LESLIE SHINN
GARDEN PHOTOGRAPH
The boy looks away
from roses in uncut sheaves,
the white foxgloves' roomettes poised
over leaves in fabulous pagodas.
A few yew stars point from the felt
backdrop. Narrow corner,
shoulder edge, limbs.
Strewn bricks, the wall's leaves
a yellow that is white.
What light lay here. A cut
of grassy cheek, spider eye,
his lips apart.
MORE WORK BY LESLIE SHINN
Cortland Review
Salt River Review (archives)
Tattoo Highway
DMQ
Beloit Poetry Journal
Truck :: n. a self-propelled vehicle for carrying goods
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Monday, April 4, 2011
SHANE McCRAE
from Child Rape Calendar: I Held Her (December)
Threw me when I was three
into a wall
I can’t get mad about it anymore
Hit me I don’t remember anything / Was told
was almost every day
I try / I can’t get mad
The woman who remembered everything / He did to me is dead
And I was mad at her for years before she died
And only once in the last years of her life
visited only once
And I didn’t I didn’t see it any shame / Any
ashamed of me
For what we couldn’t she / Or I have stopped
disease had eaten holes / Into her brain
I held her and she didn’t know
why I was holding her
MORE WORK BY SHANE McCRAE
Verse Daily
Esque
Octopus
Shampoo
Best American Poetry
Poetry Daily
from Child Rape Calendar: I Held Her (December)
Threw me when I was three
into a wall
I can’t get mad about it anymore
Hit me I don’t remember anything / Was told
was almost every day
I try / I can’t get mad
The woman who remembered everything / He did to me is dead
And I was mad at her for years before she died
And only once in the last years of her life
visited only once
And I didn’t I didn’t see it any shame / Any
ashamed of me
For what we couldn’t she / Or I have stopped
disease had eaten holes / Into her brain
I held her and she didn’t know
why I was holding her
MORE WORK BY SHANE McCRAE
Verse Daily
Esque
Octopus
Shampoo
Best American Poetry
Poetry Daily
Sunday, April 3, 2011
MICHAEL J. MARTIN
Say goodbye, not tonite
Sleazy. Her word not mine. Not hers either, maybe
her Nigerian father’s. Maybe I’ve seen too many Skullphones.
There’s death everywhere. She almost died;; Credit
the anonymous tip. You could try living a little
lot less in the moment. First she thought I was Bi-
I just had commitment issues & used to drink & smoke
—now, it’s pretty much the same except I know when to stop. Or
MORE WORK BY MICHAEL J. MARTIN
Drunken Boat
MiPoesias
Project Dust World
Say goodbye, not tonite
Sleazy. Her word not mine. Not hers either, maybe
her Nigerian father’s. Maybe I’ve seen too many Skullphones.
There’s death everywhere. She almost died;; Credit
the anonymous tip. You could try living a little
lot less in the moment. First she thought I was Bi-
I just had commitment issues & used to drink & smoke
—now, it’s pretty much the same except I know when to stop. Or
MORE WORK BY MICHAEL J. MARTIN
Drunken Boat
MiPoesias
Project Dust World
Saturday, April 2, 2011
ELIZABETH HILDRETH
HAMMERING THE SCREW
Until the head
Breaks off?
Not surprisingly
not confabulous
and in fact wading
chest-deep into virus
except suicidally more
serpentine and watery.
What have we learned
about full circle?
And what do we ever?
Don't spit if foggy.
Don't fire if foresty.
Maybe the spirit isn't
here to teach you anything.
Maybe the spirit isn't here.
I don't know. It's sweet.
Even metal in your mouth
is sweet. Even when I don't
mean that it's sweet.
MORE WORK BY ELIZABETH HILDRETH
Bluestem
Anti-
Pank
McSweeney's
Revista Consenso
Bone Bouquet
Abe's Penny
Titular
Bookslut
The Effect of Small Animals
HAMMERING THE SCREW
Until the head
Breaks off?
Not surprisingly
not confabulous
and in fact wading
chest-deep into virus
except suicidally more
serpentine and watery.
What have we learned
about full circle?
And what do we ever?
Don't spit if foggy.
Don't fire if foresty.
Maybe the spirit isn't
here to teach you anything.
Maybe the spirit isn't here.
I don't know. It's sweet.
Even metal in your mouth
is sweet. Even when I don't
mean that it's sweet.
MORE WORK BY ELIZABETH HILDRETH
Bluestem
Anti-
Pank
McSweeney's
Revista Consenso
Bone Bouquet
Abe's Penny
Titular
Bookslut
The Effect of Small Animals
Friday, April 1, 2011
Truck in April
Welcome to TRUCK in April. I’m Kate Schapira, and for my guest-editing stint I decided to go looking -- through journals, catalogues, organizations’ rosters, reviews -- for poets whose work I loved but hadn’t previously been familiar with. There are so many people out there doing such good writing, and it’s easy to stay with the people and publications that are most familiar. I wanted to get educated. Some of these poets were just names to me before I started looking; others were entirely new discoveries. Once I started investigating I was repaid a thousandfold.
To share the results of my search with you, I’m going to post a poem (occasionally two) by a different poet each day in April, along with links to more work by that poet. You may say to yourself as you scroll down, “Kate, you really hadn’t read these people?” To which I can only reply: I have now. And I will from now on.
Today’s poet, Metta Sáma, is so good that I couldn’t pick one poem; I had to pick two. Enjoy her work and come back tomorrow for tomorrow's poet.
METTA SÁMA
Extinguish me
Dear striated syntax,
button, buckle, knot, strap.
Letters stumpeth me. Composition
me a viscid bitch. Leaves
rasp & orate frankly. Hungered
for fairytales to lull, the neighbor
howls. Lines & lines
of not. Bridges decapitate air,
the way Jane loved Dick, a dog,
and a mulberry bush. Compounded,
too many words will kill. Complex
compounded: a woman says the sky
is close enough to touch, but when I reach
for stratus, my hands graze pollen; therefore I wonder:
did Dick love Jane, or did the woman lie?
Syntactical outreach support, quiet. Corner yourself.
*
Dear grammar compressed,
I don't remember how to sight signs.
A man digs into ground,
releases smoke, grieves.
I place a comma behind his action,
a parenthesis around the voluble pain.
Dear grammar,
I only want to punctuate this properly.
Instinctively yours,
x-x o-o y-y
The News Free Press
What Paul Johnson sat on that bench to discover, or
PARIS, TN: NEGRO SHOT FOR SITTING ON WHITES ONLY BENCH
1. Rumor had it, if you sat still long enough, a ladybug would sit on your lap, would tell small tales about you to you, would turn you back to you.
2. Not once, but half a dozen or more times, when Paul Johnson cut the courthouse lawn or masked the flower beds, when his hands became the smell his hands carried, he heard a particular branch sigh Negro, sit yo ass down.
3. Did that bench always crease aches, or was it resolved to hold the stress of what pains when pain pains white?
4. Word on the breeze: this bench is precisely in the location where the Eiffel Tower sits in that other Paris.
5. What must that 6 o’clock southernly breeze feel like right where the clouds hush the sun?
6. A rumor of crows once sat on that bench. But what did Paul know of that black?
7. Hell, it’s just a bench.
8. If 4, what were his chances of feeling free? of feeling? of free?
9. If 7, why no Negroes ever sit there?
10. What does a wooden bench on a watered, mowed lawn of the county courthouse mean? Whose back? Whose hands? Whose land? Whose tears?
What Paul Johnson did not sit on that bench to discover, or
PARIS, TN: NEGRO SHOT BY WHITE CONSTABLE FOR SITTING ON WHITES ONLY BENCH
10. Whose lead? Whose casing? Whose primer & rim & cordite?
9. What a man chooses is often how a man chooses to choose to be. . .
8. Courage :: rage :: rage :: freedom no
7. That bench is just a bench as that fountain is just a fountain as that counter is just itself.
6. Those crows visited him at the hospital, at the jail, arrived in the night as the night became the night; their backs, rumored swells.
5. A 6 o’clock breeze on a white’s only bench feels like first one bullet then 2.
4. Feels like a constant consonant standing over you. That shadow. That sudden eclipse. That hand struggling to down turn that dream: Paris is Paris is Paris is
3. And yes, that bench ached. Creaks of ache creak creak. Bang nigger nigger :: bang.
2. Sometimes a night-wedded hand holds the body better than a day-singed bench.
1. Rumor had it, a ladybug. A tree. A breeze. A rumor. A bench. A sign. Rage.
MORE WORK BY METTA SÁMA:
Blackbird
The Drunken Boat
Drunken Boat
350 Poems
Esque
“Extinguish me" first appeared in Pebble Lake Review
"The News Free Press" first appeared in Proud Flesh: New Afrikan Journal of Consciousness,(Issue 6) in a different version, as "10 things Paul Johnson sat on that bench to discover". PF was published on-line as PDF downloads, but is now subscription-based only, including archives.
To share the results of my search with you, I’m going to post a poem (occasionally two) by a different poet each day in April, along with links to more work by that poet. You may say to yourself as you scroll down, “Kate, you really hadn’t read these people?” To which I can only reply: I have now. And I will from now on.
Today’s poet, Metta Sáma, is so good that I couldn’t pick one poem; I had to pick two. Enjoy her work and come back tomorrow for tomorrow's poet.
METTA SÁMA
Extinguish me
Dear striated syntax,
button, buckle, knot, strap.
Letters stumpeth me. Composition
me a viscid bitch. Leaves
rasp & orate frankly. Hungered
for fairytales to lull, the neighbor
howls. Lines & lines
of not. Bridges decapitate air,
the way Jane loved Dick, a dog,
and a mulberry bush. Compounded,
too many words will kill. Complex
compounded: a woman says the sky
is close enough to touch, but when I reach
for stratus, my hands graze pollen; therefore I wonder:
did Dick love Jane, or did the woman lie?
Syntactical outreach support, quiet. Corner yourself.
*
Dear grammar compressed,
I don't remember how to sight signs.
A man digs into ground,
releases smoke, grieves.
I place a comma behind his action,
a parenthesis around the voluble pain.
Dear grammar,
I only want to punctuate this properly.
Instinctively yours,
x-x o-o y-y
The News Free Press
What Paul Johnson sat on that bench to discover, or
PARIS, TN: NEGRO SHOT FOR SITTING ON WHITES ONLY BENCH
1. Rumor had it, if you sat still long enough, a ladybug would sit on your lap, would tell small tales about you to you, would turn you back to you.
2. Not once, but half a dozen or more times, when Paul Johnson cut the courthouse lawn or masked the flower beds, when his hands became the smell his hands carried, he heard a particular branch sigh Negro, sit yo ass down.
3. Did that bench always crease aches, or was it resolved to hold the stress of what pains when pain pains white?
4. Word on the breeze: this bench is precisely in the location where the Eiffel Tower sits in that other Paris.
5. What must that 6 o’clock southernly breeze feel like right where the clouds hush the sun?
6. A rumor of crows once sat on that bench. But what did Paul know of that black?
7. Hell, it’s just a bench.
8. If 4, what were his chances of feeling free? of feeling? of free?
9. If 7, why no Negroes ever sit there?
10. What does a wooden bench on a watered, mowed lawn of the county courthouse mean? Whose back? Whose hands? Whose land? Whose tears?
What Paul Johnson did not sit on that bench to discover, or
PARIS, TN: NEGRO SHOT BY WHITE CONSTABLE FOR SITTING ON WHITES ONLY BENCH
10. Whose lead? Whose casing? Whose primer & rim & cordite?
9. What a man chooses is often how a man chooses to choose to be. . .
8. Courage :: rage :: rage :: freedom no
7. That bench is just a bench as that fountain is just a fountain as that counter is just itself.
6. Those crows visited him at the hospital, at the jail, arrived in the night as the night became the night; their backs, rumored swells.
5. A 6 o’clock breeze on a white’s only bench feels like first one bullet then 2.
4. Feels like a constant consonant standing over you. That shadow. That sudden eclipse. That hand struggling to down turn that dream: Paris is Paris is Paris is
3. And yes, that bench ached. Creaks of ache creak creak. Bang nigger nigger :: bang.
2. Sometimes a night-wedded hand holds the body better than a day-singed bench.
1. Rumor had it, a ladybug. A tree. A breeze. A rumor. A bench. A sign. Rage.
MORE WORK BY METTA SÁMA:
Blackbird
The Drunken Boat
Drunken Boat
350 Poems
Esque
“Extinguish me" first appeared in Pebble Lake Review
"The News Free Press" first appeared in Proud Flesh: New Afrikan Journal of Consciousness,(Issue 6) in a different version, as "10 things Paul Johnson sat on that bench to discover". PF was published on-line as PDF downloads, but is now subscription-based only, including archives.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Out of fuel - Call for contributions to Truck
Hi all,
Unfortunately, just after accepting Hal's kind invitation to be the March editor of Truck, i got flooded (no pun intented) by a truckload of work, so i can't find much time to act the role.
Things being as they are, i'd like anyone wanting to contribute to Truck to either send their stuff to me by mail (dirk_at_vilt.net) or request me to be taken on board as a co-author of the blog.
Applying co-authors will then receive a blogger-invitation to their specified e-mail address.
So? Go!
dirk vekemans
Unfortunately, just after accepting Hal's kind invitation to be the March editor of Truck, i got flooded (no pun intented) by a truckload of work, so i can't find much time to act the role.
Things being as they are, i'd like anyone wanting to contribute to Truck to either send their stuff to me by mail (dirk_at_vilt.net) or request me to be taken on board as a co-author of the blog.
Applying co-authors will then receive a blogger-invitation to their specified e-mail address.
So? Go!
dirk vekemans
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Editor for June
Our editor for June will be Frank Parker.
If you are interesting in editing, May is still available,
as are August, September, and . . .
If you are interesting in editing, May is still available,
as are August, September, and . . .
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Editors for April and July
Our editor for April will be Kate Schapira. In July, Skip Fox will be editing.
If you'd like to edit for May or June, please let me know.
Truck is now open to all readers.
Halvard Johnson
If you'd like to edit for May or June, please let me know.
Truck is now open to all readers.
Halvard Johnson
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Invitation to Edit Truck
If you are reading this, you have been invited to contribute to this blog.
What I would like, however, is for someone to volunteer to edit Truck for a period of one month. You may do with it as you choose: invite others to contribute work, post work of your own, etc. etc. etc. The first volunteer may have the month of March. The amount of work posted has no lower or upper limits.
HJ
What I would like, however, is for someone to volunteer to edit Truck for a period of one month. You may do with it as you choose: invite others to contribute work, post work of your own, etc. etc. etc. The first volunteer may have the month of March. The amount of work posted has no lower or upper limits.
HJ
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