The (often but not all the time like a manic clown) Very Funny Poet Buck Downs has been posting comments on Facebook with the phrase DANG YALL in them. "I've been doing it for a few months now. Like a lot of my poetics, it started on a whim, became a habit, and developed a theory." The folks at Flying Object picked their faves and assembled them in their office directory box. Ah, the surprising wells from which poetry springs forth. I can't explain why I think it's so funny (though certainly the hickishness of it dazzles) because, as the saying goes, explaining funny is like dissecting a frog: when you're done, you'll know what makes it tick, but it'll be dead. Continue reading

When I moved to Ames, Iowa, in 2013, I was lucky enough to meet Xavier Cavazos, whose chapbook, Barbarian at the Gate, won the 2014 National Chapbook Fellowship from the Poetry Society of America. Prize judge Thomas Sayers Ellis wrote in his introduction, "No one 'fucks' with fixed traditional Western forms or controls linear excess, the oral downpour of ideas onto the page, like Xavier Cavazos...Ask anyone who has ever tried to define, in writing, the Blues, and they will tell you that it’s easier to express the ache or recovering ease of what comes right after the Blues. Caught up, Cavazos comes close to a brand of telling that doesn’t have to trade in deep, heartfelt truth for quick, snapshot similes held hostage by 'like' or 'as'—" Xav's a tireless champion of poetry. When we hung out, it was all we ever talked about. But no bashing, just talking about the writers and poems that shaped us—especially the work of Richard Hugo for whom we shared a common love. When Xav gave me a copy of Barbarian at the Gate, I was flabbergasted. Oh, that experience of meeting a poet, liking a poet, then you find that his/her work is as amazing as your best conversations. What a gift—almost like a magic trick. I'm very sad to see him leave Ames for his new teaching gig. I wish him luck. Here's one of my favorite poems from Barbarian at the Gate. Hoodie dreaming in the after life SANFORD, FLORIDA 7-13-13 late “Emmanuel, Emmanuel,” Hoodie says as he stumbles through a Washington forest. “Fuck this shit!” Fence shouts & jumps over the edge of Snoqualmie waterfall like Fence was late for a party. The body of a young boy, rushing-water over a fall, all beauty as mist lifts into air from contact. Fence said, “I told you so! What did you expect! What did you think was going to happen?” The Cradle of Cambridge! “Magdalen, Magdalen, am I forgotten?” Hoodie cries. “I thought I had a chance!” The forest’s chorus sings, As mist lifts into air from contact. “Trinity, Trinity,” Hoodie Shouts! “Trinity, Trinity, where are your studied halls? Where is your branch of knowledge?” “Chance!” Fence screams. “Chance? Oh, like the chances my homies have of not-going-to-jail after a speeding ticket in Arizona’s SB 1070 a.k.a. send a homie to jail chance? I like your odds!” exclaims Fence. Hoodie yells, “But I’m only seventeen!” Hoodie knew he needed to get to the ocean so Hoodie followed the Snoqualmie River down & out into Puget Sound. The forest’s chorus sings, the sun setting like this verdict, as mist lifts into air from contact. Fence was getting nervous, told Hoodie, “I don’t know how to swim.” Hoodie told Fence not to worry, that Hoodie knew water well. “An ocean of history,” Hoodie said. “Do you know Goree Island? The water there, dark & blue as a three-day-cut umbilical cord. Palm trees silhouette the haze—Saint Louis! Saint Louis! Saint Louis!— rock me... Continue reading

Recently during a Q&A session, I was holding forth to a room full of students on the Myth of Feelings—that feelings were the prime mover of a poem, and that every element of a poem took a back seat to them. I declared that a well-placed comma could do as much, or more, for a poem than feelings, because the reader derives his/her feelings from the symbols arranged on the page. A young woman sporting a futuristic haircut raised her hand. “Who says we have to know how to use a comma?” “Well…” I scoffed, “being a poet and not knowing how to use punctuation is like being a painter but being, like, ‘Fuck color.’ It’s one of our most important tools. It sets the pace of a poem. It shows the reader what your characters are thinking. It…shows that you know what you’re doing as a writer.” “Yeah, but who says?” I was stumped, then I got it: who was I to tell her that she needed to know how to use a comma? Certainly, there had been master poets throughout the ages who had never given two shits about it. “You never need to know how to use a comma if you don’t want to. Writing is like cooking. You can cook food any way you want. You can leave tuna fish out in the sun for a week and call it casserole…” “But who’s gonna eat it?” a voice shouted from the back row, finishing my sentence. Now having mulled over my answer, I'm pretty sure I came off like a bitchy old fuddy-duddy. The question warranted a more respectful exploration because she really didn’t know the answer. And she’s not the only one. If you’ve ever encountered students in poetry writing classes who haven’t mastered basic skills, then you’ve encountered students in poetry writing classes who don’t want to master basic skills—because mastering things is hard, and very few people like to do hard things that they had managed to avoid all their lives until you came along. Why should they learn them now—and in a poetry writing class of all places? The class that was tailor-made for comma splices! Forcing someone to study punctuation in a poetry class is a little like making someone learn accounting before they go to Las Vegas. But how willing/able are creative writing instructors to teach the basics? Lately I’ve been working on my teaching statement. In an umpteenth draft, I noted my experience teaching basic grammar, which one of my generous Proofreading Pals suggested I remove. “Comp departments aren’t necessarily hot on teaching that stuff,” he said. “We’re teaching what makes a good argument. Grammar is something students should’ve learned in high school. In creative writing classes, I'm there to encourage creativity. They can worry about the details when they start publishing (which, for almost all of them, is never).” I posed the question to creative writing teachers on Facebook: 1) Do/should you teach writing basics in a creative... Continue reading

Above: JT's "IM ALL ARMS IM ALL IM ALL ARMS IM ALL ARMS IM ALL ARMS IM ALL ARMS IM ALL ARMS IM ALL ARMS IM ALL ARMS IM ALL ARMS IM ALL ARMS IM ALL ARMS IM ALL ARMS IM ALL ARMS IM ALL ARMS IM ALL ARMS IM ALL ARMS IM ALL ARMS IM ALL ARMS IM ALL ARMS IM ALL ARMS IM ALL ARMS IM ALL ARMS IM ALL ARMS IM ALL ARMS IM ALL ARMS IM ALL ARMS IM ALL ARMS IM ALL ARMS IM ALL ARMS IM ALL ARMS IM ALL ARMS IM ALL ARMS IM ALL ARMS IM ALL ARMS IM ALL ARMS IM ALL ARMS IM ALL ARMS" I've probably attended about 500 poetry readings in my life. One of the most memorable was given by writer/performer Jennifer Tamayo while wearing a paper glazed donut mask over her entire face. By "glazed," I mean she had poured some super-gross viscous material all over it. She read from her book, Poems Are The Only Real Bodies, which the publisher, Bloof Books, describes as: "A collection of letters to the historical object, Harriet Tubman (aka Araminta Ross/The Conductor/Moses) the sequence considers the pleasures and difficulties of what it means to encounter and experience a radiant historical figure—how do subjectivities collide? How does poetry service the body? Most of the chapbook was written in situ at the Harriet Tubman Memorial Triangle in Harlem, the neighborhood in which Tamayo both lives and works." The magenta and orange colors on the cover "are inspired by a popular fast-food chain located in the same plaza," which is Dunkin Donuts— thus, her donut mask. The combination of her mask, her strong stage presence, and addressing the revered subject of her book—Harriet Tubman—in a mode at once modern, profane, self-indicting, and sincere was like nothing I'd ever seen. Now I am reminded of the Flamenco dance class scene from Happy Go Lucky. It made me feel...not entirely comfortable...but good. Her poems are like a brass band on speedballs: visceral, funny, bawdy, unpretentious, honest, twisted, and, most important to me, open. Her work wants to communicate—not just babble into its belly button—and it wants to communicate with me! She burrows deep into her subjects—whatever they are—seeking the end of separation and the subjective. Which is impossible, but I understand the impulse. Is it not love for the entire world? A voracity to know it intimately? I'm rarely moved by poems that require special knowledge of a theory or their construction to enjoy them—I appreciate, and have been deeply impressed by, but am rarely moved, which is entrely a matter of taste. I love Jennifer's work right out of the gate. I may not know the holiday, but I know a party when I see one. She is the author Red Missed Aches Read Missed Aches Red Mistakes Read Mistakes (Switchback Books, 2011) and POEMS ARE THE ONLY REAL BODIES (Bloof Books, 2013). Her second full length collection of work, YOU DA ONE,... Continue reading

A little pink rabbit’s munching on grass. Everything seems nearly normal, except for the fact that the rabbit’s pink. But it’s a pink you can live with—almost a coral if you want to get technical and who wants to do that? The rabbit’s pink, and that’s that. It raises its head to sniff the air. Suddenly it stands on its back legs and flashes a bright white set of shark teeth directly at you. You read somewhere that sharks have multiple sets of teeth, a secret set nesting behind the outside set, the teeth you can see, another secret set of teeth behind those… Russell Edson has been called the Godfather of the American Prose Poem, but I don’t think that title fits. He did not create the form, nor was he the first to innoculate it with parables from the subconscious’ darkest regions. In his introduction to Great American Prose Poems, From Poe to the Present, David Lehman wrote, “It is a form that sets store by its use of the demotic, its willingness to locate the sources of poetry defiantly far from the spring on Mount Helicon sacred to the muses. It is an insistently modern form. Some would argue that it is, or was, an inherently subversive one”—hence, a form ideal in which to get your freak on, which Edson did in thirteen (stupidly difficult to find) books written from 1951-2009. He also wrote two novels, six books of short stories and “fables,” and three books of plays—a logical extension of his dialogue-driven poetry. Donald Hall said, “Whatever his method of writing, (he) makes surreal poems. Few poets have ever written as Edson does, out of a whole irrational universe—infantile, paranoiac—with its own small curved space complete to itself, impenetrable by other conditions of thought.” That’s more like it: a Universe Maker—a universe of monkeys, boobs, and poop—not the Godfather nor a Champion of the form, as Edson shunned championing things. In a 2004 interview with Mark Tursi in Double Room, he said, “I don’t see poetry as editorial comment…what we can write is so much deeper and more interesting than the empty descriptions we give of ourselves” and of our writing, I’ll add. Most definitely, a Perfector—a topiary gardener, molding seething green clouds into shapes yet unknown... Poet Ada Limón and I ran a reading series in Brooklyn for a few years at Pete’s Candy Store—now the home to Dorothea Lasky’s Multifarious Array series. Russell Edson was one of our first readers. The fact that he agreed to do so was a miracle, really. He and his lovely wife, Frances, had to travel by train from Connecticut—we could not cover the cost of their train tickets nor pay him for the reading. All we could offer him was a free sandwich. But he had just gotten over a bad cold and was excited to take a little trip. At Grand Central Station, we met them on the platform holding a sign like the limo drivers do... Continue reading

The interview here between Jennifer L. Knox and Alan Michael Parker was conducted on the occasion of the publication of Long Division (Tupelo Press, 2012), Parker’s seventh book of poems [and this just in: 2012 North Carolina Book Award winner]. His six previous collections are Days Like Prose, The Vandals, Love Song with Motor Vehicles, A Peal of Sonnets, Elephants & Butterflies, and Ten Days (with painter Herb Jackson). He has also written three novels, Cry Uncle, Whale Man, and The Committee on Town Happiness (Dzanc Books, 2014); and served as Editor of The Imaginary Poets and two other volumes of scholarship. His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Gettysburg Review, Kenyon Review, The New Republic, The New Yorker, Paris Review, Pleiades, and The Yale Review; his poem, “Family Math,” appeared in The Best American Poetry 2011, and was awarded a Pushcart Prize, his third. Parker’s essays and reviews have also appeared widely, in journals including The Believer, The New York Times Book Review, and The New Yorker. He is Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Davidson College, and a Core Faculty Member in the Queens University low-residency M.F.A. program. JK: I’ve noticed all your books are very different, one to the next. AMP: The work changes: I’m interested in reinvention, and in the possibilities of new impossible problems. For example, there are a number of “list poems” in Long Division, a poem I used to believe wasn’t possible for me to write (beyond what I tried to write in junior high). So, because list poems seem so hard to write, over the last few years, I’ve been trying to write them—and I’ve discovered that they’re surprisingly elastic, and liable to turn into dramatic monologues when I’m not looking. Book by book, if I’m repeating myself, we’re all in trouble. I’m just not interesting enough to repeat myself. Naturally, there are higher-minded ways to think about reinvention; in this, Yeats remains my model, given how his work changed so profoundly in various periods of his life. (The Yeats of “The Tower” may well be the Yeats I re-read most, of late. . . .) But he’s still Yeats. What I hope is that a reader will recognize my concerns no matter the volume, and yet find the new work new. JK: Speaking of the list poems in Long Division, you said you eventually found them, “surprisingly elastic, and liable to turn into dramatic monologues when I’m not looking.” How does a list define a character? How would you personify the speakers of the dramatic monologues that your list poems are sneaking towards? Are all of the Long Division list poems spoken by the same character? Reading through them, my emotions ran from, “This is fun,” to “I’m watching someone lose their mind and I’m worried about that,” to “We’ve all lost our minds—don’t hold on to the illusion of control.” Can you think of any poem in which the voice is not a construction?... Continue reading

Ahoy, scribblers! You've reached the finish line! How do you feel? Awesome, I hope, because you are. Along with smart and pretty. If you didn't write a poem everyday, who cares? If you did, you rule. Read some non-fiction as you rest up for next year. We'll see you then. The last prompt is, "Write a poem incorporating at least three 'I remember' statements. This invocation of memory seems a fitting way to end our month together." Onto the poems. Rock-Shy Horses My father told me of rocks that swallowed horses whole in the time when rocks could breathe. And many horses remember still their ancestors turned to stone. They spook with the inheritance of fear— an ancient trepidation. While, another wisdom says: horses spooked on sight of frozen rock, were already overwhelmed. Posted here. * Improv Dear Science: Come to bed with me. Let me start over. Your greatest men were believers. And all of their wives! The most rational thing you could do would be to walk out your back door and go bowling. Wait. This just in—not bowling. Nascar. No. Get an education. You are an education. Your mother is an education. And a believer. It is all so simple. You vex me with your definitions and demonstrations of the various meanings of words. Your examples are a museum I would rather not walk through. The sun is out. Let’s each lunch on the steps. The most splendid thing you could do would be to revise thought. Or put it down the disposal with peach pits. Nix the peach pits. That could be dangerous. The weather is fine and has not been so for centuries. Sincerely, Christian Posted here. * Inspiration Fabric Rust-red challis, all over paisley first day of school, never got made. White eyelet, the first day of spring and your bare legs all gooseflesh. Your grandfather's seersucker coat on your father. and mismatched pants without the pucker. A mint julep in that polished cotton, dark grapes pendant from the pergola. This is the life you say but the sheets are raw and your body. That is a wool dress says your mom You're making everyone hot Posted here. Continue reading

Now you’re really in the home stretch of NaPoWriMo, scribblers! If this was a marathon, you’d be peeing blood by now. Today’s prompt, an elegy, which reminds me: I especially love, “Blue looked at the possum, then he looked at me.” Our own gaze pales next to our gaze returned. Devotees paint eyes on white-washed stupas, eyes on statues in Hindu temples because we visit the Gods to be seen by them. An animal that sees us—that cuts through its instinct and collar and cage bars—is a most worthy subject for a banjo elegy. Now, onto the poems! * 23. 


 Look. The moon sits like a baffled bride.
 Still time to fix things by morning.
 If you tell the truth, they’ll leave you a bed and blanket. Deny it, they’ll bury you in your family’s yard. Quit wasting time
 polishing your teeth and renouncing gravity. 
 You will fall when it’s time to fall. Posted here, if you have Facester. * Latchkey Kids I once made a fireplace out of aluminum foil curved its edges up, for safety. Tore paper and lit it. Yellow to brown, then ash. It was a nice fire, rather tame. The carpet below came up with the foil, long strings of black plastic and a smell. We used to put on our roller skates and ride in circles in our unfinished basement. Spin around some pole and throw ourselves away, at top speed. In the many construction sites near our townhouse we’d use 2×4’s to walk above newly formed basements and rooms. We never fell. Brambles grew in a field nearby, we made rooms in the midst of them and dragged discarded lawn furniture, called it our house. Sometimes meeting random adults along the way. We always went trick or treating alone, and ate candy on the way home. Then we played trade. After watching Goonies, all the kids in the neighborhood banded together, pulled up manhole covers, walked tunnels that linked development to development. Didn’t wonder what the wet was or from where it came. My brother and I would sit in the backseat and stay unbuckled. We’d pull up our feet and hold them at the ankles and let the turns throw ourselves into one another. The goal was to stay upright, even at fast speeds. Our Dad would only yell if we laughed too loud. We’d mix potions up with things from under the sink and all the weird spices we inherited when Grandma died. We’d take turns tasting them. Countless hours at the very empty playground, with just one friend. We’d take my friend’s mother’s pantyhose and pretend to be robbers of kidnappers, covering our faces in that brownish mesh. Rode our bicycles along the main road. 3 miles to Arby’s. No helmets. French fries and every condiment and pickle in the condiment bar made for a cheap lunch. Posted here. * XXL Naked 1) Stopped at the clinic Lips black ain't smoke no blunts yet gonna get you High... Continue reading

Twenty-two has long been one of my favorite numbers because of that Twilight Zone episode, "Room for One More, Honey," where the morgue was down in the basement: room 22. And today's NaPoWriMo finds do my beloved #22 justice. Today's prompt on the NaPoWriMo site blew my mind. In honor of Earth Day, the prompt is to write a poem about a plant. OK, fine, sure, I like plants. But then Maureen dropped the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary bomb. Do you all know about this? Seriously, it blew my face off. Onto the poems. Well Hello Gorgeous In West Texas, you think of a song and you buy it No not because there might be some rattler at your boot a moment later There isn't some fear you're gonna die in the desert I could put it down that way Make a good read West Texas desert voice All boots and belts and hand-worked wooden handiwork They made a shed that's shaped like a starship because they could This town is full of because they could—that's why you should visit I could say something about never going home, but I got this girl back east, you see All kinds of reasons But heads up, maybe a month? There'd be a lot of sitting Mixed in with some walking +++ Except for this right here, I'm making it all mine Posted here. * oh yes you do for Minnie & Seymour if I can't speak of human love without wincing how will I begin to say about my inhuman loves what they do how they love a human without wince surely their reason is above my reason their love conquers, enfeebling my love their tempers for change & unconcern humiliate my grounding need of affirming words, looks I think fond words while mimicking their little voices as if to say you can hear my desperate thoughts please say that you can my hole my kept self mimics their self-kept whole if I can't speak it & they go on speaking it Posted here. * Dear Moon, You Cheshire smile, you silver sliver. How many tides have you pulled? You flash-lit nostril. How many slightly different weights have you finagled? Your presence makes shadows on the beaches romantic, eerie. The menses moons of my child-bearing years. I have one thing I need to tell you, so listen. You can not pull me away into fear anymore you giant casaba melon. I know you are my moon and you love me. Quit hiding behind those clouds. What size were you when Kennedy died? Where were you in the sky when Bernie plagued us with his pyramid? Fleetwood is telling you “Lightning strikes, maybe once, maybe twice… Oh… and it lights up the night…” Maybe brighter than you, moon. Wax, wane, all the same; moon of my tomorrows. Posted here. * this poem didn’t facebook request a title the panda is the lecturer; things occur due to a causal law and the panda speaks... Continue reading

Ahoy, Scribblers. If you written 18 poems so far, give yourself a pat on the back. What the heck, give yourself a nice, slow French kiss. You’re hotter that Georgia asphalt, and you've earned it. Today’s prompt: a lullaby, which reminds me of this song. I have four birds, and they love to listen to this at night. How can I tell they love it? Because I love watching them listen to it. Translation: "The Balsam Flowers" The Flower of Balsam, one dyes on one’s fingernails. The words of one’s parents, one must dye in one’s heart. Ships sailing the night seas take their bearing by the pole star. The parents who gave me birth take their bearings by me. One has to study and to master the name of constellations. But the lessons taught by one’s parents are no mastered by study alone. Even gems and treasures will rust unless polished. Polishing my spirit night and days, I traverse this transient world. When the sun rises, I shall go off to study. Please plait my hair, my dear mother. The Flower of Balsam, one dyes on one’s fingernails. The words of one’s parents, one must dye in one’s heart. Now onto the poems! * Dear Twentieth Century, As a very small child in the Nixon years, even I was tired. But there's ironic satisfaction to be found in Carole King's "It's Too Late" being number one the week you were born. I wasn't your best citizen. I couldn't fix the business of the Panama Canal in my mind, try as I might, sitting in pigtails and watching the news. And even though I knew about Ella Fitzgerald at a very young age, I thought her first name was "Ellafitz," last name "Gerald." Dusty Springfield and Buffalo Springfield drifted unmoored for years for me, intermingling. Roxy Music seemed important, but insidious. It was all the disappearing sixties then, louche magic and hips. All I mean to say is I miss my can headphones. Car window handles. Decaying Chevy upholstery. The smell of warm grapes and peanuts at Pope and Airey's grocery store. The world had heft and weight to it then. We had Charlie Chaplin and Richard Pryor then. I was born at the exhausted end of a barbarous century, but we had the good people. Stop children. What's that sound? Everybody look what's goin' down. You don't have to say you love me, just be close at hand. Posted here. * Ideas vs knowledge I'm going to drop wearing nothing but a paper helmet I made just now, when I crash the water I'll sail my hat like a slumbering bat. I'll grow deaf and dehydrate from loving leeches, my sponged sight will drench in world. Posted here. * Love Poem I've forgotten again what derelict means. Desolate, abandoned, ruined, you say. We exhale hot on the lenses of our glasses, wipe them clean, walk away from the future, artificially bright. When people hear explosions, they hold on tight,... Continue reading

It’s day 15, and all downhill from here, NaPoWriMoers. Are you hallucinating yet? Excellent. Today’s prompt: a parody. Here's a fine example from the cinema. Now, onto the poems. Nate on a Plane Pt. 1 “Fritz is the name I gave to all my dachshunds,” says the dermatologist sitting next to me. The dachshund’s eyes are howling something not Fritz. He doesn’t look like a Fritz. “Even the girls,” he says, “I named them Fritz.” Something still feels off. A flight attendant stands in the aisle, her hair swaying like wheat, despite lack of wind. “Is there anything else I can get you?” she asks. The dermatologist asks for some water for Fritz. My eyes are dry. The reading light has gone nova. Posted here. * 15. I celebrate the tanginess of your gruntly curves, amorphous, as sweetly mispronounced as the hush of pampas grass. I enthuse about you. Watch me rotate it with this toggle made of syllables. I want to be accommodating, as concise as water. When you don your armor as shiny as Corvettes I ping all over the place; I chew faster and with a bawdy smack. The days you’re gone float like goldenrod savannahs replete with polecats instead of big tawny ones. Am I imposing again, repositing the denim fantasy, the one we’ve mocked of all its flavor? Wring it again. The optics are still pristine, the audio sharp as architecture. Posted here. * Beachcombing Robots Last ocean & blue sky. Beachcombing robots supercede us long after we’re gone. The segmented hoses of their gentle arms— violence is stoked by hunger, despair by thirst. To take it all in, like a steady stream of irritating smoke. Even under your skin it’s still you—a million little reactions you have no idea about. What does it even look like inside your lungs? To this day, still a mystery to yourself & everyone else. Mysteries sell very well, but not yours—unsolved & with no apparent motivation. Posted here. * Friday the 13th The Knights Templars and freemasonry are best exemplars of superstitious ennui. In 1307 13 October, It wasn’t heaven ‘twas a Friday, sober. The pope, the king arrested or killed the Masonic ring Bad luck fulfilled! And so on this day Masons remembered the unlucky way Freemasons dismembered. The 13th, Friday, is not for a monk it’s a mason’s day to get stinkin’ drunk. Posted here. Continue reading

Cruising around the blogs this evening, I found some sites on the NaPoWriMo list that didn’t have any poems at all, some of which were very cool, like this flog, this flog, and this fun gif that I can’t figure out how to attach to anything. It's kinda like signing up for a back stroke contest when you don't swim, but what the heck? NaPoWriMo's easy like Sunday morning. Today’s prompt: “a homophonic translation” or should I say: “Too dazed prom. Tahoe/Mofo nicked ran slate shun"? A very observant NaPoWriMoer emailed me today, and noted that many of the poems I’m posting weren’t written on that day that I'm posting them. That's true. I’m picking NaPoWriMo poems that catch my fancy, but not necessarily posting them on the day they were written. Tonight, I have sparse punctuation on the brain. * Romola Grey romola grey plays the glistery xylophone, one foot perched up on a potato mountain. in her arteries are gold rushes, klondike blood and moody oxygen. there is a particular grace to her madness: she used to be a seaweed keeper in carmel, long-finned pilot whale watcher in cork, hoary hair weaver in aix, newspaper delivery boy in columbus—she planted soulful cacophonies of watermelon kids who ice skated around her ankles. romola grey hits the notes in vernacular solicitude, her fingers in antarctican winds, sloughs off half of the continent of dry skin. she looks for a wolf-boy who will listen to her calls, and her musical outpour of thunderous howls. but there is a nome-alaska body in her gut, corpuscled deep in her legs that trench a frozen pumpkin patch—for she is her own snowy witch with the back of a lion. Posted here. * Mitochondria subtle organelles power-generators of true nuclear energy L’Engle wrote long ago in time a wrinkle: the difference between what-is-known and what-is-not-yet-known compared to what-is-no-longer-known the greatest danger in science is unknowing and not caring when knowledge is lost meanwhile minute mitochondria make music and we whistle while we work Posted here, where the author is writing a poem a day on a scientific term. * childINdaHood One of my fondest memories is helping my grandfather build a fence to go around our back porch. I was 8 and prolly not much help But I was intrigued by the level tool Posted here. Continue reading

Ahoy, scribblers! I'll be posting more NaPoWriMo poems this month—when the spirit moves me. And on Day #11, color me moved. Today's prompt: "Write a poem of the five senses." December 30 At 1:03 in the morning a fart smells like a marriage between an avocado and a fish head. I have to get out of bed to write this down without my glasses on. By Richard Brautigan Now let's see those poems! * He Said, She Said She said, There oughta be a law. He said (reversing the manifesto mandate), Loose pants from now on. She said, The better to swash in, the better to hammer and the better to swarm. He said, When the going gets tough, get a better costume. She said I have none I have only these skinned knees. He said, I've been trying to say there was a mirage, it fizzled and I quit it. She said, Sayonara suckers, we'll keep the burlap bag, kitschy glassware, mix tapes of acrylic and ball point pen. He said, I still don't like The Future, but somehow it picked me up there and dropped me off here. She said, The future, mon chéri, every instant we are so close. He said, Like unrequited love I stole from your mouth. She said, Stealing is just bad sharing. He said, I wanna have him beat up. Posted here. * dieffenbachia dumb cane porcelain rudolph with missing hind leg, nose rubbed to rust anime eye and freckled ears tuning eternal neighbor moves out of the boot breakable man remains on ground being broken your mother’s schoolgirl crush on Blue Beard cutlery bolts from home leaves no note sprinting cow knowing nothing of moon Posted here. * A Lecture From Heidegger In a book on the essence of truth I read, in the soul there is an aviary or more generally thinking, a container quiet and still, completely empty it becomes gradually filled with the stuff of time oh, and birds, various kind, of color and song resonating in flocks far apart from the rest of smaller and looser gatherings and the solitary flitting hither and there pondering Plato and possession of knowing versus calling expressly to mind subtleties, having-present or making-present a longing to learn of what would be found in philosophers view upon setting sights on the space where birds once flew, through a cage door loosed. Posted here. Continue reading

Get this: they're up to 575 participating sites over at NaPoWriMo! Today's prompt: Write a poem inspired by the song that was #1 on the day that you were born." Make a mine a "Green Tambourine"! Onto the poems! * "It Must Have Been Love" It must have been love and the breezy projector screens that made you leave. You took the backdrop and the car keys, but you left me my wheels. Take the chess board, but leave the pieces. It's over now. You rocked out at my bedside, leaving me unsatisfied. It must have been love, because what else would tell us "Matching haircuts are okay." Posted here. * True Story Sonnet Apparently when my pawpaw was a pastor it was at a joint called Stampede Baptist Church in a little town called Moody, Texas, a name that fit. Then he fell in love with another woman and left the church to get a divorce. The citizens of Moody dropped their jaws and plenty of opinion fell out. He never quit loving firecrackers, the kind you blow up on the 4th of July. Maybe the other kind too. They stayed together until he died, a failure of his heart, and we kept visiting her until she died too, years later, still wearing his ring. Mamaw never spoke of her that I recall. Run over there now, he’d say, laughing, lighting the fuses on a bunch at once. This one’s gonna really wow you. Posted here. * Symbolic Ornithology Curious how cultures can determine Deeper meanings for simple beings. For instance, take the humble bird: Biologically, they’re feathered vertebrates, Warm-blooded, with wings, who lay eggs. And logically, they’d be nothing more nor less. However, such simplicity is not the case. Because I can say, with confidence, That seeing a blackbird or a raven Would warrant worry, while witnessing Bluejays and doves in free flight Often signifies a cause for joy. Peacocks can flaunt beautiful feathers And mock buzzards with their timelessness. And birds of prey personify power. Why else would eagles and hawks Be seen as nothing but majestic? And clichés clench a culture for a reason, As point-of-view is important to a story Centered ‘round a beautiful swan Who perceived itself as an ugly duck. But are these seemingly arbitrary perceptions fair? Who says you can’t find a raven gorgeous, A buzzard pure, a duck majestic? Why isn’t a peacock’s plumage gaudy, Or a hawk’s flight innocent? Can’t doves make mistakes, bluejays die? Or maybe they’re all just fucking birds. Posted by Chris here. "I'm the leader of the Hungarian Academy of Science and I will harden your aircraft shelter. I'm 18 and pretty damn gay....I ship a lot. I read a lot. I write a little. There's an about me now!" Continue reading

This is my last post. Thank you so much for the opportunity, BAP. It was a million laughs. I'd be happy to come back and scrub all the f-bombs off the wall if need be. Today's NaPoWriMo prompt: "Pick a color, any color. And now write a poem in which everything is that color (or, at least, that color predominates). Need an example? Try Walter de la Mare’s Silver, Diane Wakoski’s Blue Monday, or Federico Garcia Lorca’s Romance Sonambulo." Good luck, scribblers. You're a quarter of the way done. Onto the poems! Unusually Large Beach Hat Brackish landscape cut by a line of fence posts, no fence— foreign wood dotting sawgrass, waterlogged and salt white. Our kayaks drift through salt marsh canals half-guided by a breeze. Your hat makes small shade of sun bright as plastic boats. Posted here. * Man of the House He grew up in the city so he mows our lawn like a blind goat. The pickle jar may stay shut. That wood table will not get stained (unless he guffaws his coffee on it). No, he does not know what you’re talking about, Mr. Plumber Man. He cannot fix the things. Unless I am one of the things. Posted here. * Hook and Line Being a poet is being a fish swimming the river in search of a hook. Posted here. Continue reading

Attention NaPoWriMoers, you're in the home stretch of week of one! Don't you feel like an olympian?!? Today's prompt: write a poem about an animal. All my poems are about animals, even the ones that are about people. Which reminds me... Exterminator by Lucien Stryk Phone vibrates all winter. The exterminator cringes— yet another squeal, demanding he come fast. He plays at cat and mouse, stalling them for hours, days. Then pocketing thick gloves, flashlight, steelwool, poison, he enters musty corners, sets dry traps, pours tempting pellets into little paper boats, launches them here and there. As he stuffs holes, he contemplates the toughness of a world which outlaws creatures he has learned to love: starved them from frozen corn-stripped fields, small wonder they outsmart those who grudge them a few crumbs, a little warmth. The exterminator does his job, takes his money, leaves. In the long run of things, he knows who will survive. * Now onto the NaPoWRiMo poems! Pelican Called loving, divine pelican, these seapilgrims dive for fish, amphibians and crustaceans with the precision of a throat pouch which balloons with gallons of seawater after every hunt. To go under water and resurface, pelicans earned a reputation for resurrection and sacrifice – older birds congregate on islands, and meet to mate in colonies, while young ones stick their bills deep into their parents’ mouths to collect salt-eared meals. Ours are plentiful, and solitary, they swing by the causeway on sun-whittled afternoons, and will stand on wood posts in the yacht-cluttered marina for hours like the elderly neighbors I had when I lived in Queens, New York, just more approachable, the ladies and men who watched from windows, noting who passed by in what outfit with whom at what hour, reporters with no periodical, they knew more than the police department – all that gold with no box to hold it. The ancient Moche of Peru idolized pelicans in statues carved from stone, and made music from their bones of pared flutes with a sound, not siren strong, not soft like the wooden flutes played by South American troupes in subway stations in cities like New York and further north, not song exactly, but a chant like wave and air meeting, a sound between earth and ether, music translated by man who can’t walk on water or fly without machines or miracles. The pelican knows how we would give over our unwebbed toes for an hour just to know how it feels to move between worlds, how to maneuver the sea’s language, the wind’s tongue, but it would never trade its proud bill, its exceptional pouch for our earth-numb feet or featherless arms, our plates or forks or knives, gravity-ridden, and even our songs ever seeking flight. Posted here. * He Wishes For The Glockenspiel Of Heaven (After Yeats) for Danny Federici What were they thinking, adding that high school marching band sound? Was that the point: stepping out of those years and into reluctant adulthood? In German... Continue reading

Click here to listen. Thank you, Mipoesias. Continue reading

In 2001, I was in the final semester earning my master’s degree in the lucrative field of poetry writing at New York University. Many of my classmates went on to become noteable poets: Kathy Graber, Ada Limón, Greg Pardlo, Jason Schneiderman, and Kazim Ali. One evening, as were leaving a workshop together, Kazim said, "I don't think funny poetry is valid. I know that I'm wrong, but I still feel that way." I was instantly relieved. I had long felt the vibe of resistance—of dismissal—to the humor in my work, but no one had ever had admitted to me that it turned them off. It was like hearing a lover finally confirm your suspicions, "I'm not crazy about that thing you do with your tongue." Kazim's validation helped my writing evolve. I became more purposeful. I asked myself, "Is this joke worth it?" I began to seek a greater contrast in moods, as well as more intimacy in every moment. I’ve always been grateful for his candor. When I decided to write about humor in poetry, I recalled this conversation between poets Sarah Manguso and Rachel Zucker. For my money, it’s the gold standard of writers exploring an issue meaningfully and intelligently, on which their perspectives could not be more in opposition. That’s what I wanted to do to/with Kazim, a dear friend, and a great sport. Jennifer L. Knox: So we were in Mark Doty's workshop, and you said something like, "I don't think funny poetry's valid. I know that I'm wrong, but I still feel that way." And I said something like, "You're not the only one who feels that way, but you're the only one who's ever admitted it to me." Is that how you remember it? Kazim Ali: I think that what I as alarmed at—or bored by—was all the poetry that seemed to traffic in "wit," and depend on the intelligence (or facility with language) of the writer to transfer or communicate information or ideas. Poetry for me (at that time and maybe still) was so anarchic and wild and I was attracted, if you remember, to poetry that didn't depend on traditional "sense" or "knowing" in order to have musical and bodily effect. I'm particularly thinking of Susan Howe whom I had just discovered. When Emily Dickinson said she "finished Knowing then" I took it as an invitation to a different kind of poetry which could, like Sufi practice, free me from the conditioned constraints of my own mind. The other thing I remember about my comment is that we were talking about *your* poetry and people were always saying it was funny and I never understood that. I mean about the poem about the front-desk worker at the swimming pool on her hands and knees trying to pull out the knob of the old vending machine for the African men who came in who didn't have hands. She was trying to buy their red licorice strings for them. It's only funny if you... Continue reading

My nonpoet friend, D, was over the other night, watching videos of her favorite adult film star, Manuel Ferrara, and flossing her teeth at my desk. “Who’re you interviewing on Friday?” she asked over the ecstatic moans. “Rachel Shukert," I answered, sniffing a pair of underwear on my bedroom floor to see if it was dirty. “God, have you read her Smash recaps on Vulture? They’re the only things that make me want to go on living. Seriously, they’re the only antidote to the hell that’s my life,” she said, and absently dropped the used floss in my coffee cup as she shuffled off to the can. Shukert is a master of inking out that one tooth on a subway poster that transforms a tableau of icy supermodels into a gaggle of hillbilly goofballs. There’s no high-horse rider Shukert can’t drag down by drawing a floppy penis on his forehead, or bouncy set of DD boobs under his plaid riding vest. She knows transgression works best when you play high off low: peed-on pants should be Brooks Brothers and pinstriped; a steaming pile of poop looks best centered on a very expensive satin bedspread. Snooty forms that easily lend themselves to parody—like poetry itself, villanelles and sonnets—are prime Shukert real estate, but there's no flower in literature's garden that she has not pollinated: poems, plays, fiction and essays. D finally came out of the bathroom. The smell of lit matches hung in the air like old balloons. “Those poems sucked," she groaned, tossing a hip lit mag on the couch. "They were all like snooty waiters...’” she said, pulling the box of wine out of the fridge, “…you asked me to dance, Shakespeare.” But Shukert talks to us, graciously, all night long, pretending not to notice our headgear and scoliosis brace, no matter how much she's had to drink. “I can climb higher than an eagle, 'cause I'm breaking wind beneath my wings...” she sings as she draws back her slingshot, aims it right at our face, and loads a guacamole-filled water balloon. Did you ever know that you're my hero? Shukert is the bestselling author of the critically-acclaimed memoirs Everything is Going To Be Great and Have You No Shame? She is currently at work on Starstruck, her YA trilogy set in 1930's Hollywood, forthcoming from Random House, and has various TV projects going on that she is too superstitious to list here. Her journalism, essays, and fiction have appeared in Vanity Fair, New York, Slate, Salon, and McSweeney's, on NPR, and in numerous print anthologies including Best American Erotic Poetry: 1800 to the Present and Click: Young Women on the Moments that Made Us Feminists. Most recently, she writes the popular recap of Smash for NY Mag's Vulture blog. She is a sporadic Twitter person, as you can see here: @RachelShukert. If you’re Is your sense of humor genetic, or are you a singular freak? I come from a long line of major weirdos, I was just the... Continue reading

Are your hands getting tired yet? Today's prompt: write a poem in honor of baseball's Opening Day! I'd write one about how my head must have a ball magnet inside of it, because no matter where I am, if balls are flying around (!), I'll be out cold before the seventh quarter. GOOOOOOOOOAL! Now onto the poems! Lake Sketch —For Brian Ang What will impress the death cult? The beautiful, vacant death cult? What will impress the mirror-writing lump, water’s canto, her cinema, commerce’s atomic center? What will impress the cult of death? The cult of holes, of clothes. The cult of sharp elbows. The empress of the lake is here, all 90 degree angles. Hello empress of the lake. She answers through her teeth of zeros, in geese. To move five stones to the right is to enforce the odds. To pepper-spray a toddler in the springtime, Printemps Paris. Posted here. * Spring Thursday Everything doesn't need To smell like egg For your day to be shitty But it doesn't hurt Meanwhile the city Is not one for pity Still it feels good to ask Maybe I should move To a permanent lunch The fulcrum of every day Balanced there you see What happens everywhere Doesn't stay there Hey self here's an idea For your idea museum Let's forget we ever Breathed without singing Into each moment of Shirtsleeve weather Posted here. * Everything is Green and See-Through a friend in fashion reported. Now April in the country, my window concurs. The best kind of green is the green I’m seeing, Do you see it? If ever there was a day to fall in love with Kentucky, it might be today. Today could have changed my mind about cremation, made me want to go down into the soil and have things grow from my bones, to be buried deep in the dark dirt that keeps managing to turn out such alive living things. I’m all out of ideas for what to do with my life. So I make dinner and wait, wait for him to return from the road, and for my dog to come in frantic triumph. I like to memorize things while I wait: the way the houseplant leans toward the outside plant, and how they both look so radiant in their greens that I want to wear them while I cry the clearest of tears. Posted here. Continue reading

NaPoWriMo’s up to 800+! This thing's totally out of control. Maureen’s prompt on Day #4: write the blues, but first, live the blues. Onto NaPoWriMo! Boys As Saviors Mostly all of them. God bless 'em. Winter of 96, my vigils every night listening between my mother's snores for what. The IRA. The murderer from Seven. Checking the oven. Some contortionist. The enemies are men too, naturally. How could a girl at fifteen save her mom, her brother. Maybe Joan of Arc, maybe versus David Bowie, but the world is dark and crawling. Then those college boys slept in our parlor. Rope of garlic. Vale of health. I slept eleven hours; we all had brunch. If murderers are Dracula so are the boys. Your weakness lets them in; your weakness is boys' kindness. Let me be kind the boys say no one having taught them to bring over pie. Even you, love, even you and I began with you saving me from an unnecessary drive. I won't allow it you told my brother, the one I'd saved from being blown sky-high. You'll leave this house at once and so I drove away no chance to come back later, but still burned with saved. Posted here. * “The Child is father of the Man”—Wordsworth Areas of sun in Atlanta, southland spring. I want to drink it, but it’s not quite inside me the way the cooler weather was. Cars rattle, their hums and buzzes making the season seem ordinary, plain. What was that? I ask. It wasn’t quite like death, but knowledge is its own version of not-wanting. I remember the way I carried the same coat around from port to plane, wanting to remove everything, to remove the cloak. There was one bird in the mountains, though, a little one that sung from a rock. Oh those rocks, Alice, as good as anything, better than green zinnias and not quite humming the way the city does. That’s what I want to remember. Traveling for apology’s sake seems endless…. Acceptance? A disguised way to sink back into home, some sort of place where I’ve been wanting to fit. The sun is splitting the trees again, but not quite the way the rain made it seem before. We were high up there. There were good discussions. My things to do in Portland dress wasn’t worn there, but is worn here, to make the memory hang on to something pure. But what’s pure? Uncertainty seems to be the latest virtue, if one can call it that. At times, the ways of loving send hope out of the chest—the beginning of knowledge that can’t be measured without a common, already loved, really known, but with room for something more, entirely alive. Posted here. * Charging bayonet Plate 359—Eadward Muybridge The man with the gun must be thinking, out there is the center of his purpose. The grains of the gun's wood snug against the hip-bone. Left arm cradling the long barrel so that the tip... Continue reading

Conceptual comedian Steven Wright and poet Sommer Browning walk into a bar. “Is it weird in here or just me?” Wright asks. Browning listens to the silence. He hands her a screwdriver. The two proceed to remove every screw from every screw-filled object in the bar. How much support can you take away from a thing—or an idea—before it collapses? They’re not interested in the collapse; collapse is for toddlers. The teetering moment right before the collapse, played out to infinity—that’s what turns these crazy cats on. But Browning doesn’t stop at the soda gun, the coat rack, or the phone. She turns the screwdriver on herself. She takes apart the pieces, then glues fake blond mustaches to the pieces of the pieces, and sets up a still life atop a plastic covered kitchen table in an eerily idyllic 1950s-style ranch house. She titles it, “Robert Redford.” No, that’s what I’d title it. She’s way too spare and elemental for that, but the occasional pair of piano key suspenders do float by. The pieces fall asleep. One starts to snore, one grinds its teeth, one mutters: “The absurd expectations of our bodies…the surrealism of gender roles…the bummer that is domesticity…” The voice is so microscopic, it’s macro. The poet wonders if she can sell the pieces on Ebay. 

 Sommer Browning writes poems, draws comics and tells jokes. She is the author of Either Way I'm Celebrating (Birds, LLC; 2011), a collection of poems and comics. She also has three chapbooks out, most recently The Bowling (Greying Ghost, 2010) with Brandon Shimoda. With Julia Cohen she curates The Bad Shadow Affair, a reading series in Denver. You catch her Xtreme Tweeting here. Her About Me: "When I die, I want my ashes scattered along the As Seen On TV aisle in Rite-Aid." Sample: "Totally forgot we had a vengeful god for a second." I saw her tweeting this week with MARC MARON! Hello!?! Like not just retweeting his tweets, but interacting via tweets! Tweet that. Is your sense of humor genetic, or are you a singular freak? I am definitely a freak, but some of my humor came straight from my parents. I haven’t spent enough time with their families to see how my mother and father got funny. The stories they tell about their childhoods are usually very not funny, so it’s a bit of a mystery. My mother likes to tease, likes to point out absurd things, she regularly sends me cards and packages from her alter ego, a duck named Drexel. She genuinely enjoys the adventure of life and to me that necessarily means you have to have a good sense of humor. It’s a little harder to draw the funny from my father, but when it happens it’s usually in the form of a witty pun or an apropos quote from Fletch. Or on rare occasions he will be straight up, mind-bendingly silly. He had funny nicknames for my sister and me, I think this reflected... Continue reading