About “good reads” poetry competition

A fairly long post about “good reads” poetry competetion

http://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/58769-goodreads-january-newsletter-top-finalists-poems-please-select-on

blog

http://tinyurl.com/7odv292

or
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/751333?utm_medium=email&utm_source=comment_instant#comment_42407435
OR

And the poems offered as prize-worthy; and their judges and

administrators

I took a looked at various months’ selections and found them mediocre at best. Then I tried a test, the Poundian test of reading this past December’s five nominees for the December prize, as Prose: “a poem ought to be at least as well written as good prose.” These five December 2011 candidates, all but one, failed miserably: in the daylight of prose for of them revealed the barren nakedness of unconcentrated meandering of the untalented strung together, mind farts in sequence with a fancy name, for I allow of the possibility that there are artists whose every doodle manifests talent! Most easily seen perhaps in visual artists who are incapable of drawing a single inelegant line, Picasso appears to have been like that. Handke is pretty much like that as a prose WRITER. When he speaks matters can be quite different. I pointed this out and was instantly banned from the blog. Getreuer Korreptitor then stepped in far more firmly than I had: he too was banned but not after he had been offered to open a separate thread. He accepted the proposition but then was banned without his ever being availed the chance to speak his mind in a separate thread. At that point I decided to check who this “Amy” was who did the banning and averting of critique, and also of the so-called judges who picked these candidates, result of my investigation at the end, after what I have done what I did at the original site: I take each poem in full, and then transform one or two stanza into unstanzafied prose. And then I affix a few spry comments.

“Amy” accused me of “sour grapes” since my Senor Heron [see at the very end] was not nominated: I can only say, am I ever glad not to find it in that company! I am far harsher on meself than on any of these! Anyhow, in let not a moment of critique disturb this moshpit of mediocrity. There is a sixth poem, it is a kind of Yessenin porridge, perhaps I will track down the original, it is by far the best according to the standards of Imagism that have been effective from the days of Li Po to Thomas Transtroemer. It is also the poem that is getting the most votes among the 150 or so cast when I last looked, on Friday the 30^th of December. Thus the audience is not as insensitive as these judges are.

¡ POETRY ! discussion

200 views

GOODREADS NEWSLETTER CONTEST > PLEASE VOTE FOR THE JANUARY 2012 GOODREADS NEWSLETTER FINALISTS!

VOTE IN THE POLL ON THE POETRY GROUP'S MAIN PAGE! (CLICK THIS LINK TO VOTE! --> JUST SELECT TITLE OF POEM YOU LIKE BEST! 

When I Say It Felt Like Moss

You know exactly what I mean. Or like dust
Over every surface, spidercrack cast off

Toys in the crannies. Leaving one to wonder, what
Died, and how? You can make your best guess

But it will always be Miss Scarlet in a red dress
With a rope, in the bedroom. The rope

Wove from past lovers’ hair pressed
Between the plastic teeth of combs. Mister, I’m sorry

When we went to the glass house it was nothing like
What and I’m sorry for turning away at the water

So you wouldn’t take my picture and I’m sorry
For grabbing your ears giggling when you said

Beauty. If I’m careful maybe I can have some
Of your bread and maybe you will smash

A square of the yellow butter and hand it to me
Already melted. If I think about my uterus

Too much I’ll pull out my hardback, obsess
Over the female scientist who loves the swell

Of her own ovarian honeycomb, the fallopian
Tubes pink sea pens feather-dusting the egg

Down into a basket of flesh, but all you ever talk
About is your catalog of Messed Up, so I won’t

Dare pick up the book or pull back the covers
When you come in again to visit way past

The middle of the night. It doesn’t matter that I don’t
Believe half of what you say because I attend

Your freckles like they’re some kind of star
System. If we open another bottle I know

You’ll always pay me back but I’d rather find
A fountain for the two. You should stop

Reading the emails from your ex-wife and
I should stop sleeping with married

Men and we should go back to the covered
Bridge and follow the dragon green fingers

Along the dirt path rivered like a side-winder
To the stream where – hot as an engine – I

Dip my feet or lever myself in past my shirt.

--Tara McDaniel
 

NOW AS PROSE:

When I Say It Felt Like Moss

You know exactly what I mean. Or like dust Over every surface, spidercrack cast off Toys in the crannies. Leaving one to wonder, what Died, and how? You can make your best guess But it will always be Miss Scarlet in a red dress With a rope, in the bedroom. The rope Wove from past lovers’ hair pressed Between the plastic teeth of combs. Mister, I’m sorry When we went to the glass house it was nothing like What and I’m sorry for turning away at the water So you wouldn’t take my picture and I’m sorry For grabbing your ears giggling when you said Beauty.

Devoid of line breaks, which in fact add nothing but a semblance of the poetic, the word jumble is reduced to what it is, some sentimental moments perhaps peeking through.  The poems only gets worse as it goes along:

Men and we should go back to the covered Bridge and follow the dragon green fingers Along the dirt path rivered like a side-winder To the stream where – hot as an engine – I
Dip my feet or lever myself in past my shirt.

--Tara McDaniel

“Rivered like a side-winder?” What might this be? A snake? “Hot as an engine? “, spidercrack cast off Toys in the crannies. “ “lever myself past my shirt” Certainly things are just jammed in here, and the result is incomprehensibility, but not of an interesting mysterious kind. Does Tara also talk like that?
=======================================
A Marriage

lasting this long can feel leaden,
stacked slabs in some oppressive

monument. Why don’t we feel crushed
by the accumulation of years?

They feel instead like sea-colored
pebbles collected at the shore.

Out of millions, we chose these few,
pocketed them for safekeeping.

Or they seem like layers
of light rising within us.

Every day we have cleared fields,
Levered up and sledged

stubborn rocks, lit brush piles.
We have kept pledges to stand

near each other, as birches do
under a winter moon,

interlacing branches streaked
with silver. And in you

I have seen for years now,
in countless tiny gleamings,

flecks of a deeper light
that promise gold still to come.

--David Sloan

Now the entirety in prose:

A Marriage lasting this long can feel leaden, stacked slabs [in some oppressive monument]. Why don’t we feel crushed by the accumulation of years? They feel instead like sea-colored pebbles collected at the shore. Out of millions, we chose these few , pocketed them for safekeeping. Or they seem like layers of light rising within us. Every day we have cleared fields, Levered up and sledged stubborn rocks, lit brush piles. We have kept pledges to stand near each other, as birches do under a winter moon, interlacing branches streaked with silver. And in you I have seen for years now, in countless tiny gleamings, flecks of a deeper light that promise gold still to come.

One of the problems here is that the similes are leaden! Overdone. And contradict each other. And we are also in the world of many pathetic fallacies! But the sentiment is nice enough.

=======================================
Keeping it Simple

Could be I'm an anti-deconstructionist at heart.
Sometimes I think it is better not to know --
To be content watching dust motes
aimlessly floating in a beam of sunlight
without having to think about Brownian motion.
To marvel at minnows schooling in the shallows by our dock
without mentioning to my wife how their behavior
is best explained by a set of simple rules
operating in a complex bio-system.
As I age, I wonder less about how ferns and
cauliflowers might look if they didn't have
the Mandelbrot set of fractals to go by,
or if the whirl of seeds on a sunflower's face
is made more intricate by what Fibonacci had to say.
Sometimes I'd like to believe it's impossible to know
how Monarch butterflies migrate thousands of miles or why,
how a penguin chick can find its mother
in a sea of black and white,
or how the things you love in this life
can be so dear and unashamedly beautiful
that they almost break your heart.

--John Wheeler

NOW AS PROSE:

Keeping it Simple

Could be I'm an anti-deconstructionist at heart. Sometimes I think it is better not to know To be content watching dust motes aimlessly floating in a beam of sunlight without having to think about Brownian motion. To marvel at minnows schooling in the shallows by our dock without mentioning to my wife how their behavior is best explained by a set of simple rules operating in a complex bio-system. As I age, I wonder less about how ferns and cauliflowers might look if they didn't have the Mandelbrot set of fractals to go by, or if the whirl of seeds on a sunflower's face is made more intricate by what Fibonacci had to say. Sometimes I'd like to believe it's impossible to know how Monarch butterflies migrate thousands of miles or why, how a penguin chick can find its mother in a sea of black and white, or how the things you love in this life can be so dear and unashamedly beautiful that they almost break your heart.
--John Wheeler

One pathetic fallacy falling on top of the other; one awkwardness piles on top of the other, “no ear” Wheeler, “no feel for rhythm and rime, Wheeler” as he goes oh wondering wandering among the butterfries!
========================================
Training

I’m thinking of living forever.
I think that way I might finally
get my gig straight and solve the crosswords.
I’m considering outlasting everyone
although I know I’d have a hard time
explaining not having read Ulysses
past the first chapter.
I don’t care if death smells like nutmeg.
I don’t buy the plotline on eternal rest.
By staying alive someday
I might manage to hail a taxi,
and fulfill my father’s wish
of reaching town without a red light.
I couldn’t expect to avoid anger or brooding
or to make the journey with my beasts appeased.
But I might walk vast expanses
of earth and always be beginning
and I love beginning
or could learn
to love it.

--S. Jane Sloat

NOW AS PROSE:

Training

I’m thinking of living forever.[Are you now, darling?]

 I think that way I might finally get my gig straight [dreadful]

and solve the crosswords. I’m considering outlasting everyone although I know I’d have a hard time explaining not having read Ulysses past the first chapter. [duh!]

I don’t care if death smells like nutmeg. [come again![

I don’t buy the plotline on eternal rest. By staying alive someday
I might manage to hail a taxi, [appears to indicate that the writer is dead]

and fulfill my father’s wish of reaching town without a red light. I couldn’t expect to avoid anger or brooding or to make the journey with my beasts appeased. But I might walk vast expanses of earth and always be beginning and I love beginning or could learn to love it.

--S. Jane Sloat

also lacking a feel for sound, is also full of pathetic fallacies with oddities rumbling through

her mind. Yet this would seem to be the best of a bad lot, which is not saying much, but it has a sprightly attitude, shows life… and reads halfway allright as prose! and perhaps she cant help it that her father’s only wish was  that she’d reach town without a red light, although it is not clear what is meant in this instance.: red light district? Red stoplight in town? Or inbetween??? Anhow, these few lines express a mood, a self-state,  no matter that the work is not all that arresting; or rather in the wrong way when regarded closely.,

================================================

HISTORY OF THE WORLD

If it is possible to trust the love of an animal,
If it is possible to tell your grief to a stranger,
Then you can remember the love of hollyhocks
Those huge blooms primitive as the fear of snakes,
How they stared into your eyes long ago
Until the hair rose on your flesh
Like the hair of their stalks.

You can remember how the moon laid its white
Finger across your lips as you slept
How a child guards its secrets
The shoebox of feathers and stones.

You grew between your bones like a ruler
Until only sad movies could star your tears.
You wept for the censored scenes, the evidence
That your signature was becoming distinctive.

You discovered that blur could be
Defeated with magnification. All haloes
Vanished, the ghoul-closets closed.
You obeyed signs, asked directions.

But your lovers betray you. The bread
Falls from your fingers to be snatched by white birds
With hard ruby eyes. Underground graffiti
Mock your love of language. The ceilings
Are a sluice of rain, you toss sleepless
In strange beds. Loneliness
Is finding how you can’t befriend yourself.

You dream kittens mew at your threshold, fledglings
Pulse, pink and rubbery in the hidden nest,
That strangers open their arms to receive you
Pulling on familiar faces like thugs drawing nylons
Over their features. Even this dream escapes your memory

You rise to a window paling with dawn to see
A doe feeding by the fence
Trusting the season with her life.

--Joan Colby

NOW AS PROSE:

HISTORY OF THE WORLD

If it is possible to trust the love of an animal, If it is possible to tell your grief to a stranger, Then you can remember the love of hollyhocks Those huge blooms primitive as the fear of snakes, How they stared into your eyes long ago Until the hair rose on your flesh Like the hair of their stalks. You can remember how the moon laid its white Finger across your lips as you slept How a child guards its secrets The shoebox of feathers and stones. You grew between your bones like a ruler Until only sad movies could star your tears. You wept for the censored scenes, the evidence That your signature was becoming distinctive. You discovered that blur could be Defeated with magnification. All haloes Vanished, the ghoul-closets closed. You obeyed signs, asked directions…

enough I  think to prove my point that the verbal incompetence and oddities disqualify… and the rhetorical opening lines don’t help! But is seems improvable which I at least cannot say of the first three of these five.


--Joan Colby

=====================
I won’t turn into prose what seems to be an imitation of a Yesenin poem or a gloss on it. It clearly does not belong among this competition. There was a time I used to know his work quite well, but I won’t trouble to find the original which ought to have been acknowledged, and perhaps also in the original Russian.

Sergei Aleksandrovitch Esenin’s Last Poem

Here’s the night table with its lit candle.
Here the looped rope dangling from a pipe
like a question mark or a passenger’s handle
on a crowded bus. I am going on a trip.

Not far away. One step. One small kick,
a little dance and the light goes out.
I am sick of the industry of living, sick
of sleepless nights. Elizaveta, no doubt

true to your word, unopened my poem
written in the wine of my blood
sits in your pocket like a worry stone.
No stitched brow. No flood

of tears. A last breath, the psyche flies.
Goodbye, my friend, goodbye. *


*The first line of Esenin’s poem

--Jane Ellen Glasser

====================================

Below praise from the mosh pit, no discernment, no taste… and poems by “Amy” and the three judges

To see what they are up to!

 

message 2: by Andrea

Dec 28, 2011 11:25am

I am so torn between "Keeping it Simple" and "Training". Both are gorgeous. 

message 3: by Tom

Dec 28, 2011 01:27pm

These are a wonderful selection. I am blown away by how the quality of the writing has improved over the last 2 years. I have to vote for "Marriage" though I could have easily voted for any of this month's finalists. Bravo to all. 

message 4: by Sarah

Dec 28, 2011 01:51pm

Wow, great selection. How can I ever choose one? 

message 5: by Ric

Dec 28, 2011 02:28pm

i'm in awe. (i'll be too humbled now to ever submit anything again!) they are, every one, just wonderful! i wish there were links to the honorable mentions. does anyone know how to find them? if so, pls advise.
very difficult to choose. my congratulations to all the finalists. is it fair to base one's vote on a single line? "trusting the season with her life" is a show stopper. "a marriage" is also just beautiful. but i would have to cast my vote for "history of the world". superb. 

flag

message 6: by Tricia

Dec 28, 2011 02:46pm

"I have seen for years now/in countless tiny gleamings/
flecks of a deeper light/that promise gold still to come."

David Sloan, you have my vote. 

message 7: by Ric

Dec 28, 2011 02:57pm

Michael wrote: "i think what is needed here are a new set of judges, unless nothing better is submitted between [1] the simply awful "When I Say It Felt Like Moss" "Keeping it Simple" + "A Marriage" 

really??? i'm fascinated michael. what is it about "a marriage" you find simply awful? or mediocre about "history of the world"? "...it felt like moss" has a pretty quirky perspective, but i found its run on sentence style grew on me as i read. but the other 3 you dismiss i think are just exquisite, so i am intrigued by what it is in these poems you find so disagreeable. are you in a better mood now and willing to expand on your comment? - ric 

flag 

message 8: by Farahay

Dec 28, 2011 03:15pm

am not that Michael... I chose HISTORY OF THE WORLD. Flowing, beautiful simile and metaphoric references with reflections of nature any history of the world should have. It became my favorite. 

I then decided to check out what the two controllers “Amy”  and the judges Wendy Babiak, Andrew Haley and Ruth Bavetta: 

Ruth Bavetta does what she calls visual poetry  

But you can’t make out the writing in them!

But certainly inoffensive and purty.

Two Babiaks:

Rondeau for my Wedding Night

Tonight I have no desire to sleep, though this day 
has drained me, the family show-and-tell: my bouquet 
heavy with timeless ivy, the icons' weighted stare, the so- 
whiteness of my dress begging for a wine-spill of Christ-blood 
the pictures, the cake, the smiling 'til my mouth ached.

I should be empty of movement, after the grey 
flagstones of the Sacred Heart's foundation swayed 
beneath my satin-slippered feet. I should want sleep. No. 
Tonight I have no desire
for anything but this, for you to place your hand this way 
and unwrap me like a wedding present, open me 
like a white silk envelope, for me to wrap you in the snow 
of secrets and poems and thighs, for us to go 
on never sleeping, for the time never to come when I say 
"Tonight I have no desire."

Copyright © Wendy Babiak 2000 / 2002

The Uninvited Guest

So Death comes to call; I offer him tea and
take his sickle and hide it in the closet. Its handle
feels rough on my palm. The foyer smell of cedar
chases away the moths from his empty sockets.
His robes flutter with butterfly wings.
He wears a necklace of hummingbird skulls.

In the kitchen the refrigerator's hum
drowns out his whispered words.
I pretend he isn’t talking while
I sweeten the tea with lavender honey
but birdsong from outside
rolls in bitter on my tongue

"In England, Shakespeare
had no trouble dying."
Death’s voice rings out
razor sharp. I shiver
as my bare feet on the tile floor
catch February’s chill.

Rummaging in the cupboards, I think
Now that’s just swell. Death comes to call
and I’m all out of cookies.
That’s what happens
when you forget to go shopping.
I make a note to write a poem later
on the back of a grocery list.

"God, that’s just like an American."
Death’s disgust at my lack of hospitality
rankles. The overfilled pitcher of nicety
grows too heavy for my weakened hands
and falls, crashing to bits on the floor.

Like my own Lilliputian minutemen
the shards scatter into a circle around him
barring the way against his heavy feet
while I, light with emptiness
levitate over the painted table.
Arms crossed, I address my guest:

"And now Mama-san will tell you
you presumptuous usurper
what’s up: you will take your
rough-handled sickle, fluttering robe
and ominous whispering, and depart.
And you will stay long away."

Death hangs his bony head, smooth as an egg
(his has no cracks, as ours do, for through which
birth canal did it ever pass?), already missing
the taste of my tea. I tell him I must find out first
what can’t be discovered. He laughs.
The birds outside sing Hoc opus, hic labor est.

The teacups dance to the sound of his leaving.
Pen in my left hand and rolling pin in my right
I hear his voice as he strides, resigned, away:
"Get to work, girl, and the next time I visit
you’ll be glad for the rest." My refrigerator hums.
His parting words: "By the way, I prefer scones."

Wendy Babiak

Wendy Babiak lives in the Buckle of the Bible Belt (Shreveport, Louisiana) with her family, where she tends a butterfly and hummingbird garden which takes most of her time. She's also the Literary Editor for The Quarterly Journal of Ideology: A Critique of Conventional Wisdom. Her poetry has appeared in The Louisiana Review and several places online, including Numbat and the now-defunct Butterfly: The Journal of Contemporary Buddhism.

=============================

Several poems by Andrew Haley

ELECTRIC 

my heart is tingling at an excited frequency 
listening to the lightening storm 
and looking at old messages from you 

my heart is the lightening storm twittering and flashing 
with endocrine chemicals all bearing your scent 
you lovely world dressed as a woman 

risen from the ivy pond 
i want you to carry my life in your womb 
and dress the wounds 

of my life's world with your indian hair 
you are the nemesis of all the wild things 
that sit still instead of lighting 

the air on fire with their marvelous wings 
i cannot fathom any deeper purgatory 
like some vegas airport full of lines 

than standing another moment without your eyes 
gazing from the computer 
it is a cold and mechanical world 

the monkeys we fired into space 
are cold features of a museum 
the robots we fire into space 

carry love songs from our parents generation 
incised on golden disks for aliens 
who will be born from frantic alien foam 

millennia after the last two horses starve 
curled on a bath mat in a sky scraper made of living glass 
it is the horror of knowing that drives them up the stairs 

it is the surety of their horses hearts that curls them 
together on the floor of the master bath 
an astronomical warming 

that for all the bleeding seconds of loam 
and the carnivorous uncovering of the worlds trenches 
has led warm to warm 

for the love of all the asteroids and the blank satellites 
broadcasting episodes of friends 
ten thousand years after the world ends 

i want you as my astronaut wife 
to climb with me into the tethered capsule 
and rise above the dust 


APOLOGY 

in the morning 
when the crows had waved their wings 
and carried themselves home 
his body lay in the street 
bare and bones 
his heart unbeating in its white unfinished church 

the old women passed 
buying bread 

the old man washed the night 
from his stairs 
with a hose 

and the young men were sleeping 
dreaming of crows 
and the young women sat on their beds 
hating their looms 

no one stood at her window watching 
as first the ants 
then the centipedes 
then the moths 
came to carry him down 
to their holes by the sea 


ABOVE NEBRASKA 

today you are a Nebraskan town 
in a patchwork of square fiefdoms 
dull with fallow or in green circles 
arched inside their squares 
of scorpion corn 

the rain is seldom but it rains 
and the water rushes from the leaves 
that wrap each ear of corn 
like a baby Indian 

the fields sop until the soil drains 
spilling in fan shapes 
and open hand shapes 
lacework and latticework of ferns 
and fronds comingling 

bleeding rivulet to rivulet 
until the soil 
crumbles 
into a winding stream 

and all the droplets draining 
from the scorpion corn 
become a river of shrubs 
and sandbars rising like vertebrae 
from the riverbed below 

today I am a plane 
and I pass over you 
thirsting my eyes 
on your low maneuvers 

you are a town 
girdled by square fields 
earth imagined by engineers 
circles inside squares 
lushly and obediently watered 

I pass over you in my white fatigue 
with my heart shaped almondine 
so small at this height 
you look up from your world 

and see its tiny passage 
like a crystal or a freezing 
rivulet on a winter window 
only for a moment 
for you are busy farming 


BERRYMAN IN BRIDGETOWN 

All my generation – those piddling four – 
All my generation come to think on it 
With their glitter and glass 
Brood in the methane gasp 

While sorry I amid the rains 
Do nothing on my wide Pacific shelf 
Wanting more than these dragoons 
With their Beathoofian clatter 

What’s the matter? Head gone wrong? 
I see a shield amid the trees. Amid? 
Among the trees, there, 
I see a cohort’s shield hanging low 

A painted dragon on it and my own 
A ghost’s beard hanging from a naked face 

==============================================

And now some Amy King,

http://www.amyking.org/#!read-poems

 who will be subjected to the same Poundian test:

The Marble Faun              

 by Amy King

A tiny face of genius & tolerance

brands itself organic

abrupt vampire of himself, of health,

stoned circle of having risen—

Why the natural inclination to pet,

to be affection with a soul made of bone

on haunches among honeysuckle

and little else to dine upon?

I wasn't able to claim the backs

of my legs, and for that crime, was martyred

for modern day races.

From these trials, I learned to be true

to truths that hugged and lost and slew.

Not what makes my liver stand on end

but how to shake fists against the failings

of insects, of lambs, of castles and the fruits

of shadows that walk with us behind our backs,

swampy corners of decay united.

From old Jewish towns we embrace

the plotted demise and welcome a ghost

in born-again tatters, being all that we know

and the only face that matters.  Except

a child from the lawn who watches, in stone.

We become as ripe as an earth's waiting meat,

better for sculpting to crumble

a rib-eyed dust spelling death out,

names that soften at moon, broken to rise again.

NOW AS PROSE

A tiny face of genius & tolerance brands itself organic abrupt vampire of himself, of health, stoned circle of having risen— Why the natural inclination to pet, to be affection with a soul made of bone on haunches among honeysuckle and little else to dine upon? I wasn't able to claim the backs of my legs, and for that crime, was martyred for modern day races.  From these trials, I learned to be true to truths that hugged and lost and slew. Not what makes my liver stand on end but how to shake fists against the failings

of insects, of lambs, of castles and the fruits of shadows that walk with us behind our backs, swampy corners of decay united.

I wish that this doggerel might make Amy’s liver stand on end! But I am afraid not!

This Amy will forge on no matter what!

This is an example of a thoroughly CLOTTED poem. Clotted poems are not intrinsically awful.

The first poem I ever explicated, Robert Lowell’s THE SHAKO is clotted – but once you take it apart

It reveals wonderful parts. Here, if you unclott Amy what you find are entirely TRIVIAL thoughts

Merely awkwardly  and ungrammatically expressed: “to be affection with a soul” meaning what? That

“soul”possesses an “affection” , or are we trying to say that the soul is being affectionate?

The opening lines A tiny face of genius & tolerance brands itself organic abrupt vampire of himself, of health, stoned circle of having risen” … is gibberish!

This is truly awful and for this poem to grace the American Academy of Poets Site

Is an even more dreadful thought.

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/22562

Amy runs the poetry competition of  “good reads”,  at best mediocre stuff! She gets published

With crap like the Marble Faun, even has an endorsement from John Ashberry!

Not that Ashberry is at all important or interesting to me these days. Still!

==================

WE WILL NEVER FULLY RECOVER

Because the light resembles marmalade,

the zeitgeist dips gelatinous between our ribs

and makes us speak.  My sister is not gay.

My daughter is not gay.  I enjoy the war

of this party.  My husband’s not gay.

My self is not gay.  I will never be as important

to you as your family.  Please, more chips & aperitif.

This gathering will be finger foods only,

nothing more substantial to speak the appetite

or test one’s endurance with manners.

I don’t have a dog in this fight; my sister

is post–gay only.  I’m merely a gnat sans trench coat

in a small bony space crossing letters out.

The anti-Vanna White.  Even if you don’t remember,

you sleep through memory nightly.  You sleep

through me and feel your Pinot Noir all the way

back to Napa Valley.  Because the total square root

of heat is light that turns a grape

into strains of bottled affection, I hold you

close, stroke your estimations, even before

the growls of this party deliver its host

from the assumption of body, pull us

into her white-hot affection, and whether we

believe or only gesture the Eucharist, our sex

goes gay for all objects in contact.

My husband goes gay, his nipples get bothered,

my brother is gay, he’s a leg length in bathtubs,

my grandmother’s grave echoes with gay

her silky epitaph and flowers.  Gay is the next

pro-creation, save where the bombs and guns

illuminate people harnessed by fatigues

and futures without pay, futures without gay,

death in an imminent trigger.  The unemployed also

party less gay when fairies are unable to boot-camp.

If you want more of the like:

http://www.amyking.org/

How does someone with this kind of junk floating around her pretty little head do it – does she give good head? That at least would be something!  Bring back the “snap crackle and pop” poetesses of

of Yore of Bryn Mawr, which after all has only had one great poetess amongst them all:

Marianne Moore!

.====================================================================

Here my Senor Heron,  

Señor Heron



Still still

There on two stilts

Reed thin in the reeds

He stands



Posing for Mr. Audubon's

Fine line pen

His light blue grey eminence

Nearly indiscernible

Within

Grey blue

Water green

Sleek reeds

His magic cap.



Thinking

"You can't see me, Senor Darwin, 

as little as you can see cousin Robin, 

I have adapted beyond all recognition

I am part sky part water."



Then he flies off, creaking in the wind,

Scrapes his way hoarsely across the sky... 
grey…  elegant metal file... 
turning into just one disappearing line.



A niche bird,

[A specialist

Nay, a super-specialist]

A solitary aristocrat

Or pair

With beaks to be picky with

To probe into the slimmest of cavities

  

The finest meshed nets

Nearly a foot in length

The thinnest of funnels



Zap

And another baby salmon

Zap

Another frog

Wriggles down his elongated gullet



Everything about him is elongated…

But when he start to fly and slowly begins to spread,

and slowly starts, to wave his heavy-seeming, mournful wings,

like rain curtains in the wind, oh what a leaden rhythm that is of his waving of

astonishingly wide, substantial width of wings… wide enough it seems

to lift much heavier loads than his spindly being...



No fluttering ever…

Occasionally he glides…

Just above the water

Submarine hunter

Glider...



There, he perches on the crown of the 200 foot spruce tree...

Lightning rod grey white! 

  

There, he spreads those weeping wide wings,

Starts to lower his substantial spread 

- cushioning, billowing, segueing into Mr. Audobon's preferred profile, has he been watching the 82nd Airborne? -  

Landing, settling on the crown, on the huge wide spread of the weeping willow,

and there he finally cries his heart out…

[c] Michael Roloff 2008-2011

[