GARRETT CAPLES ~

Oakland


I love my city

huey newton
first declared
oakland occupied
in a very different
sense

more like paris
or baghdad

forty years later
& suddenly

THE TOWN
dogged the flame
from zuccotti park

new yorkers chanted
we are oakland
& even in egypt
they knew

I love my city

the priced out
progressives of
san francisco
entered the
panther cage

explosive combo
to rock the dome
of robocop

our summer of love
was an autumn of blood
in the neolexicon

but i love my city
cuz we mean
peace

demonstrated
repeatedly
at the 2011
general strike:

nonviolence
='d no police

& so many poets
there & boots
from the coup

& later i'm told
rexroth & lamantia
were at the last
general strike
in '46 & i'm like

i love my city

birthplace of scrapers
& scraper bikes

home at one time
to gertrude stein
earl fatha hines
alden van buskirk
Erich von Astroheim

too short & zpac
shock-g & sheila e
baby jayvees
larry graham &
pharaoh sanders

i'll take j. stallion
over jay z any day

occupy all streets?
occupy deez

i love my city

in massachusetts
lawrence &
andover

in new jersey
piscataway &
new brunswick

in brighton
england

in berkeley
california

i hated living

not until oakland
did i love home
i've lived here
fifteen years

it's been a long
long reckoning
since i first laid
eyes on leaving
but now it's
at hand

i could be like
fuck it, it's gone
duck dynasty
on me but i'd
be kidding me

i miss it like
a horny lover
& i haven't
yet left

o oakland
black city
i've known
your ghettos

stone city to
murder clubs

the lower bottoms
the 'corns &
cypress

ghosttown
dogtown
jingletown

call me danny
from sorbent
keak da sneak
or deev da
muthafuckin
greed

there's no south o
that's just the bay
sprouting from
heinhold's first
& last chance

& fuck jack
london & jack
london square

i drink there for
ambrose bierce

the north's called
ice city but also
temescal

which means
sweat house
in nahuati

& my friends feels
of sun poem for cells
translates nahuati

& my friend fab
of super sic wid it
put north o on
the rap map

i'm connected here

i saw oscar grant
become an icon
tho i'm sure
he'd rather
be alive

lake merritt poem:
to judge the change
in seasons by
observing water
fowl: red ducks
blue ducks
pelicans &
cranes

the goddamn
geese never leave
the herons hide
in the trees

by the postoffice
where rumor (&
the new york times)
had them tossed
in the woodchopper

just like the feds
to pass the buck
to the hapless
subcontractor

they say oakland's
the new brooklyn
but part of it
used to be
brooklyn

know your history
o makers of anthologies

parvenues of telegraph
avenue, i been
been here

on mamas
on see-through
it's lightweight mine


_____________

Garrett Caples
Power Ballads
Wave Books 2016


yes, I typed the whole poem
with its lower case, infuriating italics
with google down and not able to connect the Internet (rainy day in the woods)
while the film The Lobster (grueling ) plays
and my elder age eye sight dimming
never mind  a correct-speller wanting to 'educate' garrett about his spelling
that is perfectly in key

HORATIU RADULESCU ~

RIVER ~

CHICKS WITH GUNS ~

Rachel, Montana

Ruger 10/22 carbine

Lee, South Carolina

Boss 20-gauge side-by-side

Courtney, Texas

Yildiz 20-gauge

Medina, Montana

Bounty Hunter 12-gauge side-by-side coach gun

Lena, California

Colt. 45

 

Morgan, Montana

.17 HMR Savage Model 93R17 bolt-action rifle

a gopher gun

V E N D O M E     P R E S S

2011

MUSEUM by BOB ARNOLD ~

Museum

Bob Arnold

Longhouse 2016

“It was the hour, and nothing stopped the wild things from roaming.” 

(from Museum by Bob Arnold)

Museum, An Unlikely Meditation, written by the poet Bob Arnold, is as much an unlikely novel. These are prose poems inspired by a summer long visit to a museum and its grounds when the author “was very curious to know who lived there” and then beyond . . . ever wonder when a museum closes for the evening, when the security guards leave, when the alarm system is set for finer detail, and these great miracles within the venerable exhibition halls can now breath, become alive, perhaps trade places on the walls, and perhaps the museum roof is raised off its foundation, the walls open wide, and are now flattened to the ground —

These tales read as a novel or as short prose poems where no dust has settled, when the stories move from the past to the present and then to re-fresh the past with poignancy, as the tales tremble and await your visit. Interdependent, they are borne out of a stability, purity and activism from Bob Arnold who knows as they truly are. A meeting with the remarkable, they quiver and shake as the many characters are met with a disturbance of excitement, protected by Bob's sincere narrative as if the Jataka tales and Borges have met the genuine practical fantasy of Bradbury — all to converge within a reading of Museum.

The book begins with “Endless Summer”, moves to “Brats”, “A Coin Toss”, “Good Fences and Neighbors”, “Have A Seat”, “Far from the Great Plains”, “Amazing Friends”, “Drive On, Driver”, “The Golden Touch” and “The Bell” — to name a few.

______________________________________


"Not since Winesburg Ohio 
has there been such a book."

— George Willard

______________________

236 pages, prose — including a collage of levitating illustrations and photographs, joyously and with wit chosen by the author

Longhouse, December 2016 — $30 (Paypal or check)

Available with free US shipping directly from Longhouse.

This book may be further found on ABE, Alibris, Bibliofind 

& Amazon

Please inquire 

______________________________________

PEACHES EN REGALIA ~

I CHING ~

I  N  T  E  R  V  I  E  W

D A V I D     H I N T O N

Farrar Straus Giroux

2015

LUCKY ~

Leaving For Work

I could hold you

All morning like this —

Loose summer dress

In my hands, brush of

Sunburn on your shoulders,

The feel of your waist,

And a game of tip-toeing

Who is taller, as we kiss

And won’t let go

That's Her

doing farm chores, lugging

water she hikes through a field

of wet grasses in high boots

old pants & cap, a red tee

shirt she slept in & much

earlier in bed I raised this

                                                                & kissed her kissed her

Wait

All evening

A swallow has

Swept the grassy

Farmyard for one

Shed goose

Feather to stitch

Into her nest —

It is easy enough

For me to pick

Up — but I watch

Instead, until

She has it

Lucky

She is right, this woman

I love, it has been a windy

Fall. And her blonde hair slips

Apart in long strands and with

One hand she combs it away from

Her face and she is smiling. For

Lunch she eats an apple and suns

Her legs, a summer skirt raised.

She is a mother. A small boy is

Napping upstairs in the house.

When awake he will chase

Leaves that fall down from the

Sky, that’s how he sees it.

He calls me daddy because I am.

When I was off at work this

Morning up river laying stone

Along the road in the village

A blonde woman and her young son

Visited me. Hands cold gripping

Wet stone, boots chalked. This

Woman carried her little boy

In her arms, his green sweater

Was like the one my son wears

His mother knitted, ah the love

Of mothers! and I gathered stone

By hand and thought of blue sky

Above, day clear as the river,

And why you must love what you do.

_____________________________

                       Bob Arnold

ONCE IN VERMONT

Gnomon

photo ~ "Early Spring"
by bob arnold