December 2010
53 posts
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“…She would remember an orange boat tied to a dock, a dock that she wanted, and...”
– Jenny Boully from [one love affair]: A million wallowing anemones, a thousand eyes peeping through, a thousand spies shivering, unnamable endless flowerings, countless empty … one drowning, one nightclub called Juicy
You have lived on broken hearts all your life. - C.S. Lewis
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The Deaf and Blind by Paul Eluard
Do we reach the sea with clocks In our pockets, with the noise of the sea In the sea, or are we the carriers Of a purer and more silent water? The water rubbing against our hands sharpens knives. The warriors have found their weapons in the waves And the sound of their blows is like The rocks that smash the boats at night. It is the storm and the thunder. Why not the silence Of the...
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If tears are dropped on a dry piece of paper stained with the juice of the petals of mallows or violets, they will change the paper to a permanently green color.
Ray Johnson, The Paper Snake, Something Else Press, NY, 1965
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When I Think of the End of the World Now by James...
I can’t help but see the first few crocuses that will somehow shoot through the layers of ash
like fingers still tender and bright enough to redeem the particulate drizzle that will no doubt keep
staining our expectant faces as we huddle in cellars, under overpasses, crouching on hazmat pallets
and wondering how to fill the silences piling above us like stricken snow. I think of Pavlov...
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“Man whistles past graveyard on his long walk home. Imagines that his own heart stops and his hands get cold. But like in some Ambrose Bierce story he hears the church bells tone and the unbearable sound of nails driving home the coffin lid - his coffin lid! - and he sees 2 white horses poised in the line. Coffin gets lowered with golden chain. He shudders. Gets home, hugs his kids.” ...
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“He hoped obscurely that she could save him, but he did not even know from what.” ~William Gay
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Revenant by K.P. Anderson
If I’d had a different start I might’ve turned out quiet Wandering the halls with a soft pace Indeterminate from the house settling Down into its cracks Watching my charge from the edge of her bed Her hair scattered across her temple I might’ve reached my hand to touch her breath Smoothing her dreams with gentle vigilance But I am as I was forged Shadow-imbued, I howl and howl And no one sleeps
...
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The only cure for madness is the innocence of facts. - Jacques Riviere in a letter to Antonin Artaud
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There is no paradise on earth, but there are pieces of it. What there is on earth is a broken paradise. - Pierro della Francesca / Jules Renard
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I Am Coming by Philip Lamantia
I am following her to the wavering moon, to the bridge on the far waterfront to valleys of beautiful arson, to flowers dead in a mirror of love, to men eating wild minutes from a clock, to hands playing in celestial pockets, and to that dark room beside the castle of youthful voices, singing to the moon. When the sun comes up she will live at a sky covered with sparrow’s blood and wrapped in robes...
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How to Bury a Dog by Joseph Bathanti
Put to bed the children early. The moon refuses such toil. Arcturus will stand you the proper light. Fall to your knees. Let your wife’s hair grieve your mouth as you hold her. She’ll swear she hates everything. Don’t say a word. Choose a place among the loblollies where the first sun burns the cornflowers blue. Take the long-handled shovel and the garden spade, the mattock and...
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From Essex by Adam Clay
Now is the time to take the song from your throat
and unbury the bone you’ve tasted for years. The flesh
of bones is that which burdens the voice, the flesh
that feeds from the unspoken words in your throat
urging you not to pocket the flowers. Plunder
the scream of shades. Take the swarm of color
from the fields until the lack of color
forms a rupture in the sky and plunder
all...
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Eros is the helplessness of that which is sovereign: it is the strength abandoning itself to something elusive, something that stings. -Roberto Calasso, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony
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“And they say there’s no fate, but there is, it’s what you create. And even though the world goes on for eons and eons, you are only here for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Most of your time is spent being dead, or not yet born. But while alive, you wait in vain wasting years for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right, but it never comes. Or...
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This is the winter when rotting is indistinguishable from wanting. I have busted the cassette wide open on purpose, wrapped the thin strands of tape around my neck and wrists in preparation to tell you I love you. But for some reason, when I see you soaking your feet in two buckets of salt water, I am deafened by the clackety-clack of plastic galloping behind me. And there’s that smell. That...
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Comforting Philomela by Joanna Pearson
After raping Philomela, Tereus “seized her tongue with tongs and, with his brutal sword, cut it away.” — Ovid
I kiss her, and her hands flit up like toys, like white doves into the air. Light falls across her bony shoulder, forming a false bandolier. She gently mouths no-noise,
twists cracked lips until vibrations thrum within the hollow of her throat. Silence breaks — she keens, a human...
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“You said redemption looked like a painting of fire, after a fire.”
— Kate Greenstreet
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After The Party By Alison Stine
Sugar dries on paper plates. The cake’s decimated and barely touched. What to do with the balloons? A few float listlessly, unattached, still bearing like bandages the tape that bore them to the wall. They’ve gone dull, rubber tips darkening to a bottle’s pinch. It’s too late, or too early. There are too many on the floor, stirred up as I stir. In the end, I cut them, urge a...
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men debased by the nature of their work
women devoured by their hunger
children stunted by night without light
-Frank Bidart, Now In Your Hand
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XXIV
The habitual girl fakes friendliness the way one fakes blindness even the love that one scarcely considers she is on the riverbank and in everyone’s arms always the risks are at her mercy and the dreams of those who are absent she knows she is living all the reasons for living. - Paul Eluard
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those escapees, those deserters. those who remain yet in the resigned barracks, pressing their fingers to the wall.
The dragonflies, too, leave their translucent skins.
-Josie Sigler
http://www.nighttrainmagazine.com/contents/sigler_8_1.php
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Ghost Lights by Keith Montesano
What about the part where the story ends? It ends with our bodies like machines. Charred like paper— singed like leaves. Arms reaching out: Come. Now. Who says the hands of the dead don’t ask us to go there with them? Isn’t that so sad? The family parked, crushed by falling rocks. They all burned to death. I saw it in the papers today. I couldn’t find a word then. I looked. I’m looking at you...
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