Author: Nada Gordon

skirt artist entertainer ESL teacher poet

THERE IS NO I IN BIRTH

Nada GordonLeave a comment 
There is no I in Birth


A mass of bone and teeth pushing HARD
against the “miracle of birth.”

Against forced breeding of human monsters
against their will!  A groaning sound…

and a small sinus resembling an anus
and hairy, cheesy material…unfolds in the wet darkness

Are you listening, your honors?
At least, don’t force people do it

Brett M. Craven Maw
could drink a beer, since he likes beer

Cover judges with vernix!
don’t let them out until their nipples leak

Energy collected from the wails and moans coils around
episiotomies, fever, tiredness, and low or sad moods

Even normal gestation is…! You know…
fetiform things – parasitic neoplasms…

Fetuses looking like aliens, like kiwis,
from their giant unblinking eyes

If we absolutely must perpetuate our species…wait ¬–
In 2009 a British man “gave birth”

In a seven-month-old infant! – a parasitic mass
in pluripotent cells teeming with information…

In the abdomen of a teenager, the ideology of
John Roberts/Clarence Thomas – TWO two-first namers –

Joseph Halitosis, Jr.
Let the robots do it!

Let the robots do it!
Let the robots do it!

Let them eat meconium!
like a heart in the mouth

like a sprouting bean or seahorse
like peanuts, like jellybeans,

like really old dried-up old people
like toy goats about four inches long

made of a variety of foreign tissues
Neil M. Gorsuchanasshole

No more ectopic pregnancies,
No more hair loss and weight gain: Let the robots do it!

No more hyperemesis gravidarium
No more preeclampsia or gestational diabetes –

Not to be trusted, the slimy poison tentacle arm of the bought judicial
not to mention Amy Coney Island Barrett Watten of the Mindless!

O blue-eyed judges? Think a moment
of mothers carrying fetuses with giant black eyes

on the sides of their giant heads
Or let’s reimagine the species in CGI, staring into darkness

or like a pinkas mekufal, a folded notebook coming
out of his abdomen!

Roll them into a mass of hairy cheesy material 
Rub placenta in their powdered wigs!

Stuff them back into the womby windbag of judges, 
Subpar Court of the disunited Hates? Observe

that tiny tail that never wags before it disappears into
the colostrum of compassionate intelligence!

Then ask them to let the robots do it.
There are many usual poems

that stare with their blank eyes into the wet darkness!
Think of all the weird things that can happen:

This will not be one of them, signalling
to its own undeveloped twin – it pushed its way, but

we can do that now! Can’t we? Or can we not?
What do you think of bodily integrity now?

Why can’t robots have the babies for us?
Why no techno-solution yet? O look, a fetus in a fetus!

with a tiny tail, a well-formed ankle and foot!
with copious hair, and delicate legs, and shrimpy genitals!

Genius Grant

Nada Gordon1 Comment

/

Genius Grant: A Hateful Sestina

/

Any idiot can get a genius grant,

But beers, I hear, better facilitate true fellowship

Next up: the chattering infomercial Tik-Tok craft talk

while the world vertiginously wobbles on its teensy tenure track

and sends the species back to the mud and clay workshop

at the end of its wild and dissonant residency.

/

The rotten miasma of overly long human residency.

Lee was beaten by that genius, Grant

At the melodramatically quiet sincerity-italics workshop

And the young scribbling things, angling for fellowships

dream ravenous dreams of luscious tenure track

If they can just pull off that “EZ-epiphanies 4 U” craft talk.

/

The furious green sequins approach the sleeping gluestick of ideas about a craft talk

to try to establish an in-brain permanent residency.

Unmarked no-terrain vehicles screech violently off the fairy-dusted tenure track.

The head cockatoo, a rockabilly cavalier, gets an avian genius grant

for eating sweetbreads and tobiko on his year-long fellowship

while drawing infinitesimal ineffables on the table in the devil’s workshop.

/

This will be a “learning to please the teacher” workshop

to be followed by a “only thing that comes from the heart is blood” craft talk.

A lemming wants an ocean view for its exclusive residency.

I’m offended it’s not a “gal-pal-ship” instead of a “fellowship.”

It’s not that I’m not a natural genius, grant

-ed, but I’m also not into skating blithe figure eights along the slippery tenure track.

/

Did you say “manure” track? “Tenor” track? “Tin ear” track? Ah no, you said “tenure track.”

You gotta work to shop, you gotta work to shop, work to shop, work work work, workshop.

Her loose phlegm thickly encrusted with emphatically asserted identities won her a genius grant!

A crafter can craft a craft with found materials, sure, but can that crafter’s crafted craft talk?

Is that a recency? an iridescency? an indecency? a degeneracy?  oh, right, it’s a residency

that requires being felt up in the flowchart of a febrile, feckless, fiercely highfalutin feckin’ fellowship.

/

A glowing green Luna Moth fellowship.

A glinting diamond-sliver tenure track

A sonorous shoehorn residency.

A latent blatancy workshop.

A milky orange craft talk.

A bluish-orange genius grant.

/

When olives retch knowingly slithering homewards on pills: workshop!

Can rabbits always fake testimony to all living kvetchers? Craft talk!

Genuine energy needs inner upper solidity going right around no time!  Now may I please have my genius grant?

Not Being Quite Like Other People

Nada Gordon1 Comment

not being quite like other people

I slither out of the apartment

clumsily

 

like a Paratodon

the dinosaur of the moment

 

into the hammered alloy

and the molded plastic

of the built world

 

oy vey – lights

of the twinkling city

on the curving planet

 

where jobs come and go

physical beauty fades

and markets rise and fall

 

as mealy as penises

in their greed canopy –

discursively, like brats

 

sung in a low

with flops and fumes

along a jaded mass

 

but unattacked and rubbed

against their fate –

they’re hip like cuneiform

 

down the greed tongue

out of the boring gum

into a glorious slump –

 

they’re bone.

 

.

 

 

midway through my life

for the second time

everything’s destabilized

 

it’s a given –

like hush money

to pornstars

 

sounds of subway moving

a luxurious concerto –

these head-bent strangers

 

swiping images of light

dismissively

hopefully

 

“I alone can fix this”

the little blond strongman

in the solar plexus

 

bouncing shrimp off trump, too

 

chameleon hatches bright turquoise

crawling, crawling

out of the egg

 

I didn’t do it I didn’t do it says the train

Sheherazade or Krishna

in brown spots on the door

 

and a bison-shaped wall smear…

 

 

What might it actually mean

to live my life

as I want to live it?

 

Pale strawberries pushing out of a voice

Pale strawberries

pushing out

a voice

 

.

 

 

This is the fancy street

next stop, fecund avenue

awash in electro-beats

 

studiedly, people amuse themselves

as they know how,

knocking back beverages

 

my foot swells up…like a foot

 

why y’all like MAYA so much

 

Friday night:

he walks a white borzoi

through the F train

 

She stops to stare

at the closet simulation

in the organization store

 

shoes with rivets

but no laces –

“relationship” such a cold word.

 

neutral dull palette

in a world where only looks

matter.

 

in the past,

beloveds came to me

so surely

 

with a kind of sleek magic –

a miniature dachshund

like a dik-dik

 

but metaphors

I guess

are easier than marriages

 

either way

two disparate things

forced together

 

.

 

why go out?

stay in!

away from head-bent strangers.

 

something’s masquerading

as an umeboshi

on the train floor

 

never again will I romanticize

our usual spots

in New York City

 

I sit alone

with pursed lips, aware

of my eccentricities

 

It’s foggy outside.

Dutifully, invisibly,

I do my kegels

 

My head –

so heavy

like a lavender mask

 

My head a lightbulb

radiating pink

lightning

 

.

 

Train stops in the tunnel

just after a drunk woman

has suddenly puked

 

a woman with a ponytail

and strong thighs eats

an egg sandwich

 

tech guy with black earbuds

clenches his backpack

between his shins

 

I call my past love

into my attention

and give him a baleful look

 

A woman holds her coffee cup, covered,

to her mouth, as if

she’s praying to it

 

A vulture stands next to a hat

 

People are super-strange birds

with necks.

 

The sidewalk grimaces

with its grids and teeth

 

I say by way of painful critique.

 

I sing a single word: “it”

Quavering a little

 

I’ll keep unmatching

until the lion’s mane

is gone.

 

Phlegm pools in lungs.

 

I’m tired of looking at men’s faces.

 

I see your handsome face dissolve

into a one-eyed puppet.

 

And the eyes are also on bananas–

are they the high masters of history

or something?

 

fish sauce smell on the back of my thumb

 

I’ll have a sharp lamb jerky – metallic squeak.

 

It’s sarcastic in a bulb –

his highness

in your spot kingdom

 

never endorse this president

in my culture

 

I feel offensive.

I’m having 35 minutes worth

of processing.

 

Spilled gravy on the label

I think GOD knows how to do it

 

It’s from the salmon man

in question –

the purse development fathers

 

Playing a rat game.

 

He died recently –

without VIKINGS –

properly

 

otherwise and chrysanthemum

 

Bye little kazoo,

that was on – the maximum?

It’s simple

 

The thing is, I was hungry

This is excellent in our dreaming.

 

In the situation with birds, no choice!

I’ve been writing words, consecutive words

with a cat thing:

 

it is happening.

 

I understand you are coming from an altitude

of words

 

I understand you are coming from the attitude

of words

 

on the egg hold

of this latin poison,

a warble of flood rainbows.