Bjork

Necessity Defense of Institutional Memory

So the free may remain free
     say the nightmare is
     the dream
so we are preserved
     he who believes takes a life
so a life may be saved
     the girl becomes an object
so the greatest devastation occurs
     let go her fingers    their slim cleave
so I may be replaced
by a machine    which in its violence    behaves
more like me
     the longer you live    the more these lies
     come alive
so the past splits in two:
     one stays in the past and dies
one past shapeshifts    walks with you.

CAMILLE RANKINE

An Old Star

An old star ripped a new hole

glared out from its peek-a-boo

curtain as if to say the audience

was too young and shallow to witness

such a surprise performance.

“Such a predictable thing”

we heard the stars chatter

“this sequel of earthly events.”

- Debbie Calverley

Kyrielle

29 ways to stay creative

Fifty People One Question

He Could Have Been

a truck driver.  Bono.

I'm just saying.

An ordinary guy in sunglasses
and a leather jacket

filling his truck with gas

under the bright yellow canopy

marked Shell.

He stands like he owns the joint

chin at a cocky angle

as if to say

bring it on.

The glasses hiding his real

smile 

an eye grin that speaks his joy

of the open road.

I wonder if he's on the road as much

as a rock star

if he sings while he drives

if his wife takes out the garbage

if his kids really know him

like he knows the road.

The light turns green

I've been staring.

He licks his lips

flashes a peace sign

as I pull away

reflected in the mirror

of his big black shades.

- Debbie Calverley

My Apocalypse

My Apocalypse

A woman writes to ask
how far along I am
with my apocalypse.
What will you give me
if I tell?
An origami fish
made from a dollar bill.
After the apocalypse,
we will all be in a band.
We will understand each other
perfectly.
             *
"It's alright" and
"It doesn't matter."
Let "it" stand
for nothing.
             *
A weathered, fleshy bicyclist
wearing bunny ears
and a tie-dyed shirt
says "Zoom"
as she coasts past

Rae Armantrout

We amuse ourselves in repetition. One desire or another
      leads to self-hypnosis, the dazed
      critics in sensual display.
             And yet love streams across the open towers
where I wait, holed up in a question of mourning while the litigation proceeds,

-- Gene Frumkin, from "Blueprint for a New Planet," Hambone 18

On Love Poems

On Love Poems
 
I'd like to write a poem in which
the hero with the lazy eye
falls close to love with a woman
standing under a stop sign
in the worst kind of weather,

falls close to love with the outline
of ordinary thighs under a rain soaked
skirt, his eye sidling up
towards her ample waist,
plain face and her hat, worn

at an awkward angle. And I would like
the hero to come toward her,
step in a puddle as he crosses the road,
and I would like the whole
of the blemished world to cease

existing between them: the pocked
concrete sidewalk, the whorled
knots of the trees, the nail holes
in the telephone poles, the crevices
and cuts - smoothed over.

Then I would like storybooks rewritten
to reflect the fact that no one is whole,
the endings left wide open, the possibility
of loss always there, hanging
like a street light.

We think we know the world and imagine
there is order in it, but this turning
the corner into love is as much a myth
as anything - the man with the lazy eye
and the women who walk by him.

Still, what astounds me most in this
isn't our tireless wanting, the old
college try. It isn't the half-life
we try not to fall into. It's
how we find each other

remarkable, despite the absence 
of wisdom or humour or pity, despite
the absence of attributes we cannot name.
All of us wanting just enough and searching
the pockets of the world to find it.

Aislinn Hunter

Ahhhhhh..............

Inevitable

Silence descends
like black lace
over a face in mourning.

We cheat and scramble
to avoid mortality
throw dice against prevailing winds
defy all storm warnings
stand out in the gale
stubborn as a shore to sea
that digs and bitches
with the salt of demand -

all that has been cast up
must be returned.

Moi

My New Mantra

Conversion Figure

I spent a long time falling
toward your slender, tremulous face—
a long time slipping through stars
as they shattered, through sticky clouds
with no confetti in them.
I fell toward earth's stony colors
until they brightened, until I could see
the green and white stripes of party umbrellas
propped on your daisied lawn.
From above, you looked small
as an afterthought, something lightly brushed in.
Beside you, blush-pink plates
served up their pillowy cupcakes, and your rosy hems
swirled round your dark head—
I fell and fell.
I fell toward the pulse in your thighs,
toward the cool flamingo of your slip
fluttering past your knees—
Out of God's mouth I fell
like a piece of ripe fruit
toward your deepening shadow.
Girl on the lawn without sleeves, knees bare even of lotion,
time now to strip away everything
you try to think about yourself.
Put down your little dog.
Stop licking the cake from your fingers.
Before today, what darkness
did you let into your flesh? What stillness
did you cast into the soil?
Lift up your head.
Time to enter yourself.
Time to make your own sorrow.
Time to unbrighten and discard
even your slenderness.

MARY SZYBIST

Happy Valentine's Day