detective Fritterwhisker knew it was you
Harumphed the Cheese, belabored the sneeze
And we sang the between, Elizabethan we
Wheeled in Legendary Bodybuilt Steve

To ladder the rose, to rise to the pose
And we, glitterprone, teased to the knees
Did slip on the tile, made fall for the spoon,
fuzzied the wine in its geotrick shelf,

wanted to wed you despite the debris
but you sugartailed and slipped us the solar-freeze
were thusly finned through the secondest gate
gone AWOL at last from the rodent brigade.

You sugared the cootiebug, installed your harangue
Now this mascarpone posy is all that remains.

Valley Victorious!

She marched her armies overland, jaundiced as they were, wearing the red cape, the crested helmet. A benevolent dictator she was counting out, controlling all the wedding plans. She was like the working part of a lock. She was a tumbler. Without her see-through, sod-busting acumen no forgotten malcontents could bloom. She kept herself abreast. Some logistical problems. An allergy to many-cornered pollens. Trace of Salmonella in the mousse. And nobody wanted to dance! Which rather put her off. It was supposed to be a lurid affair: troupes of masked and naked men, two flag teams wound in ribbon, and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing all the hits of Hair! No, never would there be a day like this. The only presentation of her whole and lonely self! She must! She must! It radiated on the dance floor like a strangulation. All quailed, she quelled them with a single shimmy, it was longer than anyone could stand. A fete, a proper indication of her military strength.

Two to the Mat

2007-06-12T15:42:00.000-07:00

i. An Upturned Past/A Peridot Pendant/a Wrestling Match

This is my penchant for pendantry. You listen and I’ll keep roundly on
about tactical strikes, about mat-manners. I’ll keep it ago.
I’ll dangle it singly, centered on the breastbone
of this whole slate of athleticademia, this my thesis. I go theoretically through,
link by link and clasp the whole thing through the lap lane, waters a’ripple,
whether the water or the sky be shaded peridot. A glimmer bulb, fastened hookish,
while all convene to dub me bookish. But all I delve is lateral, that I know
what I know. God told Moses and Moses told Stephanie’s Dad
and Dad waved his movie know-how like it was Library. I underwrote it; Steph broke it.
I promised them my birthright was stoneset. Sworn by a matron’s most secretive fart
to snip apron strings from Poulsbo to Buffalo.
If you missed the demo of the Fireman’s Carry, I won’t be blamed
for your being Russian Dragged, your narrow self-lock as a twisted mouth.
I knew it was hard for you, tiny slapped mat that you were. I know
it still facets you, facets me, too.

ii. where they have you lie on a mat and.

It was a Woosh! Right up the.
Schlitterbahn, and I was wearing this waitress
Get-up, all lieder-hose and a really tiny.
I was kind of upset.Really hard to straighten up
But then it should have been a joke, right?
Enchanted Fun Park and all that kind of.
Tea cup, plunge-type ride, and the man in the duck suit.
Just wiggling his ass at me, sort of suggestive,
Really Fat! I thought.
Crouched down in the pool with a mysterious painful.
On the way up everyone was chanting my name,
Just terrified of.
A little tap-dancing outfit, inching my way out and then
It was a Woosh! Right up the.

Salamandra, Salamandra

2007-06-11T11:37:00.000-07:00

Party @ Dawn & Erin's

2007-06-08T09:55:00.000-07:00

A Collaborative Bio-Poem

2007-06-06T15:51:00.000-07:00

I say HELLO to all the ducks I say I LOVE YOU

I say hello to the dogs, to the cats, to the fish

I say it's GOOD to be alive.

I AM ALIVE and I LOVE YOU in your best brassieres

Your duck busts brightly worn

I touch you in your best brassiere

with all my heart I touch and never ever judge the ducks, and I say HERE

Here just lay on this table and you needn’t remove your bust

just like a butterfly does I

like a butterfly in my lightly worn descend upon your lack of trust

Your duck in its best pick-up

All the sightly ducks that truly love and EVERYBODY

and I tell it to make for me a tiny flapping

of the truck parts like my busted truck my butterfly

is big enough to haul your Truck Love

landing like a duck upon your love cloud

and I tell it YOU ARE ALIVE

and I tell it I AM SO PROUD OF YOU AND YOUR DUCK LOVE!

2007-06-04T15:05:00.000-07:00

Anagram Prompt, as Promised

2007-05-31T13:33:00.000-07:00

Go to a news website (CNN.com, etc.) and copy and paste four headlines into a word doc.

Cadet's wild dance creates YouTube sensation
Loch Ness videographer 'couldn't believe my eyes'
Zoo: Rare rhino death leaves only 13 worldwide
Rowling announces Potter Park

Grab 5-10 words you like enough to leave intact:

Cadet
wild
Zoo
leaves
videographer
Rowling
Park
Rare

delete those words from your original list. Leave all the rest:

's dance creates YouTube sensation
Loch Ness 'couldn't believe my eyes'
: rhino death only 13 wide
announces Potter

Use this mush to create another list of 5-10 words, anagram style. Just scan the word mush and see if your eyes pick out words automatically. (delete the letters you use from the mush as you go):

tub
level
wordy
ration
hint
bees
wreath
Yuletide

's dance cees sensa
Loch Ness 'coudn' ei my '
: o d only 13 wide

With the remaining mush, fabricate two or three words. Work those phascinating phonemes!

chonless
desnal
moudo

Now you have a word list! Create a poem using as many of those words as you can, plus one of the original headlines, only slightly altered if at all.

Such rare and chonless masses
to sort the desnal rations.
On the level: this zoo your relative
videographer sizes up is for the bees.
A wreath of bees can outwild
the moudo tunes you only hint ‘round
come Yuletide. Rumors a cadet hired
just to tub you. And you, wordier
than the Rowling Journals. You afraid
to admit to a smitten rhino,
its death that leaves only 13 worldwide.

Anna Fulford and I Perform an Emotional Investigation of Hybridization

2007-05-24T09:57:00.000-07:00

Because you would not check me, check
And mate, I have taken it upon my self, my
Self and mate. At cross purposes, at a
Simple cross roads somewhere
Etherly between a hare lip lean
Teaser and a mean son of a

Because you would not make me
Untrumpeted, unseen, I am no longer your
No longer lounging in the doorway
No longer found upon your parquet
Yours, Basset Bunny

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

There is an untrained way of assuming same genus.
Tractus: dragging, drawing, pulling. Traits protrude.
Tug these. There is a dare in it and I must be brave
to suggest it. If I am usually two feet off the ground,
today I can feel the raspy bits of upper-sky.
I am characteristically indifferent to mingling. But this
is different. Confront me with a mule. Pit me against a liger.
I’ll swallow them all, master their marks, make it cute.

Anna Fulford and I Pose the Question: What is a Pookey & Can We Poem It?

2007-05-24T09:21:00.000-07:00

If it were not not a mistake
lately it undulates outward
and even the cat senses its

anguish. Underneath its ultra-
gloss its mossy innards simply
be, simply do. If its lips were

any the more brazen. It gazes
unto itself a whole new limb-set.
If an aerial view did it more

savory, it shook to have it
meted out. Oh and it understood
every single sentence, sentenced

itself foremost. Sees it swatting
back the ambiance, tries
to control it as it webs which

way but down. Step away
from it, from recording it propped,
mammalled so. It has seen

the whole world, like a papier-
mache muscle, split side-
ways and tongued out.

Dearest Trull, My Harlot Head

Like anemone, fake star face

limned in bioluminesce

For whom I carried all this awe
an ocean salad more
I'd like to whack you, jug-jug
My dirty jinx, my bippy weed
so waverly the ocean floor.
The gin, the booze, the night
night !pow! Medusa muse-ic
leash, or un, cop-on
your head sank nomina
well-wet for a blessed second
Hardly feasible, a daffodil on its
home line, down drawn
vice drawn like a yak to butter

Never Again,
Your Erstwhile Lover

2007-05-10T13:26:00.000-07:00

Anna Fulford and I Write in Praise of Flam Chen Stilt-Walking Damsels

2007-05-10T12:21:00.000-07:00

A tree-lined

stultifying mid-less

I took her by the hand

Was looking up, up and then

cloud drift sent us out beyond

just pushed everything sideways

and the building was no longer holding

I thought it would be hard to shake so many

stories, hard to eat with hoofs instead of hands.

To Whom of the Gemstone Brigands:

While you hoof your way, triangulating your faith,

I will enclose the Trifocal Motto for you to think on.

It’s the mono-chromatics that get me, and I can see

you feel almost the same. And it’s a wonder

you don’t take advantage of flexible displays.

I don’t mean to insist so, but a tagline

could be just what you need. Imagine:

all the people on the interstate and your one

exquisitely jewel-toned flashing bulb

making them shiver at the mere intimation of botany.