Subject Lines

Prime Decimal

2010-11-01T13:12:00.002-05:00

my poem "Subject: Please Be Sympathetic to My Cry" is up at Prime Number

Halloween Cento (Cento from Horse Less Review 8, part 2)

2010-10-31T12:04:00.005-05:00

Everything smells like wet lawns & burned charcoal
in a suburban backyard. Their sweaty palms make etchings of the dirt ........on
long fences of night.
Or you come to the grass
the other side of a cattle fence;
stay longer, count the day's keloidal cells.

**

This is the house we have always lived in.

Eyes rimmed red,
dusted skin,
can you see that I am transparent? I pretend otherwise.
Who crushed the brain with numerals?
Who are you to talk politics? I know
the simple morality of a gun under your pillow --
bookended in sheaves of leaves, cotton --
in this country, left to right, top to bottom.

**

You've been mastering the dream; you conjured our whole ........neighborhood!
They knifed you & scooped out the bad
drills & cranes & trains & planes & automobiles
at night. At ten o'clock, the metal screeches down.
I'm scared to go to the party with you. It's my party:
a graveyard receiving bodies:
storage of the unappealing & inedible.

**

At the exact same moment
(that flat wide blade slung over your shoulder),
behind a velvet curtain in the foyer of the art gallery, a boy punched ........the,
the mirror, a window behind which
I have carried a torch
in the unperishable past. I function, at the time of telling you this ........story,
fine. Another trance upon us, then.

Or lullaby & goodnight. The fate of a nation,
whether or not to be savage
by these few simple rules. Their book deals with disappearances, ........& the
negation, to the deepest blue. But it's hard to get the blue of this ........sky. They
entangled like vines in summertime. Between skin & clothes
I dreamed I carried a snake.

**

When you see us burn things, read the smoke
like a god to me. Let be be
air for sale.

Am I losing you? The white marble
on your forehead
lets go her balloon. We will do
some sugar cane & melon. Barely
caused a scene.

The sunset shifts;
the black sky
reeks of progress.
Locks click
still like that
bag full of headlines
you're supposed to live.

**

& if we're really here
I was born for this, just as you were born
of its hairs, those along the back,
with more thought, more flesh.

**

Listen to raccoons clawing through the gutters
without us knowing. Remember
& smile more. Say something that will follow me
right now. The ducks are not ducks anymore. They're the center of ........the pond.

**

horse less review 8

Cento from Horse Less Review 8 (part 1)

2010-10-26T13:41:00.004-05:00

Out of the unexpected
my shoes will disintegrate. My shoes are full of
which of the ways I had come?

Unite once more toward some common goal
on the other side of the lake, in another time.

We looked up & saw only the things that
cut the lines out 0f bread dough.
Sitting on the earth, half immersed

upon her breasts. Once I went higher up, once only.
The way old men in shirtsleeves come out:

really suffering within. & without his head
rushing back after all these years to consult more doctors
(this was a very sick man, one might even say dangerous)

appealing turned into appalling.
Hair hard to swallow without strangling.

Like odd rats scurrying in & out of debris, laughing,
you try to console me. I will snap your neck
& a Darth Vader figurine as well as many other toys. On a shelf across .........the

the tub are seven pink loofahs & seven half-empty bottles of .........Victoria's
ghosts. To know them, I stole photographs from Giotto.

There is this feather
strips me raw in an icy racket of wind.
Changing the vocabulary of the forest

might rediscover a new life, lived in miniature.
Every line is wrong, we are told

& I'm glad. Nobody calls me in the center of the night
that I keep from veering apart
at the end of the most amazing year.

horse less review #8

a review without horses

2010-10-16T12:41:00.002-05:00

some poems are up here: Horse Less Review #8
by these people:

Graeme Bezanson, Jessica Bozek, Christophe Casamassima, Juliet Cook, Tyler Flynn Dorholt, Kate Durbin, Richard Froude, Nathan Hauke, Michael Hennessey, Brian Howe, Russell Jaffe, Kirsten Jorgenson, Megan Kaminski, Mary Kasimor, Kirk Keen, Becca Klaver, Krystal Languell, Dolly Lemke, Rebecca Loudon, Erin McNellis, Monica Mody, Danielle Pafunda, Andrea Rexilius, Susan Scarlata, Chad Scheel, Mike Sikkema, Dan Louis Singer, Jordan Stempleman, Maureen Thorson, Megan Volpert, Joshua Ware, Samuel Day Wharton, and Joseph Wood.

also thanks to scott abels, for this: country music
you should really think about submitting.

Raft Magazine Issue 1

2010-10-06T11:12:00.000-05:00

Raft, a new spoken-word literary journal, is now online, at:

www.raftmagazineonline.com

Issue 1 features new work from:

Scott Abels
Niamh Bagnell
Susan Powers Bourne
Ric Carfagna
Jan Carson
Joel Chace
Arkava Das
Mark DuCharme
Iris Jamahl Dunkle
Bonnie Emerick
Michael Farrell
Adam Fieled
Thomas Fink
Vernon Frazer
R. Jess Lavolette
David Mohan
Debrah Morkun
Paul Nelson
Francis Raven
Chad Scheel
Sam Schild
Brian Seabolt
Adam Strauss
Mark Stricker
Samuel Day Wharton
Karena Youtz

SAWBUCK

2010-05-31T19:47:00.003-05:00

check out the new sawbuck here:

www.sawbuckpoetry.blogspot.com

featuring:

Cento from Versal 8

2010-05-23T16:17:00.003-05:00

As long as the court listens,
you still lack a function. Do not fear -- function
softens the suture
we called home. If I lived there for a year, it was
your permission to move away
that bangs inside the mouth. The scarlet ink packet
that the sun drops, wrapped in smoke, towards the east.
To begin the allergic game,
each draws out the sword carefully stored
until the 1980s.
Humming a German folk tune & smiling
despite not understanding enough of the what
that later followed,
I came upon an arrow or a spear poking skyward,
running right to the margins.
A sleazy siren, decked in white,
let me stay in the morning. & I'll read you the backs of cereal boxes
once. He was a pair of fins, a rogue. & tidal
changes, tiny & secret as a warning,
made me look like a whore.
This will stand as your apology,
without opening the body.

Versal 8 is out now.

Fűrészbak

2010-04-03T17:09:00.001-05:00

somebody, somewhere, had google translate Sawbuck 4.1 into magyar:

Fűrészbak

LEVELER!

2010-03-23T07:49:00.003-05:00

There Will Always be a Moment in Your Life
That Can Change Everything

POEM!

2010-03-19T08:30:00.002-05:00

13
myna birds

is up!!!!

(i have a poem up there)

2010-03-15T09:18:00.000-05:00

beware!

SAWBUCK 4.1!

2010-03-01T21:30:00.000-06:00

is up & in business.

Cento from The Concher #2

2010-01-29T13:59:00.002-06:00

We are all upstream, relics of our counsel.,
the horizon melodramatically

fumbling through the dust-grounds
full of cobs. We keep wedding dresses out,

claw-footed, hand-held, the heart-like
moon cantos awash with

more, you know, fucking than
a field shot-up with poppies.

Like a kerchief full of ether when the phone rings
all of our chests outside today heaving the beautiful everyone

darkly away -- O bewailing & pitted America -- staring
made a hole I can see through.

Unsubdued as the season itself,
this house, a dark swallow

unmoved, turned to your supple lips.
Each blue self not quite

enough to measure their height in my teeth.
They weren't always. All the places

not present here,
where the strongman hits the bell again & the sky opens;

all the horizon in handcuffs of color, & the morning
light soaked up by mindfulness.

Say & say what is before us.
Even with me holding the door shut, I'm awake

for foul & fair, against the lichen-covered knolls.
They dance so hard the trees fall down inside them.

You refused to fall with them. Monitors
with no shade. Yellow tattered palm fronds.

this is what you want

2009-12-17T15:37:00.002-06:00

Anti- Issue #5
24 poems by Samuel Day Wharton, Fritz Ward, Julie Marie Wade, Margot Schilpp, Nicholas Reading, G. M. Palmer, Clay Matthews, Dawn Lonsinger, Lisa Lewis, Sara Kearns, Todd Fredson, Gary Dop, Curtis L. Crisler, Nick Courtright, Chip Corwin & Michael Theune, Elizabeth J. Colen, Jenny Browne, and Albert Abonado.

also, past sawbuck contributor Nick Demske has some swell poems up at 7 corners

check 'em out

SAWBUCK!! 3.4!! WINTER!! 2009/2010!!

2009-12-01T14:05:00.003-06:00

winter is here (though it may not feel like it in CA) & a new sawbuck is so ready!

read poems from:

\\ Allan Peterson //
// Becca Klaver \\
\\ Daniel Borzutsky //
// George Kalamaras \\
\\ Ian Ganassi //
// Kathleen Rooney \\
\\ Lisa Ciccarello //
// Martha Silano \\
\\ Robert Lietz //

// Sandy Longhorn \\

before they read poems from you!

Thanksgiving Cento (from Rod Smith)

2009-11-26T15:04:00.002-06:00

to the house & sunlight, we become intelligible because the egret
didn't get through water, its
opulence isn't allowed, so to
the good part of the house
& to some birds, the birds right now

the police came & went
to many -- & to many there was no
behind the kitchen cabinet nobody
tripping, the house kneads the flower

half of it, for love
becomes blatant in its strength

into the long night, dreams
are votive, based on
house & holographic, pastoral
calligraphy, camp, &
is at an angle, for the good

the clothes on the floor arouse
to the swart angles
we house, actually we are housed

in the mania of inaction, a still, unbuilt shining thing where
the water is not good unless it is clear
it does not matter if we trust

& the year's angles bid
to the ratio of need -- wisdom
blade-shaped, bending
if no one pretended
like a scythe, well-oiled, fervent
suffering & bold

not unforced, not unburied, the
Sierra Nevada, screaming
for what is good hurts too

renewal, self-denial, &

it is quite a spectacle

new journal -- LEVELER

2009-11-15T13:30:00.005-06:00

friends, i am very happy to point you to:

We (Jennifer H. Fortin, P.J. Gallo, Evan Glasson, Yotam Hadass) are happy to announce that LEVELER is officially up and running. Please check out the site at levelerpoetry.com. Every Sunday we will post a new poem, accompanied by a brief entry called levelheaded that aims to shed light on the poem and our editorial process. If you have comments on any of the present or future content, please join in on the conversation by writing us at levelwithus@levelerpoetry.com.

Cento from Dorothea Lasky part II

2009-10-27T15:46:00.002-05:00

In Brighton, MA I cannot lie, I felt the hope
in the summer sun.

"Now this is the truth" we all thought.
Scratch its head. It is holy.

So says you & you know nothing.
This is a world where there are monsters

which in bright red
lived a lot of different kinds of lives.

Inside my heart, there is a rat who
for your your kind of love

in the middle of the night I wake & I am cold all over.
Like a small business

I eat the world lovingly, too.
I hate language & yes, I hate you

with my bloody mouth.
The great event which is beauty

melting the things in the room
& I, in the light of the candles

is lost forever & replaced by the unreal.
I had almost forgotten I was a poet.

I was a philosopher:
follow me, I know everything.

We kissed each other lovingly for the very first time.

Cento from Dorothea Lasky Part I

2009-10-19T12:53:00.002-05:00

My soul was a man & like a man
I make a toast to me, my friend.
& now when you see a man six feet tall,
& he sits there in a heap in front of me thinking of suicide

with a handsome boy who wants to hold me all night,
I understand, I want to kill myself now.
Some have described
the real self

growing ever so slightly from his forehead.
There is shit on my hands;
this is how it feels when you talk to me.
The flowers scattered themselves everywhere.

Now there is something between me &
the heart of me, bursting within itself!
Don't you think that is sad, that here
is noisy with light. The blackbirds are

so in love with anyone --
perhaps it is chemistry that
was bright & blue & plastic.
& death was untuned to them & he made them an unlikely hole

of a great eternity, too large to even be
unlikely & mean.
I mean to say
a serious mistake: the universe is unlikely.

Cento Before Dinner (from Jack Spicer) II

2009-09-27T16:34:00.003-05:00

& so we walked, uneasy, wondering
enough to want to start backward.
I think I'm going to be sick.
The hands unclench, the trembling legs go loose --
what wasn't, what undoes, what will not happen
lost somewhere between Hell & Texas.
Under a sun bright like a broken promise,
the boxers face each other. They pretend
we fell unloved, like frozen fields of snow.
The word is slow & rigid in its pace.
I closed my lying heart against his lips
& sometimes I can almost see
the citizens come out to help the strangers.
What have I lost? The trees were full of birds.
I turn & place my hand upon your groin.
I hear the seagulls call. They're going west;
that gleam like God's own candles in the sun. Nothing
lets beautiful black fingers snap the last one
when I poke my fingers into her. I can see it
from the middle distance of another room:
the dancer that puts birthdays in motion.

Cento Before Dinner (from Jack Spicer)

2009-09-26T19:56:00.004-05:00

We waited & the blue skies writhed awhile
to keep the time in. But the songs are mine.

Men & women have weddings & funerals.
I watch, as others watched, but cannot stand

around, around, a convoluting day
draped loosely in my bed.

An angel pacing down Hollywood, wings folded
as ink on paper: it will be no picture, no tourist postcard

will find its rest
while the heart twists.

You want to web the rivers of the world.
You have picked the wrong flower.

We find that eyes in kissing stammer
& so we walked, uneasy, wondering.

Cento from Chris Tonelli

2009-09-08T11:21:00.003-05:00

Each introduction
is strong -- a simple mask. I am
in the objectless air.

There are so few ways
to escape, no
telling the truth.

I was born;
objects exist
where memory

does not exist.
The thing in the air
never happened.

We've evolved beyond
potential love.
This is the goal -- to be

the only thing possible.

Cento from Graham Foust

2009-08-30T20:04:00.003-05:00

A new year's clumsy gallows-
word for dead:
something someone would say.

My neighbors cough &
you get the picture.
I move around

the very best places to kill
to this place
I will always never

touch when I so want to. That is,
move. I like the way I'm still.
Compelled to pretend, I get

things when in pain.
There are only ever breaks
for a little rearview mirror

a skin's-width,
maybe.
Between the street

I never could have made
breathing people in
& that great gospel jest,

a sound somewhere
could know wisdom's cut.
Capacity -- I guess that's just

dread,
a whole night's worth.
& other than our memory

of blood,
I've been having
the most difficult beautiful

I do. I do
your new brain
& you can't notice

I am not safe.
You saw me
ashen. Face was knocked

by one hand.
As a mouth
of moon, your smile,

your hand
like a bladder.
Bored totem,

the grass spasms open,
or in a corner
you care for me,

bruised. & doubt lit up
that which hasn't
its own ceremony.

The revolution, too, is sad
like it's a mirror.
The last of

pain, quietly made,
unlocked into air. There.

coffee robot

2009-06-24T12:47:00.000-05:00

from slashfood

Cento from Realpoetik & Linebreak

2009-06-18T10:39:00.003-05:00

Halved by prisms, the multiple
cacophonies of need, a river, swells, above sound are the

favors of one slight puff, some 30 years his junior.
A jar. Rain & saliva become

snakes. Snakes
suggest ear plugs at night --

New York City
blossoming. O wide wind seers, cirrus-drafts of curving

mea culpa. What was I doing trapped
at the edge of the world? On Maarifa Street, children dream of a new

earth & the earth which forces it to freedom, the tongue of
heels ascending a ladder.

Cento from Realpoetik

2009-06-17T13:49:00.002-05:00

Past the grime-caked windows
the sound of a piano
from the briers. Sour, bitter

music. Myron has a stub of charcoal.
Far off, the front door bangs.
He eats his rations, & after,

tea. Wreak after wreck. Month,
one hour, another. The wilderness in you
a country. It stretched its rationality out:

a pitched roof to stop rain ruining, guide our
I-don't-know-who-I-am-right-now
at first; & then the eyes adjust.

When eternally the earth
up against the window,
alone in a blue vacuum,

curled in hurling its
smog over glass songs,
spills into my skin & paints my veins, even

thoughts stern on the faces of sailors.

in the mail

2009-06-07T10:26:00.004-05:00

yesterday, some goodies:
Jill Alexander Essbaum's Necropolis (thanks jill!).

Dan Beachy-Quick's This Nest Swift Passerine
Mark Yakich's The Making of Collateral Beauty

Sawbuck 3.2

2009-06-02T10:20:00.004-05:00

is ready to go: www.sawbuckpoetry.blogspot.com

Corey Mesler
David Sewell
Erik Anderson
Gina Abelkop
Jennifer Fortin
Joseph Wood
Kate Schapira
Kristina Marie Darling
Nick Demske
Paul Hostovsky

hope you like!

~samuel

Cento from Chelsea 81 (part 2)

2009-05-25T21:44:00.002-05:00

Where he'd followed his father's work --
randomness & space, smiling in bright light --
Keats had a little slice of the cosmic

lucky. & who'll bet on luck?
Searching in the painting or the mirror
to find, like a blind man turning towards her

house of muscle & breath & violin,
one white stone hidden in the hand, wisteria blooming.
When stillness goes electric,

a hundred pallid fields ignite,
sharp-angled from the earth.
Behind the window, the little boy watches.

Cento from Chelsea 81 (part 1)

2009-05-19T16:36:00.003-05:00

These thirty years, revised, destroyed
pools, this island of Guernsey; we stand as
ancestral knots adrift. No remainder
in the glass you just gave me. It was all
what we mistake it to have been.
It is in this exact moment
years sing by. Father, do you recall the time
I broke my strings, spit my teeth
through the story, far off.
At my window, the cold trees opened
the deeds that shone through your sweat.
A lever to raise from ashes the
sounds of splashing water.
How is it that sunlight consoles?
The plan is to spend the light
that makes them bold, your bones,
the facts like bones & the photographs of bones.
A man's blind trunk without arms & legs is
hoary as frost now, your eyes all clouded
in that bickering land that once resounded,
that will not let you breathe. Farewell, my friend.

Cento from Arts & Letters Spring 2007

2009-05-13T16:56:00.003-05:00

I do not remember this. I was a child
in the darkness, a winged rustling; & later
brilliant red & yellow. & grief, certainly,

is very matter-of-fact: warm bodies (monkeys
for days). Nevertheless,
things weren't always bad.

Something enters by the small window
because, let's face it, sometimes words drift too far off.
I don't know how to get back there now

said an ancient theory of medicine.
Looking at it, did he actually leave
the slow mule of my heart?

All afternoon, his back deep in the grass, he lay there
sun-bronzed,
moving more and more like fiction.

Cento from March 2009 Boxcar Poetry Review

2009-04-21T19:03:00.002-05:00

A hive living in the ribcage of a raccoon

deeper than what our fathers' called

"our lips on his fingertips"

adds up all of what you are most afraid of.

Lord, take what you've come for.

We needed the dramatic beginning.

It was a nice touch, it was, to erase

how to retreat. I want nothing to do with it.

I've driven more nails into the leaning porch

unnamed. Unnoticed, more is coming. It snows.

Cento from Sir! Issue 2

2009-03-30T15:55:00.002-05:00

Without will, there is no
time & axis, the flock

littler than I am.
Throbbing like the throat of a bird,

I know he puts his hand somewhere
that can never be found,

in a different neighborhood.
Don't fear repetition.

Remember what he made --
the ground looks strange. Like fields of white;

like nothing had happened.
In the future

we found them again,
saying it's over.

A surprise of sand & wind --
of all the unifying elements in a best friend's camera.

Even if we feel
I know my name at last,

the rain was getting in
& you will come out.

Cento from Brandi Homan 3/9/09 & 3/16/09 (in hospital & out)

2009-03-16T18:58:00.002-05:00

Like when a friend of a friend was drunk
for me. A man who smells like

blossoms bleached
purrs with the dyskinesia of atoms. Telepathy
of bleeding fingers. Feet firmly on the ground.

I'm looking for love
with exotic postmarks,

coated with afterglow until I glisten
scarlet. Your pink wig
above us. Someday,

they'll cut off your hands
in a bright red dress.

We all should be so tended
we all turn to pumpkins at midnight.
Sometimes I wear stockings

red as rising heat,
although I promised otherwise.

My grudges, tiny bludgeons
coated in dust -- life beating us
for giving until nothing remains.

Cento from Brandi Homan

2009-03-02T16:58:00.002-06:00

Not once have I thought I could be saved
alone -- one who comes out
in the red dress dancing on her own
behind the bucking chute

and says hush-hush-hush.
Like ointment, you're slippery
on my tongue, magic to molecules.
Get your truck & a gun

& loving you is like living.
Load & thrust to reduce
mercury, beautiful poison. I want
& already the world --

whose name is quicksilver --
sinkholes. I became acolyte.
Roots, they evangelize for distortion, squeeze
your honeysuckle girl.

In my mouth, a man
on a sad night. Drink & let my hand
only lead. Always
your two bodies revolve

for the world to wonder at.
Waving cigarette circles in the air
for the late crowd, nothing
& tendon. Everything.

Sawbuck 3.1 (greetings from the west coast)

2009-03-01T11:51:00.001-06:00

so it's that special time of year again -- a new sawbuck is out! check it out:

{changming yuan} {donald dunbar} {francis raven} {hugh behm-steinberg} {jason fraley}
{jehanne dubrow} {kazim ali} {kimberly ann southwick} {sally van doren} {susan elbe}

link-o-rama

2009-02-14T11:44:00.002-06:00

so i've spent most of the morning updating sawbuck's links page: added some, deleted some. take a look & let me know what's missing/defunct...

sacto has been mostly rainy the past week so i haven't had much of a chance to explore lately. d got back from portland late last night & as soon as she wakes up, we're getting breakfast @ mel's diner...which seems to be a west coast chain-type diner. it doesn't have the best reviews, but it's only 2 blocks away, so we'll see. besides, it's hard to eff up breakfast. mmm. i'm hungry. wake up soon, dena, wake up soon...

a hearty congratulations!

2009-02-05T17:14:00.003-06:00

to sawbuck contributor Phillip Byron Oakes -- whose book Cactus Land is now available! buy it here.

also, for those of you paying attention, you may have picked up on the fact that i have recently embarked on a cross-country move...that's over now (though i'm still awaiting delivery of the rest of my stuff). what this means is that i'll now get back to reading sawbuck submissions! oh, & if anybody has any job leads in the sacramento area, i'd love to hear about them!

In two weeks...

2009-01-20T09:31:00.002-06:00

i'll have a new mayor...

see ya later daley!

our world is a...

2009-01-18T08:59:00.002-06:00

this explains a lot

2009-01-14T08:32:00.003-06:00

**
and also: Go Al Sharpton!

how rad is this???

2009-01-08T13:52:00.001-06:00

http://www.youtube.com/user/poetryanimations

Jim Henson, Psychopath?

2008-12-20T17:06:00.001-06:00

or just over-caffeinated?

hmm...

2008-12-19T10:20:00.004-06:00

denis leary reads bill knott???
(who, btw, has made ALL of his poetry available for free, here)

rediscovering charles dickens. pip's sister has just passed.

also, check out jonathan messinger's rave about kr in timeout chicago!! congrats kr!

at any given moment i'd rather be

2008-12-08T17:51:00.002-06:00

so this is happening, rather more quickly than i thought possible...

hey i really love

2008-11-22T17:54:00.004-06:00

this new poem by paul guest

POEM FOR THE TELEPHONE

Because I can’t imagine much more than
a continent’s worth of copper,

strand to strand, pole to pole,
supporting crows in the moment

before their brains spasm with
not thought but imperative

to flight, because I don’t know
why I see when I walk

knotted shoes hung
like dead things from

those suspensions of imagined
copper, because everything

beyond the toaster oven
glows with a magic

in my cloddish head,
I imagine our four a.m.

talk pulsing dark
to dark and back again,

and I am in love
with you, yes,

but also the world in which
love is translated

and carried and kept,
even meted out

in minutes, in cents per each
sweep of the clock

hand, I am
in love with this

world and this word
and the ones after it,

the ones said
in the night

when we are so close
no one could

say who spoke first
and who answered

if we slept,
if we spoke at all.

maybe he'll submit to sawbuck some day...sigh...wink...slight giggle...shit, gotta stir the spaghetti sauce

Wilco Encourages You To Vote

2008-10-31T09:02:00.001-05:00

if you promise, you'll get a free song

got some new pobooks:

2008-10-16T09:32:00.005-05:00

courtesy of reb livingston:
(i had to ride home with it in the back of my pants...sorry reb! nowhere else to put it!)
& then from the Switchback book release reading last weekend:

looking forward to getting into all three of these, as soon as i'm caught up on sawbuck subs...

go connecticut!

2008-10-10T21:12:00.001-05:00

ha!

2008-10-09T09:46:00.003-05:00

apparently i wrote this

2008-10-05T08:53:00.001-05:00

Hoping might

Like deaf effects
Hopes and despairs, and
there is no nature beyond this sailor
Vanity on a power and
still disappointment, unaware in nature and protest
Like a glorious
night
We begin the quickening
and look to the
hundred
Great as a pose and high as a ship
Unappetizing as a man, appetizing as a fellow
Deaf as might and hearing as a development
Indistinct as light, distinct as fellow
Hurried as hand, unhurried as anxiety
Still as affair, moving as arm
Sorry as way, unregretting as deity
Poor as weakness, rich as gift

what did you write???

best of the net

2008-09-28T09:49:00.002-05:00

decided on & sent 6 poems from sawbuck to sundress' 2008 best of the net

last year they never received sawbuck's submission

let's see if we're luckier this year

here are the submitted poems:

Dan Boehl & Jonathan Marshall "Conference(Regatta)"
Emily Anderson "Hints"
Chad Reynolds "Bottom _____"
Daniel Bosch "from Rubble"
David Highsmith "October Fires"
Bobbi Lurie "codependent nation"

Hey, that's me!

2008-09-22T07:36:00.000-05:00

Samuel Wharton sells your likeness for a quick poll on usefulness this week at No Tell Motel.

if you don't wake up tomorrow

2008-09-09T19:35:00.002-05:00

it's because of this

really?

2008-09-05T19:23:00.002-05:00

yes!

first you find a little thread

2008-09-03T20:01:00.002-05:00

little thread leads you to a string?
& the string leads you to a?
rope? & from the rope you hang?
by the?
neck?

Sawbuck 2.3

2008-08-31T20:23:00.004-05:00

{jamesbelflower}{sheilablack}{richardchetwynd}{stevedalachinsky & jimleftwich}{ryandaley}{claytoneshleman} {deanfaulwell}{lisafishman}{skipfox}{kristenorser}

Cento from Diode Volume 2, Number 1, Fall 2008: 8/30/08

2008-08-30T10:54:00.003-05:00

Every night the clouds argue in the sky for the right to be
& you attempt to rise--then a glistening fills the channel.

On my inner forearm, at my elbow: a pothole
& a paling puncture scar -- the visible

whole? Or a faint
drunk from the sun. Apples'

color colored in the blankness. Smokey Robinson
I was, where I lived. I chanted with the others,

someone not blond, blue-eyed. Someone shaking
this, which forms in the throat.

You are lost.
You must differ yourself in the taste, ask light from breath-light.

Let them say you remember the ribcage was partially open,
with its stomach pumped. With its sputtering interface.

You don't know what's underneath
that summer night. I was an unturned field

where the wind is a wingless insect muscling a serenade.
Until the world was clean,

what the sky spat down into the woods was
invisible.

Loot

2008-08-23T09:33:00.002-05:00

schwag from the Printer's Ball last night:

ACM 47
Court Green 5
Columbia Poetry Review 20
Poetry May 08
The Journal 16
Lumpen 107

& congrats to my little sister for the swell reviews of her show!

first he makes a building sing

2008-08-20T18:47:00.002-05:00

now he's designing bike racks?

Cento from Laurel Snyder: 8/19/08

2008-08-19T09:31:00.003-05:00

She's small & alone,
so you'll turn to your words.

She wants to tell
because it's the easiest;
you'll see what I mean.

She waits. Some birds come
blades of soft grass & a few new bits of clover.

The girl knows how to arrive
in her sleep & the bottle shivered.
Where she looked, almost everywhere,

the answer to the puzzle
was willful, but tired
as the shoulderblades beneath them.

Cento from NOÖ [eight]: 7/8/08

2008-08-17T09:13:00.004-05:00

Find the one with the best packaging --
people would walk away in anger.

They looked like little spiders spinning webs.
They are giggling & woozy like they just got off a ride.

Humankind could learn something from caterpillars,
holding us even though we don't want to be held.

Not everyone wants to protect you, you know.
"Wow," I said & probably sounded dumb.

I am in a smaller version of a previous life;
my shirt is filling with blood,

a swift kick in the pants -- I can't say I like
starting fires. A good girlfriend would help you steal.

September 22, 2008

2008-08-02T19:58:00.001-05:00

umm

2008-07-22T23:16:00.001-05:00

awesome

a very good yeare

2008-07-21T18:43:00.002-05:00

oi

did you hear?

nate pritts' chapbook cycle THE WONDERFUL YEARE has now been compleated!

check out part II: Endless Summer

hint: selections from part III

congrats nate!

some good news:

2008-07-16T18:37:00.001-05:00

a rather old poem has been accepted here:

salt flats annual

look for it early 2009

catching up on pictures

2008-07-06T15:35:00.003-05:00

the newest addition to my family: silas
kathleen rooney & abby beckel of rose metal press
melissa severin reading at the dva gallery reading on july 4th
kr hides from poetry:

some things to show you

2008-07-01T17:57:00.003-05:00

Cento from Nazim Hikmet: 6/28/08

Life passed like the wind-winged horsemen.
My body which is a pine tree
across from my window
........resembles a world war soldier.

No wrist with a whip to crack
........lives like dark waters.

-on my shaven cheek my stubble turning grey-

Tomorrow I'll play it brilliantly,
acknowledge only this earth.
There can't even be a grave for giant loves.

Friends, don't look at my eyes.
Three cypresses stood in front of my doorway.
All I own is a pot of honey.

................It has no color.

**

Cento from Nazim Hikmet: 6/29/08

One night there were stars alone in the sea
without walls or borders,
............not concerned with the next world.
Then earth's pulse begins.
The earth never ending;
............this land is ours

I am full of your words.
Our fate mirrors the world's.

It's still dangerous to wander the open seas at night.
The media tell lies again:
I've become insufferable again.
A clock strikes somewhere in the night.

This world, this pirate ship, will sink.

**

Cento from Shafer Hall: 6/29/08

With no nickels for dancing
his grill could attract catfish
by throwing a brick through
the sun from the late afternoon.
His lungs are well supplied with blood.
In the family home,
he removed his skin
with himself in the mirror.
And, at the end of the hitch
it will occasionally slip.
A five-year-old girl's
knot. Knowingly
telling us of the beauty that will be
both hot & cold at the same time.

quimby's

2008-06-18T19:03:00.008-05:00

turned out to be the perfect venue for my first reading since grad school. it was a good crowd -- not too packed but enough people to actually read to...some that i didn't even know! i was nervous beforehand but a coupla beers took care of that! here are pics:

yours truly:

pic of me in the audience (from left to right: laura dunn, mandy ellis, ryan (sp?), & sdw)

kathleen rooney reading collabs (miss you elisa!)

this is the shoe oscar found on the way to the bar (after the reading; sorry these are a bit out of order)

the multitalented jasmine dreame wagner (whose album searchlight needles i am listening to right now (it's really good; experimental folk; they should hook up with mandy (see above) at some point))

also: a major announcement: henceforth i will be known professionally as:

Samuel Day Wharton

not Samuel Wharton; keep that in mind....

so, well, thanks again to quimby's for having us

really. you should come.

2008-06-15T19:17:00.000-05:00

otherwise this fine silkscreen is wasted.

10000

2008-06-14T09:10:00.002-05:00

sometime late yesterday Sawbuck collected its 10,000th unique visitor!

my thanks to everyone who's submitted to & read the journal over the past year & a half!

please keep on keeping on!

are you a beatnik?

2008-06-13T09:26:00.003-05:00

take this quiz to find out!

tonight: the happening?

9 more

in 1 week:

2008-06-10T15:20:00.003-05:00

jasmine dreame wagner, kathleen rooney & i will be reading at quimby's books at 1854 w north ave in chicago

it will probably rock

will you be

2008-06-10T08:21:00.002-05:00

10,000?

**

reading ANTI- #2

sawbuck 2.2

2008-06-01T13:19:00.002-05:00

hey hi howdy

a brand new sawbuck in the pocket? oh yes indeedy.

go there now for poems by these lovely people:

sean burke
nick demske
john findura
lola haskins
sawako nakayasu
philip byron oakes
paul siegell
gregory vincent st thomasino
lee upton
lafayette wattles

also, sawbuck is still reading for upcoming issues. visit our submissions page to find out what we're looking for.

2 by samuel

2008-05-29T14:40:00.003-05:00

hey all: blackbox's spring collision has gone live (hint: scroll down. all the way down)

read "PARA SUA MELHOR PROTECAO" & "Now I Know Why" by yours truly

plus

John M. Bennett & Baron
Nicholas Karavatos
Vernon Frazer
C. Mehrl Bennett
Gloria Mindock

check it

hey, um, have you heard?

2008-05-28T17:48:00.002-05:00

this is happening june 17th at quimby's bookstore.

um.

come.

2008-05-27T08:41:00.002-05:00

There are at least seventy-eight different aesthetics at play. I've verified this. With chemists.

PROSE by

Stephan Clark

Noah Cicero

J.P. Gritton

Gabe Durham

Ofelia Hunt

J.M. Patrick

Claudia Smith

Carrie Spell

Bobby Farouk

POETRY by

Andrew Michael Roberts

Elisa Gabbert & Kathleen Rooney

Leigh Stein

Daniel J. Bailey

Jasmine Dreame Wagner

Samuel Wharton (!)

Patrick Duggan

Alex Burford

K. Silem Mohammad

PICTURES by

Sean Kilpatrick & Daniel St. George

Benjamin Buchholz

on Poetry

2008-05-16T11:03:00.001-05:00

via the bookslut

finally finished that poem

2008-05-04T13:00:00.002-05:00

today is the beautifullest day
i'm gonna go bike by the lake
wish me love

sunday morning

2008-05-04T10:47:00.004-05:00

sitting in my armchair in my new apartment in front of the window staring at the lake & the sun coming off of it & listening to xrt & trying to finish up a poem -- the first one i've written since spain

wasting time blogging

but how cute is this?

a return...

2008-05-02T16:21:00.005-05:00

so i've been out of blogland now for a while...

sorry...

i've finally finished my move (rocking in edgewater now) & finally gotten on the interweb in the apartment, so now i should be back to a more regular presence here...& also finally back to reading submissions for the summer sawbuck, so if you're waiting for a reply it should be coming soon, probably this weekend, but don't hold me to that...

in other poetry news, just finished up reading That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness by Elisa Gabbert & Kathleen Rooney. Which you should be able to buy at Otoliths before too long. anyhow, it's really awesome, a perfect mix of spry humor, mind-curdling verbal gymnastics, & dead-on seriousishness.

some of the poems first appeared in sawbuck 1.2, read them here. congrats to those two lovely ladies.

pinsky-izing

2008-04-17T15:25:00.001-05:00

Sometimes I see a poem in Slate or another magazine, and it doesn't do a thing for me. Half of the time I can't figure out what it means—what's that all about?

Chili

2008-04-11T13:24:00.002-05:00

my coworker amanda (who knit me my awesomest hat) put this video together of the orphan squirrel she & some other folks at the hospital have been taking care of.

2008-04-05T08:52:00.000-05:00

New Texas-Style Yogurt To Feed Man-Size Hunger For Yogurt

2008-04-01T17:25:00.000-05:00

Here, the typical emotional state, radically superseding the hyper-consciousness of irony, is the trance – the state of being swallowed up by your activity.

more congrats

2008-03-31T18:31:00.002-05:00

to another sawbuckian, Clay Matthews, whose book, Superfecta, is now available.

read his poems in sawbuck here.

also, for those of you who might be wondering, baby squirrels pics & SWAN pics will be coming as soon as i have enough fucking time to deal with some pics...

cheers!

congrats

2008-03-25T10:56:00.002-05:00

to sawbuck contributer paul siegell, whose book Poemergency Room has just been released by otoliths...

read his poems here & here

a sad, quiet death

2008-03-24T20:13:00.002-05:00

so,

the outside voices anthology has been cancelled

a lot of us were really looking forward to it

it gave us some little bit of hope of resistance against the tyranny of Legitimate Dangers (boring; inconsequential).

but now...what are we left with?

anyhow.

anyhow.

i know i know

2008-03-22T10:04:00.002-05:00

it's a couple days late, but i'm posting now to let you know:

sawbuck 2.1, Spring 2008 has been released

inside, expect to find rather amazing poetry by:

[Scott
Abels][Laura
Carter][Jackie
Clark][Beth
Coyote][Adam
Golaski][Jeff
Harrison][David
Highsmith][Jane
Joritz-Nakagawa][Bobbi
Lurie][Allan
Peterson]

this weekend

2008-03-08T16:57:00.003-06:00

diabetic kitty

apt hunting

kr's bday bash

bob mould was on sound opinions last night which made me realize that he's one of my favorite guitarists.

oh god, prairie home companion is starting; time to turn the radio off....

no time for poetry right now, but still working on the layout for the spring sawbuck.

overheard

2008-03-04T07:29:00.003-06:00

on some bbc show d was watching the other day:

I didn't know you liked poetry.

Oh I hate it, sir. But sometimes I like it. When you want something to think about, there it is.

how true!

days 11 & 12

2008-02-27T09:00:00.035-06:00

cordoba!

the train station/train ride

the city

the hotel maimonides

the courtyard

the view from the room

city workers harvesting oranges!

the mezquita, in bits & pieces. started out a visigoth chapel, turned into a mosque, now a cathedral.

remnants of the mosquethe light!

from the roof of the hotel maimonides

the alcazar de los reyes cristianos, or the palace of the christian kings: where the spanish kings stayed when they came to cordoba. & then the HQ of the inquisition.

steep stairs

a roman sarcophagus; they were often used to hold water in the baths of the moors & later the catholic monarchs

the gardens at the palace were my favorite gardens we saw -- they were beautifully laid out & very peaceful, despite the crowds

in the jewish quarter

some parting shots:

late afternoon light on the mezquitalots of the streets/walkways looked like this:

fish-rider

days 8 & 9

2008-02-24T07:24:00.011-06:00

2 days in sevilla
**
we found sevilla to be much more tourist-oriented than malaga, with little t-shirt & postcard shops everywhere in the historic areas. more people wandering around with maps, too, us included. even though it's decently bigger than malaga, its attractions are pretty well concentrated in a fairly small area of the town in a bend of the river guadalquivir: the cathedral (one of the biggest in the world), the alcazar (another originally moorish palace), the plaza de las americas, & the gardens -- lots & lots of gardens...

ready to board the train
2 & 1/2 hours later, d really wants an orange (but they're very sour)...

one of the first things we see:

getting ready for la semana santa

the buildings here are a little more colorful:

the real alcazar:

local politics:

the cathedral:

pigeons & saints

inside the cathedral

by goya:

the head of john the baptist:

some views from the tower:

d relaxes in the courtyard of the hotel before heading back to the train station in the pouring rain

today: a day of rest (most things are closed on sundays anyways); tomorrow we head to cordoba for two days & then it's only 1 more day til we fly home...

days 4, 5, 6 & 7

2008-02-21T10:09:00.018-06:00

so i've been a little slow on getting these pics posted, but you'll have to forgive me -- we've finally had a few sunny days & i haven't been spending much time at the hotel. but here you go...

a very small truck

more pics from the market (lomo en manteca = hunks of pork in spiced lard):

the new jacket (see, told ya)d prepares to go to una peluqueria

d models her new hair cut & tights:

this is a side door to the cathedral (a side door!); lest you think i italicize for nothing -- this thing is well over 30 ft tall

dinner at bar lo gueno; clockwise from 12:00: aceitunas, pan, salchicas de la plancha, sepia (cuttlefish) en salsa, frijoloes con almejas, & croquetas de pollo (in the center):

self portrait"heros"

the window of a restauranttomorrow we will use this to get to sevilla:

a very large tree

i am the kiss of death

2008-02-20T08:40:00.002-06:00

or sometimes it feel like a lot of journals (good ones!) close down not so long after i submit to them.

or maybe i am attributing a false sense of agency to myself.

anyhow, unpleasant event schedule is kaput...so sad.

days 4 & 5

2008-02-19T12:31:00.002-06:00

wifi is very slow today, so no pictures

besides, yesterday & today were a bit too rainy to take many pics

there are a few; they will come later

some random observations:

-the spanish make the best cheese in the world. period.

-tapas in spain are absolutely nothing like tapas in the u.s.

-the drivers are crazy, but mostly follow the rules & will stop if you step out in front of them

-cafe con leche is very good

-people eat & drink alot all the time (favorite pre-dinner snack? churros & chocolate. see pic below)

-you buy stamps at tobacco shops

-clothes here are cut way better (wait til you see my new jacket!)

-everything stops when it rains (there was a thunderstorm today; the guy at the market says that this almost never happens)

anyhow, went to the picasso museum today (he was born in malaga). they have a good collection of mostly early stuff & sketches & studies from when he was in school. interesting to see him slowly develop the ideas that would become cubism.

they were also showing a collection of photographs on the human body (though a lot seemed to be just portraits) including a particularly creepy portrait of mayakovsky with a mean-looking cigarette in his mouth by alexander rodchenko. he's totally badass, & is about to tear your head off. (it's very similar to this one, but a little more badass).

also bought a book of poems by antonio gamoneda, called "blues castellano" with the intention of putting up some translations on this blog in the future (but probably not until after i get home)

well, it's time for a couple drinks, then dinner

pics will go up as soon as the wifi is at normal speed

day 3 part 2

2008-02-19T03:01:00.005-06:00

some views from Castillo de Gibralfaro, high atop the city:

the cathedral (see how big it is?)

d in the dungeon

day 3

2008-02-18T01:52:00.007-06:00

rockin' al cazaba: built by moors in the 11th century

the ceilings:

a nice british lady took this:

the roman ampitheater below

doors:

day 2 part 2

2008-02-17T12:20:00.007-06:00

mas de la ciudad

cathedral: it's impossible to show the scale of this building , but it's massive

for the hospital peeps:

en la playa:

best thing ever: churros y chocolate

the end of the evening