Contents
Joe Balaz
Namoku`eha
Way down inside,
I always knew why
I had wun affinity
wit da land of da rising sun.
And now,
several anthropologists
like confirm da reason
wit wun new theory: Dey say
dat wen
some of da ancient Polynesians
wen migrate,
dey wen start furdah up north
in Asia
den previously believed,
wit da taught
dat dey wen pass through Japan
and wuz deah
way before da Japanees.
Eh, I could've told 'um dat,
cause all dat info stay stuck
deep in my collective na`au, brah.
I found all dat out
wen I wen meditate.
Somehow,
wit relaxed breathing
and witout drugs,
I wen realize
dat I could tune in
to my ancestral heritage
foa contemplate
da long look back.
And suddenly,
like coming through wun tunnel,
everyting look different,
and I could see
cherry blossoms
falling,
wit beautiful Mt. Ke`oke`o
in da distance -
-Namoku`eha
(dats da original name
foa Japan, brah),
wuz wun nice place,
but wen da wintah wen come,
Cuz! Wuz too damn cold!
Dat wuz wun of da reasons
we wen hele on!
Plus, Maka Nui,
our chief and best navigatah,
(who wasn't too crazy
about da cold weadah eidah),
wen figgah
dat if we can find
dis place off of da continent,
den maybe get adah places
out deah too1 -
-And bettah yet,
maybe da new places
stay moa warm.
Wat amazing vision,
cause Maka wuz right.
You heard
of da Bermuda Triangle, eh?
Well,
Maka Nui and da Polynesian `ohana,
wen embark
on wat became known as
"Da Great Uliuli Boomerang."
First,
he wen sail us
from Namoku`eha
into da far unknown,
all da way to wun place
he wen name aftah his fadah -
-Hawai`i, brah,
wheah warm weadah
and malo-s
wuz happily discovered.
Den,
high on success,
Maka wen take us
on wun unbelivable dig
from Hawai`i,
to wun island
off da coast
of wat is now
known as Chile.
He wen
name da place
aftah his cousin
on his madah's side,
Rapa,
who wuz wun
unreal stonecuttah.
From deah,.
confident in his moves,
Maka wen head south
from Rapanui,
and wen find
on da horizon
wun new land
undah wun long white cloud.
He wen stick out his tongue
in excitement
and shouted, "Aotearoa!,"
unknowingly
naming da place
right on da spot.
Next,
wit da quest of moa islands
in his eyes,
Maka
wen sail back north again,
and came upon Tahiti,
named foa his madah,
wheah
da first bottles
of Hinano wuz brewed,
to mark da occasion.
And finally,
from Tahiti,
using his magnificent
navigational skills,
Maka Nui
wen sail da remaining `ohana
back to Hawai`i,
thus completing
"Da Great Uliuli Bomerang."-
-And all because
Namoku`eha wuz too cold.
Incredible!
History is truly fascinating.
And sometimes now
knowing all of dis,
I have taughts from da heart
of someday
going back to Namoku`eha,
to trace da steps
of my ancestors,
and see
wheah Maka Nui once lived.
Wit da rising sun
rising,
I would find myself
surrounded by trees,
wheah I would sit
in silence,
undah da reach
of blooming branches.
And as da day
brightened
to wun softah blue,
I would peacefully watch
in slow motion,
da gentle
and inspiring
cherry blossoms
fall-
-But den again,
sentimentality aside,
maybe visiting Namoku`eha today,
would be about as interesting
as going to Pearl City
foa da very same reason -
-too many Japanees!
Richard Hamasaki
Artificial Curiosities
A low grumble of earth
trembling mountains
and everything quakes
a prolonged shiver that rattles the world
From below the foundations
of a plantation-style cottage, there is a low humming sound
that won't disappear, a murmuring almost imperceptible
then the shaking subsides but does not stop
At this moment, there are no
trans-Pacific flights
approaching the reef runway
off Diamond Head,
but I can hear my neighbor,
an elementary school principal,
shrieking
at his 8-year old son
From where does this low hum originate?
not from the steady stream of cars
cruising the streets
Museums displaying
fine specimens,
striking colors sealed in
controlled environments:
Reading
ArtificialCuriosities
"An Exposition of Native Manufacturers
Collected on the Three Pacific Voyages
of Captain James Cook, R.N."
thumbing my way
toward a section called
"Owhyhee or the Sandwich Isles."
Living images,
housed in museums and collections
throughout the world
documented, catalogued
and "safe"
protected so long as they remain
"artifacts" which can maintain traceable, pedigree ancestries:
Artificial Curiosities
Vienna: "Feathered temple"
Leningrad: "Makaloa mat"
Greenwich: "Hawaiian spear"
Anonymous Private Collection: "Bowl with human images"
Berlin: "Feathered image"
Cambridge: "Two bracelets of turtle shell, dog teeth and ivory"
London: "Gourd rattle"
Edinburgh: "Shark tooth implement"
Glasgow: "Drum"
Dublin: "Idol's eyes"
John Hewett Collection: "Barkcloth piece from bound volume"
Cape Town: "Feathered Helmet"
Sydney: "Netting sample for feather cape"
Honolulu: "Dagger"
Artificial Curiosities :
Plant-dyed kapa, scented with extracts of flowers,
fragrant woods or leaves from Laka's vine;
Polished wood-smooth tools and sharks' teeth;
musical instruments worn like personal adornments;
Weapons and apparel of power;
religion of gods and feather dwellings
"Artificial Curiosities"?
Low rumbling thunder, distant,
within the earth
Scraping of stone blade upon rock.
Incandescence of amber rape lights
interior illumination, the red-eyed video camera
From beneath the decaying cities,
museum walls shatter,
splintering display cases,
hum of magic, words melting words, images
transfusing red mulberry dye,
disintegrating, transforming
Foundations crumbling, brittle;
ear-splitting thunder
Towering mountain faces,
a blackened night sky issuing flashes of light.
Tendons straining,
mother-of-pearl eyes and mouths agape,
jagged tongues of lightning,
and the "bowl with human images" appears
above the vast portals, twin tunnels, openings, grey concrete vaults collapsing,
beneath the white-toothed mouths, blood red and gaping.
Two valleys of concrete and steel collapse. And rising from mountain peaks
mammoth sculptures;
emerging human images of rock, skin like dyed kapa, dark as earth,
crouching, luminescent eyes, wide, like pohaku kekea,
arms and feet rooted in stone and earth yet bursting upward,
swallowing strips of towering highway
like a ribbon of clouds above the valley floors,
the crushing weight of countless waterfalls
roaring from multi-fingered fisted cliffs.
Museum pieces
as tall as mountains
as alive as
hurricane wind
and endless downpour
of rain
Artificial Curiosities, indeed
...artificial curiosities...
Are you
an artificial curiosity?
1987-1995
Carolyn Lei-lanilau
Translating An Anthropological Field Trip
I walked from Tuscany to Fruitvale
Up and down streets
Barking and howling at strangers
Sniffing for your car
Wondering if anyone spotted
An ear similar to your own
The pleasure of frogs mating
Or, an arm with guitar fingers
If I were a dog
men would have offered me a drink
Instead, I was ignored
A white woman lost
between good english and cigarette smoke
Panting near the memory of your heart
I expected you to call me
And then day began to resemble night
No food, no love, no you
What to believe in but miracles!
What as particles in this life
except to
bark and wag looking forward to
a pat on the head
permission to whiff the crotch
or chase the ball
Alison Georgeson
Postcard
You yourself produced I me they ensure
recognition outside the silent pictures in the current
lexicon of images swarming toward light. It was cropped,
manipulated, a fantail inviting personal reveries,
the graphic trace of their rituals eases
up the visual scale and lands a flat clear spill.
Positioned for disaster at points of display
in the family album; perhaps some small
shift in the light offered a sea of evidence
roaring through life.
Another immutable form, somebody's blazing
spectrum played out elegant solutions and borrowed
my voice. Being unable to imagine the next
ten seconds I aspire to the physical before it
hurries away. A designer intellect to go with the
food altogether loses its capacity to fill and pranced past
through a difficult calligraphy. The night is my animal
to call the geese swans and cut some slack
revealing our itinerant beginnings, trawling for genes
although we cannot slope around forever.
The elimination of previous demarcations
reveals, for me, a sly penchant for inaccuracies. But
these are not the questions asked when counting
the hours before sleep the way a miser counts formulae.
Deposits hang fire. Instruments maps dotted lines
measures of rainforest trails. lt has all converged
on this point, I repeat: here is the course you take
travelling, here is the waterfall. The gaze
will lose itself, come to that, on the lower slopes
where the rains the ashes the powder track
before I stood redundant. It could be seen as
a parting shot and an ensemble of texts
(discursive transactions, then) and protocols of
appreciation. A podium for one's introspection.
Difficult to resist the pull of the vistas of unvisited
landscapes where it is said the cassowary is
retreating further into an unidentifiable space.
Alison Georgeson
Position
In that context your rear is mud if you
don't weasel-worded answer the narrative
contract a fantastic and controversial
vocabulary provided juicy news
unlike a thick population of
scavenger birds, great irony
or just good strategy it could reach in
unknown or unwanted ways downstream
gradually becoming inaudible
there is a muzzled
discussion occupying a cultural limbo
in which meetings of consequence occur
a mobile bearer of meaning
arrived suddenly
persistent urban myths on parallel
migration routes like mountain whistlers
I see myself wandering in large circles
within a four-mile radius and racing
across a bridge or in an aeroplane
subject to imminent tailwinds
the river channel could change
depending on what it proceeds from
I will walk on cold floorboards for that idea
it all happened so long ago put
the bags over here the clothes over there now
back out of the room
Murray Edmond
Rant for Mickey Joe
"builded here . . . among these . . . mills" - Blake
Up here on Boot Hill, this spring '94,
your squat cold monument still scours the sky
as it did when Keir from Grafton laid concrete
blocks by day & ran The Fat Landlady
for those with minds that could not sleep at night
up in Symonds St 25 years ago
& poetry freed the dˇrive of the word
by publishing the dˇpart of the subject
(set fire to the sarcophagus
of good literature). But now
in this now
in this 1940 pee-yellow, grot-pink
reliquary concrete garden with its
plinths & pedestals untopped by intended
erections & its words that one needs not
more fame than comes from the love of the people,
from this cliff-edge where the grass chokes with
phthisis of green & under a pergola
one person nuzzles another/ territory of the
Nation made over to the quickie
where the present is all past
& every animal is sad afterwards
an arbitrary seagull dips east
into the bleating wind watched by the eye
of the savage sea (East! East! This East
is wholly West!)
Fly East, young gull!
Now left has been made right & right made left
a warp rags the weft of the sky,
up-harbour distant winded city,
1st of October -
yesterday my daughter turned 12, she's
down below the point right now celebrating,
child of a child of the welfare state
riding Kelly Tarlton's simulacrum
of Antarctica -
voices, voices,
Listen! Tourist voices climbing
Bastion Point ("In San Francisco
even in January the air was brighter")
to the Look-out. Look out! Look back!
"Hear but do not listen,
See but do not look,
Place your ear to earth
& read it like a book:
if you prise the hero from the story,
you must find your own way home."
Take the road back, pick up the threads
where your death began, back there where
that river slides under charred fog, hugs shaggy
banks of gravel sand, acacia & willow trail,
periscope eyes of eels gimlet, that creek
up which I found myself born sans paddle,
the stepping-into-never-twice into which now
I step again/ you make me see again
its green eyes keen under the town's high
bridges/from source to mouth do you know?
does the water stand? is it the banks that flow?
from desire to illusion? What now's
the look out for the language, the you
plus you plus you of history, & which
language do you mean when you say the living are
already dead but the dead, they live, they live!
The graven kibosh on your stone
reminds me of the simple tasks
God never cared for like
making the flesh word or cancelling the invasion
or building the city of heaven on earth or
climbing here to speak with you to make
an old love new except you are not here &
cannot be. But are builded in this now.
The invasion began again today. The Herald
said so. Saigon. Waikato. Port au Prince.
When a person dies, it said, a whole world
dies with them. & when a language.
Sorry, comrade. It goes without saying.
Old mate, the kiss of talk awakes desire.
Supernumerous reasons swarm
to pull it down, stone by stone,
& begin again. Begin. Again.
red flea
La Mer de la Merde
With such a chasm between minds
there's a great opportunity
to fill in the gaps with emptiness or sweetness
humor or rage
take a pick
red flea watches silence grow like the bush
day by day
month to month
year by year
and sees just how lonely it can be
to hold one's tongue
but red flea feels the rage
and does battle even in silence
watch that politician
he's just dying to scratch his crotch
red fleas are driving him crazy
that politician
thinks the world actually believes his pronouncements
about world peace
and computer simulations
for nuclear deterrence sometime in the future
but only
after exploding poisonous bomb after nuclear bomb in the South Pacific
at the eclipse
of our 20th century
"la mer de la merde" is what he says to the world
even though he thinks what he is saying
is "vive la France, vive la France, vive la France..."
"la mer de la merde" is what he's saying to the world
in the meantime, your vineyards are rotting, Jacques Chirac,
the liquids in your bottled wines are no longer aging with impunity
snipers everywhere are taking aim
the crosshairs of destiny focused right there on your beloved country
your wines, your colonies, your beloved ones, your leeches, your trifles
your troubles have only just begun
Tahitians are kicking in the faces of your nuclear police
Hiroshima Mururoa mon amour
Papaeete Paris? mon amour?
your boats and planes
cars and limousines
busses and trucks
your buildings and airplanes
torched and smoldering
your airport and city streets in shambles
your marines are knee deep in your mer de la merde
and despite being surrounded by all the politeness and pomposity
"...vive la France, vive la France, vive la France..."
red fleas are everywhere Jacques Chirac
seeking no acknowledgement
from those running from the truth
every time you sleep
every speech you make
every step you take
we bite and bite and bite
Jacques Chirac
it's one salt water
not la mer de la merde
wansalawata
the whole world is about to bite your ass
ho hum...says red flea,
ho hum
9/1/95
Steven Bradbury
Ho Chi Minh on the Morning of Our Invasion
In the pluperfect of our permanent revolution
When all that is solid melts into air, you
Who were so many things to so many
And everyone's favorite uncle, appear
Once again in the pages of Time and Fortune,
Burgers and fries now firmly in hand;
While all across the nation, we collectively sigh,
"This is who they really are. This is who we are."
Zhou Yaping
Remembering and Forgetting, 14 line poems
1.
Bright and clear, is the leaf on my chest
Flowers blown across the sky-ladder
Baby boy, as if fish-eyes on a rifle-butt
Water is a wound
Eulogize only once
Few poets have done so-
I want to kill greedy farmers, fat geese
Withdraw my blood and sweat
No robust words
Justice and tribulations, flowing over rocks
Icy-cold and hot
Covered the parrot
Torn bits of a calendar like vestiges of snow
Hold the line amid chaos
2.
Games of war, on the verge of death
Shattered umbrella:
Wicked child over-zealous
Like the Demon King and the Beauty
Steadily unfurl my spiritual food
Read books, feel interest-hypocritical
Seeds fell to the ground yesterday
Amid fleabane a hardworking chef
Tear open copper wires
Break the nerves of fallen flowers, higher up
Spirals enshroud wine-cups
In black and white
Only a horse, at full gallop
Again swells the shattered umbrella
3.
So deep, until past the footpath
A ray of light transparents, sand and eggshells
Glass cannot fragment ocher sets off
Green blood
A long forgotten fragrance
Remembering and forgetting
In the corner of the wall a half-hidden ox-head, can't stand
The desire to descend
I come from what year's indifference? Indifference
Amid romance a hand moves, like an opened book-cover
Then hurriedly closes
Such deep shyness, only
The flora on the sea bottom (fantastic
Limbs) is not covered with dust
4.
The soughing wind, murder and an open grave
Adamant short-tailed parrot, at this moment it
Glitteringly taps
Replies to the singing
A mortal being, yet I eulogize your immortality
Fishness on arrow-heads
Crooked teeth marks
Woman in white, tranquil around the circular rim
The inextinguishable,
The butchered,
The flute-playing, delicate throat
Catacombs
The classics you peruse
Spiders resplendent leaves
-translated by Zhen Zhen and Jeff Twitchell
Mary Burger
Esp. in being an entrance, a passageway,
a constriction, or a narrowed part,
there was no there there.
we she
raised smiled
her more
head
surprise surprising
there
her. sunny. yellow. head.
called also "apparent
horizon"
the act, the state, the place, of junction
obvious/untrue
we saw her throat, it wasn't there
Jonathan Brannen
Film Noir
As the steamer
approaches the harbor
everyone is on deck
The shoreline is skirted
by mountains which look
like a bloated Richard Wagner
outlined against the sky
plagued by a monkey
who jumps along behind him
tugging on his coattails
Because truth is inevitably
the kind of error
that cannot be refuted
the origin always
precedes the fall
derisive and ironic
like the mincing steps
of a dove
When we intend we exist
in the space of intentions
among the shadows of intentions
as well as of real things
like entering a movie
by stepping into the screen
just as the gangplank
is being lowered
only moments before
the credits roll
and the house lights
come up
Mark Wallace
I Was Dreaming of Alleys
Leaping into
this afternoon lodges
of itself upon light, open
among the cracked
pavements, slanting winds
turning to face
music slides along the wall.
Wonder now, we're strange
hand reaching across the fence
casual expense. What would
the art be knowing
do be doing, becalmed
or flouting the eye of storms,
I said, crossing at red lights
as if that could break
the limits of the streets.
Learning to move
in the body given
into edges of itself,
turned, that I would
be here to you loosely,
shaping the stories
of other lives all our own
never gone, though the snow stops.
The way veins streak fingers
leaves place to hold
the glass close to what we're drinking
for. She said it's off somehow
the aliens landed, a family visit.
I will not drift away from digression
or trap each inflection. Standing
open to the sky, leaning
towards pockets and pockmarks
saying yes, this
is where it starts,
all the shadows looking back
to be beginning again
in what happened
on the margins of fearing the footsteps.
Chris Stroffolino
Via Negativa
Seasons are either broad brushstrokes or little dots.
There is no in between. The TV is either on or off.
I'm not over my head in love yet. Or is love life?
Wriggling dusts itself on, a Nestea plunge seen as
a leap of faith. What is the time that passes
terribly slow if no one knows what time is?
What is lumber but kindling in a scorching summer?
And why is meaning such a proofless cross to carry
when you feel you make it or break it, but never both at once,
since it costs more to eat than shit, except at christmas,
as if one bad apple can spoil the whole DDT sprayed bunch
and the voice has not made the wilderness it winks in
in a myth we have to pass through, but no doubt should
edit out for the kind of network cameras we make fun of,
as if we're out of time,
We'd reject such dreams if the end were analysis, or
we can afford to flunk the final and are gamblers, all of us,
cunning in our alienation and our wonder and that cunning
is what keeps us together, as if glued to our seats so long
soon paranoia seems a vacation where once it was but a price
to be paid for the pleasure of being watched. And this is nothing
if not involved with love, though someone stole my name
and robbed theft as well and there is no drama but memory
and hope even in the hottest chicken so the zoo
Can yawn in the garbage of fertility to bring is to the body
Hank Lazer
from Days
6
for they will differ if
they do as syllable
from sound this is
hers our round did she
shiver did she know
exactly the persistent
strangeness she had
written did she ultimate
circumference wheel no
hub 10/10/94
103
you would be
& the gray day
scattering as risk
whether it's this
mustn't do that
i ask you
plastic crash helmet
does the soul
what utter fabrication
crosses over into 5/13/95
113
in the final
main repeals comes
with among several
said exactly as
seen only some of
heard and coupled
with becomes done again
with this difference
each elegy then
genetic & specific 5/21/95
Leslie Davis
[untitled]
I hold nothing back by saying: "I"
Playing my trump card in the first hand
Curving back against luck and providence.
It could be my ego that you see here or
Another three or four things unspoken.
Time imitates a solid line, I keep
Trying to break it, bringing you back into
This linear plurality of afternoons
Gone orange and red for the sake of calm-
I am always trying to see out of it
Into a dotted line above the surface
Where one doesn't depend on their eyes for sight
And the pluralities of an afternoon
Come clear with the colors that consume.
Don Brunn
Palomino Blue
the honey funnel hell bent saddle horn
wave of wave air forest bath
gummed up wheels gigantic needles
the warm window waterboy slippery
deep wonder deep venice deep white
softest breeze wrought iron gate of hearts
the concrete bunker take out barking dog
paper basketball wastepaper basket
broken coke bottle hole
the handshake darkness cry baby feet crab apple
pie panorama dawning curtain
predawn peeping jim overcrowded kiss
the loved colors fire fine drum
rolls over my arm rapture deep
run off waterfall light strident star piano bar
the muscle bound american can company
softball team victory kiss on the lips
memorial day rear end collision
the full length tremendous wave
overwhelming buy or lease
word of mouth no soap bathroom
the day after riot alive uniform fry
goaltending platinum net trophy & crushing
change of address card bus stop.
Stephen Ratcliffe
Sculpture 15
The same person therefore speaking in another room, waking up to the sound of dogs
or the call of a different bird meaning to remember something just said in a line that represents
another person's "experience," how the motion of each could theoretically coincide
in situations including the one in which each one veers away. Along such an axis (intuitive) the extension
of a line drawn in space as a tangent may be said to tear itself apart, the object in a corner
conceived as a series of curves standing for the reason one drives to that place
determined to show that something is fundamentally sound. As water in a glass that is tilted
can be poured, what one "hears" substituted for a word whose structure is visually equivalent to a figure
whose presence fills and therefore complicates the thought of one who means to be listening.
Carolyn Steinhoff Smith
Care Reverse
Once her elastic garter has lost its stretch
She stands agape at the quietness of her encounters,
the plaintive little cry of a semi,
the clatter of it over a cattleguard,
a starling rattling its wings in the birdbath.
A spear of light prods the tires quietly.
But every Friday a moan starts low and rises to hysteria
until all the steers are holding their breaths in The Panhandle.
They look like fleas on a yellow dog.
She waves to me from among them calling,
"I want to draw you as a wolf"
but the car windows are clouded with crying,
I can't see the colors of her pocket watch .
"Take two blue dogs from my bassinet," I call back.
"I'm evening out my bangs for my evening out with the two Stevens.
The concert is so full of spores,
I think I'll scamper lightly over the earth tonight,
go back into the crossfire to pick up a falling man
since I can't go back to the time before my children fell."
The skin of her face thin as moth wings,
she keeps her ear to the ground
to earn the couch that has come to her
living room. She hears clouds
stuffing their gossip in through the air vents.
"I am too sad. Don't look at my red eyes."
A girl was stopping accidentally in the town of Teabag
to cobble together an identity from before The Fall,
a few cantalope balls scooped out with one of those round spoons,
some practical advice:
take your hand out of the garbage disposal.
Make something large or small of yourself,
a rug from the scraps.
You are like the blood of a man,
You want to flow out
but you have to wait for someone to make a way for you.
She says our marriage is like white noise.
When it stops we notice it.
"Put me in my case of clothing so I don't lose my stretch and disappear."
R. M. Ernest
Foster's Daily Democrat
Handbaskets leading matrons
by the arm encounter
steel on wheels
strapping popping
chatting, grousing
hand-inserting, one in the morning
Blanks of speed lob
a phoneme, pet name cum
command, left right firm light
handed cat clean drop forged
unyielding blunt trauma
the package
the bin
the skid
Inserts
Elbow at elbow
self-intoned issue of
material self-knowledge
kite the torn or crooked
riffle palm to second joint
decelerate and hover, snap
closed the surfaces
dandle more leaf blocks
lay them in
the machine
must be nice
to dream, an interruption in
the flow of dreaming
mill water broadsheet pressed
permanently over the sluice
sunny yellow tub ducks
collecting downriver
like bets
grunchpop grunchpop
paint be paint and paper paper
paper slip, bulb blip, snag
pneumanimation cushmound.
Worst gets over, and over.
Art shakes, lies: don' matta
wannabe a uniformed pressman
plate the tacky roaring Blue
Harvest Moon Urbanite circa
1968, spilling papers
Web break
Wade, scoop, stuff
fall out, cool off, smoke
moisturize expensive fresh
tattoos, project Criminal
Justice
Birdbath
Unscoured puns, hot
rinse, callus wince, Tootsie
Pops, cream soap spatters
the truant boy's cap, her
crack
strutted him bungling a private act
crude
marooned our little pink eyes
Tony Quagliano
Adding "Poetry" to Chaos Theory
to Find a Poem
Suppose you have concocted a mathematical
model in biology or economics "poetry"
you put this model on your computer
and you discover
a Feigenbaum period-doubling cascade
which is often a sign
that chaos is present
is this result interesting?
well, probably not
one reason is that the detailed
dynamical properties of your model
may not have anything to do
with the properties of the real-life system
another reason why your discovery may be
without interest
is that the occurrence
of a Feigenbaum cascade
need not have any particular
biological or economic "poetry" significance
you still have to address the problem
of the relevance of your finding
for biology or economics "poetry"
David Ruelle, Professor of Theoretical Physics
PHYSICS TODAY, July 1994
Sheila E. Murphy
Voice Projectiles
Voice projectiles heat into a wide expanse when suddenly the emerald world
of tea ploy night has thickened to a percolated window mirror shined. They
use the voice as arrow and they use the voice as shield. Bite dog before the
dog bites you. Vocalize post-shower very much in company antithesis of
mutual massage. Voice angst voice commemorative meadow. Friendly and
responsive meadow in a photograph intended not as capture not as wicker not
as face first contact. Who has shorn bird melodies intact once warm becomes
antithesis of paranoia. Along comes the tamed hose. Paint appropriately
circulated goes a long way. Paint lived coats the surface of the world. Paint
returns home like a boomerang. Like registered relief and how sweet crops
swing to olfactory reception like the radio as timely smooth canaries skitter
breathe through scenery we sport. Of craft seamed in the perfect rose pinned
to authorly lapel as such. These banquet rooms of applique leave menace to
imagination rind. Chisel of a mathematic made to play in southern Italy
where the praxis nightfall sloughs off daylight in repeated fashion.
Wonderbread once whole is back again alert, and when we breathe
sometimes the wash of all our lives is curvy. Yell as you've been taught to
fell these lustrous trees in sequence.
Sheila E. Murphy
Shelf Life Rounded
Papaya stiffened in the fridge dried to induce (again) the liquefaction of
condition nutrience a modest day away (my father handed off the globe, I
have it. Easily so spun is now the wield circumference framing like pond
rings, tree rings, other glow apart from sundry weather made from scratch. A
lingering exception to the tool-based riveting pronouncements glides into
redress (in gambling country presence of nice people, honest working bring-
home wage pronounces how the world would be resort. A business of delight
the higher registers opposed to surfaces you'd cushion into framing the
dishonesty once smothered apart from its correlative long-standing pain
(whatever line of demarcation coughs up boundaries unpopular as woodfeel
seized by shelf life rounded to tenth power. Exhilaration sharpens wit and
jubilation for the nonce celebratory urgency comes out white blond shelving
sentences to mean a crowd could speak gracetones.
Lumber on its way to being housebound, mercenary feats, the long white heat
elapsing summer
Terese Svoboda
On the Blown Marquee: Hurricane
We simper for chips
to quell our anxiousness. There,
the water's lining up:
wave, wave, skip.
It makes you want to ride
in the math, then the aftermath as they say
on the tube, or after school which is closed
and sluiced,
the kids on the beach.
Mostly there's congratulations
among those at the silver twitching planes
on their touchdowns and-let me see-
no domestic violence.
Not on the planes, of course-no in-flight
movies this time-but under the barometer,
the mistletoe of home as fort,
where the windsock's shot.
So put up the blankets,
put up the beer,
the surf will become surfeit
as it pulls and pulls,
though we ourselves
little enervate the weather
with our lust.
Eric Chock
No Evil
We all love our kids, right?
How's about dis den.
Dese fifth graders at recess
wuz tellin' me dat euuuuu,
at somebody's house party one time
one boy pull down one girl's pants
and start lickin her.
And den somebody else said, so,
in da parkin lot right outside dea apartment
had one couple humpin up and down
inside da car after school.
So I said, how you know dey wasn't just
you know, kissin ladat.
Well, dis girl says to me,
They were shaking the car up and down
if you know what I meeean?
Like dogs, and we could see!
Euuuuu!
Well, I guess I had to stop and think
yeah, I know what you mean,
but, how you know what you mean?
Of course, one time dese 4th graders at recess
dey was askin me if I was married, and I said yeah,
just last year and dis small kid tole me too bad,
you gotta do da up and down thing, yeah,
and I said WHAT?
and he jes when make his two hands
facing each adda and humpin in a way I never saw before,
I had to go home and try um about two tree minutes
before I got da hang of da riddum like he had,
look like one sexy hand hula,
kinda like I tink whales I saw on Public Television.
Of course da television.
What dey see is da attitude.
It's cool. In my day, used to be
kinda like da tree monkeys
covering dea eyes or whateva with dea hands.
Now it's don't cover up noting!
I guess ass okay, I'm open-minded,
as long as somebody explain to them
what it's all about.
Yeah, right. From what I seen on Geraldo,
I take da monkeys anyday.
Eric Chock
Hawaiian Air
Even in the crowded airplane I immediately realized she was there. Trying to
read was futile when she announced right in front of me, "I'm goin', I don't got no
bags, no underwear, not'ing, I'm just going!"
She was a middle-aging ehu-haired wahine in tight white jeans "running away
from home for da first time in seven years."
"You gotta do dat once in a while, just to keep 'em in line," the Hawaiian lady she
was talking to offered in response.
"Yeah, I jus' wen call my sista and tell her, 'somebody can pick me up?' Where
you from? You from Kaua'i?"
"I live Kapa'a."
"You know Peter dela Cruz, he use to be my brudda-in-law, but everybody hate
him. He one cop."
"I don't know. I not from Kapa'a. I been there three years. I from Kaimuki."
"Oh, you know my sista Annie Solomon?"
The listener woman was in total, matter-of-fact sympathy. This was apparently
her reality too. Men will drink with their friends, come home at all hours, and
complain about what cold food you had cooked.
"My madda in Kekaha, she always telling me, 'Come back home live.' Maybe
when I old. Honolulu more cheap. Kekaha, one can Spam cost two seveny-nine!
Honolulu only dolla fifty-nine."
Life decided by Spam? I thought, till I saw when we landed, this big lunky guy
waiting by the lobby window. She ran to him with arms wide just like in the movies.
"Hey Joey!" she shouted as they grabbed each other in a hug.
"Oh Sis, how you been?" He said his line perfectly.
As I walked past, I could see the tears in their eyes.
Charles Bernstein
These Horses Do Not Move Up and Down
Dialogue's a dream from which
We cannot wake. The dog sniffs
Dirt to see if there is some mistake.
Little by little crowds gather round
Teapots explode, asterisks expound.
The silly sailor says to us the ship
He built is broke, Heaven help the
Nincompoop who shakes instead of bloats.
Take two steps forward, you're halfway there
Xeno's laughing, watching your bag!
Eyes in terror seek the shade that comes
Like buckets of lemonade. The bridge you sought
Is torn; no matter, never mind. Try the tunnel
Anyway - take a break, build a flake.
Charles Bernstein
Johnny Cake Hollow
Xo quwollen swacked unt myrry flooped
Sardone to fligrunt's swirm, ort
Jirmy plaight org garvey swait ib
Giben durrs urk klurpf. Sheb
Boughtie bloor de dazzy dule dun
Fruppi's ghigo's gly, jud
Chyllrophane jed jimmsy's cack -
Exenst aerodole fump glire. Eb
Horray bloot, ig orry sluit neb
Nist neb ot neb gwon. Shleb
Atsum imba outsey burft allappie
Merp av ords. Een ainsey swish
Ien ansley sploop ughalls dep dulster
Flooge, ig ahrs unt nimbet twool
Begroob, ig ooburs quwate ag blurg.
Rob Wilson & Sean MacBeth
Linoleum Heaven
We layered Shine On America linoleum wall-to-wall in Hanauma Bay
choosing progressive squid-pink and star-glow silver permanently embossed
in Chinese Diaspora calligraphy with the brains of Einstein gray
put indigenous green linoleum walkways leading down
to the ancient Hawaiian prayer altars on rugged Molokai coasts
slip and you fall out of the Elvis White cosmos
theme wallpapered the freeway to Pearl City with dayglo zen palm
put vermilion cargo cult linoleum on the moon over Hanalei
linoleumed the tragicomic azure smile of the KHON evening news
scatter painted with thumbs up Joe Moore sayings
linoleumed the oriental livers at Safeway with pig blood purple
lined Yankee go home Yankee come back black linoleum at twilight
burning up into crimson sunset along Bamboo Ridge
prayerful Tictacs linoleum for the crowded streets of Waikiki
plantation maitai blue lacquered inside the Fidel Castro Suite on Lanai
cottage cheese-teeth motif glowers inside the last Melanesian rain forests in Hilo
Rob Wilson & Sean MacBeth
Dreaming Linoleum Heaven
We layered Shine
On America linoleum wall-to-wall in Hanauma Bay
choosing Progressive Squid-
Pink and Star-Glow Silver for ebb and
flow, blocks of Gray
Brain of Einstein
symmetrically
interspersed for ocean floor
put Indigenous Green linoleum slip and you fall out of the Elvis White
indoor/outdoor walkways leading cosmography
down theme wallpapered the freeway to
to ancient Hawaiian prayer altars on Pearl City with Dayglo Zen Palm
rugged Molokai coasts-
put Vermilion Cargo Cult Yankee Go Home, Yankee
linoleum over Hanalei moon Come Black linoleum
recolored the Tragicomic
Azure smile of the KHON
news crew in Aloha Evening at twilight burning up into
(gold embossed calligraphy Crimson Sunset along
in Chinese Diaspora style re- Bamboo Ridge, Soulful
penned by Joe Moore) and Tictacs linoleum for the
mass-advertised oriental crowded, fishnet streets of
livers at Safeway with zigzag Waikiki, Plantation Maitai
Pig Blood Purple lined with Blue lacquered inside the
Fidel Castro Suite on Lanai
1. Pacific Cottage Cheese Teeth glowers inside the last Melanesian rain forests of Hilo
2.
3. Slated to be released for White Sale at Retro Mauve Ali'i
plastered signs at
Ala Moana Center get your native plastic subject while it lasts
Rob Wilson & Sean MacBeth
Dreaming Linoleum Heaven
W m r
e a f i
o c
l B r a
a a l
y y e l
e c b y
r h b
e o i
d o a n
s n t
S i d e
h n r
i g f s
n l p
e P o e
r w r
O o , s
n g e
r b d
A e l
m s o f
e s c o
r i k r
i v s
c e o
a o c
S f e
l q a
i i G n
n u r
o d a f
l - y l
e P o
u i B o
m n r r
k a
w i put Indigenous Green
a a n linoleum
l n indoor/outdoor
l d o walkways leading
- f down
t S to ancient Hawaiian
o t E prayer altars on
- a i rugged Molokai
w r n coasts-
a - s slip and you fall out
l G t of the Elvis White
l l e cosmography
o i theme wallpapered
i w n the freeway to Pearl
n City with Dayglo Zen
S s Palm
H i y
a l m put
n v m Vermilion
a e e Cargo Cult
u r t linoleum
Joan Retallack
BE ING & NO TH' ING NESS
: notes from the specific rim :
.....................................................................................................................
pre-sIgn behavIor fIrst thought memento &/but/err clarIty
second thought work Ing It all out all ready/really &/but/yes the
Ich roman Is the Is the the the German publIcs favorIte form
.....................................................................................................................
&/but/no/thIs not Is not to say neIther/yes/nor are we not too fIrst
pers prone prosaIc as well &/but neItherr/Noras &/or Janes
bed & break tIdes of prIde & pregnant dIce to be Ignored of It
.....................................................................................................................
cold polar neIther/nors belIeve Ing doubt Ing wIth where does thIs seem
to be tak Ing (neIther/nor/but) us what do Ich seem to be say Ing wIth
all those uh capItalIzed nouns roar Ing a round In termInologIcal space
.....................................................................................................................
&/but/eIther/yes from yes/no anthropologIcal poInt of vanIsh Ing
black clubs &/or Bermuda shorts neIther/nor phot O' yes porn O'
yes n'o grapher after math &/or dIvIded by zero but/n'or to yIeld InfInIty
.....................................................................................................................
common assumptIons shock Ing to good eIther/or sense &/n'or
sensIbIloquence of Itch (y) ex-no-surceaces In the complex plane
both real &/but ImagInary axIs-es &/or when you gonna get
..............................................................................................................................
holda your self when you go round someth Ing blue &/or/but
contInuous &/or/but real you find your yes/no self In unexpected place
placed &/or Is thIs stuffIcIent enuff to InvIg-O-rate hIm or herr?
..............................................................................................................................
&/but/Ing other symptoms perfect Ing decorum untIl she (gerund Ing)
past perfected as In morI modus vIvendI mountaIns where vIvendIs
(laugh Ing ly) a noun (laugh tear Ing ly) return Ing Ich to bestIal form
..............................................................................................................................
by thIs means &/but/can lIfe real (ly) ImagInary axIs real (ly) be n'or
other way to look at what you're do Ing: you are not on a plane but
on some other neIther/n'or funny surface &/but Ich Ing bad ly
..............................................................................................................................
thIs means the way you pronounce Ing may or may not (eIther x n'or
x-y) determIne your kkklass as In you (x) was my babe (y) &/but Ich
feels so goooood sIngIn the blues short waves AM oven radIo rodeo
..............................................................................................................................
In the bIg pIcto-scrIpto-nuevo-gram yes/&/or/no or n'or blue may
not be substItute Ted for red In noIre or not wIth thIs thIs evIl thIs
thIs July sky hangIn out all over us In Its ugly blue gerund
..............................................................................................................................
blue skIes may or may not be lIke (Ing) an ugly blue gerund may get
your mean Ing across the logIch et al dIvIde so slow-mo molassanalysIs
comes over us lIke the sky hangIn over us lIke an ugly blue lung
..............................................................................................................................
whIch/what/when/why O why O/where/neIther/nor n'or a but nor If nor
to talk Idle & thIck to talk you out of Ich the sky hangIn over us lIke
lIke Is thIs the kInd O th' Ing one can say lIke a well hung bulls eye I?
..............................................................................................................................
they got &/but personal assets aerobIc calm cool collect Ted Ich usually
CCC m' self but/but It seems apparent that but/but there can't be yes/no
sIngIn sIgnIn In&out dur Ing neItherr/nor/about It cIrcle Ing over head
..............................................................................................................................
bed & break down In hIstorIes folds & spIrals squeegee sheet geometrIes
full of sInIster moves (Ies) to the rIght the sIde of the room the moon lIne
dancIn n'either/yes/n'or/n'or &/or what a coIncIdence to be happenIn!
..............................................................................................................................
In addItIon to fIrst & second person ages there Is/was In subattractIon
heads I wIn taIls &/or/but thIrd & fourth the fIfth why/not/who/but/n'or
hard to count dImensIons wIth what hat & buzzer'ds soundIn on TV
..............................................................................................................................
they ask you why dId you take thIs course n'eItherr/n'or what connect
Ion wIth your major now that we're too shelf aware for prImItIve Ich thou
Ing more perceptual Icons short run n'Ing for long slIde th' Ings
..............................................................................................................................
&/or/but Is It certaIn that more th' Ings In mathImatIcs & language tIcs
result from undo Ing what could that be mean Ing In the musIc of Ing
do the anthropologIsts th'Ink th'Is th'Ing Is the rIght story to be tell Ing
..............................................................................................................................
are we talk Ing neIther/nor/&/but/yes fact of value matter of/or fact totem
some th' Ing speed Ing by fast before the approprIate Ing moment arrIves
In the scene of the play between lInes of belIeve Ing & doubt Ing a lIng
..............................................................................................................................
sprIngs like MInerva from herr vowel captIve In the vowel between yr toes
the Ich In your mInds pInk eye forms no notIon no ocean no sIng Ing no/yes
across the gerund dIve don't stop &/or am I X x Y = 0 near Ing?
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