Heaven As Nothing but Distance Maybe it was enough to believe the Zodiac’s blazing entirety would be cast from the sky, an effortless handful of salt scattered to the Kansas plains’ red wheat. Out West, souls every day were shedding their Earthly inheritance—the refused histories of cause and effect, blight, hunger with a trace of … Continue reading »
A QUAHOG FOR WALT “‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said.” How many inscrutable angels does it take to screw in a lightbulb? None. How many mice? Two, but there’s not much room. Two of Ma’s favorite expressions: “It smelled like low tide at Coney Island.” “She looked like the last whore at the clambake.” … Continue reading »
Channel We all live downstream. Osteoblast rings are an enormous thing. Have you ever seen inside the heart? If you have, you have entered a forest. Ventricles abound. Now lie down on its floor. Looking up is the miasma of trees; leucocytes scan the scene – can you believe it? You are watching your chest … Continue reading »
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Steven Karl is the author of the collaborative chapbook, State(s) of Flux, with Joseph Lappie (Peptic Robot Press, 2009) and the chapbook,(Ir)Rational Animals (Flying Guillotine Press, 2010). He has e-chaps forthcoming from Scantily Clad Press and h_ngm_n. He lives in New York City and blogs here and does this. Continue reading »
– “Spiritual” was originally published in CUE (Volume III, Issue 2, Spring/Summer 2006). It is “about” Katrina, though I hope like any good poem, its various analogies speak to any manner of degradation of human and/or material spirit, not just by the perpetrators but by those, including the author, who’ve stood by, in their own … Continue reading »
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ STATEMENT I am an employee of the British Museum and on September 1st 2010 a group staged a protest against BP’s long standing support and sponsorship of Museum events and programs. I experienced the protest first hand, and this poem stands as a response. Here are two links to the incident itself, filmed by the … Continue reading »
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Laura Quigley is a writer from south west england, writing mainly for performance, with Amnesty holding a reading of her human rights play “the advocate” in London on 2nd November 2010. She’s also had some success in short stories, films and poetry, the latter mostly published in Reflections magazine (ed. Steve Smith), with a … Continue reading »
Veiled Spill #1 One/ This is the world: we agree on that much. Spilling, they loll on their mojo here and there, hurling much to the winds. Idle. Ashing. Desperately kindled. Roasting marshmallowy virgins on the points of bayonets. Muffled within the uncanny. Incandescent. Not to blame. (Above all, not to blame!) Regard their beautiful … Continue reading »
Patterns The seamstress describes the bodice and the rows of seamstresses in training fold their fabric in ink to mark the pattern. Their own green satin billows on the table next to each of them. He goes on to describe the shirt. We are seamstresses describing the bodice. We fold our fabric in half. We … Continue reading »
Gumbo I Oil and Water have always mixed well here – Priest and prostitute; Anglo; Creole; Plantation owner; wet nurses; sharecropper – Gumbo stirring in everyone’s soul. Acadians trapped in the swamps no one wanted; Africans danced to the auctioneer’s song; Battered by strong winds, and social upheaval, Twice reconstructed, more fertile and strong. II … Continue reading »
Level for Sarah Dowling In a view from the train, as if the mixture of trees organized the water, or a face over the surface of it, or a new set of structures in the water. One object hinges into another and we know that is like ethicality, if only from a long view, even … Continue reading »
The Ninth Star When the hurricane hit New Orleans black and white newspaper image in my coworkers hands. Her black curls, her white skin. I went back to sipping black coffee in a white mug and only said, my family’s from there but thats another story, Yankee. This story the tiger who pulled me to … Continue reading »
Lullaby I’m sure God has a mean streak whoever there is whatever there is picks what we’ve decided can’t hurt us or won’t happen to humble everyone when we least expect it Superman can no longer move then dies Wendy Wasserstein leaves behind her 7-year-old daughter BP and our own subtle habits spew on and … Continue reading »
Engulfed —Gulf Coast oil spill, June 2010 It is an armband around the Gulf Coast, a quiet black ribbon on the dark sea wrapping the waters in grief, smothering the ocean’s secret mouth. From a black ribbon on the dark sea dolphins uncoil from the convulsing waves that smother the ocean’s secret mouth, slicked brown … Continue reading »
Two Tarballs She snarls at Tony Hayward’s squirming face What a criminal! I wrap her bagels in plastic and she drives away ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Frank Izaguirre is a candidate for the MFA in creative writing at Chatham University. His poetry has most recently been published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Continue reading »
What Far Away Means In western Pennsylvania, the news brings us the ruined ocean. Flush against the Allegheny, we drink our coffee black and, thirsty, read and read. We understand: waterway, pollution. We imagine: brine, gull. Far away is like a thesaurus of empathy: here, oil is coal, but lost is lost. Both leave a … Continue reading »
gray like black waters oil isn’t gone here, isn’t part for parcel— (a tower) a man lifts his feet on water, — can’t stomp across, can’t call across for the hearing. how, when simple gestures bring snakegrass, bring a vast blueness and hoodoo, he wants so much to move exactly this way & — no, … Continue reading »
My Louisiana Love Your gulf-town tonight is a bedpan sloshing with rain— So I’ll begin by confessing, I miss you, and I’ll sympathize from the get-go, down to the barnacles on my heart, that you will trudge among the oil-fish gumbo, dragging thoughts of me like a rosary while I sit at a sushi bar … Continue reading »
Now locally pronounced Dauphin (Daw’ fn) Island, Ile Dauphine is in the Gulf of Mexico near the Alabama coast. In 1699 the French-Canadian explorer Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville named the island for the many human skeletons he found on its beaches. In 1708 Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville changed the name in an effort to … Continue reading »
Burning Water In the YouTube video a man flips a lighter, flare, holds it to a belching faucet, the water catches fire, not a miracle, the companies hydro-fracking us for gas, the movement of capital in ground water— And there’s that unpoetic word again, so overt, admittedly abstract, some even say clichéd, a word I’d … Continue reading »
DAY TRIP The world is always prettier after lunch Orange and yellow starfish In tide pools at Cape Perpetua Devil’s Churn Sea-foam green anemone Spruce, fir, agate beach Cross a driftwood bridge Balance regained after a stumble A false star (is) swept into the drumming Hollows of a sea lion cave Dark into dark Raging … Continue reading »
July Poem Probably lashes the moon to its neck, overawed opal in a forest of joy, the Dolphin prints himself on the wavering line, and Good Health fireworks the twilight away. While Bad Guy blackens the beach with oil, Never does all it can to erase the smiling Dolphin who splatters his face printing and … Continue reading »
Letter #1, to the Conscience Embodied Dear Kathy, your body as oiled, a rig, an unidentified sea turtle, botched and barely. As the I am, the slosh crab apple, which finds itself in the sea. I’m there—the hazy gurgle, a crude bunch. Somebody’s responsible. Some bodies are thick, with ooze and spilling. Spit and muddle … Continue reading »
A Poetry Action This poem is a bird. Not a petrol-coated pelican but a bird to be flipped at those oily bastards. We don’t care if they don’t give half a shit about poetry and what we poets think. We’ll show them: I call upon Yeats for an image out of Spiritus Mundi: the BP … Continue reading »
Summer Vacation snorkled in toxic water between the crossings of glass bottom boats loaded with tourists from four cruise ships anchored like floating skyscrapers in the bay blocking the view of the coastline then climbed into a motorized polyurethane raft crammed with scuba tanks stun guns soda cans saw one bald eagle on the one … Continue reading »
–from The Unfinished To still be held, against an atrocity. Some of this is vague. Things go on without repeating. One atrocity leads to another, I know. Some of this is whispered. In childhood, it was simpler— this folly, the seemingly ambient skies. At the edges of some moment we aren’t sure. This is a lyrical … Continue reading »
Knife I pick up the knife and begin to chop, the same knife that almost sliced off the tip of my finger last night as I prepared soup. Another day is another day. An oil well’s gushing non-stop in the Gulf and the Drill, Baby, Drill gal sends her prayers. A fishing boat captain working … Continue reading »
Slick — to Exxon then and BP now I. Number of the 23 species seriously depleted by the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill that have recovered — 1 – Harpers Index, September 1997 “The current worst-case estimate of what’s spewing into the Gulf (of Mexico by BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil well) is 2.5 million gallons … Continue reading »
The Sea Goddess Tells His Story Part of Giordano Bruno’s heresy was his conception of a universal soul, which he compared to the Greek ocean goddess Amphitrite. I In the evening, so close, my lips graze your lobe. Where you sit at a table splattered with beeswax, roomed above a stable in Rome, I open … Continue reading »
Mourning Bubbling inside curved gulf waves, blackened, swirling slick—chunks of it glistening in orange water; And I am homesick for Louisiana. My paw-paw, dead five years this week, taught me to clean catfish, peel crawdads, spit tobacco. He called me bay-bee! He let me ride the dump truck–squirt gasoline onto burning skidder tires until flames … Continue reading »
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Mara Buck is an artist and writer who lives in the Maine woods within a self-built sanctuary. Her novel “Highway to Oblivion” has just been chosen as a Short-Listed Finalist for the Faulkner-Wisdom Award. Her latest published poems have appeared in the anthology “Vwa: Poems for Haiti” and Caper Literary Journal. A video “Autonomic … Continue reading »
A conversation with my 5-year old son while looking at oil-mired birds in the Gulf Those were wings, I try to tell him, feathers for flying. Tell me what they are now, he demands. We look at the picture again, together, as if we might discover some filament of this animal reaching through the muck. … Continue reading »
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Brad Richard’s book Motion Studies won the 2010 Washington Prize from The Word Works and will be published in January, 2011. He has published one other book of poems (Habitations, Portals Press, 2000) and a limited edition chapbook (The Men in the Dark, Lowlands Press, 2004). His poems and reviews have appeared in American … Continue reading »
Without Representation No words sings the sunset yellow sparrow No wants echo his eyes against the midday they try to open but close like a broken metronome his small body barely marks out time against the tar, inside the feather there is no sound for this slow loss of gold, for gossamer wings clipped in … Continue reading »
Parts of a Feather The superstitious geometry of the rock dove rests between its first and fifth rib. And you rest between it. It’s easy to call you a disease. Better: a heart or rain or our dinner plates, last night draped in the leavings of cherry. Of course, you say, my hands are the … Continue reading »
Deepwater April 20, 2010 – 10:00 pm When the only light is flame, I run to the end of myself. Metal bridge mangled, other men jump into the ocean’s open throat, choked water somewhere under smoking blackness. Pray the waves aren’t stone-faced when I meet them. Is this the night we were promised, the fire … Continue reading »
Somewhere Honey from those Bees Try to see the world’s backstage machinery, its business— Look, said O’Keeffe, look closer. So the man on camera keens for his wife, and for the flicker of a signal he’s ours, the sun shines equally—gracing, gilding, revealing, damning—it depends on where you stand. Looting or surviving? Taking or taking … Continue reading »
Too Late It’s too late the alarm sounded long ago but we didn’t listen let marketplace manlogic rule preferred profits to prophecy of tree huggers and biologists it’s too late for talks between the big oil bullies and failed government our wetlands have been sold out shining green and gold nursery to sea life breath … Continue reading »
A Necklace for the Goddess of the Empty Sea After years in the desert, when he reached the empty sea, he knelt in the sand and prayed to the rusted ships bobbing lifeless on the shimmering black waves. Syringes and glass glistened in the sand like ruined stars. He knelt in the sand and prayed … Continue reading »
adorned in gold dark liquid continents slowly converge on the mouth of the great Mississippi river like 15th century conquerors finding the coasts of the Americas, exploitation and greed drifting ashore. but 1492 was columbus and oceans blue 2010 is black gold adorning life (in disguise) of the sea and we’ve dressed them, our brothers … Continue reading »
THE BURNING & SINKING OF DEEPWATER HORIZON 6 figures in a loose circle going on about God knows I am the 3rd I am the 4th I dream the others I am all 6 with infinite more the surface —a Euclidean disk drifts towards the river’s mouth ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ YAMPA RIVER You are unknown & unseen … Continue reading »
Demolish a Small Grove Thorn-stitched, my ankle bleeds. Blooms across the floor. Petals and petals. The garden is weeds. There are weeds at the door. Click and whirr, beetles mate among stalks. Our dog is lost in tangle, wild as she is. A second whistle. Sound’s entirety in the holes. Come in. Come inside. Under … Continue reading »
SKIN BOAT A skin boat Rises on the breast Of an unswum sea Borne on frozen waves Yet liquid, into The quick mercy of the tide. In a skin boat He rides the breathing waters, Swallowed by The dusk, on a Cold and golden sea Where only heat is human. In a skin boat, He … Continue reading »
Cotton and Creek Water We cruise through farmland speaking of the charm of small towns, passing fields of cotton. Cotton has jagged stems, spilled blood is rich with iron, equal in proportion to the earth’s chemistry. It’s the land where Job was reading in the dark from fear of being whipped, reading blind. It’s the … Continue reading »
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ STATEMENT Using the technique of erasure seemed fitting when writing about the catastrophe that has erased so much beauty and life in the gulf–and seemed to indict BP with its very own words from early June. We now hear talk of the kills to come–the “static kill” and the “bottom kill” as BP works to erase … Continue reading »
Requiem for a CEO “And darkness covered the earth…” You sir, should take off your clothes and walk into the red and viscous sea of your making. Take with you the smothering pelicans other dying birds. Relieve them of the travesty of all attempts to breathe, fly– they cannot open their bills. they cannot spread … Continue reading »
Leaking Oil Well as Lunchtime Entertainment at My Husband’s Hi-tech Company In a distant quadrant of the country a bunch of guys in a conference room watched direct feed from under the Gulf. They cheered for the hook and booed when the long wire swung sideways and missed. They chewed sandwiches or peeled oranges or … Continue reading »
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ FROG Trapped in the pail the frog slow-arced in back flip, two extra legs half-folded, flapping like unbelted umbrellas. The radio said that the poison had not seeped into the aquifer, that the poison not gotten as far as Slough Pond. It’s true that Nature not-meddled-with makes her mutations and does not deem … Continue reading »
LETTER FOR UP NORTH ASSOCIATES you/i separate generational skins recall sight of a dolphin couple ebb and skip in the gray water how brotherly whimsical measure steady. smothered, partner, smothered and beached. mud for your descendants mud for you net particles bred in the bean counter’s lab hold your fingers, horseman you’ll be bigger, loom … Continue reading »
Riverbed Canzone A canister of can-can curses the alluvium of winter melt. Can the 12th of the month be worse? Can’t be ides, can’t be ideas. Deposit in the bank— Can pebbles be prodigal sediment a- symmetry? Simple canal drops for the mouths of bottom-feeding muscles. Feeder creeks accrete to flow, aspire to river volume, … Continue reading »
