One of the exciting things about the Aughts Revolution was the growth of internet literary publishing as an enterprise, hand-over-fist and in all directions. You could publish poems in multiple editions over comparatively short increments of time, either online-to-print (as happened to me, from Jacket to the & Now Awards/Best Innovative Writing anthology) or online-to-online anthology, and what have you. From '06 to '07, my poem Twisted Limbs migrated from Andrew Lundwall's Melancholias Tremulous Dreadlocks to Halvard Johnson's Big Bridge "Death" anthology, and was none the worse for it.
Whether off the bathroom counter
or the back of your hand, darling,
your unusual vehemence that
winter night, cob-webbed by
half-real figures, was animated by an
unfair advantage, which stooges threw
at you to keep you loopy as you
died piece-meal. All I had
was incomprehensible fury and a
broken heart- when I hit the floor
at four, you were getting ready
to play fire-starter, opened
the little snifter, curled your finger
twice in the right direction; darkness-
The UK blog Eyewear has adopted a rather tumultuous approach to what stays and what goes, conservation/preservation, over a long period of time. Most of what I had on Eyewear as of '13/'14 (mostly miscellany) has now been erased. Yet, Eyewear is being archived by both the British Library and the Internet Archive Wayback Machine; and this page, from 2008, which contains my poetic apostrophe to Dawn Ananda Hulton, is here completely intact. An apostrophe written at the Bean Cafe on South Street in '05, btw. And published first on Eyewear in December '05, when Eyewear had its original, black-out template.
Way up in the mountains, the air itself
is a drug, & hippies stand in a driveway,
smoking pipes. An inquisitive thirteen-
year-old boy tours a long, winding, high-
ceiling'd bungalow, property of two
antique dealers, stuffed full of junky
trinkets. Their redheaded daughter is
his age, and invites him into her room.
Within a few hours, he remembers nothing.
Thirty years later, a woman stands in
a driveway in Woodstock, New York,
wondering who her parents are, surprised
at what must be the altitude, skewering
her thoughts, cutting into her at strange angles.
Once all the lightweights and half-assed
prima donnas disappear, I'll be the only
one left standing. Endurance matters
more than charisma does. And, no, I'm
not bitter about my non-leading lady
status. It's more easy to be memorable
when people know what to expect from
you. Take Nicholson: we always know
what to expect from Jack. Of course,
I have a lot of technical expertise he
doesn't. I always tell my students, you
don't fill the holes, you don't get the
roles. Well, that's your problem. We
all know you're basically a lightweight
too. The difference between us is
simple: you're in Pittsburgh because
you're stuck, I'm here because I
matter. And all the "hug me, love
me, suck my juices" stuff you use
with your students is cute but it's
tacky. As I get older, Lizzie & Laura
lose their hotness. Give me the raw
girls with the tats. And watch me go.
This recording of the Ode On Psyche was made at a This Charming Lab reading at the Kelly Writers House in Philadelphia on March 27, 2004. Early Aughts odal ecstasy.
(0) Comments: Post a Comment