Tuesday poem #391 : Allyson Paty : We Like to Say What Is Happening

 

The finger for beheading

across your phone

Across the facts

one is supposed to reconcile

you take in text

and the day takes you in like a pool

Helicopter drags its shadow

a double surface through the streets

The upshot of a body

is  I   D I S P L A C E

The air itself

something other than indifferent

when I was walking making little circles with my fingers

to feel the space

out past the skin

 

Allyson Paty's poems can be found in BOMB, Boston Review, The Brooklyn Rail, jubilat, Kenyon Review Online, The Literary Review, Tin House, the PEN Poetry Series, and elsewhere. She was a 2017 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Poetry and a 2017-2018 participant in the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Workspace program. With Norah Maki, she is co-founding editor of Singing Saw Press. She is Associate Director of the Writing Program at NYU Gallatin, where she runs Confluence, a platform for student writing, art, and research, and she teaches with NYU's Prison Education Program. She's published three chapbooks, most recently, Five O'clock on the Shore (above/ground press, 2019).

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

 

Tuesday poem #390 : Khashayar Mohammadi : langue-locked

   lang-locked              far from the tongue-tip

you are now where language no longer serves you

you have passed the threshold of self-serving continuity

when you sleep on your tongue                                  you wake

thorn-scraped throat                your own body                        in pursuit 

of inhalation               the body can only express                  by expanding

   we are past signifier and signified now                   turtles all the way-downing

      the pursuit of gender                                 before finding an answer

            to words themselves.              the desire to know

                         what is a (wo)man / before knowing

                                    what is a what

                                                what

                                                     is

                                                     an

                                                       is

Khashayar Mohammadi is a Queer, Iranian-born, Toronto-based writer and translator. He is the author of chapbooks Solitude is an Acrobatic act with above/ground press and Dear Kestrel with knife | fork | book. His debut poetry collection Me, You, Then Snow is forthcoming with Gordon Hill Press.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #389 : Bill Carty : HENS

Third time this week

on I-5 behind the same

maniac who spelled

HENS upside-down

and backward

on his vanity plate:

S-N-3-H.

Two days running

I’ve nearly backed

from my driveway

into the same scooter,

its driver hunched

like a leather-backed

turtle in white helmet.

Dear strangers

who know me

better than anyone—

where do you keep

your secret clocks?

Bill Carty is the author of Huge Cloudy (Octopus Books). He has received poetry fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Artist Trust, Hugo House, and Jack Straw. He was awarded the Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America, and his poems have recently appeared in the jubilat, Denver Quarterly, Paperbag, and other journals. Originally from coastal Maine, Bill now lives in Seattle, where he is Senior Editor at Poetry Northwest. He teaches at the Hugo House, the UW Robinson Center for Young Scholars, and Edmonds College. www.billcarty.com

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan