from the desk of wilma's butler

Ape aperitif lowers all sparkly heckles as sometimes offices took your ape's arson in gloves.

common place blog

"Why must we have a poetry? And who are we? We see now that we are the world and the world is poetry, that words are poetry, while other pieces of the world have other poetries---birds have their songs but also plants have their forms and patternings and the sky has its own look and process: poetry is the surface and texture and play of being, including the light that springs up in things from their depths."

from "Women and Poetry " by Alice Notley, from her new book of essays Coming After

This deft ignition of poetry feels spot on and on and awe to me, bloggerissimo. What about you? Do you think women have or should have a poetry? What women? Or, buttery eggs, what is, my bloggerissimo, poetry?

Poetry seams like a song lyric but is feeling a strong liquorice.
Poetry sees like a song lyric but is feeling a stray locomotive.
Poetry me's like a song lyric but is feeling a startled occupant.

common place blog

Hell
by Sarah Manguso

The second-hardest thing I have to do is not be longing's slave.

Hell is that. Hell is that, others, having a job, and not having a
job. Hell is thinking continually of those who were truly great.

The kind of music I want to continue hearing after I am dead is
the kind that makes me think I will be capable of hearing it then.

There is music in Hell. Wind of desolation! It blows past the egg-
eyed statues. The canopic jars are full of secrets.

The wind blows through me. I open my mouth to speak.

I recite the list of people I have copulated with. It does not take long.
I say the names of my imaginary children. I call out four-syllable
words beginning with B. This is how I stay alive.

Beelzebub. Brachiosaur. Bubble-headed. I don't know how I stay alive.
What I do know is that there is a light, far above us, that goes out
when we die,

and that in Hell there is a gray tulip that grows without any sun.
It reminds me of everything I failed at,

and I water it carefully. It is all I have to remind me of you.


published in Conduit and Best American Poetry 2005

maid public

Here bloggerissimo do be some pix from the Tarpaulin Sky reading at the Four Faced Liar.

larkicipating in the larger bloggunity

From Reb Livingston's Cackling Jackal .

1. Go into your archive.
2. Find your 23rd post (or closest to it).
3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to it.
Post the text of your sentence in your blog along with these instructions.

As you may have curled toward the trapeze-climb, we only invited our closeted freedoms and roto-tillers, which, as it turned about, was a pot of people.

common place blog

The Miscarriage
by Amit Majmudar
published in Poetry October 2005

Some species can crack pavement with their shoots
to get their share of sun some species lay
a purple froth of eggs and leave it there
to sprinkle tidepools with tadpole confetti
some species though you stomp them in the carpet
have already stashed away the families
that will inherit every floor at midnight
But others don’t go forth and multiply
as boldly male and female peeling the bamboo
their keepers watchng in despair or those
endangered species numbered individually
and mapped from perch to oblivious perch

For weeks the world it seemed was plagued
with babies forest dwindling into cradles
rows of women hissing for an obstetrician
babies no one could feed babies received
by accident like misdirected mail
from God so many babies people hired
women to hold them babies babies everywhere
but not a one to name When we got home
the local news showed us a mother with
quintuplets she was suckling them in shifts
a mountain of sheets universally admired
a goddess of fertility her smile
could persuade the skies to rain Her litter
slept ointment-eyed in pink wool caps while Dad
ran his hand through his hair thinking maybe
of money as he stood surveying his
crowded living room his wealth of heartbeats

Pizza and pop that night and there unasked inside
the bottlecap was Sorry—Try Again
you set it down and did not speak of it
the moon flanked by her brood of stars that night
a chaste distracted kiss good night that night
your body quiet having spilled its secret
your palms flat on your belly holding holding

Forgive me if I had no words that night
but I was wondering in the silence still
begetting silence whether to console you
if I consoled you it would make the loss
your loss and so we laid beside ourselves
a while because I had no words until
our bodies folded shut our bodies closed
around hope like a book preserving petals
a book we did not open till the morning when
we found hope dry and brittle but intact

on edge

spent some time last night lying on a blanket in the front yard, staring up at the white clouds roiling in interrupted by breaks in dark space. everything was sonogram, sonogram, sonogram. have been reading the tibetan book of living and dying. so the staring at stars trying to ungrasp at life. totally unsuccessful attempt. o my bloggerissimo, i suck at enlightenment. and the nectar ain't forthcoming.

meanwhile, rita roars toward the coast.

Edge
by Michel Deguy
translated by Anne Talvaz

Why this loved formula comes back
“At the edge of the world once more”
What is edge, what is ‘edge’, being on edge
The edge in Baudelaire and
The princes’ terrace in Rimbaud
With a view of the world and all as if
Come and come again

in the nows

Sharon Olds says no tank you manyways to the Fist Lady.

ha ha that's it in the nows for tonight.

all codes lead to roam

Prathibha Nandakumar




Woman and Blood
by Prathibha Nandakumar

translated by the author


Tiny fingers cut and bleed
despite the warning not to touch the knife.
Blood finally stops with a bandage
the little sobs continue even after the hug and kiss.

All of a sudden growing up
brings new problems
Question papers are far easier
The next is still unknown.

Blood drops
on the playground
cycle seat
degree certificate
carpet in the hall
some bench some corner of a park
cinema theatre
on the first love letter
wedding mandap
and on . . . the bed.

Later,
it’s a great effort to stop the blood
on it stands the honour of the family
dynasties have tumbled
battles fought, hearts broken
even deaths are justified.

When finally it stops
my God, it’s like the churning of the ten oceans
and the butter emerges
bringing smiles to all the faces

White blood from the swollen breasts
flows endless. Innumerable legends,
myths and songs of praise . . .
It’s okay if the young pigeon
turns into a vulture later, it’s okay.

Then one day,
it really stops.
Permanently.
Tears, hopelessness,
even talks of hormone treatments.

But it’s time for getting ready to go.

Someone once said
‘Blood relation means . . .’
I stopped him midway
‘I know, I am a woman.’

booking it

O my bloggerissimo, heard tale of and thought you'd wanna know about Nightboat Books.

Check out the editors and board, quite a crew accrued. This from the website:
 
Submit your manuscript to the 2005 NIGHTBOAT BOOKS POETRY PRIZE!

2004 Nightboat Poetry Prize Winner: The Truant Lover,
by Juliet Patterson

Judged by 2004 National Book Award Winner, Jean Valentine

Nightboat Books invites submissions to our annual poetry book contest. The winning poet receives $1,000 honorarium, plus 10 copies of the published book. The book will be announced in national publication(s), and sold online and in East and West coast bookstores.


JUDGE: Donald Revell

Donald Revell is the author of From the Abandoned Cities, The Gaza of Winter, New Dark Ages, Erasures, Beautiful Shirt, There Are Three, Arcady, and Pennyweight Windows: New & Selected Poems, as well as a translation of Guillaume Apollinaire's Alcools. His honors include the PEN Center USA West Award, the Shestack Prize, a Pushcart Prize, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as from the Ingram Merril and Guggenheim Foundations.

DEADLINE: Postmark date between September 1, 2005 and November 30, 2005.

on the fence

Making it nude, not new, Rebecca Wolff claims "experimental marketing" but shouldn't credit go to Hugh Hefner as Father of Tit-lit? What do you think bloggerissimo?

maid public

Bloggerissimoes, come on gather under the Tarpaulin Sky

TARPAULIN SKY / FREQUENCY SERIES
FALL 2005 READINGS in NYC
2PM Saturdays @ The Four-Faced Liar
165 West 4th Street (between 6th & 7th Ave), NY, NY
www.thefour-facedliar.com

10 SEPTEMBER!!

Robyn Art, Jen Benka, Michael Gottlieb, Heidi Lynn Staples

Robyn Art was born in Boston. Her recent poems have appeared in Slope, The Hat, Conduit, Slipstream, The New Delta Review, Rhino, and canwehaveourballback.com. She's the author of the poetry manuscript, The Stunt Double In Winter, which was selected as a Finalist for the 2004 Kore Press First Book Award. Her chapbook, Degrees of Being There, was released by Boneworld Press in May 2003. A second chapbook, No Longer A Blonde, is forthcoming from Boneworld Press in 2005. Currently she lives in Brooklyn.

Jen Benka's collection of one poem for each of the 52 words in the Preamble to the US Constitution, A Box of Longing With Fifty Drawers, will be published by Soft Skull Press in 2005. Jen is the managing director of Poets & Writers and lives in New York City.

Michael Gottlieb is the author of more than a dozen titles, including Lost and Found (Segue, 2004). His other recent books include Gorgeous Plunge (also from Segue) Careering Obloquy (Other Publications/Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs), and More Than All (Tongue To Boot), a collaboration with Ted Greenwald.

Heidi Lynn Staples is the author of this blog and other schtuff.

a longing the gulf cost

Narrow the gap!
Emergency!
Wake

On the verge
Race
Let us
Emerge
Admit
Numberless the need
Speak out!