Saturday, January 24, 2015

In the New Century I Gave You My Name - Alex Dimitrov


The orchestras kept playing. They had a gin fix.
Why in this fog I still see you I can’t say.
With your beard and high darkness around me.
In your small machine many messages
and faces that once let you in.
The ocean drowns time all the time, slowly.
Everyone had a birthday and buried something.
I was coming from one person and into another
when really what are we: some accident.
In this show where we all have a favorite.
What we have is a taste for that thing we can feel,
will not say. Some of us wanted more
and in all the wrong ways too.
There was of course an escape…
in a year, on a street, in some near distant past
when what had us was childish and flame.
And maybe it would have been different
and maybe it would have been this.
Do you remember my hair when I met you?
Much longer. The violins ended it well.
Outside, the city continued to tease us.
Hurricanes came, storms couldn’t please us:
it was all very fast and beautifully made.
You ask why I’m thinking of death
but I’m thinking of you and it’s fleeting.
We were terrible, unrelenting and everywhere then.
All I know is I can’t stop writing about people.
So much happened. I can’t stop writing about love.



ALEX DIMITROV

Sunday, January 11, 2015

Pine

Pine

She opens her heart, a heart
full of needles 


and stands at the sink
pulling flesh from bone. 


She waits and watches
the broth for boiling 


and wonders if
she'll see him again. He, 


the stack of wobbly
coins. He, the train 


shaking the rails. The pine
bent heavy with cones 


whose boughs
reach down to sweep 


the roof this morning as
she opens the door 


and casts her hope
on the new snow, but 


finds the tracks
on her threshold are stars 


from raccoons
last night casing the house. 


LAURA VAN PROOYEN
Our House Was on Fire 

Knowledge of Snow

Looking out at the sea
her heart pangs
to the endless beat of blue.

The tips of her fingers
hold secrets, words like frozen -
her toes remember squishing
into boots, while teeth recall
the chatter of an open mouth
the gasp of inhaling January
all at once

Back home, 'tis the season
of stalled cars, frozen tires
plugged driveways, the way
a sun looks warm but isn't.
She knows looking out at the sea
her heart will pang
to the endless beat of white
always longing for the beat of blue.

- Debbie Calverley

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Je Suis Charlie

One more in the name of love.




Friday, January 2, 2015


This film, like many others,
claims we'll enjoy life
now that we've come through 


difficulties, dangers
so incredibly condensed
that they must be over. 


If the hardship
was undergone by others,
we identified with them 


and, if the danger was survived
by simpler life forms,
they're included in this moment 


when the credits roll
and we don't know
when to stand


RAE ARMANTROUT