Poetry back issues from July 2006:
Irish Poetry.(POEMS)(Poem)
Jul 01, 2006; ... <Pre> Irish Poetry That morning under a pale hood of skyI heard the unambiguous scrape of spacklingagainst the side of our wickered, penitential house. The day mirled and clabberedin the thick, stony light,and the rooks' feathered narlingastounded the ...
Sneeze Ode.(POEMS)(Poem)
Jul 01, 2006; ... <Pre> Sneeze Ode Here comes the sneeze with its end-of-the-world,mobster-motor, a-gog cog.You better not be holding nothing full,better not got hurt ribs.Rip right through your billet-doux, weed-whipyour honeysuckle before any bees get sip.Unlike its ...
Sean Penn Anti-Ode.(POEMS)(Poem)
Jul 01, 2006; ... <Pre> Sean Penn Anti-Ode Must Sean Penn always look like he's squeezingthe last drops out of a sponge and the spongeis his face? Even the back of his head grimaces.Just the pressure in his little finger alonecould kill a gorilla. Remember that kidwhose whole ...
Poem on a Theme by Tony Hoagland.(POEMS)(Poem)
Jul 01, 2006; ... <Pre> Poem on a Theme by Tony Hoagland I have a big erection.Most of mythology goes into it.Destroyer gods with one thousand armsand ceintures of skulls.Gigantic traumatic swan.I'm sure glad I'm not trying to pass through airport securitywith this big ...
What Humans Do.(POEMS)(Poem)
Jul 01, 2006; ... <Pre> What Humans Do The candlelitafter-dinnercareful screw, the under-the-moonshooby doobe doo groove, the from behind,the sixty-nine,the is there time, the I need wine,the twisted talkingdirty grind, the ...
More Foolish Things Remind Me of You.(Poem)
Jul 01, 2006; ... <Pre> More Foolish Things Remind Me of You With apologies to Eric Maschwitz Theses on archetypes in rapsters' lyrics,Menus describing hash in panegyrics,Cheap vases aping Mings--Pretentious thingsRemind me of you.Loud slurping noises from the next ...
Famous Poems Abbreviated.(Poem)
Jul 01, 2006; ... <Pre> Famous Poems Abbreviated 1 Of man's first disobedience and its fruitScripture has told. No need to follow suit. 2 Once upon a midnight dreary,Blue and lonesome, missed my dearie.Would I find her? Any hope?Quoth the raven six times, ...
Poet!(Cartoon)
Jul 01, 2006; ... SAY SEYMOUR, WHY CAN'T YOU ASTONISH US LIKE POETS DO? AHEM! WHAT THE @*!? DOGS IN A VICE, AND WOOD SAW CAN SAW AN ANATOMY OF DOG ... THAT DOES IT! I'LL SHOW THEM! BUT HOW? I'LL BE A CLOUD IN TROUSERS! GEE! THIS ...
An Opening.(Poem)
Jul 01, 2006; ... <Pre> An Opening The conversation's three minutes oldand already I feel the need,because she's pretty and gazing at meas though I were indeed as fascinating as I think I amwhen I've taken mescaline(or when I've had something takenby Poetry ...
Starbucker Starbucker Starbucker Star.(Poem)
Jul 01, 2006; ... <Pre> Starbucker Starbucker Starbucker Star It's true: she's kneelingon all fours, assthrust toward me, backslung like a hammock,black pumps facing me down...
Colonoscopy.(Poem)
Jul 01, 2006; ... <Pre> Colonoscopy Talk about intimacy! I'd almost rather not.The day before, a tussle with nausea(DRINK ME: a liter of sickly-sweet liquid)and diarrhea, so as to present oneselfpristine as a bride to the groom with his tools,his probe and tiny TV camera ...
Tea Party.(Poem)
Jul 01, 2006; ... <Pre> Tea Party Ray Way, Thunderbird Homeagain, Hugh and Mia Galore:they enjoyed such conversational topics as Mozart, tobacco, and four. "Today's peach boasts rare fuzz," said Ray. Bird added, "My mind is whale."Mia forgot her songbooks, ...
Humanity at Guantanamo.(Poem)
Jul 01, 2006; ... <Pre> Humanity at Guantanamo General Craddock suggested that the medical staff had indulged the hunger strikers to the point that they had been allowed to choose the color of their feeding tubes. --New York Times, February 22, 2006. We couldn't let them die.That would be ...
You Gotta Take Out Milt.(Poem)
Jul 01, 2006; ... <Pre> You Gotta Take Out Milt I ran into Miss AdventureAt the Bluebird CareI pressed myself upon herShe kinda gave wayI said I'm racked with guiltFor having made so freeShe gave her head a tiltShe said don't you see You gotta take out Milt ...
Schoolmarm.(POEMS)(Poem)
Jul 01, 2006; ... <Pre> Schoolmarm I've taken sacred sexAnd advanced shapeshiftingAt the Omega InstituteAnd come to little harmAt 91st and LexI've done some heavy liftingAnd flexed my abs against the absoluteOn the monastery farmI've tried and tried the ...
Refrigerator Magnate.(Comic)(Cartoon)
Jul 01, 2006; ... TO MAKE FUR OR ...
We Old Dudes.(Poem)
Jul 01, 2006; ... <Pre> We Old DudesWe old dudes. We White shoes. WeGolf ball. We ...
Go as Me Weeds Go Now.(Poem)
Jul 01, 2006; ... <Pre> Go as Me Weeds Go Now Dear Noah, The distinctive double-rapping call of that endangered bird wasoverheard recently in the plaintiff's pantry frittering near anerstwhile bandanna look-alike locale. This makes no sense to you, dear downy dollface. But stay ...
All Me.(Poem)
Jul 01, 2006; ... <Pre> All Me One night when the lawn was a sequined black chemiseand the piebald moonlit trees clicked like cool marblesin the decorous air, and the whole condominium complex buzzedwith the rumor of my latest award, I lay in the grassfeeling the enormity of pretty ...
Disturbed Paradelle.(Poem)
Jul 01, 2006; ... <Pre> Disturbed Paradelle Do not repeat yourself.Do not repeat yourself.Habits are hard to break.Habits are hard to break.Repeat: Hard. Break. HabitsAre not to do yourself. Why do you look that way?Why do you look that way?Am I so very ...
Job Satisfaction.(Poem)
Jul 01, 2006; ... <Pre> Job Satisfaction A bank patron, while in the mood,touched a teller in ways that were ...
The Cow.(Poem)
Jul 01, 2006; ... <Pre> The Cow I love the red cowwith all of my heart.She's gentle when pullingmy cherry-red cart. We take her rich milkand swallow it down.With nothing, it's white,with chocolate brown. When she grows too feebleto give us fresh ...
At Camp.(Poem)
Jul 01, 2006; ... <Pre> At Camp Everyone says the deep woods are soothing--you won't hear leaf blowers or car sirens throbbing.You'll slide into sleep to the singing of crickets,untroubled by mowers of Mom's drunken sobbing. While I lie in my tent, wind tears at the canvas,...
Jim the Car.(Poem)
Jul 01, 2006; ... <Pre> Jim the Car He sputters his lips with a guttural rumble,a V8 blast, plus a timing-belt stumble. He downshifts to third and floors the gas,slews sideways, corrects it, and pulls out to pass two drag-assing fat girls blocking the halllike side-by-side ...
Another Plot Cliche.(Poem)
Jul 01, 2006; ... <Pre> Another Plot Cliche My dear, you are the high-speed car chase, and I,I am the sheet of glass being carefully carriedacross the street by two employees of Acme Movingwho have not parked on the right sidebecause the plot demands that they makethe perilous ...
Screaming My Heads Off.(Poem)
Jul 01, 2006; ... <Pre> Screaming My Heads Off After Mayakovsky Iam Norbert Hirschhorn. NORBERT! HIRSCHHORN! Thousands of NorbertsHundreds of Hirschhorns BUT only one NORBERT! HIRSCHHORN! And IF I ever meet another Norbert! Hirschhorn! ...
Think What We Might Have ...(Poem)
Jul 01, 2006; ... <Pre> Think What We Might Have ... Today, Pompeii--on view: the ultimate interruption,permission to blame nature for the failureto finish anything--to bake the bread, to putthe kids to bed on time, sew the tattered toga, icethe wine, draw up your will, take the ...
Coleridge & the Man from Porlock.(Cartoon)
Jul 01, 2006; ... An office in Porlock 2876 724 12, 75 ... Excuse me, sir, There's a poet here who wants to see you. A Mr ....
Now We Are Ready to Speak of Bodies Changing into Other Bodies.(Poem)
Jul 01, 2006; ... <Pre> Now We Are Ready to Speak of Bodies Changing into Other Bodies At Abergroupie & FetishThe young people justCan't keep their pajamasUp. Neither modish nor faddish The boys look like licked pecs;Chicks also, with that slapped-Around, feral, ...
If wishing made it so.(Poem)
Jul 01, 2006; ... <Pre> If wishing made it so Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised. --George Bush, State of the Union address, 2003 I am the tallest sprinkler of ...
Arts & Sciences.(Poem)
Jul 01, 2006; ... <Pre> Arts & Sciences Everyone carries around in the back of his mind the wreck of a thing he calls his education. --Stephen Leacock SOLID GEOMETRY Here's a nice thought we can save:The luckiest thing about sexIs: you happen to be so concaveIn the ...
The Red Cadillac.(Poem)
Jul 01, 2006; ... <Pre> The Red Cadillac Willie "Slick" Williams reads William Carlos Williams, then writes a letter to the producers of the TV makeover Pimp My Ride, explaining why his ...
Dear Poetry.(Poem)
Jul 01, 2006; ... <Pre> Dear Poetry: Well, my mailbox has been visitedBy a note from you. I am solicited To tithe toward the part In which Humor and ArtAre happily, smoothly complicit. It Is true that I love poesying,And all writing, from A-ing to Z-ing. ...
The Mirror Does It for the Bug.(Poem)
Jul 01, 2006; ... <Pre> The Mirror Does It for the Bug I can't stop staring at this stuck-up bugclamped to its reflection on the glass.Is it merely a cool surface, a pausein its bug day, with an approving twinfor partner--silent, yes, but not remote--one whose feelers, at ...
Ballad of Charley Fell.(Poem)
Jul 01, 2006; ... <Pre> Ballad of Charley Fell It might have been pitching that over-stuffed chair,the one we were given, called Charley Fell,into a hole in the ground. I took it out to the edge of townand tried to talk the attendant, Joe,into leaving it next to the hole. ...
The Paris Mouse.(Poem)
Jul 01, 2006; ... <Pre> The Paris Mouse hunched over the greasyburner on the stovewas noir, as in film noir, as incauchemar,as in le nuit not blanche butnoir, the dream you can'twake up from, meaning she was a mouse fatale,licking the old ...
Villanelle.(Poem)
Jul 01, 2006; ... <Pre> Villanelle Bouncing along like a punch-drunk bell,its Provenzal shoes too tight for English feet,the villanelle is a form from hell. Balletic as a tapir, strong as a gazelle,strict rhyme and formal meter keep a beatas tiresome as a punch-drunk bell ...
"And maidens call it love-in-idleness".(Poem)
Jul 01, 2006; ... <Pre> "And maidens call it love-in-idleness" --From A Midsummer Night's Dream Others call it love in laziness,or violence in loveliness,or affectation on the couchness,or Won't you ever get up for lunchness,or I have made an awful mistake, Miss,or You're ...
In a Bad Mood.(Poem)
Jul 01, 2006; ... <Pre> In a Bad Mood The trout are jumping in the fucking pond,Mike's pigs are fucking in their nasty sty.I know you want to fuck the little blondeWho brought around the fucking cherry ...
On the Wagon.(Comic)(Cartoon)
Jul 01, 2006; ... POETS ANONYMOUS HELLO MY NAME IS WINSTON HELLO WINSTON ...
The view from here.(COMMENT)
Jul 01, 2006; ... The Mass Mind in Motion The West Wing may seem a long way from Iowa City, but being a writer for the Bush administration, I don't feel that I've abandoned poetry at all. Sure, my classmates are winning the book prizes while my own manuscript, Octavio, the Inhuman Octopus, ...
Ask the poetess.(COMMENT)
Jul 01, 2006 ... DEAR POETESS--Who do you think was the greatest poetess of the twentieth century, Sara Teasdale or Adelaide Crapsey?--WONDERING DEAR WONDERING--A usage note at dictionary.com states "many critics have argued that there are sexist connotations in the use of the suffix -ess to ...
Want ads.(COMMENT)
Jul 01, 2006 ... POET WANTED Sometimes I read a poem and think; I've felt that, why didn't I write that? And it almost feels like I did write that. But I didn't and they did and I'm at peace with that. I don't actually want to be a poet, working as an adjunct professor at some community college; I've ...
Luminous Crescendos: A Norton Anthology of Praise.(Book review)
Jul 01, 2006; ... Luminous Crescendos: A Norton Anthology of Praise, ed. by Timothy Moot. W.W. Norton. $19.95. This new anthology from Norton gathers some of the most imaginative work currently being done in American poetry: book blurbs. Unlike its chief competitor, The Vintage Book of ...
Charles Bukowski: Drafts, Scribbles, Doodles, Signed Leases, Cancelled Checks, Drawings on Cocktail Napkins, Things He Wrote on a Nerf Football with a Green Marker, Things He Wrote on a Waitress in Tulsa with the Same Green Marker, Things He Wrote (Possibly in Blood) on an Issue of Marie Claire, Things He Wrote (Possibly in Vomit) on a copy of X-Men vs. The Fantastic Four No. 3, and Sestinas.
Jul 01, 2006; ... Charles Bukowski: Drafts, Scribbles, Doodles, Signed Leases, Cancelled Checks, Drawings on Cocktail Napkins, Things He Wrote on a Nerf Football with a Green Marker, Things He Wrote on a Waitress in Tulsa with the Same Green Marker, Things He Wrote (Possibly in Blood) on an Issue of Marie ...
Legitimate Potholes: The New Young American Poets.(Brief article)(Book review)
Jul 01, 2006; ... Legitimate Potholes: The New Young American Poets, ed. by John Jones and Jane Smith. Silverfish Press. $19.95 (per volume). This seventy-volume anthology gathers 53,217 o f our best young writers; it takes its name from Robert Frost's observation that poets should only fall in ...
The Bogs of Xenu.(Brief article)(Book review)
Jul 01, 2006; ... The Bogs of Xenu, by Searnus Heaney. CAN Press. $19.95. If there's one thing we don't need from Seamus Heaney, it's another book about Scientology. When the poet first converted five years ago, most critics had only three questions: (1) How would it affect his poetry?; (2) Would ...
Gnostic Demarcations: Poesie, Effluvia, Descants.
Jul 01, 2006; ... Gnostic Demarcations: Poesie, Effluvia, Descants, by Anne Carson. ...
Please Cut It Out.(Book review)
Jul 01, 2006; ... Please Cut It Out, by John Ashbery. Ecco Press. $19.95. Please Cut It Out, the new collection by John Ashbery, is a reminder that certain influences are to be welcomed rather than resisted, because they aren't influences so much as ... recognitions. For who understands us better ...
Hersonia.
Jul 01, 2006; ... Hensonia, by Louise Gluck. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. $19.95. Nobody works a myth like Louise Gluck. In her early writing, she devoted poems to Achilles, the Gemini, and Hyacinth; in Meadowlands, she took up the story of Penelope and Odysseus; and in her last book, Averno, she ...
Letters to the editor.(Letter to the editor)
Jul 01, 2006; ... Dear Editor, That it should come to this! Since you won't take my calls and I'm not allowed anything but crayons, I send you this puny notepaper. Take this to the printer then the devil, vile rabble! (But I ask that you first listen to my story ... then lift the restraining ...
Irish Poetry
Jul 01, 2006; ... That morning under a pale hood of sky I heard the unambiguous scrape of spackling against the side of our wickered, penitential house. The day mirled and clabbered in the thick, stony light, and the rooks' feathered narling astounded the salt ...
Sean Penn Anti-Ode
Jul 01, 2006; ... Must Sean Penn always look like he's squeezing the last drops out of a sponge and the sponge is his face? Even the back of his head grimaces. Just the pressure in his little finger alone could kill a gorilla. Remember that kid whose whole trick was forcing ...
Famous Poems Abbreviated
Jul 01, 2006; ... 1 Of man's first disobedience and its fruit Scripture has told. No need to follow suit. 2 Once upon a midnight dreary, Blue and lonesome, missed my dearie. Would I find her? Any hope? Quoth the raven six times, ...
Starbucker Starbucker Starbucker Star
Jul 01, 2006; ... It's true: she's kneeling on all fours, ass thrust toward me, back slung like a hammock, black pumps facing me down like twin sea horses of the apocalypse but the real sin is that this slurping sound is ...
Humanity at Guantanamo
Jul 01, 2006; ... General Craddock suggested that the medical staff had indulged the hunger strikers to the point that they had been allowed to choose the color of their feeding tubes. -New York Times, February 22, 2006. We couldn't let them die. That would be inhumane (besides ...
You Gotta Take Out Milt
Jul 01, 2006; ... I ran into Miss Adventure At the Bluebird Cafe I pressed myself upon her She kinda gave way I said I'm racked with guilt For having made so free She gave her head a tilt She said don't you see You gotta take out Milt If you ...
We Old Dudes
Jul 01, 2006; ... We old dudes. We White shoes. We Golf ball. We Eat mall. We Soak teeth. We Palm Beach; We Vote red. We Soon dead. [Author Affiliation] JOAN MURRAY: Slim brunette ...
Go as Me Weeds Go Now
Jul 01, 2006; ... Dear Noah, The distinctive double-rapping call of that endangered bird was overheard recently in the plaintiff's pantry frittering near an erstwhile bandanna look-alike locale. This makes no sense to you, dear downy dollface. But stay awhile. If you can, preserve double the ...
Disturbed Paradelle
Jul 01, 2006; ... Do not repeat yourself. Do not repeat yourself. Habits are hard to break. Habits are hard to break. Repeat: Hard. Break. Habits Are not to do yourself. Why do you look that way? Why do you look that way? Am I so very strange to ...
Job Satisfaction
Jul 01, 2006; ... A bank patron, while in the mood, touched a teller in ways that were lewd. "Take that to the bank!" she said with a yank, and from then on his interest accrued. [Author Affiliation] MARY F. LEE* has no degrees in anything. She wrote her ...
At Camp
Jul 01, 2006; ... Everyone says the deep woods are soothing you won't hear leaf blowers or car sirens throbbing. You'll slide into sleep to the singing of crickets, untroubled by mowers or Mom's drunken sobbing. While I lie in my tent, wind tears at the canvas, and I hear ...
Jim the Car
Jul 01, 2006; ... He sputters his lips with a guttural rumble, a V8 blast, plus a timing-belt stumble. He downshifts to third and floors the gas, slews sideways, corrects it, and pulls out to pass two drag-assing fat girls blocking the hall like side-by-side big rigs slowed ...
Now We Are Ready to Speak of Bodies Changing into Other Bodies
Jul 01, 2006; ... At Abergroupie & Fetish The young people just Can't keep their pajamas Up. Neither modish nor faddish The boys look like licked pecs; Chicks also, with that slapped Around, feral, solipsist Chic. In Ovid's epic In-scope work, ...
The Red Cadillac
Jul 01, 2006; ... Willie "Slick" Williams reads William Carlos Williams, then writes a letter to the producers of the TV makeover show Pimp My Ride, explaining why his car should be featured on the program. so much depends upon a red Cadillac slick with ...