I laid out several recentish collections of poetry on my desk, and then formed them into a pile. I picked up the top book, and looked for words in the text that made for an interesting line, and then kept going until I was done with that particular poem. Then I grabbed the second book, shuffling the pile immediately. You don't have to do any of this. I just wanted to make this totally random. I am writing these poems in a notebook which I've called "What I'm Currently Reading". I write each mini-erasure in one color ink pen, switching colors every time I switch books. I haven't finished my poem yet, but here are my first two pages of mined lines/stanzas, and the corresponding text they came from: Logic is ten percent recovered from bone opened to crude reason The brain monsters a residence in the captive ritual of absence imagine your head is god soft fontanels of youth break this smoking hole beyond churchless quiet deliver me past noticed the abandoned bed of shy recognition No wonder These days you sleep in an older language Nothing pretending to be sick but comfortable Behind angry forgiveless power each death: a lost howling There is no ruthless in blame who sang a permission of filling pages I'm barely made of childhoods a form of architecture I found ragged If I scratched forth yesterday's treachery by factually exposing each death defying twitch If I interrupt a word in fullest wiggling tumble feathers made of plastic grace singing clamor and providence fragment unthreatened as a tombstone dug up in sin I am transparent in summer Always speckled weird that tastes superior I wonder if some seaside faded fireflies will calmly mention the sleep they do not believe will arrive Poems excised from:
1. Sam Sax "On Trepenation" (http://www.wintertangerine.com/on-trepanation/) 2. Rachel McKibbens "Deeper Than Dirt" (https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/deeper-dirt) 3. Major Jackson "Dreams Of Permanence" (https://newrepublic.com/article/61818/dreams-permanence) 4. Matthew Zapruder "Poem For Massachusetts" (http://floatingwolfquarterly.com/5/matthew-zapruder/5/poem-for-massachusetts) 6. Rachel McKibbens "Letter From My Brain To My Heart" (http://quondam-dreams.blogspot.com/2013/03/you-have-my-permission-not-to-love-mei.html) 7. Li-Young Lee "Trading For Heaven" (https://books.google.com/books?id=W2WcAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA41&lpg=PA41&dq=li young+lee+trading+for+heaven&source=bl&ots=65nbEzC0w3&sig=h0RkP4aLLzGb0wdWuraPQJIxxYI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiG8aKSmbPYAhUQMd8KHexGAlUQ6AEISTAF#v=onepage&q=li-young%20lee%20trading%20for%20heaven&f=false) 8. William L. Boyd "Backup For A University" 9. Patricia Lockwood "The Hunt For A Newborn Gary" (https://books.google.com/books?id=g7SKDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA20&lpg=PA20&dq=patricia+lockwood+hunt+for+a+newborn+gary&source=bl&ots=fp-3C-zzQS&sig=pjvUfxocm0oC9hY6xB68W2BLIY8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiFg6b7mbPYAhVCZN8KHXThAfgQ6AEILjAB#v=onepage&q=patricia%20lockwood%20hunt%20for%20a%20newborn%20gary&f=false) 10. Danez Smith "Faggot Or When The Front Goes Up" 11. Matthew Zapruder "I Drink Bronze Light" (https://pen.org/i-drink-bronze-light/) 12. Major Jackson "Tour Of The Food Distribution Point, Ifo"
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