Oh, souls

Oh, what do you see, you souls!

So much, so much

Queer wing-ed

Angela Simione, untitled (sisters 6)

It hurts me.

Easter Rabbit is here

Viscerally exquisite. Publishing Genius has taken care to do justice to Christine Sajecki’s amazing artwork for the cover, not to mention Joseph Young’s words inside. Feels good, cool to the touch, nice raised lettering. This is a wonderful thing to own.

As I mentioned before, Adam Robinson has made a dare to read this book in one sitting– “whoever reads the 3,000 words in one sitting, can email me for a full refund. My thinking is that the stories satiate after reading three or four, overwhelm after seven or eight.” I’m taking him up on it now, 1:33 PM PST. Will post when finished.

–I will post comments as I go, though not too directly about the texts, and I don’t want to spoilerize anyone.

–“It was impossible to understand, the humid cloud of words.”

–Wonder about extra credit for reading the same ones again and again.

–Cartogram feels exactly like the best kind of travelling.

–Oh, Light of No Understanding.

–The Gossipers seems complete, perfect.

–Finished Easter Rabbit at 2:20 PM PST. Not sure what to say that does justice, that doesn’t seem trite, or flippant. Just that these writings do what art does, encompass the familiar, the emotion of everyday life fully and without artifice. A pan in the snow, a quarter on the back of a hand– I had no idea such things could make me feel so much.

Easter Rabbit also includes 2 more collections, Deep Falls and God Not Otherwise. I’m on to Deep Falls now.

–Disclose/Agape together with Moses just blows me away.

–Finished Deep Falls. This is a cohesive place/relationship narrative paced in micros. Imagistic, harsh, lovely, all that. Really good.

God Not Otherwise

–Some certainties, with an interlude. Excellence.

and 5  lines about Baltimore as intense as the rest of the book combined.

Finis, 2:50 PM PST.

Lucia, Luis, and the Wolf

It was like he didn’t talk about everything.

During the night, all the sounds are louder.

Check London

Derek White, mural, Hoxton/Shoreditch

i thought about going in to the Salvador Dali museum, but again, 17 quid to get in & it looked like some half-ass private collection trying to cash in on the wax museum spillovers…London is definitely touristy, like the real campy Times Square/Jeckyl & Hyde shit but even more tasteless & widespread…attractions/rides dedicated to medieval atrocities or the black plague or torture or dead celebrities, etc…& everything cost money…& has lines of eastern European tourists spilling out the doors…crossed over Westminster bridge, saw Westminster Abbey…then over to Buckingham palace…just happened to see the changing of guards, i guess, where the guards come & switch places, right?..it wasn’t that exciting & they weren’t wearing those tall furry hats…walked into Hyde park…then cut back into the West End…through Mayfair [rich & uppity] up to Oxford street…lots of big name stores, like a 5th avenue, but crappier…up into Marylebone…then down into Soho…

 

Heat lightning

I started writing from the point of view of a small, fragile child but then at some point I found myself describing her neighbors, this grotesquely healthy and fortunate family who lived across the street. I found the true voice for the story in this family’s youngest daughter who was attracted to Wren even as her family, particularly the father, feared her. Both attitudes, the attraction and the fear, are very strange and so, I think, very real. –Kathy Fish

Kazimir Malevich

excerpt from Wren
Kathy Fish

One evening our mother joined in the games instead of making supper. Father grabbed her and held her tight around her waist and she struggled to free herself. My brothers and I yanked on Father’s arms and legs, screeching and laughing, as the fireflies lifted out of the grass around our ankles.

Mother stopped struggling and Father loosened his grip and we all turned to see Wren and her parents on their nightly walk. Mother gathered us all around her, hushing us. We were panting and sweaty and unable to keep still.

Father picked up the forgotten football and smacked it against his palm. Mr. Chu nodded and Father nodded back. Wren’s mother glanced at our mother. Some maternal understanding, like heat lightning, flashed in the space between them. I couldn’t see Wren’s eyes, but it seemed she was looking at me. I wanted to cross the street and touch her white cheek. I wanted to tell her my name.

How to write love songs

I just see things around me and try to rationalize them as we all do. I’m more influenced by the current state of culture and its complexities than I am other writers. –Mike Aho

Topical

Try not to blink

A rose is most

A rose is most fragrant when it is one-quarter to two-thirds open and has been slightly warmed by morning sun.

In the category of grace, of things undeserved

via radish king, plus some other things

The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenaline but is, rather, the gradual, life long construction of a state of wonder and serenity. –Glenn Gould

Their dreams they dreamed awake

an elephant’s eyes smile -
mountain cherry blossoms
–Buson

Easter at Christmas

This moved me:

As does everything from Joseph Young.

Publishing Genius is offering a couple of promotions for his book, Easter Rabbit. For the next five pre-orders, they’ll send out Matthew Simmons’s book, A Jello Horse, which I haven’t read, but sounds pretty good. It might be too late for this, I don’t know. I don’t even know if I ordered in time or not.

The other deal is a dare. They dare you to read all 3K words of Easter Rabbit in one sitting, and if you can do it, you get your money back. That’s it. Just do it, tell them you did it, plus 50 words of what you thought of it all (which they’ll post on their site) and you get your money back. They think you can’t do it, because, according to publisher Adam Robinson, “It’s too long, even though it’s so short.”

I believe him, but I’m a sucker for a dare. So we’ll see.

cover art by Christine Sajecki

We are not freezers of bears

These Things
Peter Davis

I’ve been meaning to say something.
I’d love to go on and on about how artists aren’t conduits
or special. We are not freezers of bears. We aren’t
shaman or conjurers and nothing we do is mysterious.
I could just go on and on about how people are like
“it just flowed through me” and “it happened” and
“enlightenment” and, you know, the general
mystery thing and super good, good thing. It’s like
everyone is special. I mean, like artists
as prophets and whatnot, getting all deep
in the belly of the goodness shark, gnashing away at injustice
and silliness, being better, being more than, being
the Jones’. O how I hate the idea of Talent and Exceptional
and Gifted and Blessed and Touched. I could go on and on.
Or, I’ve also been thinking about family and how it happens
that one has one and one lives with one and so on. But then
other things happen, like not going on and on. Like not
saying these things. Like not anything happening.
At those moments I end up slightly confused, looking
at myself in a mirror and feeling like a dead god.

The leaves on the paths ran like rats

Annysa Ng

Tea
Wallace Stevens

When the elephant’s-ear in the park
Shriveled in frost,
And the leaves on the paths
Ran like rats,
Your lamp light fell
On shining pillows
Of sea shades and sky shades
Like umbrellas in Java.

Stockings

Handbook for the Woman Driver: A Must for the Woman at the Wheel – 1955

Clothes and Beauty En Route (page 173)

Stockings: Practical as American women are, they often have a phobia against wearing stockings suitable for the occasion. For everyday wear, even with walking shoes, women buy hose far more sheer than what was considered evening weight just a few years ago. Have some sheer nylons for dressy occasions, but for the trip consider a medium-weight stocking (45-15 is good), knowing it is sheer enough to flatter your legs, yet able to take strain. If stockings are too short or skimpy, their tops may cut into your thighs as you drive, and they won’t be long enough for you to garter them to your girdle without pulling uncomfortably.

So

Why Are Your Poems So Dark?
Linda Pastan

Isn’t the moon dark too,
most of the time?

And doesn’t the white page
seem unfinished

without the dark stain
of alphabets?

When God demanded light,
he didn’t banish darkness.

Instead he invented
ebony and crows

and that small mole
on your left cheekbone.

Or did you mean to ask
“Why are you sad so often?”

Say farewell

Letman

Dance Dance Industrial Revolution

celebrate Steampunk and the age of Victorian sci-fi

Soft white

Am I an animal
          able to distinquish
                    beams of light
                             like music this moonlit night
                                      eyes closed

–Mizuhara Shion (trans. Hiroaki Sato)

Counterpoint

con⋅tra⋅pun⋅tal [kon-truh-puhn-tl] – composed of two or more relatively independent melodies sounded together.

Elizabeth Murray "Empire"

“Jorif offers us a contrapuntal approach to the usual history of slavery and law in early modern America. . . . We are more often engaged in arguments over whether an action is just than over whether an injustice has been done. Jorif’s study. . . . gives us a new handle on this problem by positing, among his observations, that the community that arises out of, or coalesces around, acts of loving forgiveness are just in ways that the law never approaches.” – Prof. Jon-Christian Suggs, review of How Slave Narratives Influenced American Literature by Rolando Leodore Jorif

Might as well milk it

Kangaroo
by Cami Park (me)

If I were a kangaroo
I’d have to draw the line
somewhere,
like at beer commercials,
sharing trailers with koala bears,
or writing poetry for money.

Thompson Yulidjirri

Otherwise,
I’d be a downright whore.
Might as well milk it,
I’d say.

Under dusty lashes, the long glance

Sarah Ball

I hear the oriole’s always-grieving voice,
And the rich summer’s welcome loss I hear
In the sickle’s serpentine hiss
Cutting the corn’s ear tightly pressed to ear.
And the short skirts of the slim reapers
Fly in the wind like holiday pennants,
The clash of joyful cymbals, and creeping
From under dusty lashes, the long glance.

I don’t expect love’s tender flatteries,
In premonition of some dark event,
But come, come and see this paradise
Where together we were blessed and innocent.

–Anna Akhmatova

Breaking my heart, shrinking my head

Listening to Miniature Tigers today:

Find whatever is hiding

Caitlin Schwerin

The Sky

I like it with nothing. Is it
what I was? What I will be?
I look out there by the hour,
so clear, so sure. I could
smile, or frown—still nothing.

Be my father, be my mother,
great sleep of blue; reach
far within me; open doors,
find whatever is hiding; invite it
for many clear days in the sun.

When I turn away I know
you are there. We won’t forget
each other: every look is a promise.
Others can’t tell what you say
when it’s the blue voice, when
you come to the window and look for me.

Your word arches over
the roof all day. I know it
within my bowed head where
the other sky listens.
You will bring me
everything when the time comes.

by Willliam Stafford

Alive, but dead

Peter Callesen "Alive, but Dead" 2006

A few years later, Lisa’s mom took me to where my mom was buried. She’d planted petunias. I could never remember how to get back there after that, but I remember the stone, pressed flat into the earth, read “MOTHER.”

excerpt from Lisa Duncan’s Mom
by Cami Park (me)

originally published in Pindeldyboz

The world is a fragmentary place

Rug
by Kevin White

It all started with an image out of the corner of my eye. There was no corresponding smell. The sounds of someone running. Laughing. crying.

She was Italian through and through.

Move ‘A’ off of the defined space. Move it towards the wall and turn it sideways to fit. Drag ‘B’ off (towards the double door). Leave ‘B’ positioned parallel to the transept shouldar 12e.

All remaining objects, lint, dirt, are to be removed. Begin rolling article 13c. towards the main door. Begin by rolling a tube approx.; 2″ in diameter. Upon finishing the rolling, tie 13c. with 10 guage steel wire at 25″ intervals.

via Calamari Press

Awake as the moon

Christine Lim Simpson

The sprinkler outside my window sounds like a spitting cat.

Be reassured

Souther Salazar

Something about jellyfish

I just like this.

Ben Grace

No excuses.

No joy

There is no joy in hesitancy between us. It doesn’t matter to me if you feel as if you would like to suck the juices of my heart like a tangerine. But if you want to suck the juices of my heart like a tangerine, that matters. Because I care about what you want more than I care about how you feel.

Jacob Collins

Which is more beautiful?

Phillip Glass by Chuck Close

after life

whatever beautiful factory
trucks forever passing
we stumble into half-attending

–Cami Park (me)
previously published in elimae

Funny/Scary

There’s something dangerous about what’s funny. Jarring and disconcerting. There is a connection between funny and scary.  –Christopher Walken

What if a whisk

Phillip Toledano

Manic Whisk

Let me out of this drawer–

I don’t belong here in this rabble
of misunderstood gadgets, spatulas,
and sad, hopeful corkscrews.

I am an artist–

Free me, and I will whip
heaping mountains of cream,
beat eggs within a living inch,
create meringues the likes of which
would have driven Van Gogh to burn
his precious Sunflowers. Picasso at
his most cubistic has nothing on me,
my arcs and twirls and brilliant frothing mounds.

This darkness is not worthy of me–

Dali weeps.

Umbrella window

View from life

Breaking my mind

jenszi, Bryan Shutmaat

Escape

Bryan Shutmaat

Legs twisted in fitted sheets. Body/breath heavy on me. Get away so far away.

I barely know you

but I think I’ve learned enough.