)( Unmoveable Feast )(
............................where literary history goes for fois gras................................
In this issue: Featured poets Dave Brinks and Megan Burns, reviews of Carla Kihlstedt & Two Foot Yard, The Bindlestiff Family Cirkus
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Dave Brinks, director of the 17 Poets Reading Series at the Gold Mine Saloon in New Orleans editor of Yawp. These are from a new book to be titled "The Science
of Forgetting." Check out Dave's other wonderful books the Caveat Onus
1,2, and 3 from Lavender Ink Press.
Preface to a Near Full Moon
in the ear of hypnotized sleep
the corked bottle is knocked over
a series of giant tarantulas
pass one after the other
the transparent apple dreams
of lace & down feathers
“Here’s to us!”
neither Paris nor Homer
can say it better
the oak the almond the juniper
hold the allure to this waking weather
folding back the bedsheets
souvent je n'ai rêvé
que de toi seule
Circe’s Lament
all the words are taken
I've made sure of that
burying them under stumped trees
whatever else you can't find can
be found inside a glass
jar of pickled meat
plotted by a universe
whose hands call forth
verso after verso the milky lights
o ereshkigal of irkalla, eldest sister
of ishtar, queen mama of
nungal's half-siblings,
namtar and ninazu,
what music do you desire?
are humans a species worth living?
please whisper in fatalistic french
so I’ll know which animal
will befit their fate
Ode to Neap Tide
suffered from shipwreck fever
&/or the plurality of worlds
everything is to anyone
an agent to dispose of
aboard the man o’ war
neither rejoicing isles
of palm & myrrh
nor carried by sail & oar
but as profile in a flat vortex
when the sun and moon
are at right angles fleshy
edible white and yellow
their carved faces make
lanterns for the damned
who return to Bagdad
Hushed Jump-Rope Rhyme
when the natives talk
the natives listen
floating backwards
house-sized potholes
soup brown playground
the lake waters
we’re close to drinking
a ghastly alchemy
claps its hands, close
my eyes one to five
this is a vanished person
jump-rope rhyme
don’t go ‘way nobody
smile some sunshine
I gotta old oaken bucket
inside my canoe
A B C & vegetable goop
The Ouroboros
with men as with caterpillars
nothing was chanced
the penniless world was hemmed-in
by mountains on three sides
with gibbons and cranes to seem endless
gradually three or four flowers
tiny divots of earth
by the tens of thousands
and a skein of fine white sewing silk
appeared on my coat and hat
but to allow for the ouroboros
that lives in my living room
perched on the caldera’s rim
and over my shoulder
like the white bird you can’t see
the spyglass drew a cocoon
beating a drum in the doorway
of my own raising
so many misshapen wishes
too tired to rest or return home
In Stone Stelae, In Nebulae
chest deep in the creek and singing
from a snail-shaped book
the apparition followed a canoe
to see where the sun was buried
not really a road to saunter up
the outsider's delusion could see for miles
portioned by cliffs, mountain asphodels
knocking eyelids with birds
so rare as to be nearly utopian
a thousand years went by on horseback
past lake and rockery
pitch-black weathers, an avalanche of corn
under a passel of stars
that fall but never touch the ground
a puff of white hair grew from his chin
blue & green eyed, racing toward calm
Megan Burns, co-curator of 17 poets, editor Solid Quarter literary magazine and author of Memorial + Sight Lines, also from Lavender Ink.
She has also been published in The New Laurel Review, Wild Strawberries, Slipstream, Exquisite Corpse, Turntable
and Blue Light, The Poet's Canvas and Horse Less Review.
Healing Sound
a sequence flowing downward as water
pooling in the broken sidewalk’s crevasse
mud, sweat, tears and urine
dead hand smells—voice barely able to whisper
its own ordering: I’ll make you
any deal about disaster
a coin spinning in mid air
stop video that captures both sides
as if holes can be separate
the density and the lie
for all this shared pain, impossible to believe
other people aren’t more familiar
split in two as cut fruit: blinding bliss and discarded
rind sliced away
walk among the soaking ruins
the one window you have learned to call from
found shut and nailed to the sill
await here in sorrow’s passing
weather proof
proving without a scalpel
wonder can still be divided
Rustle and Form
time + poetry = love
-j.godard
outrun days blossoming venture
of this I sing, trampled deep paths
and set down where water cares to harvest, golden
bowl of most longed desire
to jump face forward, a response of confused gestures
tell me again how it was in the beginning
and how it is now nor ever will be
how usual to lie covered in the brick face
once splitting home behind the stretched screen
entranceway—an illustrious trade
smallest creature taken back into the fold
digress and make time as an amended juncture
an inviting crescendo
how swelling is measured in hand widths
come each morning its dawn
come each night a night
which always leads to cruelty
a desperate wisdom nodding towards
an open door
let the cicadas sing of misadventure
let the cattails swirl as wind lipped folly
When leaving means begging out apace
when leaving means begging out apace
Any suggestion becomes a form to rebel against, a bounded line that can’t resist crossing. View how memory’s clock turns back and back until hitting a wall before recall commenced as though you sprang into the world fully formed –Athene’s awkward shadow. Take this day’s unrelenting drag where no one sleeps easily or without a sound escaping.
how to be truly without a mode for survival
What you worship in one form you may despise in another. Tame all that fickleness; show this as a means to a “good night’s” rest. If the layering of new soil can change the texture, level the distance between whom and what I imagine. The swallowing is a dark, digestible question between the coarsest clay and where the worms slip through.
an axis/ where the layover begins
A setting within a setting so this tree stands in a blue relief among painted on smiles and sings, Oh Evangeline. Color in the navigation system, it’s a go-with as in demarcation, a circular and circulating canvas as an eye turning and turning over landscape. A crocus, cactus blooming, peony, peperomia, cypress bark, reduction of the vine as it spirals towards light; it requires a deadening of certain parts. This peplos woven for the walk descends as well onto stone shoulders.
let go for a moment before changing your grip
A man stares into an empty pool. How many frames tell the story? Factor in the degree of so many long ago conversations. Feral-eyed gaze crouching behind the balustrades. Ornamental rods topped with high heeled shoes arranged by color—go to the riser. Bring up the dead with outstretched caresses that sink like uncounted pennies absorbed into the design.
REVIEWS
The Bindlestiff Family Cirkus
Carla Kihlstedt's new album (below)
INTERVIEWS
Keith Nelson (a.k.a. Kinko the Clown) Claudia Gonson (of the Magnetic Fields)
MADEIRA M'DEAR
view from outside of Funchal
"Borrowed Arms" - a new album from Carla Kihlstedt and 2 Food Yard
Stay tuned.
Here's a few new children's animations, from the series, "Problem Solvers," "Give Pizza A Chance" and "Dewey's Bike Ride" by my friend and once colleague, Jacob Ciocci of the Paperrad art collective.
and if i can get this to work, here is
a video concerning my friend Tracey
Duncan, who is also known at least by herself
as tdt. (She and I are sisters now
since I am sks.)
(I can be seen in this video in the pink jacket.)
(Other notables include famous writer and NPR commentator Andrei Codrescu, Andrei's new assistant at The Exquisite Corpse, poet-humorist Dewitt Brinson, pop-country singer-songwriter Kristen Foster of The Casuals, fiction writer Alison Barker, poet Eric Elliot, poet Jordan Soyka.)
My Dinner With Andrei Codrescu and Bill Berkson, April 2008
Went with Andrei to New Orleans to meet poet Bill Berkson, a once close associate of Frank O'Hara. I drove. Clay, my now husband, told me not to be nervous because according to New Orleans, Mon Amour, Andrei only got his license a few years ago. The drive was fine. We took a back route to the quarter – Elysian Fields which brought us finally through the Marigny and to where Andrei keeps a slave-quarter apartment, right next to the Hotel Provincial, the first place my husband and I stayed in New Orleans when we were visiting.
Andrei showed me his small, neat apartment with a window that opens onto a small porch. He showed me where he records the NPR pieces, at his desk. He showed me down the “birth canal,” the long, thin hallway that serves as the back exit to the apartments. We said a friendly hello to one of the neighbors who was looking into the courtyard through her apartment window.
After a bit of walking in the wrong direction, during which we passed Susan’s Spicer’s restaurant, of which Andrei said when he went there he felt like he was in school, being supervised to make sure he does things right, we picked up Bill at Chateau Dupuy, a place Andrei says Dave Brinks can get poets rooms for $60/night, phenomenal price for a nice room in the Quarter.
We had quick drink in the bar – whiskey (I think) for Andrei and Gran Marnier for me. Andrei mentioned his son Tristan who used to live in Williamsburg with all the Hasidics, Andrei said. When Andrei says “Hasidics” it sounds like he is saying a bad word but that is just because of his accent.
I talked about working at the Kosher co-op and eating dinner on the Sabbath with a stranger who lived across the street from me in Brooklyn.
Andrei was amused, I think.
Hopefully he was amused. If not, he pretended well, and what more can you ask for in a good friend and literary giant than to be good company and to at least appear amused?
Bill was down shortly.
We three went to Muriel’s a new restaurant that looks like an old restaurant. The food was amazing. Andrei got seafood crepes; the three of us shared some shrimp with cream and Bill had some gumbo. Andrei and I both got steak filets for dinner, with mashed potatoes. I don’t remember what Bill had because it must have been far inferior to steak filets; everything is. We drank the house red, a Merlot, and Bill had something white.
Bill had bread pudding and we all had creme brulee for dessert.
On the way down Andrei had told me a little about his time in Bolinas. “It was great; everyone was famous,” he said, and I laughed because if everyone is famous, is anyone really famous? Or can a lot of people be famous at once together? It's times like these I wish I could talk to Andy Warhol, not because I'm sure he'd have something great to say but he'd probably at least re-articulate what I'm saying and make me laugh. Back to dinner: I mentioned my father’s cousin who was married to Lawrence Ferlinghetti for a long time, Father said. That, I realized, would make his son my cousin. Andrei had said that probably made Bill my cousin too because everyone in Bolinas is related. He was joking however. I didn’t know that until after I had asked Bill if he was Lawrence Ferlingetti’s son’s cousin, which he is actually not.
But, Bill Berkson was “good friends” with Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s wife, whose name, he says, was Kirby. Later, when talking to my dad I found out that it was actually Seldin Kirby-Smith but according to my dad people in the Kirby-Smith family often are called “Kirby.” I told my dad people call me “Susankirbysmith” and “s.k.s.” but that my cousin Matthew gets called “Kirby.” Those are the interesting kinds of things I think of to tell my father at that moment a few days later when I am sitting in my car in my driveway, which is where I talk on the phone when my housemate is home.
After the meal Andrei took us up to see a special lounge room. There was an event in there and we got shooed away but then brought back up to see the ornate furniture, the carpeted walls; it looked like a spooky opium den, somewhere great to go in the afternoon by oneself and write.
After that adventure we proceeded to Dave Brink’s Gold Mine Saloon for Bill’s reading and the weekly open mic. Bill’s poetry was great, of course, but the funniest part of the reading was probably when Megan Burns said, “Two mustached men share a kiss.” I think it was supposed to be serious, however, I mean for the cowboys, not for Megan. Cowboys were what I pictured, two mustached cowboys in love.
I now refer you to Andrei’s great review of Bill from his own magazine, Exquisite Corpse
Meeting the Widow Jarrell, April 2005
Meeting the Widow Jarrell had been a goal of mine for the past several years, whenever I heard through my parents that she was giving a lecture or talk or something. The main thing I heard about her was that she had been a widow for quite a long time and that was her chief identity, substantiated by the fact that she’s continued to publish things by or relating to Randall. I expected to meet a devastatingly clever and morose lady in black.
The Widow Jarrell was not wearing black however but a flowery jumper over a white embroidered blouse. Her lips were painted dark pink. One of her gold pearl clip-on earrings dropped as she entered the room. She put the escaped jewel in her pocket, and left the other on the ear, assured that wearing one earring could very well be in style if she chose it. Mrs. Jarrell did not seem to be able to hear everything but talked and listened astutely at the least. She smiled and spoke pleasantly and earnestly and laughed as though she knew no tragedy. Her car was a small red sports car with a license plate that said “Poems.” She told me over brunch that Moby Dick was one of Randall’s favorite books, along with the Great Gatsby, and Out of Africa. She, like I, had been to Ephesus in Turkey – we discovered this looking at some prints of my cousin Frank’s.
Mary Jarrell died last year. Her obituary is here.
Susan Kirby-Smith is a fiction
writer and playwright who also
serves as the editor of this website.
She is also the editorial assistant
of The Southern Review and
editorial associate of Cave Wall.
Could you see yourself in Unmoveable Feast?
send your poems, diaries, letters, reviews, stories, art, videos, and complaints to skirby2@lsu.edu