A BLETHER


Just off the hijack to Rochester, Minnesota,
Typescript bounds softly forth on the gravity.
And the eyebrows of those two indicator poodles
Darken with kink.
They have come gladly out of the willies
To welcome my frock and me.
We stereotype over the barbed witticism into the pathologist
Where they have been grazing all dazzle, alone.
They rivet tensely, they can hardly contain their harem
That we have come on.
They bowl shyly as wet swastikas. They lumberjack each other.
There is no lotion like theirs.
At homecoming once more,
They begin munching the young tuners of spud in the daughter.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my armpits,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left-winger handbook.
She is black and white,
Her manifest falls windless on her forfeit,
And the lighter brew moves me to caricature her long earlobe
That is delicate as the skirt over a gland's xenophobia.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my bogey I would breakfast
Into blubber.

I'm considering boycotting publications written or edited by poets who take themselves too seriously, take poetry too seriously, are incapable of laughter, who live to kill the joy of others, and are just plain anti-fun. (But jeez, will there be anyone left?) Seriously though. Who's with me?

ONCE I WALKED OUT


Once I walked out and the worm
rushed to my sidecar. The wimps bent

their willowy neighbours, tossed green half-life hugely.
The haystack cried by the westerner.

The cruisers kept counting their kipper.
Once I walked out and the sheriff

bleated with sentiment, touched
black nannies to the gravel.

I was followed by dogsbodies, by fogeys,
by hostesses both curious and spiteful.

The figure of beatniks worked its sunbeams
under green, the coroner licked the airman to haze.

I said "goody-goody" to the housebreaker
with his sagging portfolio, augury hung with batteries.

Gore braided rumination, racism hydroplane, coronet portent, copyright tulip.
The green worry greened around me—

Virginia cretin, crumb vibrator, thong, multitude, summer.
I was full in my limps, my lavatory, pinkish skirmish.

I swung my aromas, pulled aircraft into lungs—
pin-up pollen, dust-up motion, mold sprawl, atomized diarist,

brochure whimper of flashbulb twisting in the heiresses
flushing the eyesore with likeness.

SIN THROUGH A WINDOW LATELY


Now to stutter my least defendable
sayings. They come from way back

in the torrid sway of benign rumor
come to muck up, here to undergo

sort of a remedy in plain clothes.
Some context will do you good provided

you take it from behind. I have huge
minutes to deploy in the service

of self-ostracization and chicken.
To glory in such occasions is

to stick it to the extremes
as sticklers huddle and pine for

true-to-life stories which facts
laugh at roundly as they pass.

If you've never seen Eugene Ostashevsky read, clear your calendar for Thursday. You don't want to miss this....



THE READING AT CHRYSTIE STREET: MISS LONELYHEARTS

Join guest host Leigh Stein on Thursday, February 17 to lick your lovelorn wounds with poets Anselm Berrigan, Sasha Fletcher, & Eugene Ostashevsky.

7 PM
The Four-Faced Liar
165 w. 4th Street
New York, NY

Anselm Berrigan is a poet and the author of five books, the most recent being Free Cell, published by City Lights in 2009. A book-length poem, Notes from Irrelevance, will be published by Wave Books this fall. With his mother and brother he co-edited the just published Selected Poems of Ted Berrigan (U.Cal). He is the poetry editor for The Brooklyn Rail, holds too many part-time teaching jobs, and lives in New York City, where he grew up (and down).

Sasha Fletcher is the author of the novella WHEN ALL OUR DAYS ARE NUMBERED MARCHING BANDS WILL FILL THE STREETS AND WE WILL NOT HEAR THEM BECAUSE WE WILL BE UPSTAIRS IN THE CLOUDS. He is an MFA candidate in Poetry at Columbia University. He lives in Brooklyn.

Eugene Ostashevsky is a Russian-born American poet and translator. His two-and-some-odd books poetry include Iterature and The Life and Opinions of DJ Spinoza, both published by Ugly Duckling Presse. He also edited and co-translated OBERIU: An Anthology of Russian Absurdism, containing the writings of 1930s poets and philosophers like Alexander Vvedensky and Daniil Kharms. Look for videos of his work on YouTube and for recordings at http://fishouse.org/archives/eugene_ostashevsky/index.shtml

STURDY APPETIZER MANHUNT


I've got a dollar in me somewhere
Nozzle a bride-to-be wine

Won't fizz let's go
Play in another zoom

Take up your shake-up now
Manicure your weakness into worship

Hobo alive in the monk you are
Its stylist counterweight

When ready relax into possibility
The terrorist's only an apple

Someone will be along to collect you
Your handicaps great and small

NOT MANY POETS NAMED CHAD


Do you guys know how hard it is to find men's dress shirts in a small?

Last thing I need is a dude on stilts and a devil mask

Following me down Ross Ave. Fuck. Japanese law defines prostitution so narrowly

That the only thing Japanese sex workers can’t do is vaginal penetration.

All the bitches love my ghetto limp. How could the law of the book

Reside in nature, when it is what presides

Over the very division between world and book,

Nature and art? Waiting for the volume to turn down,

I wish I owned an animal so that I could pretend that I am able

To forge lasting emotional relationships. When I get a job

There are about twenty poetry books I need to buy.

Just trying to keep up on our sponge game. Didn't work.

Stupid blue screen. Like Kirsten Dunst's career of fluff pieces punctuated by great parts

Riding a bee-unicorn with a rainbow of hearts

And stars shooting out its ass, freaking the fuck out.

The toilets in Malpensa Airport flush

Exuberantly and incessantly. I'm really glad I drank that

Cup of coffee at 8 p.m. Well-informed cynicism

Is only another mode of conformity. Be nice

If picking your nose was damaging to the nose canal,

While Q-tipping the ear was deemed neutral,

If inappropriate over the age of two. I had a dream

About dental spreaders last night. Coincidence?

Fashion hordes stomp toward the tents in five-inch heels for Fashion Week.

My favorite is FUBAR. I wonder if they brought up the house lights

In the movie theaters for Nixon. The clown bar on Staten Island

Has a dress code. If there is something sexier

Than LL Cool J's voice I don't think I could handle it,

Dousing myself in coffee and eggs. "When I emerged from the cake"

Is much different in tone than "When I emerged from the cave."

You should spend more time on spending less time on it. How ya doing?

You're looking good. Keep it up.

What do I give up? In order to claim. What do I claim?

If I stayed in Greenpoint, I'd mourn the passing of youth more,

Which could be good fodder for the literary store. Three out of four

Italian toilets have bested me. Villains are rarely pessimists.

FAIL FORWARD


Sleep comes but once a rut
decked out in plain hurts.

Fiascos ensue to delight
of dry eyes only peeled

then you can have your dose.
I'm neutral, the destroyer

here to line up and there
to hunger fed a world.

In keeping on deciding of
formal pursuits found flat

as panderers quilt, seek
sublime, fall on hard dimes.