Issue
Two
c o n t e N t s
Live Poem Bruce Weber
Excerpt from a Philosopher Yuko Otomo
From Bestiary Brenda Iijima
Poem Matvei Yankelevich
Lower Broadway Robert C. Morgan
Information Bob Heman
Billie Holiday… Steve Dalachinsky
Ms Goose John Reed
Three poems Michael Andre
Finally Jeffrey Cyphers Wright
POEM
We grew out of poetry into
reason, and now poetry
is the backlash against
history, for we can only
know what we have
made. And so we unmake
by making automatic
in order to return to
Providence, R.I. where
we hope to find
the savage imagination
called mom.
Matvei Yankelevich
Ms Goose
The name of the Goose
Maestro, please.
Violins, a hint of flute. The springtime of life. Blare! The trumpets.
A child is born, a child laughs. Her hair sways from the top of
her head as her Dadda holds her up by one foot, and tickles her.
“Who is this goose?” he asks, “let us examine
this goose.”
He swings her over his shoulder, and whirls her through the air
onto his other shoulder. She is laughing, saying, “again,
again.”
These are the happy days of childhood that few remember. The bubbly
joy of dumbness, of life not as obstacle but as lark. The carefree
hour when exhaustion is settled by a simple pairing of words, “Mamma,
nurse,” and joy is postponed only by haphazard slumbers, limbs
strewn across hay piles, or tossed bedding, or the loving lap of
a parent.
She was “Goose, silly goose,” and if she knew her name,
her family, her toys, her home, the woods behind the brook, she
knew that she was first and foremost of the land of Goosedom, where
silliness was as natural to life as food, as sleep, where all of
learning was a laugh, a giggle, and another laugh.
How wretched, how unfair, that all of us should lose that.
Flash forward: it is many years later and our girl is desponding,
broken hearted. Not because she should be—that wretch wasn’t
in her league—but because she is a sensitive, deserving girl,
who could not help but chase the gingerbread man. He was amusing,
and she couldn’t resist the button eyes. Trouble, indeed,
in the wee hours of the morning, but oh those sugar lips.
Since then, a dalliance with Jack Sprat. She knew better than to
strum heartstrings with the married ones, but Jack was devilishly
handsome in an all skin and bones way, with large eyes and hands
so big they could encircle her waist—thumb to thumb, index
finger to index finger.
Of course, her disappointment had not exactly been the one she expected.
As it turned out, Jack and his wife were swingers who shared everything.
Good enough in some ways, but, alas, confusing in others. Miss Goose,
after unraveling the intricacies of their tangled web, was forced
to put an end to the whole affair.
And now?
Miss Moffet, though reliable-ish when it came to perennials and
foreign exchange rates, could hardly be trusted with such a charge
as finding a man to with whom to enjoy everlasting bliss. Especially
in the sense that Miss Moffet hadn’t managed
a successful rendezvous since her tennis instructor had moved to
the Northfork, and was likely to nab any of the more favorable specimens,
or, frankly, frighten them away. Nevertheless, Moffet had fixed
Goose up with a gander. A prospect by the name of Peter Piper.
Give Peter his due. He was an organic farmer, and wouldn’t
hurt a fly on his asparagus.
John Reed
billie holiday singing Night and Day in
a bar on rue
rivoli
the sky so dark night & day are
indistinguishable
the place des voges a stark square heart
that repeats truth
the way a calendar begins & disappears
bizarre how the old synagogue
shaped like a torah
repeats with its bearded eyes leaning out the window
the eternal sources
of illuminated vaults
rarely open to the public
where
day & night
are low slung clouds that rush by
whispering “no more spring to
drink from”
here a koran filled with sacred warnings unravels
breath held wide
open & embryonic
& from the
bottom of a chasm where night meets day
& mystery is the only light to
read by –
i look into torn works parlor games & the rubber
rooms that hold my
thirst in check
&
proclaim to myself
quoting an out of season
(b)ramble
“Behold I am alive …” a “surplus
of existence is
welling up in my
heart”
where Night and Day
become one.
Steve Dalachinsky
Paris 1/18/07
Excerpt from a Philosopher
moon, water, thoughts—
they are all the same,
a noble reflection
of our own fragile senses
of (im)mortality
two major
one minor
& one diminished
“Where does it begin
&
where does it end?”
(repeat)
“Where does it begin
&
where does it end?”
(repeat again)
“Where does it begin
&
where does it end?”
-Yuko Otomo
INFORMATION
She looks at him because she thinks he is looking at her
but he wasn’t until it seemed she was looking at him
and he would look at her to see if she was looking
at him which of course confirmed what she had thought.
-Bob Heman
LIVE POEM
this is a live poem
a poem in real time real space
laughing with buddha
shining with the inner light of confucius
dancing in the moonlight with venus
this is a live poem
spitting our sulphur
cutting to the quick in the mirror
diving into the x-po-factos
blindfolded
this is a live poem
a love poem
a loafer’s poem
no
this
is
a poem split asunder
a poem spreading its tentacles like a black widow spider
a poem demanding a fair human wage
a poem jumping over jack
a poem sailing above clouds
a poem discovering the middle ground of the rocky mountains
this
is
a
live
poem
tell
it
like
it
is
poem
a
live
tell
it
to
be
now
poem
-Bruce Weber-written nov 8, 2006 -9:30 pm
Lower Broadway
I got your telematique!
nimble, ecstatic, terse
another sewn collage
another rupture from
the pulse of Tamarind
the postmediocre after
math, the final surrogate
without bias or taste
n’er to invade the years—
pink golf-hat, quanderous
knickers bragging high
(some mindless sentiment
fondling a nosebleed, upon
our newsboy’s flatulence)
O savory sweetness amid
the pleasant din of down
town traffic, another hint,
another recall, ma cheri--
alas, our crumbling castle,
our Heidelberg romance
Robert C. Morgan
OLD TUNE
What old tune? Who you kidding?
Old age begins too soon.
Humbled, we begin to mumble
And know we will not heal.
How you feel? No cure
For age can long endure.
Love the young. Noisily
Off-key, in no new
Harmony, they outlive you.
Who can sing along?
NERVOUS PANDEMIC
To worry is to fear the worst.
A bad marriage is a joint disease.
Arab horseman with his sword
Mounts a jet plane, flies
Slashes the Twin Towers.
Spare the rod; whet the knife
Slit the skin, flay the child:Sacrifice Isaac to Allah.
VIRUS
Confined to bed
Better off dead.
Often a bed¢s
A coffin.
-Michael Andre
beast entomology
opisthokonts where to shit, fuck, sleep—the shit loads of
garbage we send in a barge down river or pay off another country
to take
we (humans) are the sister group of the choanoflagellates
cross-modal transfer: hello, innervations from the brain to the
larynx”caterpillars, king kong disney-fied big mice
mummies kaapa
when neck is stretched out pig out the word that the brain focuses
on: natural, naturalistic”complex motor tendencies
prehominid days
pretext for aggression
anthropod vector “in the evolutionary perspective, then,
society and genetic programming imply each other.” mary midgley,
from beast and man
cochineal insects “foul owl on the prowl”
hyracotherium [eohippus] ssp., the dog-sized ancestors of the horse
what is the nature of the question
tro-don-descended sapient
rib cage, cortex, thorax
epidemiological data tankers
see how shamo makes his living
chloroflorocarbons
spring hill mine disaster crop that top of hill
Brenda Iijima
FINALLY
There was nothing left to say.
Your mouth was a bucket
of hurt. Throngs of diphthongs
stole through your brain
like thieves in a dark
abandoned lot where you
looked for your keys
metonymically speaking
And for this a black sheep
they want to brand you!?
Greetings, good looking.
I know where you can park
your heart and count to three.
You can be a captive of glee.
Jeffrey Cyphers Wright
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