… … words are birds eye is sky … … … … …
Category Archives: Odds and Ends
Sonnet 44
… I hear Dad’s chainsaw echo down the fieldcutting firewood for December’s stove. Herknife in hand Mom chops the cabbage she’ll sealin jars pouring boiling water overit first with a tablespoon of sea salt.Come November she’ll have her sauerkraut.Summer yet, … Continue reading
Harry Kresky reads from A Poet’s Journey
… I met Harry Kresky in the late eighties; he was my lawyer, or I should say he was the lawyer for the community. Without going into too much detail, or I’ll be writing a book, Harry defended a Lower … Continue reading
O Pretty Self
O Pretty Self A snake curled in the sunfeels my shadow come and goesripples over stones. The stream falls downand oozes out of mossand mud where a deer’s stepped. No, I won’t pick this violet.Let it clutch the cracking rockblue … Continue reading
36
36 I see how strong a fragile thing can be. Look! A butterfly comes fluttering over its own reflection hovering out in the middle of a pond so deep and close you’d think no insect strength could last the … Continue reading
232
… Fluttering robins louder than my singingare violent on the lawn where they’re fightingover a worm—No!—I’m wrong. As quietas a junkie gets sticking the needle in no matter what funny business preceded it—Like a junkie suddenlysilent one bird enters the … Continue reading
Marc Chagall: Six Paintings
… I became aware of Marc Chagall when I was a teenager in the 1960’s. Many of the artists I discovered then were still alive like Dali, Picasso, Georgia O’Keeffe, Marcel Duchamp, and Marc Chagall too, whose brides, goats, and … Continue reading
Walking Blues
When Robert Johnson recorded “Walking Blues” in 1936, he was working from a version Son House, not the Devil, had taught him. And the great Son House himself was borrowing from a Blues tradition that began after the Civil War … Continue reading
A Reading for Black Square Editions: Anselm Berrigan, Marcella Durand, and Barry Schwabsky
Weeks before it happened, I had heard about the Black Square Editions book party that was scheduled to take place at the signs and symbols art gallery at 249 East Houston. As the day approached, I looked forward to it … Continue reading
Two Sonnets and Three Drawings
158 Like the dried up dead wasp with its venom gone rolled up on the windowsill like a ball of dust my mother slumbers with her head bent near a bowl of fruit Pat Maples sent listening … Continue reading
Wayne Koestenbaum reads from The Cheerful Scapegoat, Camp Marmalade, and Ultra Marine
In October Wayne Koestenbaum read at the Segue Reading Series at Artists Space in Cortlandt Alley, right off Canal. Lonely Christopher, the curator and host, introduced him, and is letting me include his introduction here. His introductions are so well-read … Continue reading
Celebrating Paolo Javier’s O.B.B.
On Saturday October 17 there was a reading at the Moore Homestead Playground in Elmhurst, Queens in celebration of Paolo Javier’s new book, O.B.B. (The Original Brown Boy), hot off the presses, published by Nightboat Books. A lively group … Continue reading