Tuesday poem #65 : Meredith Quartermain : Cloth Music

Whatever it was the Chinese calligrapher said with her brushstrokes, it was not something she said quickly. This stroke horizontal. Cut that into two arms with a dash upwards of the same length blown forward by a strong wind. From the belly of the dash, stroke down a short leg striding ahead into the wind. Branch a bold shelf off the leg, elbowing downward to end in a hook. Finally slash upwards ramming an iron spike between leg and hook. No good rushing, thinking of what the brushstrokes mean or thinking of lunch or the next character. Each stroke must signify its own speed and weight, as it carves, in the eagle's view, buffalo pounds of white space. No use being ridiculously careful, mincing and stinting the ink, trying to keep brush strokes alive, trying to make sure it all stands for something, make sure it carries her away in its magic carpets from the meaninglessness of doing nothing, of standing for nothing, promising nothing, of promising no ticket to goodness and rightness. As though we to life are as words to meaning, a matter of reference, we signifiers and life a distant signified, rather than fractals of intercellular space returning like molecular jungle-gyms in the marks of sense and frames of  mind that captivate us. As though making our mark takes place on a white page in a vast notebook and diary that began with the big bang – each foot-print of each member of each species recorded infinitely for each to read of each of all of the others. And so we word-bodies walk our word legs in a language we can't speak. We stand for our brushstrokes. We kick at tyrants. Our ink stains resist like wax in batik. We bear scars of our spelling mistakes. We set out each day with helmet, shield and sword – the girls we love. We can't stop. Can't put down our pens. We'll always love how they twist away from us fantastic windmills. We can't imagine a time when we will no longer set out, no longer resist, no longer love to follow their rhizomatic cartwheels, to mark our time in the arms of such siren readers.

Meredith Quartermain is a poet and novelist living in Vancouver, British Columbia. Her first book of poetry, Vancouver Walking, won a BC Book Award for poetry; Recipes from the Red Planet was a finalist for a BC Book Award for fiction; and Nightmarker was a finalist for a Vancouver Book Award. Rupert's Land: a novel is just out from NeWest Press. She is also cofounder of Nomados Literary Publishers, who have brought out more than 40 chapbooks of innovative Canadian and US writing since 2002.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

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 poem #63 : Judith Copithorne : not

Judith Copithorne: I was born in Vancouver in 1939. I was first published in bill bissett's magazine, blew ointment press in 1963. In 1965 I published Returning under my own imprint, Returning Press. Recently I was published in Force Field published by Mona Fertig of Mother Tongue Press and in illiterature by Michael e. Casteels editor of Puddles of Sky Press. Some of my work can be seen on Flickr.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

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 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