Scrimshaw

At Night
Matthew Shindell

Though I wouldn’t tell her
I see tattooed ships
across her breasts,

hanging
from the main,
a sailor appears in her sleep
and hands me scrimshaw
wrapped in butcher’s paper.
Until morning we arrange
shells into sentences
that I send away
as ransom notes.

3 monks and a priest

I wrote Last Meals of the Saints for for every year. I’m not meaning to hog the 16th century or anything, but Crispin had a contributor drop out at the last second, plus I was inspired by Henry VIII‘s mass execution of 3 monks and a priest in that year, 1535.

Also, Travis Kurowski was my excellent HTMLG Secret Santa for X-mas, and he got me a subscription to a poetry journal I wasn’t familiar with, The Lumberyard, and I just got Issue #5 in the mail, and it’s a sumptuous, gorgeous, letter-pressed thing. This particular issue is dedicated to truckers, and it reminds me a bit of Forklift, Ohio (my favorite) sensibility-wise. A CD from Seclusion is enclosed -Three Bridges -Hostile Impetus. I haven’t listened to it yet, because honestly, the whole thing is just too pretty to take apart. With poetry by Brett Eugene Ralph, Kathleen McGookey, Dan Pinkerton, Yikilo Hiskiss, Tiffany Turner, M. Bartley Siegel, and Derek Mong individually and carefully formatted, it’s a complete treat to see and feel and read.

Hula, hula

Witches have no wit, said the magician who was weak. Hula, hula, said the witches. —Norman Mailer, An American Dream

Heart like a hot potato

Vodpod videos no longer available.Ramona Falls, I Say Fever

This is the kind of bullshit you want

freshness guaranteed

FRiGG‘s Law & Order Issue is ripped straight from the television and filled to bursting with lurid, inventive fiction and poetry from folks like Arlene Ang, Roxane Gay, Heather Austin, Sean Farragher, Kuzhali Manickavel, Tim Jones-Yelvington, and Dave Clapper, plus absolutely insane photography from Didi Wood. It is the kind of bullshit you want. You know you do.

Mike’s

Vodpod videos no longer available.plus bonus cereal flow chart

Umbrella window

View from life

Not really*

Things to Do Before 120

Learn to read palms.
Write a sequel to the Bible.
Make the perfect banana pudding.
Solve for pie. Anything. Solve
anything for pie.
Run Canadians across the border.
See Brooklyn Heights.
Have sex for money just once when
I’m not broke.
Get a good night’s sleep.

–Cami Park (me)

*I have already been to Brooklyn Heights

Dangerous Fruit Stores

“It is possible to look at evil so steadily that other evils, almost equally menacing, are unnoticed.  Evidently in a desire to curb the saloon and the poolroom the growing evil of gambling and other demoralizing features of fruit stores has been overlooked.”

It’s about time someone spoke up about this in 1904.

Form is never more than an extension of breakfast.

–Bill Knott, from his great blog post all about form and stuff, which concludes with this excellent poem which I just had to post on my own blog.

Late Rising

Terrible
is the soft sound of a hardboiled egg
cracking on a zinc counter
and terrible is that sound
when it moves in the memory
of a man who is hungry
Terrible also is the head of a man
the head of a man hungry
when he looks at six o’clock in the morning
in a smart shop window and sees
a head the color of dust
But it is not his head he sees
in the window of ‘Chez Potin’
he doesn’t give a damn
for the head of a man
he doesn’t think at all
he dreams
imagining another head
calf’s-head for instance
with vinegar sauce
head of anything edible
and slowly he moves his jaws
slowly slowly
grinds his teeth for the world
stands him on his head
without giving him any comeback
so he counts on his fingers one two three
one two three
that makes three days he has been empty
and it’s stupid to go on saying It can’t
go on It can’t go on because
it does
Three days
three nights
without eating
and behind those windows
paté de fois gras wine preserves
dead fish protected by their boxes
boxes in turn protected by windows
these in turn watched by the police
police protected in turn by fear
How many guards for six sardines . . .
Then he comes to the lunch counter
coffee-with-cream buttered toast
and he begins to flounder
and in the middle of his head
blizzard of words
muddle of words
sardines fed
hardboiled eggs coffee-with-cream
coffee black rum food
coffee-with-cream
coffee-with-cream
coffee crime black blood
A respectable man in his own neighborhood
had his throat cut in broad daylight
the dastardly assassin stole from him
two bits that is to say
exactly the price of a black coffee
two slices of buttered toast
and a nickel left to tip the waiter
Terrible
is the soft sound of a hardboiled egg
cracking on a zinc counter
and terrible is that sound when it moves
in the memory
of a man who is hungry.

–Jacques Prévert

trans. by Selden Rodman