Avery E.D. Burns and Joseph Noble
MODUS OPERANDI
The process of writing "Differing in Common": in call and response style, each poet wrote every other poem playing off the previous poem in some way, i.e., using the same word or passage, continuing or varying a theme, etc. We arbitrarily chose a stanza length of nine lines as something between a tanka and a sonnet.
D i f f e r i n g i n C o m m o n
each word carries two
word for word
word to word
over against
with hands between to carry
ink and breath a saying
singing
for no reason
but to
saying the breath of it
(we) lock our lines
within gesture & spittle
brittle fluids of disappointment
lacking those little round syllables
our bodies walk off without us
leaving us to run for the station
that last ticket
that tremor of motion
each listens in
an ear to the page
drops a line
just as much to himself
as to the other
riff skins
tremor a pitch
between fingertips
wondering each tune
a pulse, a heartbeat
hearing to reach
skyline moves skyline
love like blame
swirling around in fog
"accept no substitutes"
scuffed shins
a strange
debate
sloughed fins
in the scuttlebutt
tickle our throats
can't blame the skyline
for fog
no less a substitute than
walking with reach
tantamount to
part of speech
verbs, hooting through the tunnel,
arrive with nouns in tow
crimes, like paths, returning
to sour the already full air
your walks are guesses
brushing the surround
that newspaper in the gutter
talks s'nuff
crumples the rest of day
skin and word
trade places
what counts upon coming up
the song splits remainder
a path between the teeth
guessing each foot
what lasts is tapped
scratch and blow
crackling with acoustic startle
brand new page
the skin of morning
scrubbed and ready for the world
pigeons abstract the skyway
dotting the light with wheels & veers
an unsung day no more
sentience awaits
lurking behind the horizon, like dusk
tremors of later opening now
Avery E. D. Burns edits the magazine lyric&, and runs the Canessa Park Reading Series in San Francisco, CA. Two chapbooks appeared in 2000, A Duelling Primer (2nd Story Press), and Ekistic Displays (a+bend press). An interview appears in the just published Syllogism 4. A book, The Idler Wheel, is due out January 2001 on Manifest Press.
Joseph Noble has had both creative and critical work published in Hambone, lyric&, Talisman, Antenym, and TO. He has criticism and poetry appearing in upcoming issues of Sagetrieb and Aufgabe. He is co-editor of the poetry journal, lyric&. His chapbook, between them, is due out this winter.