THREE POEMS by Julian T. Brolaski

who is not your cousin?

bears may be brutal
but they never did n/t
to bruise up the earth

& englyshh is so filled
w/ periphrasis
metal band seeks bassist

in which one searches
amerikka backward
I pay money for money

who holds up thir
coffee by way of
hailing a taxi
for pigeon read rock dove

jobs that fell thru
say goodbye to the grouper forever
who therwithal
—palm and pine—
r so thoroly discomfitted

~~~~~~~~~~

whos manifest asp

all of them what devastates
herr alae who
cant stop to
mark thir
thumbs ta plug
tha hole
gushing fruitlessly

everyfish whos manifest aspect
dearregardless, whos manifest asp
OIL GUSHING UNABATED

on the way to
the airport you
pass by this
sad little enclave of horses

whos manifest aspect dear
regard   less
fisherpeople now in the employ of beepee
at deepwater
dead sea turtles
local shrimpers laying useless oil booms

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

astonished fish
(after Maria Esther Maciel’s title “Peixes perlexos”*)

The fish love to be around those rigs! -John McCain, 9/17/08

the eyewall favorable for
ikonicity an
ambivalence au bibliothèque
how eche rig shattrs
the hrt & the gut & the spleen
of fanny-freddy infamy

the fish begin to speak queerly
something that never will happen before
alexander the great
my contemporary
girding the neck
au quelque crossroads
wot disgorges
the libertine’s lap
n the ganymede’s hole

maria asks why were the fish not given any tediousness
indemnification and not being held
harmless
then what the heck ys love
my brinkly protocol?

*From the poem “Lost and Found” (“Achados e Perdidos”) by Maria Esther Maciel, in O livro dos nomes (The book of names).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

whose brainpan literally creaturely

on the contrary come up simpering (Paolo Javier) / crickets are not giving each other feedback. crickets are not not giving each other feedback. (Filip Marinovich) / I am a hammerhead shark / a pair of milky eyes that refuse to triangulate. (Sueyeun Juliette Lee)

who on the contrary come up simpering
creating whole deadzones in the gulf
a legality therefor
bristleing the loam
1000s and 1000s of patches of oil
and water and oil plumes found
under the gulf’s surface the oil &
gas together literally devouring
oxygen which levels currently (7 june 2010) at
3 miligrams per litre animals begin to be
stressed at 2 mg per litre so it is soon becom
ing a ded zone. the ocean is dead long live
the ocean! metrology
in place of the porgy
seasonique advertising four periods a year
“who says that time of the month has to be every month?”
who says that time has to be
everytime detritus? kids screaming “go meat!”
can I pay you in gum? shore littered w/ dead
greeks, dead dolphins, dead pelicans, seagulls
unrecognizable as living or dead, creatures
made crude while humans
flock to see sex & the city islamophobia
and queer appropriation
can I pay you in gum? it’s good for consuming media
the first synthetic lifeform “cynthia” pronoun it, created by a computer
bull horn thru
the toreadors throte
a wizened creature nonetheless
who skins perspective but the humans they
had got quite profligate
no sauce nor sustenance de-access-sessioning
the fishes from the very day they withheld
their greeting from me the manatees become
the mentor to shut the person down & render
thir attack therefore
inelegant

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Julian T. Brolaski is the author of gowanus atropolis (forthcoming, Ugly Duckling 2011) and Advice for Lovers (forthcoming, City Lights 2011). Brolaski lives in Brooklyn where xe is an editor at Litmus Press, curates vaudeville shows and plays country music with The Low & the Lonesome.