Prizes

Prizes for the best plural word for poemish are...


-Repeated lashings from an oversize lord
-A visit from the cheeseclothsmith
-A visit to Turkey Valley gas station store with the big square hole in the wall near the toilet. That one, definitely a suspicious prize.

Multiplicity

Multiplicity



sweet friend and I rode from Iowa City to Boston yesterday
21 hours straight, damn rain in Ohio/Pennsylvania, an oversize

lord getting off the ramp at "Lord's Valley"

or was it "Paradise Valley"?

see my new turtle Gertrude climbing the glass 

we had given ten dollars to a student 

(what he called himself) driving a "40,000 thousand dollar car"
(how he proved his parents could pay us back double) 

who had ran out of money for gas. Dear Universe, 

May That Lost $10 Given to that Spoiled Rich Kid driving Said Car Return through a Multiplicity of Riches Unbenownst to us.

melissa dancing

melissa dancing

nico dangling on melissa dancing and andy and m
miss you


love,
janine

A job

A job

is like a calendar with with no moo(ns).


(an infection, mutiple choosers)

Whose whoot?
Great-Horned Owl, I believe
you left. Nibble.

Mom (a poet once told me to say mother) says
never get in the middle.

The Apartment

In two years I haven’t filled the ice cube tray

“Is twelve o’clock tomorrow, alright?”

Sitting on the computer chair I wait for them to leave my apartment

My slowly undoes itself

Possible renters wear shoes, t-shirts, pants

The poet doesn’t remember saying she wanted to write a three-sentence novel

I make a disc of ninety-five photos for a friend who just bailed on our moving plans

Lately I don’t haul ass and I'm tired of being alone

Gurgle is all that occurs to me or, I am lonely as hail

Movers, answer the phone at ten p.m. on a Sunday

Moochers sound better as lickplates

My selfishness extends to licking plates

Can I have a drag?

"I don’t want to be smart in poems"

"I don’t want to be smart in poems"

Can I kiss you?
Can I kiss the you that or who hasn’t been kissed?
Can I kiss the heat beneath you?
Can I kiss the buzzard of your faults?
Can I kiss the lyrics the singer forgot? I will kiss
Ella and Mack the Knife. Ella calls out her name.
I am making a wreck out of not being small, not a child
suctioned cupped to pity. I am kissing. Cheryl is making bluebirds
tell the truth or tip a bad waiter and dance and dance and dance.
The arms detached. I love that part. The blue basket out of blue.
I will kiss Lou Rawls instead.

translation

Hello,

I have a translation of a poem by Mexican poet Tedi López Mills on the online journal Xchanges.

If you are so inclined, I hope you take a look.

The Full Moon, tonight.
Get a checkup.

La Commune

I'm halfway through Peter Watkins' film "La Commune" about the 1871 brief socialist revolution in Paris. It's worth watching how he blends historical research with a modern media twist. I hate to tell you more than watch it. Here's a link about it.

I suppose this week was french-themed since I also saw Jean Renoir's "The Rules of the Game." Viola.

The next post is unrelated to this one.

go see that

1.

go see that



bird foreigner.
the succulents.
to be peaceable.
to wrangle that.

distant answer.


(nothing ringing)



2.


the miser and his ilk.
flunky and the floozie.
a hunk named Dory.

not that.
all over that.



3.

clothe me.

not with enchantment's
one day sale


speedy crinolines
the clunky rich

my speech 

biceps



4.


get another movie
of a dead singer

light gone lime

say you were always there
for the songs

The ground had it.

The ground had it.

"Figures! I’ve had it. You always get the good arts."

Bullets.

•
•
•
•

A question for men:

Do you use a booklight in bed?

Egyptian

A la Lamoureux, hey mr., I checked out my Egyptian astrological sign...

Isis Honorable, straightforward and idealistic. Active and self-confident. Colors: male: white, female: blue Compatible Signs: Osiris, Thoth Dates: Mar 11 - Mar 31, Oct 18 - Oct 29, Dec 19 - Dec 31 Role: Goddess of motherhood, women, and magic; goddess of the South; protector of Imseti (the son of Horus who watched over the canopic jar containing the liver) Appearance: Woman wearing the hieroglyph for "throne" on her head What is Your Egyptian Zodiac Sign? Designed by CyberWarlock of Warlock's Quizzles and Quandaries

Dear Squire

There was a question about the squire....thanks for asking...


Dear Squire,

You are the upheaval of olden language found in our poems. Our golden time machine. Logically this may not compute(grr). You have a future, and I am asking you to see into our future: its ore, whether profitable or extractable. Profit's a retrofitted disaster (more on that later). We is problematic, but I keep trying. No. This is nothing like my other poems.

Your servant,
2006

Back door of the Blog

It's been so long that I feel like I am sneaking into the back door of the blog.

Rusty doorknob, stained glass smeared with pigeon's work.
Dirty hand, knowable.

Beard alone. Quick.

Thwack the able
on the heavy-handed. We got a long way to go un-
ruly. The tools

are big and rusty. You will never take conundrum
away from me. Discombobulation, either,

sweet miser, even though your third-grade waddling
English teacher loved it too.

-ThE TodDlers coMe Running. ThEy DO

Dear Squire,

Dear Squire,

We write to you from the future. We are unsure of our future’s future. More on this later. You may be happy to know Be Bop has few allusions in poems. Any dances connoting foods are on the wayside. Wait, you wouldn’t know this since it came from your future. But you, dearest squire have risen high into the ranks of pirates and gold slingers. This may not sound such a prize, but we in our post-postmodern leanings—I forget where we are now—, you see, gurgle with two-parts Listerine, one-part …(this brings me to my question, what was your favorite drink?)

Your servant,
2006

Tanning

Here's a great snipit of an interview wiht Dorothea Tanning. Few years old. But in case you have never seen it....Interview

Pray Tell

Pray Tell

When you were around, extricate became extra karate.
One more pork chop too many. One night you told me

doctors are in business to tell us we have high cholesterol,
or how the other animals are planning a coup inside us.

And you thought global warming was a problem. Well, it is.
There’s a movie about it by the former Vice President

and people go to the theatres
when it gets too hot outside. This is brilliant.

When you were around, remorse was a much better morsel.
See,

I can’t even do it when you’re not around.

“Oh to be seventeen years old
Once again,” sang the red-haired man, “and not know that poetry
Is ruled with the scepter of the dumb, the deaf, and the creepy!”

-Kenneth Koch, Excerpt from “Fresh Air”

My Trip to the Book Annex: Adventures in Dialogue

“What are you looking for?”
“Oh, something I can’t live without. Lately I’ve been looking for Charles Olson.”
“You like the guys.”
“Uh, I like the guys and girls,” matching the informality of guys with girls, which still doesn’t match. I pull out a 1967 Poetry Anthology. “In this they only have Dickinson and Marianne Moore,” as if noting this disgrace shows I’m not lost, but she goes on to provide me with direction.
“Adrienne Rich is great. Plath and Sexton too, though depressing.”

“Thanks.”

The Lamp

Since I haven't written in awhile I give you a poem, that I love, by Charles Olson.


The Lamp

you can hurry the pictures toward you but
there is that point that the whole thing itself
may be a passage, and that your own ability
may be a factor in time, in fact that
only if there is a coincidence of yourself
& the universe is there then in fact
an event. Otherwise—and surely here the cinema
is large—the auditorium can be showing
all the time. But the question is
how you yourself are doing, if you in fact
are equal, in the sense that as a like power
you also are there when the lights
go on. This wld seem to be a
matter of creation, not simply
the obvious matter, creation
itself. Who in fact is any of us
to be there at all? That’s what
swings in the matter, also—
the beam hanging from

Fireworks

Fireworks
Originally uploaded by cherword.

Back from Brooklyn...

no squirrels

Choose the one to watch. Had there been a need for language the language would be watched. Pull-horses. Ocean bluffs. Fondly speaking. Less fondly, pond made it to the snapshots from a throwaway. Near settler’s rock are the surmountable leaches most talk of burning.

On the mainland, as I heard the islander refer to us mainlanders, a snapping turtle crossed the street. While I yelled turtle you yelled snapping. Had this been a reason not to stop? One night I read my favorite chapter thirty times. Short, slow passage of the turtle.

Walking through the same path never gives me the same path. People remember more of how you make them feel, than what you say. For today my adages are simple.

Stick it. When you hear me complain, I had to convince you not to rip off the anti-abortion bumper sticker from the neighbor’s car. Otherwise known as pig.

Rainy day fun: Visit a grave at "Find a Grave"

Had there been Concord

(as i have mentioned before, i keep this space for revising, allowing poem to morph into different poems, try to break up the preciousness of the "publicized" writing. in my revision, there is a constant rejuvenation of forms--breaking the line in variant ways or shifting from proem to poem--so of course the words keep changing. i like to look at them in these different ways, like a family, I then decide whom to adopt if i may rely on such matronly language)


1.

Practice undoing. Others try to collect the undoing.
One takes heat
for forms spilling into other forms. I separate

our landlady’s pills, placing them in the day or night
container. No deviation. The cat needs to be fed.
I am full and thinking of wolf fish.

In Walden Pond the man caught crawfish, feeding them
to a nearby bass, I thought of casting longer sentences.
To what end? I ask myself. I ask the cat.

2.

You want to feel alongside, and are not convinced.
I change the names since this is not a record. One
wants the feeling, alongside. I am not convinced

anyone is here, with
a lot of practice. My own traps
set.


3.

What is adored is the permeable.
I adore the permeable.
My own desires abstracted

by tracing a headstand on my wall—hundreds of feet high,
toes the onlookers—not the man
on his cell phone who constantly places himself

in public spaces. Placed somewhere to meet someone.
You know, the ones who call themselves. A stranger
skirting the puddingstone or the granite wall,

covered in piss-colored paint, is on the side
I’d normally walk. I need to know
the materials.

4.

Museum-head. The woman
ready to throw her head over the terrace,
since (logical propositions abound)

baby is too large.
You said so yourself.
She looked like me.


5.

The sculpture next to the video
of the sculpture animated.

Stainless Steel. Steel.
Copper. Bronze.

P-a-t-i-n-a.

Worn out, stockpiled
beauty of damage.

6.

Paintings of downloaded images
layered with digital geometrics
gave me the creeps. See a random woman,

random leg, five images in one room
were too much for me.

Permeability.

Do prestigious words
have more legs?

Our progeny
will laugh at words called 50 cents.


6, starting over

Octopus legs regenerate.
He talks of pulling one off, getting lost
in the ink. Keep the spear gun at home.

Sugar at half-mast.
I have no reason.
(Consider weather patterns.)


7.

The can of chirping flipped over
inside the birdcage, and the mechanical parts
floating in oil imparted a jellyfish, an ocean.

The sky
a jellyfish making love to a can
of chirping. Gives the sense of

the point of impact
where Norwegians build
a doomsday repository for seeds.

Chronicles

Practice undoing and the others try to collect the undoing. One takes heat for forms spilling into other forms. As I separate our landlady’s pills, placing them in the day or the night container, there can be no deviation. The cat needs to be fed. I am full and thinking of wolf fish.

In Walden Pond the man caught crawfishes and fed them to a nearby bass as I thought about steering the flux of longer sentences. To what end?, I ask myself. I ask the cat.

One wants to feel alongside. One is not convinced. I changed the names since this is not a record. One wants the feeling of being alongside the sentence and is not convinced. Neither am I, convinced anyone is here. What would change if there were?

What is adored is the permeable. I adore the permeable. My own desires are abstracted by tracing a headstand on my wall—hundreds of feet high, my toes the onlookers—not the man talking on his cell phone who constantly places himself in public spaces. Placed somewhere to meet someone I suppose. You know the ones who call themselves.

The man skirts the puddingstone or granite wall on the side I’d normally walk; it is covered in piss-colored paint. I need to know the materials.

The woman ready to throw her head over the terrace, since (logical propositions abound) the baby is too large. You said so yourself. She looked like me.

The images downloaded from the internet with a layer of digital geometrics gave me the creeps. What is seen is a random woman, a random leg, five images in one room were too much for me. Permeability. Does a prestigious word have more legs?

Octopus legs regenerate. He talks of pulling one off, getting lost in the ink. Keep the spear gun at home. Sugar at half-mast. I have no reason. Weather patterns are considered.

The can of chirping flipped over inside the birdcage, and the mechanical parts in oil imparted the sense of a jellyfish in the ocean. The sky looks like a jelly fish making love to a can of chirping.

At the point of impact Norwegians build a doomsday repository for seeds. The sculpture appears next to a video of the sculpture animated. We stood. Who does the animating? I love the sound can. Can you make the sound?

Dispatx

Dispatx does it again with a great edition on the Plague of Language.

Two City Living Gripe

It's quasi-me until I get my box of books, foolishly uninsured. Hurry please. After force feeding a quitting meter quarters, quarreled with the post office jammed at the quay in my head since Midwest to East Coast transit has no loaded harbors, so no flotsam. What the qua! Are we back to mules? What about trucks or planes or precision or my books?

the moon

When I was born the moon was a waning crescent. What was it doing when you were born? See this site. Do tell.

Back in Boston only three days and I attend a poetry reading by Xtina Strong who is heading to Brooklyn (we should now shut the gates to deter great poets from leaving Boston for New York), and by Jack Kimball whom I was glad to have heard read. Xtina showed two films that stirred up thoughts of Sept 11, the War in Iraq, and the Katrina floods with newclips from the nemesis George W. Bush and Others, and voiceovers by Xtina posing questions about the language we use (operation, etc.) and our wartime maneuvers (another skanky word, though not included). Jack Kimball read a series of short untitled poems (what was that last haiku-ish poem of the ovary?) that gave me a sense of a person's need to write to see what can be done, and equally to question what has been done. This self is ever-ready to take some shots: when I was born I was so ugly "the doctor slapped my mother." (Sorry, don't know the exact line.) At each turn of the page, I was helicoptered into a new situation, often with an overlooker critiquing this scene. He can sure pack a wallop of voices condensed in a few words.

I'm quite horrible at this type of review, especially covering such a great reviewer as Kimball, which probably makes me want to try it more. I will not fear failure. Off I go, I will not fear failure...


Related links:

Demolicious: The great reading series, more to come in the fall
Xtina's site
Jack Kimball's blog


Now I'm off considering the possibilities of the typo "needless to see."

Other great movies to watch, if you trust me:

Black Cat, White Cat; and Underground by Emir Kustarica. I'm telling you, you will want to dance. I'm telling you twice.

Cabaret

If you have never seen the 1972 film Cabaret with Liza Minnelli, etc., directed by Bob Fosse, watch now! so good.

To Mother

This is not a letter, but a duel. Parlez-vous français ? Not I.
And you? Don't teach me technology but classify flowers
on my behalf. Luckily, you don’t need to teach me anything.

T-Rex is my prescription for the fear of regressing. I remember
when I realized that my friends' parents were professionals,
or that they were home schooled. I’ve been smoking

in the backyard, wearing pioneer clothing. Put that in your pipe
and savor it. What happens if I were writing a letter to you,
but in the writing I realize the letter isn’t written to you.

Isn't that what happens? My desirous inclination
for direct address becomes apparent. What is it then,
to come clean? From one scenario to the next,

I am shifty. At nap time, I test the waters;
The pillow is testy, the day is not testicular.
There is one thing for sure, you love to line dance.

Fondly,
A Daughter: a desire and an inclination

Need love. Feel depressed. A springtime phenomenon it seems for me.

Some on Ultraism

I initially posted a comment in response to Liz Henry, who has been responding to my promises of writing about the Ultraists and Creacionists of Spain and Latin America. Thanks! Liz, are going to make me stay on track, I know it. I feel it. I've been distracted by Dada, and classes that keep coming....

This could interest others, so let me send you,quite honestly, a freewrite of my thoughts. Hold on, ya'll.

Around 1918, at the onset on ultraism in Spain, before it later expanded to Argentina when Borges moved back, the group comprised of others such as Guillermo de Torre, Rafael Cansinos-Assens, Gerardo Diego, Juan Larrea, etc. (ladies?) and they wanted an avant-guard movement distinct from the others, a movement for the Spanish-speaking world. They had the need to react against the modernism of Ruben Dario of Nicaragua--a particular history to which they wanted to respond. The magazines that heralded Ultraismo were called "Nosotros" or "Ultra" between the timespan of 1918-1922.

Creacionism is often considered the first Latin American avant-guard movement since it began in 1912. When Vicente Huidobro from Chile showed up on the scene in Madrid, he was en route from Paris, and I believe the Ultraists thought his ideas were "tainted" by those foreign influences. Or, at least, Borges was quite militant about his reactions at the time, which he later denounced. People such as Guillermo de Torre were likely less interested in such critical distinctions. Huidobro would often be a part of these literary conversation circles at Madrid's Cafe Colonial, and it seems that Huidobro "recruited" people to creacionism by the nature of his exuberance. Some left the ultraist movement, so to speak, for creacionism. They would write creacionist poems. (Later I could talk about some of the publications, and possibly some of the aesthetics differences--but that's almost suicidal when they are so difficult to name. The question being: What does it mean to change from an ultraist aesthetic to a creacionist one?)

Yes, these distinctions between movements are so slippery. At the same time that Borges was trying to make these distinctions, he was drawing upon the work of Apollinaire or Mallarme. And, as do many manifestos, ultraism embraced many other writers prior to the naming of this movement.

(To me, the study of manifestos can be one big psychological study of the literary psyche...but that's another topic.) I will later post some sources too. And of course, you are welcome to add your information. I think this is really a collective building of knowledge.

Peace,

Cheryl

Cranky?

I don’t want to write about my feelings
I don’t want to write the books I just read
A wad of them

I do want to post some quotes
but I don’t want to type them
I don’t want to type

I don’t want to keep track of blogrolls
I don’t want to appear any way
So I don't appear

That's the problem--the crisis of imagined identity
Uggh

I don’t want to figure out how to fix this template.

That being said, I've been reading a lot of dada: Duchamp, Tzara, The Baroness, Mina Loy, Breton (who split from Dada and stirred up Surrealism)

Have you ever checked out the "International Dada Archive"?

To Mina Loy (revision)

To Mina Loy or Nima Oly or Amin Yol


I don’t want to leave you.
I’ll go back.

Courteous discomfort. Ideas
in eyes, an allotment; the facets
of all your inventions—

an invented face, “an implied whole.”
I think you’d like the word mug.

Did something happen in the reign
of your Adolescence?

Mine was pretty screwy.


*


Today in class we chuckled about the Curtain
starring as the Curtain, and of course, WCW and You
in Lima Beans. I’m glad you didn’t fall for him.

I think I love you. I think you are a hatchet
and hatchets are lovely. Literature
is a corpse-friendly place.


*

The editors are searching
for your lamps. Who has hidden a broken
lamp of yours? Today I don’t want to look
up a word and find it doesn’t exist.

I think existing is really no big deal.


*

The security man at the art museum said,
“I’m so old I don’t know if I’m alive or dead.”

Reply: “What are dead things?
What does ‘deadened’ really mean?
I mean, really?”

He walked away walkie talkie in hand.
I used to have one of those.



*

Mina, I think you were my neighbor.

“Get out of my yard,” you’d holler.
Would you, could you, ever yell at me?

Two things tell me a lot about people:
whether and how they yell,
and their bathrooms.

Mina, did you ever have a yard? Yell
across a yard?

To some, it’s so important. They say,
“Better get out your shears.”

Let’s take a walk, Mina. Really,
can I call you that?

bendy

urged worm
I am engaged
with bendy straws

urged worm
I protested a lot
with placards

bendy worm
urged me to step
so as to see steps

bendy worm
assuming
multiples

bendy worm
could've beaten up
calculus

its lessons stir
up in the brain
its functions

playthings-
serious
at some point

urge bendy
to return
as carbonated

balloon

Teaching "America"

Kept trying

in reaching


Never (resigned?)


Haven’t found

Nothing in the


How they thought they were superior
We are superior they thought

Everyone wants to be us

No one would want to be us because…

Have them mouth this

We are inferior because…

Mina Loy or Nima Oly or Amin Yol

I don’t want to leave you. I’ll go back.

I think you’d like the word “mug.”

Courteous discomfort.
Ideas in eyes, allotment
of a whole lot.

Facets are full of brochures
of your inventions. “The implied whole,”
I liked it when my professor said that.

Did something actually happen in your Adolescence—
in its reign and jawbones? Mine was pretty screwy.

Startling enough, I may have broken a lamp of yours.
Somebody else has to have one. The editors are searching.

Today in class we chuckled about the Curtain
starring as the Curtain, and of course, WCW and You
in Lima Beans. I’m glad you didn’t fall for him.

I think I love you. I think you are a hatchet
and hatchets are lovely.

This really is a corpse-friendly place. I just mean literature.
Some days I don’t want to look up a word and find it doesn’t exist.

I think existing is really no big deal.

The art museum security man said, “I am so old
I don’t know if I’m alive or dead.” “Excuse me,

is the art alive? It’s old. What are dead things?
What does ‘deadened’ really mean? I mean, really?”
He got out his walkie talkie and walked away. I used to have one of those.

Mina, I think you were my neighbor. “Get out of my yard,” you’d holler.
Would you, could you, ever yell at me if I walked through your yard?

What were you like when you yelled? There are two things that tell me a lot about people: whether and how they yell, and their bathrooms.

Mina, did you ever have a yard? They seem so important around some people. They say, “Get out your sheers. Your blades of grass are about to touch the sidewalk.”

Let’s take a walk, Mina. Really, can I call you that?

Librarything

My version of the "librarything"--not very orderly. Maybe I will begin "lovenotefile"? Anyone know code?

a company of moths

Finally reading Palmer's _A Company of Moths_, and this isn't a review. I realize that every time I see the word "Company" and its warmth, I can't help thinking of Creeley. What a wonderful legacy to leave, among many others, in our world's corporate-driven frenzies. In the case you haven't yet looked up Palmer's use of "windrow" (which I also love), see definition below. To those who already know the word, pat your toochie, sweet cheeks.


A windrow is a row of cut hay or small grain crop. It is allowed to dry before being baled, combined, or rolled. For hay, the windrow is often formed by a hay rake, which rakes hay that has been cut by a mower into a row. For small grain crops which are to be harvested, the windrow is formed by swather which both cuts the crop and forms the windrow.
The term may also be applied to a row of any other material such as snow[1].

In the case of snow, windrows are created by snow plows as they plow streets. The windrow may block driveways. Some municipalities have windrow removal service where a smaller plow goes to each individual driveway to clear the windrow. Most cities simply make the home owner clear the windrow to their own driveway. A few cities will plow the windrow to the center of the street, blow the snow into trucks, and haul it away.

Good ole "windrow removal service."

Once again, I find myself linking to Conjunctions. Some great poems and an interview from Rosmarie Waldrop:
http://www.conjunctions.com/justout.htm

Happy New Year. The greeting has not yet expired.

Tequila

Back in Boston for Thanksgiving Break. I'm finishing off the last drops from the beautiful bottle of Tequila (Azulejos) that I picked up last year in Mexico. So tasty.

I'd like to return in the summer, if I can pull it off financially.

Peace.

comments

Gracias por sus comentarios. Thanks for comments. Yes, OED look-up is a
better addiction than most.

And, about Ultraists and Creacionists, I really will write more later. I
have found some great books in this search.

Far-Fetched

Since I now have instant (I initially miswrote as instinct) access to the OED through the privilege of the university, I can't stop looking up words. The latest? Far-fetched. It's earliest known usage: 1583 STUBBES Anat. Abus. I. (1879) 33

Farrefetched and deare boughte is good for Ladyes, they say.


Hey, Christmas is coming up...

The usage of "studiously sought out; not easily or naturally introduced; strained" isn't recorded until 24 years later, in 1607.

How did those lovely far-fetched things become difficult and strained?

Blogroll

You will be happy to know I finally figured out how to begin the blogroll (i'd like soup with that puleez). Well, Mark, since you recently commented on the boob comment, I have added you first, right between google and edit-me. (Yes, I knew it was about Fence--such small talk in the poetry world, cloistered big talk...what the hell am I saying.) So, stay tuned for other blogs I peek at once in awhile since I am not a hefty duty email or blogger player.

Ok. I'm procrastinating at 12 a.m., making bean soup and blogging, instead of reading about the Ultraists. I have been figuring out the differences between the Spanish and Latin American avant garde movements called creacionism and ultraism. I've been reading the original ultraist texts published in Spanish magazines in the early 1920s. I'll try to say more later.

Dispatx

Just Received this--It's a great site to check out.If you look at the archive, there is an artist's book that I completed.


We are pleased to announce the publication of the fourth issue of www.dispatx.com : ABANDONMENT. This edition contains 14 works comprising narrative and poetry, essay, photography, oil painting and sculpture, and video.

To speak of abandonment suggests a withdrawal or relinquishment of influence, the exposure of a physical or social structure to the dereliction of time or a cessation of protection. It can also describe a state in which one is given over to forces beyond oneself - the extreme highs and lows of the human condition. Above all, the act of abandonment implies transfer - something orphaned is passed to another controlling agent, something is gained. Understanding abandonment not only as a binary, final state but also as part of a natural dialectic incorporating positive and negative elements has been critical in developing this edition.

Contents

Always-Already - Anna Simmonds [dialogue]
At the Entrance to the Arcade - Stephanie Bolster [topography]
Bifurcate - Ramón Galindo [overlay]
Collie Lane - Shannon Doubleday [recollect]
Erorr [sic] - Aaron Anstett [unease]
Estacionario - Vanessa Oniboni [embodiment]
Holism and the Gestalt - Stephen Levy [refutation]
Inwendig - Maribel Oldigs [placement]
Isolation - Karen Ann Myers [retreat]
Oradour-sur-Glane - Sharon Jefford [evidence]
¿Por qué, Por qué? - Rafael Andreu [assimilation]
The Three Gorges - Jade Ireson [inundation]
Transición - Natalia Guarin & Vanessa Oniboni [vector]
Usos y Desusos - Catalina Salazar [montage]

Please go to www.dispatx.com for details : we will announce a new theme for exploration in December 2005

If you would like to be removed from this mailing list, please let us know.

dear potential commenter

(which reminds me of the theme of non-existence),

Due to spam comments, you will need to decipher a blur of letters before submitting your insightful flashes. Think of it as "risk management" or practice in eye-hand coordination.

Yours,
Cheryl

boob one

"oh you got the boob one?" i overheard a poet say

A Visitor's Upper Echelons

not surprisingly you talked of
subordinate clauses as your posture
doted on its own arrogance

wingéd elbows
beside your nape-cradled head
the caldera between your legs
a site for rutting elk

the tree outside matched,
and was a match for,
your red shirt, I glimpsed
back into your head
and was lonely there

of course

I don't want to name names...so, N. elbows me to say my blog is bland and dried-out and I reply "what about the archive." How useless a response I know because we turn to the blog to see the latest blurb and jottings but I can't seem to keep up. I can barely keep up with sleep, which seems more necessary. Sleep. Rest your eyes for a moment.

Have you? (so phatic, a new word that I have learned. I make learning these words transparent.)

I tried. And I have tried to go to sleep and sleep cajoles "nice try." As so the blog begins to tease me much the same. Who is in control here? When the telephone rings I remind myself that I am in charge of deciding to answer it. The ringing phone is not my master. Discpline is a ciphen.

N., I hope I've done some justice. Yet, I've drifted from my subject: the fascination with "of course." No. When I wrote that poem I hadn't read that other poem. So, how is it multiple people are driven to repeat the expression "of course."

Its earliest meaning was a nautical term...oh, so many nautical terms that seeped into our speak...and then it took on the meaning of "customarily," and, most currently, the meaning of "obviously," which is also often used as an emphatic affirmative response that stands alone. I am butchering this progression. Let's turn to OED for the earliest indications of this latter meaning of "obviously":

1823 J. D. HUNTER Captiv. N. Amer. 39 She made some very particular inquiries about my people, which, of course, I was unable to answer.
1838 DICKENS O. Twist xxxiv. 266 You will tell her I am here?..Of course.
1861 M. PATTISON Ess. (1889) I. 32 It would be easy, of course, to exaggerate this truth of the continuity of history into a falsehood. Mod. And you were present? Of course; why not?


In these jottings I rest for now. In "of course" we stand alone emphatically but we are in a current current, apparent waves, and we question what's customary.

May I only blog in bogs of sleep....

beginning this entry I am reminded of my diary when I was eight

this week's entry would say:

recently I moved, got married, started grad school, had horrible experience with Enterprise Rental Car

then:
need lightbulbs, figure out how to put my bike together

then add:
someone asked about my poetics

I said "to erase"

on the go

Hey, I'm in the midst of a move so I will blog when I settle in a bit more.

Poematic

Do you want online magnetic poetry? If it barely gets used on the fridge, you could try here.

Spies

Subway:

Your eyes
Your ears
Our security

Your eyes
Your ears
Our security

Supposedly
I've joined
some team


Moving on...


Computer:

settings
hijacked

Familiar spy
Suspicious spy
reason to believe
small or large

familial spy

Summer, Revising more

I keep trying to approach this peice. Not sure if previous version was holding a center. I was interested in the language of the beginning, but it may be of a different poem.


Stirred up

We the jalopies
playing on the driveway
flirting with the dart board foraging
the red dot, unlikely
given a melodious limp wrist
(the handbrake)
and mode of transport:
synchronicity, wild flowers,
first sighting of a minnow trap
... slowly recovering
its genus from a less than
steel-trap headwhirl
where minnows were
erroneous birds
thrashing about their wings
inside mason jars.

Creeley

Not unlike many others, I've been spending a lot of time with Robert Creeley's writings. I remember his reading on the porch of the Longfellow House in Cambridge when he talked about Acton, MA and read his poems about his travels abroad--(at the moment I can't remember the collection). More recently, I had signed up for his workshop in July at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, but you know how the story goes...

There is an excellent video of a reading and conversation with Creeley on April 1, 2004 at the University of Chicago. He tells a great little story about leaving a jazz club one night! See Video of Creeley reading.

May good company continue...

Collage

As I was packing, I found this collage.

Summer, revising

Some changes thus far.

Stirred up

The manifesto (a misnomer) grew tired
before it raged. The worry wart
you burned off. The sliver
you buckled under, born-again
complainer given to rise to fist fight
with the neighbor kicking back a cool one:
a better-not juggernaut. A mandate
for training: training wheels for man.
A truncated version of the mandate:
Modulate, modulate, modulate!
We the jalopies playing on the driveway
flirting with the dart board foraging
the red dot, unlikely
given melodious limp wrist (the handbrake)
and mode of transport: synchronicity,
wild flowers, first sighting of a minnow trap
... slowly recovering its genus
from a less than steel-trap headwhirl
where minnows were erroneous birds
thrashing about in mason jars.

Summer

Hello, here is draft of a poem from today. What the heck!

Stirred up Summer

A mandate for training: training wheels for man.
A truncated version of the mandate. Modulate,
modulate, modulate! The manifesto
(a misnomer) grew tired
before it raged. The worry wart
you burned off. The sliver
you buckled under, born-again
complainer. Ward off fist fight with neighbor
imbibing a cool one: the juggernaut.
We the jalopies playing on the driveway
flirting with the dart board foraging
the red dot, unlikely
given melodious limp wrist, and mode
of transport: synchronicity, wild flowers,
the minnow trap that slowly recovered
its genus from a less than steel-trap
headwhirl where minnows
were birds thrashing about
in mason jars.

Maine

Blogwise, I've been quite inactive. Otherwise, quite active. I just returned from a 10 day camping trip in the White Mountains in Maine. Hung with the moose!

"From the cool cisterns of the midnight air/ My spirit drank repose;" writes Longfellow (born in Maine), which isn't why I went.

I'm also thinking of Forrest Gander and Kent Johnson's striking new translation of Jaime Saenz's _The Night_, which begins
"The night, its rack of antlers twitching in the distance..." (Check out the 7th edition at Mandorla.)

I am now preparing to move so pardon the sporadic bloggin'. I will post soon! And I need to fatten up my blog skills like creating links and "sidelines." Ciao!

Shorn

I own no bed or cooking ware or sheets or utensils or sofa or couch. I have books and bookshelves, and I'm not even sure I'm going to bring the shelves. I'll make my own shampoo and cleaning detergents as long as I remember which mixture of elements don't combust. These are my daydreams of frugality and I have incessant nightmares of disappointing and annoying and angering everyone I know or threw away. I am unable to wake up from their tisk-tisk. Waking myself up from nightmares is on my I-would-love-to-learn-that list--not to mention...isn't the point for it to go unmentioned? All I want is to drink sake and bourbon and moonshine. They move me. Unfortunately, I'm not drinking liquor, coffee, or any caffeinated drinks at the time so I could be chosen for a sleep study for $1,000. Waiting to see if they will select me resembles my version of Miss America. Will they pick me? Flossing makes me new. Every once in a while curly hair comes back. I keep going funny though nothing seemed funny today. I keep going wacko and nothing was funnily wacky today. Am I in someone else's landscape?

Lezama Lima Quote

Lezama Lima Quote
Originally uploaded by cherword.

Not Even a Ditty

Submission Rejection note:

Better luck
when dead

Hopscotch

At times, I take some prior ramblings and revise in the blogsphere. Here we go.


Hopscotch is the Savior

amulets and bird droppings
the cardinal at my door
adamant
for me to screech into the playing ground of a furrowed field

just as there is no "I"
in team (so it's said)
there's no "u" in footwork
(so it's never said)
it's fatal nonetheless

take me for what I am
big willy soft spot
rake me for what I am
some perrennial in the hour of planting
to sprout in some other year
some other texture
claiming your saviour
with a "u"

Carve

Now available! CARVE 5 April 2005 Cheryl Clark Richard Caddel William Corbett on Richard Caddel Jordan Davis Guillermo Juan Parra Stacy Szymaszek 32 pp. Visit Carve

take in fatality

there is no fiction when
unrelegated pronoun is blessed to return
to the midst of hopscotch

hopscotch is the savior


what could protect you

amulets and bird droppings

the cardinal at my door

adamant

for me to screech into the playing ground of a furrowed field



boxed up poker face selling for my demands

"fast spacer" key (lament lament)

de-morphed into sculpture


take me for what I am

big willy soft spot

rake me for what I am

some perrennial in the hour of planting


i'll come in some other year
some other texture


claim your saviour
with a "u"

Papers book

Hey ya'll, The book I made from the poem "Papers" by Ruth Lepson and James Carson is complete, and the virtual book is posted online at Dispatx. Visit Dispatx:


I just e-fell into this journal from Eastern Michigan University called Bathhouse. Listen to this musical intro for Vol.2 #1!

In Chicago

In Chicago
Originally uploaded by cherword.

Visit to hometown in December

CrossofChurch

CrossofChurch
Originally uploaded by cherword.

CloseupChurch

CloseupChurch
Originally uploaded by cherword.

Church that burned down in my neighorhood

Winter Poems

Here are some new drafts of Boston winter poems.


THE FIRST GRADE HALLOWEEN PLAY
THE YEAR MY FATHER DIED

On the stroke of May
bats made their way
into children's plays,
and the spelling bee flew
into the wrong word
for a sickness
able to floor you,
at least for 24 hours-but
an inconvenient 24 hours-
heaving into flapping
bat wings of black
construction paper. I chose
no corpulent pumpkin.
No ghost for me.




AT THE MUSEUM

Meeting you here
isn't fancy.

The bathroom here is fancy.

Even the women on plaques
have two kinds of dresses:

an upside-down umbrella,
another choking the midriff.

Our meeting here is akin to
metal chairs in the courtyard,
mugged by snow.




I SHOT DAYLIGHT

Pellet holes in panes of glass,
antennas of cracking.
Daylight could have sought
retribution at nightfall.
Hues relinquished
in pursuit of a gray worm,
and in silence thickly
spackled disease.
I spun around a sapling,
all elbow grease exhausted.



DOODLED NAME-DROPPINGS

Pablo Picasso meets Georgia O'Keefe.
Alfred Steiglitz and he rumble.
Helen Frankenthaler pours a bucket of paint on them.
Louise Bourgeois sculpts her mother
as a gigantic bronze spider,
eyeballs peek out of the grass.
Agnes Wright draws rectangles around the house.



BOOK OF THREE DAYS

1/24/05 6:18:12 PM

Popsicle stick people
drone on, appearing
to lipstick my long face
in light of contusion.
Until catapulted.

Pick up new object.


1/25

No room for cream. No milky space.

*

I heated black until red.
Then singed yellow
until it escaped as char
into the night.


1/26

I have a date with my shovel at three.
A flurry of activity before:
Typing notes
Listening to recorded poem

Call for Papers ---Los Estados Unidos

Here is a forward about a conference. Let me know if you submit. I'm curious.

Thirteenth Annual NYU Columbia University Graduate Conference on Spanish and Portuguese Literatures

This Conference will be held at the King Juan Carlos I Center, New York University, on Friday and Saturday, April 8th and 9th 2005

LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS

Keynote Speakers include:
Julio Ramos, Department of Spanish and Portuguese (UC Berkeley); José Quiroga, Department of Spanish and Portuguese (Emory University); Sylvia Molloy, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Comparative Literature (NYU); Mary Louise Pratt, Department of Spanish and Portuguese (NYU); Ana Maria Dopico, Department of Comparative Literature, Spanish and Portuguese (NYU); and George Yúdice, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Department of Spanish and Portuguese (NYU).

Suggested topics:

Representations of Latin America on the US
North/South: appropriations, looting & influences
Mass Culture / Pop / Globalization
Latin American readings of the US
Politics of the Empire / Colonialisms / Hegemony
Latin American and Iberic Studies inside the American Academia
Borders / Travel writings
Migration / Exile / Diaspora
Bilingualism / Spanglish / Slangs & jergas
Latinos in the US
Races & ethnicities / Gringos & Spiks

Representaciones de Latinoamérica en los Estados Unidos
Norte / Sur: préstamos, contrabando e influencias
Cultura de masas / Pop / Globalización
Lecturas latinoamericanas de los Estados Unidos
Políticas del Imperio / Colonialismos / Hegemonía
La academia norteamericana
Los estudios latinoamericanos e hispánicos en US
Fronteras / Travel writings
Migraciones / Exilio / Diáspora
Latinos in the US
Bilingüismos / Spanglish / Slangs y jergas
Razas y etnias / Gringos y Spiks

Please submit a one-page abstract in English, Spanish or Portuguese, with a separate title, page, stating name, address, e-mail and phone #

Send by e-mail to cgs245@nyu.edu or by mail to:

Los Estados Unidos
Department of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Literatures
New York University
c/o Claudia Salazar
19 University Place 4th Floor
New York, New York 10003

Deadline: February 12th 2005

Dispatx

Infrequent spurts of blogging. I've been writing more in my paper journal. So archaic. I love it. Maybe I will scan or type to you. The ubiquitous you. I've been working on Spanish to English poetry translations. Now I have all these random words in my head. Words that didn't fit or made me recall other words. I'll tell you later.

Check out this project I've been working on with Ruth Lepson. I am making a book from a poem called Papers by Ruth Lepson and James Carson. It will be posted on Dispatx online journal. Go to http://www.dispatx.com/wip/en/papers/01.html

Art Institute

If anyone is going to Chicago, I encourage you to check out this exhibit (Hero, Hawk, and Open Hand: American Indian Art of the Ancient Midwest and South at the Art Institute). http://www.artic.edu/aic/exhibitions/herohawk/overview.html

"The exhibition assembles some 300 masterpieces of stone, ceramic, wood, shell, and copper created between 2000 B.C. and A.D. 1600....[sic]..of the midwestern and southern United States."

As Alex and I walked through the exhibit we noted the similarities to, and deviations from, artifacts of Latin America. During 2000 B.C. the cultures across the entire Americas were even influencing each other. It was amazing to see and consider. The exhibit included a timeline of tribes across the Americas, however, it didn't explore the artistic interplay of these tribes for each peice. We tended to superimpose this look on the entire exhibit. Nonetheless, it is worth a trip.

For a few minutes of fun, try www.googlism.com. Here is a googlism for 'the united states." How strange when products like google become verbs?

the united states is becoming more vulnerable to natural
the united states is still bombing

the united states is disintegrating
the united states is a threat to world

the united states is the world leader in innovation
the united states is problem
the united states is not in prophecy
the united states is a diverse country

the united states is a democracy
the united states is falling
the united states is over 150 years old

the united states is putting the world at risk

the united states is still a british colony

the united states is becoming more vulnerable to natural disasters

the united states is in deep doodoo
the united states is now the only industrialized country in the world that does not use the metric system as its predominant system of measurement
the united states is still bombing iraq
the united states is available
the united states is about to take place
the united states is now included in this conservative block that opposes women’s and children’s rights
the united states is against terrorism
the united states is now our foremost enemy
the united states is a symbol of freedom
the united states is on the continent of north america
the united states is a threat to world peace
the united states is failing in the fight against aids come demand real domestic responses and real global solutions
the united states is rooted in oil
the united states is the world leader in innovation and in the trade of goods and services of knowledge
the united states is doing more harm than good in israel
the united states is one of the best tax havens in the world
the united states is the largest producer of tomatoes in the world
the united states is unfounded
the united states is over
the united states is banning books
the united states is a safe haven for more than 1
the united states is the only country to base its society not on a shared past or culture but on an idea

Let's try something new. A poem in process that first appeared here. I suddenly love the word gurgle.


The Neighbor's Dog

It is the ending that makes everything worthwhile.

The yellow bamboo leaves spike without question
less diligently. Dishes exonerate. Intentions
do not pile but spread, stave off less compelling ones.

She frequently looks up the difference between
transitive and intransitive verbs.

Metonyms have left her
stranded. Adjectives heap themselves in succession
in light of the coming holidays. Sugar tells stories

when no one's looking. Someone is always looking.
The neighbor walks the neighbor's dog.

She considers what she can throw away, what
she cannot buy, or whether carried from subject to object.

The writer has no need to ask
what makes her so. Logic is such a foe. And in the end
we all cheer for the woman who burns down the town.

No one would be prepared.

pituitary
gatekeeper

sweat
lodger

phenomenal
light
smoother

come take a look
behind the shed

heaven
swears
in 32 lanuages

does it
in succession
without stones

or stick figures




)(


the kitten had twins

shows up wrestling
with mickey

mouse #1 (said it, I gave
in) you brought a

stuffed one
like turkey
stuffing



)(


don't you just want to scream
Happy Holidays

Rudimentary

Do I post so my "readership" doesn't stray? Do I post because I am compelled? Do I go postal because I don't post? Would past tense be appropriate? In the shower I consider that I am half the blogger I could be, and possibly on the way to a have-been. Ultimately, I'm amused by such simple worries. I've given musings, but not much more. As I figure out the technicalities of posting poems that would maintain line breaks, maybe this could change. Maybe you won't stray.

It is the ending that makes everything worthwhile. The yellow bamboo leaves spike, without question, less diligently. Cookbooks piled on the monitor-on-its-way- out by way of a trip to the basement are frisky. Dishes exonerate. She frequently looks up the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs. Metonyms have left her stranded. Un-called-for hyphens deserve different homes. Live a little

language. Adjective s heap themselves in succession in light of the coming holidays. In a community imagined in a yellow evening you leave without question to go to work. The writer has no need to ask what makes her so. Relieved of reoccurring migraines, she has only the traces such as vomiting. Intentions do not pile,

but spread. Stave off less compelling ones. She will consider what she can throw away, and what she cannot buy. Logic is another foe. And in the end we all cheer for the woman that burns down the town. No one would be prepared. Sugar tells stories when no one's looking. The neighbor walks the neighbor's dog.

Only Mercedes Sosa can make me this happy listening to her album, huhmm, cd "Mercedes Sosa en Argentina," recorded in 1982 at the Buenos Aires Opera Theatre. Inserted in the front of the cd case is my ticket stub from attending her concert in 2002 at the Berklee Performance Center. Gracias a la vida!
I was in the third row with my friend Bhavana who thought that we were getting the tickets at half-price. "Thought" is the operative word.

In case you are more interested: http://www.easybuenosairescity.com/biografias/sosa1.htm

Stem cell said to Iraqi man
you are more evolved,
why don't you live?
Iraqi man said
your President won't let me.
My water is polluted.
My brother has died.
My sister's wedding was bombed.
Stem cell joined up with other powerful stem cells
for a conference on peace treaties but
the President was busy blowing hot air and missiles.
In the end, stem cells broke up with the President
and joined the Red Cross, then the Revolution.

Lantern Parade

Threadbare words cut out of tissue paper
In nothing but plastic glued to foggy lake
Waddling when need be a wink away
From worn-out face holding a lantern
at a parade

celebrations
always slap me
in the back

the futility
of reaching out buries me

alive
Is a state of mind

Malfuncion

I really sucks when an I becomes I hen says I suck I wake up earlier
o wrie wih my missing
I is so cold I hink ha winer comes and I don' wan I
o come and I keep pressing

like 's maer even more in life now I know hey are missing if I were o open any book and coun 's my kiy can' go ouside because I closed he window maybe all 's flew ou window of my scaered hear lifeline is a hold up for space loveliness when you are around I will fill in all your leers if you demand equaliy solidarity just when I get into this spellcheck interferes

marketroid

Just in case you were wondering....

marketroid /mar'k*-troyd/ (Or "marketing slime", "marketeer", "marketingdroid", "marketdroid") A member of a company's marketingdepartment, especially one who promises users that the next version of a product will have features that are not actually scheduled for inclusion, are extremely difficult to implement,and/or are in violation of the laws of physics; and/or one whodescribes existing features (and misfeatures) in ebullient, buzzword-laden adspeak. Derogatory.

Love...you are my luminary

My liver is
a gunshot
a swollen timeline
it's about time
swelling found a home
in a string of words
about to fray

Guerrero Viejo

After finishing an amazing book of oral history and photographs called Guerrero Viejo, I was drawn to write a poem in Spanish. I rarely write original work in Spanish, nor work that sounds so formal, but this is what erupted. Let me finish by saying that this book Guerrero Viejo by Elena Poniatowski (author), and Richard Payne (photographer) poignantly illustrates how the citizens of this town were uprooted when the Mexican and U.S. government constructed the Falcon Dam on the Rio Grande. The town, once under water, is now completely dry. A few people refuse to leave. ( I need to figure out how to create accents within this blogbox. Advice for mac?)


A Dona Julia de Guerrero Viejo

Amor,
no te espero sino estoy en vigila
con mis veinte chivos y un becerro.
Y en la noche no te espero
con una veladora para mis santitos
y otra luz encendida de una bateria de carro.
No necesito un carro,
sino una luz. Nunca voy a salir.

A la mala gente, no tengo miedo
de tirarla en las patas
si se trata de robar La Virgen
en mi iglesia sin muros completos.
Nunca sera vacia.

Amor,
en la casa del doctor del Flores
crecio un arbol inmenso. Se parece
que el hogar ofrecio su techo alto.

Amor, soy la unica que guardo todo.
Y cuando me muera, no se le olvide
que quiera una cruz negra
por todo lo que he sufrido.

Virgin Galactic

for $210,000
I can go to space

"It will be humbling. It will be spiritual. "

just like mom's red handprint
on my slapped ass
when I talked back

i stared at it in the mirror
and traced the far-flung fingers
with my eyes: those satellites
from earth

blood rushed up
to hit you back

got caught up
in skin

money is no object
to some

we advance

a bloodless frontier?

Ordinary

People expect me to work

This is hard work

Take the reins

Overthrow me



Take care,

Cinderblock

Quizilla strikes...What childhood toy from the 80s am I?
You're a Spirograph!! You're pretty tripped out,
even though you've been known to be a bit
boring at times. You manage to serve your
purpose in life while expending hardly any
effort (and are probably stoned to the gills
all the while).


What childhood toy from the 80s are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

If I knew which mask, I would take it off.

Medical Interpreter at the Beach

See that feather.

The man cleaned his ear
with a pigeon feather
since the doctor told him
no Q-tips. When the doctor
looked inside his inflamed ear,
the hammer peeked out at him.

how did i get trapped by goodness

headless chicken squawk
contagious spit

no good
this day

but others are branded

you want brandy?

my traditional tibetan healer told me
less alcohol
no more than a glass

guilty the day after

ugh. those day afters

i lost my bra
that i just began to wear

have you ever burned one?

burning...

i may have jumped too quickly
without weighing other options


my preoccupations are space, bodies, gaps,
grief

tense body
past eyebags

past tense
of body bag


bye

i looked back after leaving the train
i was still sitting there

good thing I had my keys in my hand

i'm always losing my keys



that waiter
reminded me so much of an ex
my receipt is about to blow away

the big man at the next table
asked for sweet and low

and that little child was wearing
an Old Navy t-shirt

the woman talked to an old man on the train who started talking to her while leaning over her shoulder to read her papers and she responded because she rarely speaks to people over seventy like him, and she laughed saying really? entrepreneur, huh?


belonging is complicated

It took me days to find imprint
to fit inside a poem
for a translation that doesn't know where to go
I want to end the other poem
"I watch it in slow"
On the verge of crying three times
on the Monday
train to work
I will stop
reading Tuesdays with Morrie
to start my day

i wanted to take a nap-e-poo
but i have to watch Jesus get flogged

never again will i go to Man Ray
where women who play nuns
on tv are fingered by men
with dark sunglasses

and the bartender gives me my drink
wearing a schoolgirl outfit and pigtails

next i'll be drinking pig ears

"language is a deluge
from one small corner of the heart"

-Lu Chi, translated by Sam Hamill

The Hood of my Care

When the woman rolled up the hood of my car, the clothes from her laundry basket flooded my windshield. I became keenly aware of the blue steering wheel in my hand, and the blue interior I was encased in. The woman who rolled up the hood of my car said I must have sped up to hit her, told the cop that she had heard the motor revving up. I was watching how we were held by the cops on different sides of the parking lot of Mt. Pleasant Laundromat. I was talking to the other cop and watching the distance between us. Not talking to her felt like a hit and run, but I figured she didn't want to talk to the woman who hit her with a car. I was the enemy. I was just a figure being directed by the cops keeping the peace, jotting their notes. She was yelling. I was sobbing. I kept wanting to approach her. I had never hit someone before. The cords of my empathy rarely knew how to slacken.

As a singed spider

I return to the cavalcade of obesity
hang on to the green patina of copper
between the grey and the laconic.

My latinated hojas flutter in questions:
Am I the lacuna or that which surrounds me?

Will I weather the storm?