A Diminutive Poem

I. Purge

“With so much nausea and diarrhea, I thought for two days that I was dying,” said an unidentified Chinese man after eating a frozen dumpling.
“They tasted bitter. I felt dizzy some 30 seconds after I had them and collapsed," said an 18-year-old boy. Five minutes later his 51-year-old father's body started twitching.
The 47-year-old mother could not walk or talk.
“My whole body was paralyzed and my eyes kept watering,” she said. “I don’t want to buy frozen food anymore.”

II. Remember

Japanese researchers have implanted a semiconductor camera inside the hippocampus of a mouse’s brain. The mouse recalled the trauma of his birth and a blue light appeared on a screen. The mouse, now with a mighty headache, will be allowed to walk soon. He does not yet have Parkinson's.

III. Absence

It is the end of January. The mixture of moisture and cold air did not climax enough to produce snow this month in New York City. It was the first time in 75 years. Perhaps there will be a dance of flakes in February. Hold out your tongues.

IV. Bloom

In a frequently fractious farming town, riots broke out yesterday when suspects were arrested for the illegal sale of flowers.

V. Flash

Pandora’s heart beat so fast and loud, that it seemed for a moment to drown all other sounds.

VI. Hope

Should she open the box?

{lm}

And Now, Some Good News

The editors at The Strip, the new literary journal of the graduate creative writing program at the Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, have been kind enough to accept four poems for publication, including "Narrative," Call Me Father, Call Me Wanting," "The Cartographer," and "Trust."

Now, if I can just get this life business sorted out...

[dr]

The End of an Era

I regret to inform you all that the Grand Marquis breathed its last breath yesterday. It put up a good fight but finally gave up and was officially pronounced dead at 12:02 pm. It took me as far as the beach and went peacefully while parked in the Brooklyn sun. It will find its new home on Monday in junkyard heaven, where the proceeds for its organs and scrap metal will be donated to Cars for Kids. In the meantime, I wish I could have it towed to Raccuglia & Sons Funeral Home, to be paid respect and for a final viewing. I would drape daisies and rosaries over it, and the car radio, if it were working, would play Brown Skin Lady and You Don't Bring Me Flowers Anymore, concluding with the soundtrack to The Royal Tennenbaums. We would smoke cigars as we listened. The MC would of course be GC, and he would ask if anyone would like to share any memories, the family would greatly appreciate it. After the mass, everyone would follow the white stretch limo stocked with Courvoisier to the junkyard, where Lionel Richie would deliver a tear-jerking elegy, titled "The Power and Girth of My V-8". Following a post-funeral luncheon at my house, the crowd would disperse, and I would proceed to join the downtrodden straphangers with my head up, knowing that it is in a better place and is not suffering anymore. I feel guilty saying this but it will be replaced, hopefully next month, by a 12-year younger, shorter black model that gets kick-ass gas mileage. I will miss it. I will miss its heavy doors that I sometimes had to kick closed, I will miss its windows that never opened when the cops pulled me over, I will miss its cocky old man outbursts, I will miss the junk in its trunk. It had a solid sense of humor. It had irony. It wanted me to tell you it loved you all, and has left something for each of you. For Gregory, it has left its plush back seat and joystick. For Reagan, it has left its disco ball and bevy of double-lined plastic bags. For Danny, it has left its cigar lighter and car radio face plate. For me, it has left its flaccid hood ornament. To honor its memory, I will have its signature three-lined insignia that was once on its grill tattooed on my ass.

Sigur Ros' takk: a found poem

track titles
icelandic | english translation | english pronunciation

takk | thank you | tahk [long a, as in "father"]
glósóli | glowing sole | glow-soul-ih [i as in "hit]
hoppípolla | hopping into puddles | hopp-ee-poddla [both o's are long, as in "aw". a is short in "man"]
með blóðnasir | i have a nosebleed | meth blothe-nasir [th as in "breathe". a is long as in "father"]
sé lest | i see a train | s-ye lest [ye as in "yet"]
sæglópur | lost at sea | sie-glope-urr [sie as in "tie". urr as in purr, r's rolled]
mílanó | milan | milano [accent on first syllable]
gong | gong | gong
andvari | zephyr | andvari [accent on first syllable. both a's are short like "man"]
svo hljótt | so quietly | svo hl-yote [o in "svo" is long as in "saw"]
heysátan | haystack | heys-ow-dan ["ow" as in "owl". a is short as in "man]

Poetry Book Titles...

We must choose carefully how we title our collections. Can you add to this list of sample book titles, boys and girls?

Express Lane Poems
Bounce like Rubber, Stick like Glue
Brazilian Wax
Onion Rings and Gin
Check all that Apply
Do Not Reply to this Message
The Google Bots are Coming to Get You
S.A.S.E.
I Got Your Poems Right Here
How Now Brown Cow?: Poems of the Colombo-American Diaspora
Death Death Death Death Goose
Bitch Bitch Bitch Bitch Duck
Pow right in the kissa.
Light Bathroom Reading
Toilet Paper Scissors
Remove Before Wearing
Occupied by Pi
Pet Therapy for Your Dog
Pack of Bazookas
Bail Me Out! and other aphorisms by Paris Hilton
Post No Bills
I’m Tired of Your Elbow in My Boob
Dearth of Girth
Release the Safety
Is this Supposed to Feel Good?
Raise Questions, Kittens
Punctum Lacrimales
That Night in Reno...
Prison Love Letters
The Circumference of Your Finger
Crackalack Attack

quote of the day by Linh Dinh

“I see violence as a common misfortune and, by extension, fate. It’s what awaits each one of us just around the corner. One cannot think seriously about life without contemplating the destruction of the body. Born in Vietnam, I was baptized early into this awareness. As an adult in Philadelphia, I had many opportunities to gather my bloody evidences.”

Heartbreak Mountain

Ode to WCW

The Blue Shuttlecock

so much depends
upon

a blue shuttle
cock

sliced with fore
hand

below the white
net.


The Popped Corn Kernel

so much depends
upon

a popped corn
kernel

greased with fake
butter

beneath the big
screen.


The Wood Toothpick

so much depends
upon

a wood tooth
pick

lodged between bi-
cuspids

within the pink
canal.


The Pink Snowflake

so much depends
upon

a pink snow
flake

still in Sheep
Meadow

below the red
sun.

Relayed by Carrier Pigeon

1) "It is hard to get heavy objects up in the air; a strong desire to do so is necessary, and a strong driving force to keep them aloft. Some poets sit in airplanes on the ground, raising their arms, sure that they're flying. Some poets ascend for a period of time, then come down again; we have a great many stranded planes." --Elizabeth Bishop (from her notebooks)

2) One of my paper airplanes, "You Give Me Fever," has been accepted for publication in Pearl.

{gc}

It's a Gas!

Neon, that is. Being a poet, eh.

Frank O'Hara Writes a Blurb for Danny Rivera

Danny Rivera writes poems of great mystery and longing, or so he would like you to believe. Rivera could use some time in the real world, out there with the working folk that propel this city, with the types that know a thing or two about strategizing at dominoes, about la vida profunda. He might also want to spend a few successive days at the movies, where he can take a look at characters neither dressed in wire-rimmed glasses and tweed jackets, nor with silk scarves around their necks like swans on a final visit to shore. He should sit in the back row of the Lyceum Theater on 42nd and 7th, that line of seating that never seems to get a visit from an usher, and gauge people's reactions - the slow gasps, moving as though confetti unleashed on that first victory parade along Broadway, especially - to the cowboy, the samurai, and the sad-sad bettor at the racetrack. All he has to do is observe, carefully at that, and learn to live accordingly.

In the meantime, I'll sit here, behind this green Olivetti and with poems by Pierre Reverdy in my pocket, awaiting the time that Rivera wakes up to what he already knows, to what he already feels.

one potato, two potato...

de riv in red ribbon

Why I love/hate New York.

So it's about 4:20 in the morning and I'm fully immersed in R.E.M sleep. I am slowly jarred out of my dreams (and my memory of my dreams) by some very close-sounding music and cackling. I'm confused. Are the Swedes next door throwing a raging party? Is someone blasting their TV? It gets louder. It's coming from outside, 3 stories down. But this is not the usual local teenagers yelling at midnight. I'm pissed. I stumble out of bed to the window and look down. Directly below my bedroom window is a scene out of my dreams or a Fellini movie. There are about 5 couples, dressed in dark outfits, dancing on the sidewalk, dancing some kind of strange ethnic ballroom dance, with their giant van blasting the craziest instrumental music I've ever heard, some kind of traditional Greek or Hebrew party music. Are you kidding me? What kind of music is this? The song is repetitive and strangely hypnotic. And too loud. This cannot go on. And just as I ponder shouting out of the window like an old italian widow (but realize that would be futile as they could never hear me), the music fades. And just like that, the couples rush back into their car like a chinese fire drill and speed off into the dawn.

This was not a dream.

Are these the party roosters who christen the sidewalks of those who are getting old?

The Top Musical Recordings of 2007, an Unbiased Assessment

1. Interpol - Our Love to Admire - [Capitol]

Once maligned for sounding too much like Joy Division - thanks to Paul Banks' morose vocals - Interpol has truly come into its own with this record, on which the band reveals a maturity in massive, sprawling tracks like Our Love's closer, "The Lighthouse." While the comparison's to Manchester's finest will always dog them, Interpol's newest should mark the beginning of some very interesting (important?) music.

2. Dizzee Rascal - Maths + English - [XL]

Moving away from the grime scene in which he made his name, Maths + English finds Dizzee Rascal, a rapper who describes the dystopia that is East London in all its violent, bloody glory, expanding his musical palette to include the funk and rock samples on which old-school hip-hop was founded. What remains strange, though, is Rascal's ambivalence about the gangster lifestyle - he turns from praising the murderers he knows to later questioning those same people - making it difficult to get an idea of the very young man (he's only 21) behind the microphone. What's important, I suppose, is that he still able to write and produce songs that leaves most of his contemporaries by the wayside. [Thanks to Anne for a copy of this record, which was not released on disc in the States.]

3. Daft Punk - Alive 2007 - [Virgin]

Playing out like a flawless mixtape (featuring songs from their debut, including "Around the World" to the track featured on an iPod commercial), Alive 2007 is the result of Daft Punk's most recent world tour, and it's clear that those who weren't at their shows missed out on the concert event of the year.

While I do not like the idea of live records taking a spot on these kinds of lists, Alive is just too fucking good not to be considered for one.

4. Von Sudenfed - Tromatic Reflexxions - [Domino]

Von Sudenfed includes the German production duo Mouse on Mars and Mark E. Smith of the Fall. On paper, this pairing sounds nothing but strange and unusual; however, on record, the mixture of scattershot electro-beats and Smith's seemingly drugged/drunken, off-the-cuff vocals work to great effect.

5. Bad Religion - New Maps of Hell - [Epitaph]

Once and always a stalwart of California's punk scene, Bad Religion - which for some reason finds it necessary to have not two but three guitarists - has returned with their best record since The Gray Race (not to mention Stranger than Fiction, my favorite punk record of the 90's). While their lyrics remain focused on the anti-establishment, anti-religion themes that they've covered since the early 80's, New Maps of Hell is something of a resurgence: it is loud, brash, and entirely unapologetic. In a word, rad.

Honorable Mentions:

Radiohead - In Rainbows - [TBD]

Battles - Mirrored - [Warp]

Black Dice - Load Blown - [Paw Tracks]
Peter Bjorn and John - Writer's Block - [V2 Scandinavia]
Kylie Minogue - X - [Capitol]

What did you listen to this year? Are there any albums that should be added to this list?