Snow Bank of the Year - March 28, 2014

at my parents place

Collect Call - Ash Bowen

Somewhere out there, an operator plugged in
            the wire of your voice to the switchboard

of Arkansas where I am
            happy to accept the charges—an act so antique

                         I think of Sputnik beeping
overhead, lovers petting in Buicks

            and glowing with the green of radium dials.
Bur what you've called to say is lost

            in the line's wreckage of crackle and static.
The night you went away

            the interstate glowed red beneath the flaring
                         fins of your father's Cadillac.

Now this collect call
            from outer space & what you've called to say
                         is clear at last: Among stars

lovers come and go easy as you please. It's the gravity
            of Earth that makes letting go so hard.

ASH BOWEN

Politicians discussing global warming Sculpture: Issac Cordal

Immunity (an older poem of mine)

                             That night the Poets declared

                                   we were no longer free to dream;

                                   I dreamt of you 

                                   even though I knew

                                   I would die for it.

                                   _____________

                                   Debbie Calverley

It's Raining Inside James Schuyler

Not tearing the umbrellas inside out
not even blowing them side to side
just getting wetness wetter
and then the rain dwindles
but the sun has a shimmer
like it's missing the rain
and every once in a while
the trees in the park let down
a drenching
like they have to admit:
Oh I almost forgot about the rain.
So many Aprils.
And then the rain is back
in strings
like hair from a horse's tail.
Oh good. Weather everywhere.
Inescapable weather.
Even in everybody's
buttonholes: weather.
And someone has put an umbrella over
Gertrude Stein
in Bryant Park
where she squats
like a toad.
Blossoms drift past and cigarette
ash in the rain
and somewhere in a pond
koi swirl against koi like
they're rehearsing
to be a kimono.
The koi look
like they've been scrubbed
by a brick
which is why I won't leave
this little metal table
with its legs
modeled on insects
among insects.
And now it's raining
in the sunlight.
And the afternoon has a new
nip in it.
Chill April.
Rain lands on my neck
and slips further,
little geraniums of rain.
That's all right.
Long ago a rain drop
fell from a leaky ceiling
into my eye
and I lived for that.
And then walking not slow
there is my friend
decades since we've seen each other
and he knows me instantly.
The same raincoat, he says.

LEE UPTON

Now this is cake.....

River - Forrest Gander

River

     from Eiko & Koma

Taut current, throughstricken
with night, starlit,

and both of them
facing off. En-
igma tipped to
distortion— *

She floats on swirled
obsidian current. Their
sightlines swim across
each other. Stars
don't look away
from the unfolding,

the going alluvial,
she against his
tenderness.
 
*cutaway:
          to the blanks in her face-slots

FORREST GANDER

A Blast from the Past!

For instance - The Chandelier Lounge - Cosmo

La la las veeeeeegas

Ok, this place is over the top, you just have to close your eyes and pretend it's not real because it isn't!  Madness I say, madness!  Love the orange bits though....