Tuesday poem #78 : Kate Schapira : UTTERANCES

who can even be bothered to remember
all the problems with talking
listening and understanding?
where edges between these are uneasy
there may be piercing changes
feeble imitations of bird noises
failing partly in their efforts
to carry very far
unless the edge is a made-up thing

Kate Schapira is the author of four books of poetry, most recently The Soft Place (Horse Less Press). Her tenth chapbook, The Motions, her second chapbook with above/ground press, appeared but a week or so ago. She lives in Providence, RI, where she writes, teaches, and co-runs the Publicly Complex Reading Series.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #77 : Emily Carr : whosoever has let a minotaur enter them or a sonnet—

) a splitbrain grace note

imagine it: fleshlyness.

leapfrog slingshot see (like eve throwing apples sideways from the trees.

gravity curls fernstalk, a red wind licks

your elbows. in current downriver singing the ocean grows. smoke bellies the flagpole.

slimankled oaks dream in soil.

he goes ahead coatless lightsoaked. breathing in folds, like a fish. he deals all his selves (was it a rib or catgut

like the corollas of a dying sun how/ brilliant

the galaxies of cow parsley, canolacoloured corn…      sour cloudbanks, & tambourines of sun—.

gravity puckers like an open wound.

the orange trees are torched, intoxicated, howling.           from where he stands, observing

me as if I/                                            were grass or dead,

or a sonnet: foxlike, the young flesh of shoulders.

in & out of the trees dark margin—in the green light my saltstripped hair.

where trout lilies used to be the roots of haunted dead.

like an ocean of surface becoming/                                          no surface he would create all white matter from the dark &

unpetal. violet drizzle; wet buttocks; heapedup jewelweed. the delicate fin of a bewildered fish.

where the fireworks leave off: mosquitoes

resume. a mutt tethered to a leafless trunk. Christ is turned back remains/            turned.

a cock crows. cicadas churn cemetery flowers.

a god with too many arms & then one without any has his way with a girl.

on your white chair deciding if tomorrow

will start on the left/                 or the right hand

of god: green fire makes a parabola, licks the cat velvet sky. wellwater pours from a stone dolphin.

the birds & their little psalms scatter

in their saintcoloured clothes, sunflowers choke statues. flower music inside burnt rubber. a catjoy clawsharpening. cornfield testaments

of the unwrapped dead. listen. even this will be taken from you finally,

Emily Carr directs the Low-Residency MFA at OSU-Cascades. She is passionate about the rediscovery of Mississippi poet besmilr brigham, the sexual politics of meat, the limits of Achilles’ honesty and the problem of Chaucer’s spring, unposted love letters, cannibal chickens and a ship too late to save the drowning witch. Emily has been a finalist in seven national poetry competitions, most recently the National Poetry Series. Her second book of poetry, 13 Ways of Happily: Books 1 & 2, was the winner of the 2009 New Measures Poetry Prize. Another book of poetry, directions for flying, was the winner of the 2009 Furniture Press poetry prize. whosoever has let a minotaur enter them or a sonnet—, prose poem fairy tales, is forthcoming from McSweeney’s in August 2015. For more information about Emily and her work or to read excerpts & link to videos, visit www.ifshedrawsadoor.com.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #76 : Paul Hoover : The Darkness of the Subjunctive

            If it hadn’t rained, we would’ve gone to the beach (Phuc Tran)

If we were in infinity, we would be everywhere,

even inside ourselves, as taste resides in the walnut,

and the walnut resides in the shell.

Then we would thrive inside the subjunctive,

where nothing happens but dreams of being,

as paradise dreams of its inferno,

the inferno of cotton candy.

If only the world had ripened, like a pear,

it might have melted the mirror in me,

delivering its softness to the hard road of the mind,

sixty miles from town.

            And if our grammar were even our heat,

comma, conditional phrase, comma,

we’d be addicted to the sentence,

sentenced to an exile that sees, hears, and thinks,

and is often mistaken for love.

            Trees are chronologies;

every leaf shines, and in turning over it winks an eye: 

if, if, and then.  The world is possible meaning;

the world is possible, meaning:

I might have been an elf, had I been elfin.

But I am not an elf.  I am a giant with tiny hands: 

would, could, and should.

Had I been winged, I might have flown

from industrial field to pastoral alley

on great woolen wings, with the blue face of a bee.

Then it would have been said, “He is repairing to his persona”

or “He is retiring to his future.”  

I’ll copy this by way of the stars, reflective.

Get back to me by facsimile or dream of climbing a night ladder

to the place of ideal size, near a town of simple affection.

But the size of midnight is always the same,

enormous yet conceivable.

If we had been born, lived our lives, and died,

we might have existed.  On the side of darkness, infinity;

on the other, a sixty watt bulb.

What the mirror roars is you.

Paul Hoover is the author of fifteen poetry books including Desolation: Souvenir (2012), Sonnet 56 (2009), Edge and Fold (2006), Poems in Spanish (2005), and two full-length volumes translated into Spanish by María Baranda:  En el idioma y en la tierra (Conaculta, Mexico City, 2012) and La intención y su materia (Monte Avila, Caracas, 2012).  He has also published Fables of Representation (2004), a collection of literary essays.  With Maxine Chernoff, he edited and translated Selected Poems of Friedrich Hölderlin, which won the PEN-USA Translation Award.  He has received the Frederick Bock Award of Poetry and the Jerome J. Shestack Award of American Poetry Review.  Professor of Creative Writing at San Francisco State University, he is editor of the anthology, Postmodern American Poetry (W. W. Norton, 1994/2013) and co-editor, with Maxine Chernoff, of the literary magazine, New American Writing.  

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #75 : Norma Cole : Extended Play

“a day’s work or a basket of wheat”

Adam Frank, About Time

A promise, if only I knew. Money is not a balloon. I am not sure how to carry it. Let’s have a big hand. A big band. It looks like three hours. Measure drama department. Once you say it, guitar, bass & drums. Pieces of resistance as in rose madder. Someone calls out, “Lefty! Lefty!” The little triangle at the top, and keep it at the table.

Norma Cole’s most recent book of poetry is Win These Posters and Other Unrelated Prizes Inside. TO BE AT MUSIC: Essays & Talks made its appearance in 2010 from Omnidawn Press. Her translations from the French include Crosscut Universe: Writing on Writing from France, and Jean Daive’s A Woman with Several Lives. Actualities, Cole’s collaboration with painter Marina Adams, is forthcoming from Litmus Press. Her paintings & drawings will be shown at the 2nd Floor Projects in Fall 2014.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan