an attempt to tip the scales

The Arc of Wine

2010-08-16T23:00:00.002-05:00

by Nik

We ate all the salami
And drank all the Chianti
We shouldn't be here anyway

We found one saved for a wedding
Underneath the frames of bedding
I ripped off all the wax

The bottle was quite dirty
But we were so thirsty
I drove the cork in and popped it open

It was losing its color
We passed it to one another
And drank it down anyway

We weren't sure if things would ever be easy
I dreamt of being in the extent of your tent

This is a war that was not for us
And yet we had been moving since dusk
In the Italian countryside

For we live at this age only once
I don't want any other cunts
I just want to see your face

All my friends are baristas

2010-07-31T10:15:00.002-05:00

by MarketFresh (formerly Surreal as Sunlight and/or Nik)

A small iced coffee for me
I keep it simple for my friends
They hand it over for free
And we shake hands

The next in queue
Wants an Americano
Extra shot, extra room
He's got a fistful of Milanos

His drink is incorrect
"Wake up man!
Do it again,
my barista friend!"

Sit down with my coffee
Flip open my books
Eyes on my friend
The one with the looks

Wiping his sweat
"a slave to the man"
Or so he says
Serving on demand

I gaze at the words
I'm stuck to the text
Memorizing for the test,
one down onto the next

Someday I'll be in a similar place
"Wake up man!
Do the test again,
my resident."

And if I do earn that MD
The clock still taps
Lists of patients to see
No stops, no naps

When it's time to unwind
Me and my barista friends
Together we drink the wine
We're all just meetings ends

clink

2009-09-04T11:17:00.000-05:00

mike swanberg

you should be asking yourself how
many poems can i write today??
not when you first wake up, not when
the bed is still warm but after that
after the skipped shower
after your toast

everyone else in the working world says it
how many bricks can i lay
how many shoes can i sell
times two one for each foot

but on the other hand never ask
how many good poems can i write
because as you know no poems are ever good
there are only acceptable poems
and rants

anyone who doesn't believe this writes
rants and is a blind fool

i might as well write this poetic advice has been
brought to you by the good people at ford motor
company. this is how day to day your poetry should be
easy on the reader
easy on me

and for another thing your heart is still
allowed to show up sometimes
sometimes poems work as diary
lookit whats his name lookit that brown haired woman
a whole generation beloved by
for thier hearts sharp tugs

here is an exercise
write one poem on monday
and on tuesday write two
by friday you should have fifteen poems
in just one week

and if saturday morning you arent so sick
of yourself that you could scream
you might have something
talk to me.

Apologies

2009-04-17T11:25:00.002-05:00

I smile,
palm to cheek,
"We all make mistakes".

Year after year
you can tell
my smile is fake.

Shuffled feet,
cheek to cloth.
Apologize.

Deep breaths
as ears take in
more lies.

Hearts collapse.
Cloth to palm.
You shrug and stare

at the floor,
where you left trust
lying there.

Eye contact.
Parted lips
release a sigh.

And with
palm to cheek,
"Goodbye".

I really liked that mug.

2009-02-17T16:12:00.000-06:00

Mug

by Amy

I broke my favorite mug this morning,
I knew this would happen.

I was on my way to the kitchen, carrying some dishes
I had her balancing inside of another,
the other was unfit.
He was typical and blue,
with grooves along the top
making tension, making mountains
when the rest of him was smooth.

She was green to a fault
with aching moldy-looking spots
constellations gone unsettled,
aneurysms from a stopped heart.

My mug had brown blood,
every vessel sprang from clay and
pumped through a shaking base,
I knew that she’d break.

it's really cold.

2009-01-15T18:03:00.000-06:00

by Amy

Falling in Love

with a place is hard to do,
there is dirt everywhere a hand can move,
no space has asked me to be truly clean.

Knowing this I still miss rising
and falling,
in Kentucky I could only truly love

the hills,
truest love I’ve had.
The lover I had in that uncertain place

wasn’t ever ever-present.
Never lined the rearview mirror through fog and later smoke the way the hills did
when I first arrived and when I left for good.

I never told you how I felt
about the hills.
Maybe you would have taken me to see them,

that would have been a desperate measure
speaking up about unreachable things.
Nothing I do now is heated

with the fever, the desperation I had
to touch them one more time before I left.
I did everything all wrong.

I traded water for a boat,
I trapped the sun inside a jar just for when it got cold,
didn’t grow what my love would need to keep rolling on.

Hills with feverish continuity, scaling and then setting just as newly,
in spite of vice for the elements I’d have to succumb to if I had stayed,
is what made me love them best, is what made me go.

Peeling Clementines, and Practice

2009-01-01T22:56:00.001-06:00

by mike swanberg

Peeling clementines

this is the only time I put
My historically ungentle hands to real work
The short story of the peel unfolding
Thumbnail pressed through soft yielding skin
Unwrapped now, like a present
From your grandparents.
Gently, infront of them, to show

You are not a creature of such stark want,
Though you want.

Then this breaking of the fruit
Into 12 equal parts and the eating
Of them all slowly

The bysight judging of which slice
To leave for last.

Sometimes the sweetest girls
Have a hard time smiling
Sometimes even a lumbering ox
Stops his chewing to write.

------------------

Practice

Nothing to say for my terrible form
As a middle hitter, point guard, or offensive lineman.
And There I am squatting in the crab grass

someone telling me later, that I crouch down
Like a fucking Marshallese, trying to hurt me,
To taunt me into good habits

But I am the unperfect spiral wavering through
A late November pick up game
The fastball to 1st caught in an ungloved hand
And dropped just as suddenly.
My shriek of pain blending with the cries
Of kids practicing perfect front flips
Off the highdive

a block away
Their naked feet climbing those slick steps
Shouldertops glowing brightly in the sun
They take one step, maybe two and then

End over end holding nothing,
They make themselves learn.

2008-12-30T05:41:00.004-06:00

Erin

The pedestal demands perfection
but the surface is slippery,
and it encourages sprained ankles.

To stay put, to stay perched
is to maintain a delicate balance
between anxiety and boredom
but it's safe

until you move a little
to the right, and then you
push against the wall
that holds you in your place,
immovable. Distant.

You lose your footing, you lose your place;
it might be miserable,
but it is yours.

It was mine.
and I'm exhausted.
I am worn out
and bruised
but already I can see
the benefits of feet on solid ground,
however unsteady:

There are no illusions here.

On Snow

2008-12-29T15:32:00.001-06:00

by Amy

Under snow there is grass,
I’ve learned and relearned that each season, but
even now I can’t promise not to forget that.
In the morning, my friend comes to the door with
a shovel,
but I have no prize for him or his help,
I only offer warmth radiating from baskets of clothes made their way to my back,
false heat in contact with my diplomatic skin
that insists any slight thickening
of blood, or
sharpening of bone
have come from within,
such shame in mentioning someone coaxing light from my skin.

I should have helped clear a path,
but I’m best at the role of rapt wayfarer, shuffle strictly
just heel to toe,
while more snow joins the gleaming colony,
its metal conqueror with one steady wooden arm decides who can stay,
and how much goes.
More weight falls to the grass, my regret is mostly of spring,
I watered only when the grass started snapping under my bare feet,
only if it pinched
blonde hairs on my thigh when I’d surrender in summer
to space not quite mine.
Hadn’t gardened in years,
but complained of brittle grasses.
I let too many things both heavy and wet
fall to grounds that will joylessly, merely
accommodate it.

The faster kitchen works

2008-12-09T12:37:00.002-06:00

or why you should never write poems about ideas
by mike swanberg

1.

mostly you circle the drain,
pull your hair across your face.
when i catch myself catching myself
in the mirror i try and look surprised

it's best not to say what a poem is going to be about
although all day my mind licked its chops for you
and i said "just this once you arent a dog"
and i meant that.

then an afternoon to forget what i should have been writing.
cold chicken/ iodized salt/ half glass of water/ forgotten apple.

if you get lucky the poem makes a late jump into the literal

i bump into my neighbor on the train
he wants to talk to me about self control
but he cant control himself enough not to

we shake hands hello
we shake hands goodbye
i tell him stop by any time

it feels like i should have sold him something.

2.

the street looked all bombed out today
and on the train someone talked about violence
from a distance

i watched a grown man with his arms out balance
up a jungle gym and then hop off pleased
i wanted to clap but my hands fell off in my pockets
holding tightly onto my phone

i wasnt expecting any calls but still
and since i already started ---> the difference
between poetry and lunch is saying iodized salt
instead of salt, forgotten apple instead of apple i forgot

wait, taste my fingers -- wait.

its almost winter and the squirrels will start holing up
in any crack they can find while the pigeons
still keep putting their jeweled necks on the line.

New and silly love poems

2008-11-15T21:07:00.002-06:00

mike swanberg

Hey

I have traveled all this way to say hey
Again and again in your bed our faces
Hardly apart, hands always touching something,
Something, something moving quickly now
Like a fox late for work

And we keep announcing ourselves.
Hey and then quiet and then hey
And then kisses and no horses
And no music, sometimes music

And another circle spinning
And I am tracing you with my index finger
And I am building a small split level house
And it is on the ridge of your hip
And the surrounding property is low lying
And it might take a full day to walk
And I am lacing up my boots
And it is morning, still dark.

sebastian marcos smith puts in his two weeks

It is with a heart as light as a birds ribs
That I leave poetry, farewell Or don’t,
It is a girl now hopping around in puddles,
shoes soaked, I am building you a timeshare
in my chest, oh sweet thing in a sweater
in a t shirt, in my bed saying everything

then hours and hours of no poems, who should miss them?

It wasn’t me that said all those things in my poems
And this isn’t me who renounces that, she arrives
Thin as a whisper she, comes fully into my arms
And then kissing up the stairs

Who wants to read an only smiling poet?
Who could tolerate finding a forgotten twenty
In almost every pair of jeans?

Oh forget it, im retired, if that last image
Isn’t earned (and im almost certain it is not)
My sweet cousin called long distance

There is a boy I love, she said, and I have given
Him allen ginsberg's howl.

Wild Ginger in Chris' back yard.

I kiss her goodbye on the train and think
This morning when she said lets spend
The whole day in bed I said no but I meant yes

Damn the consequences, I would touch every inch
Hold my hand right above her flame
Push her fingers deep into my mouth

Oh I would pull myself to nothing from nothing
Spinning wildly like a dog, barking up her tree
Chasing her kisses like rabbits to the fence
And then digging and digging and knowing only
What dogs know, sweet burn of muscle
Flight flight flight across grass that needs mowing
An itch on my back that I am rolling in the fresh mulch
To scratch

I should have thrown the alarm clock right down
Onto the boulevard I should have made a joke
“why did the boy who wants for nothing
throw his alarm clock out the window?”

how did you come to poetry?

2008-11-10T00:06:00.004-06:00

Some stuff by Amy

Louisville, KY

A few weeks ago, a bird died on the sidewalk. I don't know who killed her,
but I pass by every day and it's an above-the-ground grave, an open casket that nobody stops for.
At first her body is majestic,
rots but doesn't show it and she inspires side-step,
but after a week nobody clears her away,
and her wingless sinew inches toward the grass
to beg for an empty bed.

There should have been sirens when she was found,
airplanes and insects and all old winged lovers of hers
should have gathered, refusing to leave,
even though she's in too many pieces to detect a body
and she probably doesn't look how she used to.
Letting fewer and fewer things remind me of me and you
is how I'll let go--
when my sheets are a necessity and not anything we laid under,
when I don't picture you as handsome, only as a man,
I'll let you visit again.

I serve this bird by sending her invisible love letters,
by letting her body disappear
while praying that the last feather stays stuck to the ground
by way of fluids that escape from severed limbs
and latch onto whatever they touch.
You tossed me into bed but by then,
I wasn't listening to my breathing,
so I didn't know I'd grown extra lungs and an extra tongue,
both would have disgusted you and sent you away.
My windows were open and we could see the dirty part of the city,
but with you there
its gaping mouth and rusty teeth were only hungry.
I probably won't ever go back to Kentucky,
are you made of anything that flies north of there?

Centralia, IL

The hot air balloons in the back of my head
were risen like an Amish barn by the
stooped townspeople of small, southern Illinois,
all silent and exploding.
Their hot-handed sweat rubbed dirt into my eyes while
Angela refused to shake the springy brown axes hanging from her head out of her face.
She knew it wouldn't make a difference, they'd hate her anyway, the people--
she got to leave at the end of the night,
all they got to do was go home.

She--her sweat, her kinsmen--the children,
will drive their golden mini-van to the next town over until everyone can have their own clean bed,
while they, steadfast to the matted grass,
won't surrender the balloon pumped with flames and still stationary,
and all try to say never mind when the last lemon shake-up is sold.

They pack their trucks to lie down like dogs,
but I never smell blood how a bloodhound does,
the villagers' senses rendered as useless as mine--
we see dozens of white-hot checkered balloons and only want to keep them.
Feel wind electric from an escaped airplane and had until then forgotten the sky.

while waiting for his death sebastian marcos smith complains

2008-11-05T22:33:00.000-06:00

mikeswanberg

This room is too stuffy it smells like shoes
Not leather shoes a boy has been working in
And worse the television is stuck fuck
These little nurses prancing by distant as clouds

Com here little girl let me slide my snakes tongue
Oh nevermind give me a handful of pills doctor’s orders
My heart has been killing me my entire life

How about a burger and fries do you hear me out there
I press the button someone comes I press it and hold it down
Nothing

My feet are cold
Where the hell are my shoes?

"I don't know how long regret existed before human beings stuck a word on it." Jeffrey McDaniel

2008-09-14T20:35:00.005-05:00

Erin bird

--

Forgiveness
is a different word
now that I'm the one
who needs it.

I imagine how
the word would taste
on my tongue
while I say it:

"forgiveness", formerly
a sweet and sensible thing:
raw in its seeming
inevitability.
the only option:
to make sense
out of a betrayal,
to make excuses
for deliberate acts,
diminish the rage
into something
more practical,
and less hurtful.

the difference
between holding on to you
and holding something
against you,
between us.
weighing in my hands
which I valued more,
and then choosing you.

the difference
between my truth
and your truth.

I realize now
that asking for forgiveness
is not the same
as saying "I'm sorry."
I know that we will never
see truth
and therefore, forgiveness
in the same way.

I could never vilify you.
I hope that you are also unable
to vilify me,
but this is not asking
for forgiveness either.

I understand why you need these walls.
it makes me wonder why
I let mine fall
so easily.

untitled

2008-09-05T16:25:00.002-05:00

i never wanted to know
the difference between a wake and a funeral.
but i do.

not because my curiosity
is sated by morbidity.
but because i am unfortunately knowledgeable
and sadly experience in the formalities of deaths
of people who were taken too soon.

i never wanted to know
the difference between making love and fucking.
but i do.

and not because i spend my free time
watching movies of women who's water and plastic contents are equal.
but because i have gone to bed with men
who are thinking of prettier girls they could have had
if they didn't settle on me.

i never wanted to know
the difference between the look of a liar and a straight-shooter.
but i do.

because like smile lines,
there are so many lies to tell
before those lies start to dig into your skin.
and i can't tell if its pathetic, or useful
that i can tell the difference.

and Life is just a series of learning things
i didn't want to know.

Where Color by Number Fails

2008-08-26T01:02:00.002-05:00

by Nik

My father was born in Sindh
just outside of Karachi
In 1947 he was Partioned across a new border
from something to nothing
A "nonviolent" revolution
Across the subcontinent
Because of the number of gods he believed in

Your father in Jaipur
Who counts the number of gods on his pinky
Traveled the other way
Absorbing the hatred
Just like all the other sponges

And somehow
Our fathers traveled separately
From the same mango continent
To the same prairie state

When I felt your hand fit into mine
I noticed the monochromatic hues
And your lips against mine
I wanted to take all the sponges
And squeeze them out into the ocean
Where they could drown a salty death

But the blood doesn’t wash out
And our interlocking fingers
Could cause your mother to spill her own
Could cause mine to rip her scalp out

Our fathers crossed the oceans
And spawned star crossed lovers
So my honey, my Capulet
We have to let go
So I can go back to counting on my fingers
And…well…you’ve got your pinky.

Ana

2008-08-20T01:19:00.001-05:00

By Amy

Remembering a Friend Is To Harvest a Spare Skeleton

I can’t make a garden grow
The sun isn’t close enough
We’re not even supposed to look.
Won’t ever feel what makes us so warm,
Or everybody tells us so.

Once when I was five,
I saw a balloon blow up.
I picked a red one out at dinner,
I may even have finished my children’s meal,
Back then I could do things like finish a meal
Now I plod through ends of knives like a fish without its bones
Trying to navigate what will make him healthy,
But they already said he was spineless
So it wouldn’t matter now if he grew two skeletons

I carried my balloon out of the restaurant on the corner
Even still in my mind the street is bigger than a movie screen
But the sky was even bigger
And on the map it’s just some dust swept under the rug
I stood and stared up and up
My parents walked me to the car,
I made them stop,
I needed air,
And I let the balloon go.

Mom said that an animal would choke on it and not to do that again
I started to cry
I said it was for my friend Ana
My mom said that she’d probably get it
And that Ana was lucky and so was I for having known her before she almost made it to six years old
But deep down I wondered if she was the luckiest
I thought about the coyote in the desert halfway across the country that would choke on my balloon,
I climbed into the car and
Put my seatbelt on.

Remember When?

2008-08-16T16:21:00.003-05:00

by bru

Sometimes when the sun hits the leaves just right
I swear I could weep well into the next century
I swear I could weep until it was the end of me

Sometimes when I close my eyes too tight
I swear I could weep 'til all my friends moved away from me
Until they realized love doesn't mean always

Sometimes when I know I won't put up a fight
I swear I could weep 'til someone paid attention to me
Until someone desperately fell for me

Sometimes when it's too easy to say goodbye
I swear I could weep 'til I felt something again
Until I clumsily recall those years with 'remember when?'

between the lips and cheek

2008-08-11T14:55:00.002-05:00

by: stacy

between the lips and cheek
there is a change in impact,
a change in nerve endings
and significance.

between the lips and cheek
is a change in implication.
the cheek receives friends
and the lips receive lovers.

but knowing what i know
of sensations and heart rates,
and knowing what i know
of friends and lovers,

i'd rather be kissed on the cheek
like i'd be kissed on the lips.
and i'd rather be kissed on the lips
like i'd be kissed on the cheek.

A History of Sex

2008-08-06T20:48:00.001-05:00

mike swanberg

It occurred first by accident, as though in a cartoon.

A man who loves a woman wishes to see every inch of her
and, since she loves the way he whines, she undresses.

There isn’t much beautiful about her shape,
except that she opens herself before him.
And though her breasts are nothing, and her stomach embarrasses,
he puts his full weight on her because he believes he can.

Until they find themselves in the act and realize maybe they are scared.

His mouth not even thinking to close,
her hands wanting so much touch, and their breath ,
short and warm like an july night.

She wants him to pin her legs up, so she asks:
Will you pin my legs up with your arms?
He wants to make her happy,
So he does it one arm at a time.

Of course, that is alright, she answers after he asks.

But he thinks now, for the first time, that maybe he wants control of her terribly.
Maybe he will hold her legs up until they hurt her,
never stopping this act that she has allowed be his.
Taking as much from her as he can, almost lewd.
His teeth barred his mind a days drive away.

And though the look on her face is nothing but concern
as she asks him if he is okay.

He says yes when he means no,
So that she will let him keep going.

a few new poems

2008-07-22T20:24:00.003-05:00

mike

kentucky utilities

of course I only ever did the easiest thing
fortunately for me that meant hopping
like a small bird down the sidewalk to a girls door
and kissing her there as often as I liked

I would ask you not to be foolish about all of this
But I came into the room with a joke that I intend on telling
what do you call a deity who wont leave you a lone?

I will give you a moment to think while I
Open us each a beer, here, drink you little critter
Life is hard and that boy has left you and Christ
If you didn’t come to my side to beg advice

I would rather you have asked a lion in urbana
Or our handsome friend at Princeton he would
Have told you what I could not.

That loving is easy as getting offended
And that the end of love is a rock always in your shoe
Which is why I took to hopping to that girls door to kiss.
oh i could have bought new shoes, but Buddha pest.
oh god, i almost forgot the joke.
that a deity so busy, wouldnt leave us all a lone.

something else

I must have thought I would just happen upon the truth
Some afternoon while walking to the store.
I thought I would turn down the produce isle
to find the lemons All gone
and the apples hard and green like I was
vanished.

But Now with a backpack full of groceries and modern poets
all I want to do is say
Forhan Tate, Shapiro, give it a rest,
Williams, Rohrer, Olds
Cant you see I was trying to live a life here
Before you begged me to look closely
you frauds
Fair weather friends
come down from the universities
I need you here with me now
hands dirty like mine Shoes scuffed
no no give me your faces to kiss You sweet angels
I am alone now my apartment is nothing
Comeback back back to me please brothers sisters
Hall Howell Strand,
Stern Nemerov Vance

My generation is losing the will to keep going
Have you gone was it like that
going then gone again

Please fathers, mothers, god fathers please
Nye Smith Synder we cant work if you don’t show us
Kunitz, stop feeding us the fish you catch
stop telling us how deep the water is
Gluck please I know you don’t want to
Let me sleep in your back yard I have a tent
I need something from you now poems weren’t enough
Don’t you see you set my course you taught me How to fall
but never how to stand back up

Oh Zbigniev, oh Collins, oh Merwin god damnit
Don’t leave me to do this on my own your poems
I haven’t got them all memorized yet ive borrowed out most
So What will I do and it was I who pretended to know
Nothing about Sylvia plath or ted Hughes
It is I who never read leaves of grass
But I ate those plums in the icebox ect.
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed.

I thought by trusting in you I would
happen upon the truth somehow.
Oh Poets
Oh Teachers
I need you now
Please.

i stay up for the storms

2008-06-26T00:43:00.002-05:00

by: stacy

my insomnia starts
when rain season does.
keeping consious to count
the "Mississippi's" between light and sound.

i want to know how close
the storm can get -
how windy, how dark, how angry.

i want to be touched by destruction
and still survive.
and know that when morning arrives,
it will be beautiful and easy.

finding my kansas

2008-05-25T22:38:00.003-05:00

i'm a little bit Scarecrow,
prone to clumsiness and
catching fire, and making beig messes
when i'd meant to clean them up.

i'm a little bit Tinman.
the problem isn't that i have no heart,
but that i have too much of one.
i rust easily, locking up, cold as steel,
whenever emotions are involved.

i'm a little bit Lion,
ringing my fingers, on edge,
hiding behind manes of hair,
stuttering and stammering,
searching for roars that
escaped me.

but i'm most like Dorothy,
living in black and white,
blinded by color.
i love my dog a little too much
and just want to go home.

except for the fact that i was never from Kansas.

Sea Side

2008-05-18T13:02:00.002-05:00

by: stacy

if i was a tree
and you were seaside rocks,
you're where i'd want to grow,
jutting and clinging,
even though there'd be plent of steady soil.
but that promise would never make me stray.

i'd have roots.
i'd have formed crookedly.
i'd have deformed and twisted upon myself.
but your boulders would be clinging
tightly, too.

and though i'm sure the soil would be great,
there's something about certainty that'd scare me.
i'd rather live in the gray.
it comes with a better view.

because white is blinding.
and black is boring.

when your rocks would crumble,
they'll say they hoped i learned my lesson.
but when their soil does absolutely nothing,
they'll have learned theirs, too.

here are some poems. also, listen to this band called Bon Iver, peeps.

2008-05-04T17:15:00.001-05:00

by Amy

Faster Louder

I have to ask if it is our responsibility
As living breathing human beatings
To share beauty with each other
Or if it is our real duty to subject each other to the elements,
Watch the struggle,
Drag the lover out of the snow,
And breathe life into the frostbitten toes
Making light of their strength and their muscles and blood
Telling them you just like how they look in the morning,
That’s all.

For Someone Without Enough Words

After the night with the blankets and guitar and the tea and your clothes, my car was still there in the alley in the morning
After the night that you said not to say sorry, your car got towed
And on the ride home that morning you said that you would pay to stay with me, anyway

I thought that it would be red when we kissed
I only painted the walls so that they’d start moving
He just stood there and waited for me to speak
Me scraping with my nails against the inside of my mouth,
My hands creeping up through my jaw trying to push their way out

I thought I’d love him with my words
I thought I’d warm him with my tongue
I thought I’d tend to his wounds with a blind back when he needed
Handsome man, pity tall

He tried to pick me up once, crack my back, to resolve my core of twistedness that he felt in his own, asked me to walk on him to relieve the tension, but I never needed anyone to walk on me I needed to walk beside someone and so he picked me up and nothing cracked so he never picked me up again

And he cried his eyes were red I couldn’t tell if he was high
Like the night he cut his thumb on his stupid red glass pipe
I hated that fucking thing
It advertised its life
With a red and twisting stripe
That he thought he could breathe in
I could have been that stripe, I am I am
He said I had that all inside
He said it never escaped around him,
And that’s probably because I coughed it out so hard it went up into the air and joined the stars because even stars aren’t tall enough to reach the other stars
He is so long his legs hang off the bed
He pressed his heart against my back he said he pulled me closer when I slept he said I woke up one night and said we were going to miss the hike,
I was dreaming of Masada, I was dreaming of Israel
And I missed my desert I missed Yerushaliym

The night I lost it to him he said he knew that there was more,
He said he thought I had a spirit that I didn’t show around him,
He was right, in Hebrew school,
The teacher framed Ruach and gave it to me

I used my only phone call for him
Because my pre-paid minutes didn’t work
He said that he’d turned into a dirty pot head
I never said I was in love with a country

I showed him the video I took above the oldest part of the western wall
The men chanted and stomped and they sang and babies saw
With their head-wrapped mothers up above the western wall
We women stood in rapture and we swayed and sat and sank
Waited in line to just glimpse the red over the men’s clenched hands
Their knuckles swept the torah further from the ark
And clasped the scrolls so tight that their joints became the torah’s own
And we just stood and watched the dancing,
Too crowded to move by myself
So I let the others move me
And I let my hands touch hands like themselves

We can’t remember how we felt when we lit up and light up all at once
My father says I light a room up,
I never want to be a woman who just hangs up the phone.

I want to run and engulf the sun’s whole mouth the ocean sinks inside my mouth my teeth afloat amid my gums my beating gums that together with yours could have withstood more heat than they’d felt before
The sun in my mouth comes from oceans I haven’t lapped up yet,
Down on my hands and knees like a dog, praying to what’s lower than me
The ground that keeps me up

But when he broke his first pipe
He bought another without the red stripe
He bought one that changes color, from white to veiny blue
When someone smokes through it
He bought one with less light and less color to match what he’d, oh no, so high-
I hate to say it
I hate to be the one to say it after he said it after I didn’t say anything in response but no no no you’re wrong you’re still you and it’s ok-
Because I should have said it’s freezing in this room

Looks like I've got a lot of feelings

2008-04-27T14:05:00.005-05:00

by Amy

Glacier Drowning

Water in its easier form,
Once a transparent country
Is now shrill and quick-moving
Rushes to the sewer
As my voice to my bones
From where it would sound from
Before I knew you

Command the kitchen to
Be there for us
Middle of night, get so hungry
We assume that the zoo
Only lives when we see it
And covers its mouth with its hands when we don't
So retreat to our less wild barely-lit habits

The braided rug never spoke before kitchen
It only has eyes for the ABC magnets
No consensus on color,
Woven sound through my stomach
Expected to reveal itself on a loom
Syntax that can be read and then touched
But humans touched before they spoke

Animal Instinct

Most wolves are just people
Lying around with their jaws open
Sharpening them how they do the good silver,
Hoping they'll grow hungry again

Red Rock Garden

I can’t sit and wait to find someone to wake the passion up
That I don’t know I have
After I lost it to him, he said that he knew there was more inside
Than he saw
And that means there is more
Than I’ve considered feeling before

I’m living, now
Drinking wine not to lie down
I’m breathing blood and pumping air
Into my system, no more over and under
In my blonde, I-miss-Jerusalem system
While my friends are out tonight and I said I was going to say at home and think
And I feel somewhere there is a storm
And there is an ocean and a ship and all people are worried they won’t get home
And I think that they will even though I’ve never met them
I wish them well and wish I had spoken up more

I know that I like sharing better than keeping for myself
And I have given the best away rather than stealing more often than not
I don’t think I’ve ever held anything captive,
But I the red wall in my room is something I
Only painted so deep cause I thought it would move
I see sky for more than blue
People have asked what my walls mean
I’ve given nothing but words

The Reporter

2008-04-14T17:07:00.005-05:00

by bru

You had your name engraved on every number two pencil
so you'd remember who you were after every nervous breakdown.

And when you wanted to be a sketch artist,
you bought a pad of paper and sat in front of some trees.

Now that your life is falling apart,
you feel like pulling that paper out of the closet again.

You said you only wanted a ring on your finger.
But all you've been given is kisses on the cheeks
and I'm-sorry-you're-not-the-right-ones.

You said you were okay when he left you for that woman from Sacramento.
But giving up everything never felt so right before now.

I Never Thought I'd Come to This

2008-04-14T16:44:00.004-05:00

by bru

I'll burn my hands for you,
place them in the fire of life.

I'll take any chance I can taste and
I'll take it with your arms upon my worn down shoulders.

I'll ride the train through morning
if it means seeing your clown smile.

I'll let every simple moment turn into an incredible one.
A boy grasping his teddy bear becomes
a boy grasping his dead mother's hands because
all she ever wanted was for him to be a man.

I'd throw my heart into the river
if I knew you'd be there to catch it.

Pray in the Morning

2008-04-08T00:15:00.002-05:00

By Amy

His beard was a lot softer than I thought it would be
And I didn’t need to learn to love it, it was fast.
Soon I just let my wild hands
Chisel instructions across the cliff in the parking lot
For a sculpture of his face whenever I needed to remember he used to move.
And he said that I could have his hands,
But didn’t understand why I liked them so much
And I need someone who understands the love,
Strong hands that will hold and let go
And his stopped moving so soon

And I need someone who runs and lies down under the ceiling to push it back up with their tongue
Someone who speaks

And thank you G-d for providing me with grace and rage so I could
Find the difference
And hold it close
And let it go how I wanted his hands to

The Nuclear Family

2008-03-23T22:22:00.001-05:00

by bru

Two kids
A house
And a dog

Three kids
A house
And a man falling out of love

One divorce
A house, an apartment
And a child support check once a month

Two remarriages
A desperate wife
And a decision regretted

Fifteen years of complacency
A few too many wrinkles around the eyes
And a love tossed out with the recycling

Yellowed Vending Machine

2008-03-12T21:51:00.002-05:00

by: stacy

six months ago,
i had a dream that she'd died.
i asked you non-challantly
if you'd take me to the hospital
so i could non-challantly
check up on her.

and we non-challantly drove
to Edward's Cancer Center.
and we non-challantly joked
about how horrible COD is-
how we didn't want to start a new semester.

and we non-challantly went to her floor,
and the nurse non-challantly told us
that we'd have to hold on for a few moments.
and we non-challantly took a seat
in the waiting room, side by side with
a buzzing vending machine,
for those who could actually stomach anything
in places like this.

maybe that's why it looked so yellowed
and neglected.

and we non-challantly made small talk, while
i non-challantly played with my newly pierced
nose's ring. the ring that i lost later that night
in a pile of salted, snotty tissues.

and all this non-challant time,
she was dying two rooms away,
taking in her last breaths,
and letting out her last words,

while i non-challantly told myself,
"it was just a dream".

For Rob

2008-02-27T21:43:00.001-06:00

Amy

He’s transformed into a bear
The ones that hibernate until their hair falls out and their teeth are so dull that children walk home from school to use the bear tooth as a lucky charm, to rub down with their thumbs and throw into the well
And the only well that anyone ever opened up to me was the one behind our apartment
I’ve wished so many times for people
For their happiness, their recovery, their excitement to reach a peak they’d never known
And now that Rob is gone
I wish for his happiness but I don’t know if he’ll have it
I never wish for things I don’t think I’ll get anymore
And I don’t know if there’s a heaven
So, my wish for you is rusty, only like an antique key
Old arthritic women wear around their sleeping necks
To remember there’s a door that they used to run through
It was this time last week that he was in the hospital
My dear neighbor, there in bed
Miles away from the bed he slept in every night three floors above my bed
He has gone and didn’t take anybody with him
And I know so many who knew him better
But he came downstairs to my place one night
With some wine and two glasses
And we sat where it was cooler than the inside of our building
On the stoop, it was still summer, and we shared
All the wine
And I didn’t worry
And it is awful that deep down
I am glad we didn’t do that again
Another night with different wine
Because we would have become friends
And we would have fallen in love
And now I would be a grieving girl
And I grieve
In a way
Unflattering for me
In an inverted funnel that I piss tearful cries out of
It takes a lot of force, a lot of guts, a lot of stars
To push the sky back up

bloodletting

2008-01-25T03:01:00.000-06:00

Erin

I don't mind admitting
that I reopened this wound
with the full awareness
of what would follow:

of how it would sting,
and bleed blood
I had not seen for months,

of the salt
I would be tempted
to sprinkle
and mix well with it,

knowing it would lead to
the throbbing, the pulsating
in a rhythm identical
to my heart's: gasping,
panicking, aching freely
and rapidly and seemingly
without limit or concern
for its owner

and I still went forward.
and I gave myself over
to the kind of pain
that could have blinded me
if I had let it

but when I let that blood
flow out of me,
I didn't let it.
I let go of it

and started to teach myself
how to thread brand new stitches
through my skin
and sew this wound up
and smile

keep it

2008-01-19T03:17:00.000-06:00

Erin

I lost your grey sweater,
the one you gave me to wear
when you saw that I was cold:
bare arms, shivering,
and me, never planning ahead.

I liked the way I looked in it.
I hoped that you liked
the way I looked in it.
I liked wearing it
and thinking about how
you had looked
when you had worn it.

when you told me,
"keep it",
I shouldn't have,
but I took it to be
a promise.

it was comfortable.
I liked the cliche: the girl
wearing her boyfriend's
sweater to sleep.
did it smell like you?
if it did, I didn't notice.

I slept in it twice: once,
in your bed, curled up
beside you, and
the second time,
small and alone
in my own bed.

two days later, I lost it.
I don't know
how I could have lost it
so quickly.
four days later,
I lost you

I don't know how I could have

where is everyone?

2008-01-17T18:31:00.000-06:00

Some poems by me, Amy.

Poems from Israel:

I.

I’ve learned that no one is at the door knocking for you
Unless it is so loud
You've never heard a noise like that before
That you’d bet your whole life
That somebody has come just to save it
They aren’t hungry or cold
They need nothing of your home
Have come just to save it

II.

I remember being so young
That I thought I understood most things
But now, more confused
More learned, and taller
I know I wasn’t young
Was only hesitant to ask
Didn’t know there was a truth

I was never so small
That I couldn’t reach you
I am in between stars
Those you reach for
Those you tread on when you forget you have a past
Greatest brightest

III.

Prove nothing to the earth
Except for this, except for light
That any photograph who tries to capture sun
Centered, brawling, shutters slow to move the earth around her-
Is really just of you, not you as one, but of us all
And what to make of those from darkness
Those who pity open air
I’ve always prayed they won’t forgive
The one who brought them there

IV.

I can't forget a friend
I can let a bird go
I never throw out letters
I’ve been told I have a heart
I forgive, something in me beats so loud

V.

I heard you coming
The wind turned to rust
The only evil in you
Is that you hate to see me run

VI.

Find someone who speaks low
Holds soft
Runs fast
I see you in the sky
I feel you in the ground

VII.

Kostya said he was the fastest runner
They’d drilled us for a few seconds,
In between drills

He decided it was him
Back and forth,
To and from the lamppost
Futile is light
When desperation flares can burn your skin

I’m glad he didn’t vomit like the others, I stood near him

VIII.

The light for the entire room
Next to my bed
For the first time

Poems from January 15, 2007

II.

Our farmers are our country
Who eats soy?
Nobody!
Who benefits?
The few.
Who fights the war?
Nobody!
Who benefits?
The ones who won’t die.
And we all
Come to death
In the end
Farm a life,
Start a fire.

III.

Alone in the house
I am at home
Is it a sin
Feeling love all alone?

V.

In your animal state
You accompany me
Rip out my eyes
That I’ve always used as hands
So I can finally see

VI.

If you need somebody to understand
Shine on
If you’d rather be
Someone’s coal in the dark
Dull the sparks and come clean
Go to sleep, we understand

just a question to preface a statement

2007-12-05T00:48:00.000-06:00

by bachelorette

IS IT WRONG THAT SEVEN MONTHS LATER,

IF I THINK HARD ENOUGH
ABOUT IT,

WHAT RESONATES MOST
WITH ME IS THE FACT THAT

HE DOESN'T LOVE ME
AT ALL???

IT IS WRONG THAT ONE YEAR AGO I BELIEVED HIM, AND JESUS DID I LOVE HIM LIKE I'D NEVER LOVED BEFORE. JESUS DID I CARE ABOUT HIM, DID I WANT TO BE WITH HIM, DID EVERY FIBER OF HIS BEING CONNECT WITH MINE IN A WAY THAT FELT SO UNIFYING AND UNCHANGING AND ELECTRIC.

icarus on vacation

2007-11-27T16:16:00.000-06:00

mike swanberg

And perhaps this is the moment we know
That we flew slightly too close to the sun
Although I thought it was going to help my tan,
And you, you just wanted to remember some memory
Before me, when the world spun at an agreed upon speed.

So that when we do fall back down to earth,
There is still more fruit in our showers
Than in the kitchen, and if we want we can
Watch paternity tests all afternoon.

Its almost too beautiful, the way the women cry
And scratch at the arms of men it makes me want to cross
The room and kiss my wife, although I know in my gut
I couldn’t raise another mans child

There is a certain kiss we save just for our own blood
There is an eyecolor the men in my family grow into
But why worry about that now?
November, and im still in a t shirt
Using up all your expensive paint while you are out.

And the feathers from your pillow,
when held together with wax,
Seem to be forming into something
I think we’ve needed all along

A Rage of Fit

2007-10-30T23:46:00.000-05:00

by bru

And I think I'm going to be sick
as my hands won't stop shaking
and my honesty won't stop aching.

I feel the heat beneath my skin
waiting to inhale all that is
about to rise.

Waiting to demolish the empire I have built
on fields of betrayal
and oceans of greed.

I've never wanted more than to
close my eyes and scream through the days
and to scream through the nights.

I would tear my hair out if my ego
wasn't blocking the way.
And if I didn't look for myself
in every shiny surface.

All that beauty
and all those lies.
Wait around for the great demise.
Deceit for hands
and knives for eyes.

I can feel it curled up in a ball
at the bottom of my stomach.

It's the child you forget
to pick up from soccer practice.

It's the shoe you leave untied
because you're running late for the train.

It's the tears of steel falling down my cheeks
as I grow more deceit in the garden
that has been blossoming since the day I was born.

pick up your microphones

2007-10-08T00:18:00.001-05:00

Yom Tov

Amy Lipman

My mother is proud
To have a daughter soaked in wine
Father only asks
That she remembers to swim
I walk before I crawl
We all should drop to our knees
Twice and once in a while
You make me fall
Then lift my voice at lowest points
All too naturally

Come to me
Stand by me
I swear that I will say goodbye
In case you ever have to leave

Can't Wait To Be An Export

2007-10-02T12:15:00.000-05:00

Amy Lipman

There is a big part of me
That was disappointed upon learning
That I could get passport photos
At Walgreens
Because at Walgreens
People are unhappy with their jobs
And milk is out of stock
And people are buying Oreos
I’ve never felt the one need they could fix,
They will cure that guy’s red eyes-
God, I’ve never seen such a strung out young man-
Why am I buying
This thing that shows I can go around the world
At Stupid Fucking Walgreens?

I thought I was
Going to
Go places,
Today.

And there’s a part of me
That is glad I had only to drive
Get down just one street
To get my picture taken.
I am tired today

Again again again

2007-09-25T09:11:00.000-05:00

Amy Lipman

What I want
Is reflected in
A moon to pray to
And a witness to kneel with
In front of that moon
Watch while I learn my life
Someone who will
Hold my attention

These worlds of bodily waste-
Unanswered questions,
And kisses are lives that are breathed into mouths-
All love and leave me
Flooded on shores
I’m told by ruach
We all speak in tongues
That all of these wrongs
Will lead me to your door

I've Got An Itch

2007-09-13T00:38:00.000-05:00

amy Lipman

All my poems start the same
These days

Baby this
And baby that
And maybe I’ll never.
I don’t even
Have you
And
I’m not your mother
So quit asking if I can see
Anything
That you’re proud of

When I opened my eyes
I saw
That you wouldn’t stop looking at me
I replaced my eyes with matches,
And there’s nothing you’ll strike
But since the sun
Lives in yours,
Mine laid on the floor

You, child, you, cling
I’m a book
And you're too clean for words
But know that you’ll
Need them
When the world revisits
Its words
Left to rot inside of
Young girls
And they do
How they do turn to women

2007-09-10T21:52:00.000-05:00

Thanks

2007-09-01T00:12:00.000-05:00

amy Lipman

Oz

Don't teach me flight
I'll walk to you

Use your patience with me
To form new words
I shook and stood
Your hands
Down my back
I didn’t have words
You knew I’d still speak
Asked if I’d stay
I said Yes
I meant Yes

Get Gone, Little One

More to life than
His life and mine
Haven of Towering Things
God of heads of pins
Of bones in our ears

Some hear bells
I hear the ground
Bones left in the sun
Find a body
Bones of my body; the desert
Bleached pallid for burn

That First Thursday

2007-08-02T00:44:00.000-05:00

mike swanberg

vincent assures me that with the right tools
and a little time he could make new furniture.
when he expatriated from canada he apprenticed
as a carpenter, and now knows the intricacies of cabinets,
the graceful subtleties of crown molding.

he and i are sitting and toasting the cold january night.
a bottle of whiskey shared between us,
two cans of diet coke.

When i raise my glass it is always to something
we cant actually touch, a toast to birds shadows
rocketing across the lawn, one more for the luck
that comes from kissing a beautiful girl near a fountain.

and vincent toasts his grandfather, who got killed in the war.
then, nursed back to health by a veterenarian,
suddenly found himself unkilled and in love with the mans daughter.

the story isnt hard for me to believe ,
having watched vincent die and be reborn
in the time it took for our waiter to arrive
with his crown and coke and my ice water.

Even the chair you are sitting on, he says
i made with my own hands
and that bed in the corner.

i do almost everything i can to hide my envy.
my own hands seem dumb, and hardly used,
just waiting at the end of my arms for chance
there is something interesting to touch
every now and then.

so I raise my glass towards his bookshelf
i declare that if i could make furniture
i would have no business in writing.

if i could be proficient in anything else
i would stop this telling and telling,
i would shoot the dog in me that is content
to sit on the porch all day licking itself.

but if he hears me, it doesnt matter.
there is a girl coming over who we dont know quite yet,
but we are sure is going to be a whole lot of trouble.

and darkly, so darkly we are both in love with her
that we cant even realize,
that if we had the tools and means to do it,
our best option in that moment
is to barracade the door.

for or againt?

2007-08-01T00:08:00.001-05:00

amy Lipman

Us with our
Legs
We swing them
Wide
We are walking armies

Sleeping fleets, reserves and coal
If we let it decompose
The air between our fingers
Best used for holding onto days
Days when we live
We’ll have ourselves some man power, boys

If you’d like a love
She’s just a moat
To cross in morning
Arsenals, my boy,
Can’t sleep
They’d break
All of the goddamn triggers
If everything were
Right
Only defeated men
Admit fault

Squeezing a few words out of the old brain

2007-07-24T23:26:00.001-05:00

amy Lipman

Not a Prayer

What lives in our blood, love
Drowns in our breath, love
On earth
It's for us to pass through

The streets were of thorns, you still had skin
Please frame my face
In roses and red
I’ll be remembered
As mother and friend

Sailor

2007-07-08T10:42:00.000-05:00

by bru

Her father was a stack of books in a library.
Rigid and orderly,
He yearned for the smell of a hard working crew,
The taste of relentless waters.

As the ocean reached for the sun
He stared hard into the horizon.
Cracked hands clenched on the side of his ship.
Legs like buildings on the deck.
A life of water.
The ocean, his unrequited love.
The shore, an infection of unfamiliarity.

Desperation begged from a town off the coast of New England.
Without love returned from waters his blood spilled into,
He ached for what he gave selflessly to the sea.

At ports he gathered love from those needing it the most.
Tears dropped on blouse buttons and cheeks blossomed with anger
as love on land proved too real.
The sea does not talk back or take your heart without asking.
But the sea does not have a breast to hold or lips to brush against yours.

She heard he died at sea like he always knew he would.
An aged captain with water thundering through his veins.
Years of salty skies and gray air.
Her father was a sailor with the heart of an ocean.

2007-07-08T01:14:00.000-05:00

By amy Lipman

Things I Learned This Year

Don’t leave people behind
Unless they can’t carry their weight
Don’t follow too close
Or at all
Test sight
Beyond two eyes

Know time
Lose track of what’s wasted
Of anything that can really be measured

Reading Over My Black History Class Notebook

2007-06-26T21:27:00.000-05:00

Amy Lipman

Out With Mark

As you ate your cherry pie that
Nobody wanted you to have because
You are a big boy now, and
Need to have muscles and stretch your legs
You smiled and laughed and your river of numbers
Was relieved by a dam, our father's hand

Grandma whispered right past your nose
That you are a tragedy, oh what a shame
I boiled He is still with us, knows how to smile
Disappointed, young widow, grey mother
Just keep quiet and
Love your grandson
His gated bank of sin,
All sweet submergence
Trapped under brown eyes
Big hands and chains

Sweet Tongues

Why would you try
To teach someone French
In a place far from Paris
Where they don't serve up spit
With their tongue or lips
Those people were born wrapped in sugar

It storms, she misspoke
She made something pretty
The woman in red says "make something real"
She'll rip out her tongue and
Tie it to the train tracks and
Laugh,
And she'll
Laugh
Over mispronunciations

Why would you try to teach someone something
They'll never use outside of your mouth
They'll walk the same way as their arms always told them
Without all our words we are unkind physics
I have been lucky
I learn new words from him
Born of his mouth
Rise up in mine

The woman in red at the cafe I eat at
Was pretty enough but she's never been kissed
I know that because I asked her with looks
And she couldn't look back
And she couldn't laugh

why should you have to ask permission to sleep in your own bed?

2007-06-20T04:50:00.000-05:00

erin

-

every night that I stand next to the bed
I make every morning
for appearances only
I feel tired.

I smooth down the sheets
and adjust the pillows carefully
so you will be as comfortable
as possible

to then march down the stairs
blanketed in a silence
that is not defeaning
in its unyielding strength
but pathetic in its defeat.
it is a silence as vacant
as the weight of
every empty room

and I take my place
on the couch
to fix my eyes on the ceiling
and imagine
that I can hear the steady rhythm
of your breathing,
rising and falling

to think of what I would never say:
"I am rising and I am falling
every second that I spend awake
that you spend
so easily in sleep"

refracted light

2007-06-19T23:36:00.001-05:00

by: stacy

i don't know if there's a light
at the end of a tunnel.
i've never flirted enough with Death
enough to find out.

but if you see a light,
and you feel its warmth
more than you feel your own body,
just run.

please run the other way
and don't stop, even if your lungs
feel like they're going to explode
because you can't leave me yet.

there are too many words unspoken,
too many smiles unexchanged,
too many secrets unburied,
to many inhales unused.

and i'll break every mirror
in this house, in hopes of snatching
every year of bad luck
for all of eternity

so that none can come your way.
i've been meaning to break
a few mirrors anyways,
so i could try and refract that light.

A Recent Bought of Insomnia

2007-06-17T05:46:00.000-05:00

by: Stacy

number one

Napoleon conquered
rivers and fields,
mountains and towns.

Columbus traveled,
though centuries apart,
so we could stand on mutual ground.

Religion collected
the seekers and the desperate,
the believers, the hopeful.

Lois and Clarke,
Magellan and mavericks,
gold diggers and geese.

They all travel,
they all search,
but they all fall short,

because though I'm not a bragger,
I do believe I found you.
And in that lies all the victory.

number two

I've never been this terrified.
of losing what I never had,
of fearing the fall, without taking the jump,
of turning cynical without experience.

number three

If we forge miles without stirring,
if we build fortresses with silence,
if we turn Blake's Lambs into Tygers,
or display hatred with confidence,

if this boat we're in should start sinking,
I thought it would be best that you knew
I've never felt closer to Heaven,
than when I was in embrace with you.

the previous haiku didn't cover everything

2007-06-11T00:52:00.000-05:00

by Nik

Here we are again on the couch
My feet
Shoes still on, rubber clumping on your wooden table
Feet up head back

Your hand caresses my arm
Your ear pressed against my chest
How many times must I think
This is tearing at my dignity

Once again
You’re hearing my thoughts
Measured like an EKG
This isn’t the ICU baby
So back the fuck off

Philosofuck

2007-06-11T00:50:00.000-05:00

by Nik

Your mouth was a cave
And I am sometimes deterred
By stalactites and stalagmites

Though it is the quest of man
The fulfillment of dignity
We see the opening, the entrance, the opportunity
We act on it

The quest of man
So profound a poem

The cave was just scoffing all along

The cave presented
How can man NOT explore
The dreams of treasure, hidden away

Man must consider the dangers
He commits to himself upon entering

But he also commits
To dreams of pleasure and fortune
A reason to bare the steps and steeps

The quest of man
In an open field it doesn’t exist
You present yourself a cave
How can I not enter

Writings from all the time I spend on the train

2007-05-24T23:22:00.000-05:00

Amy Lipman

Hanging at McDonald’s Before Rehearsal,‘Cuz I Get There So Damn Early: From The Suburbs, Fuckin’ Metra

A gang of small-toothed boys tries to smile at me
I never been where they’ve been
Thirst and spin for where they’re going

Still waking up in those deserts, fall asleep in the sea?
One street, after dark
The fire came out
To
Fly down your ears, ignite the nape your neck
Whisper, “Go now- it’s time you found home”
Lift off or touch down for real live warmth

Sidewalk Cracks, Some Kids Walk Home From School

Your voice sounds like mine
Cracks a home run
Lives underground when nobody’s home

Sitting on the Steps

I haven’t walked like this
Since I learned to walk
Leaving earth behind is my god-given right
Want to be dug up when the world's not ending
My hands scale down canyons
Freedom’s flight fucking bats
In a cage
Discover caves

Quantified Love

2007-05-21T23:53:00.000-05:00

by Nik

Your head on my chest
I tried to hide emotions
but you can hear them

I've Had Some Times

2007-05-16T19:03:00.000-05:00

by bru.

1.

For years your father slicked back your hair
in a likeness of his own.

When he moved out on the day you told yourself
you'd bitten your tongue for the last time,

you decided to wear your hair differently now.
Parting your hair to the side, now.

Staring in the mirror, saying,
"I look just fine, now."

On the Thursday after Labor Day,
you came to me with a question on your lips,

Asking if you should brush the hair out of your face.
By the time your inflection rose,

Wars has passed through our lives.
Children bloomed in front of our eyes,

I didn't have the heart to tell you
You'd grown up inside.

2.

I watched grass loom over the land.

And then the year we ended up in Georgia during winter in Chicago,
You said it was as if the seasons
skipped through the pages of your favorite book.
Or wore down the bottoms of your jeans.
Or added wrinkles to the corners of your great grandmother's eyes.

I watched the prairie burn.

And then the year we ended up in Chicago during winter in Georgia,
You said it was as if you had
read through all the pages in your favorite book.
Or sewed up the holes on the bottoms of your jeans.
Or told your great grandmother wrinkles add character.

I watched the world give birth to new.

A few new virginia poems

2007-05-13T15:34:00.000-05:00

mike swanberg

Carry and smile, sort and sand.

No matter how much I wish it was so,
The two hundred year old plank
That I carried, and carefully stored
In my fathers garage is not my confusion,
Or even my joy.

And the blood drying inside of my work glove
Keeps its mouth shut about failed relationships,
And the approaching difficulties of summer.

Here, the day cracks its knuckles and moves slow.
It watches me sideways from its post
Where it has set in the leather chair
to split hairs on the cat,
And thumb through a rural Virginian magazine.

And I, with as much freedom as a potted plant
Carry and smile, sort and sand.
I mix half water half bleach
To get rid of years of stains

I scrub until my fingertips have faded
And then I take a break to watch my brother
Swing a golf club in the yard.

It’s the sound of it that pulls my eyes first.
The clean pop of the club making contact with ball
And then all eyes head upwards as if in prayer,
But really were just waiting to see
how far it goes.

The Cool lip

I have come to terms with the fact
That you wont ever show up here,
Soaked through your clothes
To tap on my window and apologize.

In truth, I might never see you again,
But that doesn’t remove your fingers
From my hair, or take your touch
Off the back of my neck while im driving

These secrets wont be uttered anywhere
But here: here still trapped in your
mouth, like your hate for your father,
He did it to you first, then the rest
Let you down.

You wear such big shoes im surprised
You don’t fall more often
Surprised you move with such elegance
Across the dance floor towards me

so that just when I think you will touch my hand
You are reaching for a glass of champagne
With raspberries floating in it.
you are saying to me
wait, but not really
and i am sneaking off to the bathroom
to pray, my knees on the tile
my head pressed firmly against
the cool lip of the sink

another lesson

When there is nothing to say to myself, I sleep.
And now that you have left me with my safe house
divided, but my body somehow still intact
I find myself sleeping more often .

What is there to say to the mirror who proclaims
Buddy you aint shit without her
How can I begin to tell the sight of her body
through that same glass where I now take my shower:
Where I sit huddled by the drain and swallow
large breaths of hot air and confusion
as often as I trace the grout snaking between the tile

When there is nothing left to hold onto
I walk down to the little creek and call someone.
I try to find ways to work the girl into conversations,

In truth im just rationing my sanity
Trying not to fall asleep as early tonite,
Trying very openly to suffer, and endure that very suffering
as though everything,
No matter how terrible,
Was a lesson I should be learning.

afterthoughts

2007-05-07T02:20:00.000-05:00

erin v
-

he told me
with a straight face
that he thought this distance
would be good for us,
and then
never bothered
to pick up
the telephone

(surely because)
his heart was just busy
growing fonder,
fonder

while I wondered,
wondered
what he was thinking

what was I thinking?

-

"I don't know"
I say these words a lot
and I say these words
without thinking
without realizing
how much I am lying

to feign ignorance
of true facts and feelings
that are scratched
into stone
or wet cement
with a kind of desperation
that cannot be denied

well

that's just a lie, that's just a line
like everything else
and like everyone else
I know much more
then I let on

Sandcastles

2007-05-03T21:55:00.000-05:00

A simple pile of sand
Piled upon a beach.
Molded and formed by hands
Built as high as one can reach.

Piled upon a beach,
A castle grows by the hour.
Built as high as one can reach,
Until the rising tide devours.

A castle grows by the hour,
Better sculpt the details fast.
Until the rising tide devours
This intricate, sandy mass.

Better sculpt the details fast,
The sun is sinking orange into the sea.
This intricate, sandy mass
Into a watery puddle, it will be.

The sun is sinking orange into the sea.
Molded and formed by hands
Into a watery puddle. It will be
A simple pile of sand.

-LissaM

55 south

2007-04-30T00:47:00.000-05:00

mike swanberg

You find yourself in love
The way travelers must find themselves
In Duluth, or on 55 south headed away
From the airport.

You tell yourself,
somewhere I made the wrong decision.
And now how many miles
Until I can turn this thing around

so you do what everyone does.

you sing along to the song playing,
You drum your hands on the steering wheel
And you wait for the next sign to say
What you probably should have known
all along

this was going to be a poem but turned into a letter

2007-04-29T20:34:00.000-05:00

by Bachelorette

To A Former Flame.

~~I hope you are doing well.~~
I'm sure you are doing well now that you
have cut me out of your life!!!!!!!
Hopefully it's everything you ever dreamed of
and I'm sure it's nice not to worry about
remembering to do certain things, like,
"fuck, I haven't called her in over a week"
...
oh wait, that's right, you never worried about those
things in the first place.

Of course.

Hopefully your newly-embraced Christianity is
treating you well. It was very considerate
that you cut off physical activity at me sucking
your dick, because sex is sacred, and you don't really
know if you're in love - who can be sure these days,
right??? I'm sure your god will be impressed by
the sexual constraint you practiced as my head was
between your legs. And yes, you do have a small
dick. You already knew it, I was too kind to
confirm it.

With that said, I hope that your new sexual
encounters are just as fulfuilling (if not more!) as
those which were experienced with yours truly. I'm sure
there are plenty of bimbos out there willing to
satisfy you after 2, 3, maybe 8 beers. You may
have a miniscule johnson but what you lack in the
sack you make up for in... well, you really don't
manage to make up for it in any respect. Let's
not kid ourselves.

Anyways! Good luck in the rest of your life. Perhaps
you really will find the woman who's man
enough to make up for all your shortcomings
and pussy antics. Enjoy the rest of the
semester, not that I need to tell you to,
because I'm sure you are.

And please mail my fucking shirt back.

Kind regards,
Your Former Flame

Next Stop--Bad Poetryville

2007-04-25T12:52:00.000-05:00

by bru

I wish I was brave enough
To throw everything away
But I've too many buttons
Holding everything together
(sewing them back on when they've fallen off)

Running away to Sacramento has been done
(so many times before)
The only appealing aspect--
it's not here.
(i would write you)

Running to Sacramento has been accomplished
(too many times before)
I'll go somewhere new
And wait for the next time
That I think I'm brave enough
To throw everything away

The Conductor

2007-04-07T14:35:00.000-05:00

by Nik

A cold September hand reached through the window and scratched his toes. He slid his feet across his bed and let his callused heels grind against each other making a sound like the crumpling of the New York Times. His eyes opened but it was still dark in the room. The clock read 6:03 AM with its dawn red numerals.

Standing at the window sill, he raised one arm up. Holding up a clenched fist horizontally, he let hit fingers unroll. Slowly he raised his open palm, the sun outside rising with it. His other hand shimmered its fingers down the boulevard while the sun’s rays dragged along with it illuminating the road.

He walked until his feet snugged into his bedside slippers. He continued circling the room as he slipped off his shirt, and then stepped out of his pajama pants. He walked to his dresser and picked up the next pair of clean underwear and continued walking and he slid them on, followed by the rest of his attire which consisted of a pressed black suit necessary for his vocation. His 2/2 march continued with his socks and shoes as they helped him out the front door.

The conductor rested at the red stoplight and pushed the cars along in front of him. One of his hands moving left to right, the other moving right to left, helping the cars through the intersection. Then he pointed at the peeling old lady on her morning walk and guided her across the side walk.

The stoplight clicked green and the march began again.

He felt the early September sun heat his face as he continued his march through the edge of Brooklyn. He found the entry stairway to the Brooklyn Bridge and machined his way up the steps.

Halfway now, across the bridge, he stood and gazed at the New York skyline. The two tall twin towers stood like white dominoes. Ready to knock one another given a slight prod.
He stopped for a minute, looked down at his watch.

8:45 AM.

His eyes darted to the left, a Boeing jet plane rocketed through the blue sky. He pointed to it with one finger and guided it through the city and into one of the twin world trade centers. He continued to stand there and guide the smoke out into the sky.

9:03 AM.

Another international flight approached. He points two fingers at the plane, and guides it into the other tower. The building released a brilliant explosion.

10:05 AM.

The conductor clenches his fist as the south tower falls in on itself like a stack of imploding dominoes.

10:28 AM.

He closes his other fist, guiding the other tower down, and letting its smoke and dust melt over the Manhattan skyline.

The conductor opens his eyes to a standing ovation.

I left my heart in Dupree

2007-03-27T20:43:00.000-05:00

By Amy Lipman

Most of the Drive there was Spent in Darkness

You and he and us and they
Are all just
One big foot
A shot star
A welfare family’s check

We were Cleaning out the Barn all Day, and I Realized I was in love with him

I am a long process
An iceberg
A sailboat
No wind in the storm

Later, I was thinking about Why Other ones Haven’t worked Out

A lot of men have held me
But they couldn't hold me
Who wants a writhing newborn
Skin once shrunken, stretched and glowing

I.

If it all ends in a warm room
I’ll be happy I felt the cold

II.

Lightning strikes in so many places
And I’m never at the right one

If I had been taller-
I’m never hiding again,
You would have seen me
Filled me with light
Grabbed on for life

Poems inspired by Orville
“We didn’t have cathedrals. The sky was our cathedral.”

III.

We’re not happy, but we’re living
In a place unfit for earth
Too small for me
To hold a child through his years
Have you ever felt too small
Boy, you might have been a man
If you’d not passed away
Our lord could pick us up
If we’d not slipped away

IV.

Women start as mothers
End as fathers
Attribute the wealth you saved for yourself
To sparks and stars up in arms
And paid someone to do the washing
When daddy was away
And when we are forgiven
We’ll bless the trees for bringing rain
We’ll keep changing our names
And charting new blood
We’ll discover, discover alone
If creation’s ever ending

V.

What could I bring
That you’d like to receive
I can wipe your nose
And paint
And run with you
And your house will still stand on two poles
Not to dodge a flood
But to heighten, fatten up
And pray for rain

“Everyone has a red road. Everyone is a turtle.” –Ray Dupris

Clarissa

Clarissa, get your lunch
It’s hot outside today
I’m running how a falcon tries to fly
Who’s still got God-given unclipped wings
Who doesn’t know her lover is crippled and still flies near
Still sings, sings

And little girl
I see you now
I saw you then
When you were ten
But have a drink
From frozen streams
Conserve all of the water
Save up riches in your lungs
Nobody banks for you like I do
Save breath for when you need it
Nobody’s always only young
Save your weeping for an angel
And your laughter for the buried
Not for me, pale skin and barely here, the calm and burning
Just one of your memories
Meant for safekeeping

Little Boys on Reservations

Little boys on reservations
Are wolves
Never wolverines
Just fast and sharp
With adult teeth
Cries came from the field
Two runs and then a strike
That’s just how the game goes
I can’t pretend it’s right

Christopher Columbus writes a letter to his lover Dona Felipa knowing that he wont have any way to send it

2007-03-23T10:56:00.000-05:00

mike swanberg

If I lost sight of my way only slightly
It was because joy had blinded me
And the sight of flying fish
like hours dashed against the sea
tomó mi respiración ausente

the rest are just words love
it feels good to hear men laughing
good to polish and to wait
and of course the stars call your name
how couldn’t they with bright tongues?
I find myself humming more often
I remember things my mother said

I picture you watching the horizon
Every morning when you wake
Your eyes bluegreen and opening
Your breath hot from a night of sleep
Your shoulders flexed from your arms
On the railing

I remember how you once said love is a dish
Best served and I,

Your servant
C.

Pets

2007-03-17T01:52:00.001-05:00

by Nik

there is a tetherfrom my chestto my cardiac muscle
how bout i flex this one for you babydoes that look hot?
crane your head in another directioni'm just trying to keep up
i know it's a little toungue-in-cheekbut i might have to cage that muther fucker

two poems about joel chace

2007-03-16T18:02:00.000-05:00

mike swanberg

Stuck in Virginia with Joel Chace’s 20^th Century Deaths

He isn’t a remarkably bad poet, no
Although he refuses to say anything I could
use as a shield and seems exceedingly content
to scratch the surface of experience then
retreat to his home in pennsylvania to pretend
it isn’t his job to open doors in people
that they once thought they had bolted shut

I suppose the one about the wind surfer isn’t awful
but his arrogance bites my minds heel as he
hoots and hollers from the shore of that poem
as smug as his press photo looks on the back cover

I am published he would say to me if we spoke.
If we ever speak I hope he doesn’t know his place
In the library of congress between martin amis and
billy collins. The arrogance of those men notwithstanding
but offering up at least something akin to wings in the world
for those who, with shaking hands or heads find them.

No joel you were not published by pitt press
Or even grey wolf for that matter, no something called singular speech
from connecticuit saw fit to bind your words.

And in truth I would bind your hands with rope
and toss you into the same angry see that your windsurfer
couldn’t navigate in that too long poem of yours
because maybe, and this is a heavy maybe,
you could teach us something close to the art of drowning
if the situation presented itself
as do or die.

An apology for the poem Stuck in Virginia with Joel Chace’s 20^th Century Deaths

I am standing in the kitchen drinking juice
When I think of Chace again and begin to wonder
If I was too rough on him. The day started out late
And lovely, if not a little cold. And by now the rain has
stopped but the river covers our small bridge and wont
Let me get anywhere but back into Chace’s poems for
another disastrous reading.

But somehow I cant help but imagine him searching his own name
And having my poem show up in all its own not so quiet
scorn without this one I am writing now as a companion
Because would he really be so quick to rush and defend
The poems he wrote ten years ago? I found the book
At a garage sale, the woman gave it to me for free and would
He really even argue that the windsurfer is worth the read?

How could he when of course he has moved on to different things
A simple search revealed he is working now and often
With a free press, what a man I say to myself and to the walls
Although the poems even now don’t grip me much

And in his picture he seems much older, the difference in his ten years
Almost the same as my own, so visible one can only see a decade as
Being wide as the atlantic at night

and there are Chace and I both
Atop the windsurfers board,
trying desperately to make it through the next
decade with all our poetry in tow,
and a little bit drier than the other.

Today my flag was a Fleur de leis

2007-03-15T16:12:00.000-05:00

mike swanberg

The girl im seeing doesn’t believe in Columbus day,
And has already refused to celebrate it with me
But rather than seeming understanding to her plea
that Columbus was parasitical at best
I know if I find the time I will try and dress like him

Then walk around all afternoon discovering different things
and pretending that I don’t celebrate Her Day either
Because I tell her without the Nina or the St.Mary
we wouldn’t be here, and she shakes her head
so that the knowledge of the Americus’s and Ericson’s,
all those early explorers of great esteem
pours disastrously into my lap.

But what she doesn’t know is I mean her and I,
Here in my small shared room,
not this country, this continent.

I mean my hand on her hip, and when the light dims
Her breast, hangs forever on Ferdinand and Isabella
on the poisoned fish, the planted flag
the sand that was kissed, and the spice

Life is about taste I tell her as I slide off
her clothes As I claim her naked body
In my name

Life is about taste my love,
and how far we will sail for ours

Language Is For The Ages

2007-03-14T21:24:00.000-05:00

by bru.

I touch the pages of my life
as if I will be able to feel what I felt
when it was happening.

I want to hug the pages,
touch my lips to its words.

They're each a picture of what I want and wish to be:
A firm and solid and permanent object.
Sure in its existence.
Never changing.
Never ever.

There is a romance to my words and I.
No,
not romance.
My blood surges with words.
With the words of my lives
and I am living them with contempt.

I feel space underneath me.
Space filled with all the words I've yet to speak.
All the words I've yet to write.
All the words I've yet to kiss
and hold against my chest and cheek.

I see words coming out of people's mouths
when they aren't speaking
I see words coming out of people's ears
when they're not thinking.
All the words they've yet to write and speak
and hold against someone else's cheek.

A trail of words follows everyone.
Ready to fill them up when they run out.

Our skin is made up of little words pushed together
as a picture is made up of small dots.
If you look close enough,
you can see pages of the dictionary
scrawled on your ankle.

Where do you think we got the dictionary from?
It's been on our skin our entire lives.
We just never looked hard enough.

Two new poems

2007-03-13T23:56:00.000-05:00

mikeswanberg

The order

I find a little comfort in the fact
That today more species will be lost
Than named

That there are still regions of the small world
That go unexplored but not untouched
And that the scientists know this
but our particular hungers make them look the other way

Because where I am going there are no poets
And the small insects that dart around my mouth
And stick in the sweat on my brow have no want
Or need for permanence

the beetle of unending deforestation
doesn’t want his picture taken,
and the mosquito of simple pleasure and white wine
doesn’t belong to a phylum but somehow he knows

That we are all in this together
Every last insignificant one of us

Christopher Columbus revisits a failed relationship
Spain 1491

What a sad son of a bitch I must have looked
The first time I came home after that girl
Broke up with me and everybody knew
That I just didn’t know what I was doing anymore

How lost I must have seemed even to my friends
Although they treated me the same and wanted
Nothing more than to drink in my hotel room
And laugh about it

Because we were young and that meant
that we thought it was a time of laughing
as much as we thought it was a time of loss

and I know now that everyone was right about me
because I didn’t have the any clue what I was doing
I couldn’t see that I was laying heavy tracks
and practicing goodbyes

so now when I look back im glad
my friends couldn’t see the look on my face
when I finally said farewell and meant it
to the whole sinking friendship

goodbye you sea of self doubt
goodbye you beams and planks
goodbye long nights without affection

I just heard the world is round, and I am off
To prove them wrong

Some Thoughts

2007-03-09T13:43:00.000-06:00

Amy Lipman

Spring

I tried to find home in a lover, he was lost as well
I tried to find home in a friend, but she had a lover
I tried to find home in me but I have
Too much on my mind
To keep all the way clean and dust-free for everybody to live in
Even though I wash so many times a day
And say my prayers before I sleep
But I've always housed really comforting songs

Why We Still Use Money

Some things snap in half
A button, a tree stump
A roof
But a wrecking crew couldn't split a penny,
Wouldn't waste time on the clock colonizing my brain
'Cause it would take
All the chemicals in the world that we use to stay hydrated
And inebriated
To find value in a stranger's blood

Plastic Guns

Men who hunt
Have been evicted
From church, from skin
From poetry
And want to see
What they used to believe in
Given the funeral they won't receive

New Year's Resolution

Our lives start in a calm yellow room
We seek to defy our limbs
Rise from a cradle and part from a mother
In time to run late to meet father for a drink

We cut our hair
Lose touch with people
Meet nice boys
Stay in control
Check the weather
And starve when the frost comes early

And then I turned to my mom and said, "I'm a tough bitch."

I loved you because I knew you'd leave me with nothing to lose
You, sometimes were good
I, always told the truth

Isn't that against your religion?

I've cried in a few churches
Once I wished for a father

I got on my knees in the synagogue
I said, "you'll be ok" to my dad

Strict Analysis

Patience is washing the sheets instead of burning them
When someone forgets you let them sleep in your bed
Feeling is moving a lamp past the ceiling
To find light in the room where it happened
Vanity isn't knowing you're beautiful
It's trying to convince yourself why someone else isn't

Victory Dance

The way that I walk when I get the chance,
Have some extra time,
Feel my clothes getting looser,
Is an excercise of evacuation
How to be the first out of a burning building,
The only way to fuck without coming close to the hands

Witnessing a Stampede

We kissed
Maybe you didn't notice

I’ve felt better, seen worse inner-workings of man
Than you
How you searched for you not for me not for we

You couldn’t see past my eyes
You probably thought you'd discovered an ocean
I am warmer
Than water cherished seasonally
By vacationers and by other people I meet looking for relief
I was raised to stay on the rise; a rose

giving birth

2007-03-09T01:12:00.000-06:00

by: stacy

if i could find the words
to describe what this is,

how this feels,

if i could verbally encapsulate it,
keep the letters and spaces
rolling and soaking on my tongue
to distribute to the world
at my will, it would be my
single.
greatest.
accomplishment.

not graceful AGING,
not unrestrained LOVE could compare.
not peaceful DEATH, nor screaming LIFE
could outshine the ability

to birth, through my lips,
this pregnant bliss.

February poems lost archive

2007-03-09T00:56:00.000-06:00

mike swanberg (sorry about the quiet)

St. James

I know I am stronger then most
And with age I have become handsome
I know these things but uncertainty
Keeps tossing rocks into my pond

I would have gone anywhere
I would have said anything for a love
This truth isn’t lost on me still
Oh there were girls to kiss I am sure
But what good

They think I am blind I see this
They say my ears are bad because
I pretend not to hear them

Lord I hear them now and call your name
Blankly into the forest that holds its breath
To touch our land those woods I wouldn’t
Cut or bother

So don’t say my name in a tone
You wouldn’t want me to use
To say your own because I am
Stronger then most and with time
I have become

Here comes your man

I don’t know why I couldn’t explain
That I felt far from you all day
And wanted your sympathy

So I questioned your love for me
Hoping it would bring us closer
I just needed to be kissed by you
So I could touch the floor again

I am tired of finding you in my poems
As only a beautiful girl my love you are flawed
And often times more then myself
When I kiss your face, your broken nose
I cant remember it before the break
Why would I want to

Love I do not care if you have been
Scattered by the wind
Even I am destined for that place of lost kites
Wherever you were sent I am going
I will get there

I am swimming in the lake of your
Knowing if I get tired, I can drink.

Wedding Guest

I thought that if I kept drinking champagne and smiling
then eventually your family would stop wondering who I was
and just confuse me with another cousin who got lost
amongst the photo albums the fights

and then I thought that you alone might carry me
dress shirt and all, up over the hor dourves and bridal party
past the disapproving mother of the groom, the aunt
whose drunkenness laughed in my face and called me chicago

Was I a fool to think you could have taken me out that row of windows
and into that hard bright skyline ? you had done more impressive things
the night before you had already humbled me so many times
that I was no more myself then I was you acting through me

I was you lacing my shoes at the foot of the bed, love
I was you kissing your cheek so quickly in a stairwell

Lucky

She could tell by my eyes and easy smile
that I wanted her naked and she was going
to prove something by staying clothed

I must admit that even I was cheering for her
as I kissed her softly where her jeans
met her hip

We were putting touch to the test
I bit her a little My heart and my want
for her shook like dice in my chest
Because she thought she was going to teach me
a lesson .

i wont bring you into the bedroom with me
I wont show you how it ends Just know she kissed me gently
and I couldn’t tell if she was crying
and that when I addressed her which was often
I only ever called her love

newsflash!

2007-03-07T20:47:00.000-06:00

hey, because of my internet ... ineptitude ... i managed to accidentally switch this blog to a fancy new google account, which was annoying at first but i think tolerable now. so in order to log into this blog now, all new google account style, the information is

localpoet@gmail.com
and the password is still whitehorse.

that is all, sorry for any unnecessary trouble.

-erin

to tie it all together

2007-02-27T03:24:00.000-06:00

by erin

I am always running down the hall
to turn up the heat
and then wait for the fan to start up
before I run back downstairs
to wait for my room to warm up.
the covers just aren't enough
for me to fall asleep
comfortably.

and this was one difference between us:
how I cannot fall asleep
when I am shivering,
and how his dreams shrivel up
when mixed with heat

how he leaves his window open
to tunnel under blankets

I would like to blame
the knowledge
of us sleeping in different cities,
and in different beds,
on something as innocent
and impartial as temperature, but

he was always running down the streets
alive in the city
and I thought we could overcome it
before it swallowed us up,
but it's distance, and it's a formidable thing
who can outrun it? it is a tin can phone
that would stretch for the miles between us
if we had the string.

and the attempts that were made
to tie it all together just weren't enough
for me to fall asleep
comfortably.

The Crutches People (Us) Hold On To

2007-02-12T15:07:00.000-06:00

by Bru

Mallory puts on make up
every time she leaves the office to run an errand.

Val gives everyone little gifts throughout the year
because she doesn't have children of her own.

Michael kisses lots of girls because
the more kisses he gives, the more love he will receive.

Allen chews the ends of his pens because
he can't tell his wife he doesn't love her.

Ruth is the boss because she can't bear the thought
of looking less than someone else.

Chrissy writes poems because
she can't tell anybody the truth anymore.

Celebrating my birthday two months late

2007-02-03T02:30:00.000-06:00

Amy Lipman

It had to be perfect since I, too, am lovely
And made of betrayal between two golden parties
The sun went down and he knocked on my door
Drove past lecture halls and trees
Always offered me wine but I never took it
My mind was at rest and my hands were on fire
We loved the mattress
The white sheets
The blanket
Warmth was for me
But the window was his
I’ve never asked for more than a window

rediscovering fire

2007-01-29T00:47:00.000-06:00

by: stacy

if secrets were sparks,
i could burn down the walls
that you've built to protect me,
with the secrets i've kept
just to protect you.
if secrets were sparks.

if secrets were sparks,
i could light myself with
bitter, agressive flames.
i could melt and disintegrate
so you wouldn't even recognize me.
if secrets were sparks.

if secrets were sparks,
i'd be too hot to hold.
i would sear your skin, and
scar you forever with lightning
bolts of scar tissue to carry.
if secrets were sparks.

oh, no.

i couldn't.

i'll freeze myself over,
because if secrets were sparks,
it'd be ashes ashes,
we all fall down.

A Haiku for College Nerd Angst

2007-01-24T13:08:00.000-06:00

by Nik

sorry professor
I just can't find the answer
its not in my UGGS

smoke and sparrows and stars

2007-01-22T18:56:00.000-06:00

by: stacy

you only talk when you smoke,
exhaling words into nicotine clouds
and toying wiht philosophy as you toy
with the cigarette between your chapped fingers.

ideas and thoughts spitting themselves from you lips,
like sparrows fleeting tree branches.
they could race the shooting stars above us
and match their pace with ease.

you only talk when you smoke,
at night, sitting cross-legged on
your concrete steps,
emptying your mind onto the pavement
as i bathe in your tobacco haze
beside you, breathing hesitantly.

but i'll risk lung cancer
a thousand breaths over,
just to hear you speak.

Some Girls

2007-01-21T12:58:00.000-06:00

By Amy Lipman

Please, Please

When I heard your voice fighting the up and down
You, sopping and shaking
Were held

You can be sure I’ll not pretend
To be what you need,
And there was snow

Gliding down the bus ramp
Skipping you home
Holding onto your hands
So you’d be warm for once

I Danced

I danced in front of the mirror
Used the heels of the red boots from my mother
Unzipped the red coat from my mother
To own the platform and be touched by smoke

More things are the color of blood and flame
Than people who have never
Seen a houseplant explode
Would think

I love the other side of reflection
The side that shows nobody really
Looks like themselves
And that tepid domesticity
Manifests in foxes who eat their young

The Mercy of the Insides of Her Wrists

2007-01-20T19:30:00.000-06:00

by: stacy

the mercy of the insides of her wrists.
soft flesh so easy to rip,
so generous in its spilling of her blood,
and so pale as if to show it off,
just as white summer dawns present
the crimson sun.

the mercy of the insides of her wrists,
so quick to satisfy once opened,
like a choir's collective mouth.
perfect pitch and
loud and
honest,
singing hauntingly of some crypted agony.

the mercy of the insides of her wrists.
so quick to scream.
so quick to burn.
so quick to tell the stories
that pen-laiden fingers can't.

The Right to Drive-thru

2007-01-17T12:01:00.000-06:00

by Nik

Hi.
Can I have a #5 with a side of trankweelity?

I'm sorry
we don't serve
your kind
anymore

What does eeht take
just to get a fuckeeng
reegular sized freedom
I'm not askeeng to be fuckeeng supersized

I'm sorry sir
Since the towers came down
We do not serve the hamburger brown
especially the facial haired
and toilet-paper turbans
So, you immigrant son-of-a-bitch
take your imported piece of shit
and move along

I will take this gun
and fuckeeng shoot you

and feed the stereotype?

No, you sun-of-a-beetch
I will keell it

Sir I don't think-

OF COURSE YOU DON'T THEENK
You think we will reemove theese from our heads
and shave our fuckeeng beards for you?
What kind of freedom is that?

It's just our policy sir

FUCK YOUR POLICEEY!

.

Freedom at last.

Here's to a new semester

2007-01-15T00:56:00.000-06:00

By Amy Lipman

Gas Stove

In a parking lot
Cars burn rubber for the same space
Like when boys started making promises to me in backseats

As I got older, I hoped that
His car would be home
That she wouldn’t be by herself
That he’d be there for dinner
And for the night
And for the rest of the repeated excuses of weeks
Because days promise endings
But there was no rest in that house
Dry skin mixed with grating fingers
On one another’s throats
We all speak in monotone
Can’t afford to waste ink or blood or expression
By any brightening or rising of octaves

And Jenny today said she wishes she
Had a stove like mine
But I clean and clean that stove
And it never makes any food
That I’ll actually eat

You are the house I tried to build
Before I knew that stitches meant to fix split skin
From acidic hands I come in contact with
When he forgets exactly who I am
Are better off putting together monuments
That nobody will ever go to see on family trips
And nobody will ever ask if they are there yet
And nobody will ever get hurt

Splitting Skin

I feel guilty for having curves and hair and a body
And feel like I owe my synapses a rent check
When I stop scrubbing mountain passes and stop
Holding tension in my neck, since they say that
Survivors
Never
Let

Anyone touch that part of them
I vow that I’ll get all the stiffness back
But then I remember touch
And how good warmth is in a cold room

They say that I need to let someone in
As they try to knock down the door
And litter my kitchen with
Their living ashes and two by fours that they wish I’d make something out of
They say they’ve brought a present
But they found it in the hallway
I saw them sneak it in
Where are my flowers

Well, maybe I’ll make a man out of you
When you carry me home when I fear the snow
But I’m not scared of cold
I never dread being alone
I skitter and snatch up my keys when faced with a face
That tries to widen its eyes
To let in mine

Justin

You asked if I’d stay
And you wouldn’t tell anyone
And I couldn’t tell anyone
Because I’d left my mark in your bed
A mattress on the wooden floor
You’d come all the way from California
To seduce an undergrad

And you said you wore my
Hair band around your wrist all day
And you said you wanted to lie like that
All week
But you had auditions
For the Milwaukee Rep
And I weight to lose

We talked in the dark
About my brother
We were shocked that you are his age
You asked if I were seeing someone
Asked if I would stay the night
Asked after a time if we could be friends

I don’t regret it
You made me feel gorgeous

Jaron

I think that you think I’m a fully-grown colt
And you like how I shake and you like how my teeth
Reflect everyone’s shadows when I smile
Which is most of the time
Because I look for backings of nails
Behind lovers earlobes
To make sure I won’t cut my mouth
If I tell them my secrets
Since what keeps them listening
Is how red my lips get

And you think that I’d loosen you up
Relieve you of sweaters
And free you of fences made from our skin
Throw everything down on the floor
And fold all the scents press them to my chest when you’d fallen asleep
That I could still rise as a bread to feed our family while suffocating
Hold your hand in the synagogue
Tell the rabbi we’d been friends for a while, now
And return your phone calls

I think you are a nice boy
I think you think I’m really blonde

Yanna

Your hair is long and dark
You talk about “the island”
You talk about your family
You nod your head and I nod mine
When we speak about the men who
Did it
The men who
Ran
The men who
Wouldn’t stop
Even on our first birthdays
They were thinking about what they’d take from us
When we had nothing to give
We were pink and hairless and not women
And they liked that because

We didn’t have voices or bellies or any real places to hide
They wouldn’t like us now
Now that our hair is longer and darker and
You think I’ll be your girlfriend, girl
I couldn’t bear to hurt you
So I’m asking you stop asking

Dominique

I want to lose it to a black man
So go ahead, you are beautiful
We laid in your bed and you
Asked me questions
And traced my body with your hands and your eyes
And I didn’t even flinch
I’m not darling or a dear
I’m everything from the empire
That couldn’t be burned
And was left because I’d age and increase in value
And be harder to swallow

I kissed your neck when you walked me home
And you wanted me to come back
To your apartment
But my friends were sleeping on my floor
And I couldn’t leave them
Because nobody likes waking up alone
Track star, you were too quick for me
It was over too soon
You made me laugh so hard I almost
Forgot what I was worried about

My First Realistic Dream...

2007-01-13T20:26:00.000-06:00

by: stacy

Skin departs Body first,
peeling back from muscle,
flying off in sheets
and disintegrating into soil.

Next, the hair,
made a victim of the wind.
Long strands blend with the breezes
until they can't be separated.

Then the fingers and hands
and toes and feet,
hips, shoulders, arms, spine,
forming the forests and boulders.

Blood digs itself riverbeds.
The spaces between ribs create valleys,
while breasts create hills.
Eyes removed and stretched
to fill out a blank sky,

until all the organs and parts
morph and scatter.
Save the Heart
and the Brain,

disguised as the Moon and the Sun,
left to wage war amongst
a newly lifeless geography.
Which will rise? Which will settle?

some work

2007-01-12T17:46:00.000-06:00

mikeswanberg

all of it all of you all of it

I hear the hunger in you as a different girl
I watch your body turn to matchsticks then bloom
So are you surprised that the voice in your head
is unapologetically mine, that he sings dumb songs
from the bathroom washing his hands but forgetting
to brush his teeth Does it surprise you that this boy
wants to lick you clean c arry all of it all of you all of it
down to some river he made up and wash you there as
well Standing in it to his ankles with his pants rolled up
casting an invisible net over what you swore could never be caught

Authority
For vincent

It is the sound of authority that allows this all
How you say fuck and everyone waits, heads nodding
For you to clarify or help them along
Because you say it and it seems clinical,
clean not at all like the girl I fucked on Justin’s futon
Or how fucked up we got just singing songs
pretending the world was ending

when you spoke with no authority about the bookshelf
and art and how lonesome it gets and the girls
who fill it all up. I trusted you more then when your
words came rushed like water through a hose you thumbed
and for the first time maybe I knew that you were
in love with everything like you had said

so friend keep your authority close, I think you and she
have a lot to give each other, and I will call you as often
as I can for drinks and conversation. But know I must move
forward without that authority you have found my feet forever
just kicking the small pebbles of every shared experience

Destinations

Tonight lets drink to that point
where everyone agrees but you
still want to have sex when we get
home oh if that was a destination
on a map I would never stop driving there

Tonight lets laugh at our own mistakes
just this once and I wont be secretly hurt
nursing my wounds like the proud and stubborn
child embarrassment turns me into

Lets turn out the lights and lay like cobras
then like concrete lay like your hand on my
forehead when he left and I couldn’t stop
crying again the proud child who wanted
none of his friends to know

Oh how I once considered my weaknesses that
Instead of gateways to the parts of me I truly needed
to reach my lungs work so poorly when its cold
but I can sing my hands refuse to be delicate
Oh I have embarrassed myself

But who would know when the look on my face
Is always one of surprise surprise that I am living
surprise that you are carrying the same colored robes
as me surprise that when we look towards the future
there is still a place where we make it

So let me mark that on a map instead
a beautiful town off the coast that I can only
reach by walking forward as blindly and as
resolutely as my ancestors had so that when
I finally make it to that town I have at least one story
worth telling my children

elegy for everything

I knew of them but had to see
The videos of snipers in Afghanistan
With guns designed to split men
It made me sick but I had to watch
What looked like rocks on a hill
Turned into bodies into bone
And all so close to independence day

That It could have been fireworks had I not
Searched it out not watched it again
and paused at different moments, as though
If I walked out of the room that man might
Still be alive someplace with the sun on his back
Before war walked to his door and bade him
Pick sides

Oh let us pick the side that always kisses both cheeks
Let us find a side finally that lets the little things go
I watched the buildings fall, I changed my shirt
I watched them fall again, I sighed

Let us live in a country with no memory
So we can forget that we were ever taught to be afraid
And maybe then men wont be split and sent to every corner
maybe then I can understand fifteen boys
Trying their hardest to get to god

Oh we are the children’s crusade all grown up
Useless and loud but ready to fight
I refuse to throw my hand up in agreement
To any of this done to protect me
Let them come and bomb my city bus
I will walk I will walk

Crashing and Burning

2007-01-11T00:37:00.000-06:00

by: stacy

Upon sunrise,
Gravity sleeps,
and I'm left floating.

Sunrays reach out -
with fire fingertips light my skin -
edges burning, flying on flames.

Kind Moon,
silver Friend,
rise and bring me Home.

Suck me into your tides.
Chain me down with your glow.
Soothe me with Gravity,

and the rhythm of waves,
and blood,
and breath.

Keep my down to earth
and don't let me fly so high.

So I may avoid crashing
and burning come sunrise.

The Disease Where You Get Old and Lose Your Memory

2007-01-10T13:27:00.000-06:00

by Bru.

I will watch my children
hug my knees.

And watch them manufacture
families.

The blankness will be
a slow surprise.

Midwest

2007-01-09T16:49:00.000-06:00

by bru

The reflection in the window
looks like mountains.

And for a moment I picture myself somewhere
out there amongst a Western state.

Holding out my right arm for a handshake
to the snow on top of the mountains

or a handshake from the bottom
of a new next door neighbor's closet;

empty except for a few photo albums
and a few letters never sent
and a few words never said
and too few lies never meant.

I am going home in an hour
and will watch flat lands seep past my eyes.

Here in the midwest,
the holes in the streets come out as mountains on the other side.

She's So Heavy

2007-01-09T00:35:00.000-06:00

By Amy Lipman

You are a tree
Little woman, shake a leg!
One-footed, old stump
We sold the other to the grocer
Because you cried for food

Your eyes have turned to breeze
Rock the baby in your head
Keep track of wooden dolls
That big brother shames to bed

Liquor cabinets douse us with
Suburban Living’s freeze
The King is unemployed, and it’s because of you
If you’d just stop growing
He would be a big man

I stopped eating when I set
The alarm off at my sisters’
I’d gone out running in the morning
Before breakfast could infect me
When all the police came
I thought they’d heard about my hunger
And I swore I’d never put anything inside my mouth
That would make me feel dirty
That would make some call me woman

All your pleasantries pollute me
You’re every tropical commercial
For romantic getaways
On impoverished TV screens

Little sister
Wingless angel
Show me how high you jump
Mom and dad say that you’re treasure
But all I’ve touched is junk

January 7

2007-01-07T01:23:00.000-06:00

By Amy Lipman

Boys I Used to Know

You are technical
Wired for a spoiled age
Of nuts and bolts I proclaimed love

May I see your sparks?
Snuff them out in my bed
If you touch me here
I will freeze

Growing Pains

Isn’t there something in your stomach
That makes you want to talk?
A mound of ice
You try to melt
With words reserved for women?

You haven’t eaten since I stopped running
You must be hungry, I must be thin

Men

Some apologize and stay angry in heaven

They used to wake me
Make me listen to nightmares
And expect I'd be up all night long

A Po-Hem for the New Yee-Haw

2007-01-02T14:27:00.000-06:00

by Bru.

When will we stop taking rushed showers
and finally sleep in for once
after dreaming of ways to budget our time;
some of which include
day planners, palm pilots, and time travel machines.

When will we start collecting
the memories that truly matter to us
and forget the memories which defeat our hearts.

And if we do develop a blossoming collection,
will we cherish the new ones
as much as the old ones
or the old ones
as much as the new ones.

We just need to start.
Here is the time we will start.
Point at it with your eyes
and with a spirit that is concise.
Here is the time we can start.

some parts of the fastest runner&other poems

2006-12-27T01:14:00.000-06:00

mikeswanberg

You hide your art because you don’t want
To answer difficult questions oh love that is like me
Hiding my heart because you can not stand the sight
Of blood there is nothing to this the veils we
Place over their eyes wont cover anything

We are protecting our own open mouths
from flies we are watching a storm
on the water twist itself into being
do you doubt for a moment that
we wont make it home dry?
--------------------------------------------

The fastest runner has drawn everything into being
Her god her boy her work
Since she was just a little girl
The runner watches because she cannot touch
The runner laces shoes too tight because she mustn’t

The runner has heard it all before
An albatross dipping her wings in the water
So in a year her love might taste the salt
-------------------------------------------

paris in ruins

Oh when she gets to paris
Oh when the sun shines through
A chain link fence and makes territories
Of her empty hand then she will know
She should have never come

Cold for September in a low top
Smiling against the grain of this experience
Her hands now reaching into her purse
For something she is sure she forgot

There is no one to take a picture of this moment
She tells herself out loud
With All her territories in ruin
as she rubs her hands together for warmth
-----------------------------

I would wear a string of them
Those awful moments when you
Were just a girl all at once like a house
Falling into the ocean

I would climb the groaning stairs
0f memory and give some ghost
what’s left of my affects for you to not
turn for you to not be ruled by that year

But what could change you have painted
The eyes of some love I never knew
And for this I owe you everything
The fastest runner
The broken queen with a tongue that sings
Hallelujah

place whatever book you picked up today
Back on the shelf I know it is cold but stand
Naked in the peach streetlight near your door

be the one who runs the fastest from her worries
and her old life and her shadow
take each step as carefully as brushstrokes
until your feet are song on street

every second step a jump towards the cloudless sky
those destined for flight will find it everywhere
but sleep

---------------------------------------------------

these boys come to pray at the alter
of her skin the intricacy of bone beneath.
a long curve of neck disappearing

what next they ask themselves
covering their hearts for fear she will
break in

I covered my own chest too when her words
Shook me deeply I wasn’t ready
To hit the floor but I did

And with as little grace as a lit cigarette
I Sputtered and danced right there
In front of everyone

What next I asked myself
My heart in my chest like a heart
What next

I'm trying to see past all this

2006-12-26T18:55:00.000-06:00

by Bru

I Am Going to Breathe You Out of My Head

I need new memories
to cover up the old ones.
So I grab my ankles
when I'm sitting down and nervous,
wondering if anybody's staring
at my pointy bones.

I need new memories
to cover up the old ones.
Just for a little while.
Just enough whiles so it doesn' t
hurt so much anymore.

I don't need so many.
I can put some in a box
with ribbon on top
and send them to you.

Would that be all right?
Will you tell me that it would be all right?
If you told me it would be all right,
then I could use the rest of my blue ribbon.
The ribbon I put in my hair so you would
notice it matched my eyes.

I guess that one's going in the box too.

------------

The Writer

Papa read every one of your articles in the newspaper.
He'd flap the pages so they stayed stiff when he read.
He always finished with a smile.
He kept the words in a dark wooden box
on the top shelf in the closet.

When he died last Thursday,
he took all those stories with him.
He'll tell new friends about how you
witnessed doctors performing brain surgery,
and young girls finding their birth mothers.
And how that one firefighter made meatballs
that tasted exactly like your widowed mother's.

Every Christmas he would say
how well you had done this year.
And every Christmas you would
tell him, "Thanks Dad."
You loved him more than your words.
You loved him more than any words.
More than any words.

December 21

2006-12-21T11:20:00.000-06:00

By Amy Lipman

I.

A child talks to God
Through the pipes of a furnace
She says
I will melt the icebergs
If you give me a new body

I will stop Hell's freezing
Turn your world into Earth
Wires snap
But Father's parched
Let him drink your milky thighs

II.

I prayed for solace
And you sent a jackhammer
Outside of my window
On Sabbath mornings
Cut down the tree outside my apartment
What does it matter
I still know the truth

Breathe in my trinity
Cough out the vines
Hugging tight both your hearts
Once your chest
Now a suitcase

You rain on my skin
Licks of strength, mostly charm
To call all the snakes home
We all crawl, scoot along
Slip forward on bellies

Some

2006-12-11T22:12:00.000-06:00

by Chrissy Bruzek aka Bru.

1.

This is Like Sleeping

I remember how I can fall asleep
to the whirls of air around my head.
Cascading through cracks of paint in the walls
and hovering about ears.
It brings thoughts of
regret and reform.
Rejuvenation and restlessness.
Reprimands and relief.
Stacked like unread magazines
in a practitioner's office;
where people go when they think something is wrong
with their heads,
or bodies,
or heads.

Inhaling.
Exhaling dirtied air
after it writhes through thoughts.
It enters the mind pure and fragile.
Leaving, it is disposed, forgotten.
The whirls hang in the air,
unaware of their incipient descent.
And I?
I will not say a word.

2.

In my poetry class at COD we were prompted to write a poem based on our inspirations from this artist that was featured in one of COD's galleries. This particular artist stapled fabric to a wall. And lemme tell you. There were lots of staples. This poem is based on the artist's work.

Millions of Staples
in response to “Wallspace” by Elana Herzog

As many staples as there are
human eyes in the world or
strands of hair twisted around a curl.

As many staples as there are
light bulbs hanging in stagnant offices or
the number of times a child says, “I want this.”

As many staples as there are
doubts in a future bride’s mind or
worrying about how there just isn’t enough time.

As many staples as there are
closed blinds in the homes of people who are shy
or wrinkles around an old person's eyes.

Millions and millions and millions of staples.
Try and count them.
You'll never be able to.
Try and count them.
I dare you.

3.

Owls

I heard owls last night,
singing their hopes that the sun won’t rise,
wondering if that would bring them closer to their demise.

I pictured them in perches against the sky,
holding wine glasses towards the end of their lives.

Hearing owls last night.

It happens maybe once every two years;
with us thinking it’s because of miracles.
So we fall asleep with this mysterious noise in our ears.

We will wake up the next morning,
forgetting it ever happened,
until the next time, in two years or so,

when they decide to raise their wine glasses
towards the end of their lives.
All we’ll give them is thirty seconds
and the slipping of our minds.

December 5

2006-12-05T10:15:00.000-06:00

By Amy Lipman

I

Nurse, my dreams
End on ladders in the dark

Bring bandages
Temples were burned

II.

I called for you to come home
Until my voice turned into the roof

III.

If I didn’t know you
I’d think you were lovely
I’d think you were what children want out of snow
A home and a man to make love to without
Giving up hope or
Removing their clothes

Perfectly Imperfect

2006-11-28T11:42:00.000-06:00

by: Stacy

You look like a calendar
with all your lines and perfect font.
Separating life into neatly packaged
squares and days.

And you drag pens
across your days,
murdering them one by one,
so easy to divide past and present.

Chaos scares you.
But write me in,
in permanent marker,
and don't cross the T in my name.

Let me be your windstorm.
Let me be your disaster.
Let me rain until your lines melt down the page,
and your papers disintegrate.

And you're left with nothing
but you. No more black and white.
So bare. So natural.
So perfectly imperfect.