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

Tuesday poem #60 : Geoffrey Nutter : Strength of Materials

What is your response to literature?

How about a stingray washed up on the shore

at dawn? And a big, raw ball of oil beside it?

When did you memorize the times tables?

And the meaning of multiplicative inverse,

the circumference of a steel band around the Earth?

Listen: the wind in a band is answering their summons.

And like your sister, studying the meteorological

paradigm, the eel-like stratagems, all

the deference paid to the paragons of arrogance,

the gold-plated locks, the volumes, dusted

with pollen of columbine, that present

the work of Bunyan, cast in the similitude

of a dream--you, perhaps, are like any man

who has just been afforded a few privileges

far surpassing your station without knowing it.

Even if you are perhaps immersed

in the strange dying blooms of the Octobrist,

the leaves, the golden plums of the spirit,

so too are you corporeal, and testing the strength

of materials, the rust preventative for pipes,

pistachio essence, pine syrup, pins for watches,

plant preservatives and the repairing of pivots,

oil of rose geranium, clouds, palaces, armies,

spectrums, prodigies, and other strange

prismatic objects through which we regard

this dark star we inhabit. It is after midnight.

My gentle-hearted friend, the sky is growing tame,

and gentler in the fading light. The crickets

are shrilling in the hedgerows under the bright

unnameable planets. It is nothing. It is merely

redemption, crisis, and coherence...

it is an ultimate, eventual coherence.

Geoffrey Nutter has published four books: A Summer Evening; Water's Leaves & Other Poems; Christopher Sunset; and most recently The Rose of January, published by Wave Books. He has taught poetry at Columbia, The New School, NYU, Poets House, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and currently runs the Wallson Glass Poetry Seminars in upper Manhattan.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #59 : Gil McElroy : Julian Day 2455179

I’ve washed her hair around

the lines & ratios of intensive care (the bonus of oxygen, the

drip of intravenous, the

arterial tap set deep

into her wrist)

 masked, gowned,

gloved

washed her hair around

a shattered shoulder, previous

Honest jobs

Facts finessed & cajoled

Gil McElroy is the author of four books of poetry, and numerous chapbooks, most recently Twentieth (above/ground press, 2013). In 2013, he was co-winner of the bpNichol Chapbook Award for Ordinary Time: The Merton Lake Propers (Baseline Press, 2012). He has also published a collection of art criticism, and the non-fiction memoir Cold Comfort: Growing Up Cold War (Talonbooks, 2012). McElroy is also a visual artist and independent curator. He lives in the village of Colborne, Ontario on the shores of Lake Ontario with his wife Heather.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #58 : Kemeny Babineau : The Long Point Is

The long point is

lovely things have happened

look at the wind for instance

blooming in the trees or nodding

narrow necked flowers in the sun.

Where the waves are waving to the beach

the view is all horizon. We bend

or lay down as the sand wants,

and in further abeyance even fore-shorten ourselves

by immersing the body in the

landscape, where the late wave’s white curl

writes itself in forever falling over.

Such bubbles of laughter and the rising note in the wind

cause a recurring literature

of frothy scribble over chalcydon.

(Long Point, Ont. July 2009)

Kemeny Babineau lives in Mt Pleasant Ontario where he operates Laurel Reed Books and edits the occassional magazine The New Chief Tongue. His latest book is After the 6ix O'clock News published by Bookthug, and the chapbook After Progress published by above/ground press.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #57 : Rachel Moritz : The shape of its body, the movement and the waveform

I left her in the kitchen, with a woman older than myself.

‘She’ll make a better mother,’
I knew such weight wasn’t finite.

The car purred away on gravel, and where she remained audible,
wind might break these trees.

Dense emporium. Gap, its not yet—

Rachel Moritz is the author of three chapbooks: Elementary Rituals, Night Sea, and The Winchester Monologues. Her poems have appeared in Aufgabe, Iowa Review, Typo, VOLT, We Are So Happy to Know Something, and other journals. She lives in Minneapolis, where she publishes a chaplet series from WinteRed Press and edits poetry for Konundrum Engine Literary Review.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan