IRIS DEMENT ~

 

Goin' Down To Sing In Texas

PATTI SMITH ~

 

R E A D    M E

L I S T E N

MARTIN SCORSESE ~

 

URSULA K. LE GUIN ~

 

Extinction

Imagine dark.

Forty years'  rain.

The sinking ark.

No dogs bark

or doves complain

in the long dark.

No eel or shark

noses in vain

the ribs of the ark.

No star, no spark.

No full or wane.

Silence and dark.

Without mark,

without stain,

bright, stark,

the ocean's arc

is bare again

above the dark,

the sunken ark.

__________________

Ursula K. Le Guin

Collected Poems

The Library of America, 2023

edited by Harold Bloom

"Extinction" was first published by Longhouse in 2007

in Ursula K. Le Guin's foldout booklet Four Different Poems

reprinted here in the new The Library of America volume

Photograph by Theo Downes-Le Guin

MICHAEL PALMER ~

After Midnight

Sometime after midnight

Han Shan drifted down

a mountain path

and arrived in my dream

only to announce

that every angel is terrifying

also that heron you saw

by the muddy pond

was not real.

You, reader,

may believe this or not.

Han Shan said

that he does not

though he spoke

such words

to me

as if

they were his own.

_________________

Michael Palmer

Little Elegies for Sister Satan

New Directions, 2021

PETER GIZZI ~

 

The Afterlife of Paper

the last best love is language in the mouth

the last best hope for joy doesn't forget

a besting sensation

the last stranger blooming on the tongue

a compass rose blooming internally

laying down track

riding the rails

wake unto me

_____________________

Peter Gizzi

Now It's Dark

Wesleyan 2020

CRASH ~ CRONENBERG / BALLARD ( 1996 ) ~

 

MOHAMMED HASAN ALWAN ~

 

R E A D    M E

MARGARET RANDALL ~

 

R E A D     M E

Duke University Press

LAO YANG, PEE POEMS ~

               

U F O

        

A kite from another world arrives

Bearing another lonely dream

_______________

Lao Yang

Pee Poems

Circumference Books

2016

translations by 

Joshua Edwards

Lynn Xu

ERIC G. WILSON : CHARLES LAMB ~

 

PETER GUARLNICK ~

 

BALD EAGLE BIG BEAR (CA.)LIVE NEST ~

 

FEN, BOG & SWAMP ~

R E A D    M E 

JAY HOPLER ~

 

Honky-Tonk Sonnet

Before cancer, I was a country.

Now—, I’m a fucking country

      Song: job gone, house gone,

            Wife diagnosed w/ Post-Traumatic Stress—


      I’m missing more organs

                          Than a looted church.
            Even my dog’s been repossessed!

            Know what I got left?

      2 years. The lifespan

            Of an average rat. My wife’s therapist

      Tells me I can use this time to find

                          Out who I really am. Lord help me Jesus,

                          I’ve wasted it, so/help me Jesus,

I know what I am: squeak.

_______________

Jay Hopler

Still Life

McSweeney's, 2022

A BLACK COUNTER-CULTURE ~

R E A D     M E

BURT BACHARACH ~

 

BURT   BACHARACH

1928 ~ 2023

BLUE BAYOU ~

 

VINOD KUMAR SHUKLA ~

 

‘Were that we all had lived together’

 

Were that we all had lived together

under one roof

without separate kitchens—

grandfather,  great aunt, 

father, uncle, siblings—

and remained in 

the same neighbourhood. 

Grass lives next to grass,

mud next to mud,

and in the wind live 

storms, hurricanes, 

and scent-laden gusts.

Unbroken, without knots,

the earth’s wind is one

with our breathing.  

_________________________

Vinod Kumar Shukla

(with ever thanks to

Arvind Krishna Mehrotra

who sent the poem to me 

from India this morning)

M U C H     M O R E !

“College” was first published in English in Blue Is Like Blue (2019), a collection of Vinod Kumar Shukla’s stories translated by Mehrotra and Rai, by HarperCollins India.

     

      

DAVID HARRIS ~

 

D A V I D     H A R R I S

1946, Fresno ~ 2022

THE BEATS IN MEXICO ~

 

JOHN TRUDELL BONE DAYS ~

 

JANINE POMMY VEGA ~

 

H A P P Y     B I R T H D A Y,    J A N I N E !

__________________

February 5, 1942

PETER GARLAND, THE BASKETWEAVE ELEGIES ~

 

JOHN BRADLEY ~

 WHEREAS:

YOU KNOW this street, you're safe, but

somehow the hushed houses, tilting

trees, bent shadows look unfamiliar.

You find your apartment, approach

the door, a chatty neighbor kid

trailing you. But your key, it doesn't

fit the lock. Maybe you don't live

here, says the kid. You try another

door, and this time —relief—the key

slides right in. You notice all the lights

are on, Frank Sinatra's voice purring

in the living room. Did you leave

music on? says the annoying kid.

In the bathroom, there's a young

woman in white scrubs. She's tending

three bodies on stretchers. Still

bodies—much too still. Who

are you? you demand.

Sanan, she replies. But I live here,

you declare, pushing the hardness

of the fact in her placid face.

Not now you don't, she states.

In the basement, you tell your story

to a cop, who nods politely.

When you begin to shout,

he gently places an open hand

on your chest. It feels like a bird,

warm and fragile. I'll look into it,

the cop tells you. Which stirs

more anger. Upstairs,

in the bathroom, you hear Sanan

tell one of the patients, Don't worry.

This place is now ours.

___________________

John Bradley

Dear Morpheus, The Glue That Is You

Dos Madres Press, 2023

BIG RIVER~

 

LET'S DO IT ~

 

R E A D      M E

Pegasus Books

2022

DARIA HALPRIN ~

 

EUGENE OSTASHEVSKY ~

 from The Feeling Sonnets

49.

Some say poetry is already translation.

Thought worded, bordered and ordered. Incorrect.

The word is its own reward in poetry. It reigns over itself.

It is sovereign. The word is weird. It is foreign.

Poetry is when you don't understand the language.

When you don't understand, you stand under. You listen.

What you don't understand is poetry.

What you understand is translation.

Is that true. Or is it just poetry.

If it were true would it be just translation.

"The doubt that is not doubted is not the ever-fixed doubt."

I am reading a study of Laozi, which positions his lines as        

        propositions.

Is there a poetry of propositions.

Is there a poetry where words don't contradict each other.

________________

Eugene Ostashevsky

The Feeling Sonnets

New York Review of Books

2022

JOHN & FRANCES REEDY ~

 

CEES NOOTEBOOM ~

 

R E A D    M E