Tuesday poem #295 : Kristi Maxwell : Poem Starting with a Misreading of the First Line in “The Glass Essay”

I can hear little chicks inside my dream

They sound painted                  they sound

like a feather’s most profitable idea

They sound off                the sound is off

like something in the fridge                 several days old

beans           in a different world, a newborn bean

cantaloupe   whatever it is that’s our last stage

our vegetable matter                 the world’s last vegetable lamb

This is no Easter candy   not Chik’n or counterfeit beef

to have a beef with  a fist in the feast    A wooly aphid

parades like a cleaning pad over the rough face of a tree

What does the tree care   one must not only ask

but discover a method for asking        must harvest the fiber

to process the text embroider the plant onto the sheet

along with initials            our love so natural

now   reminded of its seed                  that the seed foresees

its own flower likely has nothing to do with the eye

it’s shaped as                   but who knows               what

knows                   what

*

I can hear little hiccups inside my drain

The disposal needs to be addressed    Dear disposal,

dear waste      somewhere, the carcass of a deer

From the interstate, my love, driving, can find

and count every deer, coyote, fox                 he animates

the field, brings the forest into focus   there,

there   It’s a wonder we say the world     a singular thing

a monocle resting on the galaxy’s plump cheek

the other planets mere moles    no      I can hear

little hiccups inside my brain      everyone has their own

trick to make them stop  to resurface the esophageal road

There’s been a hiccup           like an accident                bone exposed

metal plates stacked in the cupboard of one’s body

not to be taken out         no matter the guest                   We’re asked

to think about what we have, to interrogate need

What’s negated by terror Here is one more torn interior  

to tour                   one more acorn of light to misplace

in the hillside                   that swollen cheek taunted by

each gauzy cloud that does nothing for it      ok it does

something   tossing out beads of ice   of rain

as if the earth had flashed its parts      or at least

outstretched its arms, made hysterical by desire

like the rest of us             with no rest in us

*

I can earn little checks inside my dream        for my dream job

To knit a rind in which to enclose the wheel of sun

and its gooey light To assign the barnacle to the shipwreck

To oversee the wound as it woos the throb  To edit the house’s

biography of the last rooted tree         To tempt the glacial sadness

to carve       We are our own misinterpreted evidence

our own misdeal or mystic        our own bento box

into which the lunch of our being is divvied out among

the organic compartments        our limbs either rogue noodles or chopsticks

already snapped apart               ready to be used

regardless     or regard more                the zebras dressed up as tall grasses

a meter’s ability to discern the worth of coins                   the coin-fed

the corn-fed and the confession          the Mexican egg filled with confetti

despite having never been cracked                Was it that we wanted

to be amazed or a maze   Was it that we wanted to identify the husk

holding our succulent kernel               a core we can’t give up

that punk     shielded by us                 shielded from us

a two-way mirror   Where is the power: seeing oneself

or seeing another            That the mirror itself limits our conceptions

of empathy  suggesting as it does that we can deposit ourselves elsewhere

cash in, cash out    invest          The terms already decided

Do you agree to the terms

Kristi Maxwell is the author of seven books of poems, including Bright & Hurtless (forthcoming from Ahsahta Press), My My (forthcoming from Saturnalia Books), and PLAN/K (Horse Less Press). She is an assistant professor of English at the University of Louisville.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #294 : Cath Morris : New World Order

I’ve noticed lately how fast things are changing

the First and Third Worlds merging so that

it’s all becoming more streetish,

busier, more stuff, less quality

dirtier, messier, more exotic,

more carnivale,

less village square

heated up,

not so cool

less elegant,

less fair

yet I suppose this means

more sharing, caring

melding of hearts

and minds

until we all melt

together

on the sidewalk,

like butter;

the hopeful side of this, though,

and why we all love Korean Psy

is the new sense of each other

the internet has bestowed

‘we the people’ not just North American

but like-minded brothers and sisters

linked across the world

in this sense

the unsettling thing about the merge

is that this new crowded high street

shows even more graphically how

the camps are divided, not just by religion

but by money and motive

and one is either fighting for right

with web-melded hearts and minds

or worshipping material wealth of all kinds

(the dead disease global trade has spread across the world

and threatens to wipe this experiment out altogether)

the Toltec prophecies tell us, however,

that the Sun is pure intelligence

and Virginia Woolfe says “all the world is mind”;

we are all creating this dream of Earth together

and if we don’t stop the destroyers

we’ll keep filling up the streets with human waste

until we all melt together

on the hot sidewalk

like… sizzling bacon rinds….

Ottawa-born long-time Vancouver resident and member of the TADS poets group, Cath Morris has been writing stories and poetry since she was a child. Before her introduction to the Vancouver literary scene, she was a journalist for The Georgia Straight and VAM (Vancouver Area Music) Magazine. Besides her chapbook, Venus & Apollo, from Pookah Press in 2009, Cath’s poetry has been published in TADS, Urban Pie, and The Capilano Review, as well as online poetry journals, Ottawater.com (3^rd, 8^th, 10^th, and 11^th Issues), Poethia.com, and Bywords.ca. Her work was later published in Coach House Press’ special edition anthology for Poet Laureate George Bowering’s 70^th birthday, 71(+) for GB, and Corporate Watch UK’s 10^th Anniversary Anthology (2007) in Oxford, UK. In 1998, director, Irina Trouchenko, staged the experimental one-act play, An Artist’s Dream, based on the eponymous poem and others by Cath Morris and Chris Turnbull for the UBC Summer Stock Festival at UBC’s Chan Centre. Besides Venus & Apollo, Cath has a second chapbook coming out with Pooka Press on September 9^th of this year (2018). Cath’s early self-published chapbook, After the Fall, awaits publication. More recently, Cath’s work can be found in the west-coast poetry anthology, Make it True: Poetry from Cascadia, 2015 (Leaf Press, Nanaimo, B.C.). Cath works as a television researcher/writer.

The Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #293 : Catherine Cafferty : Coupling constellations

The green leafy gaze, a loon on

the lake.

By night mice in a dish, when the torch

is on. And squirrels want fireside.

I cut into the tip of my finger the first

day, need layers when I enter the

water.

A death among reeds, we watch

at nothing for nearly an hour.

The dragonflies multiple by midday,

prism-like water below us.

I dream of the canoe rocking, arms

a tilted windmill, yet word is I’m working

little.

The moon casts over the islands tonight,

black pitch made sun white by tomorrow.

This cedar and soil portage, now useless

with a map of water.

Goggled liked a child, survey the moss-

covered stones, a fish.  I swim.

Catherine Cafferty is a poet living in Brooklyn, NY. She holds a BA in literature from McGill University, an MA in English from San Francisco State University, and an MFA from The Iowa Writers' Workshop. She currently is the co-director of literacy for The Partnership for Inner-City Education in NYC.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan