Tuesday poem #191 : Kiki Petrosino : OUGHT

We’ll have to hurry if we want to get started.

It’s high time to consider beginning at all.

Time, at least, to think about starting

to start. After all, we’ve only just gotten up   

& running, but now? We’re almost too late.

We’ll have to hurry. If we want to get started

we’ll have to start now. We’ll have to work

round the clock, the gold moon, right on—

We ought to think about starting, at least. But

it’s tougher than ever. We can’t even begin

to explain what it’s like. To start with, we know

we should want to hurry. At least, we’re starting

to time it. That’s almost too tough to say

at the start. Still, we’re sure we’ll begin any moment.

It’s time to get started, we think. Let’s consider

getting up & running. By then, it’ll just sort of start

& we’ll have begun. Zut alors! It’s a plan & a party!

It’s just—we should hurry. If we want to get started

we better begin. But it’s tough. Just look at the time.        

Kiki Petrosino is the author of two books of poetry: Hymn for the Black Terrific (2013) and Fort Red Border (2009), both from Sarabande Books. She holds graduate degrees from the University of Chicago and the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop. Her poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, The New York Times, FENCE, Gulf Coast, Jubilat, Tin House and elsewhere. She is founder and co-editor of Transom, an independent on-line poetry journal. She is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Louisville, where she directs the Creative Writing Program.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #190 : Anne Cecelia Holmes : A Very Harsh Hoax

I don't know how else to posture
myself against these notions
of adulthood except to say
I am nothing but posturing.
All the books in my house
lean toward one another
like they are waiting to be
excised from a more monstrous
thing. I've learned you can
drag your body around but
unless you take instruction
from your bones it's a pretty
disappointing ride. How about
I mimic the oncoming weather
or better yet make a small
noise for all the days I
have stayed inside. If I am
straying too far I do apologize
for confusing the herd.
I'm afraid I have lost my
ethical compass and in exchange
I see myself as I really am.
I feel like punching my way
through a reservoir.
Everyone I know takes
more pictures with books
than with people and I'm
starting to believe we make
the world we fell into.
I know I think too much
about cruelty. Again
and again the advice I
receive is to stick my face
in a fountain to understand
how real that feeling is.

Anne Cecelia Holmes is the author of The Jitters (horse less press 2015) and the chapbooks Dead Year (Sixth Finch Books 2016), Junk Parade (dancing girl press 2012), and I Am A Natural Wonder (with Lily Ladewig; Blue Hour Press 2011). She co-edits Jellyfish Magazine and lives in Western Massachusetts.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #189 : Shannon Bramer : ODE TO ER

She’s so much gentler kinder taller thinner warmer smarter
She’s so much better harder louder fatter sadder wilder uglier
She’s just so much angrier poorer quieter lonelier emptier

She’s water
She’s older
She’s just another mother

She’s tender
She’s feather

Let her

Shannon Bramer [photo credit: Sadie Derry] is a poet and playwright. Her fourth collection of poetry, PRECIOUS ENERGY, is forthcoming from BookThug in the autumn of 2017.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #188 : Donato Mancini : BY THE LIGHT OF THE

Donato Mancini makes visual and procedural poetry, bookworks and visual art. His books and chapbooks include: Snowline (2015), Buffet World (2011) Fact 'N' Value (2011), Hell Passport no.22 (2008), Æthel (2007), 58 Free Coffees (2006) and Ligatures (2005). Notable exhibitions ofMancini’s visual artworks have included exhibitions through Artspeak, Western Front, Gallery Atsui, Malaspina Printmaker's Society, and CSA. He performed with Gabriel Saloman in their noisepoetry/noisecomedy/noisemusic ensemble in the 2013 LIVE! Biennale of performance art, and as part of Concrete Scores at Open Space. Mancini's published critical writing includes work on the archive, time and memory in Anamnesia: Unforgetting (2011), and a discourse analysis of poetry reviews in You Must Work Harder to Write Poetry of Excellence (2012). His most recent full length book, Loitersack (2014), is a labyrinthine commonplace book where critical, theoretical and paraliterary tendencies intersect in the forms of poetry, poetics, theory, theory theatre, laugh particles and many many questions. A new book of accumulation texts, SAME DIFF, is forthcoming from Talonbooks in 2017.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #187 : Natalie Lyalin : A Mollusk

Blue-like, a blue like a mollusk melting in air

A thin air, an air in which whips

my mouth and nose and ears, that assaults them

in a funny way, a gentle way

                                    I think the air is saying why

Did you come to the Himalayas? Why are you here?

And the others all trudging up my side? But I did not

care. I did not take a care card with me on the trip.

                                                When I was planning

the trip I was on beach reading a book. A book about

Himalayas because before I thought it was just a word

like salt. And I was on the beach and I saw a blue

Mollusk and I thought of the pink salt and felt

sane. And safe!

            But it was not safe. There was a chance of

my carcass freezing to the mountain. Clinging to the

mountain like a tongue to a poll. Like the shock of

how painful it is and the instant regret like nothing else.

Like the air. The thinness of the air. The veil of it. Like

I was marrying the horror of dying alone on a hostile

mountain that did not want me. That did not care.

                                    I left my confidence on the

beach. Who was I to deal with nature like that. I only

studied danger in passing. Like the bubbling waves

before a tsunami and standing in the doorway during

an earthquake and hiding in the cellar during a tornado.

But

                                                Did I really care to learn. No.

I did not really care to learn. I did not really care

for much at all.

Natalie Lyalin is the author of two books of poetry, Blood Makes Me Faint, But I Go For It (Ugly Duckling Presse 2014), and Pink & Hot Pink Habitat (Coconut Books 2009), as well as a chapbook, Try A Little Time Travel (Ugly Duckling Presse 2010). She lives in Philadelphia.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan