From realpoetik at scn9.scn.org Tue Jun 2 12:21:38 2009 From: realpoetik at scn9.scn.org (RealPoetik Magazine) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2009 15:21:38 -0400 Subject: [Realpoetik] Karyna McGlynn Message-ID: <86a3fe410906021221w42986071g5817cff8c121a5e9@mail.gmail.com> *The Room Folded in Gelid Light* there was a wrought iron hole in my body from my bed the retractor looked far away I fingered the grillwork, the cool hard lips of the thing someone said had teeth might bite my finger, somebody said don’t touch now, germs, in any case mea culpa, what was I doing trapped in a storm drain in the first place somebody said I must be patient now patient as patio furniture it was out of my hands there were eggs stuck in my iron mouth my head swayed, an airy addendum the soft shells pulsed like shrapnel they were lodged in my coal hole somebody said say you are only a house *I am only a house*, good, now breathe *Karyna McGlynn* was born and raised in Austin, TX and received her MFA from the University of Michigan. Her first book, *I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl, *won the 2008 Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry from Sarabande Books. She’s the author of three chapbooks: *Scorpionica*, *Alabama Steve,*and, forthcoming, *Small Shrines*. Her poems have recently appeared in *Fence,* *Denver Quarterly, Diode, Octopus, Typo, Caketrain *and* Anti-. *Karyna teaches at Concordia University and will be the Claridge Writer-in-Residence at Illinois College this fall. She edits *L4: The Journal of the New American Epigram* with Adam Theriault. -- RealPoetik realpoetik.blogspot.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From realpoetik at scn9.scn.org Thu Jun 11 13:16:21 2009 From: realpoetik at scn9.scn.org (RealPoetik Magazine) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2009 16:16:21 -0400 Subject: [Realpoetik] Jeffrey Little Message-ID: <86a3fe410906111316o38d92825je69f6fa88a1d8a12@mail.gmail.com> *Maarifa Street* *(For Jon Hassell)* At the edge of the world, on Maarifa Street, children dream of a new god’s pointless S.O.S. & march throughout the town under a ten-foot tall Rumi-On-A-Stick It is baseball season, & they play no baseball, suicide is passé, the parlor game of another generation, & delinquency has yet to slip into its spats & introduce itself as a viable pastime. So they sit here in these shag trees & they wait. This is the sound of time passing, the open secret of the hills. Dust & dirt & dry as a bone meal aperitif. They are already older than the rain, than the idea of the rain, mock clouds circling, dust in the brain stem, dust in the socket, empty water buckets plotted about in long lines. Siroccos furnace, & a yard bird sets to scratching an escape route into the chicken coop floor. In the twilight when the temperatures bottom out to flatline at slow-burn the village opens up its trap door & dangles a slide rule from a string. Crones tell of a dervish that one day will begin to knuckleball & then cross over, meanwhile they have the caves, when the bats clear there are still the caves. The best two out of three builds a better machine. *Song for Johnny Dyani* >From a swatch of African veldt: Johannesburg, risen, along with hundreds of tin hats laid out as a lane. The witchdoctor’s son & beautiful obstinacy of an Ark strolling in ostinato spirited after. Reckoning as the crow flies it’s about 8000 miles from here to New York City, another 4000 to Berlin, & the electrons shed by Dyani are everywhere in between, holding court, a mighty foundation poured joyous despite. We cannot abide a philosophy of silence. On a corrugated rooftop a little girl singing Mbizo! is throwing diamonds at the sun, in lion-shadow, Johnny Dyani a river behind his bass. *Jeffrey Little* is the author of *Five & Dime*, *The Book of Arcana*, & *The Hotel Sterno*. He also has two chapbooks on view at *Mudlark*, www.unf.edu/mudlark. Along with artist Karoline Wileczek, he is the co-author of two children who have each elevated mayhem into a recombinant art form. Jeffrey is a Delaware Division of the Arts Poetry Fellow, and an all around swell egg. -- RealPoetik realpoetik.blogspot.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From realpoetik at scn9.scn.org Wed Jun 24 13:45:27 2009 From: realpoetik at scn9.scn.org (RealPoetik Magazine) Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:45:27 -0400 Subject: [Realpoetik] Nellie Bridge Message-ID: <86a3fe410906241345n66c202e9lc21ec7d99b52330f@mail.gmail.com> NEGATIVE SOUNDS I was thinking about silence and integers, how always the first questions on the math part of achievement tests were about whole numbers, integers, and natural numbers. How integers go across zero, into the negatives. How silence can be more than silent, become absorptive on the back end of sound. I have a satellite dish that absorbs noises, laughs, and people’s gestures. I use it to hide, and defeat the world. It works when I remember it’s there. It goes the length of my face, or maybe my whole body, because I feel something walking along with me. I’m so silent that silence becomes something else, and I feel very peaceful. It is different than holding my breath. The satellite dish is eating the people. But it doesn’t hold them in. The dish always breathes them out again. Naturally. Like a pillow. It holds many secrets past zero, on the negative side of sound. When I wake up, the pillow has its own scent and I’m afraid to ask it where we’ve been. At the zoo, the snow leopards sleep in the afternoon sun. Their spots are indistinct. I can’t tell which way they are lying. The owls also sleep, in low cages at “Birds of Prey.” They must know about silence and strollers, cameras, and pizza. The night must be so different here. The paths appearing as paths because they’re empty. *Nellie Bridge* grew up in Sequim, Washington and now lives in Brooklyn. Her poems have appeared in *KNOCK, Painted Bride Quarterly, New Delta Review,*and *Realpoetik*! She was a finalist for the Pleiades book prize in 2008. -- RealPoetik realpoetik.blogspot.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: