Felino A. Soriano, excerpts from Of this Momentum Song

Ho|ma|ge to Decommissioned Sincerity, image by Daniel Y. Harris 

Of this Momentum Song (fifty-eight)

                          __________

                          “Creativity is not simply a property of exceptional people but an exceptional property of all people.”

                                                          —Ron Carter        

                               We memorized

                             what Bass did, what

                                  it said against

                                an hour’s interro-

                                    gating hand.  The

                                                     strum-pause

                              paradigmatic structure:

                                      an act of delicate

                          diligence: a purposeful

                            confirmation, pulled

                             in secrets the body

                                strands in sectioned

                                                pulses

                       pushing from fingers’

                      surname, initiating

                                        birth.  Said

                         of it a smallness of

                        sound.  Heard of it a

                            halved memory

                             located my hand’s

                          touching of italicized

                                            syllables.  To

                     memorize is to act

                   upon the mirror’s

                       constant appearance,

                                           a shine-flash

                   fulcrum of abbreviated

                 sound hears no

                     mention tomorrow

                                     will mis-

                  read.  Bravery is trust

                 in what the tongue

                    unravels through you.  Is

                  an open windowed devoted

                      premise—language hearsay,

               language upended. 

                                  Measuring what

                hears us.  Resting to inward

               all sound, radial,

                 leveled.  Permissive the

               breath is an exalted

                  persuasion.  We’ve

                                    heard it all,

                                             heard what

                                      detonates within

                     the fleeing wing design,

                  momentum of this

                       hour’s fragrant

                                                           representation

                                                

Of this Momentum Song (fifty-nine)

          To where the sky-whispered

                                    music

        hangs in the sudden

            blur we warm with eyed

          rhythm: bond going there

            to the bottom of

         its presence.  Night, here

      is a shade lighter

           than when we walk

                             away

                                 from

       the sway of moving

    gradations.  Symptoms

        heal through revelations—

                            through

     what forms behavior

    in the winged and throated

       message.  Music re-

     moves me, moves me

                      into what

      fixates on my following,

  my pulse’s compulsive

       invitation to rendition

    as in Lightning’s articulate

     quick-stretch

               splay and

 untouched, over-

  extended heat up.  Here

is where we read

 these languages,

                these nuanced

  fathoms of predetermined,

 sequenced speech, configured

   memories of what

  meaning is among

                   sections of

     the tongue’s

  unused revelry. 

__________

    Friction warms

  us during Noon’s midday

 sleeping.  Softened with

    extended play virtue.  Record

   sequence, voice clarity

    of this spring’s vocal

  light plum evidence...

                      we travel

   dexterous in what

     happenstance unravels.

__________

          Partitioned sounds

   segregate nouns’ version

      of what portends the

                            mirror’s

    composite silhouettes.  Two

  are of our conjoined

      ongoing, our

                                              decisive

enunciations of why we

  are here, are ongoing

                      positions of

      what enables and stays

  in the stilled interpretation

    of the music’s upward

                               upward frequency of

meaning

Of this Momentum Song (nearly-sixty)

   Death

         among these bodies

  among the mothers’

    solace

          now silent.  Sent

into a type of hiding:

  each face a con-

 figured motive to

     isolate from Light’s

                       mention of

   involved observation 

—Felino A. Soriano

Emily Vogel, After Stein

Gertrude Stein, image by Irene Koronas

After Stein

Guitar saga, you look, cauldron eye.

Then and never. The impossible construction

of exchange. Angry gondolier,

sighing like the sea, or fast trucking

of thorax, wet sea-foam of voice.

Expletive. Logic illiterate, southern bound

of heart-want. Dead fish sizzle

of slow morning. Sit or pen-stroke,

legs sinewy like ink-stain.

I wanted you like the impact of a skull.

Bash bash or impervious brain bash.

Pink like cheek of infant death or February

rusted wheelbarrow. Ambitious garden.

Long long awaited or nothing passes.

No ants no wasps transpiration of lisp.

Never was but now. I am talking in distances.

The world is a static image

asymmetry of shape and tawny.

Blue like dead mind mind in tranquil fear.

Fear of nothing quelling sun on flat white

while too much writing

about the scales of monsters. It was

touching her shoulder. Man not man.

Idea or whisper your love bust.

It wouldn’t not if me but I would

bird twitch of self, clatter of soul.

Your interesting motion

or gesture mouth rain in ancient cave.

I dreamt that I dreamt that

I smelt the evergreens. Never did see them

as ambulatory mass. Doll breath.

See was giggle or girl

and there was a barring. Good good book

disarray of alphabet but walk on

but don’t walk away. Come back

wrangle of wire, womb-spawn.

—Emily Vogel

David Alpaugh, Four Double-Title Poems

Double Cathexis of Dead Metaphors, image by Daniel Y. Harris

                                                                        

David Alpaugh, Four Double-Title Poems

RAPPEL…

Yourself down the slope of Mount Ever Rest

after being dropped at the summit by a copter.

Who ever heard of an uphill skier? Descent’s

sine qua non—where vulnerable skin’s aloft:

Vici. Vidi. Veni. Conquer first. Arrive later.

Rappel yourself down to the Fat Lady’s chamber,

million pound dowry in hand—as Eddie croons

Oh My Papa from the penthouse of a port in air.

See that bloke, halfway down, gathering samphire

to earn a thin dime? Poor sod just has 1 way to go

CLIMB…

BOOTS…

On the ground—out of fashion with the jet set

who prefer to rise—eagle like—to 30,000 feet;

but remain wildly popular on New York City

streets; where Uggs, Trips, and Birkenstocks

prance—as The Ball descends on 20-whatever.

Boots on the ground have arm-chaired warriors,

eager to see leather slogging through hell again.

Nor does sand object to being battered and abused:

like Liza, as ’enrey ’iggins wolfs down ’is kippers;

turns ’is back on love and cries, “Fetch my bloody”

SLIPPERS…

THOUGHT…

What it did? Took a shit and ran! Dead metaphor,

to be sure, but—so pertinent—I wish it were alive.

I love its frank pragmatism. It always takes care of

business before turning tail on whatever comes to

mind. It’s so not sicklied o’er with the pale cast of

               

Thought. Had Wittenberg taught Hamlet that saw

instead of Stoicism 101, Fencing 222—Claudius

would die at prayer in 3 / 3; and Ophelia, Laertes,

Gertrude, Polonius, the Sweet Prince himself, all

be alive in 5. Swordplay foiled (Olé!) by a rusty

CLICHÉ…

MECHANICAL…

Engineering springs to mind—then Bergson

on Le Rire. What do cockroaches & Malvolio

have in common? Chitin makes us laugh or

howl. Put either on a stage and click-clickety-

clack, they’ll tap-dance the aural essence of

               

Mechanical. That cosmic Malvolio, Satan,

draws laughter from Milton’s God. Dante

ends his Commedia with a universal smile.

Risibility can’t be repressed, even by deity.

Heaven and earth splitting sides—at lack of

SPONTANEITY…

—David Alpaugh

The double-title poem has two five line stanzas.

The first title reads into the poem or states its opening motif.

The first word in the second stanza is italicized and identical to the first title.

At least one word in the last two lines of the second stanza rhymes with the exit title.

Double-titles embody both locality and “spooky action at a distance.”

Their aim is to treat language as both particle and wave.                                                                   

                                                    

Nathan Spoon, Two Poems

                                      Ho|ma|ge to קֹ֖ול דְּמָמָ֥ה דַקָּֽה, image by Daniel Y. Harris 

The Composite Stone

Toeprints in sand. Pages | driven by

the call of the common eider | wear-

ing eclipse plumage, whispering

through strong dives for salt mussels |

no need to forge them furiously o-

pen when swallowing whole will do.

*

And then there are the protective evasions.

Rabbi | what does that mean? The sky is

not at the moment a pastel wonder. The

sky is an endless blue. And the sparks

weeping off my fingertips are breath

and life: caustic chortle of moth liaisons.

*

Image-clusters pelting out as the voice

says choose, says make a judgement.

While crushing the coiled serpent’s head

one ploddingly bruises one’s heel. Deep

verst and shallow | not receiving light

from the firmest fountain above | he said.

*

The book as a portal, as a frame for

the word | open it now. Out of it a

sap lacquer oozes. And a composite

stone leached together turns up later

to glare in glamorous fields, while bolt

knuckles ghost scar shadows | in air

*

When words stand up as if a tree tall

in the ear and expected meanings

(are they meanings?) crinkle away

through peripheries and the bolt jog of

my line dartles bright waters. When

there is no learning | no recollection.

*

Wit, he said, is educated insolence. But

might it not also be | the lover’s tussle?

the tongue’s lingering to savor the flavor-

ful? the hand’s deft working of bee smok-

er bellows? | drowsing the natural instinct to-

ward defensive action, | rewarding the thief.

*

Brick by brick these bricks are manna.

Tell me, as I read | where is the kink?

how was the former maker neglectful?

Or | what has fallen into ill use? ill re-

pair? that I may be a maker too, | twilled

by a burnished boat of flowering dogwood.

*

These are the unself-governed repeti-

tions | of air, the boneless structures of

water | opening | into groaning branches

spread high above small bright green

leaves; these are eyes | hands | in a foy-

er; a context uncontrolled and coherent.

Of Twigs and Twine

From the corner of an eye, at the

terminus of Swedenborg’s nose, you

concede my ellipses as law. What is

the name of that sprig I love, touched

in patterned fashion by buds | Ouro-

boros with nothing outside himself, before

word and breath, himself his own sus-

tenance | transmutatively tangled in kind

Cleopatra’s alembic tresses. What can be

said for you, as your sieve hands grope

after the nothing you are by possession?

*

Enochian as icicles | whose name in-

cludes the fourth letter? And what

language did he extrapolate? Thus was

the world created. Thus is my heel

sore in my shoe. Light tossed from the

linnet’s wings for now glitters upon

breakers. Humankind standing, walking,

sitting, lying down, between earth and

sky, between the hellish and the heav-

enly | while in the backyard, on the roof

of the pig shed, clay figures blind-bake.

*

From the altered space language leaps

the rim. | Tetragrammaton letters tumbling

Genesis two four on. Sentimentally I

would like to believe in historical prog-

ress; however the lamplight thrust before

my eyes dazzles my vision. Cloud, leaf

and pebble (despite appearances) proclaim

a greater otherness. And you, human hiero-

glyph, consider your gematria. Take this

handful of ashes that wormwood and gall

be your lamentations, your violent oblivion |

—Nathan Spoon

Larry Sawyer, Seven Poems

Untitled image by August Highland 

Seven Poems, Larry Sawyer 

Life Script

Born Cuckoo, Technical

I became a Vagabond, Condensed.

She was très Avantgarde

always the Jester.

Our relationship Allegro.

We vacation in Geneva.

Our life Storybook.

Our son Tristan, of course.

How Poetica.

Romance Sonámbulo

“Dull, how I found it dull.
Dull wind. Dull branches.
Pinkman locked in a cage 
and Heisenberg on the mountain.”

With her waist that’s made of shadow

Skyler dreams on the high veranda,

green the stash, and green the dresses,

with eyes of frozen silver.

Green, as I love you, greenly.

Beneath the moon of the Federales

surveillance cams look at her

things she cannot see.

Green, as I love you, greenly.

Great piles of green dollars

come with my husband in the shadows

open the basement and groan.

Holly’s cries floating on the dawn wind

with the rasping of the branches,

and the mountain thieving cat-like

bristles with its sour graves.

Who is coming? And from where?

Skyler waits on the high veranda,

green the flesh and green the tresses,

dreaming of Mike the enforcer.

- ‘Brother-in-law, friend, I want to barter

a plea bargain for your freedom,

sell my story to the Enquirer,

change my desk job for a promotion.

Brother mine, I come here bleeding

from the mountain pass of ambush.’

- ‘If I could, my bald friend,

then maybe we’d strike a bargain,

but I am no longer I,

nor is this house, of mine, mine.’

- ‘Brother-in-law, friend, I want to die now,

in my own bed watching television,

with Marie beside me, if she can be,

I mean if she isn’t busy prying.

Can you see the wound I carry

from my throat to my heart?’

- ‘Three hundred silver badges

your white shirt now carries.

Your blood stinks and oozes,

all around your cue ball head.

But I am no longer I,

nor is this house of mine, mine.’

- ‘Let me then, at least, climb up there,

up towards the high verandas.

Let me climb, let me climb there,

up towards the green verandas.

High verandas of the moonlight,

where I hear the sound of waters.’

Now they climb, Heisenberg and Hank,

up there to the high veranda,

letting fall a trail of blood drops,

letting fall a trail of tears.

On the morning rooftops,

trembling, another Emmy.

A thousand tambourines of bluest glass

wound the light of daybreak.
Green, as I love you, greenly.

Green the wind, and green the money.

They climbed up, the two companions.

In the mouth, their dark plot lines

left there a strange flavor,

of gall, and mint, and sweet-basil.

- ‘Brother, friend! Where is she, tell me,

where is she, your bitter Skyler?

How often, she waited for you!

How often, she would have waited,

cool the face, and bleach blonde the tresses,

on this green veranda!’

Over the next script’s golden surface

Skyler deeply ponders.

Green is the flesh, green the tresses.

Her eyes were frozen silver.

An ice-ray made of moonlight

held her above the water.

How intimate the night became,

as she thought of her husband and his cancer.

DEA agents were beating,

beating, beating on the door frame.

Green, as I love you, greenly.

Green the wind, and green the dollars.

Pinkman locked in a cage
and Heisenberg on the mountain.

Anton Chekhov Short Story Poem

A car runs on desire. Don’t

let them tell you otherwise. When

you have the slightest memory, which

fits into your head like an oyster in

its shell, don’t expect much more.

And the people you meet fit

neatly into two categories. Some are

ripe and some are green as June.

History of Husbands

With a brilliant iris end them

with little ceremony simply end them

with quicksilver moon and rebirth

with a daggered, shaky hand.

Listen, under a canopy of mangoes

the husbands jingle and chill

(in that voluble light

anticipating thrills galore)

but these gloved husbands
reverently dissect another baseball

while an underworld of perfumed wives

waits softly like ferns.

Creation Me This

What primordial question rose

up bubbling once upon a

tribe in molten moth mist, and

now looks up backward through

a microscope to see a labcoated

ape preserved in amethyst?

Russian Poets

—after Aram Saroyan

Russian poets are the greatest of all.

With misaligned smiles or none at all.

Their black sun arrives in a worn basket

staring back at you like an empty pulpit.

If you tell them their horoscope they

convulse, or cry quizzically. It is

their right to be great. Their CT scans

show the most exotic bird.

We others seem grey by comparison

because their black lacks atmosphere, a blanket like space.

Within the infinity of their eyes whorls of green humble the wonders of the ages.

When she rarely smiles, between cigarettes,

the lights of Moscow or St. Petersburg dance like ghosts

and somewhere a ship's horn in the fog sounds lost.

Russian poets aren't gay or sad. The geologic strata of our minds can't comprehend

how their mothers went softly mad.

We bought just the right shirt but can't figure

out why, the Russian poets just know.

They are cosmic sons of bitches.

It Was the Rhythm of the Thing to Be

That described its permanence, like horoscopes

on a Saturday morning in a jello chair. Snopes

couldn't debunk our flirtations at the

laundromat, although we publicly washed separately

the colors of malice and chromatic calm as the

healthcare debate raged on. Even on

weekends while the polis lounged discreetly

sweet how your body calls me

as if the quarters we spent on laundry were

apostrophes signifying possessives.

At that altitude, full of confidences it was

kinky that we were skiing down such vertiginous

moments. Tonight ignoring the reader there who

ferments quietly in glamorous confusion.

—Larry Sawyer

Larry Sawyer curates the Myopic Poetry Series and is the co-director of The Chicago School of Poetics. He also edits www.milkmag.org. Poetry has appeared recently in Boston Review, Verse Daily, and the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day Project.

Anna Cathenka, Breósthord

Meat Hook, image by Irene Koronas

Breósthord

you are meathook to me

you are mistook

mis-taken

you are me too kin, beautiful

you are beautiful to me like meathooks

you are my breast-hoard

caught memories my heart-sword

heart's word you are

my stark mistaken moosecall

mourning mustscore my mist cord you stall

my heart scald you heartskald musk

called me mussed up me stunned

you cunt cold monk

you come you are beautiful to me like cunt

you stole my sunk heart you con

hookstooped whore you are

me hooked my heart sore stink

mountain kin stuck in i am you too kin

morning mystic sin

you are missed, took in, my Yukon

—Anna Cathenka