bone work

Picked clean is how I'm feeling after April and pages of words, more than expected, my output seemingly to be at the low end of outputting in blogland, at least from what I've observed, but output nonetheless. Sometimes, I'll admit, I worry as others seem to outpace my pace, books streaming out, poems posted, chappies shipped as I peck away at the same old bones. So there it is, printed out, the pages -- a good amount of work to work with. And whether any of it is any good won't matter because I needed matter and matter is what I made morning after morning starting when it was dark and dawn not yet around though as the mornings went on there dawn was brighter than me as the words did some kind of magic. Now to look at the work, see the bones, play with the bones, the bones-o, like a fox on the town.

theme & variation

from The Geometry of Shells

The shells of mollusks derive much of their aesthetic

appeal from the regularity of their form. From the platelike

valves of scallops to the tightly wound needle-shaped shells 

of auger snails, shells are endless variations on a geometric

theme in which an expanding figure sweeps

out a curved or spirally coiled hollow edifice. 

Because shells are growing structures built by animals, 

an appreciation of how these variations

are brought must rest on an understanding 

of how shells grow. Once we know the rules, 

we can ask why certain shapes that are compatible 

with the rules are rarely or never encountered in nature.

Geerat J. Vermeij

My mind, being tired, is thinking about other ways of being.

may day

After Joan Mitchell's La Grande Valle XIV

conclusion

My poem at qarrtsiluni

After Joan Mitchell's

La Grand Valle XIV

Check it out Joan Mitchell

recrudescence

Webs

my mother drew spider webs

on any paper within her reach

my mother on the telephone

drew webs across names in our address book

my mother in her rocker

drew webs on bills and Christmas cards

my mother in my bedroom drew

webs deep in diaries

everywhere in that house I found

ink    pencil    crayon

-Teresa Carson

from Elegy for the Floater

bloom

Magnolia

Ambition. Jealousy. The numbing flow

of adrenaline pumped along the blood.

The fear that loneliness is punishment

and that corrosive draining feeling down

the chest the natural and just result

of failures...What delicious leisure not

to feel it. What a sweet reprieve to linger

here with these ovals of purple and flamingo

plumed from the tree or splayed on the pavement.

If only for these seconds before returning

back to the open air those flowers keep

pushing out of themselves to die inside.

Peter Campion

drawn

A DRAWING

The meaning of this is entirely and best to say the mark, best to

say it best to show sudden places, best to make bitter, best to make

the length tall and nothing broader, anything between the half.

Gertrude Stein

from Tender Buttons

So the cruelest month is nearly over and I'll admit a certain rebellious disdain for napowrimo but fact is jumping part way on that bandwagon is yielding work or at least words, pages of them, all marks, some showing sudden places, which is a good thing, and when courage comes time to read, perhaps there'll be marks worth another look, then more work. This mark-making/type-making has been a relief.

more Gertrude

Water Raining

  Water astonishing and difficult altogether makes a meadow and a stroke.

one more from Matthea

Museum of the Middle

You're walking down the middle of the road when you start sinking.

Each white stripe gets successively softer, like strips of gum left out

in the sun.  You pass daffodils, coffins, and fossils until you're at the

earth's core.  The doorknob burns your hand but inside is the usual

cool, museum-ish hush.  A tapestry (2' x 48') charting the rise and fall

of the middle class is backlit so that the stitched line fluoresces like a

heartbeat on a monitor.  Most prized is a worm segment in the foyer,

a pink accordion mounted on black velvet and framed in gold. They

say a worm can live if you cut it in half but not if you extract its exact

middle.  In the next room and spilling into the one after that is the

ever-expanding gallery of middle-management--almost all white

men.  Today there are two special exhibits--to your left, Hermes

and Other Intermediaries; to your right, The Middle Distance: For-

gotten Focus. In each painting, the foreground and background have

been blacked out, leaving fragments of fields, flagstones, the occa-

sional midsized sheep.  But why are you here? Do your parents love

you exactly 5 % less than your brother and 5% more than the dog?

What museum-worthy mediocrity do the curators see in you?

from Modern Life

Reading Harvey's latest is a graphic experience. I'm learning how to lighten up. 

Not that she's funny haha. Rather that she's looser and kind of darkly playful 

in her associations and subject matter. Some of it is spookily goofy, 

if that makes sense.  Anyway, good reading.

dig it

Ode to the Double-Natured Sides of Things

God and the angels arrive in Eden to find only a scattering of stems

on the ground. Noticing how the angels' wings fall from left to right

as they bend over the stems, God invents a more flexible forgive-

ness. Things change just slightly  The usual botany class--two rows

of long tables, students on either side with wildflowers in vases be-

tween them--keeps its format, but now, if a boy puts down his refer-

ence book and stares instead at a dot of green on the cheek of the girl

across from him, his essay "How a Leaf So Tiny Got on Her Cheek"

is relevant, may even warrant an "A." Above the sky may be dark.

Below the corn may be dry. Some days recess has to be on the west

side of the school because it's raining on the east side.

Matthea Harvey

from Modern Life

dead line

Implications for Modern Life

The ham flowers have veins and are rimmed in rind, each petal a

little meat sunset. I deny all connections with the ham flowers, the

barge floating by loaded with lard, the white flagstones like platelets

in the blood-red road. I'll put the calves in coats so the ravens can't

gore them, bandage up the cut gate and when the wind rustles its

muscles, I'll gather the seeds and burn them.  But then I see a horse

lying on the side of the road and think You are sleeping, you are sleep-

ing, I will make you be sleeping.  But if I didn't make the ham flow-

ers, how can I make him get up? I made the ham flowers. Get up,

dear animal. Here is your pasture flecked with pink, your oily river,

your bleeding barn. Decide what to look at and how. If you lower

your lashes, the blood looks like mud. If you stay, I will find you

fresh hay.

Matthea Harvey