miPOradio's The Goodnight Show: August CountDown

miPOradio's The Goodnight Show: August CountDown

for my father who today would have been ninety-one

[first]
yes to perfection.
yes to worth.
yes to confidence.
yes to androgyny.
yes to accomplishment.
yes to humor.
yes to choice and both.

[then]
the long living versus the short-lived
offers to disease a whisper of true north.

[now]
how is responsibility maintained apart from girth of brain
when brain is half the reason
and when the leitmotif descends upon
already fallen earth.

[fo(u)rth]
each sentence declarative in loneliness
each portion of the skill remaindered
books in bins along the outer doors in shops
leave hope around the fillings that they are.

[toujours]
my compass you still are.
the child who has uncovered
your young mind
I hold her heart.

Paper Snowflakes By Helen Losse Now Available

Copies of my chapbook, Paper Snowflakes, will be mailed to me this week. That means copies are for sale at Southern Hum Press. The editor, Jessicca Vidrine, said, “They are quite lovely.”

miPOradio - call for audio

I am putting together a special program featuring just one writer at a time. If you have anything you can record about Frank O'Hara's poems or his life or perhaps you can read one of your favorite poems by him, please send me the audio and I may just use it on the show.

Thank you,
Didi Menendez

"Shelling the Pecans"

Shelling the Pecans

for A. A.


I knew what a woman's hand could do:
shred the husk into threads, weave lips
together at the seam. Rock to hard body,
empire to thrust into knave -- the native
touch tocando música up the spine
of the violin, some song of silk and gut.
I knew race was a matter of degree,
that inch in the face, that notice
of dismissal. How to work all day
at a posture, at a stance, at attention
paying attention to none but the awl.

I put my hole into you, this notch
between the breasts, this discovery
and treason. Hembra a macho. Fixed.
O defined in the still shell of history,
a destiny written in the charts and lost. Lost
in the unnoticed memories of you, a flicker
of change, some small scrimp
of light. Tu luz. Ahí allá -- a la ala
and the scoop. Your aguila eyes sweeping
up the dawn's desire. This night. I remember

shelling the pecans. Nothing but a bucket.
No ride exceptional. Nothing but a dream
to entertain us. I dreamed this moment --
all the sweet meats in a risen weight going
higher to the rim. The price and the pricing.
I could eat what I missed or messed. Outside,
the birds bending to it on a summer day.
The great age of my grandmother's banded
hands weighing me down. The paper
of tutelage blasting me away

at that age. Now, I still remember
how to shuck, how to fetch it, how to
step it. Stepping up to you, I ask.
The point enters the ventricle without
shattering the meat. How a woman
on a good day can rip out the heart
whole.




(in progress - 8/25/06)
Lorna Dee Cervantes

Who Killed JonBenet Ramsey?

Dan Abrams murdered JonBenet.
No, Rita Cosby murdered the little princess.
No, CourtTV murdered JonBenet.

Bill O’Reilly sexually assaulted her
and then strangled her.
Ann Coulter sexually assaulted her

and then blamed the liberals.
Nancy Grace sexually assaulted JonBenet
and then strangled her.

Anderson Cooper and Sheppard Smith
both of them took turns sexually assaulting her
and slowly strangling her.

All these bastards and bitches
are going to jail.
Who’s going to deliver the bad news now?

Christopher T. George's Blog

Christopher T. George's Blog

REMINDER

Ten days to go in the contest on my blog. What inspires you? Tell me in a poem of thirty lines or less, any form. Send your entries to me at editorctrip@yahoo.com by midnight on Thursday, August 31, Eastern time. Winners will be published on my blog and first prize winner also receives a copy of the CD of the Charlotte production of highlights from the musical by composer Erik Sitbon and myself, "Jack The Musical: The Ripper Pursued." Good luck!

Chris

www.melancholiastremulousdreadlocks.com

Art Is Mercy

Let me brush your silk and name myself a color after.
If the road were to divide, I would encompass.
Now, though, wheels seem just enough.
The only latitude I want is you.

If the road were to divide, I would encompass
Pathways not yet made, I would redeem choice from confinement
The only latitude I want is you
Beside me bringing climate to the work.

Pathways not yet made redeem choice from confinement
Any day now, when the weather holds my heart alight,
Beside me climate brings the work
To riveting displays of thinking river's pace.

Any day now, when the weather holds my heart alight,
The trebling branches sift through quiet
To the riveting displays of thinking river's pace
Mere divination of the messages from usual impatience.

Trebling branches sift through quiet
Reminscent of first moments when a picture comes to seem
Mere divination of the messages from usual impatience.
Look at where we are in blessing these surroundings.

Reminiscent of first moments when a pictures comes to seem
Wheels now just enough to
Look at where we are in blessing these surroundings
As I brush your silk and name myself a color after.

MiPOvideos: BUS PART THREE OLD MAN BY JOHN KORN

MiPOvideos: BUS PART THREE OLD MAN BY JOHN KORN

“ Twenty American passenger planes were lost over the Atlantic Ocean within
hours of each other. American authorities confirm that it was terrorism. Rescue
planes have reported no survivors and little or no debris. The lame-duck President
is vacationing in Crawford and has not yet commented on the tragedy. It is not
known when he will address the nation.”

from the special edition of The New York Times
Dec. 23, 2008


The Unfoiled Plot

The planning took years,
I’m not at liberty to say how long.
We never used the telephone,

we never used emails,
we didn’t use the Internet.
We did not write anything

(pertaining to our plans) down on paper.
It was all word of mouth.
We were going to blow up

American planes over the Atlantic,
halfway across, over the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
We were going to blow up twenty planes

to show the Great Satan his evil ways.
Twenty of us women were recruited
into the service of God.

The liquid explosives were injected
into our breast implants and triggered
by electric charges hidden in our eyeglasses.




This poem was turned over to British authorities
by family members of one of the female suicide
bombers. The poem offers the only clue as to how
the tragedy of Dec. 23 was carried out.

Entry X.5

The sky’s pastel pink and blue as the sun rises over the Sangre de Cristos.
For long moments of time, I’m calm, sitting on a tattered house rug thrown on the sand, remembering into the distance....

the aged odor of the nursing home as I would walk through to that room....
the stab of a glass shard in my foot, the sharp slide out....
how, as a child, I would always dig large holes in the woods behind our house, and lie in them....

At night, I watch the red car lights along the distant mountain ridge like slow-linear UFO’s,
and try to decipher coyotes hunting in the thick darkness.

Language

Sometimes I catch
and call a language
that isn’t mine,
stepping behind
a dream, raking
burning leaves,
or entering backdoors
one after another
after another drops off
the edge.

That can be freedom
but sometimes it flies
toward an open window
suddenly caught
without strange recourse
or the clarity of glass,
the way it can only see
so far.

Where the Heart Isn't

Where the Heart Isn’t

Day ends with the cicada’s (ceaseless) rattle.
Dusk begins, signaled by the flap of moths

(up from the blades) and bats. Three crows
fly and caw across the sky, staggered.

(I do not think about death.) A white kitten
(almost cat) stalks daddy long legs, centipedes

and gnats. (I do not wonder if I could live
with one less leg or wing.) A male cardinal

sits at the top of the cherry and sings his tiny
heart out. (Mine! Mine! Mine! Or: Night

is coming! perhaps.) A contrail drifts lows
like a tornado chopped in half. (Where

did you fly to? Why did you go? I never
asked.) Night comes on so suddenly,

(all green goes black) that I find myself
sitting in the starless dark, the house glowering

unlit behind me like a stranger who wants
to buy me a drink. (Home; where the heart isn’t.)

Hitting for the cycle

Hitting for the cycle
"It is designed to break your heart."--A. Bartlett Giamatti

That makes it easier to shrug, to close the book
on some tragic character falling ill, so irrevocably ill
while the leaves dance down in their long bright autumn.
It's meant that way. It's meant to be. Six months
and you're out. Sixty years and you're out. A quick
signing of a sixty day lease and then, by god, you're out
with a Costco bag clutched sweaty and all of your regrets
poking out the sides.

This is how we shove new petunias into the ground,
deadhead with a flick, tearing petals with their old meat
smell thick on your fingernails, and purple. Nurse them
along, but as callous as an orderly with the demented,
oh they were better dead. It is designed, these gardens
blooming brief and hot, every year, every page turned
and something somewhere ends.

Just yourself thinking about me

Look at your formatting.
Demeter is not appalled by this.
Demeter knows.

                                   I talked to her in the car
                             about her sister. I sat in the car
                                   at the top of the hill

in the police cruiser.       I said       (her daughter)

                                   I said that we were lucky
                             to be thinking about the same thing--
                                   that was rare.

And the moon the same moon.
I asked, whether she had parted ways
with her garden, or not.

*

I sat in her garden.
I said, I know.

                                   the picture will hold you up
                                   the picture will arrest you
                                   you will not be able to forget
                                   the picture
                                   the picture will argue with you
                                   from the wall

*

She had no talent for miracles
she said
(just for the mirror)

                               I said       that was a lie

I was a musician
I said

*

try music.

now Two things:

Thieves
in the New American Gothic
have a tight grip on the handle

and the woman, she
isn’t smiling.

*

What do the others know about me?

Cease-Fire

Cease-Fire

The wind arrests the plain in chilly light:
what place is this, that marks each silent name?
In blaring grand triumphal march we came
to stand this ground, the broken field of night.
Beneath the marble blessings heroes lie
in sullen wrath, a bone of discontent
on scattered ash. A letter never sent:
come find me here, for here I come to die.
This is the rusting church where speech grows numb,
if we could speak, with tongues of smoke and lead
felling each fragile hand and gaping head
at rasp of dawn where dreams gasp and succumb.
Bought and paid for, we rose to do your will,
and will no more. The stars rise bright, and still.

"Untitled"

Untitled

Yet I was born of hope

Und sie ist geboren aus dem Glauben

beyond dream incessant

in die Tatsche der Verzeitlichung

of any sentence I could create.

in einen Horizont ferner Bewegung.

-- Alfred Arteaga, from "Poem for Two Voices"



To be a small presence: your
burst of air, a molecule of blood
becoming mountains, veins of hair,
the black thread descending, all
the secrets of light gracing the waves;

Come and let me be nubbin,
nebulous and cloven, the wheat
covering the chaffed waves (Yes, sea!),
a coming to senses, to salt,
converting the moment into pages,
into the entire desire of the tide;

To know the mollusk of woman,
the taking in, I leave it to you;
I take in the perfect breath;
Alive; in the juncture of you,
a new north, the southern past, the sultry
beginning in a forest of seed;

entre una cara marcando horizontes de ojos
oscuros -- la oscuridad del futuro,
manos de la cosecha, the silk thread
of connections revealing time in its gory
details: a flag letting go, bunches
of onions in a single stall; The still

and stall of my life becoming this moment,
this dive of your eyes; This breath,
this burst of red, letting me be
this small presence, descending.



8/15/06

presents

bettie & the poets arrived via mailman this morning - wow this is a quality production. thanks didi.
(perhaps now i shall read something by each poet each month...)

- derek

I've set up a blog for the videos

Here --

I am adding another one in a few minutes...

Who will it be?