Michelle Gaddes - Michael Gurnow
Esther Greenleaf Murer - Max West
Mercedes Webb-Pullman - Changming Yuan
Ragoût de poésie
Michelle Gaddes
These god awful days
These days, these god awful days where even the sun runs away, just like you...
I hate these days of bottomless mud and shit, I care for them not one bloody bit.
My kidneys ache and I continually shake, tired of the silent abyss. I want to fight in flight
As I run into the night. Forget it – this is my home. I will not roam. To hell with this world
I want to yell. Snot and blood and psychosis. Inadequacy and struggle, we don’t even cuddle.
You know the hell bound scenario... the unfair cop out seeping onto babes.
Addictions and violence, the terse tongue, curled. Enough is enough, unfair world.
I am a rage-filled idealist cursed at every corner I manoeuvre. Impasse even an effort.
Damn this rotten life, throw me tomorrow that I may borrow some sort of dream-like sequence.
Then let me bury the angst alive, and drive and drive into a better life dance.
I will carve your eyes of clouds and scream til my body is strong. I will belong, belong, perhaps
Not in your song but somewhere beautiful and grand. No more in the middle, go fuck your fiddle
And let peace and harmony sing...
Michael Gurnow
Autobiography of a Scholar
Mom was light by December
and Daddy told everyone
Kate Smith waited a few days
to Bless America
because of me.
I walked home from school,
past the Cross Roads,
where “that devil Forrest”
beat Sturgis at home 96 – 223,
before heading out
to battle
carpetbaggers and scalawags.
It was here Ma’ and Pa’
ran the store
while I sat and listened,
as Bobby cracked the Shot
That Made Me Cry.
I too hit the ball hard,
but couldn’t make it
’round the base paths
fast enough.
Dejected, I left Juco
and went to State U. where
The Great Southern Pen
was waiting for me.
Making good,
I taught on a foreign coast.
I showed kids
how to lunge for the ball.
Years later,
a diving catch saved The Game,
but the home team lost.
I returned home
to a land divided
twice over.
As colors ran together,
students fled into my classroom.
Many cried rivers,
but met their duty
like my devil dog son.
I have taught The Pen
(and the Bible)
time and time again,
around the world,
and on t.v.
Time is my misfortune.
I Google myself,
and am met by
a transgender photographer
from South Africa.
As I stare out the window,
at orphaned cotton,
desperately clinging
to jaundiced stalks of Johnson grass,
wafting like goose down
in the breeze,
I catch a glimpse
of my reflection:
A myopic, half-deaf
gimp waiting for cancer.
I consider Richard Cory.
Esther Greenleaf Murer
Film night
I couldn’t watch the movie,
the Hungarian was so badly dubbed.
So what if the only Hungarian I know
is Frig hangsor, "Phrygian mode"?
I still know bad dubbing when I see it.
How do I know if the subtitle writers
were listening or lip-reading or just
making it up? One of the characters
is probably a ventriloquist.
I bet they’re telling each other
hoary jokes out of the book
that came with my brother’s dummy—
he’d saved his pennies for months
against the day when he could regale us
with "I was born in Chicago." "Before
the fire?" "No, behind the sofa."
Meanwhile in a lonely castle
in the Transylvanian mountains
a door creaks, and the hero
screws up his courage to look inside
and shrieks— "It’s a friggin’ hamster!"
Medical students' tribute to a cadaver donor
Despite his long struggle
with a degenerate manciple,
complicated by apotheosis
of the vestibular fasces, palpable
instigation of the spicular bivalve,
prehensile digitalis, and spondaic
litotes—all this in addition
to a grossly remarkable
occluded front etiolated
by patamorphic chiasmus—
his chronic risibility is presumed
to have been a source of amelioration
to many besides himself. He was,
we must therefore conclude,
a fellow of infinite jest.
Max West
A Wake on the Other Side
“Dearly departed, we are gathered here
Today to celebrate the morning
Of the end of living, which is not
As so many believed
The end of everything
But more akin to the reflected scene
Upon a pool of water, dependent
On the actions and memories of the living
And slowly dissolving
Into only eyes following,
Into watching.
Rest in Pace.”
Mercedes Webb-Pullman
I never talk about ants
(after Kelle Groom’s ‘Bees are all I talk about’)
or
vinegar;
home alone
I send out
double O caps
with plasticine
and pin but
no one gets it;
(:some repay a debt
some for regifting ):
for a finale I send out
a tiny dry pie so sour
no one’s tongue purrs:
in the elevator
I cold-shoulder
unfamiliar realists;
they recognise me anyway
and I shut up
about the paper bags
I take from the deserts,
how they still screech
from inside my fridge
exuding misty flower seeds.
I am constantly ill:
my fur is the texture of ant
antennae, a thin whippy black,
red-tinged where moonlight hits
and my ears sometimes shrink
and bubble like gladwrap
in a microwave
as if they’re fizzing
with vinegar; I could use
some honey, a bird wing
carbohydrates to grow
my intellect, so underslung
ants twitter inside, streams
colonise cheeks and teeth
and when I’m quiet
enter my nose
with deeds; I read with ants, sing
ant anthems,
spray ant graffiti,
but when I hang out
on the web
a man thinks ‘You do
miscomprehend’ and I’m like
‘Oh I think my txting is hot’
but he thinks ‘Yes
it’s illegible, I know they taught it
after I left school,
like they don’t now ;
etymology, entomology?’
When I show him
that hardly anyone
is sure of anything
he looks confused: This
is not what I meant.
I pretend
that sometimes ants wake up
in closets, also
in my ears:
one day while the closest
were wide awake I succeeded
in pushing them all under water
with a car, placing each closet
carefully, but first they fell
asleep, then none of them
(ants really don’t
stay still in the day time
or, what they like most
is a friendly greeting). When
I assumed control
and flew
to the pristine mountain
I hyperventilated over Afghanistan;
they noticed
and soothed my sole
once only; my toes
a shrunken point,
they separated outside me;
I died, but squeak like a heater
with a wooden floor and lately
I never wear my ant socks,
nothing like this, though
the ants upset me now
and I can’t go anywhere
without them.
Pan, or Lost between Lorca and Spicer
after Bacchus by Jack Spicer
Filigreen stencils, the grapevine
shoots out to twine me,
its outline scribbled script
along the horizon against the sky.
Clouds disagree with sunlight. Waves
lose count and start again.
Long ago, soon, laughing and dying
a random disc crack skip chip.
How will you know who to visit
after decent surgery?
--but the grapevine whimpers and retreats
seductive and distended.
Changming Yuan
At Fraser River Park: Off-Leash Dogs Welcome
One dog is chasing a crazy vampire
Another jumping high to catch a flying heart
A third licking at the wound of a deformed cat
While two are dancing with ghosts as if in a quartet
Three biting at their owner’s shoulders
Four howling loudly towards the bleeding sun
Five sniffing around baby limbs scattered along a ditch
Six listening attentively to the roars of an unseen volcano
Seven shaking a dragon’s saliva violently off their bodies
As more are driving humans and hyenas alike
Into the river, a river full of dog shit
The Fengshui Rule for Yin Residence
Let your body be buried
On a wooded ridge
Higher than all houses
Let your soul squat
At an evergreen treetop
Watching the rising sun
(Better like my grandma
Too poor to have a coffin)
Then one of your offspring
Will be a statesman
A maneybag
Or a literate star
(Like me)