Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Tuesday poem #64 : Deborah Meadows : Seven


1. An opener for a tough deal.

2. Down the rosy path, hand-in-hand, into the boxcar.

3. Read the hobo sign? Easy eats right here.

4. Operatic

5. clouds, sleeping, kills

6. the rare plants go into a database called the California
Natural Diversity Database (CNDDB)

7. Which begs the question, by whom?

Deborah Meadows teaches as an Emerita faculty member in the Liberal Studies department at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. She lives with her husband Howard Stover in Los Angeles’ Arts District/Little Tokyo. Her recent collections of poetry are Translation, the bass accompaniment – Selected Poems (Shearsman Press, 2013), Saccade Patterns (BlazeVOX books, 2011), How, the means (Mindmade Books, 2010), Depleted Burden Down (Factory School, 2009), Goodbye Tissues (Shearsman Press, 2009).  Other works of poetry include:  involutia (Shearsman Press, UK, 2007), The Draped Universe (Belladonna Books, 2007), Thin Gloves (Green Integer, 2006), Representing Absence (Green Integer, 2004), Itinerant Men (Krupskaya, 2004), and two chapbooks, Growing Still (Tinfish Press, 2005) and “The 60’s and 70’s:  from The Theory of Subjectivity in Moby-Dick” (Tinfish Press, 2003). Her Electronic Poetry Center author page is located:   http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/meadows/

Poetry Foundation site: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/deborah-meadows

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Tuesday poem #62 : Dan Thomas-Glass : four poems from "first work"


First work within
the world. Premium
coverage for pajamas
toddling wakely from
new rooms. First
dead black man in
America. Costs to
bleed. That I could end
this featureless bounty
with my pen. Alma’s
bright O each morning
at the bells. That tenderness
this. That tenderness
wins. Intimate air at
first work in the bowels
beside books. Call
the work of your dreams
to your dreams.  Wretched
Earth below trees. Songs
where they question
after termination. The day
ceases. One last disclaimer:
the information provided.
Great granite walls for
histories. Open season.


First work within
the world. Imminent
teeters—tomorrow
& tomorrow. What
withers low income
land, one point about
industry. What I know
what I been through.
Splice figures: bhangra
feels pain to get rich. Sonia,
moved, keeps whispering
her hurts—stupid, stupid.
Sun daughters once &
then again—how empty
fists where diamonds
were. Hmm. Alma takes
a header at the market
& bears new braille
on her growing skin.
Forward lisps standing
at the window small
shoulders at morning
branching to smaller
trees smaller still. We
rockin stilettos ho. So
so so. 


First work within
the world. Body of
clouds pressuring
moisture to thinning
skin. Humming power
lines streets & blonde
as my girls the wishes
effervesce toward
imagined brunches. So
little wilts. Humming
coastal tunes morning
& what I love. What I
love. Sonia explains
that her sleeveless nightie
has long sleeves & these
words leave me sleepless
in LA like a movie set
with the labor gone home
& the morning cawing
like hungry painted crows.
O tomorrow & again
Alma curls her head against
my groin where Kate jokes
she can’t go home
she can’t go home
when it’s her body &
the body she grew.


First work within
the world. Etch coverage
in freeway clovers:
signal tower to life
guard reds between
shutters & humid
beach. Sonia digs &
preens, new outfits
for each season
of the AM. Language
where we start
in the night: retching
sounds in the tin
of monitored air.
The slag of vomit
like a city on the sheets,
with peaks of what’s
hip oozing over scars.
How the stars love cars.
How the clouds repent,
washing asphalt for us
so the smell of tomorrow—
while Alma wags her finger
no, awwright—will
twinkle twinkle newly
as our songs.

Dan Thomas-Glass is the author of The Great American Beatjack Volume I (Perfect Lovers Press), Kate & Sonia (in the months before our second daughter's birth) (Little Red Leaves Textile Series), Seaming (Furniture Press), and 880 (Deep Oakland Editions). Daughters of your century is forthcoming in 2014 from Furniture Press. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife Kate and their daughters Sonia and Alma. 

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday, June 03, 2014

Tuesday poem #61 : Lisa Samuels : A bird in a plane



Sitting on a park bench is a form of publishing

rather than an endless set of bills resembling human

emotions as like a totally real event in character,

in tangible vials of Significance and maybe, maybe

the public sphere imagines like Humanishment

nourishing out emoticons, our knees in space

tumult a body’s unmistakeable exchange

for noises from without, Authentic Circles

wheeling circumambient claps ping

on the ears a Rain of Angels,

sand cake Opposition Figures

crossed by little bodies squiggling

on your eyes tra la! real things

to give our cogito

Lisa Samuels has published nine books, most recently Wild Dialectics (Shearsman 2012) and Anti M (Chax 2013), as well as soundwork, chapbooks, and critical essays and editing work. Since 2006 she has taught literature, theory, and creative writing at The University of Auckland in Aotearoa / New Zealand. Recent video work is at the November issue of The Volta [<http://www.thevolta.org/>]; also in November cellist Noemi Boutin [<http://www.noemiboutin.com/>] will perform a “singing cello” adaptation of poetry from Wild Dialectics, translated and set to music by French composer Frédéric Pattar [<http://brahms.ircam.fr/frederic-pattar >].

Electronic Poetry Center: epc.buffalo.edu/authors/samuels

Pennsound: writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Samuels.php

Academia.edu: auckland.academia.edu/LisaSamuels

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan