ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Versions of these poems have appeared
in the following publications:
The Baffler, Booglit Boogmark, The Capilano Review, Chain,Combo, Crow, Downtown Brooklyn, Explosive, Fence, The Hat,How2, Insurance, Jacket, No Trees, Oasis Broadside, Pressed Wafer,Primary Writing, Proteus, Skanky Possom, Snare, Verse and in How2 Write Love Poems that Don’t Suck by dELiA’s & Charles Weigl; Miss Traduction:Homophonic Translations from the American, Dutch,French and Latin (Tender Buttons, 1995); Reverse Mermaid / The Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Belladonna, 2001); and The Voluptuary Lion Poems of Spring (Tender Buttons, 1997).
In these Anthologies:
An Anthology of International Avant-garde Poetry in English, edited by Rod Menghem & John Kinsella (Salt); An Anthology of New (American) Poets, editors: Lisa Jarnot, Chris Stroffolino and Leonard Schwartz;
The Best American Poetry 2001, edited by Robert Hass; Blood & Tears: Poems for Matthew Shepard edited by Scott Gibson; and The Portable Boog Reader, edited by David Kirschenbaum.
Thank you to all the editors who have encouraged my work,
and to the curators of readings where these poems first aired.
The author would also like to thank
Djerassi Artists’ Residency,
Foundation Royaumont,
Rocky Mountain Women’s Institute,
Virginia Center for the Creative Arts,
Yaddo
and
the Fund for Poetry
for time and support to work on this book.
INSUFFLATION
an act of blowing on, into, or in
a Christian ceremonial rite of exorcism performed by breathing on a person
the act of blowing something (as a gas, powder, or vapor) into a body cavity
It remains (Alice Notley) read poetry
and imagine yourself writing it
A poet is a mirror, a transcriber (Susan Howe)
What are these winged words
(Jennifer Moxley)
Other peoples’ vocabularies did this to me.
Auspicious Window
Between sky & town
Birds sing Bells ring
Venus ascends the Starry Stair
While afternoon comes upon
Our fair histories
Sensitive plants touch but
Stay open past twilight.
Between rearranged lines
Walking, lives a moth.
A flaming sigh
Takes us past our
pain almost
Human Lucky
A brief Communication
Fortuitous Window never
Written, go on
A Call for Vertical Integration in the Eye of the Storm
Purple & blue Tiffany combo in the
Church of my childhood struggle of perfect
Public meat longing again vine-covered
Power flower conflict hunger for green
Struggle—if this is sin then separation—
Grace abounds even more than bonds—
Doubt boundaries not programmable—
Stretched grace strikes us down—
Social eels demand ransom, children
Do not bow your heads—tranquility of hymns
Is shattered & addressed two days ago I
Saw the Black Ash of a Church Burned on its
Sure Foundation Century old pin oaks scorched
Against stones of those who can’t ever leave this sight—
Who witnessed Who
Drove away during the sermon Burning
Cometary
Come lay here awhile familiar body of earth
swelling sweetness I know not yet
When sexing grows stale so will living so
not yet to die or be bored by bright
eyes in the bias of night streaming
3 am comfortable garlic rose
honey jasper beryllium iridium
insulating who knows what from whom or
what marginalia starts to cook at
3 pm half way cross to one real world
writing flash across the sky complete
with fiery tail Just once is not
enough how ’bout 4 a minute
and look up again tonight
Come here Come tarry
Comet her
Encyclopedia Botanica
or
A Mother-to-Be’s Book of meltdown anticipation and scientific renderings of organic and theoretical forms such as the way flowers lie in the bud: A permutational Cento of Centos consisting of painful insufflations, multiple estivations, the calculus of various inflorescents, my naive set theories (as unordered pairs), vibratory odes in all manner of cross-pollinating color, illumined spores & how they