Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Alex Porco



TWO AMERICAN SONNETS

I. Hands Up!

Mythos is derived from mu, the
Inarticulate low
Of a fugitive cow at large
From Anderson Custom Pack Processing Plant,
Pocatello, Idaho.
On a moon-less (January-less) January night,
The tickled pink
Farola fernandinas of Freedom
Light this queen beeve up, rapping her behind
Down Main St., Stock Footage, USA,
Like a cocktail shaker
With a dream of sunset served
On ice: forage, forbs, umbrella drinks.

Local cops shot her right in the brisket.


II. Astrophel and Stella, Palindrome and Homophone

I say, Omaha meat.
You say, Yellow-blue vase.
To preserve something
Of love free
From referential verification;
To interfere
With data miners who subject
The expression of desire
To a string metric, predictive analytics, foreplay.
You say, Yellow-blue vase.
I say, Omaha meat.
Then, we go to sleep,
Our private
Meaning bugged, buggered between our privates.



Alex Porco is an Assistant Professor of Poetry and Poetics at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. He is the editor of Jerrold Levy and Richard Negro’s Poems by Gerard Legro, forthcoming from BookThug’s “Department of Reissue” series in Fall 2015.


Monday, June 22, 2015

Nelson Ball



CATHERINE VISITS

For Catherine Stevenson

Catherine
likes to visit this place

where I live
mostly in silence

she says
it is peaceful

compared to life
with her students

and her children
here she will

speak words
onto the still air

where
they breathe

and we
look at them



Nelson Ball’s most recent poetry books are In This Thin Rain and Some Mornings (Mansfield Press, 2012 and 2014). An online chapbook of his poems, A Rattle of Spring Frogs, appears on the website of Hamilton Arts & Letters. Chapbooks are forthcoming this year from Apt. 9 Press, Laurel Reed Books and Stone The Crows! Press. Nelson and his late wife and soulmate, artist and writer Barbara Caruso, are the subjects of Nelson Ball & Barbara Caruso / Home Project / A Photo Documentary, a video created by his friend Catherine Stevenson, who is the subject of this poem. The video can be viewed on YouTube.


Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Jacqueline Valencia



THE CLIMB

We were climbing the mountain
and arrived at the peak
to float in high altitudes. You
chose to dance with the galaxies
above us like an obscure
narration of a moment forgotten.

I stood and observed.

Glaciers around us
at attention constructing
a circle of resonance
and the village lights below
were nothing compared to
the lamps of your eyes
fuelled by naphthalene
and anger.
But there we stood
monstrous illusions to the
heavens
tracked by the planets’
celestial dust, busted snowshoes,
dull hammers, ice picks,
our wedding rings
sucking in the starlight
as if we mattered
to anything outside of us.

It’s unbelievable what
you can find
when you are not looking:
the falsity of the sun dog,
the incoming meteor, the silver
of the moon, a rolling
thunder, and the love I
still felt for you at the start
of your departure.



Jacqueline Valencia is a Toronto-based writer and critic. Her work has appeared in various publications across Canada, and she is currently working on her first novel. Check out Jacqueline’s work and poetry experiments at jacquelinevalencia.com.


Tuesday, June 9, 2015

OK, this time I'm serious



TWSITV REALLY WILL BE BACK

I know I said last November that this weekly poetry blog was going to return in January. So my credibility is low. But really: it's on the verge of becoming active again. You'll see.

Stuart Ross