SELF-PORTRAIT WITH TUMBLING AND LASSO |
Lately my hand is an alligator. One day I had trouble slicing roast beef, and when I looked down at my hand, it was an alligator. I went to the doctor, where I was diagnosed as having an alligator for a hand. That night I took my hand for a walk. I crouched down by a couple of stagnant riverbeds and let him swim around. The moon brought out the yellow of the floating scum. I felt wonderful, like the first fish to crawl up out of the sea. I came home late, covered in mud. My wife refused to undress, feeling the hand's cold, reptilian eyes on her. She didn't know me anymore. We sat in opposite corners of the living room. The upholstery on the armchair was lime green |
recommended by Anis Mojgani
METICULOUS MURDER HANDS Adam Stone This morning there were crows latched into the stumps of my wrists Yesterday a wet noose in the turbulent harbor of my mouth Every day a part of me is briefly familiar but not welcome I had grown accustomed to my sisyphean nose forever trying to roll my eyeballs back into their sockets at work But last tuesday it was a pinball ramp and i couldn't see for days It turned out the noose was more anchor line than implement of death I couldn't say so many things that would have killed me to admit |
FOLKSONG (TRANSLATION)
Judy Halebsky
for throwing something out the window
that was after, right now I'm making your shadow
tracing your movements
catching the sharp edges
the consonants, cross outs, catch phrases, latchkey, house key
wearing its shape into the change purse of my wallet
I'm keeping it in there in case I need to go back
unlock those four summers, the piles of stones, pass my fingers
over the Braille of incomplete sentences
the fields near your house in Connemara
are this lush misty green with mazes of stone walls
four feet high like n outline of city windows
not walls to make rooms or to mark off space
just walls as a place to pile the stones
in Japanese there is one character
that means searching for something
and a different character
that means searching fro something that you lost
I try to imagine farming in those little boxes
with no openings for a plow
no doorways, no spaces for coming or going
he's writing us in 500 word news clips
he's typing us in squares across the field
incredible is the same word in French and English
when you say it in San Francisco it means unbelievably wonderful
when you say it in Quebec City it means unbelievably wicked
letters for me still come to your house
they won't bring me back or let you go
they write out the words: ice floe, glacier, granite
drainpipe, folksong, doorway
encountered with Patricia Smith
Adam Stone
The Arabic word
Ya'aburnee is the desire to die
before the person you love
because you can not imagine life
without them
The literal translation would be
"may you bury me"
"I've been emotionally complex ever since
my first boyfriend killed himself
rather than come out to his family so now I only date people
I imagine will outlive me" is a terrible opening
line for a first date but since I've already agreed to pay for this
overpriced therapy session that we both
assume will end in direct
violation of The Hippocratic Oath you should know
I will never love you as much as imagine I would still love him
if his flaws were less fatal
Tsundoku is a Japanese word
describing the act of purchasing a book then adding it
unread to a pile of other books you haven't got around to reading
I do not collect men I collect
experiences with men If I bring you home I
expect to love you if I find time to get to know you I will not
make that time
Fernweh is a German word for
feeling homesick for a place you've never been to
All these words with no direct
translation are so romantic Komorebi is
Japanese for the way sunlight
filters through trees I don't speak
romance well I speak
English This meandering
pathway to overexplaining
emotions
FOR SOME SLIGHT I CAN'T QUITE RECALL
Ross Gay
that I took the marble of his head
just barely balanced on his reedy neck
and with brute tutelage
of years fighting the neighbor kids
and too the lightning of my father's
stiff palm I leaned the boy's head
full force into the rattly pane of glass
on the school bus and did so with the eagle of justice
screaming in my ear as he always does
for the irate and stupid I made the window sing
and bend and the skinny boy too
whose eyes grew to lakes lit by mortar fire
bleating with his glasses crooked
I'm not an animal walking in place
on the green vinyl seat looking far away
and me watching him and probably almost smiling
at the song and dance I made of the weak
and skinny boy who towering above me
became even smaller and bizarre and birdlike
pinned and beating his wings frantically
against his cage and me probably
almost smiling as is the way of the stupid
and cruel watching the weak and small
and innocent not getting away.
recommended by Lynne Procope
Adam Stone
My first taste of flesh
in a backyard pool
birth metaphor
sexual awakening
and he screamed
to my mother
of my crime
betraying the betrayer
but he didn't move out of range
of my unpredictable mouth
victim blaming
confusion of abuse and love
The next day
his father smoked out
a yellowjacket nest
soothing the predator
to make them prey
explaining the difference
between wasp and bee
classifying the enemy
how a bee's sting kills it
but a wasp lives to sting again
a single shot is self defense
semiautomatic gunfire is attempted murder
When a few weeks later
I stepped in a different yellowjacket nest
new scene
old crime
I ran faster than the boy I bit
yet I was stung and he wasn't
the enemy of my enemy dispenses justice to me
Of course
I've always considered myself
more victim than wasp
identity confusion
martyr complex
presumed my barbed tongue
would kill me if unleashed even once
cross-species appropriation
over-reliance on metaphor
which is why I was a teenager
before I became this sassy cliche
internalized homophobia
we hate what we most fear we'll become
why I grew up privately
biting what I didn't understand
but never publicly stung
ST. AUGUSTINE: IF NO ONE ASKS ME, I KNOW WHAT IT IS. IF I WISH TO EXPLAIN IT TO HIM WHO ASKS ME, I DO NOT KNOW.
(PART TWO OF THE CONATUS IMPROVISATIONS)
Gregory Pardlo
waist up, the rest Corvette, which is French for a sort of girlie
warship, a chimerical twist on the Freudian cockpit. Who
wouldn't want a belly button for a windshield? All us baby
ball turret gunners would submit to mother love as long as we
were allowed the illusion that we commanded the vessel. This
may be why we give them names like Bessy and Lila Mae,
but our cars are more prosthesis than portmanteau. We say
horses that muscle and gun, but idle next to one and hear
its sputtering. Promethean delirium like a hound's
twitching dream of dogfights in biplanes that strafe
the velvet sky with leathery helmets of their little red
barons. We would have swooped the oil fields where pilot
lights burned like Zippos at a rock concert to safeguard our
memories of weekends washing father's Verte, fearing both its
pliant fire and our need to ride in pursuit of some unconscious
joy, certain only that we'd know it if it could ever be found.
recommended by the Pulitzer Prize Committee,
discovered on an expedition at The Harvard Book Store
Adam Stone
The video jukebox has Bruce Springsteen opening for The Backstreet Boys
without apology. This muddy festival of a poolhall seems content to
slur along with Bon Jovi's Livin' On A Prayer as it rolls into Jay-Z and Kanye's
Who Gon Stop Me. There is a refreshing lack of class warfare in this red
velvet nowhere. The bartender retired from smoking at his boyfriend's
request but sneaks outside for the seventy degree colder air and the
snarls of those more committed to cancer. Who better to talk to than those who have
resigned themselves to die faster if it makes them feel slightly less
anxious to be currently alive? Who wants to be alive now? Other than these
carolers of incongruous lyrics, dripping their hop dusted water over these
scotchguarded couches, still crusty with the scheduling manager's
leavings from a server's Christmas vacation request. The bartender
covers their shifts like Febreeze in a house of pot smoking cats. If your
drink isn't free tonight, you must be an ex. When the holiday revelry ends, the
scheduling manager and the ordering manager, who has taste-tested half the
servers himself, return from their island getaways with their Not As
Oblivious As They Wish spouses, and their probable kids, they sit the
bartender down to discuss the discrepancies between the damned
inventory and the stagnant cashflow. They chuckle the word
embezzlement and name check the owners of every bar in the city like
plastic police badges. The bartender, who used to work on the
docks, smiles his loyal following of teeth at them, shows them how he's
downloaded incriminating security footage to his phone and
whispers Who gon' stop me? Who gon' stop me, huh?
BOOK ONE, POEM THREE
Alice Notley
Adam Stone
i
pester the soup until
the clock stops All of my
hunger gazes Through bread
colored glasses I don't use
recipes to start Conversations with
strangers i pinch
humor until it is enough
Sodium Eye the caramel of my
tongue It is never enough Don't
panic the smile The oven is too
want The Weather is a jerk you say
how it equatored my whole
vacation And today
finally back to the job i hate
The Weather poles like there is no sun
like the atmosphere without departing words
quit for space I will not
appalachia to work today Someone
fetch me My car is a color i can
word but not paint Too many
stars between
the last time we touched I have nothing to
drive him with or away Should i
glove up his middlest
finger with a glare Poofball
smile his You
are so dairy this morning He is
so morning this ice cap The door is
an occupation i would not see
him out of
What Is This All About?
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