The bowl made from a tobacco-yellow skull
And the blood of a yearling ox
With seeds of quince floating in it.
Archives for September 2017
Tremendous Vehicles
Mama wants to see something else but you know how blood is, tra-la-la, Mama’s driving us to the country ’cause she thinks we need some staid time, tra-la-la, driving by the rural slaughterhouse, tra-la-la. I’m missing the concrete where I wrote: I love me some concrete; miss the teasing traffic lights: go ahead, stop; tight fit of houses, tessellated apartments, looking in Sra. Guzman’s rooms to tell time from her closer clock.
6:27
When I get time to play, it’s gonna be just you, me, and the Department of Beer.
Amend that: all of the above, all of the above and more beer, and all of the above and the State of Alaska.
Damn right I don’t rightly know what I’m capable of alone and left to my “devices.”
7:13
My name is Shang – or Winter.
So this is peace.
You think, and magically . . . a strawberry appears!
Flotsam vs. the Ulcer Diet
When I began to write, my ideas about narrative were pretty nonexistent. I tried to write prose that was consonant with the work of writers I admired and, later on, tried to extend their techniques when I could. It wasn’t until my first novel was shuttling from trade publisher to trade publisher and later, when the published book was eventually reviewed, that I found out narrative was supposed to be something.
Cancer
The cancer appeared in my living room sometime between eleven and three on a Thursday. I am not sure exactly when, because I suffer from bouts of migraine, and sometimes I miss things, or see things that aren’t there, flashing shapes like the blades of warrior goddesses, the vanes of transcendental windmills. A little airborne sprig could go unnoticed some while.
The Rose of the Name
The editors asked me to write an essay explaining the evolution of Language poetry. I don’t know how to. I offer instead theory, history, an apology, a reading, a quotation, and a reading list: the usual suspects.
Various Readings of an Illegible Postcard
Horny or Harm seems the ordinary home.
Or Having seen the orchard and hives,
I’m satisfied I’ve picked the dark pocket
Related
Dear Father I erred
I left my body to look for you
(its image nestles in the center of a wide valley
in perfect isolation wild as Eden)
The Limit
You see, even suffering decays, what is left
is the dust.
The limit is my breathing body.