JUXTA #21
JUXTA #21
EDITORS: Jim Leftwich, Ken Harris
Special thanks to Taz Delaney
CONTRIBUTORS: Clemente Padin, Amy Trussell, Eric Basso, John High, Nico
Vassilakis, Jim McCrary, Holly Day, John M. Bennett, Anabasis, Jeffrey
Little, Jake Berry, Karoline Wileczek
\\\\\\\\
nico vassilakis
ONE FUNNEL
Anticipation of light inside the funambulist.
New crayolas green sleep on reams of paper. she collects stepladder
string.
The concave collapses. the details of a painting no photons reach.
Light finds you. it radiates from the core of a succulent. wanting what
wont break or breakdown. "does the brain fill the head down
to the chin?" "I think the brain looks like a necklace" precious stones
roll out his mouth for weeks.
A stapled together frame propped against the back seat. a dashboard
compass.
Open o incline. o wander water. open. open sideways.
Instructional flowers. trace an object. expert clamps keep it in place. we
stop nowhere but to rest. lightning and sky.
Strong equestrian knees. the brain doubles it. in larger animals there is
the weight to consider. also the separate hemispheres of its eyes.
Sweet night bent paddling in a pond. water so still it lifts like a page.
as any scoop of dark. the measurements still in tact.
An empire dressed in light. from the base of the shaft it will be built in
one unbroken measure.
Focus forms human forms. water forms round forms. fog forms swirling
forms. mosaic forms concrete forms. formula forms linguistic forms.
residual forms continuous forms. we project a funnel on its side.
A song. for our part we touch. completing circles. let otherwise
open-ended. and what is this for?
A blue stalk in her hands or perhaps reflection. fumes enter his nose.
Peripheral shots in a hallway of magnets. he is prepared for her. some
demeanor of light. seeing and moving converge.
We undress the wheel. we imagine scaffolding. we invent equations for
things.
The kind of dust you write your name in. it's never morning it's always a
pipe. you build a house. there's skin and hair everywhere.
\\\\\\\\
Jim McCrary
FRAGMENTS 8/96
all that glitters
'gold in mexico'
and long island sound
did frida realize
'all that'
800 is nothing
[come with me
to see the sea]
how ever it falls
we can only play for rain
not just any cloud
covers all nature
by its roll and pitch
[long
islands trolly runs
right/through]
no more pointed stuff
another co
incident
'what if'
connection(s)
the pilot says this
SHE didnt say a word
many
were
'skewed'................
\\\\\\\\
Clemente Padin
FIVE AUTORREFERENTIAL POEMS
SILENCE
All unspeakable
that mediates
between this verse
and the next one
is poetry.
RHETORIC
Selene!
Plato's
plane & plain plate.
Selenite in the night.
FULL MOON
(here a circle)
POEM
Take 1 paratext
l5 substantives
l adjetive
2 conjunctions
4 verbs
1 adverb
1 article
5 prepositions
1 pronoum
12 numbers
and signs of punctuation.
Mix in a leaf of paper
disposing the words
in harmonious verses
and...
its is ready.
POEM FOR TO READ WITH CLOSED EYES
to John Cage.
METALANGUAGE
Composed word
written in English
that consist in 12 letters
which disposition in space
can harmonise itself
(poetically)
in 7 verses
(or more).
\\\\\\\\
Eric Basso
OCTOBER NIGHTS
long ago the ocean
heaved and covered
the stars with the
shadows of ancient
monsters
two legless horses
still rock by moon
light teetering in
the falling leaves
one with a sparrow
in its teeth wings
fluttering up into
a tree
one that waits for
me gills breathing
with the hiss of a
bellows at the end
of my yard
Halloween 1976
EVICTION
alone
in that room above
the barn
with nothing to
light the yellow
papers he had car-
ried this far in a
wheelbarrow up the
gravel road with
the last of his
furniture
hoarfrost fogging
the windows behind
which he was
a dark blur
recalling
other journeys
he had made and
would make again
by night
waiting for
someone to knock
at the door
and offer
him
a book of matches
November 16, 1976
THE ZONE
first
we tried to raise up
our heads but it was
no good
too many dead leaves
had come between our
eyes and this forest
was now no more than
the vague setting of
a dream
less to touch and to
hear for it had been
a long time since we
had any fear of com-
ing upon the strange
animal who blew down
the leaves that made
us blind
August 2, 1976
\\\\\\\\
Amy Trussell
CURVED BEAM
An optic axis opens:
path through an albescent stone
along which light travels
a tide wakes up in the riverbed
Rushing through the chamber
and your back's to the stern
mercury tethered to the moon
and poised in the wings
Near the stem of the boat
you navigate singing
where the hull timbers
are scarfed into a prow
It is a curved beam
on which you arrive
a filament of stars
stretching above your head
Traveling by sound wood
there is corona blue
pulling your sternum
towards the inlet
Dropping a sheet anchor
and climbing out of those ribs
feeling pushed up plates of earth
all this perfect tension
With storm petrals issuing
out of her hair
Astarte approaches you
footed in luminous milk
Palms are turned towards you
a passionflower blooming
out of each hand
a slow wind drifts off the sound
She hears the sound chamber
you've made with your heart
and the keys your fingers know
open a vault of light
Again you will launch this craft
know her rippling towards you
what is held between the eyes
the wick and the unquenched candle
Friday, 12-13-96
\\\\\\\\
Holly Day
SOLO
little bells tinkle against
the back of my eyesballs, silver strings
purr under my fingertips--the crowd
loves me. We orgasm
simultaneously.
Heroin _does_ make you a better musician.
my skin and bones melt and braid themselves into
the fiber of my guitar, ailen fleshes bonding,
symbiotically feeding. The crowd applauds
somewhere in the dark
beyond my sealed eyes--I hide inside
the dead tree Lazarusing
in my arms.
TONKA
Five a.m., no dawn yet silence
from the crib as my son sees I'm awake now
barefeet padding on cold tiled floor
as I reach down to get him, realizing
the animal at the foot of the crib is not stuffed
purring, blinking eyes open
please let me stay
My mother-in-law tried to convince me the cat
would try to eat the baby sit on him
suffocate him
that I should keep the two of them separated
for the first two years
"at least until the baby can defend himself"
I'll be good
tortoise-shell body accordians yawn soft
head bumps and rests beneath tiny outstretched hand
purrs at first contact gold eyes locked on mine
"This is Tonka.
She's your kitty now."
ANOTHER HAPPY DAY
I want you in the morning, stretched out on my bed
still curled around my body, still
clutching at my hands--I want you with me
always, and I'm not afraid to say it
anymore
I hear you breathing in the bedroom as I
put out breakfast dishes
I love the way you sound when you're
wrapped in coma slumber--I tiptoe around the kitchen
not wanting you to wake up
until I'm done
Your body is so warm I want you
wrapped around me always
I dream of happy places where we'll
always be together--I kiss your eyes awake
and serve you coffee, toasted danish--and together, we rise to greet
another day
\\\\\\\\
John M. Bennett
andomorph your
slight
apple
many names, "order
of contention" (wave back
AND A DOLPHIN
\\\\\\\\
Jeffrey Little
the thumbprint prophecies
#7
cognoscenti in cairns & the stowaway soul slaw
there's no binary to explain you away, leaking,
long on phosphate in a pothole of charged rock,
dancing no lettering of any known tongue
***********************************
the home of the king-size drink
(for the planet of the apes & timothy leary)
"take me to your leader" these words they make
an arid formation of my mouth, this is the realm
of the english accent gone bad, a cul-de-sac in
the apocalyptic narrative of the leisure suit you
don't see mutton chops like that guy's anymore!
a glorious powdered space nog it's all that's left
of our collective piggyback into an inverted hair
shirt of understanding - the universe is a bolo tie.
on easter island the wild dogs all walk sideways
& bark at the big heads until the sun completely
squeezes out their sky. this conception of caesar
it smacks of osmosis in the cellular monastery
of timothy leary standing in the bronx b/4 a brick
wall & that tangled gray ersatz drawl "can't get
there from here" - silverbacks - my mouth wading
in a tumbler full of mohair just in time for the tea.
\\\\\\\\
Karoline Wileczek
Collier's 9-2-39, page 6
article title "keep up with the world"
mourning boxes look through slits
son of the liver spot reproduced momentarily
is only a port of call
reveals that the following
lines are stretched along fence posts
by the distillation of bituminous coal
interspersed among this aggregation.
********************************************
pistle new by the way have you heard the one about
grey air fan folding swish goodbye
arcanum in the belly holed up for later
averted the tide of no tomorrow
it is plain as day in the hearing varied
all these cords are attached
to turned over cabled backward leaf
as look up I into violet and press your fingers
this iron is cold!
this banana has been peeled!
I have read the newspaper!
mesh cartwheel left right and high
on the shelf is stable before hand
looking for bathhouse engineer nod
his low ride in stout welt keeled
blue dirt pile shovel with blisters
pyrrole lined the cracker tin tin
igniting the least of vacation campers
caring only for their little canons
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Anabasis
sat nite holitude
lord's alte (late) light
stult, nix pass.
HERE, the slight of them
hanking in the mist.
this replude, nix nee pinter
i've had enough shit
for two lifetimes
n thnsm
chasm spasm
the narker spud
his own repunto
laid out and flat
the morning AAAfter
you sd helo
fuck shit
and thensm
eyem a former shoe
yr light plenty skated
in flux in tremor in
light
sharp sudden plenter
planter (sudden roses
emist'd
like
why role it out
when a pinnance
will do?
as pinner w/a small joint
like a pin
spilled communicado
nonetheless
do
he sd
late at the bar
i want to read poetry
but but
(i add) where's the beef?
and that's about it.
* * *
louie 3.30.96
\\\\\\\\
Jake Berry
from Brambu Drezi Book 2
crucifix is embryo
suspended
from phospheme logos -
Sophia ensnared in grinding wheels
of warm lethargy
at the moment of recognition and surrender,
Where the field deposits
from the brink of
all luminous spinning variably bountiful,
an accord with infinite
yet numerably substantial
stolen from her mother and bound in animal hides
locked in
the trunk
where only a
diving bell could restore
a stone
graft forged
between transistor
icon
strumming
cells to habit
nautilus
geometry
born in
modal Lilith hacking wire
Will follow Mother's
doves
to Avernus (hideous
faces)
that stench is
memory
drained like flies from
my pores
dragging Beelzebub
back to his tower of loathing
bodies suspended from a blue sky
remake the eidolon
reweb feverish discourse
until nothing remains but the pelican
bleeding her breast for no one
Down to hellmouth
with golden mistletoe
brutally awake
TV extracts flickering plague -
draughts
of cremation
till the
womb releases her waters -
.........
-
If soul is vagarious
undulating between universes - not
stars and their antithesis only,
but parallel resonances, or those
abstracted from radiant trails of subtle
behavior -
no context could provide
the bark
articulation (and who'd die of
the weight anyhow)
only unhindered could she consist
faithfully
and speak
particles emerge
from 'their' forces shadow
polishing the mount
rider eaten from marrow
electric
roomsx