SHARKFORUM: OPINION WITH TEETH

Poetry of the Week: "J. Beer 1969-1969," "Sonnets to Morpheus [Listen I want to tell you about Trinity.]" and "Sonnets to Morpheus ["This line is tapped, so I must be brief."] by John Beer

2010-08-12T12:59:32Z

John Beer's first book, The Waste Land and Other Poems, was published by Canarium Books in April 2010. His work has appeared in Verse, The Brooklyn Rail, Denver Quarterly, Seven Corners, and elsewhere.

J. BEER 1969-1969

It was when they determined that I had been born dead
That my life became easier to understand. For a long time,
I wondered why rooms felt colder when I entered them,
Why nothing I said seemed to stick in anyone's ear,
Frankly, why I never had any money. I wondered
Why the cities I walked through drifted into cloud
Even as I admired their architecture, as I pointed out
The cornerstones marked "1820," "1950." The only songs
I ever loved were filled with scratch, dispatches from
]]> I spent my life in hotels: some looked like mansions,
Some more like trailer parks, or pathways toward
A future I tried to point to, but how could I point,
With nothing but a hand no hand ever matched,
With fingers that melted into words that no one read.

I rehearsed names that others taught me: Caravaggio,
Robert Brandom, Judith, Amber, Emmanuelle Cat.
I got hungry the way only the dead get hungry,
The hunger that launches a thousand dirty wars,
But I never took part in the wars, because no one lets
A dead man into their covert discussions.
So I drifted from loft to cellar, ageless like a ghost,
And America became my compass, and Europe became
The way that dead folks talk, in short, who cares,
There's nothing to say because nobody listens,
There's no radio for the dead and the pillows seem

Like sand. Let me explain: when you're alive,
As I understand it, pillows cushion the head, the way
A lover might soothe the heart. The way it works for me,
In contrast, is everything is sand. Beds are sand,
The women I profess to love are sand, the sound of music
In the darkest night is sand, and whatever I have to say
Is sand. This is not, for example, a political poem,
Because the dead have no politics. They might have
A hunger, but nothing you've ever known
Could begin to assuage it.

SONNETS TO MORPHEUS

Listen I want to tell you about Trinity.
I spent last night in a graveyard. I could hear
grass grow like hair. My love held back my kit.
I woke up bald. Edgar Poe
wrote a story that predicted it: "Lenore."
The dead return and we don't recognize them.
I woke up with wounds on my chest and shoulders.
"And then I saw the fields with my own eyes."

Listen, I'm trying to warn you about milk.
You're not the only customer. I began
to write my letter on the train to winter,
the last long winter train. Now I know
that I was born to sail. It's 5:15,
reportedly. The grass grew thick and hot.

SONNETS TO MORPHEUS

"This line is tapped, so I must be brief."
I've already said more than I was supposed to,
spilled words like bullets onto rainy pavement,
coughed them up like milk. So now they're yours.
Don't forget to thank the little dog
who catches your eye when you suddenly look up:
you've had enough of reading about how things are,
decide you want to have a look for yourself.

But don't expect him to thank you in return.
He wanders off past the vegetable stands. The air
gets thick and hot. Can you really
breathe yourself into existence, touch the world,
and still leave behind a path for another to see?
Nobody told you to come here. There's nobody here.

Poetry of the Week: "Barn Burning, An Eclogue," "Barn Burned, Then" and "They Sold The Calf. That Fall" by Michelle Taransky

2010-08-01T11:32:24Z

Michelle Taransky lives in Philadelphia, where she works at Kelly Writers House, is Reviews Editor for Jacket2, and teaches writing at The University of Pennsylvania and Temple University. With her father, architect Richard Taransky, she is the coauthor of The Plans Caution (QUEUE 2007), as well as the author of Barn Burned, Then, selected by Marjorie Welish for the 2008 Omnidawn Poetry Prize (Omnidawn, 2009). Her poems have appeared in publications including Denver Quarterly, VOLT, How2 and New American Writing.

BARN BURNING, AN ECLOGUE

For those who say it is enough
Of the farmstead, not falling

Rain come last to bed and tearing
White sheets into small armies of animals

Where this keeper's concern meets
Old thrasher in the shed

Its keyhole patterned
After a breast and the calling

]]> Filled with response

A response then

Respond, respond with a weed to
The flames stopped to

Track a doe

I don't know how
Barn is like grave

Matter and matters
Like a silo missing its torso the
Barn's reading rooms

Forgetting-weeds mirror what
Was kept in the safe, same as others
Have divorced a few apple trees with no ideas

About red
As if it has two mother

Languages— they are the bad pruners
The unhorse
Crediting the no

BARN BURNED, THEN

The bank,
A teller,
The same figures'

Capacity to chorus, as if
Light was beaten for bread

A confessed wage
Through another

Chance-flood

Broken-necked flicker

Gold pawed labyrinth

Flints of past thresher

Taking brother who is best
At hiding

Writing a statement

To take the barn's place

THEY SOLD THE CALF. THAT FALL

The bank took over. What had been
the farm. The particular

that is described in entry 8. By that year
he was a member. Planning hearings,

writing: museums are translations of field
activities. Letters in response to letters

from architects in alphabetical sequence from
"abaca" to "zinnia." Paid to the family. To raise

native grasses, forests, and appropriate means
for measure. Boundaries should be

inspected. General views included. And the originals,
taken by farmers, working closely with duststorms, shelter,

emergencies arranged in the National Portrait Gallery
by year. By which progress could be the work of the weather

that is labeled "Domestic," indexed by name of the live-
stock responsible for making sugar from cornstalks.

Wild flowers are not documented. In the diseases of the general
the construction is not to be confused with the center, copies of loans

sent after this March are missing. Droughts vary in content. Crops
matter. Each disturbance is responsible. A farmer bearing

his name. On the farm radio program
was the farm. Responsible for planting fall

crops distributed as places. Estimating a fever
to show the extent of the overprinted threats. To form

the plan for breeding grounds. In the home
the home was slaughtered, was divided in two parts:

an experimental laboratory and a speech
made daily. The chronological copies of breakdowns. It describes

many bodies
carried on. This is almost an act. A photograph of prisoners

of war picking peaches.

Poetry of the Week: "If You See It What Is It You See," "On Love Poems," "A Perfect Emergency" by Suzanne Buffam

2010-07-27T21:45:11Z

Suzanne Buffam's first book, Past Imperfect, was published in 2005 by House of Anansi Press. The Irrationalist, her second book, was published in the U.S. by Canarium Books and in Canada by House of Anansi Press in April 2010. She's the recipient of the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and the CBC Literary Award for Poetry, and her poems have appeared in Boston Review, A Public Space, Poetry, and many other journals. She lives in Chicago.

IF YOU SEE IT WHAT IS IT YOU SEE

I didn't look at the fire.
I looked into it.

I saw a shelf of books
Crash down and bury me

Centuries deep in red leather.
I saw a statue in a park

]]> And a ship called Everything

Sink down on rusted wings.
Ten thousand triangles collapsed

Into a point
And the point was this.

I cannot tell you what I saw.
My catastrophe was sweet

And nothing like yours
Although we may sip

From the same
Broken cup all afternoon.

ON LOVE POEMS

A friend says relationships
Are only good for two poems:
One at the beginning
And one at the end.

Stevens says better to peddle
Pineapples than write love poems
Unless you happen to be
In love, that is.

When your lover shows up
With a basket of fruit
Thank him in advance
For the poem you are about to receive.

A PERFECT EMERGENCY

It was already aflame when I spotted it there in the parking lot.

Kids were standing around throwing sticks at it, kicking dirt in its face.

All I could do was look on in pity as it thrashed at the air like a tiny, vengeful sun.

But like a tiny, vengeful sun, the burning bush didn't want pity. When I approached with my hands in my pockets, it shook out its golden locks and sang in a language I could see.

I am the Unburnt Bush! it cried. I am Burning but Flourishing! I am Swallowed but I am not consumed!

In my head was a page from a musty old book with its useless list of Latin verbs. Before me I could see all the lives I might have lived, lined up and leaping through the same burning gate.

It was a perfect emergency. The only thing worth saving was the blaze.

10 Places You Might Not Want To Visit

2010-07-27T19:58:44Z

Visit the list here

Poetry of the Week: "Epithalamium," "Abusing Another for the Sake of" and "Materniliad" by Brian Henry

2010-07-13T11:10:40Z

Brian Henry is the author of six books of poetry—Astronaut (published in the U.S. and England, where it was short-listed for the Forward Prize, and also published in Slovenia in translation), American Incident, Graft, Quarantine (winner of the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America), The Stripping Point, and Wings Without Birds (Salt Publishing, 2010). His seventh book Lessness is forthcoming from Ahsahta Press in 2011. His poetry has been collected in many anthologies and has been translated into Croatian, Polish, Russian, Serbian, and Slovenian. He has co-edited Verse since 1995, and he co-edited The Verse Book of Interviews. His translation of the Slovenian poet Tomaž Šalamun's Woods and Chalices appeared from Harcourt in 2008, and his translation of Aleš Šteger's The Book of Things is forthcoming from BOA Editions.

EPITHALALIUM

What was I
but a cell in motion

the occasional collision

river           gutter            culvert

window through which I see you

the end-
point

]]> at the horizon

to which the I in me
moved

as if there were still there

as if an I
is what I thought
                                to find there

~

And what was found there
when to you this I cleaved

(by I I mean a we)

(by we we mean a doubling
                              —no thing halved)

When I say I
we are left to say it

When I see I
there are two there

ABUSING ANOTHER FOR THE SAKE OF

Nothing gets in the way
of the fleas, they're starving
in the vacuum.
Who can blame them for leaping
all at once onto my babies
in the sunroom.
No eating kids
is what I hear lately. No kicking.
No biting. Daddy's vagina hurts,
Miss Donna eats dirt.
I like to touch the where
I bite, to see the pain
on the skin. It's why
my mouth returns again.
No blood yet.
Poor tongue,
you've managed so little
in the past four months.
I've touched you
to grass and sand
but prefer the gravel
that pools at the curb.
I eat the curb song,
can taste the riverbed
it came from, the tractor
that scooped it into a good.
O sun, muscle your way
past the dog's barking wall.
Yellow tractor, yellow sun, yellow dog.

MATERNILIAD

Your polite skin stretches aisle-
ward, immediate horizon,
would turn if there were
a bearing.
                The machines work
through the night, cleaning
the air and watering the air.
The glass of ice holds its straw,
the pills in place beside the glass.
Winter digested, the furnace
will not click on, suck moisture.
"The prison of your tongue
within the prison of your sleep
watered me with a beautiful
easy . . . " a sleeptalking thought.
The house splits as it settles,
the carpet shrinks toward
the center. The yard shrinks
toward the center.
                            —A wasp
in the house clunking against
the walls until it, too shrinks
toward the center. That is where
the broom finds it. The bristles.
Its torn body dragged through
the streets of the house then back
to the center. Nothing of substance
remains.

Poetry of the Week: "The Memory Skin," "Dressing the Way" and "From the Girl Becomes" by Amy King

2010-07-05T17:22:37Z

Amy King's most recent book is Slaves to Do These Things (Blazevox), and forthcoming, I Want to Make You Safe (Litmus Press). She is currently preparing a book of interviews with the poet Ron Padgett. She also teaches English and Creative Writing at SUNY Nassau Community College and co-edits the site, Poets for Living Waters. With Ana Bozicevic, King co-curates the Brooklyn-based reading series, The Stain of Poetry.

THE MEMORY SKIN

I am opposite marriage.
My dinner cake is made
guerrilla style. Getting in
their faces sly,
shotgun raw, we spoke.
You held me well until
you closed with
the intellectual integrity
of a fucked-up life. To give
in to the grace
of a sudden condition,
that is the primacy of thought.

]]> with the blue eye of a mother,
forward swimming
the foreign gravity of a father,
deadpan cigar smoke,
rehashed cement sounds,
turning water.
Take up my flour,
soak my skin
with the limbs of vermouth:
the ear wouldn't
hear any louder
the cries of Platonic plans
cave-bound. I too am cavernous,
ready to swallow the first
sign of finger to point
or hubris as needle.

Stitch me clean, remove
the fist from your saddle
and steer me
with the sweet sweat
of birth. That is,
in the scent that
there is no light, I
can see every
artificial flame:
people in Paris
and Zanzibar cutting
garlic in half
for rainbow
trout caught by the poles
of their own hands,
arms
that stretch through static
memories not yet their own,
but that of the imperialist
retching
to make what last
was never theirs
to behold.
Now scoop her here,
listen to the sea's shell
repeat a fish-like
backbone
breaking, your teeth
at the innards of life.

DRESSING THE WAY

It's easier to wear
what your mother told you
would be the death
of your tiny days
should you not grant her
complete immortality
with your smaller soul power,
barefoot
for what it betrays:
the torso hot with mistaken
escapes. You watched
ants carry her
bloody puddles off,
back to summer cabins and
the queen's hut bound
by a loose dirt hill.
You longed to reduce this world
to the exact moment
fleshy bits became too
large for an ant-size meal.
You are also marrow
coordinates
I hold in a blurring envelope,
every object in purpose
stolen by those
less vested
with the window of plenty,
the permission of superior
phonemes
that crawl
with a mutated ear, not
superior
into the past,
only asking we see
a sideways path
that keeps us safe and criminal.

FROM THE GIRL BECOMES

The sense that longs
for the sense behind

To believe
a scarecrow's resurrection,

You must, at first, behold the thing
alive.

Follow rusted iron lattice
through a humid English garden—

A dire pond, burgeoning roses,
a hazy woman, my loosened sleeves,
a learning to, how she.

Just as
seashell cried into seashell's ear,

On the greening limbs of
petals' breath, a sleep on tree-ring blanket.

This crawl space narrows
as the child emerges

Ever more fractal,
ever more motion.

From "From the Girl Becomes" - "seashell cried into seashell's ear." "No Dove" by Günter Grass.

Chicago Art Images: January - June 2010

2010-07-05T01:44:31Z

Noelle Mason @ Thomas Robertello:

Above: LAN Party, in the exhibition,
Bad Boys
April 9 - June 5, 2010
Thomas Robertello Gallery
939 West Randolph Street
Chicago, IL 60607
www.thomasrobertello.com

Previously:
What makes a man start fires?
Noelle Mason @ Antena Gallery, 2008
www.antenapilsen.com/exhibit01.html
And:
X-ray image of ivory buddha in transit from Hong Kong to Chicago
Noelle Mason @ Alogon Gallery, 2008
alogongallery.com/artwork/313912_Noelle_Mason.html
www.newcitychicago.com/chicago/7537.html

Tony Fitzpatrick (candid) @ Studio 1020:

Roger Hiorns @ Art Institute of Chicago:

Above: Untitled (Alliance)
Two Pratt and Whitney TF33 P9 engines from Boeing EC135 Looking Glass long-range surveillance planes.
May 1-September 19, 2010
Monroe Street entrance of the Modern Wing; Third Floor; Bluhm Family Terrace. Major funding by Boeing. Curated by the Art Institute of Chicago's Frances and Thomas Dittmer Chair and Curator of Contemporary Art: James Rondeau.
http://art.newcity.com/2010/05/10/review-roger-hiornsart-institute-of-chicago
http://blog.artic.edu/blog/2010/06/16/roger-hiorns-in-conversation
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/artnow/rogerhiorns/default.shtm]]>

Andrea Myers in Ps & Qs @ Hyde Park Art Center:

Above: Soft Concentrics, in the group show,
Ps & Qs , at the Hyde Park Art Center
Featuring: Todd Chilton, Pete Fagundo, Carrie Gundersdorf, Katy Heinlein, Jessica Labatte, Andrea Myers and Tessa Windt.
Curated by Jeff Ward and Shannon Stratton
andreamyersartist.com
www.saic.edu/gallery/saic_profile

Jamie Shovlin in Partisan @ Art Chicago:

Above: Jamie Shovlin foreground, in vitrine; Alec Soth background, defocused.
Partisan
Rachel Furnari and Karsten Lund curate: Brian Alfred, Josh Azzarella, Marc Brotherton, Chris Crites, Kota Ezawa, Deanna Lawson, Jessica Labatte, Jennifer Levonian, Mads Lynnerup, Oscar Munoz, Tetsuya Noda, Pilar Olaverri, Troy Richards, Paul Shambroom, Jamie Shovlin, Alec Soth, Klaus Verscheure
www.artchicago.com

Carson Fox @ Linda Warren:

Cold Comfort
May 14th - June 19th, 2010
Tues-Sat, 11-5 PM
1052 W Fulton Market
Chicago, IL 60607
www.lindawarrengallery.com
www.carsonfox.com

Jason Middlebrook @ Monique Meloche:

Less
May 22 - July 31, 2010
Tues-Sat ,11-6pm
2154 W. Division
Chicago, IL 60622
moniquemeloche.com
jasonmiddlebrook.com
Jason Middlebrook @ MCA in Calder & Kids:
www.artletter.com/html/artletter_6_25_10.html

Renate Wolff @ Devening Projects:

Skies in Between
May 23-July 8, 2010
Saturdays 12 - 6 pm
(and by appointment)
3039 West Carroll
Chicago, IL 60612
deveningprojects.com
renatewolff.de

Jessica Labatte @ Golden:

April 30-June 12, 2010
816 W. Newport
Chicago, IL 60657
Thurs/Fri/Sat, 1 - 6pm
Or by appointment:
Call Jacob @ 773-209-8889
golden-gallery.org/home.html
jessicalabatte.com

Olof Olsson, The Suburban @ Next, Art Chicago:

125 North Harvey Avenue
Oak Park, Illinois 60302
www.thesuburban.org

Garth Weiser @ The Suburban:

125 North Harvey Avenue
Oak Park, Illinois 60302
www.thesuburban.org
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garth_Weiser
kavigupta.com/artist/garthweiser

Room-A-Loom @ Swimming Pool Project Space:

January 24th to February 21st 2010
2858 W. Montrose, Chicago, IL 60618
Sundays 1 - 5pm, and by appointment
"Initiated by Julia Sherman, Room-A-Loom is a site-specific weaving-experiment that considers the architecture of the gallery. The loom uses the gallery's walls [...] spans the width and breadth of the space [...] there is no place to enter without becoming part of the planar field of yarn and donated materials. Throughout the duration of the show [...] an open invitation for anyone to bring his/her own materials and learn to weave."
www.swimmingpoolprojectspace.com

Mike Nourse & Marta Sasinowska @ Salvage One:

Above: Peace, the recently deceased Chris Hales, a/k/a DJ Tapedek
Looking For: New Works
March 21, 2010
1840 West Hubbard
www.salvageone.com
mikenourse.com
http://gapersblock.com/ac/2010/03/23/mike-nourse-and-marta-sasinowskas-looking-for-new-works-at-salvage-one
http://art.newcity.com/2010/03/22/lost-and-found-looking-for-the-art-of-the-matter-in-the-unemployment-rate

Kimberly Baker @ Ben Russell Gallery:

Blueness
March 20 - April 17, 2010
1716 S. Morgan, #2F

Joseph Noderer @ Linda Warren:

Twelve Hundred Miles Down the Street
March 5th - April 3rd, 2010
1052 W Fulton Market
Chicago, IL 60607
Tues-Sat, 11-5 PM
www.lindawarrengallery.com
www.josephnoderer.com

Matt Saunders @ The Renaissance Society:

Parallel Plot
February 28 - April 11, 2010
5811 S. Ellis Avenue
Bergman Gallery, Cobb Hall 418
Chicago, Illinois 60637
Tues - Fri, 10 - 5 PM
Sat - Sun, 12 - 5 PM
Closed Mondays
"...a new multichannel animated film, which moves through a cycle of scenes and notations. A new series of photographs made from drawn and painted 'negatives' comprises a kind of ersatz portrait gallery, flush with a diverse cast of characters--from workers biking through the streets of Berlin to an early Los Alamos scientist, from a largely forgotten East German actress to the highest paid British television actor of the '60s"
www.renaissancesociety.org

Pamela Fraser @ Golden Gallery:

February 26th - March 27th
816 W Newport
Chicago, IL 60657
golden-gallery.org/home.html
http://art.newcity.com/2010/02/22/portrait-of-the-artist-pamela-fraser
pamelafraserstudio.com

Unconditional Love @ Antena:

Artists: Jessica Westbrook and Adam Trowbridge
1765 S. Laflin St.
Chicago IL 60608
antenapilsen (at) gmail.com
(773) 257-3534
Hours: by appointment only
www.antenapilsen.com
www.jessicawestbrook.com
www.atrowbri.com

Sol LeWitt @ Rhona Hoffman:

April 9 - May 15, 2010
118 N. Peoria
Chicago IL
www.rhoffmangallery.com
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sol_LeWitt

Nathaniel Robinson @ Devening Projects:

De Facto
April 11- May 18, 2010
3039 W Carroll Ave
www.deveningprojects.com
nathaniel-robinson.com/cv.html
http://giftshopprojectspace.com/section/38768_Nathaniel_Robinson.html

John Hartley @ antena:

May 14 -June 12, 2010
1765 S. Laflin St.
Chicago IL 60608
antenapilsen (at) gmail.com
(773) 257-3534
Hours: by appointment only
www.antenapilsen.com
www.johnhartley.net

David Corbett @ 65Grand:

65Grand: The First Five Years, group show
www.65grand.com
+ + +
Art Break: City Evicts Gallery from Apartment
"Bill Gross has been given thirty days to cease and desist gallery operations in his apartment, on the 1300 block of West Grand Avenue. Named 65Grand after the bus that passes below his third story window..." (continued)
http://art.newcity.com/2010/05/10/art-break-city-evicts-gallery-from-apartment

Lora Fosberg @ Linda Warren:

You Can't Fall Off The Floor
June 25 - August 21, 2010
Tues-Sat, 11-5 PM
1052 West Fulton Market
Chicago, IL 60607-1207
www.lindawarrengallery.com
lorafosberg.com

Erik Wenzel @ DOVA Temporary:

New 'N' Lonelier Laze
June 25 - July 24, 2010
Wed-Sat, 12-5 PM
5228 South Harper Avenue
Chicago, Illinois 60615
artoridiocy.blogspot.com
dova.uchicago.edu/dova_temp.html
Exhibition facilitated by the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Chicago.

Sarah Kretchmer (Candid):

www.sarahkretchmer.com
www.artslant.com/chi/events/show/98252-paperpaint

Scott Ramon @ Swimming Pool Project Space:

Swimming Pool Project Space
2858 W. Montrose, Chicago, IL 60618
Sundays, 1 to 5pm,
Tuesdays from 11am to 5pm
and by appointment
www.swimmingpoolprojectspace.com

Scott Nadeau @ Studio 1020:

www.thedarkwaterpress.com

Elvia Rodriguez-Ochoa in Sangre, Sudor y Papeles: Artists examine the immigration issue:

Featuring: Saul Aguirre, Adriana Baltazar, Miguel Cortez, Salvador Jiménez-Flores, Jaime Mendoza, Jenny Priego, Elvia Rodriguez-Ochoa
June 25 - July 24, 2010
1765 S. Laflin St.
Chicago IL 60608
Hours: by appointment only
www.antenapilsen.com

Claire Pentecost @ threewalls:

VictoryLand...you, I shall answer your letter
April 23 - May 22, 2010
119 n. peoria #2d
chicago, il 60607
312.432.3972
tuesday to saturday, 11am-5pm
www.three-walls.org
www.clairepentecost.org/index.htm

Back of the Yards

2010-07-01T18:25:32Z

John Gaetano at his Apartment in Back of the Yards, Chicago, 2010

Poetry of the Week: "Riding in Cars with Monsters," "What Happened in the Pool" and "Under the Evergreens" by Marisa Crawford

2010-06-28T16:17:53Z

Marisa Crawford is the author of The Haunted House, winner of the Gatewood Prize for Poetry, and published by Switchback Books. She grew up in New York and in Connecticut, and graduated from the University of Massachusetts, where she studied Creative Writing and Women's Studies. She received her MFA from San Francisco State University and lives in San Francisco where she works as a retail copywriter and sometimes teaches high school students about poetry & feminism. Some of her poems have appeared in Action, Yes, Shampoo, and Invisible Ear.

RIDING IN CARS WITH MONSTERS

I got hit with the ugly stick, and stuff. Woke up in a pool of monster sweat. The monster finds love so easily. The monster finds real love everywhere. Under rocks and buried in sand, behind trees, tangled in seaweed, love, love, love.
The monster has
a) enormous hearts for eyes
b) a locket with my picture in it
c) a fever

]]>
I'll create steps for the monster. I'll create stairs. A pond with skipping stones. Monstrous how the CD skips at my favorite part in the song. I know you, I listen and I hear your claws, paws, fangs. If this is music, it's got a scar running down its middle. If this is music, it's got pull like a black hole.

The monster stole all my pajamas. If I could I would. The monster slammed on the brakes. Or I did, either way. I cracked open my fortune cookie. I walked outside. There was some kind of natural phenomenon happening in the sky.

WHAT HAPPENED IN THE POOL

I could open my eyes under water, a formation of girls like a flower, lips petal pink. Loves me, loves me not, will never forget me, dives like a Neapolitan ice cream cup. Ashley the Acrobat, Tracy the Tongue Depressor, Candice the Carnival Apple. Tell me there's no I in team. There's no hole in the ozone, no scream in ice cream. I could see everything through your bathing suit, everything. Guilt as solitary, a kickboard, a mishap, a sky. I laid my body on top of the water, floating. The sky is made of Lycra. Chocolate-syrup solar eclipse, maraschino cherry, hole in the ozone. I could touch the bottom. I could lick the spoon.

UNDER THE EVERGREENS

You were talking to me about the prominent role that female friendship played in Emily Dickinson's poems, but it was in a message on my answering machine and while I was listening I accidentally deleted the message. And this is a prequel.

You called me up and started talking in a fake voice about Emily Dickinson's life and her poetry, militant visions for mutual reciprocity/ he kissed me. How she sent valentines from the top of the stairs. I knew it was you the whole time/ didn't/ called you back and the phone just kept on ringing and ringing I guess because you weren't home.

I called your cell phone but it went straight to voicemail and your outgoing message said things can't be the way they were when we were younger, that the attic is filling up with water and damned if you are going to lay down and die like that.

You read into the phone the Emily Dickinson poem that's like "Walk on the Ocean" by Toad the Wet Sprocket. Like the hollow feeling after the sleepover/ impossible. We'd put on mascara and listen to music to try to make ourselves cry.

It was April Fool's Day when he asked me to marry. I called you up to tell you and you said that Emily Dickinson's poetry approaches the theme of marriage in a complex and elliptical and radical manner, and then static. I meant to seal the envelope and send the letter. I meant to clutch the poison but instead I swallowed the ring.

Quicky Art History Video

2010-06-27T15:04:54Z

A 37-second video of the entire history of art from Prehistoric through now (English and German captions, no speaking). From a speech/performance I give where I teach the entire history of art in an hour and a half.
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Poetry of the Week: "I was lit as if from the inside," "The Cello," and "The Musician Considers Modernity and He Sighs" by Kristina Marie Darling

2010-06-21T13:22:57Z

Kristina Marie Darling is a graduate of Washington University, where she received both an undergraduate degree in English and a master's degree in American Culture Studies. Eight chapbooks of her work have been published, among them Fevers and Clocks (March Street Press, 2006), The Traffic in Women (Dancing Girl Press, 2006), and Night Music (BlazeVox Books, 2008). Her full-length collection Night Songs was released by Gold Wake Press, 2010.

"I WAS LIT AS IF FROM THE INSIDE"

But the room stayed dark. I'd noticed the cellist's luminous cufflinks, the uncanny whiteness of his shirt. As the concert ended, I heard nothing but his music, & the cold night pulled each silver pin from her hair. That was when the curtain fell. The audience could only murmur before its folds of dusty velvet. Outside, the evening had been opened like a black umbrella.

]]> THE CELLO

On nights like this I would play my cello, the snow like tinfoil under a phosphorescent moon. Before I knew it, you were there, with your handkerchiefs and your melancholia. The light on my windowpane, a struck match all aglow. We would take turns cradling the instrument's long neck, its cavernous belly, watching the cold metal strings shiver and hum. After each chord you'd swallow glittering nerve tablets, whispering: Be still. Be. Still. Its sonorous voice faded with each blue pill. And when the snow eddied and slushed, the cello safe in its towering white box, I took up sainthood to pass the time. On winter mornings my teeth still ache.

THE MUSICIAN CONSIDERS MODERNITY AND HE SIGHS

The city has turned into a mechanical city, he observes one morning, a tiny ballerina spinning inside a glistening box. Beyond the window, his wife seems adrift under the trellis's dank foliage, her steps measured with a strange precision. And even the chain on his wristwatch rattles with diminutive elegy. But when the moon rises that evening, every radio fades, and the streetcars vanish like wooden birds retreating into a great antique clock. The discotheque holds its breath in deference.

At the Skylark

2010-06-18T22:08:27Z

Sam in the Basement of the Skylark, Pilsen, Chicago, 2010

With Rumored Manhunt for Wikileaks Founder and Arrest of Alleged Leaker of Video Showing Iraq Killings, Obama Admin Escalates Crackdown on Whistleblowers of Classified Information.

2010-06-17T23:13:27Z

Pentagon investigators are reportedly still searching for Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange, who helped release a classified US military video showing a US helicopter gunship indiscriminately firing on Iraqi civilians. The US military recently arrested Army Specialist Bradley Manning, who may have passed on the video to Wikileaks. Manning's arrest and the hunt for Assange have put the spotlight on the Obama administration's campaign against whistleblowers and leakers of classified information. We speak to Daniel Ellsberg, who's leaking of the Pentagon Papers has made him perhaps the nation's most famous whistleblower; Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a member of the Icelandic Parliament who has collaborated with Wikileaks and drafted a new Icelandic law protecting investigative journalists; and Glenn Greenwald, political and legal blogger for Salon.com.

Visit Democracy Now to read transcript.

Basel Art Fair Pre-Opening LIVE Sharkforum Report

2010-06-16T11:44:12Z

Same ole same ole. Ho hum.

]]> Really. That's it. Consensus top o' the pops art. Big money being worshiped. Few ideas. Feined excitement. Ass-kissing. People looking over shoulders while pretending to kiss to see who else made it into the Pre-Opening (years ago openly called the "VIP" opening), when they try to keep artists out and only have collectors, gallerists and curators free to roam unbothered by the mere makers of the product.

Poetry of the Week: "Motherfixer," "Imbibe the Cranes Electric" and "Aphid Sundry" by Lina Ramona Vitkauskus

2010-06-15T14:52:28Z

Lina ramona Vitkauskas has authored Shooting Dead Films with Poets (Fractal Edge Press), Failed Star Spawns Planet/Star (dancing girl press), and THE RANGE OF YOUR AMAZING NOTHING (Ravenna Press). She is the 2009 recipient of The Poetry Center of Chicago's 15th Annual Juried Reading Award, judged by Brenda Hillman, and was nominated by Another Chicago Magazine for an Illinois Arts Council Award. She has been featured on Chicago Public Radio and her work has appeared in The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century (Cracked Slab Books, 2007), The Prague Literary Review, Van Gogh's Ear (Paris), The Chicago Review, ACM, Aufgabe, Drunken Boat, and many others.

MOTHERFIXER

To dusky chalk legs,
to orgasms under trenchcoats,
to the execution of lively girls,
to the return of the green native:
let go of my hair.

To black holes
which are not portable,
to Ariadne's dismantling,
to my seahorse hair lifting
fondly the color of your lining.

I am your pasture girl,
your pleasure brigade,
]]> Gestapo. I have honed hollers
and branded the freezing coals
to your chests:

so show me your motherfixer
and I'll show you mine.

IMBIBE THE CRANES ELECTRIC

By the crass flamingo,
let's once again engage
the firing squid. The
priest has been
floored by the metafloor.

People want their poetry in
a Ziegfeld Follies test tube,
(off to the laboratory with
social egg cream on it).

I inhale
the champagne trail,
and wonder who will not rise,
if Caesar should not fall,
we together a Scheherazade blank.

This is the halfway part,
the stopping, the turning
of the season
turning against us.

Never met a man I didn't knife.

APHID SUNDRY

The menacing horticulture of woman
saw you shaking off the Medici dust

speaking to the national hysterectomy,
planning to fade into the atypical

grace as uneasy perpendicular love kills granite
skins. Let me be it. Let it be me.

You a linear, a moniker, a trachea,
a treacherous vamp open, undone,

your harness forgone. Fabricated against
the drowning boxer frozen.

Drinking at court, driven your act
into the grouse, running to me in segments.

So laugh at the fried aphids uncamoflauged
upon the withering leaf. So idealize

ruin in a sensual haze of recognition.
Appall me as I have myself. You've

learned to live upon the lines of
distraction and radiating vice.

We are two women killed by
the anthers of dissatisfaction.