Today’s Ensemble: Eating the Railroad

I dressed like a grownup against the briskness today. I don’t feel like a grownup particularly, but like sailing chaos crashing about tiredly. Look how pale I am! I need to eat a train. Or a whole railroad.

I erased my post asking for help with what to do with opinions, because who cares, although I was reminded of it, tonally, by the most recent post by Lindsey Boldt. Really, the saddest posts are the cries for attention that everyone ignores. I’m reassured by the neediness of others (and this is the religious impulse), even if I’m repelled by it, too (and this is the impulse to nihilism).

Well, I can dwell, if uncomfortably, in ambiguities. Can you?

I am going to crash through this post. With notes and quotations from readings I’ve been to recently:

Laura Moriarty:

able to gyrate in marmalade only

Paul Foster Johnson

[lots of tripling, and triple negatives!]

not not not

Anna Moschavakis:

The Greek word cynic translates as doglike.

There were always low level scientologists hanging around the dumpsters in dirty uniforms.

Kim Rosenfield:

(in her panel of scientists’ voice)

All these documents are registered on microcassettes.

No more, no less, then the study of intonation

Bhanu Kapil:

There were some sugar crystals on the carpet, I knew I should hoover them up before they got ground in.

I compared myself to a Safeway rotisserie chicken. I said I didn’t want to be one.

Monica de la Torre

The color is a readymade – a part of the industrial production of feeling.

Hats gags games and magic are subject to random searches

Christine Wertheim:

My eyes stutter – my patter is the swoon of the sound

(dogs barking in sympathy)

Vanessa Place:

election box

dripping pan

devil’s donut

popo

lap flounder

fish mitten

Michael Nicoloff:

I’ll start calling you the sub-prime mover

I hate other poets

This haircut reflects my experience

Woke up on the wrong side of my woman suit

and his collabs with Alli Warren

slurping ramen, experiencing “glow”

automatically I love pleather

getting all bulbous on my own ass

Mel Nichols

wet panties in sunlight/ save me from the scary clownheads

the lawn’s intense

oh… human poets
oh… extra second in the world

I love the way a leprechaun scab feels on my skin.

I mean, Ben Franklin was the Joyce Carol Oates of his time.

Catriona Strang

war is also mind

I get my drift

I’m so catty in green

blink light slobbers horns

Margaret Christakos

marvel comically

a portal that would open on a room full of squirming words

to be entertained is such release

I couldn’t bear to listen to Nicole Brossard. Who is she speaking to? [I wrote.]A bunch of meta-garble. My eyes glaaaaaze over… sounds better in French…. I started looking around: Anne Waldman in a coral/ orange scarf and tunic of maybe Tibetan ornament. Jen’s brilliant silver hybrid shoes… Vanessa’s pierced brow white shirt black jeans… Mark Weiss in Japonoiseries… Emily Beall in “Midwestern” plaid… Bernstein also in plaid pastel, sitting quite sideways slumped… Pierre Joris has a “dandy” face … his mouth… brown print shirt with torches or ice cream cones… Jen plays with her hair… checking ends?

“it is frightening, this carpet of words”

and this I don’t know if I wrote this or Brossard did. Maybe I was going all homophonic on her: “the snoot wind through the roses/ don’t be afraid to touch your mélange gully/ lil sketches/ your mother in her bed tub/ the klezmer barkeep“ [uh, this all sounds like me]

Rachel Z,’s pale pink shirt with silkscreened SQUIRREL– where did she get the SQUIRREL?

“of course we do write with letters” no! [feigned surprise!]

Huh: an ABECEDARIAN book! How INNOVATIVE!

I was thinking she’s actually incompetent.

remember my continuum from my erased poets, loyal readers?

MAKE IT STOP
UGH
HUH
WOW
OUT OF THIS WORLD

I’ll just let you infer ratings, or tack on your own.

Kisses!