Gross Marine Press

Will someone string the cold lights through the tulips? Will someone close grief's atlas & ship the salt to bookend the night? Will someone briefly touch my shoulder while I sleep? Moat, moat, moat. My arm like a drawbridge lowers to the grasses, an unstamped postcard, slight glances through curt branches, grey trousers, the hand-drawn airplane. Addresses. I pack myself with milkweed & thistle. Season of what?

***

I'm briefly in NY. Which means, a whirlwind of MOMA, the New Museum, McNally Jackson, and The Strand.

One of my favorite journals, GlitterPony, has a new issue up, starring these fine reindeer:
Alina Gregorian, Andrew Morgan, Ben Mirov, Billy Cancel, Bruce Covey, Cynthia Arrieu-King, Daniela Olszewska, Dara Wier, Dot Devota, Elizabeth Witte, Emily Pettit, Guy Pettit, Heather Christle, Lyndsey Cohen, Maia Elgin, Matt L. Rohrer, Matthew Mahaney, Megan Leonard, Mike Young, Ryan Eckes, Sampson Starkweather, Seth Parker, Travis Macdonald.

For example, a poem by Dot Devota:

And The Girls Worried Terribly

I.



Splendid the time that laid eggs in our nest!

Bending to worship the self in thin winds. At the end of the stick

the disease of numb tongues

and yet, it was the end of the stick. I have only one lung.

Give me the others, each exhalation hell reaping the benefits.



And in the wrong poem is death, from which the beginning

is a frail dessert. Bees as lively as champagne bubbling from our flutes!

I leave the table and dig a circular grave beneath the peach tree,

then dig more circular graves the size of peaches

for the fruit that doesn’t get picked to fall in.



Children holler at us, the flowers are blooming!

chained pets leaning into the sun. The child I give birth to

otherwise inappropriate in the presence of the dead,

cauldron simmering our egos

breaking the skin of the porridge

and disappearing to speak of courage,

rescuing all future inadequacies.



Prying the eye apart, I begin

with the wrong poem—we toast,



To death!



For example, poem by Guy Pettit:


My Life's Work

You think

I’ll talk to just anyone

It’s amazing

How beautiful

The man in the tree

Looks

His open hands

He cleans up

He’ll nod

Undistracted

That’s what I like

Why I’ll talk to anyone

About the president.

Or more likely

I’ll make them talk

About the president

With someone else.



I want to hold the hand of modesty.

I want to hold the hand of modesty

But I don’t and I deny myself

The strange

Ancient carriage

Predicting

Loss of memory

Behind the

Beauty of trees

Always yelling



I always yell at you

I want to stop



And yelling always

To another planet.



And I am alarmed.

Believe me because I am.

If you find an egg in the air

That is my alarm.