 | ||
| ||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Diana in the Winter Wind
Strict tincture and septic
Precision, scrolled
Against tableau of gliding leaves--
Turn photograph
Of encircling terns down
Onto teak, spin canvas
Of sea and bleary wings
To vacant plaster
All that we brace and distill
Is ultimately bound,
Sold as ornament,
Deposition of ruin,
Derivation of what we
Once adored and the tenets
By which we survived
And those rare shapes,
Those that accept the eye,
Leave the page blank,
And amid these toothlike
Slits an image, elsewhere
Projection of mire folded
Beneath us all,
Footmarks dashing away
To foamy curve
Dwindled to sand,
Flight from lakeshore
And species etched out,
Lacquered with rain
Taxonomy displaced by taxidermy
This is what remains to us:
Plumage aged down by dust,
Reedy Bach flutes
From a weather-tilting barn
Down the channel,
Adornment and division,
Sheen of feather erratic
And hidden in absolute light,
Circumpolar passion
Unflamed below
On these terrestrial routes,
Inscription of autograph and skeleton,
Leaving swans little more
Than ornithological arithmetic,
Expanse and tonnage
Of endless flight,
Suffering profit
And its consequences,
Annotation of ruined anatomies,
Of span and mere physique,
Corpses weightless under
Scorched riggings of Nile And Salamis, fragment
Of shelter ruptured and haunted,
Animated by violence
As one small form goes free,
Scarred snout and brow
Of battle-callused shark,
Veering and hunting Perpetually,
Discarded from rest and propelled
Under waters gone white
With reflections then shadows Of flocks that orbit to
Coast and again out to sea.
Ernest Hilbert's poems and criticism have appeared in The Boston Review, Pleiades, The American Scholar, Verse, American Writing, Fence, The Cortland Review, and Slope. He is the Director of the Literature Section at nowCulture.com and edits the biannual print edition. He is also North American liaison for the Parisian literary magazine Upstairs at Duroc and is on the staff of the Contemporary Poetry Review, www.cprw.com. He received his doctorate in English Literature from Oxford University, where he earlier completed a Master's Degree in English Literature and founded the Oxford Quarterly. He lives in New York City.
Ronald Palmer
The Logic of Secrecy (Long Version)
"Remember, O do you remember?" Etheridge Knight
The secret crystallizes the self and all the secrets the self contains. Finally the self bursts
with secrets.
With each cultivated corner of the body; especially the corners starving for attention:
containing all the worn out secrets:
The secrets with which we ached: dull and invisible: sunk in the toes:
Striving for a potency of cadence. That's why the toes love the warm sand.
The secret is capable of busting the delicate tulip of glass
With the strength of its absence.
Without this invisible maiming: feeble is the secret: Afraid Of Itself
Where trust is less raped. Place elation's tormented hand
Near the eventual branding: liability burnt in: eyelike behind the soft inside
Of the forehead: forever unforgivable.
The secret appears catlike floating orange conduit
Massaging the air: Paw-batting your hair.
Only the locked Psych Ward of the brain
By the force of a drifting universe can clean a body's kept excess.
Only one black square: of night: sitting on the chilly toilet:
Tells of the lover who escaped for his internet date.
Looking out at the sky: I study the absurdity of my body compared to the stars.
I'm checking to see if the sky is snowing if: if: ifs:
Seeing if it's snowing down all the ifs.
Ronald Palmer is a graduate of N.Y.U.'s Master's Program and has a Ph.D. from S.U.N.Y. Binghamton. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Green Mountain Review, Many Mountains Moving, Slope, and elsewhere.
Juliana Spahr
There are these things:
cells, the movement of cells and the division of cells
and the general beating of circulation
hands, body, feet
and skin that surrounds hands, body, feet
this is a shape
a shape of blood beating and cells dividing.
But outside of this shape is space.
There is space between the hands.
There is space between the hands and space around the hands.
There is space around the hands and space in the room.
There is space in the room that surrounds the shapes of everyone's hands, body, and feet and the cells and the beating contained within.
There is space, an uneven space, made by this pattern of bodies.
This space goes in and out of everyone's bodies
as everyone with lungs breathes the space in and out
as everyone with lungs breathes the space between the hands in and out
as everyone with lungs breathes the space between the hands and the space around the hands in and out
as everyone with lungs breathes the space between the hands and the space around the hands and the space of the room in and out
as everyone with lungs breathes the space between the hands and the space around the hands and the space of the room and the space of the building that surrounds the room in and out
as everyone with lungs breathes the space between the hands and the space around the hands and the space of the room and the space of the building that surrounds the room and the space of the neighborhoods nearby in and out
as everyone with lungs breathes the space between the hands and the space around the hands and the space of the room and the space of the building that surrounds the room and the space of the neighborhoods nearby and the space of the cities in and out
as everyone with lungs breathes the space between the hands and the space around the hands and the space of the room and the space of the building that surrounds the room and the space of the neighborhoods nearby and the space of the cities and the space of the regions in and out
as everyone with lungs breathes the space between the hands and the space around the hands and the space of the room and the space of the building that surrounds the room and the space of the neighborhoods nearby and the space of the cities and the space of the regions and the space of the nations in and out
as everyone with lungs breathes the space between the hands and the space around the hands and the space of the room and the space of the building that surrounds the room and the space of the neighborhoods nearby and the space of the cities and the space of the regions and the space of the nations and the space of the continents and islands in and out
as everyone with lungs breathes the space between the hands and the space around the hands and the space of the room and the space of the building that surrounds the room and the space of the neighborhoods nearby and the space of the cities and the space of the regions and the space of the nations and the space of the continents and islands and the space of the oceans in and out
as everyone with lungs breathes the space between the hands and the space around the hands and the space of the room and the space of the building that surrounds the room and the space of the neighborhoods nearby and the space of the cities and the space of the regions and the space of the nations and the space of the continents and islands and the space of the oceans and the space of the troposphere in and out
as everyone with lungs breathes the space between the hands and the space around the hands and the space of the room and the space of the building that surrounds the room and the space of the neighborhoods nearby and the space of the cities and the space of the regions and the space of the nations and the space of the continents and islands and the space of the oceans and the space of the troposphere and the space of the stratosphere in and out
as everyone with lungs breathes the space between the hands and the space around the hands and the space of the room and the space of the building that surrounds the room and the space of the neighborhoods nearby and the space of the cities and the space of the regions and the space of the nations and the space of the continents and islands and the space of the oceans and the space of the troposphere and the space of the stratosphere and the space of the mesosphere in and out
then in this everything turning and small being breathed in and out by everyone with lungs during all the moments
all of it entering in and out
the entering in and out of the space of the mesosphere
in the entering in and out of the space of the stratosphere
in the entering in and out of the space of the troposphere
in the entering in and out of the space of the oceans
in the entering in and out of the space of the continents and islands
in the entering in and out of the space of the nations
in the entering in and out of the space of the regions
in the entering in and out of the space of the cities
in the entering in and out of the space of the neighborhoods nearby
in the entering in and out of the space of the building
in the entering in and out of the space of the room
in the entering in and out of the space around the hands in the room
in the entering in and out of the space between the hands
how connected we are with everyone
the space of everyone that has just been inside of one another mixing inside of one another with nitrogen and oxygen and water vapor and argon and carbon dioxide and suspended dust spores and bacteria
how lovely and how doomed this connection of everyone with lungs.
Juliana Spahr is the author of Fuck You-Aloha-I Love You (Wesleyan University Press), Everybody's Autonomy (University of Alabama Press), and Response (Sun & Moon Press). She edits the journal Chain with Jena Osman.
Dean Young
Is This Mic On?
Back when the drugs were almost free,
a bunch of us used to meet by the river
until the river turned unapproachable
then everyone fled to the burbs.
Not me.
That's how I became known
for impeccable control
that is more an episodic loss thereof,
how I'm said to just let things drop
where they are wont,
plangent, moony, uncoaxable things.
Now there's a whole school for it:
illuminating the rate at which intention
fails, the diurnal twists of even the simplest
wish, orbits yanked out of whack
by their own orbitular force
into the realer world, the one
no one can withstand without crying out
in a way that goes unheard.
How rarely our punishment fits
our crime, cases of mayhem met
with just a spank but steal a cake
and get sent to the guillotine although
it hardly matters. What matters is
all are punished one way or another,
put through something, even death,
shadows thrown about the room,
else darkness will never fit into the night.
Your lover loves another, your father
thinks he's still a flyer, no one likes
your novel and you don't even like
your novel. So farewell
or should that be hello? I can't say
I'm afraid of death but I can't say
I'm less afraid of living,
both go on whatever we do like fungus,
which, I must admit, gives me pause.
I can still see my poor old man crouched
with the identification guide, something
I swore I'd never do. Later,
I'd have to sue his keeper
who bilked him into some uranium scheme,
a keening I hear to this day
like the national anthems of countries
I will never go. How could anyone
think of that as music?
The Return of Kid Pyro
I arrived back into the dark city
way in advance of the platoon
with just some safety flares to my name
and the red dress. Plenty of parking spaces
which was suspicious for somewhere where
they'd bragged they'd exhumed God
or at least His receptionist.
First I needed to slice off
the plastic wrist tags from the Center
and throw them into the River Sperm
to break the curse that chiaroscuro'd
my mind like soot from burning retreads
left over from the crash site.
I don't care what anyone says, the wound
is always bigger than what causes it.
Then I went to the zoo
and a damn sad zoo it was,
one bear dying of tooth decay,
some masturbating monkey
and the antler display where,
before they put me away,
they'd been photographed announcing their candidacy,
the doctors and lawyers and furniture warehouse kings
trying to convince us meaning was semantic
while getting their paws into our pants.
I'm still not sure what my role was
in the new global economy
which may be why my only friend
was a batting practice pitcher
until he drank himself out of the rotation
and turned stooly. Now our field
is full of stabbed tackling dummies
at the old school where they've deactivated
the intruder alarm because, I guess,
everything worth taking has been took,
the idol's eye replaced with gum.
I wondered if she'd recognize me
is why I'd come, and if she didn't,
I still had my flares
and the red red red red dress.
Daylit Stars
I don't remember if this was before or after
the accident. When I looked away
from the brightness, visibility was scarred,
parts in a grid, parts exploded.
After the cats run down their choice,
the herd ripples to a calm.
First brought to the knees then suffocated
then the chest popped open within easy distance.
I can't remember if this was before or after.
A man wiping his hands in a red rag.
Weeds burning by the side of the road.
An anesthesiologist with an unpronounceable name.
When the gods came among the mortals
to beg and hitchhike, they tried
to look like filthy runaways
so when the pomegranate was twisted apart,
the juice would drip through the dirt on their hands
revealing all we could bear of radiance.
Yeah, right.
I don't know about you
but I think I've had enough of gods and lions.
They'll never stop watching us.
And the bees who are never lost.
And the dance of stamping out fires.
And the bodies making love in the smoke.
And the wheel that spins so fast,
everything disappears.
Lives of the Side-Kicks
My job was to come along later
and, you know, mop up.
At least that was the popular description.
They told me I was made of carbonized acrobat
and bent nails lined the altar of my birth
and maybe my stem cells were alien.
What could that mean?
Would all be revealed as the season flashbacked?
The critics weren't exactly ignoring me
but they weren't not either.
You think god kisses everyone?
On the mouth?
I felt like I was made of light.
Difficult to know what genre.
Some of the larger birds of prey
were having trouble finding landing sites
which played hell with the reconnaissance planes.
They're building a new town
right beside the old town.
How do you think that makes it feel?
I wasn't there when my friend shot his horse
but it is as if the story were my own.
Dean Young's most recent book is SKID (University of Pittsburgh Press).
Copyright © 2000 The New School