Tuesday poem #101 : Barbara Henning : A BEDOUIN MAN

A Bedouin man isn't certain

whether joining a revolt was

life's proudest moment or its

ruination.  The object in your

pocket is a tracking device

that just happens to make calls.

Just perch the clock near the bed

and put your phone on the stand

and it will record your sleep

patterns. Hello. Good night.

The days are going so quickly.

Perhaps we perceive quickness

more in our busy lives than

people did in previous centuries.

Yesterday, Americans used

their sizable advantage to run

others ragged. We lay the child

down into his bed and find

each other under the sheet.

Now with four arms, four legs

and two heads, we circulate qi.

Then the arm starts turning

sideways in a gentle curve, tracing

an S shape, the thumb heading

up as the palm turns parallel,

our bodies and souls parallel.

Oh, the grief of separation.

Don't think, dear, stay here.

Barbara Henning [photo credit: Michah Saperstein] is the author of three novels and nine collections of poetry. Her, most recent books of poetry are A Swift Passage (Quale Press), Cities and Memory (Chax Press) and a collection of object-sonnets, My Autobiography (United Artists). A DAY LIKE TODAY is forthcoming from Negative Capability Press.  She lives and teaches in New York City for Naropa and Long Island University where she is Professor Emerita.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #100 : N.W. Lea : EASTERS POEMS

1.

Was it an attempt
to bolster a thin mood?

Was it an extension
of the ego (an extended arm)?

Little worlds unfold:
tiny trinkets in the understory.

2.

Bless sacrifice. Its
viscose rhythm. Its
lump sum love.

N.W. Lea lives and writes in Ottawa. He is the author of three chapbooks, light years (above/ground press, 2006), Actual Girl (The Emergency Response Unit, 2011) and Present! (above/ground press, 2013), as well as the full-length collection, Everything is Movies (Chaudiere Books, 2007). His second collection, Understander, appears this spring, also with Chaudiere Books.

Tuesday poem #99 : Nikki Sheppy : Laboratory of Chthonic Fantasy

1.

In deepest cavern steeps a surreal 3D printer, sufficiently precise to print aerospace parts. Instead, a man programs an algorithm to reproduce a delicately rendered eye, in several contrasting cells—some precious, some common. Then poured onto a plate, unseeing, beneath the oculus of uppermost cavern, the eye swelters with light. Strange jewel: it’s a model of optically precise structures, submerged in algae, complying with the most rigorous tolerance, yet blind.

2.

Gradual haptic. Coal diadem. A hemorrhage of dreams. At the blood, a loitering.

3.

In cavern, it is always oneiric multitude of night & gloveless dreaming. It is always fat, imaginary knowing, the well-fed scuttle of bats piloting each violent descent into depth. That is when shine lucks out from the plate. Eye picks up a scent & scows over the invisible scurf & spoor, bashes to its flower, strangely known, & slinks inkwise home. Odour gilding its filaments.

4.

When the room badgers, hacking its paw at the inhabitant. When the room bellies & hives. When the god of angles battles dimension. And the only contusion is the past pleasure of walls—sound cored and skivvied, into partition.

5.

Tart cry, held apart. From me the fruit of fluency. Devour it. Atmospheres startle the floor, numinously strobed. Substitution of abyss for ground. Husk for pelt. “Me” for me.

6.

Where the long nerve sweeps the esophagus from the inside. Deep so deep it’s ablaze. Like shade so far gone it finds the light folded into secret theories. Palpitation in language. Tremors yoked each to each: larynx & phrase. The me that differs from the me, heart an auroch racing for itself at naked speed. Can’t wait, can’t breathe, can’t handle this proximity. To itself, the body bares each of its animals.

Nikki Sheppy is a poet, editor and arts journalist. She has a doctorate in English literature from the University of Calgary. Her book reviews have appeared in Uppercase Magazine, Alberta Views, and Lemon Hound, and her poetry in Event and Matrix. She serves as President of the Board of filling Station, Calgary’s experimental literary and arts magazine, and is the author of the poetry chapbook, Grrrrlhood: a ludic suite (Kalamalka 2014). 

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #98 : Lina ramona Vitkauskas : The Four Postmen of the Apocalypse

Crossing the street in unison, stepping from

each corner pole, the symmetry of four postmen

in the rearview, and the shelves of front porches

crucified. Upon backs of sleeping geese,

snowpiles; all the slick metallurgy, the uptalk

and salts, I feel decently Pessoa—said I’ve seen

my work desk and my eyes welled up: these keen

headlights upon the guts of winter dawn, our hazy

sun muted. Church steeples coin-caribou mouths,

plucking mackerel clouds from sky; all the recycled

Santas, puny surface-to-air missiles, the plastic meter

men playing neon violins—bundled to the yes;

the yes of universities, the yes of black cars with

tinted glass and diplomat plates. Yes, the dipshit put it

all into Ecuadorian hair products, the yes of the

conservatory of your heart, which is a parka that lures

me still, a billboard burning. Yo, it’s Donald Duck on the

bumper, because the best thing you can do in life is

show up on time. You can be on the team, accentuate

the air with your vapor, and purr radioactive hymns,

while the cold dead ones lie severed from their roe.

Lina ramona Vitkauskas (b. 1973, Lithuanian-American-Canadian) is the author of the poetry collections:

·         - SPINY RETINAS (Mutable Sound, 2014) :: an epic poem inspired by an I Dream of Jeannie episode, Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America, David Lynch’s films, and Ashbery’s Girls on the Run; 

·         - Professional Poetry (White Hole Press, 2013) :: poems that creatively address the latest rise of careerism in poetry due to the corporatization of the university system; dedicated to poets who work hard as educators with little pay and no benefits;

·         - A Neon Tryst (Shearsman Books, 2013), an ekphrastic piece speaking to three films—Antonioni’s L’Eclisse, Bergman’s Wild Strawberries, and Frankenheimer’s Seconds;

·         - HONEY IS A SHE (Plastique Press, 2012), which examines the intersection of honeybee CCD (colony collapse disorder) and a dying relationship;

·         - THE RANGE OF YOUR AMAZING NOTHING (Ravenna Press, 2010), collected poems; and

·         - Failed Star Spawns Planet/Star (dancing girl press, 2006), inspired by astrophysical studies of brown dwarfs.

In 2013, Eleni Sikélianòs selected her for first prize in the Henry Miller Memorial Library Ping Pong Journal Award, Pulitzer-finalist Brenda Hillman selected her for The Poetry Center of Chicago’s Juried Reading Award, and she was nominated for an Illinois Arts Council Award by Another Chicago Magazine. She has been published internationally—in the US, UK, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Taiwan, Australia, France, and Canada. Her website is www.linaramona.com.

The Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan.