All These Rooms

when you’re out, sell your lucky one
so no one can leave
don’t you like what you’re fleeing
enough to keep it?
only hope till your coffin’s warm
don’t hardly speak
time a little time
and you clutch to the heat

**half credit/ inspiration to J. Vernon**

Here’s my contribution to Worsty’s monthly challenge, which I neglected to revise like I thought I was going to.

It starts how it ends,
or maybe there’s no beginning, no stopping at all.
Either way, when I walked on all fours
and my dreams at night were lifting my hands, were
faces making faces,
I don’t think I was what I am.
But when have I ever been
what I am? Maybe yesterday,
maybe the day before, lifting myself
up off the cement, my legs asleep,
stumbling while I waited for the feeling
to come back. It came back,
tripping on the level ground as the rest of me still felt like I was sitting
on the cement, like my legs dreampt
of the day before, carrying my body into the air
forgetting what I am. Maybe yesterday
I was what I always am.
I don’t think I am what I was,
just faces making faces
and my dreams scratching up the night with my empty hands, air
taking both ways, walking on four legs,
finding some beginning without even knowing, not stopping, too small
to notice it starts how it ends.

Call for Submissions:

The New Plains Review is seeking stories, essays and poems on the subject of writing workshops and MFA experiences for its fall issue, devoted to the theme of how writers grow–or not–in educational settings. Submit original work by email to Editor Douglas Goetsch at douglasgoetsch(at)gmail.com

(replace (at) with @)(as Word attachment or typed into the body of the email);

or send hard copy to:

Submissions, New Plains Review, 100 N. University Dr., Box 184, Edmond, OK,
73034. Deadline is Sept. 24, 2008. Note: We will gladly consider previously
published work if the author owns the rights to it.

Everyday a fair amount

of risings and of knocking down

still unbending as she wore her crown - the one she did not know before -

she wore and wore and pimped and whored

and went to battle both with and not-so-for that little bourbon body

carried her through the streets and up

and up to touch the tops

of mountains and such. She did it all

and all was done before.

nolovernobrothernokeeper. 

In a land where grass won’t grow

this is a field

imagine the grass is knee-high and touching

the grass is the wind tuning

this field. 

EARTH’S BODY: AN ECOPOETRY ANTHOLOGY

Coeditors Ann Fisher-Wirth and Laura-Gray Street solicit submissions for an international anthology of ecopoetry. We are looking for a wide and varied array of submissions. Our working definition of “ecopoetry” is flexible; it includes not only what might be called nature poetry, and not only poetry that focuses on environmental issues, but also experimental poetry–poetry that explores language in its relations with the other-than-human. We welcome work by emerging as well as established poets. We welcome serious poems, playful poems, poems in open or traditional forms. [Read more →]

if your heart turns

to mud

to avoid the bitter glances

of the sun

do not call for it—

tell your tongue to

follow

it down.

If you want the hallowed whomper stick (TM), you must win the following challenge. And since you are naughty, asymmetrical little (all these) room-mates, I challenge you to write a somehow-symmetrical poem. The symmetry can be something like lines of equal length, number of letters, number of words, etc. Or pick some other type of symmetry. Non-participants will be whomped and eaten with a side of succotash by the next winner.

watching the faces

in the mirror above the bar

red cheeks underlining shallow eyes

magenta lipstick trying to hide

wrinkled lips

I think up metaphors

to quantify their sadness:

miles of birdless telephone poles

beneath an absent sky,

five unreturned phone calls,

or maybe it’s just one brother

with dreams of scarred elbows.

I don’t know.

but I think that

sadness cannot be quantified. it just pours

out of you like a liquid mouth

and one look at my own face and I see

that no metaphor can

fully measure

the reality of a quiet girl.

I want to go home.

but I don’t want

to leave the friends at my side

and this is when I know

that everything, the way I smile incessantly,

even at people I despise, the way that I kiss,

the way that I hide myself

in my walk,

this letter to you,

is born out of my

insatiable desire to be loved.

When the whole crowd is circulating such that soon everyone is covered in blood, and I call for him
Fearful Frank! Fearful Frank!
No one turns for me.