Tag: Poetry

Two Poems from The Future: William Ross

Memo to Agency: CLEAR THE DECKS _ Run desire metrics on thisnew thanato-tourism and ping me back asap _ Scramble the screen scrapers & launch theweb crawlers now _ Get me intel on any brand lift on social _ If this has legs, we’ll pry open themouths of every dead one ferrying the Styx, reach …
Poetry by Lisa Zerkle: “I’m Stopped by the Black Pearl of Her”

An elegant weapon, she’s glossy,ballistic. Her legs, articulated.But it’s the shine I notice. Light glintsoff carapace though she’s tangled ina sticky mess, a catchall of deadleaves and insects I take for cobwebnear a potted shrub. The hydrangeathat has bloomed and faded though the daysstill blaze and rattlesnaking of cicadasrises from the oaks. Her abdomen’sa precise…
Poetry for Haunted Passages: Two Fassbinder Tapes by LM Rivera

This is a fragment from a forthcoming book (THE RED ABSURD). The section is THE FASSBINDER TAPES. TAPEONE He swore to all the world and to himself that he would remain decent. And as long as he had money, he remained decent. But then he ran out of money, which was a moment he had…
New Hybrid Cento: “I Rewatch My Ex’s Favorite Film and Imagine Our Life Together” by Frances Klein

E—A cento of the Derek Jarman film Blue Once there are only two of us you set to work mapping the solemn geography of human limits. You are slow and deliberate, a dedicated cartographer. *** The empty book of a new year opens. I am the marble, you the sculptor. Your tool is a refined…
Poetry for Side A: “I Don’t Know Why He Mumbles in Group” by Kevin Ridgeway

I Don’t Know Why He Mumbles in Group But he does. Maybe they are prayers forhis insanity to be extinguished. Either way,he’s always shushed by counselors for causinga distraction. He likes to offer erroneous triviaabout his favorite band, The Beatles—and healways stands corrected by others. After 30years of sobriety, the only coping skill he hasto…
Zach Savich: Two from The Motherwell Sonnets

“. . . the purpose of abstraction in any field—art, science, mathematics—is, out of incredible richness and complexity and detail of reality, ‘to separate,’ ‘to select from’ the complexity of reality that which you want to emphasize . . .” (Robert Motherwell, “On the Humanism of Abstraction”) The Motherwell Sonnets considers what this kind of abstraction…
Original Prose Poetry: “Kiddie Pool” by Brad Rose

People seem to like it when I lie to them. It gives them peace of mind, although I’m not sure whether this is due to my strategy or tactics—that’s for the experts to decide. After giving the matter my full attention, I’ve resolved to pull more rabbits out of my coonskin cap. Until then, I’d…
New Poem for Bad Survivalist: “Dishes” by Lane Devers

I am telling you this because I have nowhere else. In my teens, I don’t cry for years at a time. In one of the first home videos I find, we had just bought a new washing machine. I still don’t know how to swim, never learned properly. I try to cure the dry spell,…
The Future Has Poetry: “Begging to Be Marooned” by David Dodd Lee

The geese cross the highway—five silent film comedians—while snowfalls on their slate-gray backs. I’m in seclusion. My parents are ata remove, like dolls placed in doll-shaped holes, but when you openthe box there are only cardboard edges giving shape to nothing but air.The narrator signs a lease. He lives in a haze of monofilamentand insurance…